ion an important work entitled 'A Catalogue of Books printed in
the Fifteenth Century now in the British Museum,' which is being compiled
by Mr. A. W. Pollard and his assistants; it will be completed in six
folio (really atlas quarto) volumes. Of these the first part, dealing
with block-books and the productions of German presses, appeared in 1908;
Part II., also German-printed books, in 1912; Part III., Germany,
Switzerland, Austria and Hungary, in 1913: while Part IV., the
productions of Italy, appeared in 1916. Parts V. and VI. will contain the
works of England, France, and other countries, Part VI. also containing a
general index to the entire work. The Introduction to Part I. gives a
valuable resume of the study of scientific bibliography from Panzer in
1793. Mr. Gordon Duff's great work on the English incunabula, 'Fifteenth
Century Books,' was issued by the Bibliographical Society in 1917. It
contains fifty-three facsimiles, and records the existence of 439 books
or fragments issued in English, or by the printers in this country,
before the end of the year 1500.

In France much valuable work has been done on the early presses of that
country. M. Anatole Claudin has put forth some extremely useful books on
the early printers of Poitiers, Limoges, Rheims, and of many other towns;
whilst for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 he prepared a monumental
work upon the early printers of Paris. This sumptuous book, entitled
'Histoire de l'Imprimerie en France au XV^e et au XVI^e Siecle,' was
printed in two large quarto (atlas quarto) volumes, copiously adorned
with illuminated and other illustrations. The chapter on Antoine Verard
is delightful.

There is a large number of books, too, on the incunabula of various
European towns and districts, such as Augsburg, Bavaria, Belgium,
Bohemia, Ferrara, Mainz, Lyons, Mantua, Nuernberg, Rome, Rouen, Toulouse,
to mention only a few. For the incunabula printed with Greek characters
Legrand's 'Bibliographie hellenique,' which appeared in two octavo
volumes in 1885, is useful.

For a description of the early 'block-books,' the prototype of printing,
the collector must have recourse to Sotheby's beautiful work entitled
'Principia Typographica,' published in three large quarto volumes in
1858. It contains no less than a hundred and twenty full-page
facsimiles, some in colour, of block-books, early types, paper-marks,
etc., and is one of the most important works on the history of printi