PREFACE

Easton on the Eastern Shore, and at Frederick and Hagerstown in
Western Mryland. Baltmore was son to become one of the important
printing centers in the country.

An effort hafs been made to give a concise history of the important
printing firms and a biography of the printers connected with them. In
many cases the only source of information has been the surviving copies
of the newspapers which they printed, so the accounts are often neces-
sarily limited to a few facts. The bibliography contains all Maryland im-
prints between the years 1777 and 1790 which have either been seen by
me or which, on the evidence of newspaper announcements, may be
assumed to have been published.

Kenneth L. Rede, of Baltimore, began a bibliography of Maryland
imprints From 1777 to 1820 which was intended to form the basis of a
history of Maryland printing in that period. The work was in its early
stages when he died on November 21, 1934. His notes, given by his
parents to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, will be of the greatest value to
his successors in that interesting period of printing history. The notes,
which were used in preparing this work, contain a short title entry for
each of the three hundred items in Evans together with thirty-eight
additional imprints of the period 1777 to 1790. These he had discovered
at the Maryland Diocesan Library, the Maryland Historical Society
and the library of the Hon. John W. Garrett. His search yielded six
per cent of the five hundred and sixty-five items listed in the bibliography
of the present work.

The task of compiling this bibliography has been an enjoyable ex-
perience because of the interest and cooperation given by members of the
staffs of the Maryland Historical Society, the Maryland Diocesan
Library, the Peabody Library and the Enoch Pratt Free Library of
Baltimore; the Maryland State Library and the Hall of Records, of
Annapolis; the Library of Congress and the Washington Public Library;
the New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society; the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Ridgway Branch of the
Philadelphia Library Company; the Harvard University Library and
the Boston Athenaeum; the American Antiquarian Society; the Henry
E. Huntington Library; the William C. Clements Library; the John
Hay Library, the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Rhode Island
Archives, and the John Carter Brown Library, of Providence.

In particular, I would acknowledge the help and inspiration given by
Mr. Louis H. Dielman, librarian of the Peabody Institute and chairman

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