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The Book Trade & Its Customers, 1450-1900:
Historical Essays for Robin Myers. Edited by
Giles Mandelbrote, Arnold Hunt, and
Alison Shell. Winchester: St. Paul's Bibli
ographies; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll
Press, 1997. xviii + 316 pp. References. In
dex. ISBN 1-884718-34-5. Hardcover.
$75.00
The seventeen essays in this volume, with and "Introduction" by the late D. F. McKenzie, are a tribute to the distinguished British publishing historian Robin Myers. Her main contribution to publishing research lies in her work on primary documentation in the archives she has tended in an honorary capacity for many years, the Stationers' Company Archives. Alison Shell, in a brief autobiographical contribution to a "Memoir of Robin Myers," notes that after being a schoolteacher and a brief spell of running a Kensington, London children's bookshop, Myers became Librarian of the British National Book League. In 1970, she "became Archivist of the Stationer's Company in 1978, editing the 115-reel microfilm edition for the publishers Chadwyck-Healey in 1986 and publishing an index to them in 1990."
With Michael Harris of the Extra-Mural Department of London University, Myers founded the annual conference on book trade history. In 1996 Robin Myers became the first woman to be President of the Bibliographical Society-the foremost British Bibliographical Society. Arnold Hunt's listing of works published by Robin Myers from 1954-1996, which concludes The Book Trade and Its Customers, 14501900, reveals a steady stream of books, articles and reviews in addition to catalogues on various aspects of the British book trade. Myers' productivity ranges from a Handlist of Books and Periodicals on British Book Design Since the War (1967),...