American Book-Plates

American Book-Plates: A Guide to Their Study with Examples is by Charles Dexter Allen, with a bibliography by Eben Newell Hewins. The book is illustrated with many reproductions of rare and interesting book-plates, and in the finer editions with many prints from the original coppers both old and recent. The text calls the book-plate collector naturally a book-lover and a harmless and useful specimen of the genus collector.

The text says that no intelligent book-plate collector will separate the plate of a famous man from the book which has been its home for years, and asks whether a collector with a book from the library of George Washington would think of soaking off the plate and cutting out the signature. The numbered entries describe individual plates, for example a Minot plate that is armorial and early English, with the motto Ad astra per aspera and the note George Richard Minot, historian, Boston. The bibliography includes a French list of the principal works referring to French ex libris.