English Book-Plates, Ancient and Modern (1893) | The Public Domain Review

English Book-Plates, Ancient and Modern (1893) | The Public Domain Review: "A marvellous book all about the bookplate, or ex-libris, the small and often highly decorative label pasted into a book, most usually on the inside front cover, to indicate its owner. Although the earliest known marks of ownership of books or documents dates from the latter years of Ancient Egypt, and people would mark ownership in the Middle Ages with simple inscriptions, it wasn’t until the advent of printing in 15th-century Germany that we see the development of bookplates in their more modern decorative form."

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