Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing

Excerpt from the book flap: "Joseph Moxon, Hydrographer to Charles II and a Fellow of the Royal Society, began in 1677 a series of Mechanick Exercises giving practical instruction in the manual trades. His second volume, of 394 pages, with copperplate illustrations, was the first book ever written on printing. It covers, s very few books do, the 'Whole Art'. Moxon had been for several years a master printer. He had also cut steel punches for letters, made moulds and matrices, and cast and sold type. His account of composition, presswork and letter-founding is perhaps even now the easiest and peasantest guide to their essentials. The text is here exactly reprinted and, for the first time, furnished with an index, full explanatory notes and additional illustrations designed to make it more useful to bibliographers and students of printing-history. A biographical introduction and a list of the books that Moxon wrote, printed and published make some new contributions to knowledge of him and his time. This is a revised edition of the book first published in 1958. The editors have made substantial corrections and additions to their notes, and the discovery of a better original has made it possible to improve the reproduction of Moxon's specimen of his types."