Edward Gordon Duff


Edward Gordon Duff, known as Gordon Duff, was a British bibliographer and librarian known for his works on early English printing.

Career

Duff was born in Liverpool on 16 February 1861. He was educated at Cheltenham College and Wadham College, Oxford, where he took a degree in classics in 1887.
Duff began work on a catalogue of incunabula in the Bodleian Library but did not finish the project. In 1893 Enriqueta Augustina Rylands appointed Duff her librarian. From 1893 to 1899, he compiled the first catalogue of the John Rylands Library, Catalogue of the Printed Books and Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Henry Guppy was appointed joint librarian in 1899. Duff resigned from his position at the John Rylands Library in October 1900 and, for the rest of his life, he supported himself by doing freelance work and by taking academic appointments. He was elected Sandars Reader in Bibliography at the University of Cambridge in June 1902.
Duff died at his home in Oxford on 28 September 1924.

Major works

Revised edition: Printing in England in the Fifteenth century, a reprint of E. Gordon Duff, Fifteenth Century English Books, with supplementary material compiled by Dr Lotte Hellinga. Published by the Bibliographical Society in collaboration with the British Library, 2009.