Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Series
  3. Cambridge Library Collection - History of Printing, Publishing and Libraries

The interface between authors and their readers is a fascinating subject in its own right, revealing a great deal about social attitudes, technological progress, aesthetic values, fashionable interests, political positions, economic constraints and individual personalities. This part of the Cambridge Library Collection reissues classic studies in the area of printing and publishing history that shed light on developments in typography and book design, printing and binding, the rise and fall of publishing houses and periodicals and the roles of authors and illustrators. It documents the ebb and flow of the book trade supplying a wide range of customers with products from almanacs to novels, bibles to erotica, and poetry to statistics.

Refine search

Refine search

Content type:
Publication date:
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

179 results in Cambridge Library Collection - History of Printing, Publishing and Libraries

Page 8 of 9

Glances Back Through Seventy Years
  • Autobiographical and Other Reminiscences
  • Volume 2
  • Henry Vizetelly
  • Published online:
    10 November 2010
    Print publication:
    04 March 2010
    First published in:
    1893
  • This autobiography recalls the eventful career of the nineteenth-century publisher and journalist, Henry Vizetelly (1820–1894). Born in London, Vizetelly was apprenticed to a wood engraver as a young child. He entered the printing business and helped found two successful but short-lived newspapers, the Pictorial Times and the Illustrated Times. From 1865 Vizetelly worked in Paris and Berlin as a foreign correspondent for the Illustrated London News, and also wrote and published several books. He later became a publisher of foreign novels and gained notoriety for his translations of Emile Zola which challenged strict Victorian laws on obscenity and led to his prosecution and imprisonment. His book is a fascinating blend of public and personal history, providing an insight into the turbulent literary world of nineteenth-century Europe. Volume 2 begins in 1858 with the marriage of Princess Vicky and concludes with Vizetelly's return to England in 1878.

Bibliomania
  • Or Book Madness; a Bibliographical Romance, in Six Parts
  • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    24 June 2010
    First published in:
    1811
  • 'A passion for possessing books, not so much to be instructed by them, as to gratify the eye by looking on them': thus is described 'bibliomania' by one of the characters of Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847), in this humorous novel first published in 1809. Introduced in English at the end of the eighteenth century, the term 'bibliomania' - or 'book-madness' - gained popularity with the publication of Dibdin's eponymous work. Using the entirely revised 1811 edition, this reissue brings back to life Dibdin's bibliomaniac characters and their playful dialogues on the nature and history of book collecting, and, most importantly, on the dangers of the 'fatal disease' that is bibliomania, its strange manifestations - such as the 'vellum', 'first edition', and 'unique copies' symptoms - and its possible cure. The author of numerous bibliographical works, Dibdin provides erudite comments and clarifications to his characters' dialogues in a parallel narrative of footnotes.

Bookseller of the Last Century
  • Being Some Account of the Life of John Newbery, and of the Books He Published, with a Notice of the Later Newberys
  • Charles Welsh
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1885
  • Charles Welsh's account of the achievements of John Newbery was first published in 1885. Newbery is best known as the pioneering publisher of good-quality children's books such as A Little Pretty Pocket-Book and Little Goody Two-Shoes. In many ways he can be regarded as the first publisher who created and marketed books specifically for children. He was an associate of Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, and founded a number of newspapers that published some of their works. Welsh also draws attention to a less well known aspect of Newbery's diverse business ventures: his involvement in the selling of patent medicines. The author chronicles the immediate successors to the Newbery business and includes a lengthy summary of the son Francis Newbery's autobiography. The illustrated book contains a number of appendices including John Newbery's will, lists of his publications and some of the newspapers with which he was associated.

The Manuscripts in the Library at Lambeth Palace
  • Montague Rhodes James
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1900
  • M. R. James (1862–1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His detailed descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to scholars today. This book, first published in 1900, lists about six hundred medieval manuscripts in the library at Lambeth Palace, most of them collected by Archbishop Bancroft (d. 1610). These were sent to Cambridge University Library during Cromwell's Protectorate, and returned to Lambeth Palace at the Restoration. Referring to several early inventories, James succeeds in tracing the ownership of many of the manuscripts back to English monastic houses dissolved at the Reformation including Durham Priory, Lanthony (near Gloucester), and Ely.

A History of the Cambridge University Press 1521–1921
  • Sydney Castle Roberts
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1921
  • Published to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the first book to be printed in Cambridge by John Siberch in 1521, this book traces the development of the Press over four centuries. S.C. Roberts, who became Secretary to the Press Syndicate in 1922, blends archival research with an anecdotal style to produce this informative account. Appendices list the university printers up to 1921, including most famously Thomas Thomas, John Legate, Thomas Buck and John Baskerville, and the books published in each year between 1521 and 1750 by authors such as Erasmus, George Herbert, John Donne, John Milton, Isaac Newton and Thomas Browne. Aimed at the general reader, this lively account of the Press' major achievements is illustrated with a number of portraits and historical documents and remains a useful introduction to the history of the oldest publishing house in the world.

A Century of Bibles
  • The Authorised Version from 1611 to 1711
  • W. J. Loftie
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    22 April 2010
    First published in:
    1872
  • William John Loftie (1839–1911) wrote prolifically on topics related to travel, art, architecture, and history. In this 1872 work, his stated desire was to investigate those editions of the Authorised Version published in the century following the initial 1611 text. Noting that other historians had 'stopped short' when reaching that acknowledged culmination of English biblical scholarship, he went further, claiming it was 'no exaggeration to assert that our modern Bible is altered throughout from its original, for the better in some places, for the worse in some'. His catalogue and discussion of the various texts involved included those from the British and Bodleian Libraries together with additional lists from scholars Lea Wilson and Francis Fry. Surveying English editions of the Bible published during a sometimes contentious century, Loftie's work reveals how printing and editing practices did, over time, affect even the seemingly static Authorised Version of the Bible.

An Essay on the History and Management of Literary, Scientific, and Mechanics' Institutions
  • And Especially How Far They May Be Developed and Combined so as to Promote the Moral Well-Being and Industry of the Country
  • James Hole
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    04 March 2010
    First published in:
    1853
  • In this Essay, first published in 1853, the Victorian social activist James Hole offers an impassioned defence of the one of the central products of early Victorian social reformism, the mechanics' institutes. Aimed at improving the education of working-class men, women and youths, the institutes offered basic literacy training as well as higher-level lectures on science, the arts, and industry. This volume, originally a prize-winning essay, outlines Hole's plan for improving the efficacy of the institutes, which he saw as failing in their mission of enlivening the minds of those whose primary labours were physical. The institutes 'have established the right of the people to culture', Hole writes, but they had yet, in his view, to instil it. An important work in the history of education, Hole's Essay provides revealing insights into social reformism and the complexities of class politics within the movement.

Free Town Libraries, their Formation, Management, and History
  • In Britain, France, Germany, and America
  • Edward Edwards
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    01 April 2010
    First published in:
    1869
  • An important figure in the establishment of free libraries in the United Kingdom, Edward Edwards (1812–1886) wrote this study, first published in 1869, as a handbook intended for promoters and managers of free town libraries. The book outlines the formation and workings of public libraries, beginning with British examples and proceeding to compare the British experience with libraries abroad, especially in America. Edwards presents strong evidence of the increasing number, and improving management, of libraries at this time, and also stresses the strikingly diverse circumstances under which libraries in the United Kingdom and abroad were established. The volume is an important historical document in library studies, and a testimony to Edwards' commitment and contribution to the free library movement which have been an inspiration to later generations of professional librarians.

The Sources of Archbishop Parker's Collection of Mss. at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
  • With a Reprint of the Catalogue of Thomas Markaunt's Library
  • Montague Rhodes James
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    10 June 2010
    First published in:
    1899
  • M. R. James (1862–1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His detailed descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to scholars today. In this ground-breaking book, first published in 1899, James analysed 482 manuscripts in the renowned Parker Collection at Cambridge for evidence of their provenance. James argued that by discovering what books were owned by individual English monasteries in the middle ages, historians could better understand medieval English intellectual life. He established the origin of nearly 200 of the books, and the results of his investigations (one volume, for example, belonged to Thomas Becket) still make fascinating reading today.

Random Recollections of an Old Publisher
  • Volume 2
  • William Tinsley
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    04 March 2010
    First published in:
    1900
  • 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 Victorian playwrights and actors, along with a detailed section on the history of Sadler's Wells theatre. Based on Tinsley's personal recollections, and incorporating letters as well as anecdotal information, these volumes will fascinate anyone interested in the history of publishing and the development of the nineteenth-century novel.

Reminiscences of a Literary Life
  • Volume 1
  • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    01 April 2010
    First published in:
    1836
  • First published in 1836, this lively two-volume autobiography of Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847) reveals the background and mindset of this fascinating character. Best-known for helping to stimulate interest in bibliography and for his enthusiasm in promoting book collecting among the aristocracy, the English bibliographer adopts a conversational and anecdotal tone as he shares the details of his life and work with the reader. Volume 1 begins with the history of his parents, who died when Dibdin was very young. Dibdin then describes his formative years at school and college and the beginning of his professional life, including being ordained as a priest, before moving on to discuss his publications in some detail. Drawing upon letters and literature throughout, Dibdin recounts many entertaining tales, including an unfortunate encounter with a 'savage-hearted critic' at a dinner party, and introduces the influential characters he meets along the way.

Dictionary of Typography and its Accessory Arts
  • John Southward
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    04 March 2010
    First published in:
    1875
  • The son of a Liverpool-based printer, John Southward (1840–1902) was a prolific writer and editor of books on the subject. He edited the Printers' Register from 1886 to 1890, and his Modern Printing: A Handbook remained a standard work for apprentice printers and compositors well into the twentieth century. This dictionary of terms employed in printing offices was one of his earlier works, initially issued as a monthly serial within the Printers' Register. The resulting high demand led to the publication of a second edition in book format in 1875. Painstakingly compiled, it covers the history and practice of typography, and gives references to other works where further information can be found. Over a century later, the technology and terminology of typesetting and printing have undergone enormous changes, but this book remains a fascinating snapshot of the British printing industry in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

A Descriptive Catalogue of the McClean Collection of Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum
  • Montague Rhodes James
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1912
  • M. R. James (1862–1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to researchers today. This volume describes the McClean Collection, bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1904 by Frank McClean, a Victorian polymath who was a civil engineer by profession but also pursued scientific research and the collection of antiquities, including the 201 manuscripts and 230 early printed books now in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The book is illustrated with 108 plates showing folios from the collection.

The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge
  • A Descriptive Catalogue
  • Volume 2, Containing an Account of the Manuscripts standing in Class R
  • Montague Rhodes James
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1901
  • M. R. James (1862–1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His detailed descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to scholars today. James' catalogue of the extensive manuscript holdings of Trinity College was first published in four volumes between 1900 and 1904, the final volume consisting of plates and an index. Now reissued, it will be welcomed by librarians and researchers alike.

Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical
  • With Upwards of Three Hundred Illustrations, Engraved on Wood
  • John Jackson, William Andrew Chatto
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    04 March 2010
    First published in:
    1839
  • 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 Dürer to the decline and reinvigoration of the art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Practical analysis permeates the text as a whole, with the final section explaining more fully how a block is chosen, cut, and even repaired. The book is therefore of interest to art historians, historians of the book, and even artist practitioners interested in nineteenth-century methods.

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Peterhouse
  • With an Essay on the History of the Library by J.W. Clark
  • Montague Rhodes James, John Willis Clark
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1899
  • M. R. James (1862–1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His detailed descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to scholars today. James' catalogue of the manuscript holdings of Peterhouse, Cambridge, with an essay on the history of the college library by John Willis Clark, was first published in 1899. Now reissued, it will be welcomed by librarians and researchers alike.

The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge
  • A Descriptive Catalogue
  • Volume 3, Containing an Account of the Manuscripts standing in Class O
  • Edited by Montague Rhodes James
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1902
  • M. R. James (1862–1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His detailed descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to scholars today. James' catalogue of the extensive manuscript holdings of Trinity College was first published in four volumes between 1900 and 1904, the final volume consisting of plates and an index. Now reissued, it will be welcomed by librarians and researchers alike.

The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge
  • A Descriptive Catalogue
  • Volume 1, Containing an Account of the Manuscripts standing in Class B
  • Montague Rhodes James
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1900
  • M. R. James (1862-1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His detailed descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to scholars today. James's catalogue of the extensive manuscript holdings of Trinity College was first published in four volumes between 1900 and 1904, the final volume consisting of plates and an index. Now reissued, it will be welcomed by librarians and researchers alike.

The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Emmanuel College
  • A Descriptive Catalogue
  • Edited by Montague Rhodes James
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1904
  • M. R. James (1862–1936) is probably best remembered as a writer of chilling ghost stories, but he was an outstanding scholar of medieval literature and palaeography, who served both as Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and many of his stories reflect his academic background. His detailed descriptive catalogues of manuscripts owned by colleges, cathedrals and museums are still of value to scholars today. James' catalogue of the manuscript holdings of Emmanuel College was first published in 1904. Now reissued, it will be welcomed by librarians and researchers alike.

Glances Back Through Seventy Years
  • Autobiographical and Other Reminiscences
  • Volume 1
  • Henry Vizetelly
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    04 March 2010
    First published in:
    1893
  • This autobiography recalls the eventful career of the nineteenth-century publisher and journalist, Henry Vizetelly (1820–1894). Born in London, Vizetelly was apprenticed to a wood engraver as a young child. He entered the printing business and helped found two successful but short-lived newspapers, the Pictorial Times and the Illustrated Times. From 1865 Vizetelly worked in Paris and later Berlin as a foreign correspondent for the Illustrated London News, and also wrote and published several books. On his return to England, he became a publisher of foreign novels and gained notoriety for his translations of Emile Zola which challenged strict Victorian laws on obscenity and led to his prosecution and imprisonment. His book is a fascinating blend of public and personal history, providing an insight into the turbulent literary world of nineteenth-century Europe. Volume 1 covers his life up to the infamous Palmer Trial in 1856.

Page 8 of 9