Fruit and flora, beasts and babes, and breathtaking landscape are all revealed in a blaze of colour

Anne Marie Robinson, Cambridge University

The exhibition is being used to show the leaps in technology of colour printing from its earliest days, when it was regarded as an expensive luxury item.

The library's exhibitions officer, Anne Marie Robinson, said a whole host of colour printings will be on display.

She said: "Our exhibition takes you between the covers to look at highlights from colour printing before photographic techniques dominated the illustrated book.

"Religious works, scientific volumes and children's books are all featured.

The Book of Hawking is England's earliest colour print

"Fruit and flora, beasts and babes, and breathtaking landscape are all revealed in a blaze of colour."

The exhibit ranges from the primitive techniques used in the 15th Century, where printers used multi-colour blocks to imitate the manuscript illumination made by medieval scribes, through to the 19th Century.

By then technical innovations such as lithography brought colour prints to a mass audience through publications including The Illustrated London News.

Another highlight of the exhibition is England's earliest colour printed book, The Book of Hawking.

Owen Jones produced this piece in 1850

The 1486 work features a coat of arms towards the end of the book .

The book on hunting has a publishers symbol inside that attributes authorship to Dame Juliana Berners, the prioress of a nunnery in Hertfordshire.

This book also holds the distinction of being the first book printed in English written by a woman, the first to include a list of collective nouns, and also the first list of recognised dog breeds.