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.[5]
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 the German language 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.[8]
30 January – Constantine Lascaris's Erotemata ("Questions", also known as Grammatica Graeca) is the first book to be printed entirely in Greek (in Milan).
1496: February – Francesco Griffo cuts the first old style serif (or humanist) typeface (known in modern times as Bembo) for the Aldine Press edition of Pietro Bembo's narrative Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chabrielem liber, a work which also includes early adoption of the semicolon.
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[14]
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
^ abPalmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. ISBN0-7126-5616-2.
^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.
^Csapodi, Csaba; Csapodiné Gárdonyi, Klára (1976). Bibliotheca Corviniana. Budapest.
^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.