Ghosts in the printing press
Some treasures from the caves of the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library at the University of Toronto
Ian Brown writes, the first thing you notice in General James Wolfe's copy of An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard – the copy he took with him to the 1759 siege of Quebec, the same copy he seems to have read the night before he fell on the Plains of Abraham – is how neat Wolfe's handwriting is.
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The title-page inscription (not shown) is in Wolfe's hand: From K.L. Neptune at sea. That would be Wolfe's fiancée, Kate Lowther – the daughter of a former governor of Barbados – who gave him the book for his voyage to Quebec in 1759 on the Neptune.
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Printed version of Euclid's Elements of Geometry, the first printed with moveable type.
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