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AUTHOR
Michael Visontay
Michael Visontay has worked as a journalist and senior editor at The…
DiscoverMichael Visontay at Southern Highlands Writers Festival
Journalist Michael Visontay explores the maverick who broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg Bible. His latest work, Noble Fragments, is part detective story and part memoir, as Michael tracks down pages from the broken up and rare Bible.
Michael has worked as a journalist and senior editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, and taught journalism at university. He is the author of Welcome to Wanderland, Who Gave You Permission? (with Manny Waks), and Undies to Equities: the remarkable life of Henri Aram.
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Event Date: 27 Jul 2025, 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Noble Fragments
One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg Bible, and sold it off in individual pages. This is the story of an Australian man’s hunt for those fragments and his family’s debt to an act of literary vandalism.
In 1921, Wells’ audacity scandalised the rare-book world. The Gutenberg was the first substantial book in Europe to have been printed on a printing press. It represented the democratisation of knowledge and was the Holy Grail of rare books.
Was the break-up a sacrilege or a canny deal? New…