E. Gordon (Edward Gordon) Duff

Edward Gordon Duff was a British bibliographer and librarian, born in Liverpool in 1863 and educated at Cheltenham College and Wadham College, Oxford. He became known for his deep knowledge of early English printing and for bringing careful, practical scholarship to the study of books as physical objects.

His career included important library and academic posts: he served as librarian of the John Rylands Library in Manchester and later held the Sanders Readership in Bibliography at Cambridge. He wrote influential works on incunabula, fifteenth-century books, and the English book trade, and his research helped establish bibliography as a serious field of study.

Duff died in 1924, but his reputation lasted well beyond his lifetime. Cambridge University Library still commemorates him through the Gordon Duff Prize, a fitting legacy for a scholar whose work helped generations of readers, collectors, and librarians look more closely at the history of the printed book.