The first edition of the Bibliographic Classification may fairly be described as the life’s work of Henry
Evelyn Bliss. Some small notion of this is conveyed in Bliss's own Preface to the final volume (1952)
which is reprinted here together with the Prefaces to the other volumes of Edition 1. A fuller and
graphic picture is given of Bliss’s work in Dr. Campbell's biographical memoir which forms Section 1
of this volume. Although the story of Bliss's work conveys to us (as it certainly did to Bliss himself) the
impression of a prophet without honour in his own country it is no exaggeration to say that Bliss
influenced strongly a whole generation of libraries, not only through the Bibliographic Classification
itself but through the formidable theoretical studies of the organisation of knowledge which preceded it
and laid its foundations.