The Origin of Printing

This work, first published in 1774, consists of a reissue of the Dissertation on the Origin of Printing in England by Conyers Middleton (1683–1750), first published in 1735, together with an abridgement of an account of the origin of printing by the Dutch lawyer Gerard Meerman (1722–71). It was compiled by the scholar and publisher William Bowyer (1699–1777) and his apprentice and later business partner John Nichols (1745–1826), several of whose works are also published in this series. Both essays debate the origins of printing, disputing the traditional account that Gutenberg introduced it to Europe and Caxton to England. Appendices describe the progress of printing in Greek and Hebrew, and the first printed polyglot Bibles. The names and achievements of Gutenberg's contemporaries in Germany and the Low Countries are given their due in this interesting overview of the earliest period of printing in the West.