The sixty-four illustrations in this book were chosen to give an impression of the vitality and diversity of English pottery, and to outline its development between the late thirteenth and late twentieth centuries. All of them are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, but similar types are represented in many private and public collections in England, America and elsewhere.

The Museum was founded in 1816 when Richard, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, bequeathed his art collection and library to the University of Cambridge, together with funds to provide suitable housing for them. The Founder's building, designed by George Basevi, was begun in 1837. Members of the University and the public were admitted in 1848, although the splendid entrance hall was not completed until 1875.

The first English pottery to enter the collection was a Wedgwood blue and white jasper portrait medallion of William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, which was donated in 1840. Sixty years passed before the acquisition of three delftware pharmacy pots in 1901 and during the following quarter of a century only a small quantity of Wedgwood and miscellaneous pieces from other factories were received. During this period, however, the Museum acquired significant groups of Oriental and European porcelains, Islamic pottery and Italian maiolica.

Much of the pottery illustrated in this book was bequeathed to the Museum in 1928 by Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, FRS, a mathematician and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, or was purchased with funds which accompanied his bequest. With a few exceptions (nos. 17, 20, 49, 56 and 57), these pieces were published in Bernard Rackham's Catalogue of the Glaisher Collection of Pottery and Porcelain in the Fitzurilliam Museum, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1935; reprinted by the Antique Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge, 1987).