The fifty-fifth volume of Studies continues its tradition of presenting a wide range of articles by international scholars on bibliography, textual criticism, and other aspects of the study of books.

The volume opens with Gordon Ray’s unpublished Lyell Lectures, "The Art Deco Book in France." Accompanied by illustrations in the text and coordinated with a full display of Ray’s images on the website of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, the talks provide a sense of the movement as a whole as well as of the contributions of the major figures, the shapes of their careers, and the processes they employed. The editor of the lectures, G. Thomas Tanselle, also contributes an account of Ray as a distinguished scholar, teacher, and book collector. Other articles provide a history and full census of mechanical collating machines, examine the pivotal editorial work of R. B. McKerrow, offer a detailed analysis of the output of the London press in the early seventeenth century, resolve an old problem in the text of Fielding, and weigh new attributions (to Fielding and De Quincey).

The articles and their authors are:

"The Art Deco Book in France (The 1985 Lyell Lectures)," Gordon Ray, edited by G. Thomas Tanselle, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; "’Armadillos of Invention’: A Census of Mechanical Collators," Steven Escar Smith, Texas A&M University; "R. B. McKerrow’s Pre-1914 Editions," Marcel De Smedt, Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium); "A Qualitative Analysis of the London Book Trade 1614-1618," David L. Gants, University of New Brunswick; "Who Edited Fielding’s Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755)? The Case for Arthur Murphy and a New Fielding Essay," Martin C. Battestin, University of Virginia; "Thomas De Quincey and the Edinburgh Saturday Post of 1827," David Groves, Toronto, Ontario