Early Printed Books

A comprehensive 1893 survey of the early history of printing in Europe, with chapters on bookbinding and collecting.

E. Gordon Duff (Author)

9781108026741, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 March 2011

256 pages, 11 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 1.6 cm, 0.45 kg

Edward Gordon Duff (1863–1924) was a bibliographer and librarian with a particular interest in early printed books. He was librarian of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, from 1893 to 1900, and Sandars Reader in Bibliography at Cambridge in 1899, 1904 and 1911. Alongside research and writing he also did freelance cataloguing. Duff's work set new standards of accuracy in bibliography, which he considered a science. Early Printed Books was published in 1893 as part of A. W. Pollard's series Books about Books, and became a standard work on the subject. Duff provides a concise and clear account of the development of printing and its spread from Germany across Europe, country by country, deliberately highlighting some of the less well known aspects of the subject. The book ends with chapters on bookbinding and on the collection and description of early printed books.

Preface
1. Steps towards the invention
2. The invention of printing
3. Spread of printing in Germany
4. Italy
5. France
6. The Low Countries
7. Spain and Portugal. Denmark and Sweden
8. Westminster: Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, Julian Notary
9. Oxford and St. Albans
10. London: John Lettou, William de Machlinia, Richard Pynson
11. The spread of the art in Great Britain
12. The study of bookbinding
13. The collecting and describing of early printed books
Index of printers and places.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]