The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Short History of English Printing,
1476-1898, by Henry R. Plomer

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Title: A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898

Author: Henry R. Plomer

Editor: Alfred Pollard

Release Date: January 18, 2007 [EBook #20393]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: William Morris

Printer 1891-1896.]

EDITED BY
ALFRED POLLARD

A SHORT HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH PRINTING

1476-1898

BY HENRY R. PLOMER

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER
AND COMPANY, LIMITED
1900

The English
Bookman's
Library

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty

EDITOR'S PREFACE

When Mr. Plomer consented at my request to write a short history of
English printing which should stop neither at the end of the fifteenth
century, nor at the end of the sixteenth century, nor at 1640, but
should come down, as best it could, to our own day, we were not without
apprehensions that the task might prove one of some difficulty. How
difficult it would be we had certainly no idea, or the book would never
have been begun, and now that it is finished I would bespeak the
reader's sympathies, on Mr. Plomer's behalf, that its inevitable
shortcomings may be the more generously forgiven. If we look at what has
already been written on the subject the difficulties will be more easily
appreciated. In England, as in other countries, the period in the
history of the press which is best known to us is, by the perversity of
antiquaries, that which is furthest removed from our own time. Of all
that can be learnt about Caxton the late Mr. William Blades set down in
his monumental work nine-tenths, and the zeal of Henry Bradshaw, of Mr.
Gordon Duff, and of Mr. E. J. L. Scott, has added nearly all that was
lacking in this storehouse. Mr. Duff has extended his labours to the
other English printers of the 15th century, giving in his _Early English
Printing_ (Kegan Paul, 1896) a conspectus, with facsimiles of the