INTRODUCTION

his rounding out by the addition of new information what has long been
known of those striking individuals, William and Mary Katherine
Goddard.

In my History of Printing in Colonial Maryland, I tried to make plain
my belief that a compilation of the books which issued from the press of
any community was one of its most valuable cultural records. Since I
wrote to that effect in 1922 I have seen and used a great many bibli-
ographies of local imprints and I have become more convinced than ever
of their importance to the historian of colonial society.

One hopes that one day Mr. Wheeler will carry on the record of the
Maryland press to a later period, displaying the same comprehension of
men and events, the same power to recognize the relationship between the
life of a community and its printed remains that he has shown here in his
annotations to the titles of the years 1777-1790.

LAWRENCE C. WROTH.
The John Carter Brown Library,
18 January 1938.

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