PRINTING HISTORY AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
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London : Caxton Magazine, [1918]. First edition. Thoughts on the costs and organisation of the printing industry, with "honest proposals for post war reconstruction".
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). (288)pp. Colour frontispiece. Folding table. Original boards; upper joint just starting, but still a good copy in the original pictorial dust-jacket – slightly soiled and a little chipped.

£20

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London : Trübner & Co., 1882. Second octavo edition. Adds material on the meaning and origin of Caxton’s device, on his system of punctuation, etc., to the text of the original 1877 edition.
Post 8vo (21cm). xii,(388)pp. Plates, facsimiles, etc. Original decorative boards; small chip to head of spine (not affecting lettering); slight spotting of edges, endpapers and prelims, but otherwise a very good copy.

£25

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Birmingham : Charles F. Bullock, 1901. First edition. A brief life of the celebrated colour-printer George Baxter (1804-1867), together with an extensive priced list of his works – 193 assorted prints arranged by subject, ten missionary subjects, thirty portraits, thiry-three British views, and forty-four books containing Baxter prints. Compiled by the Birmingham bookseller and antique dealer Charles F. Bullock, “Baxter Expert”, who claimed to have the largest and finest collection of Baxter prints in the country.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). (30)pp. Four plates. Original wrappers; a little worn and creased, with a pronounced vertical crease from having been folded for the pocket; lacks final blank leaf, neatly excised; a few minor marks and small flaws, but a reasonable copy of a scarce and fragile production. Contemporary ownership inscription of E. A. Baxter on upper wrapper. Some underlining and annotation in the text by an evidently serious collector.

£25

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London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, (1964). First edition. A life of the celebrated eighteenth-century printer, William Strahan (1715-1785), compiled by the war-hero and publisher J. A. “Peter” Cochrane.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (xiv),(226)pp. Portrait. Table. Facsimiles. Original boards; very good in a lightly used, rubbed and creased dust-jacket.

£10

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Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, (1992). First edition. An absorbing study of the impact of new printing technology on the handling and shaping of texts – with chapters on composition, proofing, printing, reprinting, authors, authorial control – and much on Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, etc.
Medium 8vo (24cm). (xiv),192,[ii]pp. Original cloth-backed boards; very good in a just faintly marked dust-jacket.

£20

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London : Bibliographical Society / British Library, 2009. Second edition. Reprints Duff’s seminal 1917 bibliography of the English incunabula – all printing in England (and all printing undertaken elsewhere for the English market) prior to 1501. Lotte Hellinga adds forty-six supplementary descriptions to the original 431, forty-three of which were unknown to Duff, together with a new and extensive census of known and extant copies. The illustrations depict all the founts of type used in England in the period.
Crown 4to (26cm). (xviii),278pp. Fifty-three full-page facsimiles (some coloured). Original cloth; very good.

£40

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London : Tate Gallery, (1977). First edition : the hardback issue. An account of the Curwen Press, published to accompany the 1977 Tate exhibition. Includes a full catalogue of the exhibition (340 items), a checklist of the complete donation, a glossary of printing terms, etc. With colour plates by Edward Bawden, Claud Lovat Fraser, Barnett Freedman, David Hockney, McKnight Kauffer, John Nash, Paul Nash, John Piper, Eric Ravilious, Ceri Richards, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). (168),[viii]pp. Plates, some coloured. Illustrations. Facsimiles. Original boards; a very good copy in the dust-jacket.

£30

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Manchester : Manchester University Press / The Librarian, John Rylands Library, 1940. First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed to the economist and political theorist Harold Laski (1893-1950), and signed by Henry Guppy. Traces the history of the invention of paper, block-printing in China, block-books in Europe, playing cards, block-prints, the beginnings of typography, Gutenberg, Mainz, etc. An expanded version of a paper that originally appeared in the Rylands Bulletin earlier in 1940.
Royal 8vo (27cm). (46),[ii]pp. Plates, with eighteen facsimiles. Original wrappers; a little worn, slightly creased and with a few external marks and nicks, but overall in good state.

£20

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Leiden & Boston : Brill, (2018). First edition. The first attempt fully to analyse the books (and other printed material) entered for publication in the Stationers’ Register to 1640, but which no longer survive. The author’s estimate of the sheer extent of loss – perhaps 20,000 pieces of printing in all – books, ballads, news-books, broadsides, religious tracts, almanacs, plays, verse, music, etc., are dealt with in turn – perhaps skews our entire understanding of the period. With an extensive and useful bibliography. In the “Library of the Written Word” series.
Medium 8vo (25cm). [xii],224,[viii]pp. Figures and graphs, some coloured. Original yellow cloth, lettered in blue; a very good copy indeed in the dust-jacket – the jacket equally very good.

£40

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London : Pleiades Books, 1947. Second edition : the British issue of the American sheets. A revised and much enlarged version of the original 1943 publication – the best edition of the essential text. A richly illustrated worldwide overview of the subject, based on a lifetime’s research – from ancient times to the modern era, with chapters on papermaking in China and Japan; the hand-mould; maceration; early methods; European and American papermaking; ancient watermarks and mystic symbols; later watermarks; materials; the paper-machine; new fibres; forgery; modern hand-made papers; a chronology; a bibliography, etc.
Medium 8vo (24cm). xxiv,(612),(xxxviii),[4]pp. Over 300 illustrations, facsimiles, etc. Folding diagram. Folding map. Original blue buckram, ruled and lettered in gilt; top edge blue; some very minor rubbing; a few spots to top edge and endleaves, but overall a very good copy. Additional postage on account of weight.

£50

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London : Chiswick Press, 1891. Second edition. First published in 1887, but “much useful matter has [now] been added, and an attempt has been made to classify it”. Jacobi was manager of the Chiswick Press and provides much useful advice. With chapters on the Composing Room; Machine and Press Work; Inks, Varnishes, etc.; Warehouse Work and Stationery; Mucilages; Stereotyping and Electrotyping; Lithography; Engraving and Process Work; Bookbinding, etc.
Crown 8vo (19cm). (xiv),360,[viii]pp. Original cloth; expertly rebacked, repaired and refurbished, retaining the original cloth spine; some wear; pervasive mild stain to upper corners, almost throughout; a few leaves slightly chipped, but a good, working copy.

£20

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London : George Bell & Sons, 1893. A reissue of the original 1890 edition, with a cancel title and inserted advertisements dated 1895. Jacobi was manager of the Chiswick Press and provides a comprehensive illustrated survey, with sections on types, composition and distribution, reading, press-work, motive power, machine printing, warehouse work, etc. Includes a glossary.
Foolscap 8vo (19cm). xviii,302,[x] + [iv],(12)pp inserted advertisements. Over 150 illustrations. Tables. Original cloth; some minor wear; endpapers starting; a touch shaken; some small marks, creases and general signs of age and use, but a good and serviceable copy.

£25

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Oxford : Oxford Polytechnic Press, (1987). First edition. The seventh collection of conference papers in the “Publishing Pathways” series. Includes Sheila Lambert on “The Printers and the Government, 1604-1640”, Derek Nuttall on “English Printers and their Typefaces, 1600-1700”, Michael Treadwell on “Lists of Master Printers: The Size of the London Printing Trade, 1637-1723”, etc.
Foolscap 4to (21cm). xii,174,[vi]pp. Original linen wrappers; lightly sunned, otherwise a very good copy. Small book-label on inner front wrapper.

£15

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London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1915. Second edition. A stylish history, particularly strong on the earlier periods. In the “Books About Books” series, edited by A. W. Pollard. First published in 1900.
Demy 8vo (22cm). xii,276pp. Original cloth; a little bruised; a few slight marks and spots; endpapers a little tanned, but overall a good copy. Dated 1924 gift inscription to A. C. Haydon from M.H.R.

£20

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Boston Spa & London : British Library, 2002. First edition. Essays by various hands on aspects of the international press in London: German printing and bookselling in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; chapters on printing in Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Polish, Hungarian and the Scandinavian languages, etc.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (viii),(274),[vi]pp. Facsimiles. Original boards; just slightly bruised, but a very good copy in the dust-jacket, likewise just lightly bruised.

£20

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London : Printing Historical Society, (1972). First edition. An immensely useful directory of early nineteenth-century printers, drawing on the surviving records of registration of presses with the Clerks of the Peace for London, Middlesex and Surrey – and throwing up interesting sidelights on printing practices, locations, movements and partnerships.
Medium 8vo (25cm). (xxviii),234,[ii]pp. Illustrations. Facsimiles. Original cloth; a few slight edge spots, but a very good copy in a slightly chipped dust-jacket. With the ownership inscription of the late B. C. Bloomfield.

£20

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Hitchin : Dodman Press, 1983 [i.e. 1984]. First separate edition. An extract from an 1886 Mark Twain talk on his apprenticeship to a printer at the age of twelve.
Narrow crown 8vo (21cm). [16]pp. Illustrations. Original white stapled wrappers, lettered in black and decorated in red; very good.

£15

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London : Farrand Press & Private Libraries Association, 1990. First edition. A magisterial study of the application of lithography to book production, with chapters on lithographic incunabula; military manuals; the publications of Sir Thomas Phillipps; books on accounting; music; facsimile work, etc. With a descriptive catalogue of the known examples, etc.
Crown 4to (26cm). 374,[ii]pp. Illustrations. Facsimiles. Original cloth; top edge a touch dusty; small mark on fore-edge, but otherwise a very good copy.

£30

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Ipswich : W. E. Harrison & Sons, 1949. First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed to G. Bodley Scott and signed by S. F. Watson. A detailed and illustrated monograph, with material on Reginald Oliver, Anthony Scoloker, John Oswen, John Overton, William Prynne, William Weekly, John Daye, John Bagnall, Charles Punchard, John Bush, Alfred Piper, etc., etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [viii],46,[x]pp. Plates. Facsimiles. Illustrations. Original red cloth; spine lettering much faded; some spotting to edges, but a good and sound copy.

£20

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