10 DECEMBER 1927, Page 20

If we would seek a cultured, deeply informed and therefore

lovingly enthusiastic guide to what is best in book-printing. and book-binding, we have it in Mr. William Dana Orcutt's superb Kingdom of Books (Murray, illustrated, 21s.). The printer, the bibliophile, and the lover of all fine work will each find here instruction and refreshment, as he looks at the exquisitely selected specimens of the typographer's and binder's art. If fifteenth-century Venice can boast its Aldine Press, and France, in the sixteenth, her Robert Etienne and Antwerp her Christopher Plantin, yet England in the nine- teenth can, without fear, advance the names of William Morris, Cobden-Sanderson, and Emery Walker, while America' possesses her Riverside Press. Nor need Cobden-Sanderson's binding of Atalanta in Calydon shrink from measuring itself. with the delicate wizardry of Grolier. Mr. Orcutt's book is a mine of pure gold, and contains also a store of good stories.

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