3-078-058 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Mr. William Blades, printer and antiquary, 1890. Engraving from a photograph by Messrs. Done and Ball. '...a printer and an accurate scholar, learned in literary antiquities...His first publication was a reprint, in 1858, of Caxton's "Governayle of Helthe,"...His principal work, "The Life and Typography of W. Caxton," in two quarto volumes, appeared in 1801-3. His other writings on Caxton were a catalogue of books from Caxton's press (1865), "How to tell a Caxton" (1870), and ''The Biography and Typography of William Caxton" (1877). "A List of Medals, &c., in connection with Printers," first issued in 1869, was...enlarged and published in 1883 as "Nunismata Typographica; or, the Medallic History of Printing." This work was largely founded upon the medals in his own collection...He wrote "Shakespeare and Typography" in 1872, and "Some Early Type-specimen Books" in 1875...A reprint of the "Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers" followed in 1877, and one of "The Boke of Saint Albans" in 1881. He also wrote a little treatise entitled "The Enemies of Books." In 1885 he published an account of the German morality play entitled "Depositio Cornuti Typographici," and in 1887 a pamphlet on the question "Who was the inventor of printing?"' From "Illustrated London News", 1890.