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A unusual collection of examples of typography and printing techniques, which would be of use in the classroom as non-digital but portable samples of letterpress and intaglio printing, woodcut, engraving, etching, lithography, wood engraving and their various combinations. All have been cut from (hopefully) defective original sources and include full pages (including numerous title-pages) and cut examples of initials (woodcut, metalcut, wood engraved, etc) and ornaments (intaglio and letterpress). Some of the sheets bear pencil notes as to approximate date and city, most being French, with some English and German. A good proportion of the samples are early, with a concentration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but with significant sixteenth century examples, including decorative title-pages and initials.

‘The editions of 1785 and 1791 are printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions cannot be conceived.’ (Dibdin). ‘Bijou typographique’ (Renouard); ‘très jolie édition’ (Brunet). One of two editions of 1791, this one printed entirely in capitals. Dibdin (4th edn.) I 265.

First edition of this Ossianic collection, published in Macpherson’s lifetime. It is one of the earliest (if not the earliest) book to employ William Caslon’s double pica script type, which was first introduced in his specimen book of 1785. The ‘Preliminary Address’ (dated 26 January 1789) calls attention to this new ‘species of Typographical Elegance’. A typographically daring production, the script type is used in conjunction with several other unusual types including a revived black letter, used in upper case.

The editor can be identified as Mary Potter from reference to ‘the posthumous publications of the late Mr. [T.] Potter her Father’, author of The Moralist, or Portraits of the human Mind exhibited in a series of Novelettes (1785). The subscribers include Warren Hastings, George Romney, General Paoli and Mrs Piozzi. Not in Jackson. ESTC lists four issues, none corresponding precisely with this copy, with (apparently) 4, 10 or 12 pages of subscribers, with viii or x numbered pages of preliminaries, and with or without a colophon. Birrell & Garnett, Catalogue of Typefounders’ Speciments [and] Books printed in Founts of Historic Importance (1928), 177.