In a departure from the earlier practice of having a single lecturer for the A. W. S. Fellowship in Bibliography series, three distinguished bibliographers were invited, each of whom was identified with a distinct and significant field. The three fields selected, namely fifteenth-century printed books, English literature to the close of the seventeenth century, and early Americana, all present specific problems that have occupied scholars and collectors alike, both in this country and abroad, for a long time, yet without the emergence of satisfactory solutions or agreed standards.

Introduction by: John Alden