iii
PREFACE

The history of printing and of the books which
formed a background for the culture of early America -
ever since the publication of Isaiah Thomas' History of
Printing in America in 1810 - has been a subject of
interest to many writers and bibliographers. In late
years, the formation of the American Imprints Inventory
project of the Historical Records Survey and the publi-
cation of their state bibliographies has made the study
of printers and printing recognized as a national
project.

But long before the development of state bibli-
ographies on a national scale, Lawrence C. Wroth, a
native of Maryland, now librarian of the John Carter
Brown Library of Providence, Rhode Island, proved with-
out doubt that Maryland could boast the possession cf
a printing press at a very early date, and that its
chronology came probably next after Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania. Virginia, it is true, antedated Pennsyl-
vania in the establishment of a press, but Virginia's
was not a permanent establishment. These discoveries
of Wroth's are incorporated in his book, A History of
Printing in Colonial Maryland, published in 1922.
Later discoveries led to the conclusion, set forth in
Wroth's article, "The St. Mary's City Press; a New