A Chronology and Calendar of Documents Relating to the London Book Trade 1641-1700

The Chronology and Calendar of Documents relating to the London Book Trade 1641-1700 provides, for the first time, easy access to information about the authors, printers, and distributors of books in the later seventeenth century. Chronological entries allow an insight into the day-to-day workings of the book trade. Substantial indexes allow quick reference to information on specific book titles, named authors, and book trade personnel, and specific topics such as booksellers' bills, coffee-houses, and imported books.

D.F. McKenzie was the leading bibliographer of his generation, and his Panizzi Lectures on 'Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts' revolutionized Anglo-American approaches to bibliography and the history of the book. He was a most stimulating and influential teacher: at the Victoria University of Wellington, where he was Professor of English Language and Literature 1969-87, and in Oxford, as Lyell Reader in Bibliography and as Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism. He was the driving force in the planning of the multi-volume Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, in progress, and his major edition of Congreve, close to completion at his death, is being seen through its final stages by Christine Ferdinand (married to McKenzie in 1994) and is shortly to be published by Oxford University Press. The McKenzie Trust was established after his death to promote excellence in teaching and research and there is an annual McKenzie Lecture in Oxford in June.
Maureen Bell was formerly a schoolteacher and librarian, and met McKenzie for the first time in 1987 when he acted as external examiner for her PhD thesis on women in the seventeenth-century book trade. As Leverhulme Fellow at the Institute of Bibliography, University of Leeds (1990-2) she worked on the quantification of English printing 1475-1700 and, with John Barnard, published The Early Seventeenth-century York Book Trade and John Foster's Inventory of 1616 (1994). She has published widely on women in the seventeenth-century book trade and was contributor and Assistant Editor to volume IV of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Director of the British Book Trade Index on the Web, funded by the AHRB. Currently Reader in English Literature and Head of the Department of English at the University of Birmingham.

...we should celebrate the names of McKenzie and Bell for their Herculean endeavours in the service of bibliographical scholarship. Ian Gadd, Journal of Printing Historical Society They are immensely practical, and attractively printed. The amount of labour they conceal is astonishing. Maureen Bell has done a tremendous public service in producing them. Joad Raymond, The Times Literary Supplement It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this book; all of those involved in it, but particularly Maureen Bell who brought so great a project to completion, deserve our gratitude and our admiration. John Feather, Sharp News No-one whose work involves books printed and published in Britain between 1640 and 1700 can afford to neglect these volumes. David McKetterick, The Book Collector These three valuable volumes are a synthesis of projects independently conceived and undertaken by Maureen Bell and the late Don McKenzie between two and three decades ago, and now completed by Bell. They offer a digest of all the references to the book trade and its workers in some of the key printed records for seventeenth-century bibliographical history... They will certainly save researchers a great deal of time and open up new leads. Maureen Bell has done a tremendous public service in producing them. Joad Raymond, Times Literary Supplement