1 - Foundations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2010
Summary
TO 1908
In April 1870 Henry Bradshaw, librarian of Cambridge University, published a little pamphlet entitled A Classified Index of the Fifteenth Century Books in the Collection of M.J. De Meyer, Which Were Sold at Ghent in November, 1869. Despite the unpromising title, it deserves to be considered a landmark in intellectual history – indeed, as far as bibliographical scholarship is concerned, one of the greatest of landmarks – for it contains a passage of major significance emphasizing the importance of systematically examining the physical evidence in printed books. Bradshaw insisted that arranging early books according to the locations and presses where they were printed was the only method whereby knowledge of early printing would be advanced, since it provides a basis for dating or identifying the printers of books that do not readily proclaim their origins:
we desire that the types and habits of each printer should be made a special subject of study, and those points brought forward which show changes or advance from year to year, or, where practicable, from month to month. When this is done, we have to say of any dateless or falsely dated book that it contains such and such characteristics, and we therefore place it at such a point of time, the time we name being merely another expression for the characteristics we notice in the book. In fact each press must be looked upon as a genus, and each book as a species, and our business is to trace the more or less close connexion of the different members of the family according to the characters which they present to our observation. […]
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- Bibliographical AnalysisA Historical Introduction, pp. 6 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009