Early printed books / by E. Gordon Duff.

  • Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon), 1863-1924.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Early printed books / by E. Gordon Duff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    our early printers, with a view to the solution of some of many difficulties still remaining unsettled in the history of printing. I have for many years tried to draw the attention of librarians and others to the evidence which may be gleaned from a careful study from these fragments, and if done systematically and intelligently, it ceases to be mere antiquarian potter- ing or aimless waste of time. I have elsewhere drawn attention ^ to the distinction to be observed between what may be called respectively binder's waste and printer's waste. When speaking of fragments of books as hmder’s waste, I mean books which have been in circulation, and have been thrown away as useless. The value of such fragments is principally in themselves. They may or may not be of interest. But by printer's waste I mean . . . waste, proof, or cancelled sheets in the printer’s office, which, in the early days when printers were their own bookbinders, would be used by the bookbinder for lining the boards, or the centres of quires, of books bound in the same offce where they were printed. In this way such fragments have a value beyond themselves, as they enable us to infer almost with certainty that such books are specimens of the binding executed in the office of the printer who printed them ; and thus, once seeing the style adopted and the actual designs used, we are able to recognise the same binder’s work, 1 Lists of Founts of Type and Woodcut Devices used by printers in Flolland in the Fifteenth Century. Memorandum No. 3. No. 14 in the Collected Papers,