I hope the reader may find that this book, though smaller than others on the same subject, is more helpful and even more comprehensive than they are; that it deals with the glass articles which they mention and with others which they omit; that it simplifies and classifies the study and practice of glass-collecting more than has been done in print heretofore; and that it can do these things because it is written out of personal knowledge, gained from much experience, and not from hearsay or from other books.
Diffuseness has been avoided, but this, I hope, has enabled me to make the book the more lucid, as well as the more succinct. At any rate, it affords hints, general rules, and warnings more numerous and more practical than any published until now; I have also tried to give to it a quality which reviewers have found present in my other books on Collecting-that is, a simplicity and clearness of explanation, done at the most difficult and necessary points, and in an interesting way. Moreover, this book has had the great advantage of revision (before printing) by Mr. G. F. Collins, of 53 the Lanes, Brighton, a pupil of Mr.[vi] Hartshorne's, and well known to all principal collectors of old glass. Most of the illustrations represent typical pieces in my own collection, but for some of the finest I have to thank the kindness of Mrs. Devitt, of Herontye, East Grinstead, a collector indeed. The illustrations do not represent relative sizes to the same scale.
J. H. YOXALL