Edinburgh Napier University

  The focus of this work is the printing output and intellectual history of the Dutch- and German-language areas of Europe... The focus mentioned above means that I have regarded as legitimate for inclusion here both reference works devoted entirely to these areas or ones with a significant amount of Low Countries or German content, even if they have been published in other parts of the world.

My aim in the present work is a practical one, to provide rare book cataloguers, antiquarian booksellers and book historians, who have little or no knowledge of German and Low Countries imprints, with an up to date, as nearly comprehensive as possible, list of reference resources on the printed record of these two intellectually important areas of Europe... Running to a little over seventeen hundred and fifty entries, this work presents an infinitely greater coverage than any other resource available in the English-speaking world. To achieve this I have drawn on more than thirty years experience of imprints from these areas and have cast my net as widely as possible, offering entries on publications in the humanities, law, science, technology and medicine.

In order to make the entries as bibliographically useful as possible to the work's intended users, I have given a full title, pagination and, where possible, series details. In these I have, however, reduced certain information, such as the names of editors or compilers, to initials and surnames, but in the Names and titles index I have given the fullest form of the name which I could find. In the imprint of the pre-1800 entries I have recorded places of publication as they appear on the title page, e.g. 'Anvers' (C28) and 'Dresde' (G75) ...