The history of the typography of the different oriental scripts often goes hand in hand with the history of scholarship in Europe. This is very much the case with the three Syriac scripts. The Syriac language was first studied in the sixteenth century by scholars in the circles of Guillaume Postel: since these Europeans primarily learned from Maronite and (a few) Syrian Orthodox clergy, Syriac types based on late forms of the west Syriac script predominate until the nineteenth century; it was only then that missionary work with the Church of the east led to the development of a number of east Syriac typefaces, while the acquisition, in the middle of that century, by the British Museum, of numerous ancient Syriac manuscripts in the oldest Syriac script (estrangelo) from the Syrian Monastery in Egypt, promoted the greater use of estrangelo ones (perhaps the most elegant being that based on the oldest dated Syriac literary manuscript, copied in November ad 411: this was designed by the well-known biblical scholar, F. C. Burkitt). The author of this authoritative and well-illustrated catalogue has the great advantage of being both an excellent Syriac scholar and a printer; he has produced a work which will make fascinating reading for both Syriac scholars and printing historians.