the more recent researches should be published in the English language. But I offer them only as the compiler of accredited facts: I have no original discoveries to announce no speculative theories to uphold. Nor shall I invade the proper field of librarians and bibliographers. I propose to describe old types, prints and books as they are seen by a printer, and with reference to the needs of printers and the general reader, avoiding, as far as I can, all controversies about matters which are of interest to book-collectors only. The historical part of the record will be devoted chiefly to the printed work of the first half of the fifteenth century. It will begin with descriptions of the earliest forms of printing, as shown in image prints, playing cards and block-books; it will end with the establishment of typography in Germany.
Believing that a verbal description of old books and prints, without pictorial illustrations, would be unsatisfactory, I have provided many fac-similes of early printing. No part of this work will more fully repay examination than its illustrations, which have been carefully selected from approved authorities, or from originals. Reproduced by the new process of photo-engraving, they are accurate copies of the originals, even when of reduced size. As they are printed with the descriptive text by the same method of typographic presswork, it is believed that they will more clearly illustrate the subject than lithographed fac-similes on straggling leaves.
In trying to make plain whatever may be obscure about the mechanics of printing, I have thought proper to begin the explanation with a description of its different methods. An introduction of this nature is not an unwarrantable digression. It is important that the reader should have an understanding of the radical differences between typography and xylography on the one side, and lithographic and copper-plate printing on the other, as well as some knowledge of the construction and uses of the more common tools of type-founders.
I do not propose to give any extended quotations in foreign languages. Wherever an approved translation in English has