n the year 1875. The first real impetus was given by the
appearance of the _Guide to the Study of Book-Plates_, by Lord de Tabley
(then the Hon. Leicester Warren) in 1880. This work, highly interesting
from many points of view, established what is now accepted as the
general classification of styles: _early armorial_ (i.e. previous to
Restoration, exemplified by the Nicholas Bacon plate); _Jacobean_, a
somewhat misleading term, but distinctly understood to include the heavy
decorative manner of the Restoration, Queen Anne and early Georgian days
(the Lansanor plate, fig. 5, is typically Jacobean); _Chippendale_ (the
style above described as _rococo_, tolerably well represented by the
French plate of Convers); _wreath and ribbon_, belonging to the period
described as that of the urn, &c. Since then the literature on the
subject has grown considerably. Societies of collectors have been
founded, first in England, then in Germany and France, and in the United
States, most of them issuing a journal or archives: _The Journal of the
Ex-libris Society_ (London), the _Archives de la societe francaise de
collectionneurs d'ex-libris_ (Paris), both of these monthlies; the
_Ex-libris Zeitschrift_ (Berlin), a quarterly.

Much has been written for and against book-plate collecting. If, on the
one hand, the more enthusiastic ex-librists (for such a word has
actually been coined) have made the somewhat ridiculous claim of science
for "ex-librisme," the bitter animadversion, on the other, of a certain
class of intolerant bibliophiles upon the vandalism of removing
book-plates from old books has at times been rather extravagant.
Book-plates are undoubtedly very often of high interest (and of a value
often far greater than the odd volume in which they are found affixed),
either as specimens of bygone decorative fashion or as personal relics
of well-known personages. There can be no question, for instance, that
engravings or designs by artists such as Holbein and Durer and the
Little Masters of Germany, by Charles Eisen, Hubert Francois
Bourguignon, _dit_ Gravelot, D.N. Chodowiecki or Simon Gribelin; by W.
Marshall, W. Faithorne, David Loggan, Sir Robert Strange, Francesco
Piranesi; by Hogarth, Cipriani, Bartolozzi, John Keyse Sherwin, William
Henshaw, Hewitt or Bewick and his imitators; or, to come to modern
times, that the occasional examples traced to the handicraft of Thomas
Stothard, Thackeray, Millais, Maclise, Bell Scott, T.G. Jackson