The American settlers for more than a cen tury made no attempt at book-plates of their own manufacture: the richer colonists looked to England for everything, especially luxuries and articles of culture, and the others had no time or taste for superfluities. Naturally enough, most of these early plates belong in the southern colonies, where there was more of leisure and cultivation of the decorative side of life; but for the same reason, their more in timate connection with England and preference for its ways, as well as superior taste, they con tinued to use its book-plates almost exclusively long after American engravers were actively employed upon this branch of work Very few of the old southern plates are of American de sign and consequently they are much less val ued by collectors (except for the owner's sake, as with Washington's) than the northern; though the latter are much cruder in heraldry, design and execution. The earliest dated and signed American plate by a native engraver is that of Thomas Dering, engraved in 1740 by Nathaniel Hurd of Boston; the next is of John Burnet (1754), by Henry Dawkins, who set tled in 1730-77, the best of our early engravers, though there is no doubt that an earlier one of Hurd's was that of Edward Augustus Hol yoke, Philadelphia and later in New York; then comes that of Benjamin Greene (1757), by Hurd; then of the Albany Society Library (1759). Paul Revere also engraved book plates; as did Amos Doolittle of New Haven, Peter Maverick of New York, Alexander An derson of New York (the first American wood engraver, sometimes called the "American Be wick") and others, in the Northern States, es pecially around the great centres like Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia and Baltimore. They worked mainly in the Chippendale style till it gave place to the Ribbon and Wreath, and originated no new style.
The earliest book-plates were of large size, as if made specially for folios; but a smaller size soon became general and was used for books of all sizes. Some owners, however, have used different plates for different sizes; some of Sir William Stirling-Maxwell's were of gigantic proportions.
The collection of book-plates is a very mod ern amusement, but has risen to enormous proportions. The first collector known was
Dr. Joseph Jackson Howard and his collection numbered over 100,000. Sir Augustus Wollas ton Franks of London had one of some 200, 000, which he left to the British Museum. A German nobleman, Count Karl Emich zu Leiningen-Westerburg, had also an exceedingly fine one. A number of large and valuable ones exist in the United States, including that of the Grolier Club, which gave in 1894 the first American public exhibition of them. There is a cosmopolite association of collectors and connoisseurs, the Ex Libris Society of London (1890), which from 1881-1908 issued a monthly journal Ex Libris, and there are also period icals devoted to it in France, Germany and the United States. The American Book-plate Society was founded 1 Feb. 1913. There are regular "prices current" of book-plates among dealers and auction sales as of books. The process-reproduction of drawings has some what "cheapened" the book-plate, but notwith standing this the expert graver is in good de mand. E. D. French of New York, K. W. F. Hopson of New Haven and J. W. Spenceley of Boston in the United States, and C. W. Sherborn and G. W. Eve in England, are famed for their designs. The intelligent study of them is based on the work of the English poet John Byrne Leicester Warren, afterward Lord de Tabley (1835-95), who published, in 1880, his
Bibliography.— Special works are, among others, C. D. Allen, (American Book-Plates) (New York 1894) •, Castle, (English Book Plates) (London 1892); Fincham, (The Artists and Engravers of British and American Book Plates' (ib. 1897) ; Guigard,