E. Gordon (Edward Gordon) Duff

Born in Liverpool on 16 February 1863, Edward Gordon Duff was educated at Cheltenham College and Wadham College, Oxford. He became known as Gordon Duff and built a strong reputation as a bibliographer with a special interest in incunabula and early English printing.

In 1893, Enriqueta Rylands appointed him librarian of the John Rylands Library in Manchester, where he worked on the library's great collections and prepared its catalogue. He later held bibliographical appointments at Cambridge and continued his research independently, becoming one of the leading authorities on the history of printing and the English book trade.

Duff wrote influential books on fifteenth-century printing and early printed books, and his scholarship remained important long after his death in Oxford on 28 September 1924. His legacy is still remembered in rare-book and library circles, including through the Gordon Duff Prize at Cambridge.