At once a great basic resource and a rewarding volume for browsing or bibliophilic pleasure-reading, this classic work by John Carter contains over 490 alphabetical entries offering definitions and analysis of technical terms as well as the jargon of book collecting and bibliography — with ample examples. A vice-president of the Bibliographical Society and Sandars Reader in Bibliography in the University of Cambridge, its author also worked for Scribner's and Sotheby's, and over the course of his active career he wrote or edited many well known and influential books about books. With Percy H. Muir, Carter was a prime mover of the legendary 1963 exhibition from which was derived that landmark text and guide among guides — Printing and the Mind of Man.

Carter's ABC (first printed in 1952) was revised and expanded by Nicolas Barker, his friend and the respected editor of The Book Collector, making good use of the author's own annotations and bringing to bear his own great knowledge and brisk style. A new introduction was also provided. This eighth edition incorporates the "lexicon of new bibliographical terms" brought into use by the Internet, in addition to other additions and amendments arising since the publication of the previous revised edition.

The result has been lauded as "the wittiest and most instructive alphabet for incipient bibliophiles ever compiled" (Books); it has been asserted that "No better guide to the whole subject has appeared in print" (Chicago Tribune). This is a book that no purchasing collector or cataloguer should think of as a frivolous expense, and a book that as a gift to a collector or cataloguer cannot fail to please.

•  New. Complete with printed dust jacket.