“Incunabula Croatica”: NSK to present its monograph on Croatia’s earliest printed books

On 25 September 2025, starting at 13.00, the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) will present Incunabula Croatica, the result of its major publishing project and a significant contribution to insights into Croatia’s earliest printed books and the history of the Croatian book in general.

Published with the support of the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media and the Adris Foundation as a result of years-long research into the Croatian incunabula, the monograph will be presented by the NSK Director General Dr Ivanka Stričević, the monograph’s consulting editors Associate Professor at the Department of Information and Communication Sciences of the Zagreb University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Ivana Hebrang Grgić, Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Mateo Žagar and member emeritus of the Institute of Art History in Zagreb Dr Milan Pelc, along with the editor-in-chief Associate Professor at the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies at the University of Zadar Marijana Tomić.

The crown of many years of extensive research  

By publishing the monograph, NSK is presenting the results of painstaking work and in-depth research into the Croatian incunabula which it undertook throughout the years in collaboration with many Croatian institutions.  

Spotlighting 180 copies of 96 Croatian earliest printed books identified in 40 institutions, the monograph features data collected as part of the Library’s years-long project focusing on the Croatian incunabula (Hrvatski prvotisci: popis i opis prvotisaka u hrvatskim svjetovnim i crkvenim ustanovama). It includes the findings of prominent researchers of the earliest Croatian books, ranging from 19^th-century bibliographer Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski to scholars who greatly influenced the field in the 20^th century, Šime Jurić and Vatroslav Frkin.

Published to bring together in one place the latest insights into the diversity and wealth of Croatia’s earliest printed books, the monograph will certainly both enable and encourage further research into this invaluable segment of Croatian cultural heritage.

Learn more about the Library’s major project focusing on the Croatian incunabula in the 20^th issue of The Voice of NSK (p. 49).