PKEFAOE
 

WENTY years have passed away since the Original
Proposal for this privately printed Transcript
of the Registers of the Company of Stationers
of London, 1554-1640 a.d., was issued by me on
the 8th of October, 1873.

The following extract from that Proposal
describes the circumstances out of which this
most arduous undertaking originated:

The Early English Text Society purposed, some two or

three years ago, to reprint—^in accordance with a permissive

resolution of the Master, Wardens, and Court of the Company

—the Eegisters of the Stationers* Company down to 1700 a.d. :

under the joint Editorship of F. J. Furnivall, Esq., M.A.,

their indefatigable Director; and C. R. Rivington, Esq., the Clerk of the Company.   That Society, however,

being then—as now—perfectly overcrowded with Texts in hand, was compelled to abandon a project of

such magnitude; when Mr Furnivall had already made some progress in copying Register A.

2. The Council therefore gladly transferred the Endeavour to me-—as in the previous instance of
The Paston Letters, now in course of publication by me—and, with its responsibility, the joint editorship.

For all the experience, however, that I had obtained in the cheap production of books: I found—to
my great regret—that it would not be possible to print an edition of the 50,000 entries occurring between
1554-1700 A.D., in any form that could afford but a simple probability of recouping the bare cost of
A Tranbqrjpt &c,                                                  c                                                                V, xvii,