Download or read book The Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature, Vol. 1 of 6 written by William Thomas Lowndes and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-10 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature, Vol. 1 of 6: Containing an Account of Rare, Curious, and Useful Books, Published in or Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, From the Invention of Printing In proportion to the advancement and general diffusion of literature ought to be the publication of references to, and accounts of, the multifarious works with which the genius of past and of the present times has enlightened and benefited mankind. Bibliography, or a knowledge of particular books, the peculiarities of editions, their value, and what may be termed an intimate acquaintance with the history and character of a work, has, however, been singularly neglected in this country; and rich as our literature is in most departments, that particular class, on which all others are in a great degree dependent, is confessedly deficient. In France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Holland, numerous volumes have been written on the literary history of those several countries, together with others on universal literature; but in England, excepting a few catalogues of books on particular subjects, no general Bibliographical work deserving the name was ever published until the appearance of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" by Watt, which will be again alluded to. It is not intended to explain the cause of the low state of Bibliographical knowledge in England; but it may, perhaps, be partly ascribed to the folly of acquiring, at enormous prices, works which are no otherwise valuable than for their rarity, consisting, as that rarity sometimes does, in a colophon or the name of a printer, the texture or colour of the paper, the width of the margin, the occurrence or omission of a date, or even in an obvious defect. Mankind are disposed to remember the abuse rather than the utility of pursuits in which few are deeply interested; and in the ridicule which the enthusiastic zeal of bibliomaniacs has cast on Bibliography, they lose sight of the fact, that all accurate knowledge is in a greater or less degree absolutely dependent thereon. 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.