"In the same month in which their Majesties [Ferdinand and Isabella] issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month they gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of discovery to the Indies." So begins Christopher Columbus' diary. The expulsion that Columbus refers to was so cataclysmic an event that ever since, the date 1492 has been almost as important in Jewish history as in American history. On July 30 of that year, the entire Jewish community, some 200,000 people, were expelled from Spain."

In a 4-page pamphlet, Epistola de Insulis nuper inventis published in Barcelona, Christopher Columbus describes the discovery of the New World.

According to J. Alden (ed) European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, I, 1980, 1-2, there were twenty printed works, published during 1493 that mentioned the New World. These included nine or ten different editions of Columbus' Epistola.

Anton Koberger of Nuremberg publishes the Liber Chronicarum written by the physician Hartmann Schedel. This large-folio compendium of history, geography and natural wonders contains 1,809 illustrations from 645 woodcuts on just over 600 pages. Certain woodcuts are reproduced more than once, sometimes for the depiction of different people or cities. Koberger also issues a German translation the same year. Though the information in this work is rapidly superceded, the Nuremberg Chronicle remains famous for its extraordinary graphic design, its printing, its woodcuts and descriptions of cities. One of the woodcuts depicts the paper mill established in Nuremberg by Ulman Stromer in 1390.

Probably because of its imposing physical characteristics, an exceptionally high percentage of the original editions of this work will be preserved in both private and institutional libraries. Remarkably the original manuscript exemplars showing the exact arrangement of the text and illustrations for both the Latin and German editions have been preserved, as well has other original documents pertaining to the publication of these works. The Exemplar for the Latin edition is at the Stadbibliothek Nurnberg. The Exemplar for the German edition is also preserved in the Nuremberg City Library. In 1976 Adrian Wilson, a book designer and historian of book design, issued a remarkable book in which he showed the relationship between these manuscript exemplars and the printed editions: The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976).

A product for the royal court of France, the "Hours of Henry VIII" by Jean Poyet, preserved in the Morgan Library, is one of the most splendid Books of Hours from this period. This magnificently illustrated lay book of daily devotions and prayers contains fifty-five exquisitely hand-painted images.

Even as the reach of printing continues to expand, the practice of commissioning luxury manuscript books of hours by wealthy patrons continues well through the sixteenth century, after which it will noticably decline. The production of these luxury manuscripts in which the emphasis is on the illustrations to some degree because their patrons might be only partly literate, continues to provide employment for a declining number of scribes and illuminators, some of whom find employment in the printing trades or as the illustrators of printed books. The work of manuscript illuminators can also be seen in certain hand-colored deluxe copies of illustrated printed books.