Excerpt from Aldine House If a beginning as publisher must be ascribed to the late Joseph Malaby Dent, the founder of I. M. Dent Sc Sons Ltd., then the publication in 1888 of an edition of Lamb's Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia, over the imprint of I. M. Dent Co., will best serve to indicate his breaking beyond the limits of bookbinding pure and simple, for these two volumes were planned throughout by him, and were printed for him at the Chiswick Press. They represent his first ambitious pub lishing; but earlier than that he had had printed two or three little birthday books, compiled by himself from the works of Wordsworth and other favourite poets, and published in his leather bindings. Earlier still he had left the routine of the trade and bought sheets of classical books for binding in attractive covers on his own initiative, instead of merely binding books for publishers or booksellers. 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.