Miniature book

MIniature facsimile edition of the Gutenberg Bible (Leipzig: Minaturbukverlag, 2017).

• Diamond Classics series published by William Pickering, from 1819
• Miniature Constitution of Ukraine
• Thumb Bibles

The Ellen Terry Shakespeare Glasgow: David Bryce and Son; New York; Frederick A. Stokes Co.,[1904]. Remains the smallest edition of the complete works of Shakespeare. Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. Photograph by Molly Schwartzburg

Many books have claim to the title of smallest book in the world at the time of their publication. The title can apply to a variety of accomplishments: smallest overall size, smallest book with movable type, smallest printed book, smallest book legible to the naked eye, and so on.

750: Hyakumantō Darani or ‘One Million Pagoda Dharani.' Also one of the earliest known printed texts, these 2-3/8" tall Buddhist charms were printed, rolled into a scroll, placed in miniature white pagodas, and distributed to Buddhist temples. A million were printed at the command of Japanese Empress Shōtoku.[11]

1674: Bloem-Hofje (Amsterdam: Benedict Schmidt, 1674).[12] For more than two centuries, this remained the smallest book printed with moveable type.

1878: Dante, Divina Commedia (Milan: Gnocchi, 1878). 500 pages. 5 cm x 3.5 cm. Typeset and printed by the Salmin Brothers of Padua.[13]

1897: Galileo Galilei. Galileo a Madama Cristina di Lorena (Padua: dei Fratelli Salmin, 1897). 150 pages. This remains to this day the smallest book set from movable type.[14]

1900: Edward Fitzgerald, trans. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Cleveland: Charles H. Meigs, 1900).

1932: The Rose Garden of Omar Khayyam.

1985: Old King Cole (Paisley: Gleniffer Press, 1985). Height: 0.9 mm. For 20 years this was the "smallest book in the world printed using offset lithography".[15]

2001: New Testament (King James version) Cambridge: M.I.T, (2001). 5 x 5 mm.

2002: Anton Chekhov, Chameleon (Omsk, Siberia: Anatoly Konenko, 1996)[16] 0.9 mm x 0.9 mm.

2006: ABC books in Russian and Roman characters (Omsk, Siberia: Anatoly Konenko, 1996). 0.8 mm x 0.8 mm[17]

2007: Teeny Ted from Turnip Town (category: world's smallest reproduction of a printed book. Single sheet, not codex format.) 0.07 x 0.10 mm

2016: Vladimir Aniskin, [Untitled] (Russia: Vladimir Aniskin, 2016). "The micro-book consists of several pages, each measuring only very tiny fractions of a millimeter: the precise size of the pages is 70 by 90 micrometers or 0.07 by 0.09 millimeters — too small to be read by the naked human eye. Made by gluing white paint to extremely thin film, the pages are hung from a tiny ring binder that allows them to be turned. The whole construction rests on a horizontal sliver of a poppy seed."[18]

In 2007, archaeologists found a miniature Bible (Glasgow: David Bryce & Son, 1901) tucked into a child's boot hidden in a chimney cavity in an English cottage in Ewerby, Lincolnshire. Shoes were placed in such locations as early as the fourteenth-century as anti-witchcraft devices known as "spirit traps."[19]

The Constitution of the United States, in miniature version.

Good Book Press, Santa Cruz, California

Dawson's Book Shop, Los Angeles, CA

The Gleniffer Press

Gloria Stuart, the film actress, published numerous miniature books as collaborations with significant printers

Plum Park Press

The Smallest Books in the World, Peru

Miniboox German publisher of miniature books

Achille St. Onge

Букос(Bookos), russian publisher specializing in miniature craft books, Russia

HarperCollins, Collins Gem Books division.

Oxford University Press published many miniature religious books and children's books in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Running Press, known for miniature books marketed as impulse buys in bookstore checkout lines.

Sanrio, known for tiny blank books in its Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars, and other lines starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Sangorski & Sutcliffe

Jan Sobota

Tony Firman

Margaret Hicks

• The largest collection of miniature books in the United States is held by the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington. Donated by collector Ruth E. Adomeit, it numbers more than 16,000 items.
• Second in size is the McGehee Miniature Book Collection of more than 15,000 items, at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. The collection was donated by collector Caroline Yarnall McGehee Lindemann Brandt, a charter member of the Miniature Book Society.
• In 2020, Jozsef Tari donated his collection of 5,700 miniature books to the Jókai Mór City Library of Pope in Hungary.
• The University of Iowa Special Collections and University Archives holds a collection of 4,000 miniatures donated by collector Charlotte M. Smith, which they feature on tumblr.
• The Library of Congress miniature book collection consists of 1,596 books that are ten centimeters or less in height. The Library of Congress offers digitized materials from the miniature collection, including many editions from the 19th century.[20]
• Rutgers University Library holds some 1,500 volumes in the Alden Jacobs Collection.[21]
• Washington University in St. Louis holds a significant collection, some on view in a permanent exhibition space, donated by Julian Edison. One of the most visited collections at the University of North Texas Library in Denton, TX, is their miniature book collection that contains around 3,000 items. A few items in the collection were at one time considered the smallest in the world.[22]

• The Morgan Library & Museum houses more than 8,000 miniature books.
• Queen Mary's Dolls' House at Windsor Castle in Great Britain contains a miniature library of 200 books[23] created expressly for the collection in the 1920s at a 1:12 scale. Along with reference volumes, a Bible and the Quran, the library includes works—some written expressly for the collection—by prominent authors of the day such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, and Vita Sackville-West.[24] The books were bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, and contained miniature bookplates illustrated by E. H. Shepard.[25]
• The Baku Museum of Miniature Books in Azerbaijan is the only museum dedicated only to miniature books.
• The Museum Meermanno in the Hague, Netherlands contains a significant miniature collection on permanent display.[26]

Prominent historical figures who collected miniature books include President Franklin D. Roosevelt[27] and retailer Stanley Marcus.