The bibliographer Edward Gordon Duff was born in Liverpool on 16 February 1863. He was educated at Cheltenham College, and then studied at Wadham College, Oxford, from 1883, taking a degree in Classics in 1887. At Oxford he drew up a catalogue of the 15th century books in the Bodleian Library, but further avenues did not open up for him in that direction so in 1889 he began to read for the Bar.

In 1893, Duff was appointed by Mrs Rylands as her librarian with the task of cataloguing her books (including the Spencer library), advising on new purchases, organising the collection, and supervising its transfer to the new John Rylands Library in Manchester. He was also Sanders Reader in Bibliography at Cambridge, and President of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society.

Duff's works include Early Printed Books (1893), Early English Printing (1896), The Printers, Stationers and Bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535 (1906), The English Provincial Printers, Stationers and Bookbinders to 1557 (1912), A Century of the English Book Trade, 1457–1557 (1905), and Fifteenth Century English Books (1917).

Edward Gordon Duff died on 28 September 1924.