This definitive guide to the British printing industry covers the history of printing from its earliest beginnings to the present day. Packed with fascinating anecdotes and insights into the world of printing, this book is an essential read for anyone interested in the history of communication and the printed word. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This book is new in that it discusses ephemera as an aspect of design history, showing how function, process and period have affected the changing appearance of leaflets, tickets, posters, trade cards and other ephemera. The printing histories of Britain and America are closely woven. Colonial printers and engravers imported British type and equipment and took instruction from the same manuals, a relationship that continued through the first half of the nineteenth century. It was in the years following the Civil War that American and British graphic design and typography began to establish their own identities as developments in colour printing brought an explosion of colourful ephemera. Richly illustrated with letterforms, engravings, drawings and the reproduction in colour of 200 items of ephemera, this is a book for collectors, students, design historians and all those with an interest in the visual arts.