Sunday June 27, 2004

I was very happy to notice the other day that Octavo, purveyor of rare digital books, has apparently survived the .COM implosion.

Octavo offers high-quality PDF images of a variety of old and rare books at very reasonable prices. For example, here is a sample from Mercator's Atlas, published in 1595:

Among the other volumes available: Newton's Opticks, Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity, The Gutenberg Bible, and works by Galileo, Copernicus, Blake, Milton, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, to name several.

I own a (digital) copy of Bodoni's Tipografico, published in 1818 -- of interest to anyone into typography. And a copy of Jones' The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856. Here is one beautiful page from this book:

I've found Octavo's offerings to be a nice way to enjoy beautiful works that I'll likely never see in person and certainly never have in my library.