Book Description

Excerpt from A Specimen of Printing Types and Various Ornaments, 1796: Reproduced Together With the Sale Catalogue of the British Letter-Foundry, 1797 The Specimen reproduced here is the last that was issued by the British Foundry. It displays all the types cut for it, and there is an additional specimen of 'cast ornaments' and 'engravings on wood' offered for sale, which reflect the grow ing taste for this kind of stock illustration. The copy of the specimen from which this facsimile has been made includes the sale catalogue for the foundry, which was announced for 27 November 1797, and this has been reprinted in the present publication. The British letter-foundry was the creation of John Bell, an aggressively enterprising independent publisher who was one of the first to take advantage of the decision in the legal case of Donaldson v. Beckett in 1774, by which the concept of perpetual copyright was ended in Great Britain, and the work of many dramatists and poets effectively entered the public domain. Bell's edition of the Poets of Great Britain complete from Chaucer to Churchill in 109 volumes and his British Theatre in 21 volumes both began to appear in 1776. The established London booksellers responded to this inva sion, as they saw it, of their literary property, with their own edition of The Works of the English Poets, to which Samuel Johnson was invited to write the biographical matter, and a committee was set up to commission engravings and to give directions about the paper and printing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.