particulars on the title-page or elsewhere. Unless he has made a study of the technique of 'Book-building', it will not be possible for him to supply the particulars himself. An expert and experienced bibliographer will be able to know the date of publication and other particulars by a study of the typography, decoration and so on. As every book is a monument to the civilization of its time and place, the bibliographer who assembles historical book-descriptions enables us to understand the history of the art and science of book-writing, printing, illuminating, engraving and binding also. Thus we come to the topic of historical bibliography, a knowledge of which is essential for one following the analytical method.
By historical bibliography, we mean minute examination of types and paper for determining the origin, date and textual authority of a particular edition. The pioneer in the field of historical bibliography was Robert Proctor (1850-1903) who followed a purely scientific method to find out the place, printer and date of many books which did not contain any of those particulars. The editions are likely to vary in their reading and the literary editor might not be in a position to know what the first edition was. To a large extent it is the first edition that is reliable and it is only by means of the historical method, that literary
