With this volume the Baltimore Bibliophiles celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their founding, demonstrating the flourishing of bibliophily in Baltimore and the vigor of the organization. Included in the book are an account and a catalogue of early children's books in Baltimore by Linda F. Lapides. A separate section presents the historical record of the organization.
In 1954 two remarkably learned and energetic women, Dorothy E. Miner, of the Walters Art Gallery, and Elizabeth Baer, of the Garrett Library at Evergreen House, founded the Baltimore Bibliophiles. Since then the club has met regularly to share fellowship in support of (in the words of its constitution) "matters pertaining to books and manuscripts and the collecting thereof, bookbindings, typography, printing, paper, calligraphy, prints and book illustration, maps, and aspects of the book arts such as bookbinding, book conservation, book design and related fields" and to hear papers, scholarly and entertaining, delivered by Baltimoreans and experts from afield.

The book contains historical accounts of the club, an interview with P. William Filby -- recurrent speaker at meetings of the club and the only person to serve twice non-consecutively as president, an interview with newspaperman and longtime member, James H. Bready, lists of members, meetings, and publications, the constitution of the club, and a list of the subscribers to the publication of the book.

The section "Children's Books in Bygone Baltimore," which occupies two-thirds of the book, demonstrates the collecting of children's books in Baltimore. An essay by Linda F. Lapides, "For Amusement and Instruction," is the first sustained account of books published for and read by children in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Baltimore. It is accompanied by a fully annotated narrative catalogue of 135 items in the distinguished collection of Baltimore children's books that Linda F. Lapides and her husband, Julian L. Lapides, have assembled. The essay includes a bibliographical record of the development of the collection, and the catalogue is provided with indexes of authors and associated persons, of titles, and of printers, publishers, and booksellers.

This book is a contribution both to the history of bibliophile organizations in the United States and to scholarship on early children's books in America.

The book contains 16 black-and-white photographs of children's books in the catalogue, 3 portrait photographs of principal members of the Baltimore Bibliophiles, Dorothy E. Miner, Elizabeth Baer, and P. William Filby, and -- as a color frontispiece -- the illustration of Baltimore's Washington Monument that appears on the cover of a copybook published ca. 1840 in Baltimore.

Linda F. Lapides, life-long resident of Baltimore, is a former librarian at the Enoch Pratt Free Library and longtime collector of children's books published in and associated with Baltimore. Donald Farren is a retired librarian and author of a new introduction to the Oak Knoll Press reprint of Geoffrey Ashall Glaister's Encyclopedia of the Book (1996, 2001). August A. Imholtz, Jr., was president of the Baltimore Bibliophiles, 2006-2008.