Philip Gaskell

Philip Gaskell (6 January 1926 – 31 July 2001) was a British bibliographer and librarian.

Life He was born on 6 January 1926 in Highgate, London, the son of John Wellesley Gaskell, director of an engineering company, and his wife, Olive Elizabeth Baker, who was a Quaker. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and at Oundle School. In 1947, after army service, he went to King's College, Cambridge, and studied English under Dadie Rylands.

At Glasgow University, Gaskell worked from 1962 as keeper of the early books in the library, and master of Wolfson Hall. He then served as librarian and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was at Trinity and the Wren Library from 1967 to retirement in 1986, initially a period of the Library's reconstruction.

Gaskell later taught as a visitor at Caltech during the period 1983–1988, while investigating the possible application of bibliographical techniques to film.

This press fell into abeyance as Gaskell's interests were focussed elsewhere, until 1974 when he was able to re-establish bibliographical printing in the new Morison Room of the Cambridge University Library. Classes on historical printing techniques have been taught there every year since 1974. of Ronald Brunlees McKerrow's Introduction to Bibliography. According to The Guardian newspaper,

his New Introduction To Bibliography (1972, latest revision 1985) was revolutionary in treating the object of bibliography as not just the text but all the processes that had gone into making it. It has become a classic, used all over the world.

Standard Written English: A Guide Landmarks in English Literature From Writer to Reader: Studies in Editorial Method Landmarks in Classical Literature Morvern Transformed (1968)