The First ever published book in Europe...

The first book to be published in Europe was of course the Bible. It came much later than China's first book which was actually printed in 868, Diamond Sutra.

Johannes Gutenberg was a German goldsmith, printer and publisher. His invention of moveable type around 1439 started the Printing Revolution.

The image above shows a 16th century print shop in use which followed the printing revolution. Johannes Gutenberg bought out copies of the Bible between the dates of 1450 - 1455, (it is not exactly known)

These copies carried 42 lines per page and were exquistely finished though the pages were not bound. This copy of the Bible has been highly praised for its aesthetics and the technical level involved with producing such a work. The printed Bible was not cheap but it sold for significantly less than the handwritten versions available, which also could take a full year for a scribe to complete. As the handwritten copies, Gutenberg had the copies illustrated by hand to capture the elegance of previous copies. Every detail was cared for.

There are 48 known copies of this Bible, two of which are at the British Library which can be compared. The text lacks modern features such as indentation, pagination and paragraph breaks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gutenberg.jpg
http://www.compassrose.com/publishing/printing-press.html