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. 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.