The Early Oxford Press : A Bibliography of Printing and Publishing at Oxford '1468' - 1640

Clarendon Press, Oxford, first edition, 1895. Cloth, gilt cover device, 8vo,. [xii], 365, [1] pp, collotype plates, 3 original 16th-17th century leaves at end. One of the first 700 copies of this meticulous work, having tipped in 3 original leaves from 16th and 17th century Oxford printings (as issued). The work aims to "describe in detail the products and working of the Oxford Press in its early days", and Madan's bibliography contains much valuable information and is a model of its kind. On its publication it was acclaimed in "The Library" as follows: "No more scholarly bibliography has ever been published in England" and "Bibliographica" commented: "His work is done for all time and can never be superseded". Madan notes that after printing became firmly established in Oxford in 1585 it began to reflect faithfully the current tendencies of thought and study in the University, important works published over the next half-century or so including: Richard de Bury's Philobiblon, Wycliff's Treatises (1608), Capt. John Smith's Map of Virginia (1612), Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621, &c.), Field on the Church (1628, &c.), Sandys' translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1633), the University Statutes (1634), Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida in English and Latin (1635), Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants (1638), and Bacon's Advancement and Proficience of Learning, in English (1640). An ex-library copy with library labels to the front endpapers, stamps and marks to the title-page (recto and verso), stamps to the lower margins of the plates spine-ends worn with loss, tapemarks and scuffs to covers, , endpapers slightly cracked at hinges.