Bibliography

• Adams, Thomas F. Typographia. Philadelphia, 1837. A printer's manual that discusses Ramage's reputation and technical innovations.
• Arner, Robert. "Adam Ramage." Unpublished entry in the upcoming edition of the American National Biography. Professor Arner started me on this project, and has gathered an enormous amount of material on any number of early American printers and press builders. He will be putting this information into article format some time in the near future.
• Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Oak Knoll. New Castle, Delaware, 1995. The preeminent text on bibliography.
• Green, Ralph. The Iron Hand Press in America. Rowayton, CT, 1948. Reprinted Cincinnati, 1981.
• Hamilton, Milton R. Adam Ramage and His Presses. Southworth-Anthoensen. Portland, Maine, 1942. I haven't actually located a copy of this monograph yet, but Saxe and others make extensive use of it.
• Harris, Elizabeth. "Printing Presses in the Graphic Arts Collection." National Museum of American History, Washington: 1996. As mentioned above, this pamphlet can be obtained free by sending a letter to:NMAH 5703, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 20560. Ms. Harris herself is the director of the Graphic Arts Collection of the museum, and is very helpful. The pamphlet has a short description and small picture of all the presses in the collection, which includes a number of Ramage presses.
• Harris, Elizabeth. "Press Builders in Philadelphia 1776-1850." Printing History Vol. 11 No. 2, 1989.
• Martin, Henri-Jean. The History and Power of Writing. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1994. A sweeping and thorough book, which tries to tackle all of written history in 550 pages and nearly succeeds. Has more to say about the Islamic Empire of the Middle Ages than about the United States, but it is still an extremely important work.
• Moran, James. Printing Presses. University of California. Berkeley, 1973. An excellent resource on a wide variety of presses, with photographs. The picture at the top of this Webpage is from Moran's book.
• The Philadelphia Gazette was one of the major papers in Philadelphia during Ramage's time, and is full of advertisements for Printers, Press Builders, and New Publications. If you have the time to work through your library's microfilm, it gives a great introduction to the time period. A few clippings from the Gazette are below.
• Sanders, Marc Eric. Wooden Printing Press Building in America: The 1760's to the Middle Nineteenth Century. Ph.D Dissertation, University of Maryland, 1980. If you're really interested in this material and can get a hands on this dissertation through Inter-Library Loan, it's got plenty of valuable information.
• Saxe, Stephen. American Iron Hand Presses. Oak Knoll. New Castle, Delaware. 1991. An extremely useful text by one of the preeminent scholars in the field.
• Thomas, Isaiah. The History of Printing in America. Originally published 1810. Reprinted, 1970. Editor Marcus McCorison. Barre, Massachusetts: Imprint Society.
• Wroth, Lawrence C. The Colonial Printer. Portland, Maine, 1938.

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