William Blades: 7 books

Shakspere & Typography By William Blades. Edited & Reprinted by The Winthrop Press for The American Type Founders Company. William Blades is an English printer and bibliographer, was born at Clapham, London.

A Shakespeare Miscellany This volume, number 9 in the Shakespeare series published by AfterMath, provides some supporting information not readily available and not included in any of the the other volumes in this important series.  Note that some of the authors cannot even agree on the spelling...

A fascinating look at the myriad enemies of the printed book, from fire, to neglect, to children, to the bookworm, to plain old ignorance. A passionate litany against all who would see printed literature destroyed, written by English printer and bibliographer William Blades.

This volume, published two years after Blades’s death, explores the practice of securing books by chaining in England and abroad. Other chapters deal with such topics as the use and development of signatures in books; early schools of typography; and the invention of printing. Informative and readable, Books in Chains will be of interest to bibliophiles everywhere. 

The In the good old days when printing was better recognized as a mystery than as an art, one could call a printer ‘a man of letters’ without being guilty of a pun. Books were for the few then, and the man who would print them must be somewhat of a scholar himself. To-day, amid the whirr of many...

This 1880 book, written by the great British bibliophile, is a thorough review of the many sources of book destruction. There are chapters on such enemies as fire, water, heat, neglect, bigotry, book worms, collectors, servants, and children. The book ends with a passionate plea for book preservation.

THERE are many of the forces of Nature which tend to injure Books; but among them all not one has been half so destructive as Fire. It would be tedious to write out a bare list only of the numerous libraries and bibliographical treasures which, in one way or another, have been seized by the Fire-king...