CONCISE HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING WITH PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS TO THE TRADE IN GENERAL. COMPILED FROM THOSE WHO HAVE WROTE ON THIS CURIOUS ART.
- London: W. Adlard and J. Browne, 1770.
- 8vo.
- later half leather with marbled paper-covered boards, leather spine label, gilt ruling on spine
- Frontispiece; (xii), 502, (4) pages.
Price: $1,250.00 other currencies
Order Nr. 2224
First edition. (Bigmore & Wyman I, 447). The practical instructions are the best part of the book. In addition to the Caslon type specimens there are 23 pages of flowers and other types of ornaments.
Pages 133-168 are a Caslon specimen of type faces with foreign types, music type, and printer's flowers. Pages 169-174 are a Cottrell specimen including Doomesday type. Despite Luckombe's title, his book is primarily a printer's manual, drawing on Ames, Smith, Moxon, and Fertel. This is the first issue of the first edition, without the author's name. It is probably the prettiest such manual, every page within a border and Caslon's printers' flowers throughout. It is Luckombe's tribute to Caslon "who brought the Art of Letter-Founding to its present perfection."
Bound in modern quarter-leather over marbled paper. Library stamp: Mercantile Library, Philadelphia (stamped titlepage, pp. 111, 151, 183 and 249). Tear on page 221-222.