When this work was published, its original author had been dead for fifty years. As the title page explains, the work of Joseph Ames (1687–1759) was considerably augmented by William Herbert (1718–95), and then 'greatly enlarged, with copious notes, and illustrated with appropriate engravings' by Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847), several of whose other works are also reissued in this series. Ames' history of printing, based on his own collection, was published in 1749, as an aid to booksellers in identifying old works (and modern forgeries). Herbert, a printseller and bibliophile, acquired Ames' own interleaved copy of the work and intended to enlarge it, but died having completed only three of six proposed volumes. His working copies then passed to Dibdin, who eventually published this four-volume edition between 1810 and 1819. In Volume 1, the lives of Ames and Herbert are followed by discussions of printers from Caxton onwards.