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IV. 



LIST OF BOOKS AND TRACTS FEINTED IN BELFAST IN THE 

 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



By E. R. M'CLINTOCK DIX. 



[Read January 24. PuHislieil March IS, 1916.] 



Having dealt with the seventeenth-century printing of the cities of Cork, 

 Kilkenny, and Waterford, I propose now to deal with that of the city of 

 Belfast, the only other provincial town in Ireland of which there survive 

 specimens of its printing press in that century. There is evidence of printing 

 in Limerick and Drogheda in the seventeenth century, but no specimen is 

 extant or at present identified. There may also have been a press printing 

 in Londonderry for a brief period, but this is uncertain. 



Printing in Belfast was very well recorded by the late Mr. John 

 Anderson, Hon. Secretary to the Linen Hall Library, who expended years of 

 research and much money in dealing splendidly with the subject, about 

 which he was an enthusiast, and he was the first Irish bibliographer who 

 published an exclusively bibliographical work, i.e., "A Catalogue of Early 

 Belfast Printed Books," 1890, and two supplements. From him I drew my 

 own inspiration, and took my first model ; but in his well-known work full 

 collations are not given of any work save of one edition of the Bible. Also, 

 since his lamented decease, some years ago, additional items of the earliest 

 Belfast printing have been traced, and can now be fully collated. This, 

 then, is all that 1 propose to do in this list, but it is desirable, I think, to have 

 the earliest Belfast printing properly collated, and the places where items are 

 to be found again denoted. The total items in this list are eighteen in 

 number. 



Details of the finding of the leaves of the New Testament (No. 17 in the 

 following list) appear in the " Irish Book Lover," vol. vi, pp, 159-60, and 

 Dr. J. S. Crone, the editor and discoverer, deserves great credit for his 



B.I. A. PROC, VOL. XXXIII., SECT. C. [12] 



