1425 – At about this date the first Guildhall Library (probably for theology) is established in the City of London under the will of Richard Whittington.[1]
Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire, England, presumed author of the chivalric tales of Le Morte d'Arthur, is imprisoned for most of the following decade on multiple charges including violent robbery and rape.
1452 – Completion of the Malatestiana Library (Biblioteca Malatestiana) in Cesena (in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, commissioned by the city's ruler Malatesta Novello), the first European public library, in the sense of belonging to the commune and open to all citizens.[6]
1452–3 – Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz probably prints the Sibyllenbuch, a poem of about 74 pages, of which only a fragment survives, making it the earliest known remnant of any European book printed using movable type.[7]
5 June – French poet François Villon is implicated in a murder.
1457
14 August – The Mainz Psalter, the second major book printed with movable type in the West, the first to be wholly finished mechanically (including colour) and the first to carry a printed date, is printed by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer for the Elector of Mainz.
1461 – Albrecht Pfister is pioneering movable type book printing in German and the addition of woodcut illustrations in Bamberg, producing a collection of Ulrich Boner's fables, Der Edelstein, the first book printed with illustrations. Soon after this he prints the first known Biblia pauperum (picture Bible).
First book printed in Spain, Obres e trobes en lahors de la Verge María, the anthology of a religious poetry contest held this year in Valencia.
Approximate date – Georgius Purbachius (Georg von Peuerbach)'s Theoricae nouae planetarum is published in Nuremberg, an early example of the application of color printing to an academic text.
1475
February – Pope Sixtus IV appoints the humanist Bartolomeo Platina as Prefect of the newly-re-established Vatican Library (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) in Rome after Platina has presented him with the manuscript of his Lives of the Popes.[13]
30 January – Constantine Lascaris's Erotemata ("Questions", also known as Grammatica Graeca) is the first book to be printed entirely in Greek (in Milan).
William Caxton sets up the first printing press in England, at Westminster.[15] This year he prints improving pamphlets: Stans Puer ad Mensam (John Lydgate's translation of Robert Grosseteste's treatise on table manners, printed together with Salve Regina); The Churl and the Bird and The Horse, the Goose and the Sheep (both by Lydgate); and a parallel text edition of Cato with translation by Benjamin Burgh.[16]
The first printed edition of Ptolemy's Geography (in Latin translation as Cosmographia) with maps, published in Bologna, is the first printed book with engraved illustrations[17][18] and also the first with maps by a known artist, the plates having been engraved by Taddeo Crivelli of Ferrara[19] (book wrongly dated 1462).
1482: 25 January – Probable first printing of the Torah (in Hebrew with vowels and marks of cantillation printed), with paraphrases in Aramaic and Rashi's commentary, printed in Bologna.[22]
1496: February – Francesco Griffo cuts the first old-style serif (or humanist) typeface (known from the 20th century as Bembo) for the Aldine Press edition of Pietro Bembo's narrative Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chabrielem liber ("De Aetna", a description of a journey to Mount Etna) published in Venice, Aldus Manutius' first printing in the Latin alphabet and a work which includes early adoption of the semicolon (dated 1495 according to the more veneto).
Cardinal Juan de Torquemada – Meditationes, seu Contemplationes devotissimae ("Meditations, or the Contemplations of the Most Devout"), the first book printed in Italy to include woodcut illustrations[25]
The boke intituled Eracles, and also of Godefrey of Boloyne the whiche speketh of the conquest of the holy londe of Iherusalem, a translation by William Caxton from Estoire d'Eracles, the French version of William of Tyre's Historia
Mirrour of the Worlde, a translation of 1480 by William Caxton from Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Maius, the first book printed in England to include woodcut illustrations
Giuliano Dati – Lettera delle isole novamente trovata, a translation into verse of a letter from Christopher Columbus to Ferdinand of Spain regarding Columbus' first exploratory voyage across the Atlantic in 1492
Klooster, John W. (2009). Icons of invention: the makers of the modern world from Gutenberg to Gates. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p.8. ISBN978-0-313-34745-0.
"Biblioteca Malatestiana" (in Italian). Istituzione Biblioteca Malatestiana. Archived from the original on 16 December 2002. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
The University of Glasgow, Munimenta, II, 69, dated 10 September 1462, admits a Robert Henryson, licenciate in Arts and bachelor of Decreits (Canon Law), as a member of the University. It is considered strongly likely, from secondary evidence, that this was the poet.
Wijnekus, F. J. M.; Wijnekus, E. F. P. H. (22 October 2013). "2827 cicero". Elsevier's Dictionary of the Printing and Allied Industries (2nded.). Elsevier. ISBN978-0-444-42249-1.
Vitæ Pontificum Platinæ historici liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum qui hactenus ducenti fuere et XX (published 1479). The event is depicted in Melozzo da Forlì's fresco for the library Sixtus IV Appointing Platina as Prefect of the Vatican Library (1477). Setton, Kenneth M. (1960). "From Medieval to Modern Library". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 104: 371–390.
Biddick, Kathleen (2013). The Typological Imaginary: Circumcision, Technology, History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p.48. ISBN9780812201277.