E. Gordon Duff – författare

Originally published in 1912 and based on The Sandars Lectures for 1911, this volume provides a historical study of provincial bookbinding. At the time of publication the presses of the university towns Oxford and Cambridge had received considerable attention. As regards other towns, printing in St Albans and York has received some examination, but most had been curiously neglected, including important printing centres such as Ipswich, Worcester and Canterbury. This book attempts to re-contextualise the development of provincial printing as a national process, one in which a number of different towns were involved. The text is concise but informative, containing illustrative examples, a title list of provincial books issued during the period, and a list of biographical works and articles. This is a fascinating study that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of printing.

Originally published in 1906, and based on The Sandars Lectures from 1899 and 1904, this volume provides a historical study of the publishing industry in London. The first section of the book, derived from the 1899 Lectures, covers the period from 1476, when Caxton set up his printing press at Westminster, to around 1500, when a series of essential changes took place in the English book-trade. The second section, derived from the 1904 lectures, covers the period from 1501 to 1535, covering the important 1534 Printing Act passed during the twenty-fifth year of Henry VIII's reign. The sections are concise but highly informative, containing analyses of the key figures in the inception of English printing, together with a number of illustrative examples. This is a fascinating text that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of printing.

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.

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. This study of the early London book trade contains the text of Duff's 1899 Sandars Lectures. William Caxton began printing in England in 1476 at Westminster, but most printers and booksellers working in England at that time were foreigners. Duff covers Westminster and London printing separately, and devotes individual chapters to the related trades of bookselling and bookbinding, which were often carried out by the same person. This reissue also contains Duff's lecture English Printing on Vellum, delivered in 1900.

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. This 1905 work, published by the Bibliographical Society, contains short biographies of all the known participants in the English book trade from 1457 to 1557, whether printers, bookbinders, or stationers, organised in alphabetical sequence. It reveals that during the fifteenth century the majority of printers working in England were foreigners, but after 1500 English representation increased. Although Duff's list has been supplemented by more recent research, it remains a valuable work of reference, and sheds considerable light on the early English book trade.

Excerpt: "When we speak of the invention of printing, we mean the invention of the art of multiplying books by means of single types capable of being used again and again in different combinations for the printing of different books. Taking the word printing in its widest sense, it means merely the impression of any image; and the art of impressing or stamping words or pictures seems to have been known from the very earliest times. The handles of Greek amphoræ, the bases of Roman lamps and vases, were often impressed with the maker’s name, or other legend, by means of a stamp. This was the basis of the art, and Cicero (De Nat. Deorum, ii. 37) had suggested the combination of single letters into sentences. Quintilian refers to stencil plates as a guide to writing; and stamps with letters cut in relief were in common use amongst the Romans. The need for the invention, however, was not great, and it was never made. The first practical printing, both from blocks and mov[2]able type, was done in China. As early as a.d. 593 the more important texts were printed from engraved wooden plates by the order of the Emperor Wên-ti, and in the eleventh century printing from movable type was introduced by a certain smith named Picheng. The multiplicity of Chinese characters rendered the discovery of movable type of little economical value, and the older system of block printing has found favour even up to the present time. In the same way, Corea and Japan, though both had experimented with movable type, returned to their former custom of block printing."