«What began as a hobby became a consuming quest»: il bibliofilo statunitense William Lawrence Clements e la sua collezione di incunaboli

Abstract

This paper aims to describe the activity of the bibliophile William Lawrence Clements, an American industrial businessman and one of the greatestcollectors of the 20th century. During the golden age of American book collecting, William Clements managed to set up an outstanding book collectionspecialized in Americana, never seen before in the Midwest of the United States. Through the study of the William L. Clements Library’s incunabula collection, it is possible to reconstruct the history of the individual copies and the cultural environment in which William Clements worked. Sold through auctions and individual merchants, these incunabula belonged to prestigious collections and still retain fundamental provenances that allow the reconstruction of their journey. The study of the itinerary of the incunabula throughout the centuries, from Europe to America, is reconstructed by analyzing elements such as ex libris, inscriptions, bindings, stamps, reading marks, and manuscript notes.