Electronic Publications on the Web

The Society decided in 2005 that it would use its web site to offer space to bibliographical work-in-progress and to additions and corrections to bibliographical reference works, especially those published by the Society. In 2006, the Society came to an agreement with the School of Advanced Study at the University of London to make use of the SAS e-Repository for storage of databases and other electronic documents.

The Society's Council hope that members and non-members of the Society will take advantage of these two facilities to offer electronic documents for publication on the web. If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please contact the Chairman of the Publications Subcommittee via the address found on the home page .

John Dee's Library Catalogue: additions and corrections

The original edition of Julian Roberts and Andrew G. Watson's edition of John Dee's Library Catalogue was published by th e Bibliographical Society in 1990 and has been out of print for some years. Since then, further discoveries of books and manuscripts from Dee's library have been made and more work has been done on the interpretation of the entries in the Catalogue.

Original version: October 2006. Latest update: November 2009. Format: PDF.Size: 234Kb

The London Book Trades: A Bibliographical Resource

The London Book Trades (LBT) database was originally developed as a Microsoft Access file developed by Michael L. Turner, containing entries for just over 30,000 individuals active in the London book trades from the introduction of printing to around 1830. Emphasis is placed on recording specific events in each individual's life, and on recording the inter-relationships, both familial and professional, within the trade. The database provides a snapshot of work in progress at a given time.

The Society, in cooperation with the Oxford Bibliographical Society and Michael Turner, is arranging to convert this database to a web-based format to enable easier on-line consultation and to facilitate collaborative work to edit and augment the database.

The original Access database and a copy of its index are stored in the Society's e-repository hosted by the Institute of English Studies.

English book owners in the seventeenth century

David Pearson offers this list as work in progress to construct a reference source on seventeenth-century English book owners, based on various kinds of evidence. It does not seek to cover Scottish and Irish owners, unless they were predominantly English-based. The aim is to focus on collections which were at least partly, if not entirely, formed within the seventeenth century and the list includes people who died between 1610 and 1715. The author hopes that the list may already have enough data to be useful in various kinds of ways, and that it will stimulate responses and ideas as to how it should be developed.

Original version: January 2007. Latest update: January 2007. Format: MS Word. Size: 903Kb

Ronald B. McKerrow. Printers' & Publishers' Devices in England & Scotland 1485-1640.

London : Printed for the Bibliographical Society at the Chiswick Press, 1913.
With the agreement of the Bibliographical Society, the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) has produced a digitised version of McKerrow's Devices . The file can be consulted on the web site of the Royal Library, Copenhagen, which undertook the digitisation work on behalf of CERL.
The individual images of the devices are also available as links in the entries for each bookseller or printer in CERL's Thesaurus of names of persons, places, owners, etc. for the history of the printed book up to c. 1830.
[Use the “Imprint names” menu to search for a printer or bookseller.]

July 2009

Not in McKerrow

A small number of articles have appeared documenting devices of English printers and booksellers to 1640 which were not known to McKerrow. A web page has been prepared which lists these articles and reproduces images of the devices where available. The Bibliographical Society invites contributions of further references and images of devices which were not recorded by McKerrow. Please send new contributions to Dr David Shaw (McKerrow 57α Image reproduced with permission of Lambeth Palace Library). September 2009

Coffee-House Library Short-title Catalogue
Markman Ellis, Queen Mary, University of London

This short-title catalogue lists in alphabetical order 387 printed items (books, pamphlets, maps, printed music) with provenance endorsements indicating ownership by a coffeehouse in the eighteenth century. 
For discussion of the libraries and coffee-houses associated with these items, see the article ‘Coffee-House Libraries in Mid Eighteenth-Century London' in the March 2009 issue of The Library .

PDF file (987KB). April 2009

British Book Illustrations, 1604–1640

In 2008 the Bibliographical Society provided a grant to Professor Michael Hunter to allow the British Printed Images to 1700 project to create a listing of illustrations found in books published between 1604 and 1640, based on the Short-title Catalogue of British Books to 1640 (STC) and the books digitised by the Early English Books Online(EEBO) database. The listing has now been placed on the British Printed Images to 1700 website (www.bpi1700.org.uk).It is freely available to the public. The listing has been divided into a series of files for each letter of the alphabet for ease of browsing, with a single composite file for searching purposes. It is accompanied by notes explaining the rationale of the exercise and the method used in the listing.
A direct link to the set of files can be found by clicking on the title of this section.

September 2009