This catalogue describes for the first time in detail the relatively small but important collection of German printed books in The British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings. Five centuries of illustrated books are represented, of which by far the most numerous and interesting are those of the sixteenth century. There are examples of the work of many German artists, from the greatest, Albrecht Dyrer, to lesser and anonymous figures, whose illustrative and decorative work in printed books can be studied alongside the Department's superb collections of German prints and drawings. Some of these books are rare, a few probably unique, and several are of interest also for their texts and provenances. They may be considered as an important pendant to the much larger collection of German illustrated books in the British Library.
The Museum's collection, comprising almost 700 items, was largely acquired in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and two benefactors in particular are responsible for the unusual strength of the sixteenth-century holdings: William Mitchell (1820-1908), a collector of German Renaissance prints, and Campbell Dodgson (1867-1948), Keeper of Prints and Drawings from 1912 to 1932. Amongst the books Mitchell gave to the Department are a small number originally owned by Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530), the Nuremberg humanist and friend of Dyrer.