In "The Enemies of Books," William Blades presents a captivating exploration of the myriad threats to books and the written word throughout history. Blades employs a blend of scholarly rigor and engaging narrative style, which reflects his deep passion for bibliophilia. The work weaves together historical anecdotes, literary analysis, and personal reflections on the fragility of books, addressing not just physical destruction but also more insidious cultural and societal influences that en...

This volume brings together vivid studies of William Blades, the printer-scholar whose life was devoted to the craft, history, and evidence of books. A practical bibliographer who wrote only on subjects he knew intimately, Blades emerges as a meticulous investigator of Caxton, early type, specimen books, watermarks, medals, and the origins of printing itself. From the Caxton Exhibition of 1877 and the Plantin Museum at Antwerp to the first presses at Oxford and St. Albans, he combines tech...

A fascinating look at the myriad enemies of the printed book, from fire, to neglect, to children, to the bookworm, to plain old ignorance. A passionate litany against all who would see printed literature destroyed, written by English printer and bibliographer William Blades.

In "The Enemies of Books," William Blades examines the myriad threats that literature has faced throughout history, from physical decay and neglect to the insidious influences of censorship and obscurantism. Written in a reflective style that echoes the contemplative prose of 19th-century essays, Blades draws on an array of literary references and historical anecdotes to elucidate the struggles of books as both cultural artifacts and vessels of knowledge. The work is situated within the la...

Discover a new way to read classics with Quick Read.This Quick Read edition includes both the full text and a summary for each chapter.- Reading time of the complete text: about 2 hours- Reading time of the summarized text: 9 minutes"The Enemies of Books" is a book written by William Blades, a 19th-century bibliophile and book collector. It was first published in 1880 and has since been republished in different editions. The book focuses on the preservation of ...

Lost Sci-Fi Books 21 thru 25 delivers five vintage adventures where forgotten weapons still defend their secrets, humanity meets its first visitor from the stars, and escaping to another world may only lead to bigger trouble.The Gun by Philip K. Dick — Explorers discover a silent, apparently dead world and the treasure left behind. But among the ruins, one enormous gun is still very much alive—and it knows exactly what it was built to do.

The Enemies of Books is a book on biblioclasts and book preservation by the 19th-century bibliophile and book collector William Blades. In the book, Blades, a well-known collector and preserver of the works of the English printer William Caxton, documented his outrage at any mistreatment of books in what became a passionate diatribe against biblioclasts, human and non-human, wherever he found them. The book includes chapters on the following enemies of books: fire, water, gas and heat, dus...

The In the good old days when printing was better recognized as a mystery than as an art, one could call a printer ‘a man of letters’ without being guilty of a pun. Books were for the few then, and the man who would print them must be somewhat of a scholar himself. To-day, amid the whirr of many presses, and the hurrying to and fro of the printing office, the printer finds little or no time for literary pursuits, despite the fact that printing is, in very truth, the handmaid of literature....

Shakspere & Typography By William Blades. Edited & Reprinted by The Winthrop Press for The American Type Founders Company.William Blades is an English printer and bibliographer, was born at Clapham, London.

THERE are many of the forces of Nature which tend to injure Books; but among them all not one has been half so destructive as Fire. It would be tedious to write out a bare list only of the numerous libraries and bibliographical treasures which, in one way or another, have been seized by the Fire-king as his own. Chance conflagrations, fanatic incendiarism, judicial bonfires, and even household stoves have, time after time, thinned the treasures as well as the rubbish of past ages, until, p...

A Shakespeare MiscellanyThis volume, number 9 in the Shakespeare series published by AfterMath, provides some supporting information not readily available and not included in any of the the other volumes in this important series.  Note that some of the authors cannot even agree on the spelling of Shakespeare’s name.“How Shakspeare Came to Write the ‘Tempest,” by Rudyard Kipling, with an introduction by Ashley H. Thorndike.“Illustrations to Shakespea...

William Wordsworth helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature, creating a diverse oeuvre of works that have influenced the course of poetry for over two centuries. The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature's finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents Wordsworth's complete works, with beautiful illustrations, Dorothy Wordsworth's journals and even more bonus material. (Version 3)* Beautifully illustrated with image...