A HISTORY OF THE OLD ENGLISH LETTER FOUNDRIES. [Illustration] [Illustration: _A_ true & exact _Repreſentation_ of the _Art_ of _Caſting_ & _Preparing_ Letters _for_ Printing. _Engrav’d for the Universal Magazine 1750 for I. Hinton at the Kings Arms in S^t. Pauls Church Yard LONDON._ 58. Interior of Caslon’s Foundry in 1750. From the _Universal Magazine_. (The mould is described, p. 108).] A HISTORY OF THE OLD ENGLISH LETTER FOUNDRIES, WITH NOTES, Historical and Bibliographical, ON THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF ENGLISH TYPOGRAPHY. BY TALBOT BAINES REED. LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1887. [Illustration] {v} PREFACE. In this age of progress, when the fine arts are rapidly becoming trades, and the machine is on every side superseding that labour of head and hand which our fathers called Handicraft, we are in danger of losing sight of, or, at least, of undervaluing the genius of those who, with none of our mechanical advantages, established and made famous in our land those arts and handicrafts of which we are now the heritors. The Art of Letter Founding hesitated long before yielding to the revolutionary impulses of modern progress. While kindred arts—and notably that art which preserves all others—were advancing by leaps and bounds, the founder, as late as half a century ago, was pursuing the even tenor of his ways by paths which had been trodden by De Worde and Day and Moxon. But the inevitable revolution came, and Letter Founding to-day bids fair to break all her old ties and take new departures undreamed of by those heroes of the punch and matrix and mould who made her what we found her. At such a time, it seems not undutiful to attempt to gather together into a connected form the numerous records of the Old English Letter Founders scattered throughout our literary and {vi} typographical history, with a view to preserve the memory of those to whose labours English Printing is indebted for so much of its glory. The present work represents the labour of several years in what may be considered some of the untrodden by-paths of English typographical history.