Excerpt from An Inquiry Concerning the Invention of Printing: In Which the Systems of Meerman, Heinecken, Santander, and Koning Are Reviewed; Including Also Notices of the Early Use of Wood-Engraving in Europe, the Block-Books, Etc After the lapse of a quarter of a century, the plates and last five leaves of the present work of the late Mr. W. Y. Ottley having fortunately been discovered, "An Inquiry concerning the Invention of Printing" is now introduced in its complete form to the public, as a worthy companion to the "Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving," published by the same author, London, 1816, in two volumes 4to. As is shown by the title itself, this new work does not embrace so wide a range as the Origin and Early History of Engraving. Our author does not profess, in this last performance, to exhaust the question of the Origin and Early History of Printing, but only to confine his investigation to the controversy, as it stands, between the rival claims of Haerlem and Mentz, of John Gutenberg and Laurens Coster. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.