Typographical Antiquities Or The History Of Printing In England Scotland And Ireland Begun By The Late Joseph Ames Considerably Augmented By William Herbert And Now Greatly Enlarged By The Rev Thomas Frognall Dibdin

This book re-reads the tangled relations of book culture and literary culture in the early nineteenth century by restoring to view the figure of the bookman and the effaced history of his book clubs. As outliers inserting themselves into the matrix of literary production rather than remaining within that of reception, both provoked debate by producing, writing, and circulating books in ways that expanded fundamental points of literary orientation in lateral directions not coincident with those of the literary sphere. Deploying a wide range of historical, archival and literary materials, the study combines the history and geography of books, cultural theory, and literary history to make visible a bookish array of alterative networks, genres, and locations that were obscured by the literary sphere in establishing its authority as arbiter of the modern book.

This three-volume bibliography of printing, published 1880-6, quickly became a classic reference work, and is still of value today.