Scholarship is not to be hurried. In 1954, the librarian of the British Museum reported that revision of the general catalogue was going more slowly than expected but should be finished in about 250 years. “Research” and its institutions may be forgotten; governments rise and fall; empires and isms come and go; centuries slip by; but happily books, and books about books, go on and on.

The first volume of the Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum appeared in 1908, since when the library itself has moved and changed its name. But the scholarship continued unperturbed, and this week sees publication of the catalogue’s 11th and last volume, covering books printed in England by Caxton and his successors.

It may seem odd that the English books are the last to be catalogued, but England came late to printing. For 20 years all our printed books were imported, until Caxton set up shop in Westminster in 1476.

Proper title pages, however, developed later still (after 1500), so the origins of these books have required intensive investigation, with the bibliographical scholarship building up over generations. Often the best clues for classification are differences in the type itself. In the catalogue, not only is each book identified, dated, and described leaf by leaf, but details are given of the paper source, the binding (and comparable bindings elsewhere), the printer, the text he used and where he may have found it.

Then every possible detail is given about ownership. For instance, the copy of Bonini’s exposition on Aristotle, printed in Oxford by Theodericus Rood in 1481, was bought during the following century for 2s 4d, before being acquired by Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and then in 1609 by Henry, Prince of Wales, whose arms are on the front and back.

A. W. Pollard, editor of another volume of this catalogue, wrote in 1911: “Of original literature of any importance the half-century 1450-1500 was singularly barren, and the zeal with which 15th-century books have been collected and studied has been criticized as excessive and misplaced.” Yet they have been objects of veneration since the 17th century.

To celebrate completion of the catalogue, the British Library this week held a conference about the first 25 years of English printing, and Christie’s are exhibiting a score of English incunabula – books printed before 1501 – at their rooms in St James’s.

Chosen for their immaculate condition, the books have been borrowed from half a dozen institutional and a few private libraries, and are not for sale. One of them, however, the Caxton first edition of Chaucer (1476), crops up in Christie’s sales every now and again. They sold it on April 3, 1776, for £6, and again on July 8, 1998, to Sir Paul Getty for a world record £4.6 million. Now described as the West-Ratcliffe-Rockingham-Fitwilliam-Getty copy, this first great volume of English poetry is the most expensive literary book ever sold.

Catalogue of Books printed in the XVth Century now in the British Library, XI: England, compiled by Lotte Hellinga, is published by Hes & De Graaf at €950 plus VAT.

The exhibition is at Christie’s, 8 King Street, London SW1Y 6QT, until Friday.