Norwich. W. P. Flavell, 8 St. Gregory's. Catalogue No. 31. A List of Scarce and Valuable Books, recently purchased from the Libraries of the late W. J. Birkbeck, Esq., of Stratton Strawless, and the late Rev. H. C. Green, of Framingham Pigott, 496 items, including an extra-illustrated Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries, by Leigh Hunt, from the library of Sir E. Brydges, 1828, £2 10s.; Works on Architecture, Art, Biography, Norfolk, Poetry, Theology, Philosophy, etc. Oxford. Leslie Chaundy, 104 High Street. Catalogue No. 33. Interesting Miscellaneous Books, including Modern Books, purchased privately, from the library of Sir Walter Raleigh; 540 items, under Archaeology, Architecture and Art, Economics, History and Military and Naval, Poetry, Shakespeariana, Theology, Travel, Topography, etc. Many editions of the 17th. and 18th centuries are included.

Reading. G. A. Poynder, 4 Broad Street. Catalogue No. 76. A Short List of Miscellaneous Books, recently purchased from Private Libraries, 333 items, including A Godlie Garden, 1619, in an embroidered silk binding, with Tudor roses, etc., £12 12s.; English Dance of Death, coloured plates by Rowlandson, 1815-16, £12 128.; The Little Library, 16 vols., 1831-35, £1 Is.; First Editions; Borrow's Lavengro, 1851, £5 5s; Rocque's Survey of Berks, 1761 £3 13s. 6d. ; etc. Stratford-on-Avon. Antiquarian Book Co., Invermark, Evesham Road. Catalogues Nos. 14-15-16; First Editions, Fine Editions and Rare Editions, 1721 items, including Ackermann's History of Oxford, 2 vols., uncut, 1814; Letchford's Illustrations to Burton's Arabian Nights, Edition de Luxe; Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley, 1899; Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë, fine copy, 1849; Caldecott's Picture Books, complete set, 16 vols.; Through the Looking Glass, 1872; Shakespeare's Coriolanus and Venus and Adonis, Doves Press; Gerning's Picturesque Tour along the Rhine, 1820; Vicar of Wakefield, Hugh Thomson's illustrations, Large Paper, 1890; Fied Piper of Hamelin, plates by Kate Greenaway; Ben Jonson's Works, by Gifford, 9 vols., calf extra, 1816; Lang's Blue Fairy Book, large paper, 1889; Meyer's British Birds, coloured plates, 1835-41; Œuvres de Rabelais, par Le Duchat, Amst., 1741; Collection of Portraits of Shakespeare; Harding's Shakespeare Illustrated, large paper, 1793; Surtees, Hillingdon Hall, 1888; Yeats (W. B.) Collected Works, vols., 1908; Bewick's British Birds, with Supplements, Imperial Paper, morocco extra, by Sangorski, 1821; Blake's Life and Works, by Gilchrist, 1880; Tour of Dr. Syntax through London, boards, uncut, 1820; Conrad's Works, Complete Set of First Editions, 20 vols., newly bound by Sangorski, 1895-1917; Nicholas Nickleby, with the extra set of coloured plates by Onwhyn, 1839; Fielding's Novels, 5 vols., Pallantyne Press, 1884; Charles Dickens, by George Gissing, with postcard by Gissing added, 1895; Vicar of Wakefield, illustrated by Mulready, 1843; Memoirs of Count Grammont, edited by H. Vizetelly, plates, 1889; Lamb's Works, first collected edition, 2 vols., 1818; Lang's Fairy Books, Complete Set, 12 vols.; Shakespeare's Works, by Valpy, 15 vols., 1832-34; Morte d'Arthur, Ashendene Press, fine copy, 1913; Beardsley's Morte d'Arthur, 1893; Beardsley's Land of Heart's Desire, The Savoy, Book of Fifty Drawings and Second Book of Fifty Drawings, all fine copies; Mrs. Behn's Works, by Montague Summers, one of 50 copies, 1915; Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition Catalogues School of Ferrara-Bologna, School of Siena, & Early Venetian Pictures; The Doves Press Holy Bible, 1902-4; Descent of Ishtar, Eragny Press, 1903; Erasmus, Praise of Folly, Essex House Press, 1901; Autograph Letters by George Gissing; Kate Greenaway's Almanacs, Complete Set; Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes, 1873; Kipling's In Black & White (1887); Pater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance, 1873; The Song of Songs, Riccardi Press, 1909; Pollard's Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, a Study, 1909; Swinburne's Laus Veneris, first American Edition, N. Y., 1866; Selections from Swinburne's Poems, presentation copy from the poet, 1887; Swinburne's The Age of Shakespeare, presentation copy from the poet, 1908; a number of Vale Press books; many first editions of modern Celtic and Anglo-Saxon authors;

etc. etc.

* Catalogues received since going to press will be noticed in the next Part.

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Woodcut illustration to a religious work, of a type produced in Flanders and Holland during the latter half of the 15th. century.

(Lent by kind permission from the Collection of G. E. BULLEN Esq.)

The Development of the Printed Book

By MISS FRANCES M. COMMIN

Fin. Hon Sch: Mod: Hist: Oxon.

I

do not wish to revive the old controversy as to the inventor of movable type, nor to agitate once more the forces of evidence and tradition in their heated struggle in writing of the development of the printed book; but instead to put before you the different steps by which the earlier printers advanced in their art, the difficulties with which they had to contend, and the obstacles they gradually overcame. In particular I wish to stress the work achieved by our English printers, handicapped as they were in the beginning by the political chaos into which the country was thrown by the Wars of the Roses.

The printed book, as we understand the term, dates from the beginning of the Renaissance in the fifteenth century. Up till that time England had played no mean part in the history of books. She was the first of the European countries to produce MSS. of literary importance. The Cotton MSS. of Beowulf" and The Exeter Bcok" witness to the power within the race at an early date-power shown in the variety of the work, the richness of the vocabulary, and the music of the poetry. In the production of the book itself England was able to compete with any other country of Europe. Both in writing and illuminating English schools had arisen which for one hundred and twenty years produced work whose excellence is beyond dispute. From the appearance of Queen Mary's Psalter "in the beginning of the 14th century to the Sherborne Missal" early in the 15th century English MSS. may vie in beauty of writing and decoration with the finest examples of Continental art. But the exhaustion caused by our long wars with France, followed by the turmoil of civil war, brought ruin to the book trade, and by the time the Wars of the Roses had ended the school of illumination, once so full of promise and apparently so firmly established, had absolutely died out. When printing was introduced into England there were no trained illuminators, skilful scribes, nor wood-engravers, such as in other countries perforce made the best of the new art in order not to lose their living. Making its start under such unfavourable conditions, and exposed by Richard III. to the full force of continental competition, our English printers found it a hard struggle to establish the new industry, and only really succeeded in the beginning of the 17th century, when the production of books throughout Europe was marked by carelessness and almost incredible bad taste.

Although printing had long been known in the East it only began to be practised in Europe during the early part of the 15th century. The first attempts were made to duplicate the pictures of saints from one block cut in wood, and thence passed to the production of playing cards. Alphabets, from which to teach children to read, were multiplied in this manner, although in all probability many more were still written by the monkish pedagogue. Later, certain consecutive series of prints were issued in book form, and are now known as "block books." Although these block books have been assigned in the past to the early part of the 15th century it is generally held by modern experts that they are very little earlier in date than books printed from moveable type, and perhaps even later. The earliest examples are now dated circa 1450-60. In these the whole page, which generally showed a picture and annotations in letterpress, was cut out in wood by the wood-engraver. These books were generally religious histories, of which the best known is the Biblia Pauperum," which illustrates a few of the better known Bible stories. So important did the Guild of Wood-Engravers become that, when books were more easily produced, they strove to keep the whole of the illustration work out of the hands of the printer, declaring that both design and reproduction was their prerogative.