THE CONNOISSEUR’S LIBRARY
GENERAL EDITOR: CYRIL DAVENPORT
FINE BOOKS
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| Deucalion et Pyrrha repeuplant la Terre, Suivant l’Oracle de Themis. |
FINE BOOKS
BY
ALFRED W. POLLARD
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
LONDON: METHUEN & CO. LTD.
1912
TO
SIR EDWARD MAUNDE THOMPSON, G.C.B.
DIRECTOR AND PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
1888-1909
PREFACE
If the mere taking of trouble ensured good work, thiscontribution to the Connoisseur’s Library should beentitled to the modest praise of being “superior tothe rest” of its author’s book-makings, since it has beenten years on the stocks and much of it has been writtentwo or three times over, either because the writer’s owninformation had increased or to take account of thesuccessful researches of others. Yet in the end defeatin one main point has to be acknowledged. The bookwas begun with a confident determination to cover thewhole ground, from the beginnings of printing andprinted book-illustration down to our own day, and inthe case of printing the survey has been carried through,however sketchily. But the corresponding survey ofbook-illustration ends, with rather obvious marks of compressionand fatigue, about 1780, leaving the story of ahundred and thirty years of very interesting picture-workuntold. Pioneering is always so exciting thatrecognition of the impossibility of carrying out the fullplan of the book within the limits either of the presentvolume or of the author’s working life was not madewithout sincere regret. The subject, however, of theabandoned chapter was not only very large, but verymiscellaneous, and the survey for it would have had toinclude at least three other countries (France, Germany,and the United States) besides our own. To one section,moreover, that of illustrations in colour, a separatevolume of this series has already been devoted. Theauthor would, therefore, fain console himself with thehope that in one or more other volumes a competentaccount may be given by some other hand of the wood-engravings,etchings, steel-engravings, and lithographs,with which books have been decorated since 1780. Thepoorness of paper and print with which these modernillustrated books have too often been handicapped hascaused collectors to take little interest in them—it evensuggested the unworthy excuse for the failure to writethe missing chapter that these are not really Fine Books,but only books with fine pictures in them, and so areoutside our subject. But both students and collectorshave their duties as well as their delights, and in viewof the high artistic value of qui