This history of libraries in Britain and Europe concentrates on the role of the individual collector in cultural preservation.

This 1828 treatise was the first comprehensive examination of copyright laws in Britain.

A passionate defence of educational opportunities for the working classes by one of Victorian England's most committed social reformers.

William Tinsley (1830 1900) was a noted Victorian publisher whose catalogue included works by such celebrated novelists as Thomas Hardy and Wilkie Collins. This two-volume autobiography, first published in 1900, traces his life from his rural childhood to the establishment and rise of the Tinsley Brothers company in 1858, and its later collapse. Each chapter contains a series of brief sketches of authors and other contemporaries. Volume 2 charts Tinsley's later career, and features several lengthier portraits of some of the personalities he encountered. It also includes information on...

First published in 1854, this biography of the printer William Caxton also covers the later history of printing in England.

Samuel Squire Sprigge (1860 1937) was a qualified physician who worked for The Lancet from 1892 and was editor from 1909 until his death. He published several books including a history of the journal and its founder, and a volume of essays, Physic and Fiction. The Methods of Publishing first appeared in 1890 and is Sprigge's passionate contribution to the late-nineteenth-century discussion on how the question of literary property is best resolved. Sprigge argues that this matter is often treated in a cavalier manner that disadvantages authors, particularly in the relationship between...

An engaging book of literary reminiscences of the London publishing world in the period between 1779 and 1853.

A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical (1839), combines the practical knowledge of an engraver with the critical inquiry of an historian. Compiled and edited by William Andrew Chatto, an established author with an interest in woodcuts, the book was originally conceived by the wood-engraver John Jackson, who provided the book's more than three hundred engravings. Roughly three quarters of the Treatise is concerned with the historical evolution of engraving, from the Egyptian hieroglyph stamps held at the British Museum through the masterful works of Albrecht Durer to the...

Physiologie de la Lecture and de L'Ecriture (1905) was Emile Javal's seventh book. Initially trained as an engineer, Javal turned to medicine and to ophthalmology when he saw his sister suffering from defects of vision. He became a renowned ophthalmologist, developing the Javal-Schiotz ophthalmometer, treating strabismus, and founding the Sorbonne's ophthalmology lab. Tragically, Javal developed glaucoma and was blind by 1900. His work investigates the 'physiology of reading and writing', undertaking historical, theoretical, and practical approaches to his subject. Javal's work first examines...

Charles Hindley (d.1893) wrote several books on British popular literature including Curiosities of Street Literature and a history of the cries of London. This book, first published in a limited edition in 1869 but here reprinted from the 1886 edition, tells the colourful story of John (1769 1813) and James (1792 1842) Catnach, the father-and-son printers who were leaders in the expanding market for cheap publications for the masses. John's contribution was to start using real paper and printer's ink instead of the cheap substitutes current at the time. He was also noted for embellishing his...