title on the label is: OSBORNES | TIME TABLE | OF THE GRAND JUNCTION, LONDON & BIRMINGHAM, | AND | BIRMINGHAM & DERBY RAILWAYS. | Price 6d.' It consists of seven leaves (two of which are skeleton maps) pasted back to back, bound in cloth with a paper label on side (fig. 2, P. 141).

Among other contemporary time tables are: (J. Bridgen of Wolverhampton).

| TIME TABLES OR GUIDE TO

BRIDGEN'S | RAILWAY
RAILWAY TRAVELLING. |

LONDON SIMPKIN MARSHALL AND CO., ... . PRICE SIXPENCE. CORrected to aug. 1, 1840.

A note on p. 2 states that this is a new and improved edition. In 1904 there was exhibited at the Old Manchester Exhibition at Manchester an edition of this Time Table on p. II of which there was printed Corrected October 18, 1839', a day earlier than the date of issue of the earliest. Bradshaw (cf. Manchester Guardian, 30 April 1921).

ROBINSON'S | RAILWAY TIME & FARE TABLES | CONTAINING | CORRECT TIME AND FARE TABLES | OF ALL THE PRINCIPAL RAILWAYS | IN GREAT BRITAIN, |... | London | published at the railway times office, 122, fleet street; ... ...

Naturally during 1841 and subsequently there appeared a number of local time-tables, some of which, however, had but a short career. Perhaps the most ideal of them was:

TOPHAM'S PATENTED RAILWAY TIME-TABLE | EX

CLUSIVELY CONFINED TO RAILWAY, PACKET AND TRAVELLING

NEWS, Being a corrected | MONTHLY RAILWAY AND STEAM NAVIGATION | GUIDE | DERBY PRINTED BY RICHARDSON

AND SON, ..

The first number appeared in May 1848 at the price of 6d. and was continued under a more simplified title until December 1849 at least. Its great feature consisted in the up and down trains being printed chronologically in parallel

columns, differentiated by the up trains being printed in red, the down trains in black. It recommended itself on account of its Perspicuity, Simplicity and Brevity' and that it will 'not be encumbered with advertisements nor comprise any extraneous matter.'

I also exhibit some early sheet time tables which includes one of the earliest in existence, The Liverpool and Manchester Railway' of January 1831 (Fig. 1, p. 139):

In conclusion, I must thank our President, Mr. Falconer Madan, for his kindness in placing at my disposal all his collections and correspondence relating to Bradshaw. He was the first man to approach the subject as a bibliographical study (cf. Athenaeum, 24 December 1887, 19 January 1889), and I am glad to think that during his Presidency I have been able to show that his early pioneer work was well founded. Even this paper is not the final word, but it is an attempt to chronicle our present knowledge.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

NEW MEMBERS

THE following new members of the Bibliographical Society have been elected in October and November: The Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, K.C., the Right Hon. Augustine Birrell, K.C., Miss M. St. Clare Byrne, Mr. R. E. Holmes, Sir Evan D. Jones, Miss H. A. Lake, Mr. Ernest Marchetti, Mr. F. R. D. Needham, Miss Hilda Roberts, Professor H. B. Charlton, Mr. Herbert Garland, the Hon. A. J. P. Howard, Mr. W. G. Partington, and the Central Library of the City of Auckland, New Zealand.

NOTICES

The following papers will be read before the Society on the dates named :

December 19.-The early career of Edward Raban, afterwards first printer at Aberdeen. Mr. E. Gordon Duff.

January 16.-Elizabethan Handwriting a first sketch. Mr. Hilary Jenkinson.

February 20.-The Choice of Books for Printing by Caxton and his Successors. Professor H. B. Lathrop.

A. W. POLLARD,

Hon. Sec.

THE ELIOT'S COURT PRINTING HOUSE, 1584-1674

BY H. R. PLOMER

HE death of Henry Bynneman of Thames Street, in December 1583, left a gap in the ranks of the printers, which was filled in an unusual way. His last entry in the Registers of the Company of Stationers had been made in the preceding March, when he was licensed to print certain classical works, the Company at the same time adding the following condition :

'Alwaies provided that the said Henry Bynneman shall from tyme to tyme accordinge to his good discretion, chose and accept any fyve of this cumpanye to be parteners with ' him in the imprintinge of these bookes.'

Bynneman died intestate, and there is nothing to show whether he had taken any steps before his death towards choosing the five men mentioned in the above condition; but very shortly after his death most of, if not all, his type factotums, pictorial initials, and ornaments were in the possession of four men, Edmund Bollifant alias Carpenter, Arnold Hatfield, John Jackson, and Ninian Newton, who a little later on are found printing Latin classics. Bollifant, Hatfield, and Newton were stationers and printers, and had all served their apprenticeship in the printing house of Henry Denham, who with Ralph Newbery of Fleet Street had been appointed by Bynneman one of his assigns. John Jackson belonged to the Grocers', and nothing is known about him before this: he may have been a man of some capital, and his inclusion may have been due rather to his money than his skill.

These four men took premises in Eliot's Court, Old Bailey, one of a number of courts lying to the west of Newgate, and Edmund Bollifant, if he was not already living there, was the first to occupy them. A bookseller's shop, known by the name of the King's Head' and tenanted later by John Wright, stood at the entrance to the court and next door to the printing house.

6

Nothing is known as to the business arrangements entered into by these four men, but it is singular that all their names never appear together in the imprint to any book. While they held the stock and printing material in common, the names of those only who were employed in the actual printing of any book, or who may have brought the work into the office, appeared in the imprint. Neither do we know how many presses they started with; but the number of books they printed in the first two years does not seem consistent with Mr. Arber's statement (Transcript v. 133) that they started with one hand press.

The first book that issued from the Eliot's Court printing house was Edmund Bunny's octavo edition of Robert Parsons's Booke of Christian Exercise, to which was added Bunny's Treatise of Pacification, finished some time in August 1584 and bearing in the imprint the names of N. Newton and A. Hatfield as printers, and that of John Wight as the publisher. The types used in this, and also the two factotums found in it, are easily recognized as having belonged to Bynneman.

During the year 1585 the firm turned out an octavo edition of Cicero in nine volumes with the imprint of Jackson and Bollifant, while Ninian Newton and Arnold Hatfield were at work on editions of Caesar's Commentaries and Horace in sexto-decimo. Bollifant also printed for Henry Denham and Ralph Newbery the Britannica Historia of Virunus Ponticus; while Jackson printed for George Bishop, one of the assigns