Welsh Journals

Mr. Llewelyn Lloyd's Monograph on 'The Book-trade in Shropshire.' A REVIEW AND AN APPRECIATION. By THE EDITOR. ALL Welsh bibliographers who succeed in procuring a copy will feel greatly indebted to Mr. Llewelyn C. Lloyd, Shrewsbury, for his monograph entitled, THE BOOK- TRADE IN SHROPSHIRE. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE STATIONERS, BOOKSELLERS AND PRINTERS AT WORK IN THE COUNTY TO ABOUT 1800. The copy which the Editor has is a reprint from the Trans- actions of the Shropshire Archaeological and National History Society, Vol. XLVIII (1935-6). In his introductory note Mr. Lloyd, after stating that no English county has been better served by capable and accurate historians than Shropshire-he enumerates the works of Eyton, Owen and Blakeway, Miss Jackson, Miss Burne, Dr. Cranage, and the forty-odd volumes of the Transactions of the Shropshire Archaological Society- says It is strange that amid all this evidence of careful research into Shropshire's storied past hardly any attempt has been made to investigate the history of bookselling and printing in the county. This, however, is a branch of local history which does not seem to have proved very attractive to antiquarians generally, for surprisingly little has been published. In 1911 there appeared in Bye-Gones a cri du coeur from a correspondent signing himself B.G." Is it not possible," he asked, to get more Shrewsbury light on Shrewsbury printing ? Will someone investigate the whole history ? More than twenty years have passed since that appeal was printed, and it has remained un- answered. This paper is an attempt to answer it, with the addition of some particulars relating to the printers and booksellers of other towns in Shropshire.' What Mr. Lloyd's paper sets out to do is to give as full an account as possible of the men who have exercised the trade of bookselling or the craft of printing within the borders of Shropshire up to about 1800. A few names