8603 titles: pt. I, 4954 titles, is a reprint of 1st edition, 1885, with changes to date; pt. II includes additions to titles in pt. I, and titles 5001 to 8477; addenda, 8478 to 8603.
The history of printing, books, and libraries, is confined only to a limited extent within the boundaries of individual countries. There are, indeed, few historical developments which have played a more universal role, in reaction against all kinds of particularism, than type design, printing, book production, publishing, illustration, binding, librarianship, journal ism, and related subjects. Their history should be assessed and studied primarily in an international, not in a local, context. The bibliographical resources, however, which the historian of these sub jects has at his disposal correspond hardly at all to the essentially inter national character of the object of his studies. Since the appearance of the retrospective bibliography of BIG MORE and WYMAN, covering the subject comprehensively up to 1880, the only current bibliography has been the lnternatwnale Bibliographie des Buch-und Bi bliothekswesens. Covering a representative part of newly published liter ature, it appeared from 1928, but did not survive the Second World War. More recently, several useful, but limited, bibliographies have appeared.
The notion of adab is at the very heart of the Islamicate cultures. Born in the crucible of the Arabic and Persian civilisations of the Late Antiquity period, nourished by Greek, Syriac and Indian influences, this polysemic notion could cover a variegated range of meanings, ranging from good behaviour, good manners, etiquette, proper knowledge of the rules, to belles-lettres, and finally, literature. This volume addresses the notion of adab through four perspectives, which correspond to the four parts into which it is divided: “Origins”; “Transmissions”; “Metamorphosis” of the “Origins” and finally “Origins” through the lens of modernity.