BOWYER LEDGERS, THE PRINTING ACCOUNTS OF WILLIAM BOWYER FATHER AND SON REPRODUCED ON MICROFICHE WITH A CHECKLIST OF BOWYER PRINTING 1699-1777, A COMMENTARY, INDEXES AND APPENDIXES

London and New York: The Bibliographical Society and The Bibliographical Society of America, 1991. cloth. Bowyer. tall 8vo. cloth. lxxv, (1), 616, (4) pages. Accompanied by 70 microfiche enclosed in a separate box. The Bowyer ledgers, kept by William Bowyer, father and son, between 1710 and 1777, offer vast new information concerning authorship, book production and book distribution in eighteenth-century London. They are among the few surviving from this period and for London, the center of the British book trade. More than 5,000 works by some 1,000 authors were commissioned by some 500 customers, including booksellers, institutions and private gentlemen, and were produced by several hundreds of workmen. Copies were delivered to more than 1,500 persons, members of the trade or representatives of the reading public at large. The ledgers record what happened to the text as it moved through the printing house, noting paper, types, format, corrections, number printed and the like. This edition of the Bowyer ledgers presents the records themselves in photo-facsimile on microfiche, accompanied by a volume of editorial material. The microfiches reproduce the four surviving ledgers and associated papers, prefixed with detailed descriptions of the originals. Distributed for The Bibliographical Society of America. SALES RIGHTS: Available in the US from Oak Knoll Books. Available outside the US from The Bibliographical Society of America. (Inventory #: 44064)