"Silent provenance" : some Italian incunabula from the library of Sir Hans Sloane

A consequence of the rebinding of books in the British Library has often been to cause the obliteration of marks of provenance in many incunabula, and this has been especially true of the books from the library of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), the foundation collection of the British Museum's, and later the British Library's collection of early printed books. Includes a list of 39 Italian incunabula (orations and sermons, chiefly printed in Rome, 1480s-1490s) that the author has been able to link back to Soane, and to a previous owner, John Batteley (1646-1708), Archdeacon of Canterbury.