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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #63730 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63730)
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-Project Gutenberg's Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles, by Various
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles
-
-Author: Various
-
-Editor: Paul A. Bennett
-
-Release Date: November 12, 2020 [EBook #63730]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND PRINTING ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Tim Lindell, Stephen Rowland, Lis, Gen Knit, Andrés Galia
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                         TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
-
-Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text like =this=. A
-letter preceded by the sign ^ indicates a superindex. For instance ^a
-represents superindex a.
-
-There are some characters quoted in the text that cannot be reproduced
-in the text version of the book.
-
-The sign ſ represents the ancient long s; the sign [ct] represents the
-ct ligature and the sign [ffi] represents the ffi ligature.
-
-A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
-variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
-has been kept.
-
-Not all the font families used for the different articles included
-in the book were available for the HTML version. The font families
-that could be used for the transcription are Times New Roman, Gill
-Sans, Garamond, Bodoni MT (instead of Bodoni Book), Baskerville,
-Centaur, Perpetua and Bell. Most of the currently available browsers
-are compatible with those fonts. However, it is not certain that the
-currently available hand-held devices would be able to reproduce the
-text with those fonts.
-
-Punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.
-Nevertheless, there are some portions where the author quotes text
-written in ancient style in which the punctuation rules applicable
-nowadays were not followed. Those have been left unchanged.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-                      FORUM [Illustration] BOOKS
-
-
-     _This ebook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders
-                           20th Anniversary._
-
-
-
-
-                                 BOOKS
-                             AND PRINTING
-
-                       A TREASURY FOR TYPOPHILES
-
-                      _edited by Paul A. Bennett_
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                             _Forum Books_
-
-                     THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
-                        CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK
-
-                             A FORUM BOOK
-
-               Published by The World Publishing Company
-               2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio
-
-                            Revised Edition
-
-                  First Forum printing February 1963
-
-            Copyright 1951 by The World Publishing Company.
-
-    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
-any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief
-  passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper or magazine.
-
-            Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 52-612
-            Printed in the United States of America. WP263
-
-
-
-
-                            ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
-
-I am deeply grateful to many friends who have helped in the preparation
-of material for this book, and have freely granted permission to
-reprint their brain children.
-
-To the Typophiles of New York, and to the individual authors in their
-series of Chap Books, I am indebted for including: T. M. Cleland's
-_Harsh Words_; W. A. Dwiggins' celebrated "Investigation Into the
-Physical Properties of Books," first published for the Society of
-Calligraphers and included in _Mss. by WAD_; Evelyn Harter's _Printers
-As Men of the World_; and Lawrence C. Wroth's "First Work With American
-Types," from _Typographic Heritage_.
-
-To the editors of _The Colophon_, and the three authors, I am indebted
-for reprinting the essays of Earnest Elmo Calkins on "The Book and Job
-Print," Ruth S. Granniss on "Colophons" and Sir Francis Meynell's "Some
-Collectors Read."
-
-To the individual authors, the editors of _The Publishers' Weekly_
-and its publisher, R. R. Bowker Company, I am indebted for permission
-to include W. A. Dwiggins' "Twenty Years After," the sequel to his
-"Investigation"; excerpts from two articles by Robert Josephy; and Will
-Ransom's introduction from his _Private Presses and Their Books_.
-
-To Beatrice Warde, who has graciously permitted reprinting her classic
-"Printing Should Be Invisible."
-
-I appreciate greatly the counsel of the good friends who made possible
-the symposium on "The Anatomy of the Book": Peter Beilenson, Joseph
-Blumenthal, P. J. Conkwright, Morris Colman, Milton Glick and Evelyn
-Harter, William Dana Orcutt, Ernst Reichl, Carl Purington Rollins,
-Bruce Rogers and Arthur W. Rushmore. To Mergenthaler Linotype Company
-I am indebted for reprinting the text of the "Anatomy," now slightly
-revised, from _The Manual of Linotype Typography_.
-
-To both authors and their publisher, William E. Rudge's Sons, I am
-indebted for including the extracts from Bruce Rogers' _Paragraphs on
-Printing_ and Merle Armitage's _Notes on Modern Printing_.
-
-To George Macy, and the directors of the Limited Editions Club, I am
-indebted for reprinting Porter Garnett's prize-winning essay, "The
-Ideal Book." And also for the illustration of the punch-cutting machine
-(from _The Dolphin_, No. 2) to accompany Carl Purington Rollins' essay,
-"American Type Designers and Their Work," for which permission to
-reprint was granted by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Chicago.
-
-To my good friend, James Shand, publisher of _Alphabet and Image_ in
-London, I am indebted for including his account of George Bernard
-Shaw's relations with his printer (first published in _A & I_ No. 8),
-and for assistance in securing electrotypes of the illustrations.
-
-To Oscar Ogg and the editors of _The American Artist_ I owe thanks for
-reprinting his "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its illustrations.
-
-To Edwin Grabhorn I am indebted for including "The Fine Art of
-Printing," his address to the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco.
-
-I particularly appreciate the assistance of the late Otto Ege, Mrs.
-Anne Lyon Haight and Lawrence C. Wroth in revising their essays for
-publication here, and the thoughtfulness of Robert Josephy, Will Ransom
-and Arthur W. Rushmore in writing postscripts to enhance their essays.
-
-I am thankful to Mrs. Caroline Anderson of Los Angeles; my colleague
-Jackson Burke at Linotype; to Christopher Morley of Roslyn, L. I., and
-Arthur W. Rushmore of Madison, N. J., for valuable suggestions and help
-in research.
-
-For assistance in securing illustrative material I am indebted to my
-Typophile friends: John Archer, A. Burton Carnes, Lester Douglas,
-George L. McKay and William Reydel. To Fred Anthoensen of Portland,
-Maine, I am thankful for help in securing electrotypes to illustrate
-two articles.
-
-The publisher, and I as editor, acknowledge our appreciation to
-the authors of the other essays included, and to their editors and
-publishers, for permission to reprint this valuable material, for which
-detailed mention of copyright and publication date is printed elsewhere.
-
-And I hope my apologies may be accepted, should there be inadvertent
-omission of appreciation to the numerous other individuals who have so
-generously assisted me in preparing this book for the printer.
-
-                                                             P. A. B.
-
-
-
-
-                               CONTENTS
-
-
-    BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION                                      _Page ix_
-
-    OTTO F. EGE.  The Story of the Alphabet                          3
-
-    LANCELOT HOGBEN.  Printing, Paper and Playing Cards             15
-
-    RUTH S. GRANNISS.  Colophons                                    31
-
-    EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY.  Printers' Marks                       45
-
-    A. F. JOHNSON.  Title Pages: Their Forms and
-       Development                                                  52
-
-    LAWRENCE C. WROTH.  The First Work with
-       American Types                                               65
-
-    RONALD B. MCKERROW.  Typographic Debut                          78
-
-    EDWARD ROWE MORES.  Metal-Flowers                               83
-
-    JAMES WATSON.  The History of the Invention and
-       Progress of the Mysterious Art of Printing &c.               85
-
-    EVELYN HARTER.  Printers As Men of the World                    88
-
-    ANNE LYON HAIGHT.  Are Women the Natural
-       Enemies of Books?                                           103
-
-    BEATRICE WARDE.  Printing Should Be Invisible                  109
-
-    PORTER GARNETT.  The Ideal Book                                115
-
-    W. A. DWIGGINS.   Extracts from an Investigation
-       into the Physical Properties of Books                       129
-
-    W. A. DWIGGINS.  Twenty Years After                            145
-
-    DESMOND FLOWER.  The Publisher and the Typographer             153
-
-    WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT, BRUCE ROGERS, CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS,
-       JOSEPH BLUMENTHAL, P. J. CONKWRIGHT,
-       ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE, MILTON GLICK, MORRIS COLMAN,
-       EVELYN HARTER, PETER BEILENSON, and ERNST REICHL.
-       The Anatomy of the Book: A Symposium                        160
-
-    ROBERT JOSEPHY.  Trade Bookmaking: Complaint
-       in Three Dimensions      169
-
-    WILL RANSOM.  What Is a Private Press?                         175
-
-    ALFRED W. POLLARD.   The Trained Printer and the
-       Amateur: and the Pleasure of Small Books                    182
-
-    SIR FRANCIS MEYNELL.  Some Collectors Read                     191
-
-    CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD.  Printing for Love                       212
-
-    ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE.   The Fun and Fury of a Private
-       Press: Some Voyages of The Golden Hind                      220
-
-    EDWIN GRABHORN.  The Fine Art of Printing                      226
-
-    HOLBROOK JACKSON.  The Typography of William Morris            233
-
-    STANLEY MORISON.  First Principles of Typography               239
-
-    CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS.  American Type Designers
-       and Their Work                                              252
-
-    ERIC GILL.  Typography                                         257
-
-    FREDERIC W. GOUDY.  Types and Type Design                      267
-
-    THEODORE LOW DE VINNE.  The Old and the New:
-       A Friendly Dispute between Juvenis & Senex                  274
-
-    BRUCE ROGERS.  Paragraphs on Printing                          281
-
-    PAUL A. BENNETT.  B.R.--Adventurer with Type Ornament          290
-
-    DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE.  Some Tendencies in Modern
-       Typography                                                  306
-
-    PETER BEILENSON.  The Amateur Printer: His Pleasures
-       and His Duties                                              313
-
-    T. M. CLELAND.  Harsh Words                                    321
-
-    OSCAR OGG.  A Comparison of Calligraphy & Lettering            337
-
-    ALDOUS HUXLEY.  Typography for the Twentieth-Century
-       Reader                                                      344
-
-    MERLE ARMITAGE.  Notes on Modern Printing                      350
-
-    JOHN T. WINTERICH.  Benjamin Franklin: Printer
-       and Publisher                                               352
-
-    EARNEST ELMO CALKINS.  The Book & Job Print                    368
-
-    JAMES SHAND.  Author and Printer: G.B.S. and R.& R. C.:
-       1898-1948                                                   381
-
-    PAUL A. BENNETT.  On Type Faces for Books                      402
-
-    PAUL A. BENNETT.  Notes on the Type Faces Used in This Book    411
-
-    _Index_      421
-
-
-
-
-          [Illustration]BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION[Illustration]
-
-
-Labeling these observations "introductory" isn't to confuse the purist.
-He knows that the terms preface, foreword and introduction become mixed
-frequently, he doesn't like it and he much prefers retaining the proper
-distinctions.
-
-"An introduction," he will insist, "should be solely concerned with
-the subject of the book, and introduce or supplement its text. And the
-preface or foreword should properly deal with the book's purpose, and
-define its limitation and scope. Let's keep things that way."
-
-Unfortunately, there isn't one term that covers comment which flows
-from one division to the other in a miscellany like this. At times--and
-at the risk of editorial modesty--I may seem something of a typographic
-barker, singing the praises of certain essays and pointing up
-different attractions. At others, the text will be supplemented with
-an explanatory note, or amplified to bring it up to date, as in the
-Josephy, Ransom and Rushmore articles.
-
-It amounts to an assist in getting back to purpose: that of informing
-on matters typographic, and on books, their printing and some of the
-fascinating steps along the way. In selecting material of appeal to the
-collector, printer, typographer and student, I have not overlooked the
-professional curiosity of editors and technicians. That's the thinking
-behind the inclusion of extracts from McKerrow and Mores and Watson,
-among other scholarly contributions.
-
-Where there was a choice, the preference was for the author with
-a point of view and the ability to express it interestingly. Four
-articles indicate this approach. "Printing, Paper and Playing Cards,"
-the brilliant survey of Lancelot Hogben, illumines the birth and
-spread of writing and printing as nothing else I know. Otto Ege's
-brief account of the development of our alphabet, with its memorable
-letter-diagrams, has a different, not less valuable appeal, as does
-Oscar Ogg's comparison of "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its
-specimens of his own distinguished hand. And in "Printers As Men of the
-World," Evelyn Harter writes of a number of great printers as men of
-intellect, at home in the world of ideas. Her stimulating text suggests
-the compensation of looking at the background of printing in relation
-to world events.
-
-There was no preconceived attitude to consider in evaluating the essays
-included: no restriction by country of origin; no fixation about the
-traditional or modern in typographic approach; no desire to slant, or
-plant, ideas; no intent other than to select much of the best writing
-in English by authors of substance. That the gathering may provide
-riches to be added to "the savings account of your memory" is my hope.
-
-In a quite real sense, the experience has been something like spending
-many long weekends with friends in good, solid talk--some of it
-controversial, much of it illuminating and informing. The re-reading
-has not only opened "doors and windows for a welcome flood" of ideas,
-it has suggested new trails and made for valuable comparisons of
-favorites first met with years ago.
-
-It has been difficult to resist the temptation to include more essays
-of historic and technical appeal to typographers and printers.
-Many of the present generation, I presume, may not know De Vinne's
-authoritative account of the development of the American Point System,
-which occurred in the late eighties and is detailed at length in his
-_Plain Printing Types_; or the invaluable Meynell and Morison essay on
-"Printer's Flowers and Arabesques," with its fascinating reproductions,
-from _The Fleuron_. I have omitted these two with reluctance, and have
-used the space they would occupy for a half-dozen shorter essays not
-less worthy in themselves, but on different topics.
-
-Since space was limited, I needed to be. I would have welcomed the
-opportunity to include additional essays by D. B. Updike, whose
-incomparable _Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use_; _In the
-Day's Work_, and _Some Aspects of Printing: Old and New_, and other
-writings on typography should not be missed; by W. A. Dwiggins, the
-distinguished American letter artist and designer, who writes as
-well as he draws; and by Holbrook Jackson, the great English critic,
-literary historian and essayist, whose _Anatomy of Bibliomania_, _Fear
-of Books_ and _Printing of Books_ are required reading.
-
-There are other favorites omitted too, for unlike Jackson's remark
-about the house of books, "There are many mansions and room for all
-trades, whims, and even fads"--this book could comfortably hold no more.
-
-It has not seemed desirable, as it would be possible, to eliminate a
-degree of duplication in part among some of the essays. That would have
-required an amount of editorial surgery and revision unfair to the
-authors concerned. More importantly, it would have assumed that every
-reader would read every essay--hardly an attainable ideal.
-
-Nor has any documentation been attempted to reconcile opposing
-viewpoints--that of A. W. Pollard and Holbrook Jackson, for instance,
-in respect to William Morris as printer and typographer. Happy will
-that reader be who finds this and other instances sufficiently
-provocative to embark upon further research of his own.
-
-And while it is easier to come upon material in a collection such as
-this than to track down each item individually, much of the fun of the
-search is missing, along with the memorable thrills of discoveries in
-scattered places. There's much gold yet to be found by even moderate
-digging.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-The greatest area for argument is that within the opposing views of
-the modern and traditional approach to book design. It is unrealistic
-to oppose the concept that contemporary typography should reflect some
-of the differences that mark our time from other epochs. Defining
-distinctions and relating them precisely to the arts of the book is
-something else again.
-
-In his eloquent _Harsh Words_, T. M. Cleland decries the restless
-craving for something new. "This poison is aggravated in printing and
-typography," he insists, "by the fact that of all the arts it is, by
-its very nature and purpose, the most conventional. If it is an art at
-all, it is an art to serve another art. It is good only so far as it
-serves well and not on any account good for any other reason.
-
-"It is not the business of type and printing to show off, and when, as
-it so frequently does, it engages in exhibitionistic antics of its own,
-it is just a bad servant.... Typography, I repeat, is a servant--the
-servant of thought and language to which it gives visible existence.
-When there are new ways of thinking and a new language, it will be time
-enough for a new typography."
-
-The modern designer disagrees. He believes books can be freshened,
-made more appealing to eye and hand, and more inviting to read, just
-as product-packaging has benefited by the imaginative conceptions of
-skilled industrial designers. He concedes that books remain unsurpassed
-as a medium for transmitting thought to the reader's mind--and admits
-they do it best with a minimum of visual distraction. But, he asks, "is
-it not reasonable to remain open-minded and appraise the modern artist
-for what he may contribute?
-
-"Books, to be sure, are much more than packages to be styled for
-shelf attention and sparkle. Yet it seems reasonable to believe they
-also may benefit by traveling the road of visual appeal and design
-attractiveness, and that they may be assisted in typographic handling
-to convey the author's words with a minimum of reading effort."
-
-It isn't difficult to dismiss the modern approach and call it
-uninformed nonsense, but that doesn't lift the curtain and illumine the
-problem--or settle the continuing debate.
-
-I recall discussing modern typography some years ago with the late D.
-B. Updike, in his library at the Merrymount Press in Boston. A catalog
-from the Museum of Modern Art was at hand, designed by Herbert Bayer of
-Bauhaus fame.
-
-It looked strange in its all-lower-case typography, and seemed to slow
-reading because of that strangeness. To many it was the newest of the
-new ... perhaps it would institute a trend? Mr. Updike smiled, reached
-to a shelf for a book. It was printed more than a hundred years earlier
-in Paris and set throughout in lower-case. "So far as this had any
-influence, then or later," he remarked, "the experiment of _Typographie
-Economique_ is as dead as Queen Anne."
-
-All of which points up Bertrand Russell's remarks, "On Being Modern
-Minded," in his recent _Unpopular Essays_[1]: "The desire to be
-contemporary is new only in degree," he declares, "it has existed to
-some extent in all previous periods that believed themselves to be
-progressive.
-
-"The Renaissance had a contempt for the Gothic centuries that had
-preceded it; the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered priceless
-mosaics with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised the age of the
-heroic couplet.... But in none of these former times was the contempt
-for the past nearly as complete as it is now.
-
-"From the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century men admired
-Roman antiquity; the Romantic movement revived the Middle Ages.... It
-is only since the 1914-18 war that it has become fashionable to ignore
-the past _en bloc_.
-
-"The belief that fashion alone should dominate opinion has great
-advantages. It makes thought unnecessary, and puts the highest
-intelligence within reach of everyone."
-
-Really thinking through the design potential not only seems the nub
-of the matter, but is basically sound typographically. Read Peter
-Beilenson attentively as he discusses the amateur printer and the
-development of a new style (page 313). "It is simple, but dull, to copy
-an old style," he points out. "It is hard, but exciting, to work out
-a new one. And while you are working at it, you must expect cynical
-observers to give your experiments the adjective 'wacky'; you must
-expect certain curious kinds of people to praise your work for the
-wrong reasons; and you must expect alternating moods of conceit and
-confusion. The proofs you gloat over at night will become commonplace
-by dawn....
-
-"You will make misjudgments about the intelligence of ordinary readers.
-You will make mistakes of taste. You will find it too easy to get an
-effect by means of shock, and you will forget that any book, even a
-twenty-first-century book, must be a coherent unit. And you will often,
-since there are no highway markers for the explorer, feel lonely and
-discouraged and want to go back to the old familiar, well-traveled
-roads again....
-
-"You can be subtle or bold, as you feel the urge ... you can advance
-your own work by looking to other fields of creation, enjoying and
-profiting by the experiments going on in them. You can feel yourself
-part of the whole forward-looking culture of today ... and if you
-do strike a vein with the least glitter of real gold in it, you
-will become rich indeed. For you will have become a creator in a
-new sense; your duty done as an amateur will be compensated with a
-twenty-four-carat satisfaction...."
-
-There's sense in that essay, as there is in the views of Merle
-Armitage, T. M. Cleland, Porter Garnett, Eric Gill, Frederic W. Goudy,
-Edwin Grabhorn, Robert Josephy, Aldous Huxley, Stanley Morison, Bruce
-Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins, D. B. Updike and Beatrice Warde on
-related topics. Admittedly, some are in opposition--yet that very
-quality of provocativeness may help in dispelling the fog.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Whether we like it or not, the factor of competition affects the
-sale of books and their reading. Because so many elements compete for
-reading time, we frequently forget that they comprise the obvious:
-sports and the allure of the outdoors, newspapers and magazines, the
-theater and movies, radio and television, as well as social and family
-distractions.
-
-These elements are real, measurable to a degree, and materially
-affect the reading of books and consequently their sales. To the
-trade publisher and printer they affect the business future and may
-be considered opponents. To them, the question of whether the modern
-approach is more effective than the traditional is no academic matter.
-
-We have indicated the problem at length, though only in part, because
-of its consuming interest. For a comprehensive and sympathetic account
-of the modern view, see _Books for Our Time_. That illustrated record
-of the exhibition sponsored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts
-(recently published by Oxford University Press), was designed and
-edited by Marshall Lee, and has essays by Merle Armitage, Herbert
-Bayer, John Begg, S. A. Jacobs, George Nelson and Ernst Reichl.
-
-It was Henry Watson Kent who sagely pointed out that the collector who
-has affection for the book's format is not necessarily indifferent to
-its soul--"the thought enshrined in it." And so, as the one may proudly
-discuss his Kelmscott, Doves or Ashendene items and their literary
-background, so the other--more knowledgeable in graphic arts lore--may
-find equal pleasure in his discoveries: John Winterich on Franklin as
-printer and publisher, possibly, or Sir Francis Meynell on collectors
-who also read, or James Shand's revealing account of G.B.S., his
-interest in typography and his relations with his printers.
-
-Instead of asking the fine press enthusiast to show his Doves Bible,
-his B. R. _Pierrot_, Nonesuch Dickens, or Grabhorn _Leaves of Grass_,
-the collector who reads about the making of books may get even more
-satisfaction in discussing his favorite essays or his most recent
-"find."
-
-That the one can be as satisfying as the other is quite definite in my
-mind. In fact, I am certain that the collector who learns to appreciate
-book-making details will find the greater pleasure: his knowledge
-becomes a part of him as prized items on his shelves never can; he will
-enjoy looking _in_ books even more than looking _at_ them.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-A concluding typographic note: Excepting for strictly type specimen
-material, and the degree of typographic expression attempted in Parts
-six and seven of _The New Colophon_ for a different reason, I don't
-recall any other book set in such a variety of distinguished body
-types. Yet that seemed so natural and sensible an idea for this that it
-has been stimulating to work it out.
-
-Much of the detail and burden has fallen to the willing hands of
-Joseph Trautwein, the able designer responsible for this format, and
-the continuing interest of Joseph and Miriam Schwartz of Westcott
-and Thomson, the superior Philadelphia typesetters, whose wealth of
-typographic resources is evidenced in these pages.
-
-Some of the reasons for coupling specific essays and types are detailed
-in the final chapter, which includes also a brief specimen of each face
-with a note on its attribution.
-
-And finally, I want to salute William Targ, World's editor, for
-inviting me to put this miscellany together, and for his patience
-in watching the book develop. That hasn't proved anything like the
-challenging experience I envisioned, but instead became a spare-time,
-weekend pleasure I've enjoyed for months. Indirectly, of course, this
-is related to the great fraternity of book-makers and typophiles,
-rich in its friendships and international in scope, that I have been
-privileged to enjoy through the years. As I scan the contents again,
-I see not only the names of many good friends and the rewarding
-associations they bring to mind, but also some of their best writing.
-My chief regret is that there just wasn't room for more of it in this
-collection. But that's a different adventure--and possibly another book.
-
-                                                     PAUL A. BENNETT
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] Bertrand Russell, _Unpopular Essays_ (New York: Simon and Schuster,
-1950).
-
-
-
-
-            [Illustration]BOOKS AND PRINTING[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-                [Illustration]OTTO F. EGE[Illustration]
-
-                      _The Story of the Alphabet_
-
-                     ITS EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT
-
-     Copyright 1921 by Norman T. A. Munder & Company. Reprinted by
-                       permission of the author.
-
-
-_Do you know your A B C's? Each Letter Character Has a History and a
-Reason for Its Present Form. Have you Ever Questioned the Origin and
-Significance of the Alphabet?_
-
-Our transition from barbarism to civilization can be attributed to the
-alphabet. Those great prehistoric discoveries and inventions such as
-the making of a fire, the use of tools, the wheel and the axle, and
-even our modern marvelous applications of steam and electricity pale
-into insignificance when compared with the power of the alphabet.
-Simple as it now appears after the accustomed use of ages, it can be
-accounted not only the most difficult, but also the most fruitful of
-all the achievements of the human intellect.
-
-Man lived by "bread alone" and without the alphabet untold ages,
-and with a practical alphabetic system not more than 3,000 years.
-So important and wonderful was this step deemed by those who lived
-nearer the time of its inception--in the time before the wonder of its
-extraordinary powers had been blunted by long possession and common
-use--that its invention, as well as that of writing, was invariably
-attributed to divine origin.
-
-Modern investigation always seeks sources other than mythological
-ones, and thus the science of ancient hand-writing, paleography, came
-into existence. In the last hundred and twenty-five years the writing
-of the ancient Egyptians, which was a "sealed book" for nearly twenty
-centuries, has been deciphered through the efforts of Champollion
-and Young; the mysterious cuneiform characters of ancient Assyria
-and Babylon have been interpreted by Grotofend and Rawlinson, and
-the "missing link" to connect our present alphabetic system to these
-ancient ones is being partly completed by Sir Arthur Evans, who is
-compiling and analyzing Cretan characters and pre-Phoenician writing.
-The story, however, will probably never be told in its entirety.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-The forms of our letters, with the exception of G, J, U, W, reached
-their full development two thousand years ago. The Roman letter was
-the parent of all the styles notwithstanding the diversity that has
-appeared in Europe since the beginning of the Christian era. With a
-little imagination it is not difficult to note the resemblance between
-similar letters of the old Roman capitals and those following that
-have been designated as script, Italic, Old English or black-letter,
-versal, uncial and an endless list of alphabet families. The desire for
-speed, and the influence of the tool, pen, reed, chisel, brush, were
-the determining factors in the change of form. Curiously enough instead
-of being archaic, the Roman alphabet, which is now 2,000 years old,
-is still the most useful because of its legibility, and also the most
-beautiful.
-
-We derived twenty-three of our letters from the Romans. They had taken
-probably eighteen of these from the Greeks about the fourth century
-B.C. and afterwards borrowed elsewhere or invented seven more. Instead
-of giving them names as the Greeks did, they simply called them by
-the sounds for which they stood: A (ah), B (bay). They introduced the
-curve wherever possible, whereas the early Greek letters were all
-angular--what an interesting analogy is evident in the architecture of
-those two peoples, the temple pediment and angularity of the Greeks as
-contrasted with the dome and arch of the Romans.
-
-The Greeks, in their contact with those great traders and "Yankees
-of ancient time," the Phoenicians, saw the value of their alphabetic
-writing and inaugurated its use about the time of the first Olympiad,
-776 B.C. Three or four centuries before they gave it to the Romans the
-ancient Greeks found use for fifteen of the Phoenician letters and then
-conceived enough to round out an alphabet of twenty-four characters.
-The changes that took place in the shape of their letters can be
-attributed to their sense of order; the letters are balanced better and
-the parts better related.
-
-The Greeks were interested in the sound value only, not in the picture
-value of the symbol, and, therefore, they probably did not notice that
-A, for instance, had ever been a picture of the head of an ox and that
-it was now drawn upside down; and that the Phoenician name "Aleph"
-meant ox and that they mispronounced the sound in calling it "Alpha."
-
-The Romans borrowed from the Greeks and the Greeks had borrowed from
-the Phoenicians, but where did the Phoenicians obtain their letters?
-Did they invent them? To what extent were these letters influenced by
-earlier systems of writings as those employed by the Cretan, Assyrian
-and Egyptian civilizations? These are questions that probably will
-never be answered satisfactorily. Many arguments and theories are
-advanced. We can, however, trace back with certainty a number of our
-letters to the Phoenician alphabet of 1000 B.C. Beyond this all is, at
-present, a matter of conjecture.
-
-The Phoenician alphabet consisted of twenty-two pictures of familiar
-objects. These pictures were rudely and simply made, for writers
-and readers soon recognized the fundamental characteristics and all
-unnecessary details were eliminated. The great advance that can
-be credited to them is that they realized that a small number of
-sound-expressing characters, if well selected, are sufficient to
-express any word. Other races at this period had phonetic systems
-but they consisted of numerous symbols and cumbersome appendages of
-non-alphabetic characters--"eye pictures" side by side with "ear
-pictures." No doubt earlier Phoenician writing passed through the
-stages of development traceable in so many countries:
-
- 1. The pictures or characters suggesting the thing or incident
- (picture writing).
-
- 2. The pictures or characters symbolizing the thing or idea
- (ideographic or symbolic writing).
-
- 3. The pictures or characters representing the sound of the thing or
- idea (phonograms).
-
- 4. The sign suggesting the various sounds of the language (alphabetic
- system).
-
-To free this last stage from the others was the great Phoenician
-contribution.
-
-
-                                   A
-
-Why is A the first letter? It represents one of the commonest vowel
-sounds in ancient languages. Naturally the Phoenician alphabet makers
-selected a familiar object in the name of which this particular vowel
-sound was emphasized. Since food is of primal importance, it is not
-surprising to find that he chose the ox--"Alef" (ah´lef), or rather the
-head of the ox, for the characteristics of animals are chiefly embodied
-in the head. Not only was the ox important as food but also as a beast
-of burden, for the ox had been harnessed to the plow centuries before
-the horse was domesticated. Thus one of the earliest and most important
-of man's friends among the brute creatures was honored.
-
-In making this letter repeatedly and rapidly they became careless
-and instead of crossing the letter V they tried to make it with one
-continuous scratching, hence when the Greeks became acquainted with
-it three to five centuries after its invention, the picture had
-deteriorated almost beyond recognition. They introduced balance and
-the V was inverted, and the cross-bar was retained between the lines.
-Unknowingly they were drawing the ox head upside down; and it remains
-so with us to this day. The Greeks called the first letter alpha,
-the Romans called it A (ah) and we call it A (ay), a sound it never
-possessed in Latin.
-
-
-                                   B
-
-The second letter of the alphabet represents a crude house, roughly
-outlined. After food, shelter is an important consideration and this
-fact was expressed by the early alphabet maker. The Greeks again were
-ignorant of the picture and careless or indifferent as to the exact
-name of the character, and thus two triangles instead of the square
-supporting a triangle were made and the name changed from "beth" to
-"beta" (ba´ta). Combine the Greek names for the first two letters and
-we have (alphabeta) "alphabet." The Romans shortened the name "beta,"
-calling it B (bay) and introduced the curved loops. The original name
-is familiar to us through names found in the Scriptures: Bethel (house
-of God) and Bethlehem (house of bread).
-
-
-                                  C-G
-
-The "ship of the desert," the camel, gave its name to the third letter.
-Our name for this animal is traceable back to the Phoenician "gimel"
-(ghe´mel) or "gamel" (gah´mel). The long neck and the peculiar angle
-of the neck in relation to the head could easily be represented. The
-Greeks made changes similar to those in other letters--they improved
-the shape and changed the name to "gamma." The Romans did not forget
-the curve and gave it both the hard and soft sounds (kay and gay).
-Later on, about the third century A.D. to distinguish the "g" sound
-from the "k" sound they added a little bar below the opening. Thus we
-get both C and G from the picture of the camel.
-
-Stevenson said that when he was a child the capital G always impressed
-him as a genii swooping down to drink out of a handsome cup. Kipling's
-story of the invention of the alphabet is filled with similar
-delightful stories of the picture origin of letter forms.
-
-
-                                   D
-
-The next letter, D, came from a representation of a door--"daleth"
-(dah´leth). It probably pictures the door of a tent. A custom that
-prevails among the Arabs and in a number of countries gave particular
-importance to the door of a tent--a stranger, or even an enemy, if
-he entered through the door of a tent must receive food, drink and
-shelter. "Daleth" became "delta" with the Greeks and D (day) with the
-Romans, who, of course, rounded the angle.
-
-
-                                   E
-
-The house picture gave us B, the door, D, and the window, E. "He" (hay)
-meant to look, to see, or window, and one writer asserts our familiar
-street cry "hey, there" can be traced to these ancient times. One side
-bar of the window was lost early.
-
-The Greeks at first used this sound for the long "e" (epsilon) but
-afterwards employed the character H or "eta" for the long sound. The
-Romans at first made no change except to call it "eh."
-
-This is the letter that occurs so frequently in English words, and
-many no doubt recall the interesting use that Poe makes of this fact in
-his story "The Gold Bug."
-
-
-                                   F
-
-Our letter order does not agree with that of the Phoenicians or the
-early Greeks. Our sixth letter, F, is missing in classical Greek,
-but it is found in earlier writings. It comes from a Phoenician
-representation of a hook or nail (?) "vau." The Hebrew form resembles
-the latter object. The nail was important in shipbuilding, a common
-industry of the early traders. When the Greeks used this letter they
-called it "digamma" (double gamma) and its form represented one "gamma"
-(Greek c) superimposed over the other. The Romans called it F (ef) and
-during the reign of Emperor Claudius the consonant V was represented by
-the F inverted. This was done because the Latin alphabet had but one
-character to represent U and V and OCTAVIA became OCTAℲIA.
-
-
-                                   H
-
-Two fence posts and three horizontal boards gave us our eighth letter,
-H. The fence was called "cheth" (haith). The Greeks omitted the upper
-and lower boards thus making it like our H, and called it "eta" (ata).
-The Romans gave it a soft sound H (hah) just as we do today.
-
-
-                                  I-J
-
-The parts of the human body also played an important part in giving
-form to the letters of the alphabet. The early peoples recognized the
-value of the hand and the head and these members gave rise to the
-letters I and K, and Q and R respectively. The hand in profile bent at
-the knuckles and wrist gives us the character "yod" (the hand) as used
-by the Phoenicians. The Greeks, who always liked to have their words
-end in vowels, added "a" and called it "Iota" (e-o´ta). When the Romans
-received it, it was simply a vertical stroke, I (ee) which represented
-the same long "e" sound as it did with the Greeks, but later they used
-it both as a consonant and vowel, differentiating the consonant by
-making the letter I longer, J; but they did not give a distinct letter
-form for the capital J until the sixteenth century.
-
-The small j came into being nearly a century later. The dot over the i
-was first introduced in a thirteenth century manuscript.
-
-[Illustration: Genealogy of Our Letters from the Phoenician Alphabet
-1300 B.C.
-
-Until the 3rd Century B.C. the character _c_ represented
-the sounds of both _g_ and _k_ when a slight modification of the
-character _c_ was made for the _g_ sound.
-
-In a table of this sort, dates, forms, and even meanings must be
-arbitrary. For instance, _Koph_ can be spelled _Goph_ or _Qoph_; He may
-have no meaning; _Lamed_ (_Lamedh_) may mean _teacher's rod_; _Samech_
-(_Samekh_) may mean _fish_ or _fulcrum_; _Zayin_ may mean _olive_ or
-_balance_.]
-
-
-                                   K
-
-The silhouette of the open hand, with its radiating lines, discloses
-the origin of the letter K, "kaph," which signified hollow or palm. We
-know that palmistry was practiced by the ancients, and probably the
-association of reading the hand and writing influenced the inclusion of
-this character. The Greeks added their favorite vowel sound, "a," again
-and thus obtained their "Kappa." The Romans had no need for this letter
-at first, as C furnished the same sound. When they did accept it, they
-made no change.
-
-
-                                   L
-
-The ox goad or whip lash, "lamed" (lah´med) gave rise to the next
-letter. Herding oxen and sheep was the important occupation of the
-slaves of the Phoenicians and hence the last, an object so unfamiliar
-to us, was easily recognized by them. The Greeks again added an "a"
-and called it "lambda" and made it in the form of an inverted V. The
-Romans, strangely, adhered more closely to the original form than did
-the Greeks.
-
-
-                                  M-N
-
-The Phoenicians were lovers of the sea, and from this source two
-letters were derived, M and N. They explored not only all of the
-Mediterranean shore at an early date, but they also sailed boldly
-through the gates of Gibraltar, and "beyond the world" where they found
-Britain. They were the first navigators that sailed by night and it is
-said they discovered the north star. Therefore it is not surprising
-that water "mem" (maim) is the source of M and that fish, "nun" (noon)
-the source of N. The letter M has changed but little in form, it is
-the Greek letter "Mu" and the Roman M (em). The head of the fish, from
-which the letter N is pictured, was simplified even more than the head
-of the ox, in A. It no doubt represents the fisherman's viewpoint--not
-a swimming fish but a suspended one. The Greeks reversed the stroke and
-called it "Nu" and the Romans did not change its form but called it N
-(en).
-
-
-                                   O
-
-In Phoenicia, as in Egypt, China and Mexico, the eye is one of the
-commonest elements found in the writing. It was called "Ayin" (ah-yin).
-The Greeks used it for two sounds now designated by "Omicron," little
-"o," and "omega," great "o," the letter which, strangely, was placed at
-the end of the Greek alphabet. We find in the Bible: "I am the Alpha
-and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." How
-many today would think of using the alphabet for such an important
-illustration? It is easy to trace the Roman O (oh) from its Greek
-parent, "omicron."
-
-
-                                   P
-
-Many letter pictures run in pairs--finger and hand, water and fish--and
-now after eye we find mouth "pi" (pe) which represents the lower lip.
-The Greeks made little change in the name or shape at first, but later
-they introduced the angles and made the downward strokes equal. The
-Romans formed the letter by continuing the curve farther than the
-Phoenicians and called it "pe" (pay).
-
-
-                                  Q-R
-
-Now we come to Q and R, the letters which were mentioned above as those
-probably coming from the head. Whether Q (koph) was derived from the
-picture of the back view of the head and neck, or whether it represents
-a knot, which, no doubt, was as important to navigators then as it is
-now, is a mooted question. The Q sound is guttural and the tail of
-the letter is supposed to indicate the throat sound. The Greeks soon
-discarded "koppa," as it was called, and the Romans went back to the
-original source for their Q (koo).
-
-The back view of the head is the unusual one, for as we look at the
-drawing of the early races, or memory pictures, or the delineations of
-a child of seven or eight we find they are almost without exception
-profile pictures. The Phoenician "resh" represents the profile and
-shows very little resemblance to a human being, although at first the
-features may have been more clearly indicated. The Greeks, as was to be
-expected, turned the letter around, and later, oddly enough, introduced
-a curve making it exactly like the Roman letter P. The extra stroke
-which we find in the Roman letter was no doubt due to the carelessness
-in copying. They pronounced it R (air).
-
-
-                                   S
-
-There is a common legend explaining S, the letter with the hissing
-sound. Because of its curved shape and its hissing sound many people
-believe it to be derived from a snake. Its real history is easily
-followed from Phoenician "shin" or "sin" (teeth) to the present day.
-Its form closely resembled our W. The Greeks made it perpendicular for
-their "sigma" and the Romans simplified and curved it giving S (ess).
-
-
-                                   T
-
-Our twentieth letter, T, is particularly interesting because it is
-derived from "tahv" a mark or cross made by people who could not
-write, and no doubt their signature frequently resembled it. We must
-not forget that even Charlemagne and other kings of the middle ages
-had to make their mark or trace their initials through stencil plates.
-The only change of "tahv" to Greek "tau," and to Roman T (tay) was the
-raising of the cross-bar.
-
-
-                                 U-V-Y
-
-The letters U, V and Y were all taken from the letter "Upsilon," and
-it may have been derived from the queer Hebrew form of "Ayin" which
-closely resembles Y. The letters U and V were interchangeable. Upsilon,
-known as the "Samian letter," was used by Pythagoras as an emblem to
-represent the parting of the ways--the young man making a choice in
-life.
-
-
-                                   W
-
-Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers contributed two letters, W (wen) and
-another often confused with Y, called "thorn." These were introduced
-during the thirteenth century. The French always called the former
-letter double vay, and in English it may be said to represent double U,
-as its name indicates. The letter "thorn" had the value of the digraph
-"th," and "ye" in old English should be pronounced "the" like the
-definite article.
-
-
-                                  X-Z
-
-Although we have no direct need for the letter X, for Z can be
-substituted for it when it is used as an initial letter, and "ks" when
-used elsewhere, it has remained in the alphabet since its frequent
-use by the Greeks. It came from the Roman X (eex) which may have been
-derived from the Greek "ksi." The latter resembles the Phoenician
-character "samech," meaning a post or support.
-
-The dagger "zayin" from which we obtain our Z must have been
-important in the daily lives of the Greeks, Hebrews and Phoenicians
-for it occupies the sixth place (Zeta) and the seventh in the latter
-alphabets. The Romans did not change its name or shape, but although
-there has been little change in 2,000 years we see little resemblance
-to the short sword in the letter the Romans gave to us.
-
-                     *       *       *       *       *
-
-Many slight changes that have occurred in the formation of the letters
-of the alphabet may be accounted for. At first the Greeks wrote from
-left to right in one line and from right to left on the next line--a
-mode of writing which has been termed "boustrophedon" because it runs
-as an ox plow does in a field, up one furrow and down another. It is
-due to this fact that many letters were reversed from their original
-prototypes. It is interesting to note that recently books for the blind
-have been embossed in this manner.
-
-The small letters of the alphabet, sometimes called "lower case"
-letters because printers keep them in a case below the capitals, or
-"minuscule letters" in contrast with "majuscule," or capital letters,
-illustrate further changes due to rapid writing of capitals in a
-cursive or running hand.
-
-The few characters selected by the Phoenicians, the great traders,
-artificers and farmers of the ancient world, not only influenced Greek
-literature and life, Roman and modern nations in Europe, but also
-spread eastward to the very walls of China. The Hebrews copied them as
-a whole and retained the original names with only slight variations.
-They did change the shapes because a different writing instrument was
-employed.
-
-According to a legend, Jehovah gave the letters to Moses, hence all the
-left curves in Hebrew letter form turn upward--as symbols of a finger
-pointing heavenward.
-
-The Phoenician alphabet is also the parent of the Arabic, Indian,
-Javanese, Corean, Tibetan, Coptic syllabaries and alphabets. No small
-country ever gave such a great gift to humanity; no large country could
-have given a greater gift.
-
-          THIS ARTICLE COMPOSED IN JANSON TYPES, AS ARE THOSE
-                 ARTICLES FOLLOWING FOR WHICH NO OTHER
-                        TYPE FACE IS INDICATED.
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]LANCELOT HOGBEN[Illustration]
-
-                  _Printing, Paper and Playing Cards_
-
-_From Cave Painting to Comic Strip_ by Lancelot Hogben. Copyright 1949
- by The Chanticleer Press. Reprinted in abridged form by permission of
-                         author and publisher.
-
-
-Twenty thousand years or more separate the way of life of the
-Aurignacian hunters, who contributed the first pictures to the modern
-symposium of human communications, from the beginnings of settled
-community life and the beginnings of a priestly script. Fully three
-thousand years separate the way of life of the first Semitic trading
-folk who had an alphabet from the vast expansion of knowledge which
-occurred in Northern Europe after the spread of printing from movable
-type during the half century before the voyages of Columbus. Civilised
-mankind had to surmount many hurdles before it was possible to exploit
-to the fullest extent the considerable economy signalised by the
-introduction of alphabetic writing.
-
-At first, there were few people who had any use for the art of writing
-except as a convenience of commercial intercourse. There was in fact
-no incentive to adapt the art of writing with letters to the flexible
-uses of daily speech.... An age-long popular tradition of community
-singing and community dancing lies back of Aeschylus, Euripides and
-Aristophanes; but it was one which could assume so novel an aspect only
-in the trading communities of the islands in the Mediterranean, where
-constant interchange of personnel promoted conditions less propitious
-to the dominance of a priestly class of avaricious landed proprietors
-than under the earlier dynasties of Egypt and the near East. Thus and
-there, at an early date, a segment of tribal ritual crystallises as a
-secular pursuit; and where there is a flourishing drama there is also a
-motive for writing, equally aloof from association with the repetition
-of sacred texts or from the limited requirements of the counting-house.
-There is, in fact, an incentive to write down what is more than a
-ceremonial password, an epitaph or a bill of goods, an incentive to
-record in writing what living people actually speak.
-
-It is indeed a far cry from the Greek drama to the free-and-easy
-visual speech of a modern novel or of a modern newspaper in the
-Western world; but we unduly belittle our too often overrated debt to
-Greek civilisation, if we fail to pay tribute to an innovation which
-entitles Greek literature to rank as a cardinal contribution to the
-self-education of the human species. To a far greater extent than the
-Romans, the Greeks wrote about the life of their times with an intimacy
-and liveliness which foreshadows the adaptation of writing to all the
-familiar uses of speech. For the Latin which generations of schoolboys
-reluctantly construed in the grammar schools, Latin in the Gladstone
-tradition, was actually dead when committed to writing, a language as
-remote from the common speech of the Italian peninsula as the idiom of
-Gertrude Stein from that of the contemporary American household.
-
-Within the framework of Greco-Latin society, the written word became
-available to the more prosperous citizens on a scale unprecedented in
-the civilisations which had preceded them; but there were still very
-few who read much or read often. The spoken word was still the main
-instrument of instruction and of political persuasion. Even among those
-who could read, there were still few who could also write. There were
-in fact two formidable impediments alike to the use of the written word
-as a medium of instruction or of propaganda and to the availability of
-any considerable body of written matter for those with inclination and
-training in the art of reading. Needless to say, one was the laborious
-nature of the only available means of multiplying the products of the
-pen, when it was necessary to copy every script individually by hand;
-and since this was a labour commonly entrusted to slaves, deficiency
-in penmanship gave little affront to self-esteem among the still
-privileged few who could read with ease. The other handicap was the
-writing surface itself, often of its very nature inadaptable to free
-circulation and at best costly.
-
-PAPER is so much a part of every-day life that we too easily overlook
-the significance of writing material as a circumstance limiting the
-advancement of literacy. It is on that account worthy of more than a
-single sentence. The clay tablets of Babylon and Crete might serve the
-purpose of stocking a temple or a palace library; but no household of
-modest size could have accommodated the contents of several issues of
-the _New Yorker_, if transcribed in the cuneiform tradition. Much the
-same may be said about the wax tablets in common use among the Roman
-contemporaries of Cicero. Indeed the advantage Egyptian civilisation,
-and thereafter the mainland Greek, Alexandrian, and late Latin, enjoyed
-from the use of _papyrus_ is difficult to exaggerate. Papyrus consists
-of longitudinal ribbons of reed laid on a wet surface, stuck with gum
-to an overlaying layer of similar strips at right angles, dried in the
-sun and subsequently polished. It has a double advantage over clay and
-wax. It is not bulky, and its smooth surface permits an easy cursive
-style of writing. On the other hand, its manufacture is tedious; and it
-does not stand up to a moist climate.
-
-Long before printing began in Europe--during the Han dynasty in the
-first century A.D.--the Chinese had taken a lesson from the wasp,
-which makes its nest by chewing vegetable fibre and pressing the moist
-suspension into a film of even thickness. As a source of vegetable
-fibre, the Chinese used anything which came to hand: old fishing nets,
-worn-out rope and hemp, macerating it in tubs before removing with a
-sieve the artificial detritus. It is then possible to compress the
-latter to required thickness, and the triturated fibres adhere when
-dry. The Mandarin had now material far superior to papyrus, alike for
-copying or for storing the written word; but he lacked the incentive
-to share the advantage of this invention with his underprivileged
-compatriots. Chinese literature received a new impetus; but there were
-still few who could enjoy its benefits....
-
-The capture of Samarkand by the Arabs in A.D. 750 marks the date when
-paper starts on its trek to the as yet non-existent printing presses
-of Europe. The Moslem invaders of Spain and Sicily brought it with
-them into the territories they conquered, and with it a recipe for
-deriving the fibre basis from old rags. For three centuries after
-its introduction to Christendom, somewhere about A.D. 1200, it had
-to compete with parchment or vellum made from stretched, pressed and
-dried animal membranes. What was probably decisive in establishing its
-supremacy was the spread of water mills in the two centuries before
-Caxton. Power was necessary to speed up maceration of the raw material;
-and we have record of paper mills in Germany by A.D. 1336. Had it not
-been for this new tempo and economy of production of thin, smooth and
-flexible material for the impress of the written word, the vastly
-increased volume of written matter put into circulation by the printing
-press could not have come about.
-
-As we all know, printing from movable type began in Europe about
-fifty-years before Columbus set out on his first voyage; but few of us
-reflect upon the dramatic speed with which the new trade spread from
-one city or one country to another. A single leaf of a sibylline poem
-called the _Fragment of World Judgment_ is supposedly the earliest
-extant product of the new technique, probably issued about the year
-1445 from the press of Gutenberg, a master printer, then resident in
-Strasbourg. From law-suit records we know that Fust, a goldsmith of
-Mainz who financed Gutenberg's earliest trials, was printing there
-during the fifties; and McMurtrie, author of _The Book_, states that
-
- the first _dated_ piece of printing preserved to us appeared in
- 1454, which is thus the earliest date that can be set beyond any
- speculation or controversy. In that year four different issues
- of a papal indulgence appeared in printed form. The occasion was
- historic. Constantinople had fallen to the Turks the year before.
- At the solicitation of the king of Cyprus, Pope Nicholas V granted
- indulgences to those of the faithful who should aid with gifts
- of money the campaign against the Turks. Paulinus Chappe, as
- representative of the king of Cyprus, went to Mainz to raise money
- of this cause. Ordinarily, these indulgences would have been written
- out by hand, but in this case, as there were a considerable number to
- be distributed, the aid of the new art of printing was enlisted, and
- forms were printed with blank spaces left for filling the dates, the
- names of the donors to whom they were issued, and other details.
-
-The new art turned out to be a double-edged weapon in the hands of
-papal authority. A Latin Bible in two columns of forty-two lines to the
-page came out in 1456, most probably, according to McMurtrie, from the
-press of Fust, now in competition with Gutenberg. As early as 1478, a
-Cologne master printer issued a Bible in two different German dialects
-with well over a hundred illustrations. There were 133 editions of it
-during the next fifty years. To be sure, a century was to elapse before
-printed Bibles were available in the home tongue throughout Germany,
-Britain, Scandinavia and the Low Countries; but it was a disastrous
-step to make the poorer clergy Bible-conscious.
-
-Within ten years of the issue of the Indulgence mentioned above,
-printing by movable type was going on in several German cities other
-than Mainz and Strasbourg. German printers brought the art to Rome
-in 1467, and two years later John of Spire, like Fust a goldsmith,
-had started work in Venice. In Switzerland, says McMurtrie, it seems
-likely that "the first printing office in Basle began work about
-1467." Printing in Paris starts about a year later. In 1469, Caxton, a
-Kentishman, who had occupied consular status to the English Merchant
-Adventurers at Bruges, began translating into his own tongue for the
-press the _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, printed there in 1475.
-A year later, he returned to England, set up business with Colard
-Mansion in the Almonry near Westminster Abbey, and from that office
-produced _The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers_. This, states
-McMurtrie,
-
- was the first dated book printed in England, the Epilogue being dated
- 1477 and in one copy November 18. Though this was the first _dated_
- book, it was not certainly the first issue of the press, Caxton's
- translation of Jason and a few other publications of slight extent
- having probably preceded it.
-
-Within twenty years from the start, on the threshold of the
-discovery of the New World, printing from movable type is thus in
-full swing throughout Europe. The speedy and consequent intellectual
-ferment is an oft-told tale, scarcely worth further comment, if it
-were not too customary to dwell on the alleged impact on natural
-knowledge, as on biblical criticism and political theory, of Greek
-scholarship imported into Europe by Byzantine immigrants in flight
-from the victorious Turks. The fact is that the positive outcome of
-Alexandrian mathematics, astronomy, medicine and mechanics had long
-ago penetrated north-western Europe through visits of students to the
-Moorish universities in Spain, where positive knowledge had attained
-a higher level than ever before through the marriage of Alexandrian
-science to Hindu number-lore. Equally indisputable is the fact that
-the universities of Toledo, Cordova and Seville were midwives of
-the cartography which Jewish pilots put at the service of Henry the
-Navigator. That the new technique of printing made available for the
-great explorations of the fifteenth century a new scientific amenity
-for which there was a pre-existing and insistent demand is evident from
-the mounting number of nautical almanacks published between Gutenberg's
-first productions and the project of Columbus. Soon there were to
-follow manuals of military science propounding problems of ballistics
-created by the introduction of gunpowder into warfare--like paper, from
-Chinese sources by way of the Moslem world.
-
-Why monks, such as Adelard of Bath, should disguise themselves as
-Moslems to study in the Moorish universities during the twelfth century
-is easy to understand. The Church had assumed the responsibilities
-of the ancient priesthoods as custodians of the calendar, and hence
-of astronomical lore, when Christianity became the official religion
-of the Roman Empire. As founders of hospitals in conformity with
-the beatitude of the sick visitor, they were prohibited from active
-participation in the advancement of medicine as a science by Papal
-bulls against dissection of the human body, but on that account the
-more well-disposed to Jewish missionaries of the Moorish culture, when
-the latter set up schools of medicine on the campuses of the mediaeval
-universities....
-
-That Ionian scientific speculations exerted a salutary influence on
-Newtonian science, when the atomic concept invaded modern European
-thought after the seventeenth-century translations of Gassendi and
-others, is not open to dispute. Nor need we rob the fugitive scholars
-of Constantinople of the credit for playing a minor part in this
-climax off-stage; but the efflorescence of science in the seventeenth
-century was the immediate consequence of technological advances made in
-the preceding century, and put into circulation through a commercial
-undertaking which had to sell science to a reading public of master
-pilots, mining engineers, artillery commanders and spectacle-makers
-before naturalistic science had paid its way into university cloisters
-under a more accommodating sobriquet as natural philosophy.
-
-With this overdue obituary on the immigrants from the fall of
-Constantinople in the year preceding the first dated product of the
-new printing technique let us leave them; and again get into focus
-the astonishing speed of its spread in an age when the craft guilds
-jealously guarded their secrets. Here is a technical revolution of the
-first magnitude at a time when technical innovations diffused leisurely
-against menacing obstacles of custom thought and of legal sanctions. As
-such, its tempo is a challenge to curiosity; and part of the answer to
-the enigma is that there was already a flourishing craft of printing to
-take advantage of the economy of movable type, when Gutenberg and Fust
-began their partnership.
-
-Again, we must pause to pay a debt of gratitude to China, and to
-civilisations far older than the Chinese. We have seen that the seal is
-the oldest form of signature; and that all our knowledge of one of the
-earliest literatures of the world comes from clay tablets on which the
-Sumerian priesthoods engraved their sign-language with a punch to which
-it owes the characteristic style called cuneiform. The same impulse to
-impose the signature of a sky-sign on the clay tablet had led men to
-impress symbols of ownership or good omen on the soft clay products
-of the potter's wheel before the baking began. A stamp is, after all,
-a seal to carry a pigment; and the practice of stamping pottery with
-coloured patterns is of great antiquity. The next step is intelligible
-in its own territory. In China, whence the silkworm made its lethargic
-way across the great trade routes of Asia, stamping patterns on silk
-was probably a practice before the Christian era began; and it was
-China which produced the first paper. Probably about A.D. 700, though
-it may well be earlier, the practice of stamping charms by wood blocks
-on paper began there. In A.D. 767 the Empress Shotoku of Japan ordered
-a million Buddhist charms to be printed from wood blocks on paper for
-placing in miniature pagodas.
-
-The Chinese predilection for games such as _Mah Jongg_ is an ancient
-tradition; and an early use of block printing--long before it came
-into Europe--is the production of _sheet dice_ or, as we should say,
-playing cards. As charms--pictures of saints--and as playing cards,
-wood-block printing established a market in Europe at least a century
-before Gutenberg's Bible. Fortunately, we know some facts about this,
-as often by a happy dispensation. For the age-long obstruction of the
-legal mind to progress conspires with its obsessional drive to record
-its own ineptitudes and us to perpetuate milestones of progress by
-the resistance it offers to innovation. Thus we have the record of
-a prohibition issued by the Provost of Paris in A.D. 1397 against
-working men playing cards on working days; and there were many such
-prohibitions in German towns about this time. We have also originals of
-contemporaneous wood-block prints portraying saints for sale at shrines
-by travelling pedlars and palmers, encouraged to foregather by papal
-indulgences for the pilgrims.
-
-Like _Snap_ and other children's card games of today, the first playing
-cards were wholly pictorial, in suits exhibiting the feudal hierarchy,
-starting with the king and queen. The joker is a relic. Sometimes, the
-wood block of the picture card accommodated a title or epithet, and
-often the _Heiligen_, or shrine charms promoted by the clergy as an
-antidote to the carnal indulgence of card-playing, would carry the name
-of the saint. Either way, the next step was inevitable. We are now in
-sight of printing as a medium for the rapid circulation of knowledge;
-but we have to take stock of several features of the folk ways of
-Europe in the Middle Ages before we take the next hurdle.
-
-When we reach the threshold of the fifteenth century, writing is
-no longer the prerogative of a priestly caste. There are merchants
-with big balances in the wool trade, the herring trade and the spice
-trade. There are pilots who have to rely on their _rutter_ books to
-navigate cargoes of the spice trade over long ocean routes. There is
-a mounting volume of manorial accountancy and litigation connected
-with the exchange of produce between the countryside and the boroughs
-where master-craftsmen and merchants are now aspiring to domestic
-conveniences heretofore inaccessible to the landed gentry. All this
-signifies the pre-existence of considerable semi-literate personnel to
-provide a market for the products of Gutenberg's trade. It is necessary
-to say this, because school history too often exhibits the Church and
-the Law as the custodians of literacy.
-
-What is true is that the monks, and to a less extent the lawyers,
-were the only people who had time to write _at length_ during the
-century we have now reached. The lawyers we may leave to their own
-sadistic pursuits.... The Church deserves kinder consideration, even
-if the Church had outstayed its welcome. For Catholicism kept alive
-the lucidity of picture-language in an age when a new technique of
-illustration offered the only means of grace to the few men who saw the
-light of science through a miasma of verbal puns.
-
-In short, we are here talking of the _Missals_, a form of sacred art
-with a charm to which even a hard-boiled technician such as the writer
-is not entirely indifferent. There is a pathetic earnestness about the
-tender care with which the monks illuminated their copies of devotional
-texts, and one which established what we may fairly call the first
-experiment in visual education for the people. The monks who made the
-missals offered a helping hand to the new industry. To be sure, we
-read a lot of rubbish written about what we owe to them; but they did
-one thing of enduring value besides starting hospitals and nursing
-the spectacle trade for the benefit of "poor blind men." They made
-_block-books_ possible. In the admirable book already cited, this is
-what McMurtrie has to say about their contribution:
-
- There is ... one exceedingly primitive block book, the _Exercitium
- super Pater Noster_, in which the illustrations are printed from
- woodcuts and the text added in manuscript.... The costume is that of
- the Burgundian court of the second quarter of the century, and this
- feature, in conjunction with the technique of design and cutting led
- Hind to date the book about 1430 and hardly later than 1440.
-
-There is still argument about whether devotional block-books with
-both illustrations and text produced from fixed blocks antedated or
-synchronised with printing from movable type; but it seems fairly
-certain that block-books were in circulation before the wastefulness
-of cutting the same letter over and over again on the same block
-occurred to Gutenberg, and likely enough to many others. The issue
-is of academic interest only. What we can say certainly is that the
-printers of playing cards and of _Heiligen_ were already involved in
-the book industry before it occurred to anyone to make punches and dies
-for letters of the alphabet in order to dispense with the necessity of
-repeatedly carving the same sign on a composite block. Metal-founders
-of the thirteenth century already knew the art of using stamps with
-single letters in relief to make an impress on fine sand for molten
-metal when making inscriptions, themselves to appear in relief on the
-finished casting. In bell foundries, among craftsmen who made pewter
-vessels with inscriptions, in the minting of coin and the casting
-of medals, the use of metal single-letter punches and dies was also
-commonplace.
-
-In short, there is already in existence an industry of master printers
-when the record of Gutenberg's law-suit bequeaths the first documentary
-evidence of printing as we use the term today--moreover an industry
-working in close contact with ancillary crafts which had already solved
-the technical problems on whose solution printing on a larger scale
-at less cost was attendant. There is a market for books, with richer
-profits if the printer can solve the technical problem of outsmarting
-the monks in the art of making the first copy, as he can already
-outsmart them by reproducing the first copy without limit. In one
-sense, we now have a press.
-
-Still, we have not explained the phenomenal rapidity with which the
-new technique of cutting stamps to make up a frame of continuous
-type spread throughout Europe, unless we look at our period in its
-social entirety; and if we are to do so we must take stock of many
-things which were not happening in China, the parent civilisation of
-the printing art. One of them is sufficiently obvious to be easily
-overlooked in an age of central heating. Europe, as post-war American
-tourists will agree, is rather cold and rather cloudy. That is why it
-is important to bring glass into the picture. GLASS is an invention
-of great antiquity, being in fact an early Egyptian amenity; but the
-very qualities we admire in the iridescent glass of Etruscan or Roman
-vessels make it equally unsuitable to the uses of domestic life or to
-the science of gas or temperature measurement. Before you have leisure
-to read, in the chilly north of the Hanseatic League or the Flemish
-wool trade, you must have a technique of house design utterly different
-from what meets your requirements in the sunny south of Greece and
-Italy, Crete or Egypt. It is therefore relevant that there is now, in
-the fifteenth century, a prosperous burgher class with houses equipped
-with windows made of glass, glass of poor quality by our standards but
-vastly better fitted to its principal use than the glass of antiquity.
-Nor is it irrelevant that spectacles are now coming into use for the
-old folk who have time on their hands.
-
-The very fact that we now have windows brings into focus that we have
-an emergent class of semi-literate and relatively prosperous merchants
-and craftsmen, a class which is beginning to send its sons to grammar
-schools to get a smattering of reading and of the art of cyphers. This
-consideration prompts reflection upon the almost ubiquitous association
-of the goldsmith as the patron, partner or financier of the earliest
-master printers of books. There is now a wealthy craft of jewellers and
-armourers skilled in the art of using punches and dies to make patterns
-in relief on a metal surface, with a secure trade among the nobles and
-the wealthier merchants; and there are already the beginnings of a new
-trade in pictorial reproduction fostered by artists seeking patrons
-among them. Before printing by movable type begins, the wood-block
-illustration is competing with a better technique. Instead of smearing
-a sticky ink on a raised surface, it is now possible to achieve the
-same end by filling the crevices in a metal plate wiped clean; and
-who should be more concerned with promoting the use of pictorial
-reproduction by engraving than goldsmith and jeweller well versed in
-the uses of impressing a pattern in relief or intaglio?
-
-What is happening in the fifteenth century is not the outcropping of
-inborn genius. Contrariwise, we should regard it as the confluence
-of a large number of new techniques, individually of little import
-to human advancement, collectively with a new momentum. Nor need we
-pride ourselves on the fact that European civilisation proved equal to
-exploiting to greater advantage what it had thanklessly received from
-the Eastern world. Paul Pelliot has discovered wooden types attributed
-to Wang Cheng in the beginning of the fourteenth century, well over
-a hundred years before the first dated printing from movable type in
-Germany; and if this invention came to nothing, have we far to seek
-the explanation? With twenty-six pigeonholes for a box of letter type
-at his elbow, the European compositor of the fifteenth century enjoys
-an immeasurable advantage over his fourteenth-century fellow craftsman
-who has to manipulate several thousand Chinese characters. Korea took
-up movable type, probably through Chinese influence, about fifty years
-before Europe.
-
-No intelligent Anglo-American needs to be told at length how printing
-contributed to the diffusion of knowledge previously transmitted by
-oral tradition, how much more the master printers and book-makers
-from Gutenberg to Benjamin Franklin contributed to the making of our
-language habits than all the professors of their time, how much the
-trade in reading matter contributed to the great enlightenment of
-the four centuries which followed, how it also contributed to the
-liberation of Christendom from papal authority, what it bestowed on
-the age of Galileo and Newton, how it catalysed man's thought about
-human dignity and fundamental human rights. What we are prone to forget
-is how much water had to pass under the bridges before the homeland
-of Caxton or that of Franklin could assert the ability to read and to
-transcribe the written word as the birthright of every citizen.
-
-In North America and in Northwestern Europe, literacy is today a
-medical diagnosis. That a person cannot read or write is now a
-sufficient criterion of mental defect; and this is so in a sense which
-would have been utterly false of Britain or the United States alike
-when Charles Dickens wrote an uncharitable record of his transatlantic
-itinerary. Until the middle of the nineteenth century there was
-everywhere a large underprivileged class cut off from the possession of
-books and without the incentive to purchase reading matter....
-
-By attaching a cast of the hand-set type to cylinders it was possible
-to take advantage of the introduction of steam power with considerable
-economy of time entailed in running off the printed sheet; but it was
-impossible to reap the harvest of this economy while it was still
-necessary to set type by manual extraction from a box of each die for
-a letter, cypher or punctuation mark. Also, the manufacturer of paper
-from rag was a relatively costly process by modern standards; and
-the discovery of a cheaper source of raw material was a precondition
-of expanding trade in the printed word. Rag, be it said, is simply
-woven fibre of cotton or flax; and any vegetable fibre is good enough
-for the work of the wasp. It was therefore a great advance, when it
-was possible to use the by-products of the lumber camps for paper
-manufacture. Wood pulp as a source of paper came into its own in the
-eighties, though its use goes back to a German patent about 1840.
-In 1857 Routledge had introduced, as an alternative source of raw
-material, esparto grass from Spain and North Africa; and there had
-been notable advances in the mechanics of paper production during the
-preceding fifty years.
-
-In 1803 the French printer Didot brought into England a device which
-took advantage of steam power by running wet pulp on to a moving,
-endless belt of wire mesh through which the water drained off. It could
-run off in a day six miles of paper of uniform width. In 1821 Crompton
-invented the process of drying by steam-heated rollers. Between
-1803 and 1815 König in Germany and Cowper in Britain had perfected
-power-driven machinery for printing off a continuous roll of paper from
-cylinders carrying the type cast. The four-cylinder machine patented
-by Cowper and Applegarth in 1827 ran off 5,000 sheets per hour of the
-London _Times_ simultaneously printed on both sides. The Walter Rotary
-of 1866 appears to have been the first cylinder machine to print on
-both sides of an unwinding roll of paper with a power-driven mechanism
-to cut the sheets, previously fed to the machine by hand. By that time
-a cheaper source of paper was available.
-
-The advent of cheap paper accommodated the purchase of reading matter
-to the purse of the poorer classes in the community; but it did not
-bring into their lives a daily stimulus to read. While type-setting
-remained a manual operation, the maintenance of a daily press was beset
-by many difficulties and possible only because it did not as yet aspire
-to the topical immediacy which could coax a large semi-literate section
-of the population into the habit of daily reading. What made possible a
-truly popular press was an invention thus described by McMurtrie:
-
- Setting extensive manuscripts by hand is, of course, a very slow and
- laborious process, and as the printing industry grew in extent and
- importance it was only natural that efforts should be made to devise a
- means of setting type mechanically at greater speed and less cost....
- The failures were myriad. All efforts to take the foundry type used
- by the compositor and set it up mechanically came to naught. Finally,
- however, Ottmar Mergenthaler invented a machine which, by the action
- of a keyboard somewhat resembling that of a type-writer, assembled
- not type but matrices and, when a whole line was set and spaced, cast
- this line in one piece, or "slug," of type metal. This machine, which
- was first put into practical use in 1886, and appropriately christened
- a "linotype," gave a revolutionary impetus to the printing industry
- ... as with all new inventions of importance it was expected that
- thousands of compositors would be thrown out of work. But, again as
- usual, the industry grew so fast that more men were employed than
- before.
-
-This device is not the only machine which sets type. On its heels came
-the monotype which employs the pianola principle for power transmission
-and is for some purposes preferable. The technical advantages of one or
-the other are irrelevant to our theme. What makes printing by linotype
-an outstanding achievement of nineteenth-century technology is that it
-permits type-setting to keep pace with the tempo of topical affairs at
-a time when a railroad schedule co-ordinated by telegraphy has made man
-minute-conscious for the first time in history. It is at once a new
-goad to the new social discipline of punctuality and a new means of
-satisfying an appetite for sensation among a section of the population
-not as yet attuned to habitual reading....
-
-That the Moslem world of Omar Khayyam and Alkarismi transmitted so
-many of the benefits of Chinese civilisation to the West, reaping
-themselves no advantage from the invention of printing, illustrates
-a truth which Marxist dogma ignores. Fruitful innovation is, as the
-Marxist rightly asserts, the result of interplay between human needs
-and natural resources; but the triple formula of means, motive and
-opportunity suffices to account for the vagaries of man's history only
-if we recognise the inherent inertia of human motivation. Beliefs do
-not come from heaven; but they have a remarkable tenacity in the teeth
-of worldly profit, a tenacity forcefully illustrated by two facets of
-the Moslem creed. In the racy, though none the less scholarly, account
-of the history of printing already cited several times in this chapter,
-McMurtrie states:
-
- The Koran forbade games of chance.... The Koran had been given to the
- Moslems in written form, and writing, therefore, was the only means
- by which it might ever be transmitted. To this day the Koran has
- never been printed from type in any Mohammedan country; it is always
- reproduced by lithography.
-
-One consequence of this is that Moslem countries, and African
-communities which have received their script from Moslem missionaries,
-suffer from the educational disability of a cursive style which is
-ill-suited to easy reading. If we are tempted to ascribe this to
-defective hereditary equipment of peoples whose culture was the
-inspiration of Europe in the Middle Ages, we may well reflect with
-moral and intellectual benefit to ourselves on the complacency
-with which western scholars disown the constructive tasks of
-language-planning at a time when scientific journals embodying new
-discoveries are appearing in twenty or more languages.
-
-Statistics which convey a clear picture of the mounting volume of
-printed matter issued annually during the four centuries of European
-printing are hard to come by. The number of editions printed in England
-increased from 13 in 1510 to 219 in 1580, to about 600 a year in
-the first two decades of the nineteenth century and 12,379 in 1913.
-Unhappily, an edition is a grossly misleading index of production,
-even of new books. What we call a modern best seller signifies a first
-edition of over 25,000 copies. In the fifteenth century, the average
-edition was about 300 copies. Till the middle of the eighteenth, an
-edition rarely exceeded 600; but there were notable exceptions. There
-were 34 editions of the _Adagia_ of Erasmus, each of a thousand copies,
-in the first few decades of the sixteenth century, and 24,000 copies
-of his _Colloquia Familiaria_ came out in the same author's lifetime.
-Of Luther's tract _To the Christian Nobility_ 4,000 copies were sold
-within five days. The Bible Society, founded in 1711 by Baron von
-Canstein in Halle, printed within a short space of time 340,000 copies
-of the New Testament and 480,000 copies of the Scriptures as a whole.
-The British and Foreign Bible Society, founded in 1804 by Thomas
-Charles of Bala as an incident in his crusade against Welsh illiteracy,
-was responsible for the issue of 237 million copies in the three
-decades 1900-1930....
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-So far, we have taken no cognisance of the formative role of the master
-printer _vis-à-vis_ the culture of contemporary western civilisation.
-We shall now try to get into focus the consequences of something quite
-new in the history of our species, the emergence of a social personnel
-with a vested interest in the enlightenment of mankind. Of such was the
-inventor of the first saleable electrical device, the originator of the
-very names positive and negative in their now most common technical
-context, a man who rendered signal service for his country at the court
-of France and put his signature to the Declaration of Independence,
-the man whose last will and testament begins "I, Benjamin Franklin,
-Printer...."
-
-At first, the master printer was also a publisher, till the
-trade began to expand a book-seller as well, and sometimes, like
-Caxton, translator or author. Nor is it surprising that printing and
-bookselling still preserve the professional outlook of the mediaeval
-craftsman far more than any other contemporary commercial undertaking,
-with _mores_ peculiar to themselves. Today, as throughout the past four
-centuries, there is still a place for the small-scale high-quality
-firm in printing, publishing or bookselling alike. Throughout the five
-centuries of printing from movable type the small proprietor has ever
-been the ally of novel thought; and the book trade still thrives on
-the free expression of views which are anathema to big business, oil
-politicians and Wall Street tycoons. To say this is not to say that
-every publisher, every partner in a printing firm or every back-street
-book-seller is in the vanguard of liberal sentiment and fertile
-cerebration; but to be blind to their contribution to our common
-culture is to be blind to one of the burning issues of our age. Even
-to say that the publisher, the printer or the book-seller is always
-ahead of his business colleagues in joining the bandwagon of progress
-is to dispel a miasma of moral indignation which distorts our view of a
-decision contemporary man has to make wisely or incur the prospect of a
-dark age of superstition and authority....
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration: Colophons. Ruth S. Granniss]
-
-Copyright 1930 by _The Colophon_. Reprinted by permission of the author.
-
-
-The late printer-scholar, Theodore Low De Vinne, was wont to exclaim
-with regret over a puzzling bookish question, "Alas, bibliography
-is not an exact science!" Since his day, what with the learned
-publications of bibliographical societies (first and foremost--that
-of England), with such scholarly independent productions as Ronald B.
-McKerrow's _Introduction to Bibliography_ and some of its followers,
-and with such undertakings as the _Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke_--not
-to speak of the many masterly library catalogues and bibliographies
-which these late years have brought us--we are almost tempted to
-reverse his dictum. We have all these, added to the wealth of pioneer
-writings of book-lovers like Richard de Bury, Gabriel Naude, Guillaume
-François De Bure, Gabriel Peignot, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, and the more
-scientific but no more (nor less) book-loving Panzer, Hain, Brunet,
-Renouard, Bradshaw, Haebler, Proctor, Claudin, and our own Wilberforce
-Eames. We pause for breath, but have only picked a few random names
-from the long roll of those who have loved and worked for the arts that
-go into the making, and the science that goes into the understanding
-of a printed book--the vehicle which must continue to preserve and
-to carry down through the ages the results of men's thoughts and the
-records of their deeds.
-
-All this is as it should be, but of late, and especially in connection
-with the present vogue for collecting the works of living authors, a
-certain quality (shall we call it self-consciousness) has crept in,
-an undue stressing of small technicalities, and we blush to confess
-a confused feeling of sympathy for the modern book-hunter, who is
-having so much of his fun taken away from him by neat little textbooks
-and articles, bristling with allusions to "points," "right copies,"
-"firsts" and the like (with the inevitable quotation marks) and
-filled with weighty questions of dollars and pounds--the seemingly
-all-important matter of the investment value of our treasures. This
-surely is not the fine frenzy which possessed Charles Lamb when
-he wrote: "Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang
-upon you, till all your friends cried 'Shame upon you!' It grew so
-threadbare--and all because of that folio 'Beaumont and Fletcher,'
-which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden. Do
-you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds
-to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near
-ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington,
-fearing you should be too late. And when the old book-seller with some
-grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was
-setting bedwards), lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures, and
-when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome, and when
-you presented it to me, and when we were exploring the perfectness of
-it (_collating_ you called it), and while I was repairing some of the
-loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be
-left till daybreak--was there no pleasure in being a poor man!"
-
-Where there is much smoke, however, there is fire, and it is assuredly
-good that this interest in bibliographical things should have swept the
-country, and incidentally that the joys of the bibliomaniac and the
-bibliophile are being experienced today by many more than the elect few
-of the past, on whom we love to dwell. But if we moderns are doomed to
-buy our first editions ready labelled and to have our equations worked
-out in advance, if a fine copy must be termed immaculate and the back
-of a book must be its spine, etc., etc., ad infinitum, let us start
-with the right premises, and hold on to the terms which were proverbial
-before we were born. Which brings us to our point--What is a Colophon?
-
-The question would seem a reflection upon the intelligence of the
-average book-lover, at this late day, were it not that there seems to
-be a growing tendency, shared (even instigated) by lexicographers, to
-mis-define the word, or to use it out of its truly bibliographical
-and philological meaning. To book-lovers and collectors of even the
-preceding generation, acquainted as they were with the niceties
-of their vocation, or avocation, the suggestion of more than one
-signification would have seemed well-nigh an insult. Perhaps it is
-even because we are living in this late day that heresies have crept
-in. After all, it is nearly a quarter of a century since the Caxton
-Club of Chicago brought out _An Essay on Colophons_, by Dr. Alfred W.
-Pollard, later Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, whose
-word on all bibliographical matters carries the highest authority--the
-Club thereby performing one of those great services to students of
-bibliography for which it and similar institutions are acclaimed by an
-appreciative, if limited, circle. Perhaps the very limits of the circle
-are accountable for lack of knowledge, and it may be that a book,
-printed nearly twenty-five years ago in an edition of some two hundred
-and fifty copies, may never have come within the ken of a writer on
-bookish things today--even of an earnest one. But that is just where
-our quarrel begins--ought anyone to write on colophons, or on anything
-else, without some knowledge of at least the chief literature of the
-subject, and should the next man, and the next, be allowed to hand on
-an error, or perhaps a misconception, without a thought of the original
-sources of information? For that is just what has been happening in
-America in this matter, and what it seems must also be occurring in
-greater ones. There is plenty of thorough scholarship here, scholarship
-that shrinks from no drudgery--then why is it that so much hasty,
-slipshod work is allowed to pass?
-
-But we were speaking of colophons--a word which, to many people who
-trouble with it at all, seems to mean almost anything,--for instance
-the mark or device of a printer or publishing firm, placed anywhere
-at random in a book, possibly bearing a motto or a name. Indeed, this
-is the signification which has frequently been given to it of late in
-print and in common speech by people who should have known better,
-and whom a little thought or a little more research would have taught
-better. For instance, a publisher's assistant suggested that a given
-place upon the title page is the proper location for the colophon; a
-librarian wrote to request a copy of the "colophon of the Grolier Club"
-to add to a collection; a book-trade magazine issued an article on
-devices or trade-marks of publishers of today, appearing on the title
-pages of their publications, and dubbed them all colophons; a college
-professor used the term in like manner; and all this occurred within a
-period of a few months.
-
-The only protest to be raised in print seems to be that of Leonard L.
-Mackall, in his dependable "Notes for Bibliophiles," a department of
-the _Herald Tribune's_ Sunday magazine, _Books_. In the issue of March
-17, 1929, he wrote: "Right here we must call special attention to the
-fact that, some modern ignorant or careless misuse to the contrary,
-notwithstanding, a colophon is not really a colophon at all unless
-it appears at the end of the book. Most certainly the word does not
-properly mean merely a publisher's device wherever used, as stated in a
-[recent] anonymous illustrated article."
-
-No one has heeded him, however, and my own like-minded objections were
-met with the advice to look in the dictionary, and then the blow fell!
-It is true that some dictionaries, but by no means all, countenance
-this usage of colophon as a device upon a title page. Before quoting
-their definitions, let us look at the Oxford English Dictionary, where
-we find:
-
- 1. "Finishing stroke"; "crowning touch," _obs._
-
- 2. The inscription or device, sometimes pictorial or emblematic,
- formerly placed at the end of a book or manuscript, and containing the
- title, the scribe's or printer's name, date and place of printing,
- etc. Hence, _from title page to colophon_.
-
-It may be noted that, of the various examples (1774-1874) quoted by the
-Oxford English Dictionary, not one refers to the colophon as placed
-elsewhere than at the end of the book.
-
-Our Century Dictionary is sound on the subject, but we have in Funk &
-Wagnalls' Standard Dictionary:
-
- 1. An inscription or other device formerly placed at the end of books
- and writings, often showing the title, writer's or printer's name and
- date and place of printing.
-
- 2. An emblematic device adopted by a publisher and impressed on his
- books, usually on the title page of each volume (accompanied by an
- illustration of the printer's mark of Nicolas Jenson, inscribed:
- "Colophon of Nicolas Jenson" [1481]).
-
-The phrase "usually on the title page" (not in the Oxford English
-Dictionary) seems to us absolutely wrong, and not to be countenanced
-for a moment by bookmen who have proper regard for the correct usage of
-words.
-
-The corresponding definition in late editions of Webster's Dictionary
-is:
-
- An emblem, usually a device assumed by the publishing-house, placed
- either on the title page, or at the end of a book.
-
-In what subtle way this secondary and inadequate definition has crept
-into American usage we do not know, and we plead earnestly for its
-abandonment.
-
-In the encyclopedias consulted, there is nothing disturbing, the
-definition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, written by Dr. Pollard,
-being especially clear and concise. It runs in part as follows:
-
- ... a final paragraph in some manuscripts and many early printed
- books, giving particulars as to authorship, date and place of
- production, and sometimes expressing the thankfulness of the author,
- scribe or printer on the completion of his task ... the importance of
- these final paragraphs slowly diminished, and the information they
- gave was gradually transferred to the title page. Complete title pages
- bearing the date and name of the publishers are found in most books
- printed after 1520, and the final paragraph, if retained at all, was
- gradually reduced to information as to the printer and date. From
- the use of the word in the sense of a "finishing stroke" (from the
- story that the final charge of the cavalry of Colophon was always
- decisive) such a final paragraph as has been described is called by
- bibliographers a "colophon," but this name for it is quite possibly
- not earlier than the eighteenth century.
-
-Let us turn from general works to those specifically bibliographical.
-In his _Introduction to Bibliography_,[2] Dr. McKerrow writes: "In the
-early days of printing, the end of the book was the normal place for
-the printer's name and the place and date of printing to appear. The
-history of the colophon is merely that of the gradual transference of
-this information to the title page. When this was complete the colophon
-was as a rule of no use and it was abandoned."
-
-Later, among his cataloguing instructions we find: "A colophon should
-always be noticed, if there is one. It is also, I think, desirable to
-record the occurrence of a printer's device (even without a verbal
-imprint) at the end of a book, as this often appears to take the place
-of a colophon."
-
-Iolo Williams' _Elements of Book-Collecting_[3] contains this
-paragraph: "In the earliest printed books the title page's functions
-were performed by the colophon, a word which is a transliteration of
-the Greek, a summit or finishing stroke. The colophon is put, not near
-the beginning of the book, like the title page, but at the end, and
-it usually takes the form of a statement that here ends such-and-such
-a book, written by so-and-so, printed by so-and-so at such-and-such a
-place and date. The use of the colophon has been revived in certain
-finely-printed modern books, but such modern volumes usually contain
-both a title page and a colophon."
-
-Though not quite as satisfying, the following allusion in Van Hoesen
-and Walter's _Bibliography_[4] should be quoted, as occurring in a
-modern American treatise on the subject: "The early printers used
-the colophon at the end of the book instead of a title page, and the
-colophon is still used to indicate the printing firm in cases where it
-is not part of the publishing firm given on the title page."
-
-These are the latest printed words that we have noticed. Suffice it to
-say that we have nowhere found in earlier important manuals anything
-but the (to us) proper explanation of the term. In other words, we
-gather from important sources that, while a colophon may include or
-even take the form of a printer's mark or device, such a mark, placed
-upon a title page, is not a colophon.
-
-Aroused by the dictionary findings, and discovering those American
-students of bibliography whom I consulted to be in agreement with me,
-I wrote to Dr. Pollard, as to a court of final appeal, to inquire
-if he considered it meticulous to object to the intrusion of this
-illogical trade definition which some dictionaries and many people are
-giving us. His answer, which I am allowed to quote, seems definite and
-wise enough to carry conviction, coming as it does from the admitted
-authority on the subject: "If a sufficient number of people misuse a
-word, Dictionaries have to record the wrong use as well as the right,
-as in the case of _hectic_ and crowds of other words. But the misuse
-of the word _colophon_ as a synonym for the printer's mark or device,
-without regard to position, has not yet gone as far as this and should
-be strenuously resisted. By standard use as well as by etymology, the
-word means the crowning stroke, or finishing touch, to a book or part
-of a book, and it must come at the end of the book, or part of a book,
-rightly to be given this title.
-
-"In cataloguing early books it would not in my judgment be incorrect
-to enter the printer's device at the end of a book, under the heading
-colophon."
-
-And now, the unpleasantly controversial side of the matter having
-been disposed of (if so large an adjective as controversial may be
-applied to so small a paper), let us devote our little remaining
-space to the colophons themselves, first turning our attention to Dr.
-Pollard's book,[5] with his own rendering into English of the unwieldy
-fifteenth-century Latin.
-
-In the introduction, Dr. Richard Garnett gives a brief sketch of
-the derivation and earliest uses of the term. He quotes the Greek
-word _colophon_, the head or summit of anything, usually used in a
-figurative sense, the position on a crest of the City of Colophon
-(whence its name), the first appearance of the word in the seventeenth
-century, with its secondary classical sense of a "finishing stroke"
-or a "crowning touch," and goes on to say: "Of the use of the word
-_colophon_ in the particular significance elucidated in this essay--the
-end or ultimate paragraph of a book or manuscript--the earliest example
-quoted in the New English Dictionary is from Warton's _History of
-English Poetry_ published in 1774. A quarter of a century before this
-it is found as a term needing no explanation in the first edition of
-the _Typographical Antiquities_ of Joseph Ames, published in 1749.
-How much older it is than this cannot lightly be determined. The
-bibliographical use appears to be unknown to the Greek and Latin
-lexicographers, medieval as well as classical. Pending further
-investigation, it seems not unlikely that it may have been developed
-out of the secondary classical sense already mentioned sometime during
-the seventeenth century, when the interest in bibliography which was
-then beginning to be felt would naturally call into existence new terms
-of art."
-
-While acknowledging the great interest that many authors have found
-in individual colophons, Dr. Pollard states that his task is the more
-ambitious, if less entertaining one of making a special study of this
-feature in fifteenth century books with the object of ascertaining
-what light it throws on the history of printing, and on the habits of
-the early printers and publishers. His first conclusion being that
-colophons are the sign and evidence of the printer's pride in his
-work, he draws attention to the utter lack of such information as
-they give in the very earliest books of all, as contrasted with the
-self-glorification of Fust and Schöffer when, printing independently,
-they affixed the first known printed colophon to their Psalter of 1457
-(in at least one copy accompanied by their device):
-
- The present copy of the Psalms, adorned with beauty of capital
- letters, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus
- fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing, and stamping without
- any driving of the pen. And to the worship of God has been diligently
- brought to completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of Mainz, and Peter
- Schöffer of Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord 1457, on the vigil of
- the Feast of the Assumption.
-
-Of Peter Schöffer's later allusion to the shields of his device Dr.
-Pollard writes: "Needless discussions have been raised as to what was
-the use and import of printers' devices, and it has even been attempted
-to connect them with literary copyright, with which they had nothing
-whatever to do, literary copyright in this decade depending solely
-on the precarious courtesy of rival firms, or possibly on the rules
-of their trade-guilds. But here, on the authority of the printer who
-first used one, we have a clear indication of the reason which made
-him put his mark on a book--the simple reason that he was proud of
-his craftsmanship and wished it to be recognized as his. 'By signing
-it with his shields Peter Schöffer has brought the book to a happy
-completion.'"
-
-[Illustration: _Psalter. Mainz, Fust and Schöffer_, 1457. THE FIRST
-                          PRINTED COLOPHON.]
-
-Again he calls attention to the boast of John of Speier at Venice,
-"primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis," by which he asserts his
-individual priority over any other firm in that city. And here is the
-rhyming colophon used by the same John, in which he boasts with some
-ambiguity of the number of copies of Cicero which he has printed in his
-two editions:
-
-  From Italy once each German brought a book.
-  A German now will give more than they took.
-  For John, a man whom few in skill surpass,
-  Has shown that books may best be writ with brass.
-  Speier befriends Venice; twice in four months has he
-  Printed this Cicero, in hundreds three.[6]
-
-In wording their colophons, the early printers were only following
-the constant practice of medieval scribes, of whose many colophons
-a selection of examples is given in Bradley's _Dictionary of
-Miniaturists_.
-
-The moving of printers from one town to another, transference of their
-stocks, their quarrels, their boastings and pleas for favor with those
-in high places, all are followed, and much information gathered in the
-_Essay_. There is simple pathos in the colophon of the _Chronicles of
-the londe of England_ printed at Antwerp in 1493, which records the
-death of its famous printer, Gerard Leeu,
-
- a man of grete wysedom in all manner of kunnyng; whych nowe is come
- from lyfe unto the deth, which is grete harme for many of poure man.
- On whos sowle God almyghty for hys hygh grace haue mercy. Amen.
-
-"A man whose death is great harm for many a poor man must needs have
-been a good master, and a king need want no finer epitaph," writes Dr.
-Pollard.
-
-The days when we find the book trade highly organized and the functions
-of printers and publishers clearly separated, are pictured in the
-following colophon:
-
- Here you have, most honest reader, six works, etc. It remains,
- therefore, for you to make grateful acknowledgement to those who have
- produced them: in the first place to that eminent man Master Simon
- Radin, who saw to their being brought to light from the obscurity in
- which they were buried; next to F. Cyprian Beneti for his editorial
- care; then to Jean Petit, best of book-sellers, who caused them to
- be printed at his expense; nor less than these to Andrieu Bocard,
- the skilful chalcographer, who printed them so elegantly and with
- scrupulous correctness, June 28, 1500. Praise and glory to God.[7]
-
-Here are men making aspersions on the editions of rival publishers,
-with warnings against them:
-
- Here end the Decretals, most correctly printed in the bounteous city
- of Rome, queen of the whole world, by those excellent men Master
- Ulrich Han, a German, and Simon di Niccolo of Lucca: with the ordinary
- glosses of Bernard of Parma and his additions, which are found in
- few copies; both printed and corrected with the greatest diligence.
- Purchase these, book-buyer, with a light heart, for you will find such
- excellence in this volume that you will be right in easily reckoning
- other editions as worth no more than a straw.[8]
-
-We find that the Nuremberg Chronicle is the only book which Dr.
-Pollard can call to mind that gives explicit information as to its
-illustrators, Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenworff; and finally
-we come to books where the author takes a hand, and we sometimes have
-a double colophon, as in the case of the _Morte d'Arthur_. Here we
-have Sir Thomas Malory's colophon, requesting the reader's prayer for
-his deliverance, and for the repose of his soul, and William Caxton's
-business-like statement as editor, printer and publisher.
-
-The author's struggle with the printer, to obtain his own way, is no
-new thing, as proved by this late colophon of the musician, Johann von
-Cleve, affixed to his _Cantiones_, 1580:
-
- As I come to the end of my task it seems worth while to inform
- students and amateurs of music that this collection of Motets was in
- the first place entrusted to Philip Ulhard, citizen and printer of
- Augsburg, to be printed, and that he (as often happens), being made
- unreasonably capricious by bodily ill-health, often did not carry
- out our intention, and compelled me, by leaving out some motets
- (which however, if life bears me company and God helps, will shortly
- be published), to abridge the work, and more especially as the same
- printer, when the work was not yet finished, came to an end of his
- days, and there upon the work was entrusted to Andreas Reinheckel to
- be completed, if anything, therefore, is found which might disturb
- a connoisseur, I pray musicians to bear with it with equanimity.
- Farewell. In the year of the Lord 1580, in the month of January.
-
-We have noted one rhyming colophon, a mannerism much affected
-by Italian printers. Another fanciful custom by which the early
-printers called attention to their colophons was the use of eccentric
-arrangements of types, by which these final paragraphs appeared in the
-shape of wedges, funnels, diamonds, drinking glasses and the like.
-
-The earliest known title page is in a Bull of Pius IX, printed in
-Mainz by Fust and Schöffer in 1463, but it was some twenty years before
-the custom became common. At first the title only, taking the form of
-a single sentence, appeared at the top of a title page, but it was not
-long before, either in the interests of decoration or of advertising, a
-simple woodcut or the device of the printer appeared below the title.
-In his _A Treatise on Title-pages_, 1902, Mr. De Vinne proposes the
-following ingenious explanation of the evolution of the printer's mark:
-"It was hoped that the distinctiveness of a peculiar device would
-be remembered by the book-buyer who had forgotten the name of his
-preferred printer.
-
-"In the beginning the device was put at the end of the book, above
-or below the colophon. It was at first a small and simple design ...
-but the eagerness to have a device that should be striking led to its
-enlargement and afterward to an entire change of position. When the
-greater part of the last page was preoccupied by the last paragraph
-of the text, the device required a separate page. This led to making
-full-page devices and afterward to the putting of the device on the
-first page."
-
-As time went on it was only natural that the remaining space at
-the foot of the title pages should be utilized for brief details
-of printing and publishing, but the transition was gradual and
-unsystematic. Indeed, some printers continued to use colophons alone
-well into the sixteenth century, and there are frequent instances
-during that century of books containing both title pages and colophons,
-the latter being a repetition, at the end of the book, of the imprint,
-as the few business-like lines at the foot of the title page had come
-to be named.
-
-By the time that title pages were firmly established, publishing
-had become a separate business, and the publisher was not long in
-assuming the ascendency, often pushing the printer altogether into the
-background and appearing alone in the imprint. For a long time the
-printer modestly tucked in his name wherever he could, sometimes on the
-verso of the title page, and sometimes at the bottom of the last page,
-but in a formal manner, without the naive and often delightful and
-useful details which make the early colophons so interesting.
-
-With the nineteenth-century revival of interest in typography, the
-printer came to the fore again and we see his name appearing in a new
-place, the certificate, preceding the title page--an entire leaf,
-moreover, on which are set forth the details in which he is interested,
-the paper, number of copies, and so on. This use seems to have been
-introduced by the finely printed volumes of the French book clubs, with
-their "Justification du tirage," and it was followed through the later
-decades of the nineteenth century, in the publications of book clubs
-and many other privately and finely printed volumes. Simultaneously
-with these came the publications of the Kelmscott and other private
-presses, which revived the use of colophons in the early manner. The
-separate page, placed at the end of the finely printed book of today,
-giving details of the making of the volume, is the result of this
-modern impetus in book-making[9]--the interest in fine production of
-the person for whom the book is made, added to the desire of the modern
-printer for recognition of himself as the producer.
-
-  [Illustration: _St. Bernard._ _Sermones._ _Rostock_, _Fratres Domus
-          Horti Viridis_, 1481. COLOPHON WITH PRINTER'S MARK.]
-
-This is but the very logical expression in the books themselves of the
-modern trend, so assiduously cultivated, toward the making of good
-books, and the return to prominence of the printer after the long
-period of his subservience to the publisher. In the present-day notice
-of its makers, on the final page of a book, the colophon is revived,
-and once more the printer has the last word!
-
-                      COMPOSED IN GARAMOND TYPES
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[2] Ronald B. McKerrow, _An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary
-Students_ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1927).
-
-[3] Iolo Williams, _The Elements of Book-Collecting_ (London: Elkin
-Mathews, 1927).
-
-[4] H. B. van Hoesen [and] F. K. Walter, _Bibliography, Practical,
-Enumerative, Historical_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928).
-
-[5] Alfred W. Pollard, _An Essay on Colophons, with Specimens and
-Translations_; with an Introduction by Richard Garnett (Chicago: The
-Caxton Club, 1905).
-
-[6] Cicero, _Epistolae ad Familiares_, Second edition (Venice, 1469).
-
-[7] Diui Athanasii, contra Arium, etc. (Paris, 1500).
-
-[8] Decretals of Gregory IX (Rome, 1474).
-
-[9] We may note that the French technical term for the modern colophon,
-"achevé d'imprimer," emphasizes this importance of the printer.
-
-
-
-
-          [Illustration]EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY[Illustration]
-
-                           _Printers' Marks_
-
-  From _Fifty Printers' Marks_ by Edwin E. Willoughby. Copyright 1947
-    by the author and reprinted by his permission. Published by the
-                    University of California Press.
-
-
-A printer's mark is a trade-mark. Printers used them in the fifteenth,
-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the same purpose that printers
-employ them today--to ornament their books and to make each volume
-readily recognizable as the product of the printing establishment which
-produced it.
-
-The printer's mark was but one of the many types of marks which,
-largely because of the widespread illiteracy of the people, were used
-throughout all phases of medieval life. The ownership of objects,
-for example, was often shown by means of a regularly used mark. Two
-examples of this type of mark, the seal and the cattle brand, go back
-to the dawn of history and have continued in use to the present time.
-Merchants in the Middle Ages often identified their property by placing
-on it their merchants' marks.
-
-The mark of a merchant was legally recognized as his by his guild or by
-the town government. Often it was a representation of the tools of the
-man's trade or a replica of his house sign. Sometimes it was an animal
-or object which formed a pun on the merchant's name. Frequently, simple
-geometric designs were used. Toward the latter part of the Middle Ages,
-as merchants grew richer and more powerful, they aped the upper class
-by making their marks resemble, as closely as they dared, the heraldic
-devices of the knights and nobles. These marks enabled employees or
-hired porters to recognize at a glance a merchant's property.
-
-Places, as well as objects, were identified by means of marks. Inns,
-shops and similar public places in those days before houses were
-numbered were designated by house signs. The Tabard, the inn from which
-Chaucer's pilgrims started for Canterbury under the leadership of its
-host, Harry Baillie, took its name from its sign--a representation
-of a short outer jacket. An equally famous tavern, patronized by
-Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other "sirenical gentlemen," bore the "Sign
-of the Mermaid." And over the door of the Globe, Shakespeare's theater,
-hung a picture of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders.
-
-Printing houses, like other business establishments, were known by
-house signs. The printer's mark of Adrien van Berghen supplies an
-illustration. [Page 48.]
-
-Not only were objects and places designated by marks in the Middle
-Ages, but under certain conditions people were recognized by them also.
-A knight, his face obscured by his helmet, made his identity known by
-wearing on his helmet, shield and tabard simple pictures or symbols
-by which he could be recognized. As it was usual for members of the
-same family to wear the same emblems, these simple pictures, many of
-which became conventionalized, descended from father to son, indicated
-relationships, and finally developed under the control of officers of
-the king into the elaborate system of heraldry.
-
-Marks, then, were widely used in the Middle Ages. It was inevitable
-that they should be used to identify the makers of manufactured
-goods. Craftsmen with pride in their work naturally desired others to
-recognize their products. As a result, the use of trade-marks became
-common. Craftsmen of every trade were frequently compelled either by
-law or by guild regulations, to affix a mark to their products as
-a guarantee of their honesty and good workmanship. Such marks were
-required especially of goldsmiths, silversmiths and other artisans who
-were under unusual temptation to misrepresent the quality of their
-goods. In England, to take another example, arrowheads, the quality of
-which might determine the issue of a battle, were ordered, by a statute
-of Henry IV, to be "marked with the mark of him who made the same."
-
-These trade-marks performed much the same function as the house mark
-or the merchant's mark; indeed, the three were often the same. They
-enabled a purchaser, literate or illiterate, to identify the maker of
-a product and to buy thereafter according as he had been satisfied or
-displeased with the first article purchased.
-
- [Illustration: GUY MARCHANT printed his first book at Paris in 1483.
- His motto, _Sola fides sufficit_ (Faith alone suffices) appears above
-   the clasped hands, with the first word represented by the musical
-                      notation, _sol_ and _la_.]
-
- [Illustration: JACQUES MAILLET began publishing at Lyons in 1482, and
-probably began printing at the same time. His mark represents a shield,
-supported by two dogs, which bears his initials and a mallet (_maillet_
-                   in French), hanging from a tree.]
-
-The printer, to be sure, was under few of the compulsions to use a
-trade-mark that beset his fellow craftsmen. His patrons were literate;
-they could read his name and address--when he chose to set them
-down--either in the colophon at the end of the book or on the title
-page. But the example of other craftsmen was not to be resisted.
-Besides, a well-made printer's mark, or a publisher's device, could be
-both useful and ornamental. Put at the end of the book, it could give
-it a fitting close. Used in the middle of a book, it could set off
-chapters and parts. Above all, especially when it was printed in red,
-it could give life and balance to a title page.
-
-  [Illustration: ADRIEN VAN BERGHEN in his mark pictures his printing
- house "at the Sign of the Great Golden Mortar in the market place" at
-                  Antwerp, where he started in 1500.]
-
-By the printer's mark, also, a prospective purchaser could recognize
-at a glance the product of a press. It could prevent a careful
-purchaser from being deceived by a false imprint. "Look at my sign,"
-warns Benedictus Hector of Bologna, "which is represented on the title
-page and you can never be mistaken." It was harder to counterfeit a
-printer's mark than to filch his name.
-
-Even a mark, however, was not infallible protection. The "prince of
-printers," Aldus Manutius, complains that his Florentine competitors
-"have affixed our well known sign of the dolphin wound around an
-anchor. But," he adds, "they have so managed that any person who is in
-the least acquainted with the books of our production cannot fail to
-observe that this is an impudent fraud; for the head of the dolphin is
-turned to the left, whereas that of ours is well known to be turned
-toward the right."
-
- [Illustration: WILLIAM CAXTON, the first English printer, printed his
-  own translation of a French romance, _Recuyell of the Histories of
-Troy_, in 1474. At his press at Westminster he completed nearly eighty
-books between 1477 and 1491, many of which he also translated from the
-                               French.]
-
-In one country only, and there for but a brief period, was the use
-of a mark made compulsory. In 1539, François I, in an act intended
-to suppress both the piracy of copyrighted works and the printing of
-heretical books, ordered every printer and book-seller in France to
-have his own device so that purchasers might easily ascertain where
-books were printed and sold.
-
-Although (with this exception) the use of marks was voluntary with
-printers, they were early adopted. In 1457 Fust and Schöffer, the
-successors of Gutenberg, first employed one in the Mainz Psalter, the
-first book to contain the name of the printer and the place and date
-of printing. [Page 39.] The device consisted of two shields resembling
-coats of arms. Other printers quickly followed their example. As the
-fifteenth century saw the rise of the mercantile class, it is not
-surprising that printers used in their marks heraldic devices, if they
-had the right to bear arms, or shields displaying their merchant's
-marks in a manner often resembling armorial bearings.
-
-Frequently, printers used as the central part of their marks the signs
-which served to designate their places of business. Pierre LeRouge, for
-example, used a red rosebush for his sign and in his device. The London
-printer, Berthelet, used in like manner the figure of Lucrece.
-
-[Illustration: WILLIAM FAQUES began printing in London about 1503. His
- mark represents a hexagram of interlocking triangles bearing biblical
-    quotations, which enclose his monogram pierced by an arrow. The
-       initials "GF" are those of the French form of his name.]
-
-If the printer's name could be punned on, it was common to use for
-a mark an object the name of which sounded like the printer's own.
-Jacques Maillet's surname means mallet. He made it easy to remember by
-displaying a mallet in his device. [Page 47.] A few printers, among
-them Aldus Manutius, John Day, John Wight and Willem Vorsterman, even
-used their own portraits in their marks.
-
-Many other signs and emblems were employed. In an age fond of
-symbolism it is not surprising to find that many marks had symbolic and
-mystical meanings--not only in the earlier period, when ecclesiastical
-symbols were often used, but in the later period also, when devices
-were frequently copied from emblem books. Sometimes a printer would use
-a woodcut to illustrate a book and then, because it struck his fancy,
-adopt it as his mark. Thomas Gardiner and Thomas Dawson, partners, on
-the other hand, had a block which contained, around a central open
-square, figures forming a rebus of their names: a gardener, a daw and
-the sun. With their initials in the open square, it served as a mark;
-with the appropriate display letter, it was a factotum bearing the
-initial letter of the first word of a chapter.
-
-Printers' marks, in fact, took a multitude of forms during the
-fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the late
-seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they became
-conventionalized and were used infrequently; but they did not die out
-altogether. The Oxford and Cambridge University presses, for example,
-continued to put them on the title pages of their books.
-
-The revival of printing late in the nineteenth century saw an increased
-use of the printer's mark. This was almost inevitable, for when the
-craftsmen strove to do fine printing, they desired, just as did
-the craftsmen of the fifteenth century, to have their work easily
-recognized. Today, private presses which specialize in fine printing,
-some university presses, and many publishing firms, frequently use
-marks which both ornament their title pages and identify for the reader
-the creator of the volume.
-
-  [Illustration: THE GROLIER CLUB. A rendering of the Club's familiar
-                       mark by Rudolph Ruzicka.]
-
-
-
-
-                             A. F. JOHNSON
-
-                            _Title Pages:_
-
-                      THEIR FORMS AND DEVELOPMENT
-
- From _One Hundred Title Pages_: 1500-1800, selected and arranged with
-  an Introduction and Notes by A. F. Johnson. Copyright 1928 by John
- Lane, The Bodley Head, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-
-It is a curious fact that the title page was evolved at a comparatively
-late date in the history of the book, and is indeed almost unknown
-before the printed book. There are a few examples among early surviving
-manuscripts of a separate leaf being used for the title, but they
-are quite exceptional, and even these give the title on the back of
-this leaf. The usual practice of the calligrapher was to give any
-information considered desirable as to the author and the date and
-place of the making of the manuscript in the colophon. This practice
-was taken over by the printers, although in the first years of the new
-art they frequently said nothing as to place of printing, probably
-with the deliberate intention of concealing the fact that the book was
-produced by mechanical means. The title page as we know it, giving
-the title, author's name and an imprint, being, in fact, a kind of
-advertisement of the book, was not well established until some years
-after 1500....
-
-The title page owes its origin, according to one theory, to the fact
-that printers found it necessary to protect the first leaf of the
-text. Whereas a manuscript would be bound as soon as the calligrapher
-had finished the text, most of the copies of a printed edition were
-delivered to a book-seller in sheets, and many might remain unbound for
-years. Hence arose the practice of beginning the book on the second
-leaf or on the back of the first leaf. The first page could then be
-used for the purpose of advertising the book, for the fully-developed
-title page arose out of a commercial need. A few early examples of the
-addition of a brief title on the first page are known, the first being
-that of a Bull of Pope Pius II, printed by Fust and Schöffer at Mainz
-in 1463. But the blank title leaf is found for many years after that
-date, and to the end of the fifteenth century a title leaf containing
-a brief description in a few words is common. As late as 1548 we find
-the brothers Dorici at Rome printing several volumes of the works of
-Cardinal Bembo with the title on the back of the first leaf. An edition
-of the Vulgate printed at Venice in 1487 by Georgius Arrivabene offers
-an example of the most rudimentary form of a title page, with the
-single word _Biblia_ on the first leaf.
-
-The example of Ratdolt at Venice, who in 1476 printed a Calendar of
-Regiomontanus with woodcut borders and an imprint on the first leaf,
-was not followed by contemporary printers. Even this solitary case
-hardly presents a title page in the form in which we know it, since the
-leaf, in place of a title, has a poem in praise of the book. Of the
-fully developed title page, giving title, author and full imprint, Dr.
-Haebler, the German authority on incunabula, knows of only one instance
-in the fifteenth century, a book by Johannes Glogoviensis printed by
-Wolfgang Stöckel at Leipzig in 1500; the title itself, however, is cut
-on wood.
-
-The lettering of the simple fifteenth-century title page was often
-that of the text of the book, or sometimes a larger, heading type was
-used. Very frequently the words were cut on wood, and since for the
-printer it was as easy to print from a block containing a design in
-addition to a brief title, the woodcut illustration on the first leaf
-soon followed. The examples of the John Lydgate, printed by Pynson,
-_c._ 1515, and of the _Deceyte of Women_, printed by Abraham Vele about
-1550, are typical title pages of popular books of the earlier printers.
-In Spain especially this combination of title and illustration, in that
-country often an heraldic cut, both cut on wood, became the fashion
-and persisted for many years in the next century. Scenes from school
-life often illustrated educational texts, while a school of woodcutters
-at Florence designed a famous series of illustrations which decorated
-the title pages of devotional tracts by Savonarola and other works.
-The first printers' devices, the two shields of Fust and Schöffer and
-the double cross rising out of a circle at Venice, were added to the
-colophons, and it was only when the French printers began to use large
-devices surrounded by borders, for which there was no room on the last
-leaf, that the printer's name, or at least mark, began to appear on the
-title page. Thus one further step was taken towards the title page as
-we know it.
-
-[Illustration: MACHIAVELLI, SOPRA LA PRIMA DECA DI TITO LIVIO, ANTONIO
-   BLADO, ROME, 1531. The formal Italic below the device, designed by
-  Lodovico Vincentino, the calligrapher, was used in many of Blado's
-    books. It has been revived and is known as Blado Italic. (Size,
-                         5-1/2x8-1/4 inches.)]
-
-The sixteenth century is especially the age of the woodcut title-border
-(or metal-cut, for the material used for blocks was frequently
-metal). The practice of decorating the first leaf of the text with a
-woodcut border had been started by Ratdolt at Venice, and after 1490
-was common among the printers of that city. In fact, several of the
-borders originally used for an opening were actually converted into
-title-borders after 1500. During the following century the variety
-of borders used in all the countries where printing was practised is
-remarkable. In Germany especially, during the years of the Reformation,
-when the printing press was unusually active, a very large number of
-decorative borders were cut, many of them by artists of the first rank,
-including even Dürer and Holbein. The work of the Holbeins and Urs
-Graf at Basle is well known to English book collectors. Perhaps less
-familiar is the work of Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Weiditz and Daniel
-Hopfer at Strasbourg and Augsburg, and that extraordinary series of
-designs which appear on the Luther tracts printed at Wittenberg and
-on similar works produced in Saxony. Many of these borders are highly
-successful as decorative pieces. The fact that they are less familiar
-to us may be accounted for by two circumstances. In the first place the
-earlier book collectors were almost all collectors of the classics,
-and the first writers on the history of printing, except in the matter
-of the invention of printing, approached the subject from the point
-of view of the student of the Greek and Roman classical writers. In
-the second place the German printers cut themselves off from Western
-Europe by clinging to the gothic letter after Italy, France and
-finally England had adopted Roman and Italic, even for books in the
-vernacular....
-
-There is one point about the early woodcut borders which must seem
-strange to the printer of today, and that is the suitability of the
-decoration to the subject matter of the book. The sixteenth-century
-printer naturally found it economical to ignore the fact that a border
-originally intended for a Bible was not suitable for a medical work.
-He did not regard it as incongruous to use a border depicting scenes
-from Greek mythology on a French medieval romance. Even a printer of
-the class of Jean de Tournes uses the same piece on the title page of a
-_Xenophon_ and of a book of French verse. Nor was the average printer
-very particular about the state of a block. Especially in England,
-where the general standard was lower than on the Continent, a damaged
-block would be used as long as it held together.
-
- [Illustration: O. FINE, QUADRANS ASTROLABICUS, S. DE COLINES, PARIS,
- 1534. The border was probably designed by the author. His mathematical
-diagrams are generally decorated with leaf forms like the "petits fers"
-             of this title. (Size, 7-5/8x11-5/8 inches.)]
-
-In the second half of the century two rival fashions of decoration were
-developed which finally banished the woodcut border, first the method
-of decoration by type ornaments or printers' flowers, and secondly
-the engraved title page. There is one example of type ornament known
-even in the fifteenth century, in an _Aesop_ printed at Parma in 1483.
-After 1500, examples of borders made up of separate cast pieces are
-fairly frequent and are especially common in England in the books of
-Wynkyn de Worde and his contemporaries. But it is not until about
-1560 that we find borders built up of type ornaments worked into
-arabesque patterns. It seems to have been Robert Granjon, the engraver
-of types at Paris and Lyons, who cut arabesque fleurons, divided them
-up and built up fresh patterns out of their component parts. The use
-of printers' flowers in borders is found at most centers of printing
-towards the end of the century and obtained its greatest popularity in
-the Netherlands and in England. Many fine examples are found in English
-books from about 1570 for the next fifty years. Joseph Moxon, who wrote
-on English letter-founding in 1683, tells us that they were considered
-old-fashioned in his day. They were revived again in the eighteenth
-century by P. S. Fournier at Paris, who cut many new designs which were
-copied all over Europe. Fournier's flowers could be built up to form
-all manner of ornaments and were more adaptable than the arabesques
-of the sixteenth century, when the original unit always resulted in
-the same pattern. Just as Granjon had devised a method of decorating
-without the use of the woodcut block, so Fournier designed his new
-flowers in order that printers might dispense with engraved vignettes.
-However, the vogue of the Fournier designs had a shorter life, and may
-be said to have been killed by the classical school of printing of the
-end of the century.
-
-[Illustration: J. LONGLOND, A SERMON, LONDON, 1536. Wynkyn de Worde and
- his contemporaries used cast pieces as ornaments, at least from 1504.
-Although their use was frequent, the arrangement of this title page is
-                 uncommon. (Size 5-1/4x7-1/4 inches.)]
-
-Engraving on copper was practised in the fifteenth century, but
-the engraved title page originates about 1550. Curiously enough, the
-earliest known engraved border occurs in an English book, the Anatomy
-of Thomas Geminus, printed in London in 1545. In the following year
-we find a second example, cut by Corneille de La Haye for Balthazar
-Arnoullet at Lyons, where there was a remarkable group of engravers
-at work about this time. From 1548 the books of Enea Vico printed at
-Venice begin the fashion in Italy, where, after 1550, examples are
-fairly numerous. In the Netherlands also, beginning with the work of
-Hubert Goltzius at Bruges, they are met with almost as frequently as in
-Italy. It was, perhaps, Christopher Plantin at Antwerp who, more than
-any other printer, made the engraved title-border the fashion for all
-larger and more important publications. But it is with the seventeenth
-century especially that engraved borders are associated. The Elzevirs
-used them even on their pocket editions, while at the other extreme
-the massive volumes issued at Amsterdam and at Paris in the reign of
-Louis XIV are almost invariably introduced by an elaborate engraved
-frontispiece....
-
-   [Illustration: DUGUÉ, ARIETTE, FOURNIER, PARIS, 1765. This rather
-    ornate border shows what could be done with Fournier's new type
-               ornaments. (Size, 7-1/4x10-1/4 inches).]
-
-Perhaps the worst examples of these overloaded frontispieces are to be
-found in German books of the period. Often, also, the engraved border
-is only a bastard title, the proper title page being set up in type.
-The earlier examples, dating from the sixteenth century, are in general
-the best, being simpler and not yet overburdened with a mass of detail.
-The good taste of the eighteenth century brought about a reform. But
-at Paris most books of this period had a typographic title page and
-the work of the famous school of French engravers was lavished on the
-illustrations. However, the engraved vignettes of that age were often
-very effectively used. Even Baskerville did not always disdain the
-vignette, and it was the last form of decoration abandoned by Bodoni.
-
-One other form of decoration may be mentioned, that of metal rules.
-Rules have been used occasionally at almost all periods, by Geofroy
-Tory, for example, among others. But as far as title pages are
-concerned they are found most often in the seventeenth century.
-
-   [Illustration: THE DECEYTE OF WOMEN, A. VELE, LONDON, C. 1550. The
- combination of black-letter and a woodcut is a usual title page in an
- early English book. This undated example is probably mid-century, as
- the printer, Vele, is not heard of before 1548. The cut seems to date
-              much earlier. (Size, 5-1/4x7-1/2 inches.)]
-
-The purely typographic title page is naturally of greater interest
-to the modern producer of books. At all periods the title page which
-was effective mainly by the arrangement of type has been common, and
-at most periods there have been printers who preferred to dispense
-with ornament of any kind. In the sixteenth century the books of the
-Paris printer, Michel de Vascosan, illustrate this severer manner,
-and the classical style of the great printers at the close of the
-eighteenth century was likewise independent of decoration. Some sort of
-arrangement of the letters displayed on the title page suggested itself
-from the first, and very soon various shapes were tried. Perhaps the
-commonest arrangement was the conical one, or the so-called hour-glass
-shape, in which the lines of type begin by being long, to become short
-at the center, lengthening again in the imprint at the foot. Others
-have preferred a natural arrangement, printing the matter exactly as
-if on a page of the text. Geofroy Tory, a book producer whose work was
-of great importance in the history of the book, seems to have been
-against the fashion of his day in his choice of the natural layout. It
-has certainly been the usual custom to aim at some sort of pattern in
-the division of the lines of type. In this respect the earlier printers
-had one advantage which was not enjoyed by their successors. They felt
-no difficulty about dividing a word in a title, even when the second
-part of the word was to be set in a different size or even a different
-kind of type. Frequently we find examples of such breaks in words as
-custom has made impossible for the modern printer. The simplification
-of the task for whoever was responsible for the layout is obvious. One
-rule which seems to have been almost universally observed is that the
-mass of the type must be in the top half of the page and not evenly
-distributed. [Page 69.]
-
-Equally important with the distribution of the matter is the
-question of the kind of type to be used, the sizes of type, upper- or
-lower-case, and the number of different fonts. The simplest manner of
-using the letter employed in the text met with little favour and was
-soon displaced by the use of larger types and especially by the use of
-capitals. The heavy, square Roman capitals, like those of Froben at
-Basle, for the first line, with smaller capitals for succeeding lines,
-were more or less customary in Northern Europe in the first quarter
-of the sixteenth century. In some countries a mixture of a "lettre de
-forme" and Roman capitals was not unusual at the same period. With the
-introduction of the new Garamond romans at Paris about 1530 began the
-fashion of using the Canon and Double Canon sizes of the lower-case
-letters for titles. In the seventeenth century we find large and heavy
-Roman capitals again in favour, often balanced by a woodcut ornament
-or a basket of flowers. This century, undoubtedly the worst in the
-history of typography, notwithstanding the Elzevirs, is especially
-remarkable for its crowded title pages. It had become the custom to
-give as much information as possible about the contents of the book and
-the qualifications of author, editor, etc., and the printer took the
-opportunity of displaying as large a variety of his types as possible.
-No doubt the use of title pages as posters for advertising is partly
-responsible for the custom. It has been established by documentary
-evidence that such methods of advertising books were usual in England
-and in Germany, and probably this was so in other countries also.
-Incidentally it may be pointed out that the posting up of title pages
-accounts for some of the early collections, such as that of Bagford,
-now in the British Museum. Bagford has been attacked for his vandalism
-in mutilating books for the sake of his hobby, but it now appears
-that he may have been quite innocent of the charge. In any case the
-result on the title page as a specimen of typographical arrangement was
-deplorable....
-
-[Illustration: ISAIAH THOMAS, A SPECIMEN OF PRINTING TYPES, WORCESTER,
-   1785. As with most type specimens, this early American title page
-displays many different types and flowers. (Size, 5-3/8x7-5/8 inches.)]
-
-With the eighteenth century title pages became simpler and letters
-became lighter, and the result is again work as good in its different
-style as that of the sixteenth century. The eighteenth century is
-certainly a great period in the history of book production, with its
-center in Paris. In England the influence of Caslon and Baskerville at
-length raised our typography to a level with Continental work. For one
-innovation P. S. Fournier is mainly responsible, the introduction of
-outline and other decorative capitals which were so successfully used
-at Paris. At the end of the century we have the work of the Didots and
-Bodoni, the classical school, whose technical achievement has hardly
-been surpassed at any period. One may cavil at their conception of the
-ideal shape of letters, one may dislike their excessive use of hair
-lines and their flat serifs, but it must be admitted that as practical
-printers and type-cutters their work was of first rate quality. These
-classical printers were proud of their types and wished them to stand
-alone. Bodoni, who at the beginning of his career used ornaments copied
-from Fournier and engraved vignettes, in his later years more and more
-abandoned decoration and outline letters. The classical title page is
-composed in Roman capitals of varying size, but without the admixture
-of lower-case letters or italics and without the aid of decoration.
-Like Baskerville, these printers considered that type is itself
-sufficiently interesting to stand alone.
-
-
-
-
-                           Lawrence C. Wroth
-
-                  THE FIRST WORK WITH AMERICAN TYPES
-
-    From _Typographic Heritage_. Copyright 1949 by The Typophiles.
-                Reprinted by permission of the author.
-
-
-On 7 April 1775 there appeared in Philadelphia the initial issue of
-Story & Humphrey's _Pennsylvania Mercury_. This newspaper was referred
-to by a contemporary diarist as "The first Work with Amer. Types" and
-with certain qualifications, later to be made, it seems to be entitled
-to the distinction of priority implied in this descriptive phrase.
-Type founding in the colonies went through those phases of tentative
-effort, complete failure, and partial achievement which are normal to
-the beginnings of great industries, and before going on with the story
-of the font of type from which the _Pennsylvania Mercury_ was printed,
-it is proposed to give briefly an account of earlier attempts at the
-establishment of letter founding in English America. By doing this it
-will be possible to secure correctness of sequence and of relationship
-among the several elements of this study in origins.
-
-The first font of types cast in English America was that which
-resulted from the painful efforts of Abel Buell, a silversmith and
-lapidary of Killingworth, Connecticut. Shortly before 1 April 1769
-Buell cast a small font of letters, crude in design and in execution,
-from which proofs were taken for the examination and the criticism of
-his friends. In October of the same year, using a different and much
-better type of his own making, he presented to the Connecticut Assembly
-a printed petition in which he asked that body for financial assistance
-in his proposed establishment of a letter foundry. In reply to this
-memorial he received a loan from the colony for the purposes of his
-venture, and soon afterwards he removed to New Haven and prepared to
-manufacture type for the printers of a continent. The story of his
-failure at this time, and of his success on a much smaller scale twelve
-years later, is a part of the present study only in the sense which has
-been indicated in the introductory sentences.
-
-  [Illustration: _Abel Buell's First Font. From a proof of May 1769.
-               Courtesy of the Yale University Library._]
-
-Buell was not without a rival in his ambitious plans. David Mitchelson
-of Boston, possibly acting under the direction of John Mein, a printer
-of that city, is reported by a contemporary newspaper writer to have
-attained as great a degree of success as the Connecticut silversmith
-in the difficult art of letter casting. In the _Massachusetts Gazette
-and Boston Weekly News-Letter_ for 7 September 1769 there appeared
-among the local news items a report on recent developments in
-American manufacturing activities in which are certain sentences of
-interest in the story of colonial type founding. "We are assured by a
-Gentleman from the Westward," said the writer, "that Mr. Abel Buell,
-of Killingworth in Connecticut, Jeweller and Lapidary, has lately,
-his own Genius, made himself Master of the Art of Founding Types for
-Printing. Printing Types are also made by Mr. Mitchelson of this Town
-[Boston] equal to any imported from Great-Britain; and might, by proper
-Encouragement soon be able to furnish all the Printers in America
-at the same price they are sold in England." The absence of a known
-specimen of Mitchelson's letters or of any specific information as to
-his operations is enough, however, to require a verdict of "not proven"
-on any claim to priority in American type casting that has yet been
-made on his behalf.
-
-Because of the unfruitful nature of the enterprises which have been
-spoken of, the year 1770 found the American printer still dependent
-upon European importation for his printing type, and at the moment
-there existed little prospect of relief from a situation which in the
-years of the Revolution was to become a hardship rather than the simple
-inconvenience of the earlier period. The policy of non-importation,
-however, was stirring the colonies to the establishment of local
-manufactures, and under the whip of necessity, type founding, among
-other essential industries, was to take its rise in the United States.
-The carrying to success of this manufacture in Pennsylvania in the year
-1775 was undoubtedly assured by the political and economic situation of
-the country, but its beginning, which must first be described, had its
-cause in a set of circumstances of a more general character.
-
-"The secular history of the Holy Scriptures," wrote Henry Stevens,
-"is the sacred history of printing." In these words the Vermonter
-gave sententious expression to the truth that the printing of the
-Bible has been in all ages an appreciable factor in the development
-of typography. The successful beginnings of type founding in English
-America, it is believed, may be traced to the desire of Christopher
-Sower Jr. of Germantown, Pennsylvania, to issue a third edition of
-that German Bible which first had made its appearance at the pains and
-expense of his father in the year 1743. It is said that the younger
-Sower's dissatisfaction with the conditions of type importation from
-Germany led him to conceive the idea of importing thence matrices and
-moulds instead of finished type, and with these placed in the cunning
-hands of Justus Fox, his journeyman, of casting his own letters for use
-in the proposed edition of _Die Heilige Schrift_. An enterprising man,
-a religious zealot, and the proprietor of one of the most extensive
-printing offices in America, he was able, partly at least, to carry out
-his intention.
-
- [Illustration: _Abel Buell's Second Font, October 1769. Courtesy of
-                   the Connecticut State Archives._]
-
-The exact date of the first use by Sower of locally cast German
-letters evades determination. Sometime in the year 1770, he began
-the publication of the "second part" of a periodical known as _Ein
-Geistliches Magazien_. The title page of No. I, Part II, of this
-early religious magazine tells us that it was printed by Christopher
-Sower at Germantown in the year 1770, and the undated colophon of No.
-XII of the series contains information of singular interest in the
-words, "Gedruckt mit der ersten Schrift die jemals in America gegossen
-worden." The probability is that this issue of _Ein Geistliches
-Magazien_ was published late in 1771 or early in the ensuing year.
-Upon the basis of this quoted statement and in view of the knowledge
-that when his estate was sold in 1778 there were disposed of to Jacob
-Bay and others certain lots of letter moulds, crucibles and a large
-quantity of antimony[10] it becomes clear that Sower's interest in type
-making developed well beyond the stage of thinking it would be a nice
-thing to do.
-
-The initiatory efforts of Sower have a particular significance in
-the story of American type founding; for the tradition is that while
-engaged in the casting process of type making in the Germantown
-foundry, Justus Fox and Jacob Bay learned the more difficult mysteries
-of an art in which later they attained proficiency. Because of the link
-of continuous effort thus formed between Sower's initiation of the
-business in 1770 and the later cutting and casting of Roman letter by
-these artisans, there must be conceded to him the distinction of having
-begun in English America the industry of type manufacturing, regardless
-of whether or not his casting of German letter from imported matrices
-was as extensive as has been supposed.
-
-Our knowledge of Fox and of Bay is derived largely from the _Additions
-to Thomas's History of Printing_, a body of tradition of uneven
-reliability transmitted to Isaiah Thomas by William McCulloch, a
-Philadelphia printer active in the early years of the century.
-Selections from the six communications of the period 1812-1814 in which
-this information was transmitted were incorporated by Thomas in the
-revision of his book upon which was based the second edition brought
-out by the American Antiquarian Society in 1874. Long afterward the
-series of letters was published as a whole in the _Proceedings_ of the
-Society for April 1921 under the title, _William McCulloch's Additions
-to Thomas's History of Printing_.
-
-In these letters to Isaiah Thomas, McCulloch was recording his own
-memories and the accepted Philadelphia tradition. Because he was well
-advanced in years at the time of writing, one is not surprised to find
-that now and then he trips over the barrier that separates documented
-fact from hearsay and personal recollection. It is much to our comfort
-in the present instance, however, to learn that he possessed and made
-use of unusual opportunities to obtain correct information as to the
-craftsmen who are the subject of our interest. These facts which he
-records of Justus Fox, for example, he obtained from Emmanuel, the
-son and partner in type founding of that artisan, and in _Justus Fox,
-a German Printer of the Eighteenth Century_, Dr. Charles L. Nichols
-accepts his testimony as of general reliability. He was indebted to
-various relatives of Bay, among them a sister, "a plump lady of 68,"
-for the account of him which is found in the pages of the _Additions_.
-It is possible to compare various items in McCulloch's sketches of
-these men with records unknown to him, but available to us, with
-results so little at variance that one is inclined to accord a high
-degree of credence to all that he wrote concerning their activities.
-
-At the time of Sower's importation of German equipment, McCulloch
-informed Isaiah Thomas, he had among his journeymen an ingenious
-general mechanic, Justus Fox, whom he charged with the responsibility
-for casting the letters to be used in the great Bible. In April 1772 he
-employed a newly arrived Swiss silk weaver, Jacob Bay,[11] to assist
-Fox. Two years later Bay left Sower's service and set up a foundry
-on his own account in a near-by house in Germantown. Fox remained in
-Sower's establishment, presumably engaged in casting the large quantity
-of type required to keep standing an edition of the Bible. In addition
-to this routine work he is said to have cut and cast an unspecified
-amount of Roman letter before 1774, the year of Bay's separation
-from the Sower establishment. Working in his separate foundry, it is
-recorded by our volunteer historian, Bay "cast a number of fonts,
-cutting all the punches, and making all the apparatus pertaining
-thereto, himself, for Roman Bourgeois, Long Primer, etc."
-
-That this reported activity in type casting in Germantown about
-the year 1774 was not a play of the imagination on the part of its
-historian is made certain by the definite statement that occurs in one
-of the non-importation resolutions of the Pennsylvania Convention.
-On 23 January 1775 the Convention "Resolved unanimously, That as
-printing types are now made to a considerable degree of perfection
-by an ingenious artist in Germantown; it is recommended to the
-printers to use such types in preference to any which may be hereafter
-imported."[12] Referring somewhat vaguely to this resolution, both as
-to content and as to origin, McCulloch tells us that even at the time
-of its passage Fox and Bay each claimed the honor implied in its terms.
-To this day the identity of the "ingenious artist" remains uncertain.
-
-It is not clear by what evidence it was known to the Convention that
-"a considerable degree of perfection" had been attained in the making
-of type in Germantown. The only known specimen of printing type cast
-at that place before the meeting of the Convention in January 1775 is
-the German letter employed in Sower's periodical, _Ein Geistliches
-Magazien_, and it is not likely that this or any other specimen of
-German type would have led the Convention to a recommendation as
-sweeping as that which has been quoted from its journal. It could only
-have been a Roman letter that the delegates had in mind for a usage so
-general as was indicated in their resolution, and we must remain in
-doubt as to what specimen or specimens they had seen of locally cast
-type in this character. It is certain, however, that at the time of
-their action a font of Roman letter had been completed, or at any rate,
-that it was then in the process of casting. It is quite possible that
-a trial specimen of this font had been submitted to the Convention for
-its examination and approval.
-
-It is a satisfaction to be able to introduce the new font through the
-medium of a contemporary reference to its use. We are indebted to the
-correspondence and to the diary of the Rev. Ezra Stiles of Newport,
-later President of Yale College, for some important information on
-early American type founding. Excited by Buell's efforts to make
-type in the year 1769, his interest in the manufacture seems to have
-remained in being, for on 9 May 1775 he appended the following comment
-to an entry in his Diary: "Extracted from the Pennsylv^a Mercury,
-whose first N^o was pub. the 7th of April last: printed with types
-of American Manufacture. The first Work with Amer. Types: tho' Types
-were made at N. Haven years ago."[13] The fact that Ezra Stiles was
-one of the earliest patrons of Abel Buell's venture in letter casting,
-supported as this fact is by his interest in American manufactures
-generally, lends a certain amount of weight to any observation that he
-might make on the subject of American type founding, although it is
-probable that he was ignorant of Sower's partial achievement of the
-art, just as Sower some years earlier in his claim to priority had
-seemed to be unaware of Buell's technically successful effort. If we
-may interpret Dr. Stiles's words as meaning that Story & Humphreys's
-_Pennsylvania Mercury_[14] of 7 April 1775, Vol. I, No. I, was the
-first published work printed in Roman letter which had been cut and
-cast in English America, we may unhesitatingly repeat his description
-of it as "The first Work with Amer. Types."
-
-The Philadelphia newspaper which has been referred to is one of the
-rarest of American journals of the period. Complete files, comprising
-issues from 7 April to 27 December 1775, are found only in the Library
-of Congress and in the Harvard College Library. From the first page of
-its first issue, the publisher's announcement is here reproduced.
-
-A glance at the pages of the newspaper in which the new Roman letter
-was first used makes us feel that in his commendable willingness to
-admit imperfection the publisher paid small tribute to the skill of
-his "ingenious artist." The letters of "rustic manufacture" were far
-from perfect, it is true, and in later issues of the newspaper it is
-observable that they had not worn especially well, but nonetheless
-they composed agreeably and they were sufficiently well executed to
-entitle them to something more than the half apology with which they
-were offered to the public. Their interest, however, as the first
-American-made Roman type to be used in a publication intended for
-circulation transcends considerations of worth and appearance.
-
-[Illustration: _Extract from The Pennsylvania Mercury of 7 April 1775.
-               Courtesy of the Harvard College Library._]
-
-Rejoicing in their encouragement of native manufactures, the
-practical support they were giving to the Pennsylvania non-importation
-resolutions of six months earlier, the publishers of the _Mercury_
-advertised on 23 June 1775 _The Impenetrable Secret_ as a work "Just
-Published and Printed with Types, Paper and Ink, Manufactured in
-this Province." If they had added, as possibly they might have done
-with truth, "on a press of Philadelphia make," we could regard this
-statement as the declaration of independence of the American printer
-from the English manufacturer.[15]
-
-Isaiah Thomas says that the _Pennsylvania Mercury_ was established with
-the backing of Joseph Galloway as a substitute for the _Pennsylvania
-Chronicle_, that disastrous earlier venture in journalism in which
-the Quaker politician had engaged with William Goddard. If this was
-the case, certain features of the new publication must have been
-displeasing to the silent partner, for Galloway the Tory could hardly
-have rejoiced with the publishers in their virtuous encouragement of
-native type founding, with all its patriotic implications. Furthermore,
-from an advertisement of John Willis and Henry Vogt in the first
-issue of the paper one learns that the publishers were making use of
-other articles of printing equipment made by these general craftsmen,
-who here announced their ability to make presses and any and all
-of the mechanical appurtenances required in a printing shop. This
-well-advertised Americanism of the publishers, however, seems not
-to have availed them in the attainment of success, and after their
-establishment had been destroyed by fire in the closing days of the
-year the business was never resumed.
-
-It is not certainly known who was the maker of the significant
-_Mercury_ types. Assuming that Sower's foundry was in full operation
-in the early months of 1775, we must assume also, in the absence of
-knowledge to the contrary, that its principal activity was in the
-manufacture of German letters for the great Bible, first published in
-1776, and that Sower would not have been likely to engage in the making
-of Roman type on a large scale until this work had been completed.
-Because of our ignorance of other possibilities there remain to be
-considered only the two craftsmen, Fox and Bay, as the probable makers
-of this first successful American letter. According to McCulloch, Fox
-had cut and cast Roman letter at some period before the year 1774 while
-still working for Sower. This statement contains all that is known of
-his efforts at making Roman type during the years that he remained
-with Sower, but there is the chance to be taken into account that the
-_Mercury_ font was the result of his experimentation during this period
-in an art which later he pursued with no small degree of local success.
-On the same authority it is said, it will be remembered, that Jacob Bay
-had left Sower in 1774, and in a near-by house in Germantown had set
-up a type foundry on his own account. In this separate establishment,
-it is likely that he was able to devote to the business such time
-and energy as would be required in making a font of sufficient size
-to accommodate the needs of such a newspaper as the _Pennsylvania
-Mercury_. The fact of his separate foundry having been established
-sometime in 1774, the reference in the Convention resolution of January
-1775 to the "ingenious artist" at Germantown and the appearance in
-April 1775 of the new font of type acclaimed by the publishers as
-"an attempt to introduce so valuable an art into these colonies" are
-considerations which, taken in their order, seem to give ground for an
-assumption that it was Jacob Bay who cut and cast the letters for "The
-first Work with Amer. Types." Until proof is forthcoming, however, this
-must remain an assumption and nothing more.
-
-It is certain that both Fox and Bay maintained their interest in
-letter casting for many years. At the sale of Sower's confiscated
-property in the year 1778 both of these artisans were present as
-purchasers of type-making tools and material.[16] Bay especially
-seems to have taken advantage of the opportunity to secure equipment
-at this dispersal of his old master's goods. Among other purchases
-which he made at the sale of what was probably at the time the largest
-typographical establishment in the country were "a lot of letter moles"
-at three pounds, "a Box with 9 Crusibles" at £5 15_s._, a quantity of
-worn type at 8_d._ a pound and antimony worth £8 18_s._ 3_d._ He was
-living at the time in a house rented from Sower,[17] and at the sale
-of the printer's real property in September 1779 he purchased another
-house belonging to the estate for £4200, a sum which he paid in two
-installments before 28 October 1779.[18] In recording from tradition
-the fact that Bay secured at this time one of the Sower houses,
-McCulloch asserts that he purchased it from John Dunlap, the printer,
-whom he paid in type of his own making. It is possible that he borrowed
-the purchase price from Dunlap on this or a similar basis of repayment,
-a transaction that would explain McCulloch's version of the story. It
-is said that he conducted his foundry until the year 1789, and that
-between this year and 1792 he sold the business to Francis Bailey. Fox
-continued the making of type until his death in the year 1805, when
-his son and partner Emmanuel Fox sold the equipment to Samuel Sower of
-Baltimore, the son of Christopher Sower, the Second, of Germantown,
-whose enterprise had been the determining cause of its existence.
-
-McCulloch was emphatic in his praise of the sturdiness of Fox's types,
-but when he remarked to Archibald Binny upon the excellent wearing
-quality of a set of figures and capitals cast by the Germantown
-founder, which he and his father before him had been using for many
-years, that gentleman replied with scorn that they were "at first so
-devilish ugly ... the longest using cannot mar their deformity."
-
-The type-founding operations of Fox and of Bay have greater importance
-in the history of the art in America than is usually conceded them.
-When they are referred to at all by general writers, their activities
-are mentioned briefly or in such a manner as to give one the impression
-that their efforts were sporadic or tentative. It is with the work of
-the Scotch founder Baine, using imported equipment, that the story
-of American type founding is usually begun, but with the _Mercury_
-font before us, cut and cast thirteen years before Baine's first
-operations, and with assurances by McCulloch that Fox cut and cast the
-letters used in the McKean edition of the _Acts of the Pennsylvania
-Assembly_, printed by Francis Bailey in 1782,[19] and with references
-by McCulloch to fonts produced by Bay, it seems certain that there
-exists material which will require a revision of the story of American
-type-founding origins. Beginning with the incontestable fact of the
-successful _Mercury_ font of 1775 and accepting McCulloch's relation of
-later events as a working hypothesis, there is seen to exist a field
-for research which should prove productive of discoveries, inasmuch
-as the fact and the tradition indicate a continuous activity on the
-part of one or the other of these early Pennsylvania founders, Fox and
-Bay, from 1775 to 1805. In the course of these years other founders,
-better known to us, began their work, and between the years 1796 and
-1801, more than one hundred American printers, from Massachusetts
-to Georgia, purchased type from the foundry of Binny & Ronaldson of
-Philadelphia.[20]
-
-The identification of the various fonts of locally made type used in
-Pennsylvania in the quarter century following "The first Work with
-Amer. Types" would form an interesting chapter in the story of early
-American type founding.
-
-                     COMPOSED IN MONTICELLO TYPES
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[10] Editor's Note: _Pennsylvania Archives_, 6th Series, 12:887-919. In
-_Typographic Heritage_, the second printing of this essay, Sower's type
-founding venture is more extensively treated, and the rare existing
-issues of Part II of _Ein Geistliches Magazien_ are located (pp.
-143-144).
-
-[11] McCulloch, p. 181, gives the middle of December 1771 as the date
-of Bay's arrival in Philadelphia. In Rupp's _Collection of Thirty
-Thousand Names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French, and other Immigrants
-in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1776_, p. 398, Jacob Bay is among the
-arrivals on the Brig _Betsey_ on 1 December 1771. The name is spelled
-Bey by McCulloch, Bäy by Rupp, Bay in various lists and documents
-in the Pennsylvania Archives. The last-named spelling is used in the
-present study on this authority.
-
-[12] Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of
-Pennsylvania ... (1776-1781), Volume the First (Philadelphia, 1782), p.
-33.
-
-[13] Ezra Stiles, _Literary Diary_. Ed. by F. B. Dexter. 3 vols. (New
-York, 1901), I:549.
-
-[14] Story & Humphreys's _Pennsylvania Mercury, and Universal
-Advertiser_. Evans 14477. No copy seen by Hildeburn.
-
-[15] It well may be that this production was not a book or pamphlet
-but a popular card game of the educational sort. See A. T. Hazen,
-_A Bibliography of Horace Walpole_, p. 173, and the same author's
-bibliography of the Strawberry Hill Press, pp. 145-148.
-
-[16] Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:887-919.
-
-[17] McCulloch's statement is borne out by the inventory of Sower's
-real estate in Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:872-873.
-
-[18] Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:918-919.
-
-[19] McCulloch gives the date indefinitely as about the year 1784. His
-father, John McCulloch, from whom he received much information embodied
-in the "Additions," was at one time foreman in Bailey's shop.
-
-[20] _One Hundred Years_, MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan Foundry,
-Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1896), p. 12, where is given a list of
-printers found in Binny & Ronaldson's ledgers from 1796 to 1801.
-The original books are in the Typographic Library and Museum of the
-American Type Founders Company, now a part of the Columbia University
-Library.
-
-
-
-
-                          RONALD B. McKERROW
-
-                          _Typographic Debut_
- Notes on the Long ſ and other Characters in Early English Printing.
-
-From _An Introduction to Bibliography_ by Ronald B. McKerrow. Copyright 1927
-   by the Clarendon Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-
-                        _The letters ſ and s_
-
-From the beginning of printing until towards the end of the eighteenth
-century ſ was used initially and medially and s finally, following
-of course the practice of the MSS. There were certain exceptions:
-Sweynheim and Pannartz, setting up the first press in Italy at Subiaco
-in 1465, used a type transitional in character though with marked
-gothic features, which used the long ſ in all positions, a practice
-which may have been imitated from Neapolitan MSS. of the period. Other
-printers sometimes followed the same usage in Roman type.
-
-The first book to discard ſ is said to have been Joseph Ames's
-_Typographical Antiquities_ of 1749, but this was regarded as an
-eccentricity, and the normal ſ is used in Herkert's edition of
-1785-90. The effective introduction of the reform has been credited to
-John Bell who in his _British Theatre_ of 1791 used s throughout, the
-same practice being followed in the Boydell _Shakespeare_, of which
-vol. I appeared in 1792.[21]
-
-It is worth noting that Capell in his _Prolusions_, 1760, had
-attempted a modification of the usual practice. He there uses s
-medially for a z-sound, retaining ſ for an s-sound, thus: easily,
-visible, rais'd, &c., but verſes, purſuit, ſatiſfy.
-
-In London printing the reform was adopted very rapidly and, save in
-work of an intentionally antiquarian character, we do not find much
-use of ſ in the better kind of printing after 1800. The provincial
-presses seem, however, to have retained it somewhat longer and it is
-said to have been used at Oxford until 1824.
-
-
-                      _The letters i, j, u and v_
-
-As a general rule, until early in the seventeenth century there was
-only one capital letter, I (in Roman) or [Illustration: J] in black-letter),
-for the letters now represented by I and J; and only one capital letter
-V (in Roman) or [Illustration: U, V]] (in black-letter) for the
-letters U and V. As was pointed out by F. W. Bourdillon, this has in
-early French books the odd result that a _libraire juré_ is liable to
-appear in capitals as "I V R E." When reprinting a black-letter text
-in Roman it seems logical to represent these by I and V in all cases,
-though some editors have preferred to use J and U, perhaps because the
-black-letter forms approximate more closely to these letters in shape.
-
-In lower-case most founts had i, j, u and v, but j was only used in
-the combination ij (often a ligature) or in numerals, as xiij, while
-v and u were differentiated according to position, not according to
-pronunciation; v being always used at the beginning of a word and u
-always medially.
-
-Thus the following are the normal spellings: iudge, inijcere or
-iniicere (= _lat._ injicere), vse, euent, vua (= _lat._ uva). Certain
-printers varied the practice in a few books, but the rule followed
-by most was absolutely rigid. It is quite incorrect to say that the
-letters were used indifferently, or that the sixteenth-century usage
-was the converse of the modern.... Rimes and puns show that the
-Elizabethans _called_ V by the name we now give to U (hence W is called
-double-u). I have failed to discover the originator of the modern name
-"ve...."
-
-In England no example of the distinction [between i and j, u and v]
-seems to have been found earlier than J. Banister's _History of Man_,
-printed by John Day in 1578. The new method is followed in a few other
-books of Day, and in 1579-80 we find it followed by Henry Middleton
-in reprinting a Latin Bible from a Frankfurt edition in which the
-distinction had been made. From that time onwards to the end of the
-century we find a certain number of books following the new system
-either completely or with certain modifications, and thereafter the
-number gradually increased until between 1620 and 1630 it became the
-general rule.
-
-The majuscule U at first employed was of the general design of the
-lower-case u with a small tail or serif at the foot (which has been
-revived in some modern fonts). The modern U begins to come into use in
-English printing about the middle of the seventeenth century.
-
-
-                            _The letter w_
-
-In early fonts this is often represented by vv. In later times the same
-is often found in fonts of extra large size (presumably of foreign
-origin), and in ordinary fonts when there happened to be a run on the w
-and the compositor had not enough.
-
-
-                              _Ligatures_
-
-Two or more letters joined together, or differing in design from the
-separate letters, and cast on one type-body, such as [ct] or [ffi],
-are called a ligature. There were two reasons for their being so
-cast, custom and convenience.
-
-In the early fonts the great majority of the ligatures were due to
-custom alone and represented a following of scribal practice which
-commonly joined together certain pairs of letters. Thus in the fount
-used by Caxton in the _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_ we find
-such ligatures as ad, be, ce, ch, co, de, en, in, ll, pa, pe, po, pp,
-re, ro, te, &c., all of which owe their existence solely to imitation
-of MSS. of the time. Many of these customary ligatures persisted
-throughout the sixteenth century, and even later in black-letter founts
-... while a few have combinations with certain capitals such as Ch, Sh,
-Th, Wh.... Even in Roman founts we find [ct], [oo], &c., of
-which [ct] has persisted until modern times. In Italic fonts we also
-find _es_, _us_, _[st]_, and others. (The original Aldine Italic had
-many more.)
-
-When a letter part of which overhangs the body of the type, such as f
-or ſ, happens to be followed by such an upright letter as l or h, or
-by an i, the overhanging part or "kern" of the first letter comes in
-contact with the top of the second, and either the two types do not fit
-together properly or the kern of the first letter gets broken off. To
-avoid this, most fonts even at present have ligatures of f with l, i
-and another f (the end of the curve of the first letter or the dot of
-the i being suppressed), and of [ff] with l and i. In early times
-these ligatures for convenience included also a set with ſ. The f
-and ſ ligatures are also presumably copied from the MSS., where they
-frequently occur, though not in all hands....
-
-
-                          _Punctuation marks_
-
-/ In quite early fonts this sign is used for the comma, or perhaps we
-should rather say to indicate any short pause in reading.... The modern
-comma seems to have been introduced into England about 1521 (in Roman
-type) and 1535 (in black-letter). It occurs in Venetian printing before
-1500.
-
-? The query mark seems to have been used in England from about 1521.
-
-; The semicolon seems to have been first used in England about 1569,
-but was not common until 1580 or thereabouts.
-
-. The full stop was commonly used _before_ as well as _after_ Roman,
-and sometimes also arabic, numerals until about 1580. Thus ".xii."
-It was also used before and after i (.i. = id est) and ſ (.ſ. =
-scilicet), and I have found it once with q = cue: "as though his .q.
-was then to speake."
-
-‘ and ’ were used indifferently in such abbreviations as th’ or th‘ for
-‘the.’ It may be noted that ‘t’is’ or ‘t‘is’ (instead of ‘ ’tis’) was
-so common in the Elizabethan period that it should perhaps be regarded
-as normal.
-
-" Inverted commas were, until late in the seventeenth century,
-frequently used at the beginnings of lines to call attention to
-sententious remarks. Modern editors have occasionally regarded such
-passages as _quotations_ and completed the quotes, which is generally
-wrong. So far as I have observed they were not especially associated
-with quotations until the eighteenth century, although, owing to their
-use for calling especial attention to a passage, they often appear in
-passages which are actually quoted.
-
-Even after they become clearly used to mark quotations they generally
-appear at the beginning of the passage and at the beginning of every
-line, but not always at the _end_. The practice of closing the
-quotation with two apostrophes seems to be comparatively modern. (I
-have found it in the middle of the eighteenth century, but it does not
-seem to have been regularly observed until much later.)
-
-Inverted commas, as well as many other signs, Greek letters (sometimes
-inverted) &c., were used in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printing
-as reference marks directing to side- or footnotes.
-
-( ) were often used in the sixteenth century where we now use quotation
-marks, and were indeed the general way of indicating a _short_
-quotation, e.g.:
-
- "she was neuer heard to giue any the lie, nor so much as to (thou) any
- in anger."--STUBBES, _Christal Glasse_, 1591.
-
-They also seem sometimes to be used merely for emphasis, e.g.:
-
- "What yesterday was (_Greene_) now's seare and dry"--COOKE, _Greene's
- Tu Quoque_, 1614.
-
-[ ] Square brackets are common in some Elizabethan fonts, being used as
-we now use round ones. They were also sometimes used instead of round
-ones for the purposes mentioned above; e.g.:
-
- "which is as much as [of olde] or [in times past]."--PLUTARCH,
- _Morals_, 1603.
-
-                     COMPOSED IN CASLON 337 TYPES
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[21] NOTE: In the Birrell & Garnett catalog, _Typefounders' Specimens_,
-London 1928, pp. 39-40, it is pointed out that the short s was
-effectively introduced by the Martins "who worked the Apollo Press at
-Edinburgh, and their London publisher, John Bell. The first book of
-theirs that I have seen is the series of Poets, for example the Dryden
-of 1777...." Graham Pollard relates there the instructive and amusing
-history of the error, for which Hansard was responsible: J. Johnson in
-_Typographia_, London 1824, wrote "... for which we are indebted to
-the ingenious Mr. John Bell, who introduced them in his edition of the
-British Classics." In copying this, Hansard (1825) made the error in
-transcribing "British _Theatre_." He was followed by C. H. Timperley in
-1842, who added the qualifying phrase "about 1795," by J. B. Nichols in
-his _Illustrations of Literature_, 1858, and by R. B. McKerrow in 1927,
-"where it has been given a new lease of life by correcting the obvious
-mistake in date to 1791."
-
-
-
-
-                           EDWARD ROWE MORES
-
-                    [Illustration: _Metal-Flowers_]
-
- From a Dissertation upon English Typographical Founders and Foundries
-by Edward Rowe Mores. London 1778. Reprinted by The Grolier Club, 1924.
-
-
-Metal-flowers were the firſt ornaments uſed in printed books, to
-be ſet at the head of the firſt page and the tail of the laſt
-page, as well as at the head and tail of any ſeparate part of the
-whole work, and they were ſometimes uſed as an edging to the matter
-according to the taſte of the author or the printer, they were uſed
-ſparingly and with ſmall variety, but in time they became more
-numerouſ, and were cut in ſeveral ſhapes, forms and devices, and
-continued in reputation till _Cutters in Wood_ ſupplanted them, when
-_Mr. Moxon_ wrote they were accounted old-fashioned. but the uſe of
-them was revived by the _French_ and _Germans_ and the variety of them
-conſiderably encreased by the Two _Mr. James's_ in _England_.
-
-The _flower_-matrices in their foundery have been divided into _old_
-and _new_, which to be ſure is a diviſion, but ſuch as conveys
-nothing or a falſe idea to the underſtanding.
-
-We are to obſerve then that the latter, though moſtly now in vogue,
-are mere figures of fancy, made up of circular oval and angular turns,
-contrived to look light, airy and unmeaning, and to try the genius or
-patience of a compoſitor.
-
-But the former expreſſed ſome meaning and were adapted to other
-purpoſes than barely to dress and decorate a page. they were formed
-from real objects natural and artificial, civil and military, as from
-weeds and flowers of the field and garden, leaves, branches, fruits,
-flower-baſkets, flower-pots, urns, croſſes, banners, launces,
-ſwords, and tilting ſpears, and other ſamples culled from the
-fields of nature and of heraldry; yet germane to the ſubject matter
-of the work.
-
-They were frequently emblematical and monitory; as cherubs' faces for
-the hymns of charity girls, hour-glaſſes for lugubrious orators,
-and _mort_-heads for the pariſh-clerks. they were ſymbolical
-of nations; as the crown and roſe, the crown and lyz, the crown
-and harp;--of dignities and orders; as diadems, crowns, mitres and
-coronets; the red hat called at _Camb._ the _Cardinal's cap_, where too
-the mitre is called the _golden night-cap_; the courtelass; the arms of
-_Ulſter_, and the anchor of hope; the _Scotch_-thiſtle and ſprigs
-of _rue_; both _ſub_-ſymbolical; the former rendered more ſo by
-the _cry de guerre_ "_Noli me Tangere_";--of ſtates and conditions;
-as the myrtle, the weeping willow, and the bugle-horn. with many others
-which to enumerate would be tedious here.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                     COMPOSED IN CASLON 337 TYPES
-
-
-
-
-                             JAMES WATSON
-
-_The_ HISTORY _of the Invention and Progress of the Mysterious Art of_
-                         PRINTING _& c._
-
-From _The History of the Art of Printing_ ... printed by James Watson,
-                           Edinburgh, 1713.
-
-
-If the Ignorant look upon PRINTING without admiring It; it is, because
-they do not understand the same: The Learned have always judged far
-otherways; and have, with Reason, thought, That, for almost the Three
-Ages wherein this Wonder hath been seen in Europe, the Wit of Man did
-never invent any Thing that was either more lucky, or more useful for
-Instruction.
-
-This Truth is so universally acknowledged, that it needs no Proof:
-Every one knows, that, without this marvellous Art, the Studies,
-Labours, and Works of great Men, would have been of no Use to
-Posterity. We are then obliged to this Art, for the Knowledge of the
-Works of the old Philosophers, Physicians, Astronomers, Historians,
-Orators, Poets, Lawyers, Theologues; and, in a Word, of all that hath
-been writ upon any Art, and Science whatsoever. It is by the Means
-of PRINTING that Theologues do attain to the sacred Mysteries of our
-Religion; That the Doctors of Law, do teach those admirable Laws, which
-do regulate the Society of Men; That Historiographers do furnish us
-with Examples, which we are either to follow or shun; That Astronomers
-do make every Day such fine Discoveries in the Heavens. It is this very
-Art which furnisheth Physicians with Means to preserve and recover
-the Health of Man's Body; Which discovereth to Philosophers the more
-hid Secrets of Nature; Which furnisheth Geometricians with Ability to
-measure the Earth; And to Arithmeticians, to give every Man his Due.
-In fine, what would the Moderns know in any one Science, and Art, if
-PRINTING did not furnish them with All that the Ancients found out? All
-the Elogiums which we make of PRINTING, and the Honours which we pay to
-It, come far short of It's Merit: And we cannot but easily consent to
-this, if we consider the vast Expences which the Ancients were obliged
-to be at, in procuring Manuscripts....
-
-
-         _THE PUBLISHER'S PREFACE TO THE PRINTERS IN SCOTLAND_
-
-  _Gentlemen_,
-
-  _That Men are not born for themselves, but for the Republick, is an
-  ancient and universally applauded Maxim. And it is so agreeable to
-  right Reason, that the wisest and best Part of Mankind, in every
-  Age since the Creation, have endeavour'd to lay the Foundation of a
-  lasting good Name, by every Action of their Life; whereby they might
-  improve the Body or Society of which they were Members. To this
-  Principle it is, that we owe the Invention or Improvement of all the
-  Arts and Sciences that are instructive or beneficial to Man. 'Mongst
-  which the Invention, and vast Improvement, of the no less honourable,
-  than useful and admirable Art of PRINTING, which we profess, deserves
-  a very eminent Place: Since by It, all Sorts of Learning, Sacred
-  or Profane, and every Kind of profitable Instruction and Invention
-  are both publish'd and preserv'd; as my Author, I here give you the
-  Translation of, shews clearly and copiously enough._
-
-  _This Book, being the History of the Beginning and Advancement of
-  our Art, shews the Character of the Men who first profess'd It, the
-  Marks of Honour paid them, wilst alive; nay, and the Monuments rais'd
-  to preserve their Memories after Death. By all which 'tis plain, That
-  those illustrious Persons were honour'd, and ranked among the best of
-  their fellow Citizens, in those Times: Whereas now we are scarcely
-  class'd or esteem'd above the lower Forms of Mechanicks. How we came
-  to lose that Honour and Respect due to our Profession, (since the
-  present Age is much more learned, and I believe, as just too, and
-  discerning of Merit as their Ancestors) shall be a little inquir'd
-  into. But first let me give some general Account of this Work._
-
-  _It bears the Title of_, The History, _&c._ of our Mysterious Art; _and
-  the Author, with great Exactness and Candor, fairly shews the Claims,
-  Reasons and Authority supporting them, on both Sides, in the lasting
-  Contest betwixt the Towns of_ Mentz _and_ Harlem; _for the Glory of the
-  Invention. A clear Mark, what a solid Honour 'tis esteem'd for a Town
-  to have been the noble Theatre, where so wonderful an Art was first
-  brought to Light._
-
-  _He next gives the Names of the first learned Printers, together with
-  a Catalogue of the Works printed by them, and the Marks of Honour paid
-  to them by their Fellow-Citizens and Country-Men; which will more than
-  enough justify what I have affirm'd above._
-
-  _The Author wrote in_ French, _and I have caus'd translate it for my
-  own, and the common Benefit of these practising the Art in this Part
-  of_ Britain; _without proposing any other Advantage or Gain by it,
-  but the Improvement of the Art, or at least raising It to the Pitch
-  of Perfection It was at here in former Times. And since we are, I
-  trust, all of us honest Men, and of better Spirits than to propose the
-  Earning our Bread as the chief and only End of our Labour; I entertain
-  a settled well grounded Hope, that the Perusal of this, will inspire us
-  all with a noble and generous Emulation of equalling, nay, exceeding,
-  if we can, the best Performances of our laudable Ancestors in the
-  Employment. That since our Native Country has at present as many good
-  Spirits, and Abundance of more Authors than in any former Age; we may
-  make it our Ambition, as well as it is our Interest and Honour, to
-  furnish them with Printers that can serve them so well, that they need
-  not, as many of our former Authors have been forc'd to do, go to other
-  Countries to publish their Writings, lest a learn'd Book should be
-  spoil'd by an ignorant or careless Printer._
-
-  _Thus, Gentlemen, we shall have this Honour, which is truly more
-  valuable than immense Sums of Money or opulent Estates, that, for
-  the Glory of our Country, we have retrieved the Art of PRINTING,
-  and brought It to as great Perfection as ever It was here in former
-  Times...._
-
-  EDINBURGH, MAY 29TH, 1713
-
-
-
-
-                     Printers as Men of the World
-                     [Illustration: EVELYN HARTER]
-
-Copyright 1947 by The Typophiles. Reprinted by permission of the author.
-
-
-Printers are usually judged as printers, and there are those who hold
-that this is as it should be, that the printer should stick to his pica
-rule and follow copy out the window. But in their spare time printers
-also eat, vote, marry and go to war. It would therefore be possible to
-look at them from various points of view, as, for instance, how many
-were vegetarians, anarchists, bigamists and top sergeants. This could
-be so of any group of craftsmen. If we look at printers from another
-viewpoint, as to whether they were men of the world, it is because of
-the nature of the stuff with which they work.
-
-I should like to begin obliquely by speaking first of an approach
-to the history of printing. Probably the history of printing is more
-limited, definite and easy to encompass than that of almost any
-subject. That is not to say that anyone can ever learn all of it, or
-that we cannot go on learning something new about it all our lives.
-But printing started fairly recently in time; it is its own record.
-Excluding the science of bibliography, the literature is not large
-compared, for example, with that of art or philosophy or geology. Yet
-few people know as much of it as they might know with pleasure, and
-perhaps the reason for that might be a faulty approach. It is customary
-to send beginners to study Updike, but it is easy for beginners to get
-bogged down in _Printing Types_, particularly if they start to read
-it from the beginning. Updike's magnificent work is, in its writing
-and its outline, gratifying to the student whose basic knowledge has
-been fixed and matured. Beginners move more freely in the pages of
-George Parker Winship, possibly because he related printing events to
-world events to a greater extent than does Updike. Usually the person
-who wishes to learn more about printing has already at hand a lot of
-names and dates and places vaguely relating to world events of the
-past. To such a person printing history lends itself readily to the
-method of study by association. It can be a good game to find out what
-was happening in printing when Napoleon was looking at the Pyramids,
-or when Charles I was beheaded. If one is interested in art, he can
-correlate artists and printers, and find that Leonardo was born about
-the same time that printing was born in Europe, or he can correlate
-printing with advances in the knowledge of medicine or agriculture.
-There are small but interesting links between the history of printing
-and that of music. For instance William Caslon the elder loved music,
-and it is possible that the composer Handel sometimes played his new
-pieces at the concerts held in Caslon's organ room, since the two men
-had mutual friends in the musical world of London.
-
-There have been printers who were interested in other worlds. The Dutch
-printer Blaeu studied astronomy under Tycho Brahe, and himself produced
-in 1600 a celestial globe. The Scottish type-founder Alexander Wilson,
-although educated as a doctor, became interested in type and left a
-considerable foundry to his sons before he himself moved on to become
-professor of astronomy at the University of Glasgow.
-
-If you wish to make the most of this method, you must do it yourself.
-Then it is you who will have the fun, and then what you learn will
-stick. What follows illustrates the method briefly by looking at a
-number of printers in the past five hundred years from one angle,
-judging them not simply as printers but as men of the world.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-It would be nice if we could start with a definition of "man of
-the world" and a definition of "printer" but actually this small
-investigation is an attempt at definition. We cannot mean "man of the
-world" in the Chesterfieldian sense, although there have been many
-printers who knew how to dress and carry themselves in court and salon,
-notably Aldus, Caxton and members of the Didot family. Chesterfield
-would be obliged to allow some of our printers in his company, but I
-doubt if we could allow him in ours, for in one of his letters to his
-son he says, "Due attention to the inside of books and due contempt
-for the outside is the proper relation between a man of sense and his
-books." Perhaps he was thinking of the vanity of fancy bindings, though
-it is more likely that he was beguiling himself into one of those
-untruths common to aphorizers. However that may be, our man of the
-world does not mean gentleman of the world as Chesterfield thought of
-gentleman, although there are printers who are both--not all dead.
-
-If we were to speak of the printer as a citizen of the world, we would
-be coming a little closer to it, but citizen implies being at home in
-the geographical world, whereas we are thinking of him being at home in
-the world of ideas. When we say "of" the world, we mean that he knows
-that he belongs to his contemporary world, that the people and events
-are of interest to him, the politics, art, science and poetry--not only
-some particular dexterity, professional specialization or money-making
-device of his own.
-
-It might be argued that the bulk of printing has not now, and never has
-had, much relation to ideas, that in the early days its chief business
-was dubious theological disputes and that its chief business now is
-advertising soap flakes and the like. But printing, in its entirety, is
-a description of the world, and if a great deal of print is devoted to
-murder cases, toothpaste ads and income tax blanks--well, that must be
-the kind of world we have. However, when new ideas have been advanced,
-they have been advanced in print, so that the printer has never been
-safe from them. Even now, in the event that they be promulgated by
-radio, they must be fixed in print in order to stick and sink in. Let
-us only say then that with regard to gaining knowledge of the world in
-which we live, the printer is in an exposed position--nothing more.
-
-Although we do not know much about Gutenberg,[22] the first
-printer, we doubt that he was a man of the world in our sense. How
-could he have been? For the preceding four or five hundred years to be
-a man of the world was to be unworldly; people had been concerned with
-building cathedrals, making religious paintings, going on crusades.
-Printing was the chief factor in making the man of the world in our
-modern sense. Printing enabled him to know what was going on so that he
-might take part in it, although printers did not realize this during
-the cradle days of printing. Great events were occurring then; the
-Turks captured Constantinople; the Hundred Years' War came to an end
-with the English driven off the continent of Europe; the Portuguese
-sailed to the Canaries and the Azores; but these events found little
-mention in early printing. _The Nuremberg Chronicle_, as Helen Gentry
-and David Greenhood point out in their _Chronology_, made no mention
-of Columbus' discovery of America in the previous year. First came
-religious books, then school books, law books and classics. It is true
-that Fust and Schöffer printed proclamations and information for the
-archbishop, but it was not until Von Olpe at Basle printed _The Ship of
-Fools_ in 1494 that we have "a book dealing with contemporary people
-and their exploits instead of with historical accounts of the past."
-
-Although Gutenberg had been involved in the politics of Mainz in his
-youth, probably he thought of nothing but printing after he began work
-on his invention. We have an old book of stories for children which
-describes Gutenberg in a dream: "He thought of the great harm which
-might be done through the printing of bad books--how they would corrupt
-the minds of the innocent, how they would stir up the passions of
-the wicked. Suddenly he seized a heavy hammer and began to break his
-press in pieces. But then a voice seemed to come from the press itself
-saying, 'Hold your hand, John Gutenberg. The art of printing will
-enlighten the world.'" I have no idea where the author could have found
-source material for this little fantasy, for we can feel quite sure
-that Gutenberg had little conception of the influence of his invention.
-He was all craftsman and inventor and carried his world in his head.
-His financial reverses alone would indicate that.
-
-The word "printer" has been an elastic word from the very beginning,
-including scholars and artists, businessmen and craftsmen. If we were
-to consider the term "printer" narrowly in the sense of a typesetter or
-a pressman or a man who supervises these operations, we should still
-have to make room in our history for men like Jean Grolier, the patron,
-and Geoffroy Tory, the artist. We know of many printers who were first
-and last businessmen. Johann Fust was a banker until he put money in
-Gutenberg's project. The first English printer, Caxton, was a retired
-wool merchant who liked to translate French romances for his friends
-and became tired of writing them out in longhand. Anton Koberger, who
-was Dürer's godfather, the publisher of _The Nuremberg Chronicle_ and
-a great entrepreneur in his day, began as a printer; he printed books
-in various languages, did sub-contracting and printed advertising
-circulars. Probably if the plain motives of most printers could be
-discovered, making a living would loom large.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-There have been many printers who were also scholars, beginning with
-Aldus and including the Estiennes and the Didots. And there are the
-typecutter-printers who combined letter-founding and printing--Nicolas
-Jenson, Giambattista Bodoni, John Baskerville, as well as the
-names equally brilliant in printing history of those who devoted
-themselves to founding--Claude Garamond, William Caslon and the
-Fourniers. A general haze surrounds the subject of the contribution
-of less well-known type-cutters to printing. Although the use of a
-distinguished type may be one of the chief reasons for the printer's
-success, compare the fame of the printer Aldus with that of his type
-designer, Francesco da Bologna, of John Bell with that of Richard
-Austin, of Thomas Bensley with that of Vincent Figgins, of Bulmer with
-William Martin, of Elzevir with Christoffel van Dyck, of François
-Ambroise Didot with that of Waflard. On the subject of the share which
-these printers had in suggesting the nature of the type to the men
-who cut it, typographical writers are almost consistently inexplicit,
-although we do know that William Martin brought his types with him
-when he started work for Bulmer. Even Updike, who gives credit to
-the type designer and cutter wherever he is known, says, "At first
-the best printers were often type-founders too, although Garamond
-merely (_sic!_) cut and cast type for the use of others." Binders and
-papermen, ink-makers and machinery manufacturers have always had an
-affectionate and proprietary air about printing. Rather than try to
-define "printer" strictly, it may be truer to say that printers are an
-adjectival lot, and that printing can honorably be a very inclusive
-term, but that we might have a new printing terminology which would
-better define the various contributions.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-What was happening in the world about the year 1500 when Aldus
-Manutius[23] had his great printing shop in Venice working at its peak?
-Columbus had made several voyages, and the Portuguese had been around
-the tip of Africa although Magellan had not yet sailed around the
-world. Leonardo da Vinci had left Milan for political reasons, and was
-working in Venice, as was Giovanni Bellini and his pupils Titian and
-Giorgione. Northern Italy was the scene of much brawling between rival
-princes, with Emperor Maximilian I stepping in now and then to make
-things worse. The battles were nuisances to Aldus, for they interfered
-with the production and distribution of his books. I do not know how
-much he knew about the geographical discoveries of his time, but we can
-be sure that a man of his cultivation knew about the great painting and
-sculpture being done. Ralph Roeder says of this time that its "triumphs
-are preserved in art, its reverses in its spiritual story, and both are
-the result of the same cause--its supreme vitality."
-
-It is one more indication of that vitality that Aldus at the age of
-forty embarked on a project which was to bring about a tremendous
-enlargement of the conception of the purpose of books. Many printers
-in history have drifted into printing or its allied trades by chance,
-but there seems to be no doubt that Aldus knew exactly what he was
-doing all the time. He was a man who knew what he wanted. He had been
-a scholar and tutor to Alberto and Lionello Pio, princes of Carpi,
-when he first saw printed books and realized what could be done to
-make classical manuscripts generally available. With the aid of the
-Pio family he went to Venice, which, since the fall of Constantinople,
-had been the richest repository of manuscripts and a residence of
-Greek scholars. In order to have reference books available for his
-proof-readers and editors, he first printed a Greek dictionary and a
-Greek grammar and himself prepared a Greek-Latin dictionary. He gave
-Venice a university when he started the New Academy of Venice. For his
-press he hired the finest scholars of the day--Bembo and Reuchlin,
-Musurus and Erasmus. We, in the twentieth century, have a tendency to
-think of scholars as removed from the affairs of life. Aldus was a
-scholar who was also in the midst of life, because scholarship was an
-important affair in the world of Renaissance man. He must have been a
-true cosmopolitan as well, commanding, as he did, the friendship of men
-as different as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Jean Grolier of France, from
-whom he had a commission to print special copies of his books on vellum.
-
-The 1500's were a time of religious bickerings and of religious wars,
-of Henry the VIII's break with Rome, of the German wars following the
-death of Martin Luther, and the Inquisition in Spain. In the early part
-of the century there was working at Lyons, which was then second only
-to Paris as a printing center in France, a young scholar and printer
-named Etienne Dolet.[24] There is a story that he was the illegitimate
-son of Francis I, but at any rate he came of a wealthy family, having
-been to Venice as secretary to the French Ambassador and to Toulouse
-to study law. By the time he was twenty-seven he had published a
-Latin Dictionary which was "one of the most important contributions
-to classical scholarship in the century" and was given a license by
-Francis I providing that Dolet might print for ten years any books
-written or supervised by him. His great range of taste and interests
-may be judged by the fact that he printed the New Testament in Latin
-and Rabelais in French.
-
-He had met Rabelais when he first went to Lyons to work under
-Sebastian Gryphius as proof-reader, and there gained his practical
-knowledge of printing under the foreman, Jean de Tournes. E. D.
-Christie, Dolet's biographer, says that Dolet, arriving in Lyons
-with a fever, may have been taken directly to Rabelais, who was at
-that time practising medicine, with the position of Physician to the
-Great Hospital. Christie also thinks it possible that Dolet may have
-seen Rabelais perform a dissection on a man's body ten years before
-Vesalius. Everything Dolet did shows him to have been a man with
-lively fearless intellect and no talent for playing safe and keeping
-out of trouble. He spent several terms in jail for lack of orthodoxy
-on religious questions, was pardoned by Francis I for killing a man,
-and was denounced by Rabelais for printing an unexpurgated edition of
-_Pantagruel_ after Rabelais had fixed it up to suit the Sorbonne.
-
-At Lyons in the months of April and May, 1539, there occurred the first
-large organized printers' strike. It was no wonder, for Updike says
-that it was not unusual for the printers' day to begin at two in the
-morning and last until eight or nine at night. The workmen said that the
-masters did not supply sufficient food, that wages had been reduced,
-that there were too many compulsory holidays. The Seneschal of Lyons
-was empowered to meet a committee of journeymen and one of masters; at
-this conference rules were drawn up. But the trouble spread to Paris,
-and as a result of arbitration there, the working day was set from five
-in the morning till eight at night. Then there was a flare-up at Lyons
-again because the master printers threatened to move away; this was
-some years in settlement.
-
-Of all the master printers of Lyons, the only one who sided with
-the strikers was Dolet. This was held against him later when he was
-imprisoned on a charge of atheism, tortured, hanged and finally
-burned on his thirty-seventh birthday. (See _Chronology of Books and
-Printing_.) On his way to his death he made a Latin pun on his name. If
-we speak of him as a man of the world, the accent is on man.
-
-It is said that it was this event--the burning of Dolet--which
-decided Christopher Plantin[25] to leave France in 1548 for Antwerp,
-though Plantin never exhibited the uncompromising attitude of Dolet;
-rather he showed a business toughness and adaptability which enabled
-him to survive and stay in this world, which was no small feat for
-a printer in the sixteenth century. It was a time when empires and
-ideologies were in tremendous conflict; the period of the German
-religious wars following the death of Martin Luther; of Spain and
-England in unrelenting struggle for control of the sea, culminating
-in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Antwerp itself was
-a focal point of disorder after Philip II sent the Duke of Alba to
-subdue the Netherlanders. Plantin had built up a good printing and
-publishing business when, in 1562, it was liquidated because of his
-alleged unorthodoxy. Within a few years he had recovered to the extent
-that he was made Printer to the King of Spain, from whom he received
-assurances of help on his Polyglot Bible. Again, in the sack of Antwerp
-by Spanish soldiers in 1576 his business was all but ruined; he went
-to Leyden for a few years, but returned to finish his days at Antwerp.
-To a man living in those times, the issues must have seemed even more
-confused and difficult than ours do now. Recent investigations indicate
-that Plantin belonged to a sect of heretics for which he printed books
-secretly, while also doing books for the church.
-
-Another sixteenth-century printer who could hardly be oblivious to
-the events of his time--he was so knocked about by them--was Robert
-Estienne.[26] Even though he was at one time Royal Printer, liked and
-respected by Francis I, he sometimes had to seek the sanctuary of the
-King's court to escape the King's censors. Robert must have been a man
-of stature, for he published his _New Testament_ in defiance of the
-Sorbonne, and only after Francis I died did he leave Paris for Geneva.
-He was a believer in one of the springs of Renaissance thought--that
-through scholarship it is possible to come to the truth, and through
-printing all men may recognize and know the truth.
-
-It would be possible for a man of the world to be so without ever
-stirring from the town of his birth, yet oftener than not the man
-with breadth of interest is a cosmopolitan and a traveller. Such
-cosmopolitans were fourteen members of the Elzevir[27] family, who,
-over a period of one hundred and thirty years, engaged in printing and
-selling small books chiefly intended for poor scholars. This Dutch
-family of practical internationalists established their bookshops and
-printing offices in nearly every large city on the continent, from
-Denmark to Italy, printing their books in Latin and Greek, French and
-Arabic, on subjects ranging from medicine to political science. All
-this in spite of the Thirty Years' War, which was to bring about the
-decline of the artificial internationalism of the Hapsburgs and the
-Holy Roman Empire, and in spite of similar disturbances before and
-after.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the geographical
-boundaries of printing were extended vastly outside of Europe. The
-colonization of North and South America was going forward. The first
-press in America had been established at Mexico City in 1539 by agents
-of Kromberger of Seville. European printing was carried to India in
-1561, to China in 1589, and to Japan in 1591. The first printing was
-done in Russia in 1563.
-
-Credit for doing the first printing in the American colonies,
-_The Freeman's Oath_, was once given to Stephen Daye, is sometimes
-latterly given to his young son, Matthew Daye. Were they more than
-mechanic, compositor and pressman? Who chose the copy, proofread it,
-set policies, pushed the work along? Possibly some of the founders of
-the new Harvard College, or possibly Mrs. Glover, the widow of the
-man who originated the idea of the press. She was probably a woman of
-education, since she settled in Cambridge to be near the new college
-and later married the President, Henry Dunster. She undoubtedly shared
-her first husband's independent views--he had been suspended from
-his parsonage in Surrey because of his nonconformity; she might have
-picked _The Freeman's Oath_ for the first copy. She may have been
-more of a printer and more of a woman of the world than the fragments
-of knowledge which we have about her disclose.... Whoever guided the
-destiny of the first press, it was a person not completely confined by
-dogma, for the books included almanacs, law books and college thesis
-lists, as is pointed out by Carl Purington Rollins, himself perhaps our
-best example of a modern fine printer conscious of what is going on
-around him.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-During the late 1700's the Industrial Revolution began, but its
-implications were not guessed by artisan or statesman, and the
-best printers were still in the age of elegance. Baskerville was
-businessman, eccentric, free-thinker, but his printing, as much as that
-of Bodoni who was employed by the Duke of Parma, was regal.
-
-Probably Horace Walpole,[28] more than any other printer, felt that
-the world was his house, in which he could move about freely from
-room to room, always at ease. He had the wit and manners to be an
-ornament to French salons, the originality to introduce a new brand of
-literature in his _Castle of Otranto_--the forerunner of our mystery
-novel of today, the personal force to influence the trend of English
-architecture with his "little Gothic castle" at Strawberry Hill in
-Twickenham. In one of his letters to the artist Richard Bentley he
-says that he can't resist going to fires, and there is something of
-this spirit in his activities. The collector W. S. Lewis says, "He was
-not only, in his own word, a 'gazetteer' but the historian of English
-painting and gardening, an essayist, poet, novelist, pamphleteer,
-dramatist, printer, antiquarian, and _arbiter elegantiarum_ and in the
-modern sense and phrase a 'debunker' of historical figures.... It was
-his main purpose in life to be the official historian of his time."
-
-Although he had a seat in Parliament, he paid little attention to the
-nation's business. He represented those parts of life in the eighteenth
-century which had natured and were drawing to a close, as Fielding
-and Goldsmith, the American Revolution and the French Revolution
-represented things to come. Printing being one of his minor activities,
-he is of more interest as a human being than as a craftsman.
-
-If Walpole was a man of the world and man of letters, John Bell[29]
-was man of the world and man of business. During a lifetime of
-eighty-six years he was, as Stanley Morison pictures him, book-seller,
-printer, publisher, type-founder and journalist. Like a lesser
-Franklin--he had not Franklin's scientific interest, integrity, or
-vision--he was endowed with the ability to grasp the salient facts of a
-trade or profession, and a wealth of exuberant interest in life around
-him. At the beginning of his career as a book-seller, he published a
-sort of early version of Wilson's _Cumulative Book Index_, a list of
-current books for the use of the trade. As type-founder (and introducer
-of the short "s") he employed the talent of the punch cutter Richard
-Austin to produce the first English "modern" type. In addition to a
-successful fashion magazine, he published at different times four
-newspapers. At one time he even made himself a war correspondent, when
-he visited the British Army then fighting the French Revolutionaries in
-Flanders. He reported the action at Ypres, made a march with the troops
-from Courtrai to Tournai and pursued his object of finding "active and
-well-informed persons in different parts of the continent" who would
-act as regular correspondents for his paper, _The Oracle_. The books
-he published included law books, Shakespeare, a series of the poets of
-Great Britain; he engaged members of the Royal Academy to illustrate
-the plays of a series called _The British Theatre_ and hired the best
-engravers of the day to copy the paintings. He knew the literary men of
-the day--Sheridan wrote for his _World_--and even had a balloonist for
-a friend--Lunardi, who made the first ascent in London. Compared to his
-contemporary Bulmer, who could be called a printer's printer, Bell was
-a promoter whose medium was printing.
-
-Of all the Didots, and they seem to have been able men, Firmin
-Didot[30] is of most interest to us. He taught many of the printers
-of Greece out of sympathy for the cause of Greek independence, the
-same for which Byron died. He wrote plays, translated classics, and
-after he retired from business he entered the Chamber of Deputies;
-he learned Spanish at the age of sixty-three. Desmond Flower says,
-in writing of him, "Printing is a curious and perhaps unsatisfactory
-hybrid between a profession and an art; the men who have caught the
-sense of it most successfully have been intelligent people who could
-see it whole--scholar-printer-publishers--for whom some other rivers
-flowed beyond the simple floods of printing ink." Perhaps when Mr.
-Flower wrote this he had forgotten how "tacky" printing ink is, but his
-meaning is a large part of what I am trying to say.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-The question of what world one chooses to recognize--that of courts
-and salons or of slums--arises in connection with the great printer of
-the nineteenth century, William Morris.[31] He saw what was happening
-as a result of machinery and large industry, and he did not like it.
-He must have seen it very plainly in order to revolt against it so
-strongly. His printing period was the last in his life, following
-the chintzes, stained glass windows, tapestries, rugs and furniture.
-He felt that people would be better people if they made and owned
-beautiful things, and he also saw, like his contemporary, Karl Marx,
-that the economic structure would have to be changed before the best
-qualities in people could operate, though he was not willing to follow
-Marx in his methods. When we think of the William Morris who printed
-the Kelmscott _Chaucer_, we do not always remember the William Morris
-who stood in Hyde Park near the Marble Arch talking to the street
-crowds about socialism, wondering if the police were coming; who for
-years travelled about speaking in a thousand stuffy halls in England,
-Ireland and Scotland. When he was old, tears would come to his eyes
-when the misery of the poor was mentioned. It is easy to say that his
-socialism was vague and his desire to return to the methods of the
-thirteenth century unrealistic, but considering the sincerity of his
-motives and the breadth of his interests, I think that we must say that
-he was not so much a man of this world as a man of a better world.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Perhaps we must return to America to find the printer who has made
-the greatest contribution to political history. We can hardly detail
-here the cosmopolitan accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin. We might
-rather examine what right we have to call him a printer, in view of the
-magnitude of his other accomplishments. He liked to think of himself as
-a printer, and started his will with the words, "I, Benjamin Franklin,
-printer." Once when he visited the establishment of the Didots in
-France he stopped at a hand press and pulled a few proofs. When the
-workman exclaimed at his dexterity he said, "Do not be surprised.
-Printing is my real trade." Wherever he went in England or France he
-corresponded with printers and visited their establishments. We know
-about his private press at Passy and about his wholesome influence on
-American printing. Carl Van Doren, in his biography of Franklin, says
-that when he died the printers of Philadelphia walked in his funeral
-procession and that the printers of Paris gathered to honor him,
-listened to a eulogy by one of them while others set it in type as fast
-as it was delivered and distributed printed copies as souvenirs. If
-then we can claim him as a printer, we can feel sure that the man who
-helped draft the Declaration of Independence, who was sent to negotiate
-the peace and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention was, more
-than any other printer, a man of the world.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-It could hardly be maintained that being connected with printing makes
-one a man of the world. It might even be argued and proved by examples
-past and present that preoccupation with the problems of the craft is
-a narrowing influence. Since most of the circumstances of our lives
-are arranged for us when we are born, it is possible to travel through
-life as on a conveyor belt, having things done to us along the way, and
-this can be as true of a fine printer as of a bank president. Each can
-go through life utterly ignorant of the economic and mental processes
-that bring food to his table and send his son to the wars. It was
-always a question, now more than ever critical, what part of a man's
-life must be given to being a citizen against the claims of livelihood,
-philosophy, family and amusement. The events of the past few years have
-dramatized the dilemma. Printing has helped bring us to this place in
-history. And so, although we cannot condemn a good craftsman because he
-is interested in nothing except shop talk, we might say that printers
-who are also men of the world realize that they are working in a bigger
-shop.
-
-   [Illustration: WOOD ENGRAVING BY REYNOLDS STONE, 1937.]
-
-                       COMPOSED IN GRANJON TYPES
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[22] Johann Gutenberg (c. 1397-1468). Gutenberg is considered the
-effective inventor of printing, but his biography is written darkly
-only in the records of the law courts to which he was constantly
-summoned on money matters. His was a complex of inventions: he not
-only cast type in single pieces, but devised a chase to hold it,
-mixed suitable ink and perfected a technique for register and good
-impression, with the result that the first printing remains among the
-best.
-
-[23] Aldus Manutius (1450-1515). Aldus' contributions to
-printing--small capitals, the first Italic, the popularization of the
-small type page--centered about his wish to help scholars. He wrote
-to a friend: "We send these Satires to you, my dear Scipio, that they
-may through their brevity become once more your intimate friends, as
-they were formerly during your stay at Rome as a young man, when you
-possessed them as thoroughly in your memory as your own fingers and
-fingernails."
-
-[24] Etienne Dolet (1509-1546). Dolet belongs with the great
-scholar-printers Aldus Manutius and Robert Estienne, although he did
-not live long enough to compare with them in volume of work. His career
-of collision with the authority of the church, the state and other
-printers terminated when he was tortured, hanged and burned on his
-thirty-seventh birthday.
-
-[25] Christopher Plantin (1514-1589). Plantin, a Frenchman who migrated
-to Belgium, printed in many languages, using fonts by the best
-contemporary type-cutters; he undertook work for the King of Spain and
-the City of Antwerp, which honored him in death by burying him in its
-cathedral, with the inscription "... king of typography."
-
-[26] Robert Estienne (c. 1503-1559). In Robert Estienne, as in Aldus
-and Dolet, the scholar and printer combined to produce tools for
-humanism: dictionaries, lexicons, grammars, editions of the classics.
-On his death his son Henri Estienne, grandson of the first Henri,
-augmented the family tradition of scholarly publishing, though he never
-surpassed the books of his father and grandfather in typographical
-brilliance.
-
-[27] Louis Elzevir (1540-1617). About one hundred and thirty years
-after the invention of printing, Louis Elzevir became the first
-publisher in the modern sense; not primarily a scholar or craftsman,
-but a businessman who undertook the risk of production and distribution
-of quantities of books for a variety of readers throughout Europe.
-
-[28] Horace Walpole (1717-1797). Walpole is the great example of
-the gentleman-amateur in printing. His fame as a printer has been
-bolstered by his renown in other fields, especially in literature and
-architecture.
-
-[29] John Bell (1749-1831). Bell was a journalist and impresario in
-printing whose enterprises ranged from publishing fashion magazines
-to sets of Shakespeare. If he did not entirely realize the ambition
-announced when he started his foundry--"... I am not without hopes of
-raising my fame in this pursuit beyond the reach of competition in any
-country whatever"--the type which bears his name remains today his best
-memorial.
-
-[30] Firmin Didot (1764-1836). The Didot family illustrates again that
-printing ink seems to linger in the blood longer in France than in
-other countries; of the Didots, Firmin stands out as a man who loved
-his profession and constantly looked beyond it.
-
-[31] William Morris (1834-1896). William Morris was a man who looked
-backward in the crafts and forward in human relations, yet had a full
-life in the world of his own time. As a printer he had great influence,
-not all good.
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]ANNE LYON HAIGHT[Illustration]
-
-               _Are Women the Natural Enemies of Books?_
-
- From _Bookmaking on the Distaff Side_ by Anne Lyon Haight. Copyright
-          1937 by the author and reprinted by her permission.
-
-
-In my search for knowledge about lady bibliophiles I climbed the
-library ladder and among the books on collecting saw _The Library_, by
-Andrew Lang, London, 1881. Confident that I would find some charming
-and sympathetic essay on the subject, I took it down and turned to the
-index, but evidently I had forgotten Lang's prejudice, for to my horror
-the startling lines "Women the natural foes of books" met my eye.
-They were classed with the other enemies of books: damp, dust, dirt,
-book-worms, careless readers, borrowers, book stealers, book-ghouls,
-etc., so I hastily turned to the page and read: "Almost all women are
-the inveterate foes, not of novels, of course, nor peerages and popular
-volumes of history, but of books worthy of the name. It is true that
-Isabelle d'Este and Madame de Pompadour and Madame de Maintenon were
-collectors; and, doubtless, there are many other brilliant exceptions
-to a general rule. But broadly speaking, women detest the books which
-the collector desires and admires. First, they don't understand them;
-second, they are jealous of their mysterious charms; third, books cost
-money, and it really is a hard thing for a lady to see money expended
-on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper scored with crabbed
-characters. Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war against book-sellers'
-catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have had to practise the
-guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase across their own
-frontier. Thus many married men are reduced to collecting Elzivers,
-which go readily into the pocket, for you cannot smuggle a folio volume
-easily."
-
-Poor man, his experience with the fair sex must have been a very
-unfortunate one. Perhaps he had been disillusioned by reading of the
-sixteenth-century abbess of the convent of Rumsey in Hampshire, whom
-Dibdin tells about. She was bibulously rather than bibliographically
-inclined and bartered the books of the abbey for strong liquors and
-consequently was accused of immoderate drinking, especially in the
-nighttime when she invited the nuns to her chamber to participate in
-these excesses. But fortunately the women whom Lang describes in his
-diatribe are really the rare exception to the rule and only lack of
-space prevents my writing a folio volume about the many famous women
-collectors who have been friends not foes to books throughout the ages.
-
-It is true though that the female of our species has never been as
-susceptible to the malady of book madness as the male, possibly because
-she has not had the same opportunity. Unless a woman is economically
-independent there are many demands upon her allowance and consequently
-she must really want a book very much to buy it instead of a new hat or
-something else that is dear to her heart. She is not as apt to buy for
-speculation or because a book is one of the conventional collector's
-items, but is more independent and adventurous in following her
-personal taste, although the spirit of a true collector of books is the
-same whether it be possessed by man or woman.
-
-Strange to say, the first bibliophile on record is a woman. She was
-a Benedictine abbess named Hroswitha. She lived in the Nunnery of
-Gandersheim in Saxony in the tenth century. She not only read all
-the parchment rolls and great codices which came into her hands, but
-caused books to be written for her Convent, wrote plays in Latin and
-translated Terence. Hroswitha probably knew but little Greek, as
-certain monks of the period considered the language an invention of the
-devil. Her example was followed in the next century by the lovely and
-intelligent Countess Judith of Flanders, who, wherever she followed
-her warring English husband, caused the most exquisite illuminated
-manuscripts to be made. She continued her interests on the continent
-when she later married the Duke of Bavaria. Four of her manuscripts,
-magnificently bound, are now safely housed in the Pierpont Morgan
-Library where "though they are books worthy of the name" their beauty
-may be appreciated by women who are not even "the brilliant exception
-to the general rule" of collectors.
-
-The Golden Age of women bibliophiles in France from the fifteenth
-through the eighteenth centuries must have been a glorious time to have
-lived. The Queens, the Princesses, the Mistresses of the Kings and all
-the great ladies had their libraries. They were composed of beautifully
-illuminated breviaries, missals and manuscripts, and from the presses
-of the great printers of the day came romances, histories, plays and
-religious books, veritable works of art. These books and manuscripts
-were bound in gold and silver and jewels, embroidered velvet, and in
-some of the most beautiful leather bindings the world has ever seen.
-Briefly: Marguerite of Navarre was one of the famous scholars of her
-day and the author of a collection of love stories, _The Heptameron_.
-It is said of her "L'amour du livre, chez la fille de Catherine fut
-une véritable passion." Her books were bound by the famous Clovis and
-Nicolas Eve and were decorated with daisies. Madame de Pompadour was
-for many years an inspiring influence in art and letters, although she
-owned more plays, novels and other "productions légères" than serious
-works. She had a printing press at Versailles and also etched plates
-for illustrations and as gifts for her friends. La Countesse de Verrue
-was a discriminating collector, a patroness of all the arts and a
-fascinating woman. The Du Barry acquired 1,068 volumes. When she began
-to form her library she could scarcely read or write. However, with
-practise, she soon learned to read well, but like many of us never to
-spell. Anne of Austria was fortunate in having her friend Mazarin, a
-kindred spirit in bibliomania, to advise her. Marie Antoinette had two
-libraries. She kept her particular books in her boudoir in the Trianon
-and the titles in the catalogue are very entertaining. Mary Stuart had
-a catholic taste in literature and her books were exceptionally well
-chosen. In deference to the loss of her first husband some were bound
-in black with black edges. It is comforting to know that when she left
-France as a young widow to return to her native Scotland where so much
-tragedy awaited her "qu'elle avait pour les livres un goût profond, et
-ils etaient pour ainsi dire sa seule consolation loin de ce beau Pays
-de France." In England, one of the most fortunate of the many ladies
-who appreciated literature was Queen Elizabeth, for she lived in an age
-when masterpieces were being written, many of them dedicated to her and
-many inspired by her. When she was young she embroidered velvets in
-gold and silver threads to bind her treasures. Among the manuscripts
-in the Bodleian Library are the _Epistles of St. Paul_, etc., which
-was Elizabeth's own book. She has written at the beginning "I walke
-many times into the pleasant fields of the Holy Scriptures, where I
-plucke up the goodlie-some herbes of sentences by pruning: chaw them
-by musing: and laie them up at length in the hie seate of memorie by
-gathering them together: that so having tasted their sweetness I may
-the less perceave the bitterness of this miserable life."
-
-One of the most touching and beautiful tributes ever written to a
-woman is Sir Philip Sidney's dedication of his _Arcadia_ to his "deare
-ladie and sister," the Countess of Pembroke, to whom he wrote in part:
-"you desired me to do it, and your desire, to my hart is an absolute
-commandment. Now it is done onely for you, onely to you." She was his
-great inspiration and helped him in the editing of the book.
-
-Where there's a will there's a way and women seem able to smuggle
-folios as well as duodecimos into the library. Catherine de Médici, for
-instance, had such a passion for books that she got them by fair means
-or foul. She longed for the library of her cousin Marshal Strozzi and
-as soon as he died appropriated it for her own. Catherine neglected to
-pay for it and owed the book-sellers as well, so after her death when
-her books were about to be seized by her creditors, De Thou raised
-the money to pay for them and they were saved for the state. The
-fascinating and glamorous Diane de Poitiers was a practical business
-executive as well as a bibliophile, for it was she who supposedly
-advised Henry II to pass an ordinance requiring publishers to present
-a copy of each book they published to the royal libraries at Blois and
-Fontainebleau, thereby increasing these collections by more than seven
-hundred volumes. Thus the present-day copyright law was initiated by
-a woman. Catherine of Russia was also courageous in her methods of
-gratifying her literary tastes. She partitioned Poland in 1772 and
-seized enough books to form the foundation of the Imperial Library
-at the Hermitage. She used to ask the Ambassadors, particularly the
-Ambassador from England, to get foreign books for her and if she did
-not have the money to pay for them at the time she conveniently forgot
-about it.
-
-In later days there were women in the young colony in America who
-enjoyed their books in the midst of their primitive surroundings. In
-1643 in Emans, New York, the inventory of the Widow Bronck included
-Danish books. Mrs. Willoughby of Virginia left over one hundred volumes
-at her death in 1673, and in 1700 Elizabeth Tatham of New Jersey
-left five hundred and fifty-two volumes, while their New England
-contemporary, Hannah Sutton, acquired a library of about seventeen
-hundred volumes.
-
-In the early nineteenth century Miss Richardson Currer of Eshton Hall,
-Craven, Yorkshire, amassed a large and scholarly collection of books on
-many subjects. It was housed in a great room with a gallery which must
-have been the envy of all book-lovers. She was the fond possessor of
-the rare _Book of St. Albans_, written and compiled by Juliana Berners,
-prioress of the nunnery of Sopwith in Hertfordshire. It is said that
-the ardent book collector Richard Heber, being unable to secure the
-book in any other way, ardently proposed marriage to Miss Currer. She
-was firm in her refusal however, preferring to keep this first book
-about sport to be written by a woman to herself.
-
-One of the most learned lady bibliophiles of this century in America
-was Miss Amy Lowell of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her books and
-manuscripts, including her collection of Keats, are being preserved for
-posterity in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial at Harvard. She always
-enjoyed smoking a good cigar while writing or carrying on her sparkling
-conversations, as she thought it made her thoughts flow more easily.
-
-One could not write of women in connection with books without speaking
-of two distinguished custodians of famous libraries, scholars, who are
-as well known abroad as in America: [the late] Miss Belle Da Costa
-Greene, the brilliant Director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and
-Miss Ruth Sheppard Granniss, former Librarian of the Grolier Club
-and sympathetic friend of all bibliophiles, male or female. They, of
-course, come under Lang's category of exceptional examples.
-
-But what of the many other exceptions? Would Lang have thought that
-Miss Lowell could not understand books? Or that Diane de Poitiers could
-be jealous of their mysterious charms? Or that Catherine of Russia
-would hesitate to spend what money she could procure to satisfy her
-passion for them? What could his lady friends have been like to be
-classed with the enemies of books--and such enemies at that?
-
-It would appear that book collecting is a truly feminine pastime,
-containing many elements which appeal to their sex; romance,
-intellectual curiosity, love of the beautiful and the quest of
-something difficult to obtain. But feminine collectors should beware
-of pitfalls, for sometimes this mania arouses the baser instincts such
-as envy, extravagance and self-indulgence. Wives have even been known
-to spend their marketing money on books instead of daily bread, and
-to waste hours reading book catalogues instead of attending to their
-housewifely duties. Book collecting, however, is a common denominator
-of all ages and a medium through which the minds of both sexes may meet
-with pleasure, and therefore greatly to be recommended as a delightful
-occupation.
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]BEATRICE WARDE[Illustration]
-
-                     PRINTING SHOULD BE INVISIBLE
-
-Copyright 1932 by The Marchbanks Press. Reprinted by permission of the
-                                author.
-
-
-Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your
-own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a
-deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One
-is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is
-of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and
-drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or
-not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about
-wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking
-the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost ten thousand dollars;
-but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine
-vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is
-calculated to _reveal_ rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it
-was meant to _contain_.
-
-Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will
-find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wineglass are parallel
-in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates finger-prints
-on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and
-the fiery heart of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages
-similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-page?
-Again: the glass is colorless or at the most only faintly tinged in the
-bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its color and is
-impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms
-in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in
-tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too
-small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted;
-you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting
-lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader
-subconsciously worried by the fear of "doubling" lines, reading three
-words as one, and so forth.
-
-Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold his
-wine was a "modernist" in the sense in which I am going to use that
-term. That is, the first thing he asked of this particular object was
-not "_How should it look?_" but "_What must it do?_" and to that extent
-all good typography is modernist.
-
-Wine is so strange and potent a thing that it has been used in the
-central ritual of religion in one place and time, and attacked by a
-virago with a hatchet in another. There is only one other thing in the
-world that is capable of stirring and altering men's minds to the same
-extent, and that is the coherent expression of thought. That is man's
-chief miracle, unique to man. There is no "explanation" whatever of the
-fact that I can make arbitrary sounds which will lead a total stranger
-to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be able to
-hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on paper with
-an unknown person half-way across the world. Talking, broadcasting,
-writing and printing are all quite literally forms of _thought
-transference_, and it is this ability and eagerness to transfer and
-receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for
-human civilization.
-
-If you agree with this, you will agree with my one main idea, _i.e._,
-that the most important thing about printing is that it conveys
-thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds. This statement is
-what you might call the front door of the science of typography. Within
-lie hundreds of rooms; but unless you start by assuming that _printing
-is meant to convey specific and coherent ideas_, it is very easy to
-find yourself in the wrong house altogether.
-
-Before asking what this statement leads to, let us see what it does
-not necessarily lead to. If books are printed in order to be read,
-we must distinguish readability from what the optician would call
-legibility. A page set in 14-point Bold Sans is, according to the
-laboratory tests, more "legible" than one set in 11-point Baskerville.
-A public speaker is more "audible" in that sense when he bellows.
-But a good speaking voice is one which is inaudible _as_ a voice.
-It is the transparent goblet again! I need not warn you that if you
-begin listening to the inflections and speaking rhythms of a voice
-from a platform, you are falling asleep. When you listen to a song
-in a language you do not understand, part of your mind actually does
-fall asleep, leaving your quite separate aesthetic sensibilities to
-enjoy themselves unimpeded by your reasoning faculties. The fine arts
-do that; but that is not the purpose of printing. Type well used is
-invisible _as_ type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed
-vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.
-
-We may say, therefore, that printing may be delightful for many
-reasons, but that it is important, first and foremost, as a means of
-doing something. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed
-piece a work of art, especially fine art: because that would imply
-that its first purpose was to exist as an expression of beauty for its
-own sake and for the delectation of the senses. Calligraphy can almost
-be considered a fine art nowadays, because its primary economic and
-educational purpose has been taken away; but printing in English will
-not qualify as an art until the present English language no longer
-conveys ideas to future generations, and until printing itself hands
-its usefulness to some yet unimagined successor.
-
-There is no end to the maze of practices in typography, and this
-idea of printing as a conveyor is, at least in the minds of all the
-great typographers with whom I have had the privilege of talking,
-the one clue that can guide you through the maze. Without this
-essential humility of mind, I have seen ardent designers go more
-hopelessly wrong, make more ludicrous mistakes out of an excessive
-enthusiasm, than I could have thought possible. And with this clue,
-this purposiveness in the back of your mind, it is possible to do the
-most unheard-of things, and find that they justify you triumphantly.
-It is not a waste of time to go to the simple fundamentals and reason
-from them. In the flurry of your individual problems, I think you will
-not mind spending half an hour on one broad and simple set of ideas
-involving abstract principles.
-
-I once was talking to a man who designed a very pleasing advertising
-type which undoubtedly all of you have used. I said something
-about what artists think about a certain problem, and he replied
-with a beautiful gesture: "Ah, madame, we artists do not think--we
-_feel_!" That same day I quoted that remark to another designer of my
-acquaintance, and he, being less poetically inclined, murmured: "I'm
-not _feeling_ very well today, I _think_!" He was right, he did think;
-he was the thinking sort; and that is why he is not so good a painter,
-and to my mind ten times better as a typographer and type designer than
-the man who instinctively avoided anything as coherent as a reason.
-
-I always suspect the typographic enthusiast who takes a printed page
-from a book and frames it to hang on the wall, for I believe that
-in order to gratify a sensory delight, he has mutilated something
-infinitely more important. I remember that T. M. Cleland, the famous
-American typographer, once showed me a very beautiful layout for a
-Cadillac booklet involving decorations in color. He did not have the
-actual text to work with in drawing up his specimen pages, so he had
-set the lines in Latin. This was not only for the reason that you will
-all think of, if you have seen the old typefoundries' famous _Quousque
-Tandem_ copy [_i. e._, that Latin has few descenders and thus gives a
-remarkably even line]. No, he told me that originally he had set up
-the dullest "wording" that he could find [I dare say it was from the
-_Congressional Record_], and yet he discovered that the man to whom
-he submitted it would start reading and making comments on the text.
-I made some remark on the mentality of Boards of Directors, but Mr.
-Cleland said "No: you're wrong; if the reader had not been practically
-forced to read--if he had not seen those words suddenly imbued with
-glamor and significance--then the layout would have been a failure.
-Setting it in Italian or Latin is only an easy way of saying 'This is
-not the text as it will appear.'"
-
-Let me start my specific conclusions with book typography, because that
-contains all the fundamentals, and then go on to a few points about
-advertising.
-
-The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between the
-reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author's words.
-He may put up a stained glass window of marvellous beauty, but a
-failure as a window; that is, he may use some rich superb type like
-text gothic that is something to be looked at, not _through_. Or he
-may work in what I call transparent or invisible typography. I have a
-book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever as far
-as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three
-Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of
-Paris. The third type of window is one in which the glass is broken
-into relatively small leaded panes; and this corresponds to what is
-called "fine printing" today, in that you are at least conscious that
-there is a window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it. That
-is not objectionable, because of a very important fact which has to do
-with the psychology of the subconscious mind. This is the fact that the
-mental eye focusses _through_ type and not _upon_ it. The type which,
-through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of "color," gets
-in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is a bad type. Our
-subconsciousness is always afraid of blunders [which illogical setting,
-tight spacing and too-wide unleaded lines can trick us into], of
-boredom, and of officiousness. The running headline that keeps shouting
-at us, the line that looks like one long word, the capitals jammed
-together without hairspaces--these mean subconscious squinting and loss
-of mental focus.
-
-And if what I have said is true of book printing, even of the
-most exquisite limited editions, it is fifty times more obvious in
-advertising, where the one and only justification for the purchase of
-space is that you are conveying a message--that you are implanting a
-desire, straight into the mind of the reader. It is tragically easy to
-throw away half the reader-interest of an advertisement by setting the
-simple and compelling argument in a face which is uncomfortably alien
-to the classic reasonableness of the book-face. Get attention as you
-will by your headline, and make any pretty type pictures you like if
-you are sure that the copy is useless as a means of selling goods; but
-if you are happy enough to have really good copy to work with, I beg
-you to remember that thousands of people pay down hard-earned money for
-the privilege of reading quietly-set book-pages, and that only your
-wildest ingenuity can stop people from reading a really interesting
-text.
-
-Of course every one of you realizes that whatever interesting effects
-you can produce with displayed advertising, Direct Mail is your
-paradise. It is here that you approach the august precincts of the
-designer of books; here you can deal in the fascinating questions
-of paper, ink, presswork, and all those minute and thrilling
-technicalities by which the craftsman proves his worth. You also have
-the satisfaction of knowing that the better and more mannerly Direct
-Mail advertising looks, the more solid returns it will bring in.
-
-To sum up: printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which
-many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and
-maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the
-transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline.
-When you realize that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be
-able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at
-something else. The "stunt typographer" learns the fickleness of rich
-men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and
-kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair spaces. Nobody
-[save the other craftsmen] will appreciate half your skill. But you may
-spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline
-goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.
-
-
-                        COMPOSED IN BEMBO TYPES
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]PORTER GARNETT[Illustration]
-
-                           _The Ideal Book_
-
- Copyright 1931 by The Limited Editions Club. Reprinted by permission
-                           of the publisher.
-
-
-In adopting a prescribed title for this paper, I must begin by
-registering my dissent to its validity. There is no such thing nor
-can there be such a thing as "the ideal book." No single book, no
-particular style of book can be said to represent in itself an ideal
-below which all other books and other styles which differ from it fall.
-A certain book may be ideal for its purpose, but books can no more
-conform to a fixed ideal than can churches, cocktail-shakers, or hats.
-The best that one can do is to attempt to enumerate and codify those
-elements of good book-making that enter into what may be called the
-"fine" book.
-
-It is difficult to declare oneself an advocate or exponent of fine
-printing or fine book-design without being misunderstood. Such a
-declaration, however, is not to arrogate superiority. It merely means
-that one believes in certain principles of craftsmanship and in
-upholding certain standards based upon a scrupulous and uncompromising
-observance of refinements and minutiæ. It is a mistake to assume that
-the word "fine," as applied to printing and to books, is a comparative
-term meaning a grade or measure of merit. Consider for a moment its
-true meaning: delicate, studied, subtly calculated. It represents not
-a grade of excellence, but a _quality_, a quality distinguishing those
-books and pieces of printing which the term properly describes from
-other books or pieces of printing. It may be allowed, however, that
-fineness is itself a comparable term; that there are, in other words,
-degrees of fineness. Thus a book may be fine without being of the first
-order of fineness. But if we are to seek for a standard of excellence
-equivalent to what is implied by the word "ideal," it should be obvious
-that only fineness of the first order can be considered. A fine book
-of the first order is the end-result of a sedulous effort on the part
-of designer, printer, and binder to bring to their artifact every care
-for physical and technical details, every revision in the interest of
-betterment, of which they are capable, to the end that the finished
-product shall represent the capacity of each for the fulfilment of his
-artistic wish, his desire for perfection. To slacken this effort, to
-compromise wittingly (or wilfully), to surrender to expediency, is to
-repudiate fineness of the first order.
-
-It is this concern for perfection that Mr. Stanley Morison means when
-he says "The fine printer begins where the careful printer has left
-off." It is this concern with perfection that Conrad celebrated when he
-wrote:
-
-"Now the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive, the
-redeeming and ideal aspect of this bread-winning, is the attainment
-of the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsman. Such
-skill, the skill of technique, is more than honesty; it is something
-wider, embracing honesty and grace and rule in an elevated and clear
-sentiment, not altogether utilitarian, which may be called the honor of
-labor. It is made up of accumulated tradition, kept alive by individual
-pride, rendered exact by professional opinion, and, like the higher
-arts, it is spurred on and sustained by discriminating praise. This
-is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with
-attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of
-vital concern. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached
-naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond--a
-higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond
-mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish
-which is almost art, which _is_ art."
-
-In dealing with the constituents of the fine book I intend no
-disparagement of seemly, modest, and honestly-made books to which the
-term "fine" is not strictly applicable. Even the humblest volume,
-_ad pauperum commoditatum_, may be, by virtue of its suitability to
-purpose and its seemliness, wholly admirable. As for the better class
-of trade books, the productions of university and great commercial
-presses, they often display qualities of design and workmanship of a
-high order. Though not of the first order of fineness, they represent,
-with gratifying frequency, what Conrad called "efficiency of a
-practically flawless kind." That the best of them belong, however, to
-a lower stratum than the truly fine book may be, I think, quite easily
-demonstrated. One does not have to consider the work of the Doves Press
-or the Bremer Presse or the finer examples of French printing of the
-sixteenth or eighteenth century the _ne plus ultra_ of book-making
-in order to recognize in them a quality (mark the word) which the
-trade edition, however charming, never does and never can attain. By
-reason of this quality--the quality of fineness--they are _different_
-from trade books, whether or not they are _superior_ must remain for
-each of us a question of personal values. Since that is true, let us
-now--having cleared the ground and removed perhaps the possibility of
-a misapprehension with regard to the title of this paper--consider the
-values and the physical constituents of the fine book.
-
-These constituents fall into three divisions: first, _Dimensional_
-(size and proportions); second, _Tectonic_ (plan and construction); and
-third, _Visual_ (appearance).
-
-It would be absurd to contend that, ideally, a book should be of a
-certain size. Very large books are, of course, awkward to handle and
-are unsuitable, let us say, for reading in bed or in a railway train.
-But it does not follow that, because our habits of life differ so
-radically from those of the more leisurely and contemplative past, the
-tall volume is no longer justified. The large book is not an impediment
-to meditative reading and, although the "handy volume" will, in most
-circumstances, serve every purpose, there are those who, undeluded
-by pragmatism and undebased by false ideas of efficiency, may still,
-in the seclusion of study or library, find pleasure in the leisurely
-perusal of, let us say, _The Golden Legend_, in folio, nobly enthroned
-upon its lectern. Again, there is nothing incongruous or unpractical
-about the scholar (perhaps I should say, "research-worker") making use
-of a huge volume, spread before him on a library table. Large volumes
-are, moreover, frequently justified by the fact that illustrative
-plates of a large size are often desirable or essential. Who will deny
-that reproductions of Egyptian papyri, of eighteenth century engraved
-portraits, of Oriental carpets, in fact, of almost all works of art
-other than such small objects as miniatures or jewelry, would be better
-in folio than in octavo or duodecimo? It can be said, I think, that
-the very large book should be unconditionally condemned only when its
-size defeats the purpose to which, by reason of its content, it would
-normally be put. Stateliness of form imparts dignity. It may be argued,
-therefore, that a great work on engraved gems, imposing in size, with
-plates, each showing many specimens, comports better with the character
-of its subject matter quite aside from any advantage it offers for
-comparative study, than would the same work printed as a book one
-might slip in one's pocket. Stateliness of form implies stateliness of
-content, and vice versa. Let a book be, for a generation, of such good
-report that it may be said to have become a classic, and a large-paper
-edition is justified. Let those who must cavil do so. If they cannot
-rise above the utilitarian ideal, they can easily obtain the work in a
-small format and be happy.
-
-It may not be out of order to say at this point that, while a
-considerable range in the size of books is not only permissible
-but desirable, there are limits at both ends of the scale where
-practicability ceases to exist and we pass into the realm of
-curiosities and _tours de force_. Thus the miniature book, for all
-its charm, lies outside the confines of normal book-design. As to the
-maximum size that may be legitimately allowed for a book, it should
-never, I think, exceed the normal folio height (defined approximately
-by the larger moulds employed for manufacturing hand-made paper) while
-its bulk and weight should not preclude the possibility of holding it
-by the spine with one hand while turning the leaves with the other,
-when such a method of referring to its contents may be necessary. And
-now a final word as to dimensions. Large or small, the most perfect
-book will always be one of which the thickness bears a just and
-agreeable relation to its height and width. Small and slender books are
-delightful objects which no one could wish to abolish (one cannot say
-as much for the lamelliform folio, a veritable atrocity), but their
-inferiority to books of a meet thickness becomes apparent when, with
-(or, worse yet, without) their vertical, neck-twisting titles they are
-placed on a shelf.
-
-We must next turn our attention to those aspects of a book which
-have to do with its plan and construction and which we have called
-_tectonic_.
-
-In its physical character a book addresses itself to two of our
-senses, the sense of sight and the sense of touch. Because the tactile
-qualities of a book are relatively of less importance than its visual
-aspects, let us first deal with those elements which are, in part at
-least, evaluated through the sense of touch.
-
-Our first impression of a book is received from its exterior, its
-binding. Now the qualities to be looked for in the binding of a book
-are: (1) the character and quality of the material, (2) suitability,
-(3) soundness and charm of design, (4) agreeable color (a relative
-term), (5) workmanship, (6) pleasantness to the touch. Granting
-adequacy in all of these (and no book can pretend to fineness without
-such adequacy), there is still another _desideratum_ less easy to
-specify. It might be called (7) "the evidence of durability." A book
-when taken in the hand should have a feeling of compactness, almost of
-solidity. I do not mean by this that it should feel like a block of
-wood, but it should, when picked up, when opened, or when its hinges
-are tested, give the impression that leaves and cover are so firmly
-(and honestly) knit together that they constitute a unit, having in its
-"feel" the evidence (or the assurance) of durability.
-
-The next characteristic of a book to be noted through the sense of
-touch is the _texture_ of the paper. By "texture" several things are
-meant: a surface agreeable to the hand, the degree of crispness, an
-impression of toughness (again the evidence of durability), and the
-degree of flexibility. Ideally, the paper in a book should satisfy all
-these requirements and should possess as well certain qualities of
-character, style, and color, pleasing to the informed eye. These will
-be dealt with in their proper place. The paper should be flexible,
-without the flimsiness characteristic of papers weak in substance. It
-should bend readily when the leaves are turned and should flow smoothly
-through the hand when all the leaves are bent at once. Stiffness in
-the leaves of a book (an all too common defect) is not, it should be
-observed, always the fault of the paper. It is often due to the choice
-of a paper too heavy for the size of the leaf. The same paper in a
-larger leaf might have the desired flexibility.
-
-The final tactile test of a fine book (applicable, alas, to very few
-books indeed) resides in the character of the impression of the type
-on the paper. In the best printing, the surface of the page, if rubbed
-with the palm of the hand, shows a slight and pleasant roughness due to
-the sinking of the type into the paper. Such printing is rare in modern
-books because it is difficult of attainment with machines designed for
-quantity production. To attain the effect described the paper should be
-dampened before printing, and an ink employed that is adaptable only
-to the hand press. Dry paper, particularly when heavily sized, resists
-a deep impression. It can be _heavily_ impressed, but there is not the
-same difference between the impressed and unimpressed portions, due
-to the impaction of the substance caused by the pressure of the type,
-which results when dampened paper is used. In the latter instance, the
-depth of impression is _within_ the sheet, not an embossment on the
-reverse side. This incisiveness, without a corresponding relief on the
-back of the sheet, is shown when an impression without ink is made on a
-hand press with dampened paper and a hard packing.
-
-In printing on dry paper it is necessary, if adequate color is to be
-obtained, to use such a quantity of ink, of a consistency suitable
-to machine-press printing, that a really deep (not merely heavy)
-impression cannot be imparted to paper without "spreading," which
-slightly modifies the sharpness of the type. The machine printer must
-choose therefore between a surfacy quality with sharpness and a heavy
-(not necessarily deep) impression with a loss of sharpness, neither
-of which is ideal. There are some that will question the truth of
-this statement, calling attention to specimens of machine printing
-on dry paper in which the ink has been driven into the sheet and
-perfect sharpness maintained. It may be said, however, in support of
-our contention, that, under the test of hand and eye, this perfectly
-printed dry sheet will be found, in the last analysis, to lack, in
-comparison with a sheet perfectly printed by hand on dampened paper, a
-certain almost-indefinable something that can perhaps be best described
-as a _living_ quality. This ultimate grace arises, I think, from the
-fact that in competent hand-press printing the third dimension is
-not merely suggested but actual; we have, in other words, not merely
-sharpness but crispness; the effect attained is sculptural. No printing
-that is lifeless, or to which such terms as "slick" and "dry" may be
-appropriately applied can be called fine printing.
-
-Turning now from the tactile to the visual elements of the fine book,
-we shall consider, first of all, that fundamental factor of all books,
-the text-page, upon the form or "layout" of which all other typographic
-elements must, to a large extent, depend. The text-page is of primary
-importance because by its rightness or wrongness a book must stand or
-fall.
-
-The elements of the text-page that call for consideration may be
-grouped under three heads: first, _Form_ (the proportions--width to
-height--of the type-page and the balance of the rectangle of type with
-the rectangle of paper); second, _Space_ (the ratio between the areas
-of the type-page and the paper-page); third, _Tone_ (the tonal value
-of the type mass and the relation between its tone and the white area
-of the margins). In the perfect text-page all these elements may be
-observed in nice adjustment, severally and mutually.
-
-There are those who contend that a proper relation of margins to
-type-page may be arrived at by employing ratios identical with those
-to be found in the well-proportioned pages of the early printers.
-Others declare that correct margins can be created by the application
-of an arithmetical or a geometrical formula. It can be admitted that
-such procedures are, at least, _safe_; that is to say, the danger of
-malproportioned margins will be avoided. But neither the method nor the
-result can be ideal for the simple reason that, while providing for the
-factors of form and space, they fail to provide for the factor of tone.
-It should be obvious that a rectangle of black type, with no space
-(leading) between lines, and a rectangle of the same shape and size
-printed from light-face type and generously leaded call for different
-margining.
-
-All of this may seem to be supervacaneous, but the stubborn fact
-remains that no one of the factors set forth above can be ignored. It
-is perfectly true that the accomplished book designer will compass the
-desired end through a sagacious application of his knowledge and taste,
-but we are concerned here with presenting the elements of the ideal
-book and it is therefore essential that _all_ the elements, no matter
-how much the initiated may take some of them for granted, should be,
-for the benefit of the layman, categorically enumerated.
-
-It is necessary at this point to allude to the dictum--voiced in high
-places as well as in low--that a book is primarily something to be
-read; that every factor which does not contribute to that end is an
-impertinence. The worthy champions of this faith would be on firmer
-ground if they heaped their condemnation upon such adjuncts of a book
-as actually _lessen_ its readability. M. Paul Valéry has disposed of
-the matter so effectively from the aesthetic point of view in his
-essay, _Les deux vertus d'un livre_, that nothing remains to be said
-on that side of the question. But there are other objections to be
-raised to this _ipse dixit_ of the mechanists. Their contention that
-what we all grant is at once the basic and paramount function of a
-book, its readability, is its only function would, if carried to its
-logical conclusion, lead to a doctrine in book design equivalent to
-what is known in present-day architecture as "functionalism." Since
-functionalism or, as it is sometimes called, the "machine and function"
-principle, demands that the design of a building must grow out of and
-be restricted by its predetermined use or purpose, it should follow
-that, if the sole purpose of a book is that it be something to read,
-there is no reason, based upon utility, for not using the whole area of
-the paper-page, with margins of no more, let us say, than a quarter of
-an inch or so. The uncomely, marginless illustrations of certain recent
-books represent an application of this principle. If the protagonists
-of the utilitarian ideal admit that margins are other than a waste
-of usable space, they make a concession to the aesthetic conception
-of a book, for the determination of margins, the _mise en page_,
-is primarily an element of design. It will be argued no doubt, in
-contravention of this statement, that margins make for ease of reading
-(utility), but that this is an untenable defensive assumption should be
-proved by the perfect readability of newspaper columns separated only
-by a light rule, or by the two-column book or magazine page with only a
-pica of white between the columns. Since it cannot be denied that the
-margins of a book, if well proportioned, promote pleasure, an aesthetic
-function, the true functionalist should, to be consistent, insist upon
-doing away with them.
-
-We may turn now from that major fundamental of the fine book--a
-text-page of perfect seemliness--to a consideration of other elements.
-But before doing so, it may be proper to explain what some of my
-readers may deem an omission. I have said nothing about the choice
-of type. It is axiomatic that good letter is a prime essential of
-the good book. There are only two kinds of type, good and bad. Good
-types, whether based upon classical models or the quasi-original forms
-of contemporary type-designers, are sufficiently numerous to make
-a suitable selection, provided the printer knows anything whatever
-about the subject, quite simple. It should be pointed out, however,
-that, other things being equal, type cast from matrices struck from
-hand-cut punches is superior to machine-cut type. This superiority is
-a matter of real importance, chiefly in printing by means of the hand
-press. Only in such printing is the difference between the hand-cut and
-machine-cut letter fully apparent.
-
-No type is good if some of the characters are marked by eccentricity.
-Unorthodox peculiarities in the forms of certain letters sometimes lend
-charm to a type-face, but there is a difference between a peculiarity
-of shape thoughtfully and discreetly arrived at and freakish variations
-which do not justify themselves and bespeak only a stupid desire for
-novelty at any cost.
-
-Given the seemly text-page as the prime requisite of the fine book, our
-next consideration should be what may be called _integration of the
-parts_. Here we must again think in terms of architecture, with which
-art book-design has so much in common. Let the parts of a book be few
-or many, simple or complex, it is of the first importance that they be,
-one to the other and each to all, harmoniously correlated.
-
-In the simple undecorated and unillustrated book it is not only
-desirable that sunken pages, if any (the first pages of chapters or
-sections, for example), should show an equal sinkage. But all isolated
-typographic elements, such as half-titles, elements of the title page,
-copyright notice, dedication, headings of preliminary and supplementary
-matter, etc., should fall on levels which, though not necessarily
-identical, bear a mensural, not an arbitrary, relation one to the other
-and to the structure of the book as a whole. This requires, perhaps,
-some elucidation. Suppose we give the first pages of our chapters a
-uniform sinkage. These pages, let us say, establish three levels for
-us--(1) the chapter heading, (2) chapter title, and (3) the first line
-of text. If we adopt the same sinkage for Contents, Illustrations,
-Appendices, and Index, putting the headings of this group on the same
-level as the chapter headings (LEVEL 1), the first text lines of this
-group should be on the same level as the chapter titles (LEVEL 2), or
-on the level of the first text lines of the chapters (LEVEL 3). If, on
-the other hand, we adopt a different sinkage (smaller) for the second
-group, we may still relate it mensurally to the first group by placing
-the first text lines of Group 2 on the same level as the chapter
-headings of Group 1. Suppose further that we place our half-titles
-on one of the three or four levels that have been established. We
-still have to deal with a copyright notice, perhaps a limit notice, a
-bibliographical note, and a dedication. It is not essential that all of
-these should fall on the same level, but it _is_ essential that each
-be _related to some one of the established levels_. Finally, it is
-desirable that such major elements of the title page as a subtitle or
-the author's name should be placed on one of the established levels.
-
-An observance of this principle makes for homogeneity of design. In
-reading a book so put together we are spared (without knowing that we
-are spared) the disturbance of our sense of balance which results,
-almost without our knowing it, when our eyes fall upon a page some
-part of which is not "tied in" architecturally with the rest of the
-book. The effect is similar to that of a many-paneled room with an
-impost cornice at a certain height in all the panels except two or
-three where it is either higher or lower. We have, in one case, faulty
-architecture; in the other, faulty book-making. In judging a book or a
-building, it should be borne in mind that, however charming its parts,
-it must be regarded as a whole. If our contemplation of it is to be
-attended with pleasure and comfort, its parts must be so disposed, so
-correlated, that they will not produce a "jumpy" effect.
-
-It is not contended that every book in which this refinement of
-perfectly integrated parts has been ignored should be considered a
-failure because it is less than perfect. If that were true, few books
-would pass the test. It would indeed be hypercritical to insist that
-a failure to observe this principle actually spoils an otherwise
-well-made book. It is desirable, however, that the principle should be
-observed _as far as the material will permit_. It must be recognized,
-also, that sometimes the elements are so diverse--chapter headings or
-the internal titles of essays, short stories or poems--that a strict
-adherence to the principle becomes impossible. In such instances, the
-designer's task is still to strive for order and integration. Perfect
-order, symmetry, and balance may be unattainable, but this does not
-justify him in being haphazard. When order is observed we may not be
-conscious of it; when it is not observed we are aware of its absence.
-Movement is of the highest importance as a factor of design--such
-movement, for example, as is imparted to a book by this very diversity
-of its elements--but good design demands movement that is ordered,
-not arbitrary. If liberties are taken (and it is desirable, in the
-interest of vitality and charm, that they should be taken) they must
-justify themselves aesthetically; they should not only please us in
-themselves but as evidence of the designer's intelligence, his insight,
-subtlety, sensitiveness, discrimination, and tact. However diverse
-the elements or parts of a book may be, however they may, by reason
-of such diversity, render perfect order and balance impossible, their
-arrangement should at least possess a _rationale_.
-
-This need of a fundamental balance has its basis in its pleasure-giving
-value. I have adverted to the analogy between book-design and
-architecture, let me point now to an equally pertinent analogy with
-the structure of poetry. "Verse," says Poe, "originates in the human
-enjoyment of equality, fitness. To this enjoyment, also, all the moods
-of verse--rhythm, meter, stanza, rhyme, alliteration, the refrain, and
-other analogous effects--are to be referred." Specifically, the parts
-of a book--half-titles, headings, etc., etc.--should be, severally _and
-collectively_, related as are such structural elements in verse as
-recurrent rhythms, rhymes, and refrains.
-
-We must now consider the decorated or illustrated book. In the
-first place, it should be understood that no form of decoration or
-illustration is legitimate in the strictly fine book except such as
-are printed from wood or metal engraved by hand, preferably in relief
-which comports with type both in physical character and in the means
-by which the image is imparted to the paper. Process-engravings are
-disqualified not only because of the preponderant mechanical factor,
-but because mechanical engraving in relief cannot produce a line of the
-delicacy and purity obtained with the engraving tool. As a corollary to
-the principle of integration set forth above let us take first the type
-of decorated book to which most obviously it applies. A book carrying
-on various pages head-bands of varying depth and varying tone--deep,
-shallow, black and heavy, light and delicate--will produce a disturbing
-effect. Less obvious but hardly less disturbing is a succession of
-initial letters differing in size, in tone, or in position on the
-page. The book with initial letters strewn through the text, sometimes
-several on a single page, is a challenge to the designer. When thus
-arbitrarily employed it is important, in order that the initials shall
-not be obtrusive, that they be so selected as to size (in proportion
-to the page) and so integrated with the book as a whole that their
-"accidental" character is either disguised or lost and their recurrence
-actually contributes to the unity of the volume by virtue of their
-consistent accentual value.
-
-An arbitrary arrangement of tailpieces is likely to produce a "jumpy"
-effect. Since the spaces (at the ends of chapters or sections) within
-which tailpieces may be placed differ in area, such decorative elements
-cannot always fall on the same level. This irregularity can be
-compensated for in a measure by adjusting the size of the decoration to
-the area of the space it occupies. By what may seem to be a negation
-of the law of balance here insisted upon, such a variation is more
-productive of architectural harmony than tailpieces of uniform size
-would be if disposed in spaces of varying area.
-
-Returning for a moment to the undecorated book, it may be remarked in
-passing that verse, particularly a collection of short lyrics, does
-not lend itself to good book-design. It should be enough to point out
-that the disproportion between type mass and white paper caused by
-short measure and the frequently meager letter-press deprive books of
-verse of the book's basic structural factor, the rectangle of type. How
-decoration can be employed to overcome this deficiency is perfectly
-exemplified in the original edition of Dorat's _Les Baisers_.
-
-With the principles of balance and unity still in mind, it will hardly,
-I think, admit of contradiction that the scattering of odd-sized
-illustrations through the text is incompatible with both of these
-principles. Such illustrations, particularly those of irregular shape
-bounded on two or three sides by type, are as destructive of balance
-and unity as is poor fenestration in a building. It is not enough that
-something like a balance is effected on facing pages (an elementary
-principle in layout); the lack of a complete integration of the
-pictures with the book and the disturbance created by distorting the
-letter-press into odd shapes preclude the possibility of such a book
-being regarded as well-planned, much less ideal, however charming it
-may be in detail.
-
-We have seen, while considering the major aspects of book-design, in
-what wise paper must be judged with regard to those first or immediate
-impressions gained from seeing and feeling it. I must now carry the
-consideration of paper a little farther. Since style and character
-are essential qualities of the fine book, we must insist upon these
-qualities in every element of its substance. Now style and character at
-their utmost are peculiar (for reasons that have to do with the methods
-of manufacture) to hand-made paper only, laid or wove, and, it may be
-further insisted, to only the best hand-made paper. Desirable as wove
-paper is for certain purposes, it cannot be denied that it has less
-character than the laid sheet. It is also true that no feature of fine
-laid paper gives more character to a sheet than the so-called "antique"
-factor, a slight thickening of the pulp and greater opacity along the
-chain-lines. By an "improved" method of mould-making, introduced by
-Baskerville, this thickening was eliminated, but, whatever mechanical
-superiority its absence may represent, there can be no question but
-that it represents a loss of character. All book papers produced by
-machinery (particularly the laids in which the effect of laid lines
-is mechanically faked) are as much imitations of and substitutes for
-hand-made paper as machine-made lace is a substitute for hand-made
-lace, and the disparity in quality is as great. We speak of "imitation
-lace" and "real lace," meaning machine-made and hand-made; we might,
-with equal propriety, speak of "imitation paper" and "real paper."
-Ideally, then, the fine book, in the fullest and strictest sense of the
-term, can be printed on no other than paper that is hand-made and of
-the best quality.
-
-As to the color of paper for fine books, the whole question may be
-considerably clarified at once by the statement that everything
-suggestive of artificiality should be avoided. A paper that is chalky
-white or bluish white tells us at once that the rags which went
-into its manufacture were chemically (that is to say, artificially)
-bleached. A great many toned papers, described as "cream" or "india,"
-are artificially colored and show it. The most desirable tone for fine
-book paper is the "natural" tone of unbleached (and sorted as such)
-linen rags. Its slight creamish color is at once pleasant to the eye
-and holds the promise of that agreeable mellowness which comes, very
-slowly, with age. A number of very pleasant books have been printed
-in recent years on gray, blue, green, and brownish papers (the last
-usually a deliberate simulation of ancient paper), but, despite their
-charm, they are, I think, open to the charge of affectation, against
-which, if true, there is of course no defense. If not actually "arty,"
-they come perilously near to it.
-
-It has not been my purpose in this paper to lay down the rules for
-making a fine book, for, after all, rules are of no use whatever (in
-an art or in a craft) except to be broken--wisely. Neither has any
-attempt been made, since this is not a technical treatise, to outline
-the methods by which the results described may be produced. I have
-tried merely to set forth the various criteria by which fine books
-should be judged and the principles (quite different from rules) that
-underlie them. If the "specifications" seem over-exacting, if they
-are to be dismissed as _trop raffinés_, I must ask the caviler if
-that which purports to be "fine" can be "too refined"? Let those who
-wish to compromise (with popular taste, with outlay and returns, with
-honesty, with self-respect, or with machinery) do so, but unless the
-thing they produce represents, with eloquence and beauty, the full
-and unconditional employment of _every realizable aid to betterment,
-physical and technical_, it is something other than a fine book of
-the first order. We must discourage ourselves in order that we may be
-strong.
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]W. A. DWIGGINS[Illustration]
-
-   EXTRACTS FROM _AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF
-BOOKS_ AS THEY ARE AT PRESENT PUBLISHED UNDERTAKEN BY THE SOCIETY OF
-                         CALLIGRAPHERS, 1919
-
-   Copyright 1919 by L. B. Siegfried. Reprinted by permission of the
-                                author.
-
-
- NOTE: _The accompanying extracts from the Transactions of the Society
- of Calligraphers are published with the approval of the Society.
- They form a part of the exhaustive and unbiased Report returned by
- the Committee in charge of the Investigation, which Report will be
- presented in its entirety in the Annual Bulletin. The report is of so
- surprising a nature that it was deemed unwise to withhold all notice
- of the findings until the annual publication. The Society, therefore,
- has the honour to present certain portions of the Inquiry together
- with an abstract of the Committee's recommendations._
-
-                                     W. A. DWIGGINS, _Secretary_
-
-384A _Boylston Street, Boston_
-
-_December 1, 1919_
-
- _Editor's Note_: In commenting on the reception of the now famous
- _Investigation_, Watson Gordon pointed out (in _Mss. by WAD_, a
- collection of the writings of Dwiggins on various subjects, published
- by The Typophiles, New York, 1947) that it "received wide attention
- in publishing circles where some exceptions were taken to the
- findings. Certain publishers felt sure that some of those replying
- to the pertinent and impertinent questions of the investigator were
- members of their organizations who preferred to remain anonymous." The
- complete report, with its original note and illustration, as well as
- the sequel of twenty years later, follow.
-
-It may be said in introduction that the Society's Investigation into
-the Physical Properties of Books was undertaken by a special committee
-whose personnel insured that its consideration would be thorough and
-unbiased.
-
-The Committee began its labour by an examination of all books published
-in America since the year 1910. This examination forced upon the
-investigators the conclusion that "All Books of the present day are
-Badly Made." The conclusion was unanimous.
-
-Working out from this basic fact in an effort to arrive at the
-reasons underlying the evil, the Committee held numerous sittings in
-consultation with men concerned with various branches of printing and
-publishing. From these sittings there developed a mass of information
-of an unusual and stimulating character.
-
-The publishers have chosen from the Record of the examination a few
-examples, not because they are extraordinary but because they present
-typical points of view. They are transcribed verbatim. It will be
-obvious that in certain cases it has been no more than courteous to
-suppress the names of the persons assisting the investigation. For the
-sake of uniformity it has been deemed wise to follow this practice
-throughout.
-
-
-                               I. MR. B.
-
-Q: Mr. B----, will you please tell the committee why you printed this
-book on card-board?
-
-A: To make it the right thickness. It had to be one inch thick.
-
---Why that thick, particularly?
-
---Because otherwise it would not sell. If a book isn't one inch thick
-it won't sell.
-
---Do you mean to say that people who buy books select them with the
-help of a foot rule?
-
---They have to have some standard of selection.
-
---So that it is your practice to stretch out the text if it is too
-short by printing it on egg-box stock?
-
---Not my practice, particularly. All publishers do it. We are obliged
-to use this and other means to bring the book up to a proper thickness.
-You must remember that our prices are not based on the contents of a
-book but on its size.
-
-  [Illustration: A chart showing the percentage of excellence in the
-          physical properties of books published since 1910.]
-
---You mention other methods. Would you mind telling us what other
-method you use?
-
---We can expand the letter-press judiciously. We limit the matter to
-seven words on a page, say, and so get a greater number of pages. We
-can use large type and can lead considerably.
-
---But does not that practice hurt the appearance of the page? Make a
-poor-looking page?
-
---I am afraid I do not get your meaning.
-
---I mean to say, is not the page ugly and illegible when you expand
-the matter to that extent?
-
---You don't consider the look of a page in making a book. That is a
-thing that doesn't enter into the production of a book. If I understand
-you correctly, do you mean to say that it matters how a book looks?
-
---That was the thought in my mind.
-
---That's a new idea in book publishing!
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
---You were speaking of the pressure of industrial conditions since the
-war. Under these conditions what percentage of the traditions of the
-craft can you preserve, would you say?
-
---The traditions of what craft?
-
---The craft of printing, obviously. What I am trying to get at is
-this:--There are certain precise and matured standards of workmanship
-in the printing craft; these standards are the results of experiment
-through nearly five hundred years. How far are these standards
-effective under your present-day conditions?
-
---Those standards, so far as I know anything about them, are what you
-would call academic. In the first place, book-manufacturing is not
-a craft, it is a business. As for standards of workmanship--I can
-understand the term in connection with cabinet-making, for example, or
-tailoring, but I should not apply the expression to books. You do not
-talk about the "standards of workmanship" in making soap, do you?
-
---Then in your mind there does not linger any atmosphere of an art
-about the making of books?
-
---When you talk about "atmosphere" you have me out of my depth. There
-isn't any atmosphere of art lingering about making soap, is there?
-
---You would class soap-making with book-making?
-
---I can see no reason why not.
-
---May I ask you why you were selected by ---- Company to manage their
-manufacturing department?
-
---Really, I must say that you overstep the borders--
-
---Please do not misinterpret my question. It is really pertinent to the
-inquiry.
-
---It should certainly be obvious why a man is chosen for a given
-position. I am employed to earn a satisfactory return on the
-shareholders' investment. Is that the information you want?
-
---I think that is what we want. Would you then consider yourself as
-happily employed in making soap as in making books?
-
---Quite as well employed, if making soap paid the dividend.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
---While we are on this subject, may I ask you how you choose the
-artists who make your illustrations?
-
---My practice is to select an illustrator whose name is well known.
-
---Is that the only point you consider?
-
---I should say, yes. I am not aware of any other reason for spending
-money on this feature. It is always an uncertain detail and this way of
-making a choice puts the matter on a safe basis.
-
---It is sometimes assumed that the illustrations should have a
-sympathetic bearing on the story. Does not that consideration have some
-weight with you in choosing your artist?
-
---None, I should say. You see, the pictures are not really a necessary
-part of the book. They are a kind of frill that the public has got in
-the way of expecting, and we have to put them in. Illustrations as
-a rule stand us as a dead loss unless they are made by a well-known
-artist. Then, of course, they help sell the book.
-
-
-                             II. MR. McG.
-
-A: The gentlemen of the committee must remember that the
-book-publishing business is a gamble. Each new issue, particularly in
-the department of fiction, is a highly adventurous risk. Our percentage
-of blanks would astonish you if we dared to state it. But any book may
-turn out a best-seller. This hope keeps us going. It is absolutely a
-gamble, as I say. You can see that under these conditions we cannot
-spend very much money on non-essentials. We have to strip the books
-down to the barest necessities.
-
-Personally I should like to see the firm put out nothing that is not
-well designed and well printed. But as an agent of the firm I have to
-set aside my personal preferences. The directors are very much down on
-what they call art.
-
---Has the firm ever looked into the question of good workmanship as a
-possible aid to sales?
-
---Not under the present management. The founder looked at good work as
-more or less a marketing advantage.
-
---What do you think caused the present management to change from that
-opinion?
-
---They haven't changed. They never had it. They get at the matter from
-another angle altogether. Their policy is to reduce the production cost
-to the minimum. The minimum in theory would be reached when the public
-complained. The public hasn't complained, so you can't tell when to
-stop cheapening.
-
-You see the directors don't look at a book as a fabricated thing
-at all. Books are merely something to sell--merchandise. Our
-management--and all the rest of them, for that matter--come from the
-selling side of the business and do not have any pride in the product.
-Old Mr. ---- was a publisher because he liked books. That made an
-entirely different policy in the old firm, of course.
-
---To get back to the question of good workmanship helping sales:--Here
-are two books published abroad to be sold at 50 cents and 80 cents.
-They can very well be called works of art. Do you not think that these
-well designed paper covers would stand out among other books and invite
-customers to themselves?
-
---Undoubtedly they would.
-
---Have you ever tried the experiment of putting out editions in paper
-covers of attractive design?
-
---Never. It couldn't be done. People wouldn't buy them.
-
---But you said a moment ago--
-
---Moreover the difference of cost between cheap cloth sides and paper
-covers of the kind you have there is so slight that it wouldn't pay to
-try the experiment. People want stiff board covers. It doesn't much
-matter what is inside, but they insist on board covers.
-
---How do you arrive at that fact?
-
---Through our salesmen.
-
---And you say that paper covers have never been tried?
-
---Never. None of our travellers would go out on the road with a sample
-in paper covers.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
---A little while ago you said something about your salesmen helping
-you to an understanding of the public taste. I infer that you get
-considerable help from this source?
-
---Most valuable help indeed. We depend entirely on the reports the
-sales force turns in in these matters. The salesmen are in direct
-contact with the retailers and are naturally in a position to feel
-the public pulse, so to speak. Their help is invaluable. They can
-anticipate the demand very often.
-
-I had reference more particularly to the way books are made.
-
---Oh, on that point too. We never make a final decision on a cover
-design, for instance, without showing it to the salesmen. They very
-often make valuable suggestions as to changes of colour, etc. They run
-largely to red.
-
---It would seem, then, that the designing of the books is very much in
-the hands of the salesmen?
-
---Quite in their hands.
-
---Are the office-boys often called into consultation?
-
---Mr. ---- finds his stenographer a very great help in passing upon
-certain points--illustrations, etc.
-
---Does it appear to you that the sales department would be the one best
-qualified to pass on points of design?
-
---Well, there, you see--the books have to be sold--that is what we make
-them for--and the sales department is the one in closest touch with the
-people that buy the books--that knows just what they want.
-
---The standards of quality, then, are set by the people who buy the
-books?
-
---Oh, absolutely so. How else would you move the books? It is a
-merchandising proposition, you must remember.
-
---But do you not think that people would buy decently made books as
-willingly as poorly made books?
-
-At the same price, yes. No question about it. The book-buying public
-doesn't worry its head about the way books are made. It doesn't
-know anything about it. And well made books cost more. The trade is
-committed to a dollar-and-a-half article and can't risk going above it.
-
---Your opinion is that the price of a well made book would be so high
-as to prevent its sale?
-
---In the case of fiction, yes. The price has become almost a fixture.
-
---We shall have to go outside of fiction, then, to look for well made
-books?
-
---It amounts to that.
-
---You have said that certain unproductive factors prevent you from
-spending what you otherwise might on good workmanship. What specific
-factors would you mention?
-
---Plates--electros. We plate everything on the chance of its running
-into several printings. 80 per cent of the books are not reprinted. You
-can see that the money tied up in plates is a very considerable sum,
-and, as I say, 80 per cent of it is dead loss. We are obliged to take
-the chance, however.
-
---Has any remedy occurred to you?
-
---If stereotyping could be revived as an accurate process it might help
-us out. It would cost much less to make and to store paper matrices
-than to make electrotypes. The difficulty here is that no one knows how
-to make good stereotypes, and the stereotype plates at their best are
-more trouble to make ready. Trouble with the press-room, you see.
-
---Is it possible under good conditions to get satisfactory results from
-stereotype plates?
-
---Unquestionably. The books printed from this kind of plates in the
-first days of the invention are entirely satisfactory.
-
-
-                              III. MR. L.
-
-Q. Can a trade-edition book be well made and sell for $1.50?
-
---That depends on how high you set your standard.
-
---Well, let us not be too rigorous. Can it be made better, say, than
-this book?
-
---Beyond question. It will all depend upon whether or not the printer
-has a few lingering memories of the standards of printing.
-
---But should not the setting of standards come from the publisher?
-
---Oh yes, under ideal conditions. Both printer and publisher should
-have a hand in it.
-
---How would you make a book of fiction to be sold for $1.50?
-
---Well, such a book could have a good title-page as cheaply as a bad
-one--and the whole typographic scheme would cost no more if it were
-logically done instead of crudely strung together. By logically done I
-mean with well proportioned, practicable margins and legible headings,
-etc. The press-work on books is reasonably good but the "layout" or
-design is entirely neglected. It calls for a little planning, of
-course, but no more than should be available in any reputable plant. It
-isn't so much that these books are badly planned as it is that they are
-not planned at all.
-
---But most printing firms have a planning department, do they not?
-
---The planning in most presses is concerned with the handling of
-material, not with the _designing_ of material. This is no doubt due
-to the fact that the Taylor System has not yet got around to Aesthetic
-Efficiency.
-
---Are not the typographical unions concerned to train their men on
-these points of design that you mention?
-
---The unions have only one idea--and it is not concerned with the
-improvement of printing.
-
---Are there any trade schools that teach these things? Are not the
-employers' associations promoting schools to train men in the craft?
-
---The employers' associations have one idea--a little different from
-the idea of the unions, perhaps, but not concerned with the improvement
-of printing. There are trade schools but they teach only the mechanics
-of the craft.
-
---Apparently, then, there is no place in this country where one can
-learn how to design printing?
-
---You can safely say that there is no such place.
-
-
-                              IV. MR. A.
-
-Q: What is your own opinion on the subject of illustrations in books?
-
---In what particular do you mean?
-
---I mean, do you think that illustrations help or hinder the quality of
-a book?
-
---The question is too general to be answered easily. May I ask you to
-be more specific?
-
---For example, here is a "best-seller" with several--five or
-six--half-tone illustrations. Do you consider that these pictures make
-the book a more complete thing as a specimen of book-making?
-
---Most certainly not.
-
---Then would you say that illustrations in such books were a detraction?
-
---Illustrations such as these, yes. Though it would be hard to detract
-from this particular book.
-
---It is a standard book--a standard type of book.
-
---I fear that it is.
-
---What kind of illustrations would you favour?
-
---For many books, none at all. In these books of current fiction the
-pictures are either futile or else detrimental to the development of
-the plot. They give the game away, so to speak, when the author may
-wish to hold the story in suspense. The effort to avoid this disaster
-accounts for the multitude of undramatic pictures you see in books.
-
---Your theory of no pictures should appeal to the publishers but I
-doubt if the illustrators will stand with you.
-
---Illustration is a trade as well as an art.
-
---True. But we are trying to limit the inquiry to the artistic side at
-present. When, then, according to your deductions, would illustrations
-be called for?
-
---When they can make a stage-setting for the story. When they ornament
-it or suggest it, perhaps, instead of reveal it. Impressions and
-"atmosphere" instead of literal diagrams with a cross marking the spot
-where, etc.
-
---But perhaps people like the cross marking the spot where.
-
---We are limiting the discussion to the artistic side, are we not?
-
---What about the half-tone process of engraving?
-
---The process is a way of doing a thing that cannot be done cheaply by
-any other means.
-
---Do you consider it a process that adds to the artistic possibilities
-of book printing?
-
---You mean according to the standards that prevailed in the earlier
-days of the craft?
-
---I do. Yes.
-
---According to those standards it seems to me that half-tones
-will always have to be considered as necessities forced upon the
-book-printer. They demand a kind of paper that is never a satisfactory
-book-paper. In the case of the kind of books we are talking about
-the relief line methods have always given the most artistic results,
-because they are so closely related to the character of type.
-
-One regrets, however, to give up the chances for tonal designs that
-the half-tone process provides. Probably the designers and printers
-will work out a satisfactory relation between half-tones and type
-when the craze for photographic detail passes a little. As things
-stand, I should say that the best results are to be had with uncoated
-book-papers and with line plates. It is true books are rarely
-illustrated this way--current fiction, I mean--but the method might be
-used to produce a very attractive and unusual result.
-
---Then you would condemn the use of half-tones in this kind of book?
-
---If you mean the usual kind of half-tones printed separately and
-inserted, I do. But if you are making a book of travel, for example,
-the half-tones from photographs explain and justify themselves.
-
-But on this whole subject of book illustration it strikes me that if
-you are to make the design from the start you might as well make it
-in harmony with the kind of paper and printing you are planning to
-use, and get all the artistic advantage of fitting your means to your
-limitations.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Are you familiar with the Christy-Holbein Test?
-
---Yes. That is to say, I have heard of your applying it, and remember
-that the percentages were very much against Holbein.
-
---Ninety-three to seven, on an average. How do you explain such a
-crudity of taste in these groups of people otherwise well educated?
-
---By the deduction that they are not educated. That is to say that
-these people, cultivated in other ways, react precisely like savages
-when confronted with pictures or drawings. They "go for" the tinsel
-and glitter and are opaque to the higher and more civilized values.
-They get the most pleasure from drawings that they think they could
-make themselves. This is the basis of the Eight-year-old Formula widely
-applied in the department of newspaper comics: "Make your drawing so
-that it can be understood by a child eight years old."
-
-All of this is clearly lack of training, because their taste is good in
-other matters--music, for example, and house furnishings.
-
---You would deduce, then, that the periodical and book-publishing
-industry has failed to train the taste of its public in such matters?
-
---It has done worse: it has depraved that taste. Because there was,
-not very long ago, a fine tradition in this country in the line of
-illustration.
-
---Why should the publishers find any advantage in depraving the taste
-of the public--as you say they have done?
-
---Because they turned their backs on the standards of the publishing
-business and became merchandisers solely. They had to sell the goods
-and they had to "sell" a big new public. The quickest way to this
-public--through flash-and-crash tactics--they adopted. And naturally
-ran themselves and the public down hill.
-
---May there not be other sides to it, too? May it not be that the art
-schools are not now producing draughtsmen of a calibre to support the
-fine tradition you mention?
-
---That may have something to do with it. But even that is mixed
-up with the other. I think that the chief difficulty is with the
-publishers.
-
---And the public?
-
---The public will follow if the publishers lead.
-
-
-                               V. MR. S.
-
-A. Are you not making the mistake of keeping too close to the
-publishers? It seems to me that you will not get at all the facts
-behind the situation until you get in touch with the people we sell the
-books to. _They_ are the factors that bring about the conditions you
-object to. The publisher is merely a machine for selling the public
-what it wants.
-
---Then the publisher has no selective function?
-
---Absolutely none.
-
---How does the public bring about the condition we object to?
-
---Obviously by buying the books.
-
---I mean to say, how does the public prevail upon you to sell it trashy
-books instead of well made books?
-
---The public is entirely uneducated on the subject of books, in your
-sense. People know nothing at all about paper or printing or pictures
-or things of that sort. One book is as good as another to any educated
-man so long as he can read it. He doesn't know that there is any such
-thing as good printing or bad printing or good or bad taste in making
-books. Under these conditions we should be fools to spend money on
-features that do not have any bearing on sales. It's a simple business
-proposition.
-
---Would the public that you are discussing buy well made books as
-willingly as trashy books?
-
---Oh, absolutely. It's the books they are interested in--what they
-contain, not how they are made. They wouldn't know the difference.
-
-
-                              VI. MR. G.
-
-A: What's the use of talking about standards in connection with things
-like these? These are not books. They aren't fit to wad a gun with. I
-wouldn't have them in the house. Nobody pays any attention to stuff
-like that.
-
-There isn't what you would call a book on the table, except this one,
-perhaps. That's printed in England and sent over in sheets and bound
-on this side. But that one is set in a bastard Caslon. It isn't the
-original Caslon but a revision with the descenders cut off. See how
-he's got his O upside down!
-
-Those others--what's the use of talking about them at all? It reminds
-me of the story about the Chinaman--
-
---But, Mr. ----, do you not think it possible to get up this class of
-books in a manner that would suit you better?
-
---You can't hope to get anything like a decent book until you do away
-with the damnable cheap paper and the vile types. And then you will
-have to start in and teach the printer how to print. There aren't more
-than a half a dozen presses in the country that know how to print. Most
-printing looks like it had been done with apple-butter on a hay-press--
-
---What you say is unhappily true. What we are trying to find out are
-the causes of this state of things.
-
---The causes are everywhere--all through the rattletrap, cheap-jack,
-shoddy work that is being done in every kind of trade. Nobody cares for
-making decent things any more.
-
-The only cure is to get back to decent standards of workmanship in
-everything again. But the case seems to me to be hopeless. I try to do
-printing up to a decent standard--and that is about all any of us can
-do. I don't believe you can hope to do much good through your societies
-and investigations. I believe in each one doing his own job in the best
-way he knows how. That's the only way you can raise the standard. It's
-the work you turn out that counts.
-
-
-            AN ABSTRACT OF THE COMMITTEE'S RECOMMENDATIONS
-
-Two main questions resulting from the Inquiry present themselves to
-the Committee. The first question is: Is it within the power of the
-Society of Calligraphers, of any society, or of Society itself, to
-restore to the printing of books a standard of good work? The second
-and major question: Are books necessary to the present social state?
-
-I. When the Committee began its work it assumed as a matter of
-course that the established standards of printing would serve it as
-guide-posts and criteria. It expected to traverse a country where the
-highways were in need of repair, perhaps, and the marks of direction
-dim, but on the whole a negotiable country. It found a very different
-state of things.
-
-Instead of roads to be followed with some excusable discomfort it
-found not even trails. Such highways as had once been charted were
-obliterated. Not only hair-lines but the most elementary blazemarks
-were overgrown and lost beyond any hope of recovery. Instead of
-following the planned course of visit and consultation the Committee
-was forced to reorganize itself into an expedition of discovery. It has
-been fortunate to return at all.
-
-The collected data of the exploration can lead to but one conclusion:
-That the whole fabric of Standards of Workmanship will have to be
-rebuilt from the beginning. Whether this can be done under the present
-state of society is a matter to be discussed in connection with the
-second question.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-II. Are books necessary to the present social state? The Committee's
-finding is, unanimously and conclusively, No.
-
-During the past twenty years many influences have been at work to
-wean mankind from the use of books. Automobiles, the motion-picture
-drama, professional athletics, the _Saturday Evening Post_--these
-operated even before the Great War to discourage the habit of reading.
-Since the war the progress of society--culminating, in America, in
-the dictatorship of the proletariat--has effectually completed the
-process. Books as an element vital to the welfare of the race have been
-eliminated.
-
-The Society of Calligraphers is thus freed at one stroke from the
-obligations implied in the first question. But there are still books in
-existence, and for these the Committee feels a professional concern.
-For the Investigation, if it has done nothing else, has disclosed
-the most cogent and ineluctable fact: that wherever there is contact
-between books and the public, the effect upon the books is deleterious.
-
-So far as the immediate situation is concerned, the public, by
-discontinuing the contact, has obviated the danger. But in a period of
-revolution no condition can be taken for granted as fixed. It is quite
-within the range of possibility that the public, under compulsion, may
-turn again to books and reading; and this, the Committee believes, is a
-contingency the Society should be prepared to meet.
-
-Publishers as a group promise, for the immediate future, to be a
-harassed and unimpressionable body. Influence upon them can be
-brought to bear only through public demand. Should a public demand
-for books revive, it will be imperative for the Society either to
-quench it altogether--a project which the Committee has discarded
-as visionary--or to take it in hand at its inception and give it
-constructive shape by forcing upon public attention such knowledge of
-the more elementary points of good taste as shall make impossible the
-further prostitution of standards. As the most direct means to this end
-it is urgently recommended by the Committee that the Society take up at
-once the study of advertising.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]W. A. DWIGGINS[Illustration]
-
-  TWENTY YEARS AFTER: MR. McG., MR. A., MR. L. _and_ THE SOCIETY OF
-                             CALLIGRAPHERS
-
-   From _Publishers' Weekly_, Sept. 2, 1939. Copyright 1939 by R. R.
-         Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-
-NOTE: _In 1919 the Society of Calligraphers published a pamphlet_:
-Extracts From An Investigation Into the Physical Properties of Books.
-_In the summer of 1939, three of the people who reported in the
-investigation were visited again and their opinions solicited as
-to what had happened in the interval of twenty years to change the
-physical characteristics of books. Transcriptions of parts of the three
-interviews follow._
-
-
-                               MR. McG.
-
-Q: Twenty years ago you were kind enough to discuss book-manufacturing
-with us.
-
---Twenty years. Remarkable memory!
-
---It meant a great deal to us--your help. It was in 1919. We were
-conducting an inquiry--perhaps you remember--into the physical
-qualities of books.
-
---Oh, yes! How you could improve them, and so on. Yes.
-
---Now we are back again--to see what you think now.
-
---Good. Interesting idea. Ask me questions.
-
---For instance ... Does it strike you that trade books have improved in
-the twenty years?--as physical objects,--packages?
-
---Packages. Very neat. Sums up the situation.
-
---We mean, both as implements, tools, for getting a job done; and as
-pleasant things to look at, handle, use ... or the contrary.
-
---Well. Let's see. Yes. I think trade books have improved decidedly in
-twenty years. Decided improvement.
-
---What points of improvement, would you say?
-
---Well. More care taken with the get-up, margins, format as you call
-it, title pages. Real design coming into it. And much more careful
-about the type--legibility and all that--paper, suitability for
-reading, good surface for the eye, etc., etc.
-
---You said, twenty years ago, that your directors' lack of interest in
-the product hampered you. Since you have been in charge here have you
-been able to bring your books up to a level that suits you better?
-
---Yes ... and no.... Costs have climbed in twenty years, materials,
-labor. We've pushed up retail prices, but the manufacturing costs eat
-up all we gain. More than eat it up. Less margin now for design or
-style or whatever than twenty years ago, I'd say.
-
---That looks like faulty adjustment somewhere, doesn't it?
-
---Situation needs adjusting, certainly!
-
---I mean, maybe you are paying out money for quite unnecessary features.
-
---Possibly.
-
---Not a strictly _factual_ meeting of the conditions, perhaps?--not
-"realistic," as the dictators say. Have you ever thought how you might
-study the market-product relations from an entirely new and fresh angle?
-
---Now there! ... that's interesting ... I have. I've thought a lot
-about it. When I get off into the Maine woods and look back at it
-there's one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb. We've got into
-a rut. The whole trade has. Not a shadow of a doubt about it. We let
-ourselves be ruled by a whole catalog of standards and values and
-"musts" that are as dead as the dodo. Standards inherited from an
-entirely different state of society. A thousand years different, you
-might say. It is amazing how conservative a tribe we are, we book
-people.... Take the cover of a book, for example. Take this cover
-here, for instance. We spent a lot of trouble and money dickering
-it up--worry about the colors and the design--cost of dies, cost of
-stamping, cost of foil ... and not a soul will ever see it! It's all
-hidden away under the jacket, and it'll _stay_ hidden under the jacket!
-All this book-cover stuff is ... what's the word? ... vestigial--like
-your appendix--something no longer used--something useless left over
-from an earlier stage of evolution. Did you ever see anybody in a book
-store turn the jacket back and look at the cover? Did you ever hear
-of a cover that helped sell a book?--to the slightest extent? No. And
-when they get 'em home and read 'em and lend them to their friends the
-jacket stays on. Never comes off. Book-covers are just expense--useless
-expense--the decoration and things, I mean.
-
---You would do away with covers, then?
-
---No. It's got to be in boards--people want them that way--it's one of
-your "realistic" details.
-
---In your "new angle" volume would you have the insides as you do them
-now?
-
---No. There again I'd let the demand shape the product. Your market
-doesn't give a hang about the type and printing so long as they can
-read it.
-
---That sounds like twenty years ago!
-
---I know. Very likely it does.
-
---Haven't things changed?
-
---Not much. It's as true now as it was then.
-
---But all this talking and writing and lecturing....
-
---Two or three thousand persons, perhaps--two or three thousand have
-become "book conscious" as they say--the limited edition crowd. I'm
-dealing with the ten million.... There's a lot of whoosh in all that
-book beautiful stuff, you know.
-
---Mr. ---- thinks it helps to tell them about type and paper, etc.
-
---I know. It doesn't. They don't understand his little notices--it's
-all shop talk. He likes 'em. He thinks they give the books tone, I
-daresay. I think it doesn't matter a damn one way or the other. All
-that shop detail is zero. They don't care to know and they don't _need_
-to know. Just make your book so it will read handily and let it go at
-that.
-
---Have you got this "new angle" idea to a point where you could
-describe a book made that way?
-
---Well. I might. Take the cover--I'd have board covers and cloth. But
-I wouldn't stamp them. Bright color. Gay. Patterned cloth sometimes.
-I'd have the simplest kind of paper label on the backbone. Printed
-from type--standard affair--library label that you could read. No
-embroidery, just plain function. On the least expensive terms possible.
-Make it a kind of house-trademark feature.... Inside I'd forget all
-I knew about fine printing--the art--it's a great art--forget all I
-knew--start fresh with the _use_.
-
---_You_ like fine printing.
-
---That's right. I do. In its place. The place isn't trade books. You
-can't have fine printing in trade books. All you can have along _that_
-line is cheap imitation--celluloid collar and no shirt. If you go out
-with your imitation fine printing as a mark to shoot at you come back
-with what we turn out now, all of us--shabby genteel, to the limit. My
-book won't try to get by with a paper collar. My book won't have _any_
-collar. It will get down to the basis of realism--a handy, efficient,
-_cheap_ tool for temporary use. Read it--throw it away. Who saves a
-book now? If you save it, where are you going to put it? In the car?
-
---That suggests question of size--what do you think about size?
-
---Oh, small, by all means. For the usual job not larger than the
-5-1/2x7-3/4 range. Smaller than that when you can.
-
---You think people do not want a big package for their money?
-
---Not when they want a book to read. If we can get the price down
-they'll flock to small size, I'm sure. When they pay two-fifty, three,
-perhaps they want their poundage. Books for gifts too, possibly--want
-'em impressive. But on my basis of a good workable tool they'll like
-them small and handy.
-
---Your point in general, then, is that modern books should be looked at
-as temporary affairs.
-
---Absolutely. Temporary affairs. Like magazines. And they ought to be
-_produced_ as temporary affairs. Paper a little better than newsprint,
-but not much better--better color, on the warmish side instead of
-blue-grey. "Guaranteed by the Bureau of Standards to last three hundred
-years." Bosh. Presswork: set your standard at the level of legibility.
-That's low--look at the newspapers. Get it so you can read it easily
-and let the fine points ride. Give up points of paper and make-ready
-to get a cheaper package. You are making a tool, remember, not a
-_bijou_--you're making a sound, efficient, easy-working tool--tools
-don't need paper lace and fake-leather upholstery to make them
-sound--when a tool is efficient it has a style of its own, inevitably.
-
---Your dictum is, "books as tools."
-
---Books as tools. Right. But here's a point. All this is on the
-technical side. Treat a book as a temporary affair. But while it lasts
-I'd take considerable pains to have it be a _lively_ affair. Not
-freakish--you can't play tricks with the reading process--but lively,
-like a good, interesting talker. Little fresh twists, but hardly
-noticeable in detail. A lot of ways to do it in an inconspicuous way.
-Mustn't be conspicuous--mustn't interfere with the reading job. Little
-touches of ornament in the right places. Pictorial bits--pictures are
-coming back into trade books again, in a new form--easy, swift, simple
-illustrations that fit in with the "temporary affair" style. Some
-of the money saved by a strategic retreat from impossible printing
-standards I'd put into things like that--to keep the pages gay and
-interesting.
-
---In this connection, do you think that modern books ought to be
-"modernistic" in design?
-
---Absolutely _not_. As I said a minute ago, you can't play tricks with
-the process of reading.... One of the necessities of the modernistic
-stuff is the necessity to shock you--to make people jump. You can't set
-off firecrackers on a book page every few paragraphs without taking the
-reader's mind off the text. You simply can't read in the neighborhood
-of modernistic design. It isn't because you are not used to it. It's in
-the very nature of the style.... I'm talking about books, of course.
-For advertising, it's prime. Have all the modernistic design you want
-on your jacket. The more the better.
-
---And that brings us....
-
---Yes. I've been waiting for it. That brings us to book-jackets!
-
---Yes. What do you think....
-
---Now _there_ you are in another country entirely. Now's the time
-to beat the drums and run up the flags and drape the bunting....
-All the money you can't afford to spend on covers you _can_ afford
-to spend on jackets. Because, first, the jacket _is_ the cover; and
-second, the jacket helps directly in selling the book. Jackets are
-advertising--posters--billboards--so make 'em shout.
-
---Attractive?
-
---If you mean _pretty_, not so important. If you mean oomph,
-by all means. Feminine charm, in the prevailing mode.... But
-sock-'em-in-the-eye. Make them strong. Make them so people can't miss
-seeing them.
-
---What is your own formula?
-
---Formula? I haven't any formula.... If I had I think it would be
-_contrast_. Contrast with all the other books on the table. Don't
-follow anybody's style. Get away from the prevalent "successful" style
-of the moment. Take a look at the tables--what would stick out now more
-than plain white paper with plain black type? I'd probably varnish it.
-Contrast.
-
---Do jackets sell books?
-
---Oh ... no. Jackets don't sell books. They _help_. What sells a book
-is the stuff inside--story--text. But books need to be _seen_. Jackets
-help make them visible.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
---You save on covers and spend on jackets. You save on paper and
-printing, and put some of the saving into pictorial and design
-features. Would you come out with enough saving to get the retail price
-down from two fifty?
-
---I think so. I think if the thing were studied out on our "new angle"
-basis you'd find that you not only liked my books a lot better--as
-"packages"--but that you'd be able to buy more of them.
-
-
-                                MR. A.
-
-Q: One thing I wanted to ask ... you have had a considerable part in
-shaping your juvenile department.
-
---Yes. I have.
-
---My question may seem a little ... cool.... Do you prepare your
-juvenile titles with the children themselves in view--the ultimate
-consumers?
-
---The question's quite proper. I am glad you asked it--it goes
-straight to the heart of a big trouble about children's books....
-The children themselves in view, eh? The ultimate consumers.... No.
-I am sorry to say, we do not. We can't. Because children do not buy
-books.... You see, a juvenile, like any other book on our list, has
-to please the person that's likely to buy it. And that means, a book
-to please adults--a book that a grown-up will mark down as something
-a child ought to like. _Ought_ to, you see--the adult's judgment, not
-the child's. We can't get past it. We can't find out what the child
-really _does_ like. When children rally to an author, or a style of
-book, then we get a glimpse of the children's state of mind. But that
-is our only contact.... All our _new_ ventures have to be baited and
-primed to catch the fancy of the mothers and the cousins and the
-aunts--_against_ the interests of the ultimate consumer, you might
-say, when that is necessary. Sometimes a juvenile runs to large sales
-purely on the strength of adult appreciation alone, like Ferdinand,
-for instance.... If it were possible, there is nothing I should like
-better than to deal with the children direct. I have children of my
-own. I think I understand them ... to a certain extent. I think I could
-please them. Once or twice--this is a confession--I did take a direct
-hand--made a couple the way I thought they ought to be. _My_ judgment
-against the child's, eh?... Complete failures--drugs.... I couldn't
-move them--couldn't get past the censor--couldn't sell the grown-ups.
-
---Have you ever thought of ways for getting into direct touch with the
-children?
-
---I can see no practicable way. As the case stands you can't penetrate
-the Adult Front Line.
-
-
-                                MR. L.
-
-Q: This scheme of Mr. McG.'s for a different kind of book--what do you
-think of it?
-
---If he can _control_ his "decline from a high estate" I am with
-him, emphatically. Books need to be cheaper. Books _vis-à-vis_ market
-certainly need to be studied all over again--from a new base line. I
-agree with his findings about shabby-genteel. And I'm sure that I'd
-like his "cheap" books much better than the kind I buy now, _if_ he
-can liven them up as he suggests. The question is, can he stop his
-"strategic retreat" at the right point? It's like inflation: easy to
-start, but...! He drops the standard of material and process--will
-his proofreading go down hill too?... Many French books in paper
-wrappers--made at the lowest cost-level, badly printed on cheap
-paper--have an air and a style that our own more expensive affairs
-can't quite achieve. _Somebody_ laid a finger on them. Who, in Mr.
-McG.'s scheme, is to be this somebody whose touch creates liveliness
-and interest? A highly important factor in the product!... If we
-_can_ get the liveliness and interest, we will be glad to trade more
-expensive paper and printing to get it. Our books are pretty dull....
-But, _just_ inferior printing on cheap paper, _without_ the lively
-touch and style, is going to bore us worse yet!
-
---You mean dull in content?
-
---I mean dull optically, visually.... Like--to put it into terms
-of sound--like a long, droning recital of a tedious story--no
-inflection--no climax--no motion. ... I like Mr. McG.'s figure of a
-"good, interesting talker."
-
---You'd spice it up with "modernist" feeling?
-
---No. He's right, there. No fireworks. Keep the explosions _outside_
-the book.
-
---_You_ have used "contemporary" design.
-
---Yes, but you'll notice, not in places where _reading_ is going
-on.... Another point: letting the market set the _tone_ is not good
-merchandising. The market needs to be led, by a tone a little higher
-than its average taste.... And Mr. McG.'s good tool isn't made by
-majority vote in Congressional committee--it's made by somebody who
-knows, expertly and practically, just what the tool is intended to do
-and how it works.
-
---You are for "books as tools."
-
---I am for books as tools--and that means cheaper books.... I think,
-too, that a lot of the things that make books expensive are false
-value--brummagem.... But the trade is so firmly established in the
-tradition of false-front and bustle-rear that I'm afraid it's going
-to take an awful tussle to get it back to real values again--to
-the tool basis--to the simplicity and directness and general
-fitness-for-its-job, for example, that makes a carpenter's plane a
-masterpiece of appropriate design.
-
-                       COMPOSED IN ELECTRA TYPES
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]DESMOND FLOWER[Illustration]
-
-                  _The Publisher and the Typographer_
-
- From _The Penrose Annual_, Vol. 44. Copyright 1950 by Lund Humphries
-   Ltd., London, and Pitman Publishing Corp., New York. Reprinted by
-                     permission of the publishers.
-
-
-We live in an unhappy age. I suppose that it must be the most wretched
-known in history since the hordes of Genghis Khan swept across the face
-of the eastern world. Yet it is not the physical losses--though these
-are bad enough--which are responsible for the malaise, but a spiritual
-shortcoming: a lack of direction and a lack of faith. Ours is an age in
-which there is no single thing, not great or small, which can escape
-our petty probing, our questioning and our doubts. Nothing is because
-it is: a shadowy reason must be sought behind.
-
-In the course of man's desire to examine and explain away everything,
-one of the multitudinous minutiæ which have come in for worried
-attention is the position of printers, particularly in relation to the
-publishers they serve. The first four centuries of printing produced
-ninety-nine per cent of all the books which are worth looking at: yet,
-at what time during that period did anyone worry about the division
-of responsibility in a book's production? Then, it was a matter which
-somehow got done; now, unfortunately, it is a subject for discussion.
-
-When Sweynheim and Pannertz started work at Subiaco in 1465 they were
-at the same time both printers and publishers, and this represents
-a dual personality. But when Fichet, the Rector of the Sorbonne,
-decided to set up the first French press five years later within the
-precincts of the University, he imported three printers from Germany,
-and possibly the first printer-publisher relationship was born. That
-this relationship was a living thing is shown by the fact that Fichet
-had the books which the press produced printed in Roman type. Soon
-after the great Rector had gone into voluntary exile for his political
-opinions, the press moved out of the University precincts to become
-a normal commercial printing shop, and Gering and Krantz reverted to
-the use of gothic type! Since the use of Roman lay within the high
-road of French classical development--France being the only country in
-Europe which did not begin its printing history in gothic--this stands
-as the first instance of the views of a publisher, as a man ordering
-the print, being in advance of the more timorous craftsmen, who were
-glad to revert to their old, safe and conventional ways as soon as the
-refining influence was removed.
-
-French printing as a whole in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
-centuries is full of printer-publisher problems for our questing minds.
-Simon le Vostre, the great ecclesiastical publisher of his age, used
-Pigouchet mostly for his printing; the Hardouyn brothers commissioned
-several lovely books from Anabat: why, and who dictated the terms? The
-balance of power may then well have lain with the printer, since in the
-Hardouyn's 1500 _Book of Hours_ the first page is filled with Anabat's
-superb device. But what shall we say of the _Hours_ printed in 1527 by
-Simon du Bois, but which bears on every page the unmistakable stamp and
-signature of its publisher, Geoffroy Tory? Now, they say, too, that
-Tory was not a binder: yet from him we have two gilt panels done to his
-order and to his design, matching exactly the work which he hired his
-printers to do for him.
-
-I feel we are too certain in our minds that in the past printers
-were _ipso facto_ publishers, or that those "for" whom they printed
-were merely agents. Like a fatal crack hidden for many years in the
-foundations of an outwardly sound edifice, the split between printer
-and publisher had occurred at the Sorbonne in 1470, but was patched,
-mended and ignored from time to time for long thereafter. Yet like
-that neglected flaw which, having widened until it defies repair,
-will in the end bring the whole building down, the printer-publisher
-relationship has now some time ago irrevocably divided.
-
-Today the publisher and the printer are two separate men: there are
-few exceptions to this rule. Mr. Oliver Simon recently began one of
-his all too rare essays with the words "Printing is a way of life";
-and later he remarked that "if he (the printer) is not something of an
-artist, he cannot hope to evolve and maintain a typographic style."
-But these words must be read in conjunction with one of Holbrook
-Jackson's many wise remarks: "whether it (printing) is an art or not
-is a secondary affair, so long as it is good printing. 'Art happens'
-says Whistler, and the printer who sets out to be an artist is liable
-to make a mess of both art and print." One further quotation will show
-how readily Holbrook Jackson's wisdom can be thrown out of the window;
-in these pages last year Mr. Herbert Read criticised the English
-and American editions of his own book, _The Grass Roots of Art_. He
-wrote "On balance, I do not find much to choose between these two
-designs from a functional point of view, but discounting a poverty
-due to material restrictions imposed on the English publisher, there
-is a certain liveliness in the American production, which, were I a
-purchaser faced with a choice, would induce me to buy the American
-edition, even if it cost me rather more. But if the English edition
-had been printed on better paper, it would have been the easier of the
-two editions to read...." With the exception of the last sentence,
-the whole of this passage seems misleading and irrelevant. The use of
-the word "functional" is one of the crosses which we in the twentieth
-century have to bear, but, since it has occurred, we must presume the
-function of printing to be that of presenting the written word to the
-reader in its most easily assimilated form; if the English edition
-in question is, apart from its paper, more easily readable, how can
-both editions be equally functional? The implication that a piece of
-printing--particularly when the text is a work of serious criticism--is
-to be purchased (even at a higher price) for its liveliness at the
-expense of its readability is particularly unfortunate. If for
-"liveliness" we read "speciousness" or "pretention" we have found a
-ready definition of the one quality which should be excluded from
-book printing at almost any cost. For this reason I am frightened of
-Mr. Simon's statement that "printing is a way of life"; good printing
-implies a philosophy, it is true, but I fear that printers who are
-far from good may assume airs above their station and, when they
-produce a perfect horror, state "that is my way of life--take it or
-leave it." If they do, they may be astonished at how fast any decent
-publisher will embrace the latter course. I disagree with a great deal
-more which Mr. Read wrote in his article, but there is room here for
-comment only upon his remarks about Baskerville type. Baskerville is
-_not_ an easy type, nor a safe one (though printers may find that it
-satisfies their customers). The "gentlemanly sort of type which passes
-unnoticed, unquestioned" is undoubtedly Caslon and all its derivatives.
-Baskerville with its broad face and flourishing Italic is hard to
-handle, and in consequence is employed in a higher percentage of bad
-printing than any other type face.
-
-It is generally agreed that when an irresistible force meets an
-immovable body, the result is a stalemate; equally obviously, whichever
-power wanes first will suffer an immediate eclipse. From this we may
-proceed by a process of elimination. A publisher who knows what he
-wants employs a printer who is an artist, and the result should be a
-masterpiece of give and take. A publisher who does not know what he
-wants employs a printer who is an artist, and the result should be a
-piece of fine printing. A publisher who knows what he wants employs a
-printer who is not an artist, and the result will depend on the degree
-of taste of the publisher. A publisher who either does not know what
-he wants or does not care, and employs a printer who is not an artist,
-will both get and deserve a shambles. From these simple equations one
-constant factor emerges--the publisher; and this fact is not at all at
-variance with the traditional saw that he who pays the piper calls the
-tune.
-
-There have been a number of eminent publisher-printer relationships in
-the past. I have mentioned the French of 1500-1550, where there seems
-already to be evidence of a publisher's taste exerting an influence.
-The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries offer no examples which are
-worthy of study: the works undertaken by one printer on behalf of a
-syndicate of publishers produce no evidence of the book's appearance
-being dictated by any taste other than that of the printer himself.
-
-The nineteenth century saw the publisher come into his own. One of
-the greatest publisher-printer partnerships in the history of British
-book-production is that of Pickering and Whittingham. It would be
-reasonable to suppose that Pickering was the moving force in this
-partnership, since the ideas are publishing ideas mainly exemplified
-by the Aldine poets and the Diamond classics, and their starting
-point is Pickering's choice of the anchor and dolphin with the motto
-grouped about it: _Aldi Discip. Anglus_. To the same taste of Pickering
-and his delight in the printing of Aldus and his contemporaries may
-be attributed the gracious and restrained use of sixteenth-century
-fleurons which in the eighteen-thirties are not readily to be
-found elsewhere, and the curiously appropriate renaissance borders
-occasionally introduced. Another partnership in which I suspect that
-the publisher had a considerable say was that of Edward Moxon and
-Bradbury & Evans. In 1850 Moxon issued the first edition of two most
-important works, Wordsworth's _Prelude_ and Tennyson's _In Memoriam_;
-both were printed by the same printer. But eight years later we may
-point to John Murray's edition of Coleridge's _Table Talk_; this,
-too, was printed by Bradbury & Evans with more than a glance over the
-shoulder at Pickering's publications, but without the guiding hand
-of Moxon. It is an interesting book, for it just fails before every
-problem which the text sets. Pickering would have set the solid prose
-at least a point smaller and increased the margins; in the same way
-he would have managed to get more space between each specimen of
-_Table Talk_. Instead of a page of grace and readability, there is in
-consequence a slightly crowded air and the eye skips disconcertingly
-from line to line.
-
-Little more than thirty years later British book production was
-influenced by the most powerful small group of publishers which had
-ever turned printing upside down: it was indeed a small group--it
-consisted of three men: John Lane, Elkin Mathews and Leonard
-Smithers. The splendid series of publications for which each of these
-extraordinary individuals was responsible need no enumeration here
-... but it is worth pointing out that they were the pioneers of the
-asymmetry which Mr. Read praises as an unusual and notable feature in
-the American edition of his book already mentioned. Holbrook Jackson
-said the last word on the publisher-printer relationship: "it was
-publishers like Pickering, Moxon, Field and Tuer, Elkin Mathews, John
-Lane and J. M. Dent who by their example in the nineteenth century
-helped to _defend_ [my italics] printing from printers who were
-content to do as they were told, and, if no one told them, to follow
-rule-of-thumb methods which tended always to become worse rather than
-better."[32]
-
-To quote again from Holbrook Jackson: "It was long before the average
-printer took advantage of the awakening of typographical taste which
-began in the eighteen-nineties. The men who extended and consolidated
-that taste came from anywhere but the printing offices. The majority
-of modern typographers are intellectuals or scholars who have forced
-themselves on the trade, often through the publishing houses."
-In almost every age there have been a few commercial printers of
-first-class standing, but perhaps it is no coincidence that it would
-be difficult to name one who was at work in the eighteen-nineties--the
-most lively age of the publisher's influence. The situation has not
-materially changed by the middle of the twentieth century, except that
-in our own age we are fortunate in having among us a few printers who
-bow to no man, and have left their mark upon this country's production.
-First among them stands Mr. Oliver Simon, whose steady output of fine
-printing must command unqualified admiration. Both the Cambridge and
-the Oxford University Presses have evolved styles of their own, and
-there are a few others who are fine printers in their own right. But on
-the other side of the ledger there is Sir Francis Meynell, who, despite
-the criticism that much of his work is pastiche, showed with exquisite
-taste [in the first hundred Nonesuch Press books] what could be made of
-the types and ornaments which Mr. Stanley Morison had made available
-through the Monotype Corporation, and all this with a multitude of
-printers who were set to work and produced but one result--pure
-Meynell. There is also the more recent example of Mr. Jan Tschichold at
-work in the Penguin pool.
-
-This lamentable lack of taste among the generality of printers led
-publishers to give instructions as to their wishes, and this in turn
-has created a new position in publishing offices: the typographer. Once
-this person made his appearance on the payroll, the initiative passed
-from the printer for ever. In the first place, if the publisher employs
-a typographer he is going to be sure he gets his money's worth; in the
-second, human nature being what it is, most printers will willingly
-accept a publisher's design because it is the line of least resistance,
-and because, according to the best principles of business, the customer
-is always right.
-
-I cannot see why the initiative in design should ever pass back to
-the printer. The problem was admirably expressed by D. B. Updike in his
-little book of essays on the craft, _In the Day's Work_: "If printers
-had more of a standard and a stiffer one, both about the types they
-employ and the way in which they use them, printing would be better.
-The printer, if he has no standard, _must_ allow the customer to
-dictate his own wishes about types." I hope that there will always be
-the handful of printers who are great enough to say "you will do it my
-way--or else," but the rest will do as they are told by publishers'
-typographers, which amounts to the substitution of house styles for
-printers' styles. Printing, like so many arts, has fallen into the
-hands of the middleman--for such indeed the publisher is. There I
-am sure it will remain, and it is now for the middleman to justify
-himself. If he will take his responsibilities seriously he can do
-nothing but good. The good printer's compositor who is "something of an
-artist" will go on setting the target; but the publisher's typographer
-can, if he will, go far towards dragging the mediocre printers up
-towards the same high standard. If this is done, design in British
-printing will show a welcome overall improvement.
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[32] _The Printing of Books._
-
-
-
-
-            [Illustration]WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT[Illustration]
-
-                       _The Anatomy of the Book_
-
-From the Manual of Linotype Typography, Copyright 1923 by Mergenthaler
-   Linotype Company, Brooklyn, N. Y. Reprinted by permission of the
-           publishers. Corrected and amended by the Editor.
-
-
-The experienced designer is familiar with the successive parts of
-a complete book. All less formal embodiments of the book idea have
-some of these parts, and their position in the whole scheme should be
-governed by the traditions of the book proper.
-
-In order to leave complete freedom as to number of pages, the favorite
-custom is to number the text pages in arabic folio numbers, beginning
-with 1. The front pages are then numbered with Roman folios, and thus
-it makes no difference with the body how many or few front pages are
-finally found necessary.
-
-The typographical treatment of front matter and chapter pages
-throughout the book should be in perfect harmony, whether the
-treatment is simple typography or calls for elaborate embellishment.
-The character of the book is largely decided by what is done in this
-respect, and the intelligent designer fully realizes its importance and
-the chance thus given him for distinguished work.
-
-The following summary gives these parts in proper sequence, and the
-nature of each.
-
-
-              BASTARD TITLE (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-Nowadays this page (often miscalled "Half Title") is used merely
-because custom demands the familiar resting place for the eye in
-advance of the Title Page. It should never be omitted in work of any
-pretension to style and quality, and it should never be made unduly
-prominent by decoration or other treatment. Conventional dignity is the
-safe note for this page in the book.
-
-
-             ADVERTISING CARD (_always a left-hand page_)
-
-If an Advertising Card or other similar announcement is required,
-it should be typographically a part of the book, no matter what the
-client's style in his advertising typography may be. If a customer has
-a special or unique form of advertising, and insists on its use, the
-printer should inform him that it conflicts with the harmony of the
-book to do so.
-
-
-              THE TITLE PAGE (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-The Title Page gives the reader his sense of the whole book's quality.
-It should, therefore, be as nearly perfect as may be. Its first
-essential is that the eye shall read instantly the three important
-facts that it has to tell: the title of the book, the name of the
-author, and the imprint. In the case of a business volume this means
-the merchandise or business subject, the name of the business house,
-and the address or addresses. The typography should make these three
-divisions clear at a glance. There should be as little else on the
-title page as possible. Everything that can be left out is an aid to
-quality. The principle of the page is that it is an announcement of the
-book's contents and that it should not go beyond a very few display
-lines. It is the door to the house. White space is of the greatest
-value in this part of the book. If decoration is used, it should never
-be made more important than the type lines. The use of different faces
-of type is almost always bad, and success is obtained only occasionally
-by a genius. So important is harmony that it is not safe even to
-combine lines of capitals and lower case letters, except after careful
-planning and with assured understanding and talent.
-
-
-                 COPYRIGHT (_always a left-hand page_)
-
-The Copyright of the volume should be placed a little above the center
-of the page. The best taste calls for caps and small caps, or small
-caps alone. It is customary to use the bottom of this page for the
-printer's imprint or the international requirement, "Printed in the
-United States of America," or both, but the size of page should be
-considered.
-
-
-                DEDICATION (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-The character and purpose of the Dedication dictate that its treatment
-should always be formal. The "monumental" style is appropriate and
-correct. Small caps are the best. The Dedication should always be a
-right-hand page. Its reverse must be left blank.
-
-
-          PREFACE [OR FOREWORD] (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-A Preface that has simply the ordinary character usual to most prefaces
-should be set in the same size of type as the body of the book, and
-in the same face. For any preface of unusual importance, the page may
-be double-leaded, or set in a type one size larger than the body. If
-the book has both Preface and Introduction, the Preface may be set in
-italics to mark the distinction. Italics may also be employed if the
-Preface has been written by a person other than the author. In this
-case, however, the Preface is preferably placed after the Contents and
-the List of Illustrations.
-
-
-                 CONTENTS (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-The Contents or Table of Contents, filling as many pages as necessary,
-follows the Preface. The quality of this part of the book-job
-depends on the little niceties of spacing, margin, and proportion of
-white space to type which are too often ignored, even in otherwise
-pretentious books. The Contents pages are almost as important as the
-Title Page in establishing a sense of quality.
-
-
-        THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-The List of Illustrations follows the Contents pages, but no matter
-where the Contents finishes, the List of Illustrations should begin on
-a right-hand page. Obviously its typographical style should be the same
-as the Contents.
-
-
-               INTRODUCTION (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-The Introduction follows the List of Illustrations, and its
-composition should be in the same size and face as the body of the
-book. Any typographical distinction between Preface and Introduction
-should be limited to the former, as stated under "Preface." Authors
-are not always clear in their understanding of the difference between
-a Preface and an Introduction. Their Introduction often is really a
-Preface, and should be so entitled and placed in the book accordingly.
-The Preface is the author's personal remarks to the reader, and these
-may be of any character, treating of any subject. The Introduction, on
-the other hand, should treat specifically of the subject of the book,
-and should contain only statements of direct bearing and importance.
-
-
-                HALF TITLE (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-As the Bastard Title always precedes the Title Page, so the Half Title
-always precedes the first page of the text--the page which carries the
-title of the book at its top. The Half Title must always be on the
-right-hand page immediately preceding this page, and it should consist
-of not more than the title of the volume. Half Titles may run through a
-book before various divisions.
-
-Those sections of a book which follow the text must be treated with
-the same typographic care as the pages which precede the text. These
-sections are usually as follows:
-
-
-                 APPENDIX (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-This should be set in the same face as the text, but in one size
-smaller type. If the text ends on the left-hand page, a Half Title may
-be thrown between the text and the Appendix.
-
-
-               GLOSSARY (_preferably a right-hand page_)
-
-The size of type used for the Glossary depends wholly upon its nature,
-but it usually is two full sizes smaller than that used in the text of
-the volume. A Half Title may be thrown in before the Glossary, if the
-text ends on the left-hand page.
-
-
-             BIBLIOGRAPHY (_preferably a right-hand page_)
-
-The comments made under "Glossary" apply equally to the Bibliography.
-The combination of titles of books and the names of authors offers an
-attractive opportunity for artistic treatment.
-
-
-                  INDEX (_always a right-hand page_)
-
-If the text ends on the left-hand page, a Half Title may be thrown in
-before the Index. The type used for the Index is usually 8 point size
-set in double column. There is so much difference in the way the index
-entries read that great care should be exercised to select a model
-which will fit the particular case in hand.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
- A SYMPOSIUM: _By Bruce Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins, Joseph
- Blumenthal, P. J. Conkwright, Arthur W. Rushmore, Milton Glick, Morris
- Colman, Evelyn Harter, Peter Beilenson and Ernst Reichl._
-
-Have there been any material changes in the anatomy of the book in the
-past quarter century? Should there be, to have the contemporary book
-reflect the times in which it is designed, set and printed?
-
-As these and other questions occurred, we re-appraised the Anatomy of
-the Book summation in _The Manual of Linotype Typography_, reprinted
-in the foregoing pages. That text seemed to stand up pretty well.
-It was written originally by William Dana Orcutt for the _Manual_,
-whose typographical plan and critical comment was prepared with the
-co-operation of the late Edward E. Bartlett, then Director of Linotype
-Typography.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-What revisions or additions would Mr. Orcutt suggest for a reprinting?
-What would other prominent designers and book-makers suggest?
-
-The idea of a symposium appealed. The counsel of Bruce Rogers, Carl
-Purington Rollins and Joseph Blumenthal, in the field of fine and
-privately printed books, was invited, with that of P. J. Conkwright in
-the university press field.
-
-Trade book-makers would also have opinions and suggestions, in all
-probability. Counsel was sought from Milton Glick, who heads the Viking
-Press design and production activity; Morris Colman, former chairman
-of the A.I.G.A. Trade Book Clinic and one of Viking's top designers;
-Arthur W. Rushmore, former Harper vice-president in charge of design
-and production, now retired to the delights of his Golden Hind Press,
-at Madison, N. J.; and Ernst Reichl, one of our ranking modern
-designers, whose long association in book manufacturing with H. Wolff
-and as a free-lance brought an unmatched experience in working with
-many publishers. Mr. Reichl also has been prominent in A.I.G.A. Book
-and Magazine Clinic activities.
-
-The comment of an author and a publisher also seemed in order, and
-happily one in each field with a considerable appreciation of the
-graphic arts was obtained: Evelyn Harter, whose novel, _Dr. Katherine
-Bell_, was recently published by Doubleday, and who formerly headed
-design and production activity for Random House, Smith and Haas and
-other firms before retiring to private life as Mrs. Milton Glick. As
-publisher-designer-printer all in one, Peter Beilenson was invited to
-comment. He, with Mrs. Edna Beilenson, directs the Peter Pauper Press
-in Mt. Vernon, and is consistently represented in the A.I.G.A. "Fifty
-Books of the Year" selections.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-"So far as I know," Mr. Orcutt wrote, "the Anatomy remains the same
-today and I can think of no changes I would want to make. I may be
-wrong, but I am still hoping that it is one thing that doesn't change."
-
-To Joseph Blumenthal, who directs the Spiral Press in New York, and
-whose books are famed for their simplicity of design and excellence
-of typography and presswork, the statements of the Anatomy are sane
-and safe. "In the hands of a sufficiently experienced and versatile
-designer," he added, "no rule is absolute to the point where it cannot
-be broken, at least in part, where occasion requires."
-
-To Bruce Rogers, most distinguished of designers of books, the Anatomy
-"is an excellent short treatise that covers all the points of a
-well-designed volume.... I recommend it for the perusal of anyone
-engaged in book-making. Following it literally would result in a decided
-advance in that art."
-
-Several minor suggestions that B.R. made have been incorporated in the
-text of the Anatomy as here reprinted. These concerned the substitution
-of "should" for "must" in several instances, "in order not to be too
-dogmatic." His other points were: 1, "that it is frequently preferable
-to place the preface before the contents"; and 2, "that there seem to
-be too many half-titles recommended for anything else than a de luxe
-book--especially at the end, for the index and vocabulary."
-
-To Carl Purington Rollins, Printer Emeritus to Yale University,
-lecturer and writer on the graphic arts and one of the foremost
-American masters of the book, the Anatomy "is a very sound and sensible
-guide for young book makers--and, to judge from the queer books
-coming out of New York, older ones could profit from it. I have no
-disagreement with it in any particular," he continued, "and if it will
-not make a genius, it will at least prevent a diligent reader from
-going astray."
-
-P. J. Conkwright found the text clear and concise. "Any extensive
-elaboration would defeat its usefulness, I think, to those approaching
-the subject for the first time.
-
-"My only quarrel," he added, "is with the paragraph concerning
-Copyright. If there is no Dedication I like the Copyright statement and
-printer's imprint grouped together a little above the center of the
-page. If there is a Dedication, I like the Copyright statement at the
-top of the page lining with the top line of the title page, and the
-printer's imprint at the bottom of the page, lining with the bottom
-line of the title page.
-
-"This is a good example, however, of how an elaboration of the text can
-get too involved for a beginner."
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-To several experienced trade-book designers with considerable
-production and manufacturing experience, the Anatomy text was less
-satisfactory.
-
-Both Evelyn Harter and Milton Glick found the text too dogmatic in
-its dicta. They were bothered most by the first two sentences under
-Copyright, the last sentence under title page and "references to
-'genius.'" They both liked best the remarks regarding Contents, Preface
-and Introduction.
-
-"Ought not the topics of chapter openings be included," Mr. Glick
-inquired, "also illustrations, captions, running page heads, folios and
-such?"
-
-As an ex-designer turned author, Miss Harter has "come to appreciate
-more than ever the values of legibility and simplicity, with no
-extraneous tricks."
-
-Morris Colman concurred in feeling the Anatomy text is pretty arbitrary
-for today, and that chapter openings, running page heads and all other
-normal elements of a book should be included.
-
-"In particular," he added, "I would like to see the various arguments
-presented both in terms of tradition and also in terms of the
-particular function which each element of a book performs.
-
-"For example, the title page is not only the 'main entrance' but it
-also is the source of the bibliographic information which appears
-in hundreds of library cards, catalogs, etc., and its contents and
-arrangement determines whether it will be listed in all these places in
-such form that you or I could find it if we wanted it.
-
-"There are certain legal requirements which influence the form and
-content of copyright pages. Dedications, while formal in a technical
-sense, may need to be treated quite informally to express the spirit of
-the particular dedicator.
-
-"And with many kinds of contemporary books," he continued, "the
-contents page is made to precede any other preliminary matter, despite
-tradition, for the greater convenience of the reader. I am sure that
-this is always why the Index is invariably the last element in back
-matter."
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-To Arthur Rushmore, the Anatomy "is darn good copy, clearly stated.
-There are a couple of amplifications that might help give more clarity:
-
-"_Advertising Card_ seems a little vague. This is more likely to be a
-'List of Author's Books' or 'Series Title and Titles of Books already
-issued' if the book is in a historical or other series.
-
-"_Copyright_: Relatively few books carry the Printer's name on
-copyright and the line 'Printed in the United States of America' looks
-better and obviates a printing problem if run as a line directly under
-the copyright notice. A single line at the foot of the page, after
-the first 500 impressions of 1951 printing, is either bold face or
-completely unreadable.
-
-"_Dedication_: To me, 'small caps are the best' is doubtful. Small caps
-are the worst printing of all characters in a font, and unless small
-caps of a larger size than text will look too weak and small. I'd say
-'should be planned with the utmost care for balance and position on
-page.'
-
-"_Half Title_: First paragraph too dogmatic. If book is a novel, or
-book without 'Parts' then half title should be 'book title' backed
-blank and folioed in Roman front matter. If book has 'Parts,' the half
-title should not bear book title, but should carry the Part or Section
-Title and folio arabic 1, backed blank 2 and first page of text folio
-3. Similar half title for all other Parts or Sections folioed in."
-
-Peter Beilenson, whose comment on the pleasures and duties of the
-amateur printer is well worth reading (page 313), thinks the Anatomy
-"perfectly all right, so far as it goes. If it wavers from the perfect,
-it is in being too strict--_vide_ the remarks about the title page, the
-"it should never" of the bastard title, etc.
-
-"But," he asks in suggesting the text be extended, "what about
-additions to the coverage? Footnotes, running heads, chapter titles,
-initials, etc., are not the limbs of the anatomy, but they are organs.
-What about the binding? The jacket? The direction of the stamping of
-the title on the spine?"
-
-To Ernst Reichl, the Anatomy comprises "what might be called the basic
-minimum. Any designer worth his salt should not only start with this
-standard but also allow his imagination to roam far beyond it.
-
-"An 'anatomy,' however precise and objective, necessarily breaks down
-a living entity into component parts. These parts in reality show much
-more cohesion than is apparent in their piece-by-piece description.
-
-"In the modern book, in particular, we tend to treat the volume as a
-whole and to submerge the importance of the single page in it. The
-bastard title, for instance, might be left entirely blank; the title
-page may be spread over two pages and the advertising card incorporated
-into it; the copyright page and the dedication page might be treated as
-a double-page spread, etc.
-
-"The tendency today," he summarized, "is altogether to handle the
-double-page spread as the unit of the layout, rather than the single
-page. This may help to break down in some degree the rigidity and
-formality which awes ordinary human beings, and makes them as reluctant
-to touch a book as to put on a dress suit. It may also help to make our
-books a little more ordinary and lively."
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]ROBERT JOSEPHY[Illustration]
-                         _Trade Bookmaking_:
-
-                  COMPLAINT IN THREE DIMENSIONS
-
-   From _Publishers' Weekly_, Oct. 5, 1935. Copyright 1935 by R. R.
-         Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-
-The development of trade book-making since 1920 has been an
-extraordinary phenomenon in the conservative business of publishing. At
-that time most publishers looked upon "manufacturing" as a necessary
-but routine activity, ranking with accounting, shipping and such, and
-on a far lower intellectual plane than the cultivation of authors and
-reviewers, or the writing of good blurbs. The production of books was
-usually entrusted to an uninspired saint who was expected to be hard
-on his printer's back and soft under his boss's feet. The idea of the
-publisher himself taking any interest in the _aesthetics_ of book-making
-was thought to be a trifle queer.
-
-There was, to be sure, a small traffic in books printed for collectors,
-and the term "fine printing" had already come to mean "not printed
-to be read." Typography, as usual, was less than twenty years behind
-current architecture, and American type founders had already cleaned up
-the Renaissance and were well on their way into the eighteenth century,
-while American typographers, like interior decorators, were learning to
-hop nimbly from period to period. Everyone was learning to blame the
-machine for the things we were too greedy or too lazy to do properly;
-fortunately small power presses could be made to imitate hand-press
-printing, so it was not really necessary to do business at hand-press
-rates.
-
-In the field of general publishing, however, the hand-press page was
-out of the question, period styles were incongruous, and the real
-problem of designing the trade book had never been attempted, because
-it had never been seen with any clarity. There were many experiments
-with new binding materials and designs, and with printers' flowers
-and other typographic embellishment, but these were all attempts to
-"dress up" the old formats, and arose from no real understanding of the
-problem.
-
-Today [1935], thanks to the leadership of a very few publishers, the
-educational work of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and perhaps
-to the enthusiasm of the designers themselves, there is a steadily
-widening appreciation of good trade book-making, and a better perception
-of the problem among book-makers. We are learning to plan books in
-_three_ dimensions, considering proportion and weight and the texture
-of materials--designing for the hand as well as for the eyes. We are
-getting free of "period" styles and "period" motifs, and developing a
-new idiom to suit new methods of production. We are finally trying to
-make the physical aspect of our books bear some relation to the culture
-of our own time.
-
-Everyone has come to recognize certain aesthetic values in cheap
-machine-made glass and metal-ware, if it be designed for the machine
-and does not attempt to imitate the hand-made, and we find in it a
-quality different from, but not necessarily inferior to, that of
-the more elegant article. Thus in printing we are coming to realize
-that electrotyped plates, made from machine-set type and printed on
-wood-pulp paper on a perfecting cylinder press can produce a page quite
-as satisfactory, aesthetically, as the product of the hand-press. It
-is this new sense of values, born of respect for the machine and for
-what it can do if used with character, that must be the basis of the
-designer's attitude. If he is working with his fingers crossed, his
-work will show it.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-The problem of suiting type to subject is the cause of much confusion.
-We give too little study to the characteristics of type-faces, and the
-announcements of the foundries and composing-machine people frequently
-attribute the most fantastic qualities to their new types.
-
-Furthermore, most of the faces available on the composing machines
-have been cut to reproduce some earlier design, and few to meet
-the contemporary technical or literary requirements, so that we
-have several great gaps in the line of type resources that need to
-be filled. Recent books examined, and a great part of all current
-book-making, show that we have largely thrown off the reactionary
-hand-press ideal, and that we are learning to construct instead of
-decorate. We have finally obtained a supply of modern book cloth;
-Europe has given us a supply of modern display types; and we are
-anxiously awaiting the composing-machine companies' arrival in the
-Twentieth Century.
-
-
-_Two years later_:
-
-   From _Publishers' Weekly_, April 3, 1937. Copyright 1937 by R. R.
-         Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-The end of a three-hour period spent examining a month's output of
-American trade books leaves one thinking much more about the book
-making situation in general than about the four books one has chosen.
-What impresses one is not that four books, or forty, are decently made,
-but that all the rest are so badly made.
-
-After my last experience in inspecting a collection of this kind, I
-wrote, with some satisfaction and much optimism: "We are learning to
-plan books in _three_ dimensions ... designing for the hand as well as
-for the eye.... We are finally trying to make the physical aspect of
-our books bear some relation to the culture of our own time." Well, I
-still think we are only _trying_.
-
-Designing a book is a problem in _three_ dimensions. The first
-essential is good and suitable materials, the second good proportions,
-the third a good type, and the last good typographic arrangement.
-Good decoration (or any decoration) is not essential at all. If the
-materials are poor in quality and unsuitable to the idea of a book; if
-the proportions detract from the aesthetic effect, or from the book's
-practical usefulness, typography can do very little to save it.
-
-In the last two years the publishers have been increasing trim sizes
-without increasing list prices, and at the same time increasing bulks,
-instead of reducing them to compensate. What that means in simple
-arithmetic is that when a novel is increased from a 7-1/2 inch 12mo to
-an 8-1/8 inch large 12mo, and the bulk from 1 inch to 1-1/8 inches,
-it requires a third more cubic inches of paper, a seventh more square
-inches of cloth, a sixth more board, etc.--all for the same money. It
-means even softer, less printable, less bindable paper; cheaper binding
-materials throughout; sewing in 32's and other skimping in workmanship.
-And it means clumsier, uglier, more perishable books.
-
-While other industries are seeking to make the implements of
-living more convenient and more durable and more beautiful, we are
-deliberately making books less convenient and less durable and less
-beautiful. While other industries are helping to develop popular taste
-and anticipating changes in it, we are waiting for our customers to
-get mad at us. While we see the masses getting wise to other frauds of
-branding and packaging, we still hand our "intelligent minority" the
-old fraud of inflated books.
-
-The digest magazines can get millions of readers, though magazines
-have always had _large_ pages, but "that's not the book business." A
-few of the publishers can sell small books, but "that's all right for
-_their_ lists." Booksellers can tell us the public is on to us, but
-"_their_ customers aren't typical book buyers." Our friends can tell us
-they like to carry books in their pockets, and that they have no more
-room on their shelves, or under their beds, but they're only our crazy
-friends. Our salesman can tell us he got a bad order because the book
-was too thin--and ah! there we have the real and only truth.
-
-Publishers of new books blame this practice on the reprints, but they
-themselves control much of the offending reprint output. We allow the
-cheapest and shoddiest goods to set our styles; as if Fourteenth Street
-were to lead our dress industry, and jerry-built Queens our builders.
-Publishing is indeed, as we are so often told, a "different" kind of
-business!
-
-Most of the books I examined suffered from this inflation. In most
-cases the money spent on them would have produced a sound, handsome,
-and durable book in a smaller size, and without small type or crowding.
-Books printed on proper paper were so rare that I found myself
-reluctant to discard the few I found, however undistinguished in other
-respects some of them were. (I felt the same way about the few books
-with trimmed edges--but that is a delicate subject better discussed
-face to face, and with weapons, than in a family journal.)
-
-Most of the books suffered also from too much typography. I think we
-are all trying desperately to overcome typographically the handicap of
-paper and materials. Some of us find that if we don't do stunts the
-publisher will think we're not trying. Some of us are still suffering
-a little from Rogers-complaint. And some of us are perhaps just too
-anxious to express ourselves.
-
-Whatever the reason, we seldom have the courage to let a simple book
-stay simple. We are very particular about the type we select, and then
-we are afraid to use it boldly, and to depend on the design of the
-letter for our effects. Books with illustrations, diagrams, complicated
-heads, or other special matter, we are apt to handle well; but when the
-copy is simple we do insist on using rules and/or ornament. When we
-use ornament we are inclined to have meaningless little units repeated
-endlessly throughout the book, instead of a few positive, significant
-elements, used with proper restraint.
-
-In many of the books I saw, the design bore no relation to the subject
-matter, either in materials, format, or typography, and these were by
-no means all from the hands of inexperienced designers. Many suffered,
-of course, because good types are not available for certain problems.
-None of the composing machines has a really suitable type for books on
-contemporary subjects: the natural and social sciences, architecture
-and technology, etc. There should be several such types, comparable
-to the old numbered "moderns" and "old styles" but better in design,
-traditional in general form but impersonal and mechanized in drawing;
-and cut in several weights for different papers. If I may conclude
-by quoting again from my last effort in this medium, we are _still_
-"anxiously awaiting the composing-machine companies' arrival in the
-Twentieth Century."
-
-
-_Postscript_, 1951:
-
-Re-reading the above complaints, I am saddened to find how many of them
-I would repeat today. Many of them, but not all. The inflated book is
-becoming rare, but it took a world war to finish it off. With it we are
-losing the sloppy rough-cut fore-edge. "Period" typography is quite
-dead, but its belated and tortured passing is no credit to any of us.
-
-We still have too much typography, however; too many self-conscious
-tricks, too much un-discipline. And we still lack many of the types
-we need. The war may fairly be blamed for disrupting the programs of
-the machine people, for a book face takes years of labor and trial to
-produce. But where are the new hand-types?
-
-A healthy printing industry needs a prolific type design program.
-Creative type-founding stimulates the typographer, and paves the way
-for the machine cutting. We need ignore competition in the foundry
-field, and all we have is one tired monopoly. Perhaps most of us are
-too polite to point, but let us not think that we can ignore the
-foundry situation, and supply the lack of types with calligraphy. Every
-creative period in printing history has produced its own new types. The
-present period can make no important contribution without doing the
-same.
-
-
-
-
-                              WILL RANSOM
-
-                        WHAT IS A PRIVATE PRESS?
-
-From _Private Presses and Their Books_, by Will Ransom. Copyright 1929
- by R. R. Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher.
-                 Corrected and amended by the author.
-
-
-Whenever private presses are mentioned, one of two questions is certain
-to be heard. The layman asks, "What do you mean, a private press?"
-while a collector smiles quizzically and inquires, with gentle malice,
-"How do _you_ define a private press?" There have been many answers and
-much discussion, but common agreement has not yet fixed upon a single
-definite phrase. Perhaps one fascinating element of the subject is this
-very uncertainty.
-
-There is really little question about the meaning of "private" in
-any connection, with its connotation of complete personal freedom
-in thought and expression and exemption from exterior influence or
-compulsion. So it is a simple matter to define a private press in
-those terms. The usual argument, however, is less concerned with a
-fundamental definition than with its interpretation. The uncertainty
-is about which of the many presses of past and present shall be
-considered, from the collector's viewpoint, private enterprises
-as distinguished from commercial ventures. Actually the line of
-demarcation is so broad and nebulous that decision must always remain
-a matter of personal opinion. For a working basis, the following
-statements provide the best available material.
-
-John Martin, in his _Bibliographical Catalogue of Books Privately
-Printed_ (1834), included certain presses whose productions "were not
-intended by the writers for sale, and the circulation of which has
-been confined entirely to their friends and connexions or to those
-who took an interest in the matter contained in them." The intent is
-apparent, but it applies equally to privately printed and private press
-printing, which are different matters. The restriction to "writers" is
-unfortunate, and Martin contradicts himself by including at least one
-press, Strawberry Hill, many of whose books were offered for public
-sale. On the other hand, he omitted many which were clearly within his
-own terms.
-
-M. Claudin, the French bibliographer, explains at greater length that
-a private press is "one set up in a monastery, a palace, a residence,
-or a private house, not the office of a printer. In fact it is a press
-reserved for personal and not for public use, patronized, held, owned,
-or hired for the occasion by a private person at his own house, or by
-a congregation in, or close to, their buildings. Whether the copies
-issued were merely intended for the use of an ecclesiastical order or
-to be presented to high personages, whether they were exposed for sale
-or reserved for exchange ... makes no essential difference." That seems
-to cover the ground pretty thoroughly.
-
-Alfred W. Pollard, one of the foremost English authorities, says: "For
-a press to be private a double qualification seems to be necessary:
-the books it prints must not be obtainable by any chance purchaser who
-offers a price for them and the owner must print for his own pleasure
-and not work for hire for other people." And Falconer Madan, another
-noted English bibliographer, condenses his decision into "a press
-carried on unofficially by a person or group of persons for his or
-their private purposes."
-
-The following paragraph, as originally written, erroneously ascribed
-the quotation to John T. Winterich. It should have read: Still another
-neatly phrased version occurs in _English Books 1475-1900_, by Sawyer
-and Darton: "Perhaps, in the end, the best definition of a private
-press is that it is an enterprise conceived, and masterfully and
-thoroughly carried out, by a creative artist who (whether or not he
-likes to cover some of his expenses by sales) does his work from a
-sincere conviction that he is so expressing his own personality."
-
-Except that any book offered for sale may easily come into the hands
-of "any chance purchaser" who learns of it, and that "creative artist"
-is a severe limitation, the common factor of independent expression is
-apparent in all these.
-
-Granting the connotation of "privacy" as an imperative factor, a
-survey of impulses and characteristics provides a better understanding
-of the matter. Actually, the principal differences of opinion and
-the major argument derive from the question of whether or not the
-productions of a press are sold or given away. But what difference
-does that make if the fundamental impulse and continued purpose prove
-monetary return to be a minor consideration, a casual effect rather
-than a desired result? It is true that many private presses, even
-some of the greater ones, continued for longer and more prolifically
-than they would have without patronage, but that was because their
-subscribers liked the result of what was done in free personal
-expression. Even the Kelmscott Press produced an edition for Way and
-Williams with a Chicago imprint, but it should be noted that the
-publishers bought the book and the book-making of Morris' choice
-instead of engaging him to carry out their wishes. So there seems to
-be sufficient justification for disregarding the financial element, so
-long as it is clearly secondary, except to note that a private press
-must be free from the necessity of considering that phase of the matter.
-
-As individual expression chooses many avenues, each with its particular
-attraction, the reasons for establishing private presses are numerous
-and varied. They have sprung from the dreams and desires of craftsmen,
-authors and artists, prophets and dilettantes. Broadly, they divide
-into two general classes, one being concerned with literary content
-and the other with typographic form, with perhaps a third division
-concerned only with enjoying something to play with. The typographic
-viewpoint seems to attract popular interest to the greatest extent.
-
-The simplest and perhaps the truest type of private press is that
-maintained by one who is, at least by desire, a craftsman and finds a
-peculiar joy in handling type, ink, and paper, with sufficient means
-and leisure to warrant such an avocation. His literary selection may
-leave something to be desired and art may be disregarded or amazingly
-interpreted, but he has a good time. As a correspondent recently wrote:
-"This small effort shows the difficulties of an amateur both with ink
-and with type. But as it is a matter of the mere fun of the thing,
-rather than business, I am in that singularly fortunate position of
-being able to tell anyone who doesn't like it to go jump in the lake."
-Another version of the same spirit was happily expressed by Edwin Roffe
-(Rochester Press) in 1861:
-
-                  _I must confess,
-                  I love my Press;
-                  For when I print,
-                  I know no stint,
-                        Of joy._
-
-At the other extreme is the author who is entirely or largely
-concerned with producing his own writings. He may turn printer by
-choice or for economy, or may hire a workman, but he must, to qualify
-as a private press, maintain the equipment in his own ownership or
-control. In this group the personal element is usually the one point
-of interest, as the typography is generally a mere means to an end.
-Somewhere in this rating may be included the secret presses devoted
-to political and religious propaganda in the days when free speech
-was a hazardous adventure; also those which, like Middle Hill, were
-established to preserve and distribute rare or unique items of
-information and record.
-
-Then there is the dilettante who dabbles a little in both phases but
-performs few of the functions in his own person. His viewpoint is more
-nearly that of a publisher, yet insofar as he maintains a press and
-follows an individual program he is a member of this goodly company.
-Horace Walpole was an excellent example. "Present amusement is all
-my object," he said at the start, and no doubt he accomplished that
-purpose not only for himself but for many of his friends.
-
-Another distinct approach to private press activity, most familiar
-because its results have been more significant and have affected
-typography as a whole more emphatically, is from the standpoint of
-aesthetic or artistic vision. Men with a fine feeling for beauty have
-done marvels with available materials, but the impulse usually includes
-type design. "Let's make a new fount of type" voiced the conception of
-the Kelmscott Press and the next ten or twelve years saw almost as many
-types designed, not all successful but certainly bearing the impress of
-individual expression. Even Dr. Daniel, with no assumption of creative
-ability, served the cause well by searching out and reviving the Fell
-types.
-
-Finally, there is a kind of press which may or may not be considered
-private but is certainly not commercial, a press maintained by a school
-for educational purposes of one form or another. Rarely do these reach
-a collector's attention, since their products are distinctly localized,
-but there are instances of significant accomplishment. The notable
-example is the Laboratory Press where, under the direction of Porter
-Garnett, students of printing learn something of typography in terms
-of the ideal, not to mention other cultural by-products. Mr. Garnett's
-statement may well be added to the definitions already quoted. "Issuing
-publications (for such, in spite of their slenderness, our students'
-specimens are), and having no commercial function, the Laboratory Press
-is, in the purest sense of the term, a private press; and its purpose
-being solely educational, it may be said to be the first private press
-to be dedicated exclusively to educational ends." On the sole point of
-priority the Whitnash and School Presses might be offered in evidence,
-but no comparison of purpose can fairly be suggested.
-
-Somewhat in the same spirit is the use of a private press for
-experimental work, as proposed by James Guthrie, who has said: "The
-artist at the press is, before everything, an explorer. His true
-mission is to suggest and demonstrate, not ideas thirty years old,
-but new ideas, which may take our friend the fine printer (by easy
-methods) another thirty years to see the drift of!" That approach, as
-well as another stated intention towards "a gesture of protest and
-criticism," is of a part with the purpose animated by vision of new and
-finer achievement. That there was feeling of experiment in the first
-Kelmscott type and book is a matter of record, as is the fact that
-subsequent experience and development have changed the result in some
-important details.
-
-While these groups serve to distinguish the main differences between
-various kinds of private presses, very few individual instances lie
-within one classification. Craftsmen have turned to writing, authors
-to printing, and dilettantes to both. Some have achieved simultaneous
-distinction in type design, writing, and book-making. Such versatility
-is rare, yet it is illuminating to note that the outstanding figures,
-those who have contributed most of permanent worth to subsequent
-culture, of which William Morris is the chief example, are the ones who
-have combined the greatest number of elements in their activities.
-
-Out of all these has come something more than individual purpose and
-personal endeavor. Though the poorest of them have earned nothing
-more than pity or at best a genial tolerance, the significant presses
-have contributed richly to the program of typography and to aesthetic
-progress in general. Although the story of private presses is no
-more than a tiny chapter in the annals of graphic art, although all
-of them are but an infinitesimal part of the deluge of printers and
-printing since the middle of the fifteenth century, their influence,
-particularly upon book design, is strikingly impressive out of all
-proportion to their size and number. Verily, they are "the little
-leaven that leaveneth the whole lump."
-
-After all is said, the distinguishing quality of a private press is no
-less than a matter of spirit, indefinable except by inference. Whatever
-decision is made concerning the status of a press, with regard to its
-being private or not, must be based upon a recognition of the ideal
-apparent in its works, with due consideration for the human elements
-of its activities. Freed from the confining strictures of details,
-a private press may be defined as the typographic expression of a
-personal ideal, conceived in freedom and maintained in independence.
-
-                   [Illustration: The Village Press.
-             PRESS MARK, ITS SECOND, BY FREDERIC W. GOUDY.
- Mr. Ransom was associated with the Village Press during its beginning
-          months at Park Ridge, Ill., in the Summer of 1903.]
-
-
-POSTSCRIPT, 1951:
-
-Twenty-four years later the question is still academic. Instead of
-a few distinguished private presses there is now a spate of "press
-books," some of which are produced in home privacy, others designed
-or printed or published by an outstanding personality, and a few,
-regrettably, on the border line of the commercial limited editions
-racket. But the meaning of "privacy" remains unchanged and a private
-press is what it has always been, a personal activity. I cannot improve
-on my original statement.
-
-To fill out the record with some definitions that were unknown or
-omitted in the earlier chapter, and to get all of the statements into
-one place, we may begin with William Morris's _Note on His Aims in
-Founding the Kelmscott Press_ (1898): "I began printing books with the
-hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty,
-while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not
-dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity
-of form in the letters."
-
-C. R. Ashbee, of the Essex House Press, stated in _The Private Press:
-A Study in Idealism_ (1909): "A private press as we understand it at
-the present day in England and America is a Press whose objective is
-first of all an aesthetic one, a press that if it is to have real worth
-challenges support on a basis of Standard, caters for a limited market
-and is not concerned with the question of the Commercial development
-of printing by machinery." In 1933 (also twenty-four years later) he
-repeated that definition in _The Book-Collector's Quarterly_ (No. XI,
-p. 72) and added: "That, I think, is as near as we shall get."
-
-For the Doves Press, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson explained his purpose in
-the three _Catalogues Raisonné_ of 1908, 1911, and 1916, shortened in
-the last: "... to attack the problem of Typography as presented by
-ordinary books in the various forms of Verse, Prose, and Dialogue and,
-keeping always in mind the principles laid down in the Book Beautiful,
-to attempt its solution by the simple arrangement of the whole Book,
-as a whole, with due regard to its parts and to the emphasis of its
-capital divisions rather than by the addition & splendour of applied
-ornament."
-
-Among the commentators and bibliographers, Robert Steele, in _The
-Revival of Printing_ (1912) makes no attempt at definition, and G. S.
-Tomkinson, in his _Select Bibliography of Modern Presses_ (1928) "still
-seeks the right answers." In the latter book, Bernard H. Newdigate's
-introduction contains two statements which indicate the spirit that
-informs private presses and in recent years has expanded into more
-public book-making: "... a zeal in the pursuit of their art which has
-been inspired by something more than mere money-making, and in many
-cases by the attainment of a degree of excellence which invests their
-work with a peculiar interest for all those who study printing..."
-and specifically about operators of private presses who "have printed
-their books because they have judged the books worth printing for
-their own sakes, or worth printing in some particular way; and it is
-the particular way in which each of these printers has sought to give
-expression to his conception of how his books should be printed and the
-way in which he has overcome the limitations of his type and plant and
-solved the several problems which beset the studious printer in every
-detail of his work, that give them so much individual interest...."
-
-In later years, we have had noble bibliographies of the Nonesuch,
-Grabhorn, and Ashendene Presses, Bruce Rogers' _Paragraphs on
-Printing_, and Daniel Berkeley Updike's _Notes on the Merrymount Press_
-and _Some Aspects of Printing, Old and New_. All of these are required
-reading for collectors of press books, and each represents a personal
-viewpoint, but only one defines a private press.
-
-That is the Ashendene _Bibliography_, but one who seeks for a formal
-declaration will not find it. The few phrases that can be
-isolated--"... the absorbing interest of an otherwise busy
-life...."--"The Press was started solely for the sake of the interest
-and amusement I expected to derive from it...."--"... the striving
-after an ideal...."--these casual comments are slender evidence. If,
-however, the entire Foreword is read, one discovers just why and how a
-private press is operated--"the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh
-alive."
-
-                      COMPOSED IN ELDORADO TYPES
-
-
-
-
-             [Illustration]ALFRED W. POLLARD[Illustration]
-
-_The Trained Printer and the Amateur: and The Pleasure of Small Books_
-
- From the Centaur announcement booklet, Lanston Monotype Corporation,
-                          Ltd., London, 1929.
-
-
-Printers, as a class, like all other craftsmen, can only thrive by
-supplying their customers with what they want at prices which they are
-willing to pay. Here and there an exceptionally gifted and courageous
-craftsman may rely on being able to obtain a better price for better
-work, and be rewarded for his confidence, but success will always
-depend not only on himself but also on two external factors over which
-he has very little control; the existence of enough customers, or
-potential customers, able to recognise better work than that which they
-have been getting, and the ability and willingness of these customers
-to pay a higher price for it as long as a higher price is necessary
-for its production. But occasionally the discriminating customer (or
-potential customer) may not find a master-craftsman able and willing
-to do for him what he wants, and if so, if he cares enough about it to
-be an enterprising amateur, he starts a press of his own to print the
-books he wants as he thinks they ought to be printed. Very often he
-fails; almost always he finds that he must engage at least one skilled
-journeyman to help him through. But occasionally he succeeds, and when
-he succeeds he brings new life into the craft of printing.
-
-Definitions of what constitutes an "amateur" have always proved
-difficult. The two characteristics of the class of which I am thinking
-are that they have been readers and lovers of books before they have
-become printers and that they will not knowingly print any book badly
-for the sake of making a profit off it. As a rule they will only print
-the books they like, and they will print them according to their own
-standards. That some of them have made a good living by their work,
-does not alter their status.
-
-In the early days of printing amateurs abounded, but not at the very
-first. When printing was invented it was applied first of all to
-multiplying a few much-used Latin grammars and calendars for which
-there was a large and steady sale, because the production of manuscript
-copies had been too slow and too expensive. These early efforts, which
-have come down to us mainly in fragments found in binding, are rude and
-ugly enough. There is no evidence of any effort to make them beautiful
-for the sake of making them beautiful, and there was no need to do so.
-Fifteenth-century schoolmasters did not cosset their pupils with pretty
-school-books; they beat them. Their standard in printing was strictly
-utilitarian. But when the adventure was once undertaken, whether it
-was by Gutenberg, or by Fust and Schöffer, of printing large Bibles
-for use in church, there was at once admitted a standard of dignity,
-and this the Church for centuries did more than any other body to
-maintain. Furthermore when the goldsmith Fust and the scribe Peter
-Schöffer, greatly daring, set themselves to produce psalters for use
-in choir which, by red printing and by large and small capitals in red
-and blue, should rival the beauty of the hand-written and hand-painted
-psalters then in use, to the dignity of the first Bibles there was
-added beauty and charm, and in a few years bookmen all over Europe were
-eager to apply the new craft to multiplying the books in which they
-were specially interested. A few secular highbrows stood aloof. As some
-old ladies still drive out in their carriage and pair (a very pleasant
-and dignified way of getting about) and abjure motor-cars, so there
-were a few great bookmen who clung to manuscripts and would not have a
-printed book in their libraries. In the same way for some twenty years
-bishops looked askance at presses and types, and it was not until 1474
-that a printed missal was placed upon an altar, and not until 1479 that
-more than two editions were printed in any year, or anywhere outside
-Italy. But when Milan and Rome had continued to set the example, German
-bishops were content to follow it, and when they decided to print they
-found a vigorous way of maintaining a high standard. They commissioned
-the best printer they could get to do the work; they allowed him to
-charge an agreed price for it, and they obliged every Church in their
-province or diocese to provide itself with a copy before a specified
-date.[33]
-
-In France in several instances a Bishop, or the Canons of a Cathedral,
-arranged with a printer to come to the Cathedral town and print a
-missal or breviary under their supervision. These good men were perhaps
-rather amateur publishers than amateur printers working private presses
-with a hired man to do the heavy work. But if we choose to think of
-them only as customers, they were customers who knew what they wanted
-and brought the printer under their roof as the best means of seeing
-that they got it.
-
-As regards the printing of secular books in the fifteenth century,
-since the craft was a new one, it was necessarily run in the first
-instance by men who had been brought up in other occupations. In this
-sense nearly every native printer outside Germany was an amateur.
-At the outset the newcomers were largely clerks in minor orders and
-professional scribes; but merchants, professors and men of letters
-generally were attracted to the new craft, many of them doubtless only
-to make money, others to print books in which they were specially
-interested. Even more than in the case of the bishops or canons who
-commissioned missals and breviaries, we must think of this motley crowd
-of recruits rather as amateur publishers than amateur printers. It may
-be doubted whether even Caxton (who was by trade a mercer) in all his
-fifteen years in the business, set up the equivalent of one of his
-small folios with his own hands. He started his press because he wanted
-to get his books into print as the easiest way of circulating them; but
-there are no signs that he took any special interest in fine printing
-for its own sake, or took any joy in producing a handsome book. His
-standards were those of a competent but unenterprising scribe, who
-only wanted to set his words down accurately on the page so that they
-could be easily read. The master printers all over the Continent of
-Europe, when they had the courage to stand out against the pressure to
-cut prices or increase profits by using cheaper and cheaper paper, and
-crowding more on to it, were doing much better work than Caxton, and
-when they found customers who encouraged them to do their best, their
-work altogether outclassed his.
-
-When we turn to the scholar-printers of the sixteenth century I think
-it would be hard to deny the claim of Aldus and the Estiennes to a
-disinterested love of good printing, as well as a desire to get the
-books in which they were interested into print. It is true that the
-rich scholars of Italy and France were used to a high standard of
-excellence in the books, manuscript or printed, which they put on their
-shelves, but it is to the credit of Aldus and the Estiennes and Simon
-Colines and Geoffroy Tory that they catered also for the needs of less
-wealthy scholars, not by cheapening paper or crowding more old types
-on a page, but by designing, or causing to be designed, new fonts,
-with which they could print more economically without loss of beauty.
-Moreover, more especially at Lyons, the new ideals of compact printing,
-of the small book beautiful, were applied to printing not only in Greek
-and Latin, but in the vernacular, and these sixteenth century models
-can still be imitated without archaism or ostentation, which, when
-fifteenth century masterpieces are followed, are often difficult to
-avoid.
-
-"A penny, I trow, is enough for books," said one of Robert Copland's
-customers to him, somewhere about 1530, and the spirit of that remark
-haunted the vernacular English book trade for nearly a century and a
-half. Amid all the outpouring of the wonderful Elizabethan and Jacobean
-literature, though no printing was allowed in the provinces except
-at Oxford and Cambridge, there was not a sufficient demand for books
-in all England to provide work for more than about five and twenty
-master printers many of whom had only a single press, with a couple of
-journeymen and an apprentice. The Privy Council was always trying to
-keep down the number, both of printers and presses, and its action in
-so doing is usually represented as solely dictated by the fear of their
-being employed in producing seditious or schismatic pamphlets. No doubt
-this fear was the main cause of the Council's action. But if there had
-been enough lawful work for twice as many printers and presses, the
-number might have been doubled with no increase of risk. The risk lay
-solely in the fact that a man who owned and could use a press, if he
-could not get enough lawful work to give him a living, might be tempted
-to take secret work. Unless they were desperate, men would not risk
-hanging to earn a few shillings, or a few pounds, but there is ample
-evidence that in Shakespeare's day some of the small master printers
-really were desperate, and it was only natural that they should do bad
-work--as indeed they did. All over Europe printing at the beginning of
-the seventeenth century was bad; in England it was very bad indeed.
-
-During the second half of the seventeenth century and the whole of the
-eighteenth, the wealth of England steadily increased, and with its
-wealth the standard of education. There was a much greater demand for
-books, and though printing was permitted after 1693 in the provinces
-without restrictions, there was clearly more work to do in London.
-Printing became neat, and on occasion elaborate, and throughout the
-eighteenth century, both in England and Scotland, there were constant
-experiments and efforts to improve it, to which full justice has not
-yet been done. Among these efforts to improve it there is no reason
-to include Horace Walpole's private press at Strawberry Hill, or any
-of the other private presses which, possibly in imitation of his
-example, subsequently sprang up, except perhaps that at Lee Priory.
-The Strawberry Hill books were handsomely printed according to the
-taste of the day, but they showed no originality, such as was displayed
-by Baskerville or even the Foulises, and they certainly started no
-style. The other private presses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
-centuries were purely literary in their aims, and many of the books
-produced at them are below the average good commercial work of the day.
-
-In the middle of the nineteenth century the great spread of education
-caused a demand for very cheap books, both for amusement and
-instruction, which led to some lowering of standard. More dangerous
-still were the very gaudy ideals of decorative work which found
-favour during the era inaugurated by the Great Exhibition of 1851.
-There was an epidemic of bad taste among book buyers and publishers,
-and therefore printers responded to it, as they always will, whether
-gladly or reluctantly, respond to any popular demand which brings grist
-to their mill. Meanwhile much quite good work was being done by the
-Chiswick Press and other firms, but the influence of the amateur on the
-professional printing of that period is not much in evidence, either
-for good or for evil.
-
-The Daniel Press, worked as an amusement by the Rev. C. H. O. Daniel,
-Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, for a good many years, beginning
-about 1874, seems to me one of the best examples of a really amateur
-press that can be adduced. The interest of its books is mainly
-literary, but it is also typographical, and though the performance is
-usually slight, and even thin, Dr. Daniel showed real _flair_ in his
-revival of the old Fell types, his uses of italics, and the happy knack
-with which the work was put on the page. I think that Dr. Daniel's
-influence may possibly be traced, though only quite slightly, in some
-of the pretty books (often a little spoilt by the weakness of the ink)
-published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., in the eighties, most of them
-printed by Messrs. Ballantyne. If this is true, it is so much more to
-Dr. Daniel's credit.
-
-We come now to the movement of which William Morris was the leader,
-which placed to the credit of English typography some of the finest
-books the world has ever seen. Morris must be classed as an amateur,
-and his press as a private press, because he printed to please himself,
-and no offer of money, however great, would have induced him to print
-anything he really disliked. We must not, however, allow the private
-income which enabled Morris to carry out his ideas without worrying
-over cash-returns, or the fact that he sold most of his books by
-means of circulars from a private house instead of over a counter,
-or any other consideration, to blind us to the fact that he was one
-of the world's greatest craftsmen, and certainly, if we consider his
-versatility, his sureness of touch and his imagination, the finest
-that the British Isles have ever produced. If he had had the largest
-printing house in London, and had printed the Kelmscott books in a
-special department of it to advertise the rest, it could not have made
-him more of a craftsman than he was. He stands in a very real sense
-alone by virtue of his unique and splendid personality.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-Admiration for Morris led to the setting up of several private or
-amateur presses, which did excellent work in his spirit: notably
-the Doves Press, conducted at first by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, an
-ex-barrister, who had produced some real masterpieces as a bookbinder,
-and Mr. Emery Walker, the photo-engraver, who had ever been ready
-to help anyone trying to promote good printing; afterwards by Mr.
-Cobden-Sanderson alone. There was also the Ashendene Press of Mr. St.
-John Hornby, one of the partners in Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son, who, I
-fancy, has done rather more of the work with his own hands than most
-other private printers. Robert Proctor's Greek type, again, was brought
-into existence by love of Morris, but Proctor, like Messrs. Ricketts
-and Shannon, who were responsible for the Vale Press books, had no
-press of his own.
-
-The beauty of all these books reinforced the influence of the
-Kelmscott Press ones, by proving that what Morris had done on his
-own lines could be done by lesser men with the variations suggested
-by their individual tastes. They reinforced also the proof which
-Morris had given, that so long as it is regarded as a hobby (or in a
-commercial house as an advertisement) the production of really fine
-specimens of printing is not an impossibly expensive one. Morris made
-no profit from the Kelmscott books as a publisher; could allot himself
-no payment for all the magnificent decorative work which he put into
-them with his own hands. He got nothing from his venture save the joy
-of achievement and pleasure of giving copies to his friends. But he
-proved the existence of a public willing to pay for the cost of print
-and paper, even when both print and paper were the best which money
-could buy; and I believe that most venturers in the same field have
-been supported to about the same extent. From our present point of
-view, this is one of the most important results which Morris achieved.
-The direct influence of his work on men like Mr. Updike and Mr. Bruce
-Rogers can only be reckoned very slight. But if the Kelmscott books had
-not made the success they did, neither Mr. Updike nor Mr. Bruce Rogers
-would have been given his chance, and to make it possible for younger
-men to get their chance is one of the finest things a master craftsman
-can do.
-
-Private presses have multiplied greatly in the last thirty years,
-and some of them have done fine work. But the influence which they
-are exercising on the commercial printing of the present day is not
-in any way comparable to that which the Kelmscott and Doves books
-exercised a generation ago. There is no virtue in a book being printed
-in a small edition or in a private house, and no virtue in producing
-endless specimens of printing rather than books. Mr. Meynell and the
-Nonesuch Press (whose achievements I should admire much more joyously
-if it had not been called a "press") have shown what a diversity of
-interesting work can be obtained from commercial printers by a man who
-has good taste and knows how to get what he wants. When fine work can
-be obtained in this way private presses seem of little use save as an
-amusement to their owners. But no one is as yet making full use of the
-revolution (a much greater revolution than that inaugurated by the
-Aldine italics) which the "Monotype" machine has effected in modern
-printing just at the moment when (owing to the economic conditions,
-compositors having at last secured a fair wage) it was most needed.
-Thanks to the wonderful facility with which small types can now be cut
-and the greater quickness of machine-setting there is now only one
-obstacle to a new triumph of the Small Book Beautiful; and that is the
-obsession of the paymaster, the Customer, that it is unreasonable to
-expect him to pay anything approaching the same price for compact books
-in small clear type with no needless expanse of blank paper around
-the type page, as for the same number of words printed in larger type
-and with much more blank paper. The obsession is fostered by the fact
-that the reprints of popular books which have passed out of copyright
-and which often are produced in very pretty forms, are sold in large
-quantities at small prices, because no author has to make a livelihood
-out of them. But if a book does not appeal to a large public and yet
-has to earn money for its author it cannot be sold at a low price,
-and it is childish for the customer to insist that this fact should
-be concealed from him by books being made needlessly large in order
-that he may persuade himself that he is still getting plenty for his
-money. Publishers and Printers and Authors should unite to educate
-their paymaster the Customer on this point, and it is much to their
-interest to do so, for the book space which is now occupied by a couple
-of hundred volumes might easily hold two or three times as many if all
-books were printed with pleasant compactness. If an Amateur would arise
-who would help to train Customers to pay high prices for beautiful
-compact books he would be doing good service. At present most of the
-finely printed books are needlessly and inconveniently large.
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[33] The story of Bible-printing in England runs on very much the
-same lines. As soon as it was decided that English Bibles were to be
-placed in all churches, the printers were chosen, the price was fixed
-and every Parish was ordered to supply itself with a copy. From that
-day to this, with only a very partial exception for a few years under
-Queen Elizabeth, the printing of the plain text of the Bible has been
-a monopoly in England. Since the seventeenth century it has been kept
-absolutely in the hands of the King's Printers and the Universities
-of Oxford and Cambridge. From about 1770 onwards various provincial
-printers tried to circumvent this monopoly by printing Bibles with only
-a nominal amount of commentary, but hardly any of them found it worth
-while to issue a second edition. The monopolists knew that to maintain
-their rights in the nineteenth century, which made unrestricted
-competition into a fetish, they must give good value to buyers, ensure
-good workmanship, and give their workmen no ground for complaint. They
-have fulfilled all three conditions, and as a result we still have a
-Bible Trust in England, which is a Trust in the true meaning of the
-word, because it is worked in the interest of everyone concerned.
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]FRANCIS MEYNELL[Illustration]
-
-                         SOME COLLECTORS READ
-
-  This essay appeared originally in _The Colophon_, Part IV, 1930. It
-  was revised and retitled The Personal Element for inclusion in _The
-       Nonesuch Century_, 1936, from which it is here reprinted.
-
-
-It wouldn't be easy to imagine an idea, a policy and a business more
-"personal" than our Nonesuch has been. This is my excuse for the
-personal (worse, the first-personal) character of these ensuing notes.
-
-Nonesuch was started by three of us in the close quarters of a basement
-room (two of the three became husband and wife); at our busiest and
-most successful we have never had an office staff of more than three,
-usually our friends as well as our associates; we later lived above
-and in our office; we have been responsible ourselves not only for
-every decision of policy of what to publish and not to publish but also
-for every piece of printing, of make-up, of advertising; for jackets,
-catalogues, specimen pages and a vast deal of miscellaneous editing.
-And, more than anything else, it is our own taste which has determined
-our choice of books and choice of styles. In short everything (except
-typing and account-adding in later days) has been done by Vera Meynell
-or David Garnett or me.
-
-When I set myself to the making of these notes I thought I should only
-have to remember, not to reconstruct. I had by heart all that was worth
-knowing about the beginnings of the Nonesuch in itself. But for its
-remoter beginnings in myself I found that I had in fact to go back to
-my childhood.
-
-What induced this revision of my opinion was a phrase (quoted in my
-brother Everard's "Life" of Francis Thompson) from a letter of my
-mother's. "Please return" she had written to Thompson, "the revise
-proofs sixteen pages at a time."
-
-First of all (said I to myself) I am the son of a mother who was not
-only a poet but who knew also that page proofs have to be dealt with
-in units of sixteen. Yes, and that was only a trifle of the family's
-knowledge. I have often seen my mother unflinchingly cut a treasurable
-phrase in one of her essays so that it should end to the line or
-paragraph of the printer's prescription; and correct a proof so that a
-word deleted here would be promptly balanced by an added word there to
-save the over-running of the corrected lines. Where did she learn this
-tenderness towards my craft? But from my father, of course.
-
-And then I realised that, if he likes it or not, the Nonesuch Press is
-really my father's grand-son. In establishing it I was doing no more
-than reverting to type.
-
-There was of course the literary background, the great names and
-exciting personalities of the writers who were my parents' friends.
-There was George Meredith whose limping descent of the staircase I can
-just, and whose yearly tip of a pound at Christmas I can very easily,
-remember. There was the silver teapot which I never carried to be
-replenished without remembering my father's solemn sanctification of
-it: "Robert Browning has taken his tea from this." There was W. B.
-Yeats standing owl-like at the door blinking to discover my mother
-through the smoke emitted from the Egyptian cigarettes which I had
-lately been sent at top speed to buy, my father sometimes going
-twice through his pockets before he assembled the necessary tenpence
-halfpenny. (Tenpence halfpenny was also the price of a box of soldiers,
-and once I thought of buying soldiers instead of cigarettes and
-running away from home.) There was Francis Thompson, "The Poet" as
-we children always called him, fragile, mannered, and complaining of
-the weather or of the quality of our food. Much later I remember Jack
-Squire discussing the plans for the first _London Mercury_; and Hilaire
-Belloc brought by Wilfrid Blunt because of my father's "discovery" of
-his first writing in the _Morning Post_. I don't remember Stevenson or
-Patmore; but framed holographs of _In the Highlands_ and _The Toys_
-were set between the gold Japanese embroideries which surrounded the
-sitting room. This literary "atmosphere" was more continuously and
-intensively itself than anything I know today--even in psycho-analytic
-or Communist circles. "Does he write? Then do bring him." "Is he a
-Thompsonian? Of course he must come."
-
-Every Sunday afternoon and evening my parents were "at home." There
-was endless poetry-reading, endless "literary talk" by my mother's
-devoted admirers. No, not endless. There were two signals for their
-departure. The first gong, so to speak, was the arrival of the hot
-blackcurrant jam drink. The second was my father unbuttoning, almost
-unostentatiously, the top button of his boots.
-
-But all this was literature, not letters, and letters was after all
-the chief occupation of the house. A literary hot-house should have
-produced in me, very nearly did produce, an over-sensitive literary
-plant. And sure enough I wrote poetry, with three of my sisters and one
-of my brothers. (George Moore in one of the "Hail and Farewell" volumes
-has a disconcerting fancy of the young Meynells assembling for their
-verse-writing hour once a week.) But letters made me into a printer.
-
-In a play about Francis Thompson which was lately produced my father
-had necessarily to be represented. He objected to his portrayal under
-his own name, and he was therefore made to appear as John Oldcastle,
-his writing-name before I was born. In one scene he was shown sitting
-in the office of the paper which he edited, _Merry England_. He struck
-the bell twice for his sub-editor, once for his office boy, three
-times for his secretary. There was indeed such a magazine. But there
-was never an office, never a secretary, never a sub-editor, never an
-office boy. The whole work was done by my mother and father and amateur
-helpers on and about the library table. If I was allowed in the room on
-press-days the bargain was that I was to sit under the table. Mostly
-this was fun. I learned a lot about the leg-fidgets of writers. And
-"under the table" became my own kingdom, from which I could at the age
-of seven declaim without embarrassment Gray's "Elegy" to the Sunday
-night supper guests. But one memory survives which still carries horror
-with it--the memory of my mother suddenly going down on her knees, down
-to my level, and burying her face in her hands. She had just been told,
-in the midst of proof-correcting, of the death of Coventry Patmore.
-
-"The Poet" was one of the helpers--a feared helper. He would wish to
-engage all the rest in argument as to the desirability of this or that
-paragraph. On one occasion, J. L. Garvin, who could disturb by his
-brilliant relevance almost as much as Thompson by his dull irrelevance,
-made an unexpected call. Proofs were already overdue. By a masterly
-manoeuvre "the poet" was sent to entertain him. Garvin, the liveliest
-talker of our day, was overwhelmed by Thompson's discussion of the
-relative merits of Lyons and A.B.C. tea shops. He sat mumchance an
-afternoon through. Thompson reported: "Never have I known Garvin so
-brilliant."
-
-_Merry England_ was a monthly, but its crises were not less acute for
-that. You can put off so easily until too late what has to be done only
-once a month. But _The Weekly Register_, which was also my father's
-property, and which was written almost wholly by himself and my mother,
-was a weekly. The correction of proofs was a diurnal occupation with
-Thursdays as the grand climax. It was printed by the Westminster Press;
-and here, too, my father was the begetter of my trade. For he was
-part-owner of the Westminster Press and helped to establish with it a
-style of typography and a care for detail in printing which were far
-ahead of the run of commercial presses.
-
-When he was over fifty my father added the last segment to the
-circle. Magazine proprietor, editor, writer, printer, he now became
-book publisher, as managing director of Burn & Oates. He transferred
-from John Lane Francis Thompson's books and my mother's, and he gave me
-my first job. He gave me also my first lesson in detail. _The Collected
-Works of Francis Thompson_ were issued by Burns & Oates a few months
-after I had joined the firm, and I was allowed to have a hand in
-designing the edition. When it was printed my father discovered that
-several commas had broken away from the ends of lines and that a number
-of the kerns or top loops of the letter "f" had been broken. Day after
-day piles of the imperfect volumes were massed in his flat, which was
-immediately above the office. We had a sort of fire-bucket drill. One
-of my sisters would find the page, my father would dab in the comma, I
-would do the blotting and another sister would restack the books. Some
-scores of thousands of pen corrections were thus made. I don't think my
-father would have trusted any one of us to do the actual pen work. He
-leant back, he quizzed, he admired after every stroke.
-
- [Illustration: The title page of Bunyan's classic, composed in Caslon
- and Deutsche Zeitschrift, printed by the Kynoch Press, edition, 1600
-                               copies.]
-
-In 1913, pursuing a common typographical errand, I chanced to meet
-Stanley Morison, who had just emerged from a bank and was anxious to
-concern himself with book-production, and he joined forces with me
-at Burns & Oates. A year later as a personal venture I purchased a
-hand press, which I kept in my dining room; and my next step was to
-persuade the delegates of the Oxford University Press to let me use
-some of their seventeenth century Fell types. They were very obliging,
-and they let me have what I wanted, charged me for it as if it were
-sold, but very properly kept the legal title to it, so that if I were
-to misuse this cherished type they could at any time call upon me to
-surrender it. I still have these Fell types in my possession. "The
-Romney Street Press," since I lived in that street, was my new "style,"
-and I issued a prospectus, which I regard now with mixed feelings of
-shame and admiration at my audacity; for if ever there was a gold-brick
-prospectus this was one! Here it is:
-
- "The Romney Street Press at 67 Romney Street, Westminster, has been
- set up for the better and unaffected production of Books, & Pamphlets,
- & single sheets of poetry. The type of the Press (used for this
- prospectus) is the finest of the series imported from Holland in
- about 1660 by Bishop Fell for the Oxford University Press, by whose
- courtesy it is now used. The editions of the Romney Street Press
- will be limited to a maximum of fifty copies. The preliminary costs
- of equipment amount to £40, & Francis Meynell, the Director of the
- Press, invites subscriptions to cover this amount. Subscribers will
- have first call upon the publications of the Press at cost price,
- upon the amount of their subscription. The first publications will be
- Seven Poems by Alice Meynell, written since the issue of the Collected
- Poems. There will follow Mary Cary, the meditations, occasional poems
- and spiritual diary of the wife of a Cromwellian captain, now first
- published, from her MS. note-book; & Love in Dian's Lap, by Francis
- Thompson. But the process of production will be slow. Suggestions for
- other books, particularly of 17th century reference, will be welcome.
- APRIL 1915."
-
-I may say at once that the only two books which I issued (_Ten Poems by
-Alice Meynell_, and _The Diary of Mary Cary_) were, with a good deal of
-difficulty, disposed of--yes, the whole of the fifty copies; but there
-were no general subscriptions to the Press, not one, and the cost of
-equipment, forty pounds, bore heavily upon me. Perhaps because of this,
-perhaps because my dining room was my workshop, and printer's ink was
-apt to get into the soup, I discontinued the venture--which in any case
-(since I had no technical assistance and very little competence myself)
-was decidedly irksome.
-
-Meantime decisive things had happened to me. I had met George
-Lansbury, inspiration of my politics, and I had met Bruce Rogers,
-inspiration of all eager typographers. For the next five years I
-worked in close association with George Lansbury. (I suppose that he
-has lately become one of the most generally loved men in England. To
-anyone who has known him in times of deep stress as intimately as
-I have that cannot be surprising. There is no qualification in my
-admiration and affection.[34]) In him I found a most ready support for
-my "propaganda" view of good printing and good craftsmanship of any
-kind. Lansbury secured the financial support which made it possible
-for me to start the Pelican Press. I think the Pelican was a pioneer
-in the policy of having very few types but all of them of good design.
-We set advertisements for commerce, which was in those days something
-of an innovation; and we printed political pamphlets in the Minority
-Labour interest. These pamphlets are odd to look at now. The slogan of
-"fitness for purpose" had not yet informed us. A report of the great
-meetings which we held at the Albert Hall after the first Russian
-revolution was designed with the mannered elegance which would have
-suited better an essay by Walter Pater. And I remember myself writing a
-double-page political manifesto for the _Weekly Herald_, calling upon
-the proletariat to rise and end the war, which was set in Cloister
-Old Face with a seventeenth century flower border and sixteenth
-century initials.... I set up with elegance what must be the rarest
-of Siegfried Sassoon first editions. I myself have no copy. Bertrand
-Russell brought him to see me when Sassoon had decided to refuse to go
-back to the war, and I made into a leaflet his letter of explanation
-to his Commanding Officer. I am now astonished at what we published
-without prosecution. Now it would be "seditious propaganda." I can only
-put it down to the innocent elegance of typography!
-
-Soon after the war I began making proposals from the Pelican Press to
-various publishers. Would they allow me to print for them this that and
-the other book in a "really nice" edition? I pointed out that if they
-were in fact wrecked upon the conventional desert island and wished to
-take with them the conventional choice of two books, Shakespeare and
-the Bible, they would not find a current edition of either fit for a
-tasteful shipwreck. But my arguments were fruitless--except of a plan
-for myself. Why shouldn't I do what I wanted them to do? Why wait on
-them? So I began to hanker after the as yet unnamed, unmanned and
-unfinanced Nonesuch Press. The next step was to bind David Garnett and
-Vera Mendel to the adventure.
-
-David Garnett's family history, like my own, is full of literature. He
-is the son of two writers and the grandson of a third. He too, after
-a brief excursion into the Natural Sciences, reverted to type, opened
-a book-shop (with Francis Birrell), wrote his first novel and, in the
-same year, lent both the cellar of his book-shop and the assistance of
-his critical and book-learned mind to our new venture. He too "liked"
-books. He could, I mean, enjoy the feel of a book, its weight, shape,
-edges, the synthesis of sensitive things which is represented by that
-most insensitive word "format."
-
-Vera Mendel was the useful necessary incubator for our schemes. She
-provided our small capital and she did the routine work. She was also
-our fearless critic-in-chief. The things she stopped us doing! She,
-too, developed in me the sense which David Garnett already shared with
-her--the sense of responsibility about texts. And she put sobriety
-whenever she could into my lush "blurbs." Her flexibility of mind made
-our work, too, flexible. She translated Toller's first play, which
-was among our earliest books; and shared with me the editing of _The
-Week-End Book_. For the first eighteen months, while I was working
-full time at the Pelican Press and David Garnett at his book-shop, and
-before we felt justified in employing as much as an office girl, she
-did everything, from editing to stamp-licking, that I could not steal
-time to do.
-
-This about ourselves. Whence our corporate name? We began by looking
-not for a name, but for a device; and we found in a tapestry surviving
-from Nonesuch Palace the elements which Stephen Gooden made into our
-first "mark." In adapting the device, we took also the name; and I
-silenced an early objection that it was too boastful by pointing out
-that Nonesuch means "nonpareil" and so had an esoteric meaning. For
-nonpareil is the name of a very small and very humble size of type.
-Nonesuch was chosen, then, in a spirit of mixed hope and humility.
-Ralph Hodgson, the poet, who was interested in my enterprise, was most
-anxious that I should call it the Pound Press. (He had lately seen and
-admired my father's seventeenth-century farmhouse, which has in front
-of it a delightful yard or "pound.") Every book, he urged, warming
-to his subject, should weigh a pound and cost a pound! After some
-intensive correspondence his enthusiasm was routed, and the Nonesuch
-Press came into being.
-
-[Illustration: Page from Montaigne's _Essays_, composed in Poliphilus
-and Koch Antiqua, printed by R. & R. Clark. Published 1931; edition,
-1375 sets of two volumes.]
-
-So there we were, in 1923, in our cellar under Birrell & Garnett's
-book-shop, book-enthusiasts, amateurs in the literal, though not, I
-hope, the derogatory sense of the word, tackling the donkey work of
-book production and the mule work of book distribution.
-
-For nearly two years we continued in the half light of our limited
-premises, producing illuminating works in limited editions, and
-varying the daily task with such occasional diversions as "invoice
-bees"--parties to which our friends were bidden in order to help us
-between drinks with the task of writing our invoices, "statements," et
-caetera.
-
-It is scarcely worth recording the vicissitudes of those underground
-activities. Only when we tried to stop an ever-rising tide of
-Congreves--which, as with breaking back I eagerly unloaded the volumes
-from the lorries, narrowly escaping immuring V. M. in that unhistoric
-cellar for good--only then did we wonder whether, for purposes of
-self-preservation, the Press might not have to expand. (Indeed, one
-wall did bulge alarmingly.) Happily, part of the edition of Congreve
-got lost in Devonshire.... The lorries which were carrying the bound
-books from the printers at Plymouth broke down before we did.
-
-I myself travelled the first books, being received with varying degrees
-of courtesy by the book-sellers. Of those who were civil some were
-encouraging, some politely discouraging. When, very soon, we were
-obliged to "ration" orders, these were rewarded and persuaded, and the
-discourteous received no more than their small deserts.
-
-We meant to have fun with our business and fun we have had. Even when
-it had outgrown its puppyhood we continued to button-hole our customers
-and sell them not only our goods but our tastes and our views. Let me
-anticipate for a moment and quote a sample from the opening paragraph
-of our 1929 catalogue.
-
- "In these days of literary censorship exercised by Sir Archibald
- Bodkin (of Savidge case fame), Sir William Joynson-Hicks and a
- Detective-Inspector of Scotland Yard, no publisher can be positive in
- his announcement that he will issue such and such a book. Chaucer?
- Fie, his language is coarse. Plato? The less said about Socrates and
- his young friends, _if_ you please, the better. Shakespeare? He will
- perhaps pass unchallenged, for Lamb's Tales doubtless exhausted the
- censors' interest in this prurient author. Farquhar, Don Quixote
- even--these too may corrupt the corrupt, which is the current legal
- test of obscenity. With a propitiatory bow to Sir Archibald and to
- the potent and anonymous Detective-Inspector (the unlamented Home
- Secretary gets no more than a distant nod), we therefore give to this
- list of announcements the precautionary title, 'Bodkin Permitting.'"
-
-But this jape, and others, were part of a serious and deliberate
-policy. From the beginning we had a plan and hoped to have a public. In
-the words of our first (1923) catalogue, we intended to make books "for
-those among collectors who also use books for reading." We intended
-to choose our books to suit our tastes, not the imputed taste of a
-hypothetical public.
-
-Not that we felt ego-centric and exclusive about it, like the
-Californian millionaire who, I am told, caused a Shakespeare to be
-printed to suit his own taste and his own library--an edition of
-one copy. We have made now over a hundred editions to suit our own
-personal requirements--the author we wanted, the text we wanted, the
-format we wanted, the decorations we wanted. And if there had been
-no other profit from the Press, this shelf of my library would have
-seemed in itself a sufficient recompense for my share of the work.
-But fortunately, many other people also wanted these books. For our
-taste proved to be a normal contemporary taste. We did not create the
-vogue for Donne, for instance--we were ourselves part of that general
-tendency which has in these days found him afresh.
-
-My previous experience in printing had shown me quite clearly that,
-in order to avoid monotony and to produce desirable editions at a
-reasonable cost, one must intelligently exploit the best mechanical
-equipment and the highest technical skill available. Today there is
-more fine typographical material to be had than even the largest
-printing house in the country could possess; and the various commercial
-presses have developed technical skill and variety along various lines.
-There was therefore no good reason, we thought, for a new "private
-press" in the old style, arrogantly self-contained, and with but one
-type and obsolete "hand" machinery.
-
-Our stock-in-trade has been the theory that mechanical means could
-be made to serve fine ends; that the machine in printing was a
-controllable tool. Therefore we set out to be mobilisers of other
-people's resources; to be designers, specifiers, rather than
-manufacturers; architects of books rather than builders.
-
-The propriety of our use of the word "Press" was called in question by
-Arnold Bennett and others. Pedantically it may be wrong; by the spirit
-it is nearly right. There is no exact word for our function, which
-was new. Nor for my own part in that function. When I have wanted to
-"sign" a book, at first I wrote "Typography by." But typography is
-only a quarter of my battle, and that phrase puts undue emphasis on
-one department, one only, of a job the essence of which is that it
-is manifold. A number of books I signed F. M. _Finx_. But "finxit"
-means "fashioned," and so "made," rather than "designed." I also used
-the phrase "under the care of," but this is vague and inaccurate,
-suggesting merely the oversight of someone else's designs. Perhaps
-"This book was planned by" is the least inaccurate formula, though
-this again leaves out the whole business of overseeing. Overseeing is
-no purely typographical matter. It means the planning and coordinating
-of the whole book--text, editor, and artist, as well as paper-maker,
-printer and binder. In fact, it involves an editorial as well as a
-typographical attitude.
-
-[Illustration: Opening page from Voltaire's _Princess of Babylon_ with
-  line drawing by Thomas Lowinsky. Composed in Caslon, printed by the
-      Westminister Press. Published 1928; edition, 1500 copies.]
-
-Foulk Grevill writing of the posthumous edition of Sidney's _Arcadia_
-said "This requyres the care of his friends, not to amend (for I think
-that falls within the reach of no man living) but only to see to the
-paper, and other common errors of mercenary printing." My own interest
-and ambition in founding the Nonesuch was to see to the paper and other
-common errors of mercenary printing; but D. G. and V. M. aspired to
-tackle the question of amendments as well. From our fourth book onwards
-that policy has governed all our major publications. When, as sometimes
-happens, a text needs no more editing: when it is adequately and
-accurately "established," there is still the quasi-editorial function
-of the illustrator. He may, he should, become in his designs more than
-a decorator; he should, I believe, become a significant _commentator_.
-"Kauffer on Burton" is, for example, how I would describe the drawings
-for our edition of _The Anatomy_.
-
-Our books were published in "limited editions" because we had to rope
-in the collector as well as the reader and student. We have found that
-it was necessary to impose another sort of limit on our output--a limit
-to the number of titles we could conveniently and properly publish in
-a given time. We came to the conclusion that eight books a year was
-about as much as we could manage if every detail was to be our personal
-concern and if all were to be freshly designed. The making of our
-books in a great variety of styles was an early principle, firmly held
-to. I did not want people to be able to say at the first sight of our
-books, "Oh yes, that must be a Nonesuch book." I wanted them to say,
-"That's not a bad looking book," and then to find that it was ours. My
-calculation--it was a calculation, not a programme--proved surprisingly
-right. Our first hundred books have taken us twelve years to make.
-
-Our friends have been our editors; and our editors have been our
-friends. We have had the most valuable suggestions for books, and the
-most valuable criticism of details of production even, from them. I
-have seldom "passed" a binding, for example, without asking Geoffrey
-Keynes's opinion of it. His well-wishing has been of extraordinary
-value to us, apart from the many editions which he has himself
-admirably edited for the Nonesuch. It was he who introduced us to
-those other excellent editors of our texts, John Hayward and John
-Sparrow--the former a keen critic and helpful adviser. E. McKnight
-Kauffer, Stephen Gooden and T. L. Poulton have also done for us much
-more than illustrate a number of our books.
-
-E. McKnight Kauffer (who drew us from the life for the last of
-his illustrations to _The Anatomy of Melancholy_) at one time had
-office-room with us. The hours I spent in discussing aesthetics with
-him were stimulating--over-stimulating, we found, when there was work
-to do. So, in the end, we nailed up a list of "red-herring words"
-("functional," "the Artist" and so forth) which were not to be used
-during office hours on pain of a fine of sixpence for each use. But
-there was no sixpenny escape from George Moore. While _Ulick and
-Soracha_ was at the printers, he came almost daily, hung up his square
-bowler hat and settled down to read aloud to us the revisions he had
-made in his last batch of proofs. Each time it was an entirely new
-text. The first version was almost illiterate. The second grammatical
-but undistinguished. The third a transfiguration. It was fascinating to
-see the process of his composition at close quarters: and our feelings
-were undisturbed by anxieties about the printer's bill, for he had
-proposed at the outset that he should pay for his own corrections. They
-exceeded the original cost of the setting. In any event, who am I to be
-critical? For one book I had 37 different varieties of title-page set
-up. My friend William Maxwell, who printed this book, said that he did
-not mind "losing" (printers are like farmers) on the text of a Nonesuch
-book because he always made up his loss on the title-page....
-
-In 1925 we moved from our cellar to Great James Street and we decided
-(with some misgivings) to incorporate the firm. It seemed better to
-our auditors although we had suspicions that our subscribers might be
-discouraged from collecting when they saw first the formula "Ltd."
-on our letter-paper. We did them an injustice. The partners became
-directors and shareholders. Vera Meynell bought a little book entitled
-"The Secretary and His Directors" and, impressed by the legal penalties
-that hedge about these offices, occasionally wound up one of our long
-triangular discussions by taking down the minutes book and saying:
-"Well, I suppose that this might as well have been a board meeting."
-Once a year, for the benefit of Somerset House we (the directors)
-presented to ourselves (the shareholders) with all due formalities,
-a report on the year's accounts and progress. Otherwise it made no
-difference.
-
-    [Illustration: The Antigone Greek type used in Homer's _Iliad_,
-decorated by Rudolph Koch. Printed by Joh. Enschedé en Zonen. Published
-                     1931; edition, 1450 copies.]
-
-Even the "mundial bad-time" (to quote the phrase of an Indian friend)
-of 1930 did not seem to affect us or our customers much. But the second
-year of the great depression brought onto the market many hoarded
-copies of our books from the pickle-shelves of profiteers and deflated
-some of their more astronomical prices. Our survival-value (as luxury
-trades go) is perhaps due to the fact that even in boom-time we tried
-to be honest traders, not using our success with collectors to put
-prices as high as the traffic would bear, but giving a constant ratio
-of good value in the sheer materials of book-making, so that our paper,
-printing, binding were as good as any to be had at the price.
-
-No book-producing of our kind can subsist without sales in America. It
-was our good fortune to ally ourselves in 1927 with Random House of New
-York. No collaboration could be more satisfactory from a technical or a
-personal point of view. It survived the get-rich-quick temptations of
-1929; it has survived the difficulties of the depression. New blood and
-money entered the Press two years ago when Cecil Harmsworth, Desmond
-Harmsworth and Eric Harmsworth joined our board. But they belong to our
-Second Century, not to our first.
-
-We have avoided antagonisms, even avoided competition. My friend Osbert
-Sitwell suggested that we should publish a satire on Noel Coward;
-Coward that we should publish his satire on the Sitwells. To both we
-said "no." How pleasant it would have been to issue them together in a
-single book! When I found that Peter Davies and the Nonesuch were both
-planning to reissue Cobbett's _Rural Rides_, we met and tossed for it.
-He won; and our editorial work was made over to him.
-
-Of all Nonesuch books that by which I should best like the venture to
-be judged is our Shakespeare, edited by Herbert Farjeon. It brought
-us, among other things, a characteristic contact with T. E. Lawrence.
-Lawrence had written a letter of fervent praise of the Shakespeare to
-David Garnett; and I sought permission to use it. David Garnett was
-himself our ambassador. Lawrence appealed to the group of friends with
-whom he happened to be. "I don't want my letter to be reprinted. I
-hate the advertising of my name and opinions," he protested. To his
-obvious chagrin (for Lawrence had a passion for publicity as great as
-his passion against it) his friends supported his view. "After all,"
-said they "you are not a Shakespeare expert." That decided Lawrence. "I
-think it is my duty to give permission," he said. This was his letter:
-
- "We turn over to the Nonesuch Shakespeare. There you have created a
- most marvellous pleasure. I have handled it ever so many times, and
- read THE TEMPEST right through. It satisfies. It is final, like the
- Kelmscot Chaucer or the Ashendene Virgil. And it is a book which
- charms one to read slowly, an art which is almost gone from us in
- these times. Every word which Shakespeare uses stands out glowing.
- A really great edition. The tact and grace of your editor have been
- surpassing. I think I like the size and shape and binding almost as
- much as the text. The paper, too, is just right. Altogether a triumph.
- One of the best things is that it can be done again. Nobody will
- ever dare to produce the old type of edition now, while your text
- stands there to reproach them. It means a permanent improvement in
- Shakespeares."
-
-"There they are, my fifty men and women." They must speak for
-themselves, and I have almost silenced them with my chatter. For their
-successors I can say only this: that it remains the ambition of the
-Press to make a worthy edition, textually and typographically, of every
-major English writer who has not already been appropriately served. It
-will make these books for money, and has no shame in that. We are not
-"Gentlemen Farmers" but workers at our trade. But we are enthusiasts
-also, even in our middle years; and still propagandists. Every
-well-designed book or advertisement or prospectus is the begetter of
-others; and good printing is one of the graces of life even where life
-is ungracious.
-
-  [Illustration: Title page for small book edited by Francis Meynell,
- composed in Janson and "printed on the premises" at the Press on Van
-           Gelder mould-made paper. Edition, 1250 copies.]
-
-In a letter from Vienna in 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes
-of Prince Eugene's library that it is "though not very ample, well
-chosen; but as the Prince would admit into it no editions but what are
-beautiful and pleasing to the eye and there are nevertheless numbers of
-excellent books that are but indifferently printed, this finikin and
-foppish taste makes many disagreeable chasms in this collection!"
-
-I should like to make Prince Eugene patron saint of the Nonesuch. And
-dear Lady Mary as well; for it remains the object of the Nonesuch Press
-to meet tastes finikin and foppish like his, studious like hers.
-
-                COMPOSED IN POLIPHILUS AND BLADO TYPES
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[34] When we published the Compendious _William Morris_ I sent
-copies to G. L., to Ramsay MacDonald and to Mr. Baldwin--the last a
-stranger to me. Their replies make almost a résumé of their political
-characters. G. L. saw in the social essays a conscience-pricking
-reproach about things left long undone. J. R. M. saw in them a cause
-for self-congratulation. Mr. Baldwin did not answer for nearly two
-years: the book had been mislaid. But when he did answer he covered two
-pages with his close hand-writing to apologise and explain. The Perfect
-Gentleman!
-
-
-
-
-           [Illustration]CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD[Illustration]
-
-                          _Printing for Love_
-
- From _Cockalorum_: A Bibliography of the Golden Cockerel Press, June
- 1943-December 1948. (An address to the Art Society, University of the
-  South West of England in Exeter, June, 1947.) Copyright 1950 by the
-Golden Cockerel Press. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher.
-
-
-[Illustration] I have called this talk "Printing for Love." I have not
-come to preach a gospel to you, but, as I proceed to discuss printing
-and publishing and book-illustration, it will be apparent to you that
-one of the tenets of my religion is that we workers should do our
-job, whether it be farming, or gardening, book-keeping or building,
-hewing coal or engineering, _with a will_. In Ecclesiastes the Preacher
-advises us: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
-(Ch. 9, v. 10.) You may say that my job is a nice job; that it is all
-very well for me to talk. I can assure you that book-manufacture is
-a most intricate process. Things tend to go wrong at every stage of
-production. Of worries we printers have no end.
-
-I often feel like an Irish farmer driving his pig to market. In one
-hand he holds a stick to prod the pig. In the other a string tied to
-the pig's leg. The pig goes to the right and then to the left and
-the countryman wonders will he ever get that pig to the market. Many
-of my books are like that pig. They drive me to despair. And yet I
-love my printing like a mountaineer loves his mountains, which he
-climbs arduously with sweat and aching limbs. He has his reward when
-he reaches the summit and enjoys a fine view, much as I enjoy the
-appearance of a book which I have made with infinite pains. For both of
-us there is the joy of achievement--of something attempted, something
-done.
-
-"Oh, but," you may expostulate, "supposing you were a sewer-man, could
-you bring love into your work?" I am sure I would. In fact this case
-in point was quoted recently on the wireless. If I remember rightly,
-a speaker had referred with commiseration to the lot of the sewer-man
-working underground among the rats in the muck and stench of drains.
-He was called to task by a most insulted sewer-man, who explained that
-his was a good job--as good as any other. All the artists and the
-craftsmen who co-operate with me--the paper-makers, the cloth-makers,
-the tanners, the brass-cutters, the illustrators, the compositors, the
-pressmen, the binders--aye, and the authors too, who write and rewrite
-their text until it seems to me just right for the Golden Cockerel--all
-of them have their worries and their toil, but their work for me is
-done with love.
-
-This is a question you might ask yourselves: can a beautiful thing be
-made cynically? The dice is loaded against the unwanted child of a
-loveless marriage. You cannot divorce your work from your life. The two
-are parts of a whole. My religion is that love should be the basis of
-all one's living and all one's work. In so far as my books have been
-successful as works of art, it is because they have been made with love.
-
-Only with great self-restraint can I refrain from reading you again
-that beautiful thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the
-Corinthians on Faith, Hope and Love--you remember "Love suffereth long
-and is kind, love envieth not, love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed
-up." Please read it now and then. It is so important.
-
-Perhaps, when you heard my talk was to be called "Printing for Love,"
-you thought, "Oh, he means printing without financial reward." Believe
-me, love, too, hath its reward. Make what you have to make, and do what
-you have to do, the way I advocate, and you will have your reward. You
-must have _faith_ in this. We have got to fight our battles against
-obstructions, but, if we fight well, and do what we are intended to do,
-everything is made possible for us: the most miraculous things happen
-in their due time.
-
-At the Golden Cockerel I never choose a book because I think it a
-good seller. Publishing friends are astonished when I admit that quite
-recently I refused books offered to me by Evelyn Waugh--one of the best
-selling novelists of today--and Sir Osbert Sitwell. Of course I do not
-disapprove of the authors. I admire them greatly. But in each case the
-manuscript submitted was not one I wanted for the Cockerel.
-
-I choose those books which I believe are _right_ for this gay,
-mirthful, versatile bird. At times he likes to play, at times to be
-serious. He is interested in genuine old tales of adventure written
-by explorers and missionaries, who may have travelled in birch-bark
-canoes or quaint unwieldy ships. He is interested in old peoples and
-their poetry. At present he is printing a translation of the epic of
-Gilgamesh preserved on stone tablets. It is at least six thousand years
-old and refers to a flood--like Noah's Flood--which was recent history
-to people then. They were either more or less civilized then than we
-are now, according to your view of what constitutes civilization. They
-appear to have had more to eat than we have now; they spent more time
-in making life beautiful, and in thoughtful enquiry into spiritual
-things, such as survival after death. They had libraries of books,
-not printed like Golden Cockerels, but inscribed on series of stone
-tablets. There were several "copies" of the epic of Gilgamesh in the
-library at Nineveh.
-
-To return to the Golden Cockerel, he also loves the masterpieces of
-English and French literature and classical literature. He is really
-a very human bird, kind and sometimes very amorous, never spiteful,
-never morbid, never cruel. I personally pretend to run this Press, but
-you know this chimeric cockerel really rules the roost. When I and two
-friends took over the Press in 1933, I had quite different ideas for it
-from those I had accepted a few months later. This Cockerel had his own
-personality and traditions. I have rather enjoyed following his gaudy
-plumage along the aerial avenues in which he seems to want to fly.
-
-This has not always been easy for me. From time to time I had partners
-to help me. Their ideas and mine naturally did not always coincide.
-They gave in to me so often that just occasionally I had, in common
-charity, to print and publish some book favoured by one of them and
-which I did not myself like. Usually on such occasions the finished
-book was to me abortive--a baby cuckoo among my own fledglings. And
-they usually did not sell well. Try as you may, you cannot do quite as
-well for someone else's offspring.
-
-It has always been of paramount importance that my books should sell.
-As a husband and a father of three children, I have had to make the
-Cockerel pay. Otherwise I should have had to work at something else.
-Obviously you cannot make a large income from the sale of, say, half
-a dozen books a year in small limited editions. But the Cockerel
-has never let me down and always made it possible for me to keep on
-with this work. The late St. John Hornby, who used to publish those
-monumental Ashendene Press books at prices in the neighbourhood of
-100 gns. has said that, taken all over, he would just approximately
-cover his costs. No profit! He was in a financial position to ignore
-costs and the necessity to make his books pay. In theory that is
-good. In practice I think it is wholesome that the products of your
-labour should be commercially right. The absolute necessity for you
-to sell what you produce makes you take notice of the reactions of
-your patrons, keeps you from being too personal, too idiosyncratic,
-too precious, shall I say too amateurish? Here I am on difficult
-ground. It depends what you mean by amateurish. I think of myself as
-a professional, but, to the trade publishers (who would not dream of
-rejecting a manuscript from Evelyn Waugh), I, and others like me, are
-looked on as amateurs, because we do what we like.
-
-This type of amateur, who does what he likes, scientifically, is,
-I believe, very important. Into this category would fall research
-students, and poets, and scholars, and inventors, and all sorts
-of people. Has a scientific study ever been made of the amateur
-throughout the ages and his influence on our life? If not, _there_ is
-a noble thesis for a research student, and he could make of it a most
-interesting and I think saleable book. Perhaps _one of you_ will do it!
-
-Now you may be thinking, "here's this chap and they tell me he has a
-certain reputation as a printer. We get him down here to talk to us
-about printing, and off he goes gassing about love, and Noah's flood,
-and how to make money without trying to."
-
-Please forgive me! You see I started as a printer and taught myself
-how to dress a book according to my tastes. Then I became a publisher.
-Let us make no mistake: the important thing is the literary content of
-the book. How it is dressed is only of secondary importance. It _can_
-be dressed any old how. Obviously it is better when it is suitably
-dressed. But the dress, that is, the printing and binding, must not
-be accorded _too_ great importance--it must not _vaunt_ itself. If
-you ask a book-seller who has built up a circle of people who collect
-"cockerels" _why_ they like cockerels, he will answer "because they
-are _cockerels_." By this he does not, I hope, mean "because they wear
-cockerel dress"--or, shall I say, "plumage"?--but rather that they are,
-in their literary content, in their dress, and in their illustration,
-examples of the cockerel idea of what a book should be.
-
-Of course it is no good the author thinking he has done everything--it
-is the composite whole which is so engaging. I have known some
-illustrators who think the author doesn't count. And authors tend
-to think the artist a hack who should do what he is told. Both
-may think that my own small contribution, as the architect of the
-whole structure, is unimportant. Quite the greatest joy for me in
-publishing is being in constant delightful intercourse with these
-beautiful authors and artists. Beautiful is the right word. I don't
-mean physically, of course, but in their natures. Compare them if
-you like, to the most sensitive instruments designed by man and you
-behold these God-made beings a hundred-fold more sensitive. Go to the
-races and delight in the controlled nervousness and the pent-up fire
-of enthusiasm in those beautiful thoroughbred horses, and yet these
-dreamers of dreams, these passionate romancers, these scholars, in
-all the controlled exuberance of their knowledge and their zeal for
-research, these drawers of pictures, who "see the light that never was
-on sea or land": the horses are as nothing beside them!
-
-Now, who are these authors and scholars and artists? Well, some are, of
-course, professionals, in the sense that they live by their art, and
-others, a lot of them, are civil servants, or architects, or even prime
-ministers, who make their art a hobby. But can we end there? Is not
-every roadman tidying his road, every thatcher on the roof, or every
-good accountant neatly writing his accounts, and every worker planting
-his allotment of a summer's evening, an artist to a greater or less
-degree? He seems to me, watching him, to be working for love. And so
-with those of us who make seemly books.
-
-Normally you have the publisher who chooses what books he will
-publish, and contracts with the author to produce and sell his work
-in book form. You have also the paper-maker, the ink-maker, the
-type-founder, the maker of printing machinery and plant. You have
-the printer, with his compositors who prepare the type for press,
-his proof-readers, his pressmen who print the corrected type on the
-paper, and his warehousemen, who deal out the paper, and pack the
-printed sheets. You have the binders and manufacturers of material
-and machinery used in binding. Normally a host of people have taken
-their part, however small, in processes which go to the making of the
-finished book.
-
-In a "private press" a very great deal of the work is concentrated in
-the hands of its owner. In certain cases the owner himself has set
-the type and printed it on a hand-press. His output has thus been
-severely limited to the productivity of one single pair of hands.
-This is not practical politics today--one's turnover is too small to
-cover overheads. An alternative is to employ skilled help with the
-type-setting and presswork. This was the method employed by the Golden
-Cockerel up to 1933. For reasons I need not go into, this method does
-not now pay.
-
-The survival of the Golden Cockerel, since I and my friends took it
-over in the midst of the great depression, has been due in large
-measure to the method of production which we adopted. By working in
-with the Chiswick Press, a famous old firm of trade printers, we
-arranged that the Cockerel should have the use of their plant and
-their skilled labour precisely as and when we wanted it, without
-the necessity for capital expenditure on plant or of providing the
-wages of skilled craftsmen, week in week out, whether or not fully
-employed. Those were terrible times, and our solution was the only
-one practicable. It was a great experiment, but it worked. Of all the
-important private presses in this country, the Cockerel alone has
-carried on--and right through the war. In the books of the Golden
-Cockerel a great tradition survives.
-
-But the survival of the Golden Cockerel, and of the tradition which
-it holds dear, is not achieved solely by its method of production. On
-the contrary, there are other prime factors. I have said that in my
-view the literary content of the book is more important than its dress.
-We must not print for the sake of printing. Firstly then I only print
-what I greatly desire to publish--something that is really good. I
-think I have been successful in finding a lot of new literary material
-which a sophisticated section of the community does enjoy to read.
-Of course some of my book-seller friends often beg me to print the
-old favourites, for which there is such a great demand. Occasionally
-I oblige. I have a Gray's _Elegy_ at the binders now and a Keats'
-_Endymion_ in the press. But generally the Cockerel prefers to be more
-enterprising. Look at all the literature we unearthed and published
-on the subject of the Mutiny on the Bounty--book after book. And then
-those volumes of Shelley's letters to Hogg. We found and published the
-journal kept by the Pilgrim Fathers when they went to America. Then
-there were the four previously unpublished books by that legendary
-character, Lawrence of Arabia, and so on. These are typical of the sort
-of thing we've found and published for the first time. Not the old
-favorites, but, because they add to literature and knowledge, so well
-worth making known.
-
-The second important feature of Cockerels is their illustration with
-engravings. More than any other process, engraving harmonizes with
-type. Engraved wood-blocks and copper-plates are very difficult to
-print as they should be printed, especially on a durable rag-paper.
-They are therefore little used in these days of mass-production. In
-the hands of the team of artists who work for the Golden Cockerel,
-engraving as an artistic medium is flowering as never before. By the
-enthusiasm and _love_ which these artists bring to their work, they
-advance their techniques year by year, always improving on their own
-previous best, or the previous best of their competitors, till there
-sometimes seems to be no limit to the new effects they will obtain
-in their illustrations. It is an undying satisfaction to the Golden
-Cockerel to be able to encourage and advise talented engravers, and,
-by displaying their work to the best advantage, to build up for them
-the reputations they deserve. In the twenties it was Eric Gill, Robert
-Gibbings, Eric Ravilious, David Jones, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Agnes
-Miller-Parker and John Nash. In the thirties, and more recently,
-other engravers like Clifford Webb, John Buckland-Wright, Reynolds
-Stone, Gwenda Morgan, Peter Barker-Mill, and John O'Connor have come
-to the fore. You have seen a few examples of my own wife's work
-among the books I have brought along. And now we have others too,
-of an astonishing brilliance, like Dorothea Braby, coming on. It is
-impossible for me to be sufficiently grateful for the privilege of
-being able in my small way to nurture this flowering and progressive
-art.
-
-After their literary content and their illustration, the third feature
-of Cockerels which has sustained the Press, when other presses have
-fallen out, is my policy of co-operating with the buying public--of
-producing books which they can afford to buy. Obviously the very rich
-men who can pay 100 gns. for a book are now very few and far between.
-I have resisted the temptation to compete with the 100 gn. books--the
-"museum pieces." I have resisted the temptation to spend so much on the
-production of my books that they are inaccessible. With the levelling
-of incomes there is now a considerable public, which, if it appreciates
-them, can buy Cockerels at the 2 guineas or 4 guineas which their
-production necessitates.
-
-Those, then are the particular features of Cockerels which [Illustration]
-have maintained the Press through difficult years. That they
-are works of art--the conceptions of a book-architect--would not have
-sufficed, but, since they are expressions of the art of the book, let
-us consider them architecturally for a few minutes. The subject is
-vast: I must try to epitomise it....
-
-                   COCKEREL DEVICES BY MARK SEVERIN
-
-
-
-
-                          ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE
-
-_THE FUN AND FURY OF A PRIVATE PRESS. Some Voyages of The Golden Hind_
-
-    From _Bookmaking and Kindred Amenities_ edited by Earl Schenck
- Miers and Richard Ellis. Copyright 1942 by Rutgers University Press.
-               Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-
-[Illustration] "It's fun, isn't it?" said my wife. "I've gotten so
-that I can recall whole sonnets just by reading these first lines." We
-were sitting in a patch of warm September sunshine under the walnut,
-trimmed high like a giant umbrella, over the terrace back of the press.
-Proof and copy of the long Contents of Edna Millay's new volume of
-collected sonnets lay on the table between us as we idled, savoring
-the first signs of Fall in the yellow leaves that the breeze scattered
-about the gray flagstones. The air was spicy and the ageratum and
-marigolds in the border matched the autumn colors of the goldenrod and
-wild asters by the roadside. "I love gardening, too," she said loyally.
-"I must pot those double begonias before the frost gets them." I lit my
-pipe again and we went on with the proofs. One hundred ninety-two pages
-set in Bruce Rogers' beautiful Centaur, corrected, tied and wrapped,
-lay in neat piles waiting to be taken to Camden for printing. We had
-worked at it off and on all summer--painstaking work, but as rewarding,
-in our eyes at least, as any labor we could think of--interesting
-copy, lots of problems to argue over, the excitement of watching the
-author's mind at work as proofs came back with alterations, changes
-that in some miraculous way always added clarity or cadence to the
-lines; reading and re-reading proof until the sonnets became part of
-us. Now it was finished, and we had added one more book to the world's
-store and to our little shelf of Golden Hind Press imprints. This book
-will be published by Harper & Brothers in an edition which would take
-us the rest of our lives to print by hand. The design, the whole format
-and all the composition is ours. The printing and binding will be done
-elsewhere. Thousands of people will share our pleasure (or brand us
-failures). We feel that books of this type offer golden opportunities
-for the private press. We are not selling them, we are making them our
-way for someone else to sell. However, most of our books are printed on
-an old hand press, and given to our friends. So far we still have our
-friends.
-
-As a hobby, a private press may be as extravagant, or as inexpensive,
-as one chooses to make it. It's fun and hard work and a challenge to
-all the intelligence one possesses.
-
-We started our press in 1927, named it The Golden Hind after Drake's
-flagship that went on adventures no more hazardous than ours. Elmer
-Adler called it "A Busman's Holiday" for a publisher's production
-man. Perhaps he was right. At that time we knew little about the
-problems--about as much as parents do about the first baby. We don't
-know much yet, but we've had a swell time and through it have made a
-jolly lot of friends which in itself is reward enough.
-
-We started with an ancient hand press of unknown vintage that had been
-in use in the cut-room at the old Harper plant in Pearl Street since
-before the knowledge of any man now living. I've an idea that it may
-have come from England when Harpers started in 1817. Until the 1830's
-all their books were printed on hand presses--so close are we to the
-beginnings of the art of printing.
-
-Later, in Philadelphia, we found a big Washington hand press in perfect
-condition that was going out as old metal. The bed was smooth though
-the edges showed the nicks of hard wear from the endless up-ending of
-the forms of some country newspaper. With decent treatment it will be
-just as good a hundred years from now.
-
-We made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. It's not always
-wise to know too much--it's a great damper on ambition. Shortly after
-we started, a chance came to do a proposed definitive edition of
-a well-known poet's works. It was to be in seven folio volumes on
-handmade paper and no effort was to be spared to make it right. Six
-hundred pounds of 18 point Lutetia and weight fonts of the smaller
-sizes were ordered cast at the Enschedé Foundry in Haarlem, Holland,
-for the job. The type duly came, pages were set, and sample forms
-printed and bound--and then the project was withdrawn! In the light of
-accumulated experience I still break out in a cold sweat at the thought
-of our colossal nerve to have taken on such a task. Anyhow we had the
-type, and have used it many times. With it we have set the limited
-editions of each new book of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems as they
-have come along, since 1928.
-
-The status of a private press is difficult to define. As far as we are
-concerned it is to make as well as we can only those books that we want
-to do and to turn down all else; to have no "help," no payroll, keep
-no books; to care not a hoot about a balance sheet which has no column
-for satisfaction; and to take all the time we want to do the job the
-way we want it. From the standpoint of factory speed we are nothing
-to write home about--but we are not a factory and have no ambitions
-in that direction. Ours is a private press and we work as we please:
-that is where the fun comes in. We can work hard if need arises; then
-hours have no meaning, and we work till we get exhausted, fed up, and
-solemnly vow that we'll never do another book. But we have been at it
-nearly fifteen years and we still think, even though composition is
-exacting work, that such congenial labor is the best fun in the world.
-Sometimes we have furious arguments over punctuation, as though life
-depended on it. It is surprising how much warmth can be generated over
-the position of a comma. When we set _Shakespeare's Sonnets_ we had
-at least six different sources to work from, including a facsimile of
-the first edition. A single punctuation mark will completely change
-the meaning of a sonnet, so condensed is the wording to fit the mould.
-No two sources agreed throughout--who were we to put in Shakespeare's
-points for him--so the smoke got pretty thick sometimes, and the result
-was still another reading of the sonnets embodying those details we
-preferred from each: that's the fury of it.
-
-The dream of every private press is to own its own private face. We
-had our chance but didn't know what to use for money so we let it go.
-One of the best presses in the United States now owns that type--alas!
-We have many, too many, faces and borders and florets collected from
-Europe when the world was sane, yet every new volume seems to need
-something we do not have. Fred Goudy cast for us at his shop at
-Marlboro two sizes of Mediaeval. We did Mrs. Browning's _Sonnets from
-the Portuguese_ in it. That type is precious now since the matrices
-were lost in the fire that destroyed all his equipment at Deepdene.
-Long before the Monotype cut the Deepdene face, Fred cast it for us.
-We used it for Dr. North's _Hymns_. Then along came a book my wife
-wanted to do. Two hundred and eighty-eight pages of 14 pt. A.T.F.
-Garamond all standing in galleys made a lot of type for us to store.
-We used it again for Frederic Prokosch's _The Assassins_ and later for
-_The Carnival_. Gradually the metal has crept into the house until
-scarcely a room is spared. We sleep with 60 cases of type in stands on
-our sleeping porch. We should be safe in a tornado--we have plenty of
-ballast.
-
-A couple of years ago we did a group of Edmund Spenser's _Amoretti_ for
-Christmas. The lines breathe the spirit of another day and we wanted
-to preserve, if we could, the romantic atmosphere. I remembered that
-for the titles of the poems in _The Queen's Garland_, printed for R.
-H. Russell in 1898, D. B. Updike had used an odd Italic which he told
-me was Original Old Style cast by the old Farmer foundry in 1854. Some
-one had had fun with the 18 point size--it had a swell set of oversized
-vowels and all the long ſſ ligatures. The resulting effect looked much
-like very early printing. The mats were in the possession of the A.T.F.
-though they seemed never to have heard of them and were a bit annoyed
-by my insisting on seeing their file copy of the Farmer type book.
-There it was, and eventually they dug them out and cast them for us.
-We printed the book on our old Hoe hand press on Arak Ash white paper.
-For a frontispiece we used Virtue's beautiful engraving of Spenser. It
-was bound in tan boards with dusty rose cloth spine and a bright yellow
-label. In many ways it is our favorite book.
-
-Last year we had fun (perhaps I should say I did as my wife did not
-give her fullest sympathy). 1940 was celebrated, and how! as the 500th
-Anniversary of the Invention of Printing. The whole country broke out
-in a rash of exhibitions, lectures, special articles and such like,
-on poor old Gutenberg about whom practically nothing is known to
-begin with, not even that he invented movable type. If he did, he was
-only trying to fake manuscript writing and should have been hung as a
-forger. I got pretty fed up on the tosh that was being handed out. So,
-to even the score, I "discovered" in a garret in Mainz, Germany, the
-private diary of Gutenberg's wife (no one but I knew he had one). By
-quoting from her diary I showed conclusively that all the credit was
-really hers. I had cuts made of the old leather-bound volumes of the
-diary (four old volumes from the Harper Medical Library) and a page
-of the manuscript (translated _into_ German and written in the lovely
-hand of Dr. Otto Fuhrmann). Dr. Herman Püterschein, that infallible
-authority on things typographic, wrote a Foreword. It was titled _The
-Mainz Diary: New Light on the Invention of Printing_ and 200 copies
-went out for Christmas. Then the unexpected happened. Letters began
-pouring in showing it was being taken as gospel. Pundits, librarians,
-experts in the graphic arts, fell for it hard. My wife threatened to
-disown me. Of course the tale hadn't a word of truth in it. I had been
-in Mainz and Frankfort a few years before so that the thing started off
-with some element of reality. A friend in London gobbled it whole--I
-had to send a letter by Clipper to keep him from showing it proudly to
-his friends. After all, my yarn had about as much truth in it as most
-of the hash that I'd been forced to listen to during the year and I'd
-gotten quite fond of Frau Gutenberg. I felt, too, that I'd done my bit
-for the cause. Many of the biggest libraries, including the Library of
-Congress, had requested and received copies. Ten years from now it will
-pop up in some bibliography of a Ph.D. thesis.
-
-I had my fun all right.
-
-But the boys got even with me. A year later, the editor of a well-known
-art magazine and his wife, with careful deliberation and much
-ingenuity, sold me down the river with a hoax that I gobbled whole. So
-we are even and everybody is happy.
-
-Why are we so cracked about a private press? I often wonder myself.
-The house smells of printer's ink and type wash. Right now there are
-eleven metal-strapped type boxes on the sunporch where the expressman
-left them a week ago; and my wife is to have a luncheon tomorrow. Fine
-looking mess. I'll get around to them soon. There are piles of printed
-signatures of our Christmas book all over the place. The composing room
-is crawling with undistributed type. Can hardly work without spilling
-it. My pet Vandercook brayer has fallen arches--it was left in the sun
-yesterday and its insides turned to soup.
-
-Next morning on my desk I found the proof of our new broadside _Emmer
-Jane_ with the drawing at the top beautifully colored by the artist.
-It's swell. Presently the messenger brought in the advance copies of
-the new _Sonnets_ bound in blue natural-finished cloth stamped in gold,
-just as I wanted it. I can hardly wait to get home to show them to my
-wife. We must get that new type to use for _The Ghost Ship_. We'll
-start it this week-end. How slow the days go. Isn't a private press fun!
-
-
-_Postscript_ 1951:
-
-Still hard at it. We are older but no wiser. Nowadays the
-grand-children come in the back door and call up the composing-room
-stairs, "Arthur, may we play type and picture cuts?" They spend hours
-at it and I spend hours putting things to rights.
-
-The check-list has grown to 186 books and pamphlets. The work is still
-as exciting as ever, though we try to check the fury a bit. The skipper
-of the _Golden Hind_ retired in January 1950, which released more time
-for the press; being in business always was a nuisance.
-
-We spent the summer doing a first edition of a Mark Twain book for
-Harpers--mixed with a lot of farming. For a retirement occupation we
-can commend a private press. It keeps up the interest in life.
-
-Offers of work flow in, much more than we care to accept. We are not
-in business and we have more projects of our own than we shall ever
-complete.
-
-It's fun to get up with the chickens and work together all morning,
-spend the afternoon puttering about outdoors, and retire at night dog
-tired--what my wife calls "nice tired," no nervous tension.
-
-The _Golden Hind_ is twenty-four years old but her seams are tight and
-she manages nicely--who knows, maybe the voyage is only nicely begun.
-
-                      COMPOSED IN FAIRFIELD TYPES
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]EDWIN GRABHORN[Illustration]
-
-                      _The Fine Art of Printing_
-
- An address before the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco at its meeting
-    in the Allied Arts Guild, Menlo Park, California, May 15, 1933.
- Fifty copies printed by Edwin and Robert Grabhorn for members of the
- Roxburghe Club, May 15, 1933. Reprinted by permission of the author.
-
-
-[Illustration] I know of no better way of beginning this talk to you
-tonight on PAPER, INK and TYPE than by first sketching a brief outline
-of the Art of Printing.
-
-Printing in its childhood was an art. The highest period of any art
-is its childhood, because childhood moves by spontaneous inner urge,
-not by rules and intellectual bondage that runs all into fixed moulds.
-It is an accepted truth that as skill and elaboration creep into
-development of an art, simplicity, feeling and beauty decline. The
-early printers were not weighed down with rules, formulas and theories
-which have smothered us today. With but one font of type, a wooden
-frame with a screw attachment and a crude inking device, they have
-given us books of strength and beauty that we have never equalled.
-
-We all like to think of the invention of printing as springing
-Minerva-like from the brain of man. Printing is, of course, the
-combination of paper, type, ink and the press; and these various
-elements were some three hundred years in the process of springing.
-Paper was the cheap substitute for vellum, and type the substitute for
-hand-writing.
-
-All of us are more or less familiar with the invention of printing
-and with its God-like first-born, the Gutenberg Bible. Those who have
-had the thrill of examining the great 42-line Bible have told us that
-it is the most beautiful book ever printed. This is a magnificent
-tribute--one that I have never heard contradicted. Just how much of the
-beauty of this Bible is due to the art of the illuminator and how much
-to the skill of the printer has never been told by those who represent
-it to be the most perfect specimen of printing.
-
-A few years ago a book speculator dissected an incomplete copy, selling
-the leaves with beautifully hand-illumined initials at twice the price
-of those pages without decoration. I hope this speculator lost his
-ill-gotten gains in the stock market.
-
-A thing of beauty stands alone, and I know of no fixed law by which we
-can judge beauty except through the emotions; and emotions are rather
-difficult to tabulate. I, myself, can only contemplate the childhood of
-printing with amazement and admiration. In its youth it exhausted every
-possibility of type arrangement.
-
-An estimate of the activity of those first wooden frames can only
-be guessed at. In Venice alone, as early as 1472, over two million
-separate volumes were printed. By the opening of the sixteenth century
-the art of printing had spread to every civilized country and the
-supply of its raw materials became so great that the process of
-cheapening set in.
-
-The first printers had selected as models for their types the beautiful
-hand-written books of their day. The second generation of printers
-modelled their types from those of the first printers. The illuminator
-gave way to the wood-cutter and the fine art of printing became a
-science, then a craft, and when William Morris tried to stop its
-downward slide, in 1891, it was a trade.
-
-During this downward trip through four centuries, weak attempts to
-restore the art of printing to its first high place in the life of man
-were made. Benjamin Franklin wrote on the "Improvement of Printing
-Backwards," protesting the discontinuance of the tall "f." But man was
-not interested in the intangible influence of art as much as he was in
-the perfection of the machine.
-
-The ink was hardly dry on the effusions of our modern printing critics,
-when the collapse of over-production set in and silenced them, I hope,
-permanently.
-
-Writing about modern books in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia
-Britannica, Francis Meynell of the Nonesuch Press says: "The
-type-setting machines used with as much skill as hand-set type will
-give a better result, and in alliance with fast but very perfect
-cylinder printing presses, will give this result not to a few, but to
-a multitude. It has taken us from the day of 'the book beautiful,' and
-given us the day of the beautiful book."
-
-The fast moving cylinder presses of the Nonesuch Press have slowed
-up since this was written. And we can thank God that we have some
-opportunity for reflection.
-
-One of the modern criticisms of William Morris and the private presses
-that he inspired is that too much stress was placed on method. Method
-means how a thing is done and how a thing is done is of very vital
-importance if we want to give our work durability.
-
-I have said before that it was William Morris who attempted to stop the
-downward slide of printing. He was the leader in the revival of what
-is known as "modern fine printing." It has been said that Morris was
-inspired by a lecture of Emery Walker's on the Golden Age of Printing.
-While not denying Walker's position in this revival, we must admit that
-there is a vast gulf between talking and doing. Morris's was a very
-simple yet positive personality. There were no tints in his make-up.
-When asked if he liked colors, his answer: "blue and red," tells us
-whole volumes in folio. He had no tolerance for the effeminate printing
-of his day. He even scorned the sunny pages of the Italian Renaissance
-printers. It is no wonder that his Gothic books, in violent contrast to
-the weak old styles and modern type faces of his time--and our time,
-too--were startling. I have no doubt that some antiquarian hundreds of
-years hence, delving among musty tomes, will find Morris's books still
-giants in a land of dwarfs.
-
-Whether you like or dislike Morris's books is of little concern to me.
-But what is of vital importance to me as a printer, and should be to
-all printers who are endeavoring to print books that will last, is the
-honesty of William Morris. Morris knew, because he was a collector of
-the earliest printed books, that those early printed books could not
-have descended to him, looking as sparkling and vital as the day they
-left their makers' hands, without honesty of craftsmanship. It was
-this craftsmanship that Morris revived, and that we today will have to
-revive again before our books can have any claims to a long life.
-
-Let me briefly describe to you the various processes used in the
-making of books, beginning with the paper on which the book is printed.
-Morris found no paper being manufactured that was suitable for his
-use. It was only after months of experiment and failure, during which
-he worked at the paper mill himself, that a satisfactory sheet was
-made for him. With the closing of the Kelmscott Press after Morris's
-death, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker used his specifications
-for this paper at their Doves Press. This mill still manufactures this
-paper, and it can be obtained easily enough. But it is not popular with
-the printers of today because its texture is so tough, its resistance
-to type so great, that we rather choose the short cut to the Royal Road
-to Fine Bookmaking, using the many counterfeits with their imitation
-deckle edges and their artificial ageing at the mill. We also like
-opaqueness in our paper, although transparency is usually a guarantee
-of its quality. All-linen-rag quality paper can easily enough be
-printed on if dampened first. By lessening the resistance of the paper
-through dampening, the type can penetrate its tough fiber, and the
-ink thus becomes a part of the paper itself. But by taking the short
-cut and not dampening the paper, at least four times the quantity of
-pressure and ink must be used. This over-abundance of pressure and ink
-still does not penetrate the paper but leaves the ink upon the paper's
-surface so that it looks to me as if printed from an etcher's plate.
-The excessive amount of ink, because of the heavy varnish used in its
-manufacture, has a tendency to shine when dry, producing a luster
-that is hard on the eyes. In time a film of oil will encircle each
-individual letter, discoloring the paper, and the page will look like
-those cheaply printed eighteenth-century books do to us today.
-
-I know of no process in the making of a fine book more difficult of
-perfecting than getting the right amount of pressure and ink into the
-paper. In hand-made paper there is only an approximate uniformity in
-the thickness of the sheets, and these variations can be overcome by
-using a hand-press. The sense of touch must be developed until you can
-feel the right amount of pressure through the lever. The mechanical
-press is so regulated that it cannot control the variations of the
-paper's thickness. The right pressure can, of course, be applied to the
-average sheet--the heavier and lighter sheets can be sorted out before
-printing. However, this is seldom done. The paper is usually sorted
-when the finished book is being collated.
-
-I can speak with some authority on the importance of dampening a sheet
-of fine paper. Such a process takes lots of time, but if you think the
-time not well spent compare a book from the Kelmscott Press with any
-of the books of our best machine printers of today. You will see that
-decay is already beginning to set in in the machine book. The edges of
-the paper will soon turn yellow and the ink begin to spread.
-
-I hesitate to turn from the processes of making a fine book endure
-without impressing upon you the importance of using the finest
-quality of paper. The paper, and the ink that becomes a part of that
-paper, determines the life of the book, just as stones and mortar do
-in architecture. No matter how fine the type or how beautiful the
-decorations, the book must die if quality be lacking in both paper and
-ink.
-
-And now just a few remarks about the binding of a book. Bindings are
-the protection for the body of a book. Here permanency decreases as
-use increases. Only those books that have escaped usage have come down
-to us with their original bindings, except those bound in limp vellum.
-Heavy boards encased in leather were the protection of many early
-books. The swinging of the heavy covers breaks the hinges of the book,
-and this leads to destruction. William Morris revived the use of limp
-vellum as a book covering.
-
-Of far more importance than the cover in the making of a fine book is
-the gathering and sewing. When the printed sheets are folded a trained
-eye should put them together so that pages either under- or over-inked
-may be taken out. If there are no extras, then all the light pages can
-be put into one book, and the dark in another. If this is done, the
-critic will say that the press work is even.
-
-After the book is assembled the sheets are sewn together by hand, using
-a strong linen thread. Of course, they can be sewn on a machine, but
-you might just as well save that expense by gluing the sheets together.
-If you don't believe me, take a machine-sewn book, before it is glued,
-pull off the first section, hold it up by the last page and watch the
-book fall to pieces. Hand-sewn books are sewn on either cords or tapes.
-Of course, you can have cords and tapes on a machine-sewn book, but
-they will be false ones, pasted on after the book has been stabbed to
-death.
-
-I do not want to give you the impression that I am some sort of John
-the Baptist crying in a wilderness of machines. Machines are designed
-for special purposes and when we try to use them for a different
-purpose from that for which they were intended we fail. You would
-think a carpenter who used a machine that was made to drive nails in
-an orange box unbalanced if he tried to adjust that machine to build
-a house. The delicately adjusted printing press that Francis Meynell
-idealizes was designed for producing our ephemeral printing.
-
-A machine cannot create--it can only assist, directed by the mind and
-imagination. The more that is left to the machine, the worse the work.
-The machine can arrive at perfection, perfection that is cold and dead
-and mechanical. And it is this cold and dead perfection that brings me
-to the beauty of the book of today.
-
-I would say that "Post-Modern" Fine Printing began in America with
-Bruce Rogers, at the plant of William Rudge. It was Bruce Rogers'
-books that have influenced American and English printers more than
-any other recent single force. It was the "charm" and finish of this
-man's work that none of us escaped. During the years that Bruce Rogers
-was designing special editions at the Riverside Press there were few
-collectors of his books. As late as 1920, I bought some of these books
-from the publishers. They had been in stock nearly twenty years! Among
-them was "The Song of Roland" at the publisher's price. When I first
-started printing I was already an admirer and collector of these
-Riverside Press limited editions.
-
-Now William Rudge was a better business man than a printer. He
-recognized the ability of Rogers and engaged him. Then things began to
-happen to our Fine Art of Printing. The typographical designer came
-into fashion, the machine was glorified and we all became theorists.
-Printing was aimed at suitability. The scholar and critic displaced the
-master craftsman and the advertising artist was added by way of variety.
-
-Each new type face, faithfully re-cut by the aid of the pantograph and
-resurrected from our admittedly worst periods of printing, was eagerly
-bought by our typographical experts. The printers who had been quietly
-producing books, trying to make them a little better than necessary,
-fell into the hands of the publisher and the publicity agent. And the
-publisher announced that the next limited edition of 1600 copies was
-completely over-subscribed--the poor printer got one-third of what you
-had to pay. It was a Wonderland, indeed, until Alice woke up, and the
-printer was left with all the cards, and they were all blank.
-
-I am very glad it all happened. I would go through any form of hysteria
-again, if we could produce another _Leaves of Grass_. Since I am
-going to talk about type, I know of nothing better than to relate our
-experience in printing Walt Whitman's masterpiece, for it has shown me
-the folly of theory and intellect in art.
-
-We accepted this undertaking with enthusiasm. Here was an opportunity
-to prove that we could print a book. The first deposit had no more than
-been spent when the publishers announced it as the finest book to be
-printed in America, and off we started on the wrong track.
-
-Well, the finest book had to have the finest type and the finest type
-was the latest type. And it had to be a folio in size, because for One
-Hundred Dollars you had to get a folio. We bought one thousand pounds
-of the finest type; 18 point Lutetia, fresh from a new designer in
-Holland. And we hired two printers to set this bright new type and
-when it was all set, we pulled a proof and started to put grass into
-it--pale green grass, and it looked like grass and we pulled it out and
-tried again. Well, every time we tried that bright new type it didn't
-look right. So we dug up some of the latest theories about suitability,
-tried again, but it was no use. The brain told us one thing and our
-eyes another.
-
-Meanwhile, one thousand pounds of bright new type and months of labor
-were tied up with strings and the Master Craftsman was getting worried.
-He went to specialists for advice. They said: "Try this new initial or
-this new picture," and the Master Craftsman went back to his shop and
-bowed his head.
-
-Then his tired eyes lighted on a dusty case of type, designed by the
-artist Goudy but the critics had condemned it to the graveyard. Wearily
-the Craftsman dug it up and set a page of Whitman in it. Then he pulled
-a proof and Lo! He saw something that the machine had discarded; he saw
-strength: he saw the strong, vigorous lines of Whitman, born of the
-soil, without grass. He saw what he had heard whispered before. He saw
-strong, vigorous, simple printing--printing like mountains, rocks and
-trees, but not like pansies, lilacs and valentines; printing that came
-from the soil and was not refined in the class-room.
-
-And the printer knew that the limited edition was not a racket as long
-as he had honesty and sincerity, and reverence for the best traditions
-of his craft.
-
-
-
-
-             [Illustration]HOLBROOK JACKSON[Illustration]
-
-                   THE TYPOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM MORRIS
-
-  From _The Printing of Books_ by Holbrook Jackson. Copyright 1938 by
-   Cassell & Company, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
- First read as a paper, at the William Morris Centenary Dinner of the
-                Double Crown Club, London, May 2, 1934.
-
-
-William Morris is an ironic figure. His achievements not only missed
-their mark, but hit marks he was not aiming at. His printing is no
-exception. The masterpieces of the Kelmscott Press which he aimed at
-making "useful pieces of goods" were typographical curiosities from
-birth, and so far removed from the common way of readers that they have
-become models of what a book should not be.
-
-He was a Bibliophile, or more exactly, a typophile whose affections
-became unruly in the presence of decorated incunabula, and, although
-he was outwardly correct towards pure printing, his heart was not
-there. According to Sir Sydney Cockerell he flirted with the idea of
-a folio edition of _The Earthly Paradise_, "profusely illustrated by
-Sir Edward Burne-Jones," a quarter of a century before the inception
-of the Kelmscott Press. His personal taste was much the same then as
-later, although he continued to pay homage to good as distinct from
-fine printing. It was the "essence of my undertaking," he said, "to
-produce books which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of
-printing and arrangement of type." Thus inspired by the example of "the
-calligraphy of the Middle Ages, and the earlier printing which took its
-place," and in spite of his passion for decorated books he observed
-that the early printed books "were always beautiful by force of the
-mere typography, even without the added ornament with which many of
-them are so lavishly supplied."
-
-Much has been made of the emphasis he laid upon the book as an organic
-assembly of paper, type, and binding. But although few printers or
-publishers in the nineteenth century had insisted upon the excellence
-of these ingredients, as he did, the architectonic principle had never
-been wholly ignored. But in the main it was unconsciously observed.
-Deliberation is evident in the construction of the Pickering books,
-in the Keepsakes and Table Books of the thirties and forties, in the
-illustrated books of the sixties, and the later productions of the
-Daniel Press; and, if we may leave England for a moment, in such
-convenient publications as those of Bernhard Tauchnitz, where there is
-rectitude to satisfy the demands of the most austere of functionalists.
-
-It was not, then, the architectonics of the Kelmscott books which
-evoked a typographical revolution. Nor was it the pursuit of beauty
-which always haunted Morris's intentions. "I began printing books," he
-said, "in the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim
-to beauty." Many printers and publishers of the time would have claimed
-as much. Bad taste in the arts and crafts is invariably the result of
-beauty-mongering, and the more costly books of the nineteenth century
-are littered with beauty from cover to cover.
-
-Neither was it originality. Morris never sought to be original. He was
-a revivalist, and all his work is derivative. There is nothing new even
-in that, for all the arts and crafts are derivative, and originality is
-apt to be a myth and often a nuisance. Morris was even less original
-than many other earnest innovators, and the Kelmscott books are
-derivatives twice removed. They are modern variations of the early
-printed books of northern Europe, as they in turn were but mechanical
-imitations of the manuscripts which preceded the invention of movable
-types.
-
-Nor again was there anything peculiar even in that, for all
-mechanical evolution seems to proceed in the same manner. The
-earliest railway carriages followed the lines of the stage-coach; the
-earliest steamships were schooners and brigantines with funnels and
-paddle-boxes; and the earliest motor-car was a horseless-carriage
-complete with tail-board. It is not surprising to learn that the
-earliest printed books were imitations of manuscripts, but it is
-surprising to find a nineteenth-century printer of genius imitating the
-imitations.
-
- [Illustration: A page from _Poems By The Way_, written by Morris and
-set in the Kelmscott Golden type. This small quarto was the first book
- printed at the Press in two colors, black and red. Issued in October,
-     1891, in an edition of 300 copies on paper and 13 on vellum.]
-
-There is, however, more than one difference between these mechanical
-devices and the Kelmscott books. The engineers copied because they
-could not think of anything better. Now and then they even made
-concessions to beauty, in the form of superadded decorations, much as
-Morris did. But there was a marked difference between them, for Morris
-knew better. Although to him beauty meant decoration or ornament,
-yet in the first edition of _The Roots of the Mountains_ he actually
-produced an undecorated book of great distinction. The book is not
-only admirable in itself, but it has had a better influence on recent
-typography than all the Kelmscott books together. Morris himself was
-delighted with the book. He declared it to be "the best-looking book
-issued since the seventeenth century," and added: "I am so pleased with
-my book, typography, binding, and must I say it, literary matter, that
-I am any day to be seen huggling it up, and am become a spectacle to
-Gods and men because of it." His enthusiasm rings true, but this was
-a passing fancy, for even then he was in hot pursuit of more opulent
-beauties.
-
-It was the magnificence of the Kelmscott adventure which impressed and
-influenced printers, professional and amateur, and resuscitated the
-curious vogue for so-called "Private Press" books artificially rarefied
-and deliberately beautified. But, in spite of many extravagances and
-some few absurdities, the Kelmscott influence has been beneficial.
-Morris reasserted sound principles, and the richness of his books
-helped to secure their acceptance. "The road of excess leads to the
-palace of wisdom." The style of the books themselves, because of their
-massive individuality, must always provoke differences of opinion, but
-in the house of books there are many mansions, and room for all tastes,
-whims, and even fads.
-
-I prefer my books pocketable, flexible, and legible. In the Kelmscott
-books these qualities are not sufficiently balanced. Each is there in
-some measure, but something is invariably added to weaken proportion.
-William Morris (or worse, Burne-Jones) is always getting between
-reader and author. I like my Chaucer neat. Morris produced Chaucer as
-Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree produced Shakespeare. I suspect that
-enthusiasts for such productions are not readers. The idea is supported
-by the fact that the majority of Kelmscotts are still in mint state; it
-is not easy to meet a copy bearing the honourable and endearing scars
-of use.
-
-  [Illustration: A page from the first book printed in the Kelmscott
-  Troy type, _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, a large quarto
-  printed in black and red and published by Bernard Quaritch in 1892.
- The edition: Two volumes, 300 copies on paper and 5 on vellum. "As to
- the matter of the book," wrote Morris, "it makes a thoroughly amusing
-         story, instinct with medieval thought and manners."]
-
-Legibility is relative, as I am reminded by my own experience,
-for myself when young did eagerly frequent Pickering's _Diamond
-Classics_--a practice I should probably have defended with conviction
-based upon sight rather than insight. I take a different view today,
-not only of miniature types, but of rules and spacings generally.
-Morris granted the necessity of legibility. In this he differed from
-another poet and amateur of printing, Robert Bridges, who used Gothic
-characters for the Daniel Press edition of his poems to induce slow
-ingestion. Morris believed that solidity of type and setting made for
-easy reading. By solid type he meant "without needless excrescences" or
-"the thickening or thinning of the line," which, with reservations, can
-be defended. Density of type area is a different matter and, if I admit
-charm, I reserve the right to question even aesthetical propriety in
-favour of legibility. The solid page is impressive: solidity inspires
-confidence, but confidence, as we know, is often illusion and not
-always guiltless of trickery. The first edition of _The Roots of the
-Mountains_ would probably have been more readable with than without
-rules.
-
-But although legibility must always be the first rule of printing,
-there are other important principles. Morris summed them up in the
-word "beauty" with impressive but dubious results, because of his
-predilection for ornamentation. Any plain space for him was an
-opportunity for decoration, or, in Ruskin's words, for "the expression
-of man's joy in his work." He would go out of his way to make books
-bigger than they need be so that he might have more space to fill with
-his and Burne-Jones's illustrations. His type-faces became picturesque,
-his margins inclined to pomposity, and his paper was pretentious.
-The Kelmscott books are overdressed. They ask you to look at them
-rather than to read them. You can't get away from their overwhelming
-typography, and, even if you could, you might still be cheated of your
-author by their high-minded purpose, for in addition to being the
-creations of an impressive genius the Kelmscott books were protests
-against the logical conclusions of mechanical book-production.
-
-All these things are hindrances to reading, and I still believe that to
-be read is the destiny of a book, and that reading is best when you are
-least conscious of print or paper or binding. Since the Kelmscott books
-are not likely to induce that condition they must remain museum pieces,
-typographical monuments--beautiful and ineffectual angels beating in
-the void their luminous wings in vain.
-
-                       COMPOSED IN EMERSON TYPES
-
-
-
-
-                           _Stanley Morison_
-
-                    FIRST PRINCIPLES OF TYPOGRAPHY
-
-   Published 1951 by the syndics of the Cambridge University Press.
-               Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-
- NOTE: This essay towards a rationale of book-typography was first
- attempted as an article, s.v. "Typography," in the twelfth edition
- of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ (Chicago and London, 1929). It
- was reconsidered and entirely rewritten for No. 7 of _The Fleuron_
- (Cambridge, 1930) when it also went out of print.... Although several
- reprints have been brought out and extracts have been made, demands
- continue for the whole text from printers as well as from those
- outside the trade for whom the article was originally written....
- As the brevity of the essay seems to be one of its most approved
- qualities, no expansion, and only slight revision, was made.... The
- present reprint is that of the Amsterdam edition published in 1947, in
- which the first paragraph was interpolated.... It may be added that
- while the principles here set forth apply to the typography of books,
- the sections dealing with composition may be adapted to the design of
- newspapers and publicity....
-
-                                                                 S.M.
-
-
-                                   I
-
-Letters of the alphabet that are cast or founded for the purpose of
-impressing upon paper are known as "types" and the impression thus
-made as a "print." But every impression, from any raised surface, is a
-"print." Hence the impression from the particular raised surfaces known
-as "types" is called a "typographical" impression; or, to use a more
-old-fashioned term, "letter-press." The precise form of the "types" and
-the exact position they need to occupy upon the selected paper involve
-skill in the art that is called "typography."
-
-Typography may be defined as the art of rightly disposing printing
-material in accordance with specific purpose; of so arranging the
-letters, distributing the space and controlling the type as to aid to
-the maximum the reader's comprehension of the text. Typography is the
-efficient means to an essentially utilitarian and only accidentally
-aesthetic end, for enjoyment of patterns is rarely the reader's
-chief aim. Therefore, any disposition of printing material which,
-whatever the intention, has the effect of coming between author and
-reader is wrong. It follows that in the printing of books meant to
-be read there is little room for "bright" typography. Even dullness
-and monotony in the type-setting are far less vicious to a reader
-than typographical eccentricity or pleasantry. Cunning of this sort
-is desirable, even essential in the typography of propaganda, whether
-for commerce, politics, or religion, because in such printing only the
-freshest survives inattention. But the typography of books, apart from
-the category of narrowly limited editions, requires an obedience to
-convention which is almost absolute--and with reason.
-
-Since printing is essentially a means of multiplying, it must not only
-be good in itself--but be good for a common purpose. The wider that
-purpose, the stricter are the limitations imposed upon the printer. He
-may try an experiment in a tract printed in an edition of 50 copies,
-but he shows little common sense if he experiments to the same degree
-in the tract having a run of 50,000. Again, a novelty, fitly introduced
-into a 16-page pamphlet, will be highly undesirable in a 160-page book.
-It is of the essence of typography and of the nature of the printed
-book _qua_ book, that it perform a public service. For single or
-individual purpose there remains the manuscript, the codex; so there
-is something ridiculous in the unique copy of a printed book, though
-the number of copies printed may justifiably be limited when a book is
-the medium of typographical experiment. It is always desirable that
-experiments be made, and it is a pity that such "laboratory" pieces are
-so limited in number and in courage. Typography today does not so much
-need Inspiration or Revival as Investigation. It is proposed here to
-formulate some of the principles already known to book-printers, which
-investigation confirms and which non-printers may like to consider for
-themselves.
-
-
-                                  II
-
-The laws governing the typography of books intended for general
-circulation are based first upon the essential nature of alphabetical
-writing, and secondly upon the traditions, explicit or implicit,
-prevailing in the society for which the printer is working. While a
-universal character or typography applicable to all books produced in
-a given national area is practicable, to impose a universal detailed
-formula upon all books printed in Roman types is not. National
-tradition expresses itself in the varying separation of the book into
-prelims, chapters, etc., no less than in the design of the type. But at
-least there are physical rules of linear composition which are obeyed
-by all printers who know their job.
-
-The normal Roman type (in simple form without special sorts, etc.)
-consists of an upright design, and a sloping form of it:
-
-                      ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&
-
-                      ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
-
-                      abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
-
-                     _ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&_
-
-                     _abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_
-
-The printer needs to be very careful in choosing his type, realizing
-that the more often he is going to use it, the more closely its
-design must approximate to the general idea held in the mind's eye
-of readers perforce ruled by the familiar magazine, newspaper and
-book. It does no harm to print a Christmas card in =black-letter=,
-but who nowadays would read a book in that type? I may believe, as I
-do, that black-letter is in design more homogeneous, more lively and
-more economic a type than the grey round Roman we use, but I do not
-now expect people to read a book in it. Aldus' and Caslon's are both
-relatively feeble types, but they represent the forms accepted by the
-community; and the printer, as a servant of the community, must use
-them, or one of their variants. No printer should say, "I am an artist,
-therefore I am not to be dictated to. I will create my own letter
-forms," for, in this humble job, no printer is an artist in this sense.
-Nor is it possible today, as it just was in the infancy of the craft,
-to persuade society into the acceptance of strongly marked and highly
-individualistic types--because literate society is so much greater in
-mass and correspondingly slower in movement. Type design moves at the
-pace of the most conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore
-realizes that, for a new fount to be successful, it has to be so good
-that only very few recognize its novelty. If readers do not notice the
-consummate reticence and rare discipline of a new type, it is probably
-a good letter. But if my friends think that the tail of my lower-case
-r or the lip of my lower-case e is rather jolly, you may know that the
-fount would have been better had neither been made. A type which is to
-have anything like a present, let alone a future, will neither be very
-"different" nor very "jolly."
-
-So much for Type. The printer possesses also Spaces and Leads as a
-normal part of his typographical material, straight lines of metal
-known as rules, braces, and finally a more or less indiscriminate
-collection of ornaments--head and tailpieces, flowers, decorated
-initial letters, vignettes and flourishes. Another decorative medium at
-his option lies in his command of colour; red is, with sound instinct,
-the most frequently used. For emphasis, heavy faces are used. White
-space is an important item of composing-room equipment--margins,
-blanks, etc., being filled in with what are known as "quotations." The
-selecting and arranging of these elements is known as Composition.
-Imposition is the placing of the composed matter upon the sheet.
-Printing includes impressing in due order, perfecting the sheet in
-due register (backing up), regulating the inking, and achieving a
-crisp type-page. Finally the tone, weight and texture of the paper are
-important factors entering into the completed result.
-
-Typography, therefore, controls the composition, imposition, impression
-and paper. Of paper, it is at least necessary to demand that it be
-capable of expressing the value of the composition; of imposition,
-that the margins be proportionate to the area of the text, affording
-decent space for thumbs and fingers at the side and bottom of the page.
-The old-style margins are handsome in themselves and agreeable to the
-purpose of a certain kind of book, but are obviously not convenient in
-books where the page dimension is unavoidably small or narrow, or the
-purpose of the book is to be carried in the pocket. For these and other
-kinds of book, the type may be centred on the measure of the page, and
-slightly raised above ocular centre.
-
-Imposition is the most important element in typography--for no page,
-however well composed in detail, can be admired if the _mise-en-page_
-is careless or ill-considered. In practical printing today,
-these details of imposition are on the whole adequately cared for;
-so that it is possible to report that the mass of books presents a
-tolerable appearance. Even a badly composed work may give a good
-appearance if it is well imposed--good imposition redeeming bad
-composition, while a good composition would be effectively ruined by
-bad imposition.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-The designer of the book, therefore, first determines his imposition
-and then tackles the details of composition. The first principles of
-composition do not require much discussion since they necessarily
-follow from the conventions of alphabetical printing in the Roman
-letter accepted by those for whom we are printing. The matter is
-relatively simple. First, it is certain that the eye cannot read with
-ease any considerable number of words composed of letters embodying
-sharply contrasted thicks and thins; secondly, it is none the less
-certain that the eye cannot agreeably read a mass of words composed
-even in a rightly constructed letter, if the lines are beyond a
-certain length. The most expert reader's eye cannot seize more than
-a certain number of words in a given size except in a proportionate
-length of line. Thirdly, practice proves that the size of the letter
-must be related to the length of line. Respect for these principles
-will generally protect the reader from the risk of "doubling" (reading
-the same line twice). The average line of words which the reader's
-eye can conveniently seize is between ten and twelve. Nevertheless,
-the typographer, while exerting himself to the utmost to respect this
-ocular truth, is daily confronted with the fact that unavoidable
-conditions make it impossible for him to secure a type of the duly
-related size, and that he is driven to use a relatively small type.
-To obviate here the risk of "doubling," he consistently inserts
-proportionate leads through the matter, so opening the lines that the
-eye comfortably travels and returns from beginning to end and from end
-to beginning.
-
-The practice of leading, denounced in certain quarters as essentially
-evil, is an inevitable necessity to a large proportion of printing; and
-the skilled typographer, making the best use of his material, makes in
-turn, wise use of leads. The orthodox high-brow view that leads produce
-in every instance an unhappy weak-looking effect will not survive a
-wide experience. On the contrary, it will be found that their absence
-may effectively ruin even a composition in large type, so that it is
-true to say that the intelligent use of leading distinguishes the
-expert from the inexpert printer. A slight differentiation of type-face
-may make the practice advisable. Clearly, while a letter of the size
-now under the reader's eye, with fairly long ascenders and descenders,
-would not require leading unless set to a measure of more than 3-1/2
-in., there exist letters with short descenders designed rather to
-sustain leading by rule than by exception. Baskerville's is a type to
-which leading is invariably an advantage. The problem of determining
-the amount to be given is not to be settled by considering only the
-ascenders or the body of the type, because breadth of letter is also
-a factor to be reckoned with--some letters are narrow in respect to
-their height, while others are wide. A composition in a round, open,
-wide letter, chosen because it is rather loose (that is to say, the
-space between the letters is greater, or appears greater, by reason
-of the curves of the c, o, e, g), gains in consistency when there is
-a satisfactory lead between the lines. It is often argued that loose
-setting is not admirable in itself; to which it might be replied
-that the printer is generally bound to carry out the instructions of
-his customer; often to respect the wishes of an artist who may be
-illustrating the work; and, not seldom, committed by the publisher to a
-paper-size dictated by irrelevant considerations.
-
-Further, it is obvious that the space between words composed in a
-condensed letter may be less than that between words in a round, wide
-form of letter. Where there is no leading between the lines, and the
-composition is, for extrinsic reasons, necessarily tight, it may be
-an advantage to set leads between the paragraphs, even though this
-result in pages with uneven tails. In paragraphing, it is important
-to realize that the opening sentence of a work should automatically
-manifest itself as such. This may be secured by the use of the large
-initial letter; the printing of the first word in CAPITALS, or SMALL
-CAPITALS ; CAPITALS _and_ SMALL CAPITALS ; or by setting the first
-word into the margin. On no account should the opening of a chapter be
-indented, since indention should mark (and always mark) the subsequent
-sections, i.e., the paragraphs, of the text. The abolition of
-paragraph-indentions is plainly an undesirable practice; nor is setting
-the first word in capitals or small capitals an agreeable substitute
-for the indention. The space of the indention should be sufficient to
-be noticeable.
-
-As both measures must be related, displaying a proportion pleasing to
-the eye, the depth of the page follows from its width. It seems that
-the proportions of the oblong are more pleasing than those of the
-square; and as a horizontal oblong drives out the line to an impossible
-length, and a two-column arrangement is tedious, the vertical oblong
-has become the normal page.
-
-Such are the elements of typography; and a volume built up of
-type-pages composed in accordance with them will be generally
-satisfactory. There remain only the page headings and the folio. By
-ranging the headings inside towards the gutter, to the left and right
-respectively, two pages are fixed as a unity; but they can also be
-ranged outside to the right and left, or they may be centered. The
-folio may be centered at the foot, or range either way at the top or
-bottom (preferably, for quicker reference, on the outside), but it
-cannot be centered at the top without cancelling the running page
-headline--only to be done by exception. The running headlines may be
-set in capitals of the text, in upper and lower-case of the text, or
-in a combination of capitals. Full-sized capitals overemphasize what
-is, after all, a repetitive page-feature inserted chiefly for the
-convenience of librarians and readers interested in the identification
-of leaves which have worked loose. If set in upper and lower-case,
-the headline loses in levelness, so that it seems well to employ
-S M A L L   C A P I T A L S; these are best separated by hair spaces,
-since the unrelieved rectangular structure and perpendicularity of
-capitals tend to defeat instantaneous recognition. Full-sized capitals
-may well be used for chapter headings, with the number of the chapter
-in smalls; both indications being hair-spaced.
-
-The reader, travelling from the generally invariable blank at the end
-of a chapter to the beginning of the next, finds a dropped chapter
-head an agreeably consistent feature, which saves him from feeling
-suffocated or overpowered by the text.
-
-
-                                  IV
-
-The foregoing elementary directions affect the main part of the
-book, its body. There remains a section which goes before the text,
-known as the "preliminaries," often complicated both in respect to
-arrangement and draftsmanship. Before considering these, it may be
-well to summarize our present findings--to concentrate them into a
-formula. According to our doctrine, a well-built book is made up from
-vertical oblong pages arranged in paragraphs having an average line of
-ten to twelve consistently spaced words, set in a fount of comfortable
-size and familiar design; the lines sufficiently separated to prevent
-doubling and the composition being headed by a running title. This
-rectangle is so imposed upon the page as to provide centre, head,
-fore-edge and tail margins of dimensions suitably related not only to
-the length of line but to the disposition of space at those points
-where the text is cut into chapters, and where the body joins the
-prefatory and other pages known as "preliminaries."
-
-Now these first pages, being intended rather for reference than for
-reading and re-reading, are less strictly governed by convention than
-the text-pages. They consequently offer the maximum opportunity for
-typographic design. The history of printing is in large measure the
-history of the title-page. When fully developed, the title occupied a
-recto page, either partially or wholly; and the title-phrase, or the
-principal words of it, has generally been set in a conspicuous size of
-type. Sixteenth-century Italian printers generally used large capitals
-copied from inscriptions, or by exception, from medieval manuscripts;
-while English use emulated the French in employing a canon line of
-upper and lower-case, followed by a few lines of pica capitals. Next
-came the printer's device, and at the foot of the page, his name and
-address. These large sizes of upper and lower-case, an inheritance from
-printers who were accustomed to black-letter (which cannot be set in
-solid capitals), have gone. The device has also vanished (it has been
-revived by a few publishers), and thus the contemporary title page
-is generally a bleak affair, exhibiting in nine out of ten cases a
-space between the title and the imprint of the printer-publisher, so
-that this blank tends to be the strongest feature on the page. When
-the device was first abandoned, the author, printer or publisher took
-advantage of the leisure of the reader and the blank at their disposal,
-to draft a tediously long title, subtitle and list of the author's
-qualifications, designed to fill the entire page. The present-day
-publisher goes to the other extreme, reducing the title to as few
-short words as possible, followed with "by" and the author's name. A
-professional writer may insert, e.g., "Author of _The Deluge_" under
-his name or there may be incorporated a motto; but apart from such
-exceptions, three and sometimes four inches of space separate the
-author's name from the first line of the imprint.
-
-The result is that unless the title is set in a size of type out
-of all relation to that of the remainder of the book, this space is
-more conspicuous than the chief line. It is more reasonable to lessen
-this space by shortening the depth of the whole piece from title to
-imprint. It is clear that a volume in 12-point does not require a
-30-point title unless it be a folio in double-column; and it is of no
-consequence if the title page is a little shorter than the text pages.
-There is no reason, other than a desire to be "different," for a title
-page to bear any line of type larger than twice the size of the text
-letter. If the book be set in 12-point, the title need be no larger
-than 24-point--and may decently enough be smaller. As lower-case is a
-necessary evil, which we should do well to subordinate since we cannot
-suppress, it should be avoided when it is at its least rational and
-least attractive--in large sizes. The main line of a title should be
-set in capitals; and, like all titling capitals, they should be spaced.
-Whatever may happen to the rest of the composition, the author's name,
-like all displayed proper names, should be in capitals.
-
-
-                                   V
-
-Here we may pause to counter an objection. It will be contended that
-whatever the value of our preceding conclusions, their adoption must
-mean an increase in standardization--all very well for those who have
-an economic objective but very monotonous and dull for those whose aim
-is that books shall possess more "life." This means that the objectors
-want more variety, more "differentness," more decoration. The craving
-to decorate is natural, and only if it is allowed the freedom of the
-text pages shall we look upon it as a passion to be resisted. The
-decoration of title pages is one thing--that of a fount to be employed
-in books is another. Our contention, in this respect, is that the
-necessities of a mass-production book and the limited edition differ
-neither in kind nor in degree, since all printing is essentially a
-means of the multiplication of a text set in an alphabetical code
-of conventional symbols. To disallow "variety" in the vital details
-of the composition is not to insist upon uniformity in display. As
-already pointed out, the preliminary pages offer scope for the utmost
-typographical ingenuity. Yet even here, a word of caution may be in
-place, so soon do we forget, in arranging any piece of display (above
-all, a title page), the supreme importance of sense. Every character,
-every word, every line should be seen with maximum clearness. Words
-should not be broken except unavoidably, and in title pages and other
-compositions of centred matter, lines should hardly begin with such
-feeble parts of speech as prepositions and conjunctions. It is more
-reasonable, as assisting the reader's immediacy of comprehension, to
-keep these to the ends of lines or to centre them in smaller type and
-so bring out the salient lines in a relatively conspicuous size.
-
-No printer, in safeguarding himself from the charge of monotony
-in his composition, should admit, against his better judgment, any
-typographical distraction doing violence to logic and lucidity in the
-supposed interests of decoration. To twist his text into a triangle,
-squeeze it into a box, torture it into the shape of an hour-glass
-or a diamond is an offence requiring greater justification than the
-existence either of Italian and French precedents of the fifteenth
-and sixteenth centuries, or of an ambition to do something new in
-the twentieth. In truth, these are the easiest tricks of all, and we
-have seen so much of them during the late "revival of printing" that
-we now need rather a revival of restraint. In all permanent forms of
-typography, whether publicly or privately printed, the typographer's
-only purpose is to express, not himself, but his author. There are,
-admittedly, other purposes which enter into the composition of
-advertisement, publicity and sales matter; and there is, of course, a
-very great deal common to both book and advertisement composition. But
-it is not allowable to the printer to relax his zeal for the reader's
-comfort in order to satisfy an ambition to decorate or to illustrate.
-Rather than run this risk the printer should strive to express himself
-by the use of this or that small decorative unit, either of common
-design supplied by the type founders or drawn for his office by an
-artist. It is quite true that to an inventive printer decoration is
-not often necessary. In commercial printing, however, it seems to be
-a necessity, because the complexity of our civilization demands an
-infinite number of styles and characters. Publishers and other buyers
-of printing, by insisting upon a setting which shall express _their_
-business, _their_ goods, _their_ books and nobody else's business or
-goods or books, demand an individuality which pure typography can never
-hope to supply. But book-printers, concerned with the permanently
-convenient rather than with the transiently sensational or the merely
-fashionable, should be on their guard against title-page borders,
-vignettes and devices invented to ease their difficulties. There is no
-easy way with most title pages; and the printer's task is rendered more
-difficult by the average publisher's and author's incompetence to draft
-a title or to organize the preliminaries in reasonable sequence.
-
-
-                                  VI
-
-Those who would like to lessen or vary the tendency towards
-standardization in day-today book production have a field for their
-activity in the last-mentioned pages. The position on the page of
-the half-title, title, dedication, etc., and their relation to each
-other, are not essentially invariable. Nevertheless, as it is well
-for printers and publishers to have rules, and the same rules, it
-may be suggested that the headings to Preface, Table of Contents,
-Introduction, etc., should be in the same size and fount as the
-chapter heads; and should be dropped if they are dropped. The order
-of the preliminaries remains to be settled. With the exception of the
-copyright notice, which may be set on the verso of the title page, all
-should begin on a recto. The logical order of the preliminary pages is
-Half-title or Dedication (I see no reason for including both), Title,
-Contents, Preface, Introduction. The certificate of "limitation," in
-the case of books of that class, may face the title where there is
-no frontispiece, be incorporated with the half-title, or be taken to
-the end of the volume. This order is applicable to most categories of
-books. Novels need neither Table of Contents nor List of Chapters,
-though one or the other is too often printed. If it is decided to
-retain either, it would be reasonable to print it on the back of the
-half-title and facing the title page, so that the structure, scope and
-nature of the book will be almost completely indicated to the reader at
-a single opening. Where the volume is made up of a few short stories,
-their titles can be listed in the otherwise blank centre of the title
-page.
-
-
-                                  VII
-
-Fiction, Belles-Lettres and Educational books are habitually first
-published in portable, but not pocketable formats; crown octavo (5 by
-7-1/2 in.) being the invariable rule for novels published as such.
-The novel in the form of Biography will be published as a Biography,
-demy octavo (5-5/8 by 8-3/4 in.), the size also for History, Political
-Study, Archaeology, Science, Art and almost everything but Fiction.
-Novels are only promoted to this format when they have become famous
-and "standard"; when they are popular rather than famous they are
-composed in pocket (4-1/2 by 6-3/4 in.) editions. _Size_, therefore, is
-the most manifest difference between the categories of books.
-
-Another obvious difference is _bulk_, calculated in accordance with the
-publisher's notion, first, of the general sense of trade expectation
-and, secondly, of the purchasing psychology of a public habituated
-to certain selling prices vaguely related to number of pages and
-thickness of volume (inconsistently enough, weight does not enter
-into these expectations). These habits of mind have consequences in
-the typography; they affect the choice of fount and size of type,
-and may necessitate the adoption of devices for "driving out," i.e.,
-making the setting take up as much room as possible. By putting the
-running headline between rules or rows of ornaments; introducing
-unnecessary blanks between chapters; contracting the measure;
-exaggerating the spaces between the words and the lines; excessively
-indenting paragraphs; isolating quoted matter with areas of white
-space: inserting wholly unnecessary sectional titles in the text and
-surrounding them with space; contriving to drive a chapter ending to
-the top of a recto page so that the rest of it and its verso may be
-blank; using thick paper; increasing the depth of chapter beginnings
-and inserting very large versals thereto; and so on, the volume can be
-inflated to an extra sixteen pages and sometimes more--which is a feat
-the able typographer is expected to accomplish without showing his hand.
-
-Limited editions of standard authors, or of authors whose publishers
-desire them to rank as such, are commonly given a rubricated title
-or some other feature not strictly necessary. A dreadful example of
-overdone rubrication is to be found in an edition of Thomas Hardy's
-verse, in which the running heads throughout the book are in red--the
-production of a firm which desired to make an impression on the
-purchaser in view of the price asked for the edition. This could have
-been better done by reserving colour for the initial letters. Handmade
-paper is generally used for _éditions de luxe_, and none but the
-brave among publishers will disregard the superstitious love of the
-book-buying classes for its untrimmed, ugly and dirt-gathering edges.
-That most of the public prefer to have it so is because a trimmed
-book looks "ordinary" to them. Any book which is "different" from the
-"ordinary" in one superficial way or another is apt to impress those
-lacking trade experience. And there has been a notable increase during
-recent years in the category of books, generally illustrated, known
-to the trade as _fine printing_, _éditions de luxe_, _press-books_,
-_limited editions_, _collectors' books_, etc. Hence, it is hoped that
-the above setting out of the first principles of typography may give
-the discriminating reader some sort of yardstick which he can apply not
-only to the entries catalogued by the book-sellers as limited editions,
-but to the output of publishers responsible for printing the literary
-and scientific books which are more necessary to society, and are often
-designed with greater intelligence.
-
-                   COMPOSED IN NEW TIMES ROMAN TYPES
-
-
-
-
-          [Illustration]CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS[Illustration]
-
-               _American Type Designers and Their Work_
-
- Published by The Lakeside Press 1947-1948. Reprinted by permission of
-                            the publisher.
-
-
-A piece of paper about two inches square, originally pinned to the
-manuscript of the Rev. Ezra Stiles's diary in the Yale University
-Library is all that remains of the first original American type design.
-It is a proof of letters made by Abel Buell, a Connecticut Yankee, in
-1769.[35] Buell was his own designer, punch cutter, and caster, since
-in his day, as for many years after, the making of type was entirely a
-hand operation. Not the least exacting part of the work was the cutting
-of the punch on the end of a short bar of softened steel. It was not
-until the invention of the Benton pantograph punch-cutting machine in
-1885 that any other method was known. All type made before 1885 was
-therefore dependent on hand punch cutting, and the designer of the type
-was almost always the same man who cut the punches.
-
-Who these type designers were after Buell is a matter of uncertainty
-and obscurity. The first type specimen book in America was that of
-Binny & Ronaldson of Philadelphia, issued in 1812; and from then
-almost to our own day the type foundries have taken the credit for the
-type designs which they have offered for sale. Type designers, like
-architects, got no credit; possibly Modesty, with a backward glance at
-old specimen books, raised a warning finger, and the designers were
-willing to let the foundries have whatever glory there was.
-
-    [Illustration: The Punch Cutting Machine. _Courtesy George Macy
-                            Publications._]
-
-Abel Buell and his contemporaries and successors followed the general
-trends in design in the arts as a whole. The Greek Revival and the
-Victorian Age, marked by the two great expositions at London and
-Philadelphia with their crudities and extravagancies in design, found
-echoes in our imitative craft of printing. So it is not surprising
-that type design began to improve, along with the other arts, with the
-advent of the '90's. We have always followed European and especially
-English models, and it is natural that the upheaval in type design in
-England under Morris's influence had immediate repercussions here.
-But while imitations of Kelmscott types were soon on the market, two
-surprisingly original American designs appeared at the same time as
-the imitations. About 1894 or 1895 the Central Type Foundry of St.
-Louis introduced a face which became widely used, called (for no better
-reason than attends the christening of most type faces) "De Vinne."
-It is of unknown parentage, though there is some reason to suppose
-that it descended from the Elzevirs; but it was a face of character
-and distinction. At the same time the same foundry brought out another
-design which had an acknowledged father--Will Bradley. Of this face it
-has been said that it has "remarkably bold letters, with peculiarities
-of form never before attempted." Thus we have in the De Vinne and the
-Bradley faces two fresh and distinctively American types, destined to
-be the forerunners of many others. And in one case the name of the
-designer was definitely attached.
-
-With the invention of the pantograph punch cutter, type design became
-an "art" rather than a craft, and as might be expected the personality
-of the designer became for various reasons more important. It is
-not without interest that the chief designer of the American Type
-Founders Company--a man responsible for almost the whole type output
-of that foundry for many years--Morris Fuller Benton, was the son of
-the man whose machines were responsible for this revolution in type
-design. For it was the two basic machines invented and developed by
-Linn Boyd Benton which made it possible for those unskilled in the
-intricacies of type making to provide the basic designs for type.
-The machines were very ingenious, and the designs partook of the
-"faultily faultless, icily regular" perfection of the mechanical
-device. This method of making type faces involved the drawing of the
-design and the making of two or three patterns in thin brass of the
-outline of the letter--each pattern good for several sizes of type,
-and slightly modified for another group of sizes. This is the way in
-which modern type is designed. It is the reason why such a type series
-as "Cheltenham," designed by the architect Bertram G. Goodhue in 1900
-for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, while very expertly handled in
-the details, seems monotonous in mass; whereas the Caslon type of the
-original cutting shows all the inevitable variations of hand work.
-
-A survey of the types of the first quarter of the present century,
-made by the Editor of the _Inland Printer_ in 1927, displays 161 type
-faces brought out by seven or eight of the leading foundries between
-1900 and 1925. Of these, it was possible to name the designers of 72,
-almost all from the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler foundry of Chicago,
-whose records seem to have been in better shape, or whose generosity
-was more spontaneous. Oswald Cooper, Sydney Gaunt, Will Ransom, Robert
-Wiebking, and George Trenholm were the chief names. It is unfortunate
-that the names of the designers of the types put out by the American
-Type Founders Company have not been preserved except in rare instances.
-Of course, Benton was responsible for the greater portion, and on the
-aesthetic side they occasionally scored a triumph as in the case of the
-"Cloister" face.
-
-The list included in the _Inland Printer's_ survey fails to include
-some of the outstanding designs of the period. Goodhue's "Merrymount"
-was done in 1894, but after 1900 we have Mr. Rogers's "Centaur,"
-Mr. Hunter's odd but forceful types (properly cut on punches by
-the designer), the output of the rapidly growing composing-machine
-industry, and Frederic W. Goudy's fifty designs completed in that
-quarter century. Goudy's output of six score type designs in fifty
-years is an amazing record, one probably never equalled. Such designs
-as those for "Goudy Modern," "Goudy Text," and "Hadrian" would
-establish his reputation. He had his limitations as a designer--most
-of his designs lack a certain crispness--but his versatility was
-extraordinary.
-
-In the years since 1925 new designers have come to the fore: Blumenthal
-with his "Emerson," Dwiggins with his "Electra" and "Caledonia,"
-Ruzicka with his "Fairfield," and Chappell with his "Lydian." This
-brief survey cannot hope to mention all types or designs which American
-designers have contributed, but it is well to see if any tendencies can
-be detected.
-
-The type which Buell made in 1759, as well as the type of his
-immediate successors into the first decades of the nineteenth century,
-were mainly variations on the so-called "modern romans" of Didot,
-Bodoni, Austen, and Thorowgood. As the artistic styles in design in
-general, not alone in type, gradually lost the evolutionary force
-which has developed letter forms through the centuries, eccentricity
-and anarchy came into play. The nineteenth-century types as shown
-in the specimen books of Bruce, Connor, Farmer, etc., and exhibited
-in all their grotesque horror in Fred Phillips' "Old-fashioned Type
-Book," had no legitimate parentage, and they are as well relegated
-to the bizarre and pseudo-nostalgic advertisement. The result of the
-Kelmscott "revival" was to turn attention to type forms of the past
-which could be revived for modern use, and the type designers after
-1900 did a remarkable piece of work in introducing good type faces.
-The advertisers have been eager to use new and novel faces, and have
-greatly stimulated this activity, even in many cases over-exciting
-it. The most interesting result has been the renewed interest in
-calligraphy. First directed toward new forms of script, the truer form
-of broad pen lettering is now beginning to influence type design, to
-free it from too slavish a devotion on the one hand to the serif, and
-on the other to a too-free rejection of the serif altogether. Such
-a face as Mr. Chappell's "Lydian" is an example of real advance in
-design, and if one could adduce European examples, more could be cited.
-
-American designers have not developed many new or good book faces;
-such types as Oxford, Centaur, Emerson, Fairfield, Electra, are the
-exception. Their efforts have been given to the drawing of display and
-advertising types--too often not to the enrichment of the printer's
-repertory. It is quite as true now as in the past that distortions of
-the normal Roman letter form in the direction of extra condensed or
-extra heavy or very light mono-line letters result in eccentricities
-which have no permanent value. On the other hand such novel type
-designs as Garamond Bold Italic, Hadriano, the newspaper Ionics, and
-Lydian are meritorious additions to the printer's fonts. When it is
-realized that eccentricity and originality are not the same thing, we
-may expect from our increasingly intelligent designers indigenous types
-of usefulness and charm.
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[35] Reprinted in Lawrence C. Wroth's "The First Work with American
-Types," page 65.
-
-
-
-
-                         TYPOGRAPHY--ERIC GILL
-
-     From _Printing & Piety_, An Essay on Typography by Eric Gill.
-   Copyright 1931 by J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London. Reprinted by
-                     permission of the publisher.
-
-
-One of the most alluring enthusiasms that can occupy the mind of the
-letterer is that of inventing a really logical and consistent alphabet
-having a distinct sign for every distinct sound. This is especially
-the case for English speaking people: for the letters we use only
-inadequately symbolize the sounds of our language. We need many new
-letters and a revaluation of existing ones. But this enthusiasm has
-no practical value for the typographer; we must take the alphabets we
-have got, and we must take these alphabets in all essentials as we have
-inherited them.
-
-First of all, then, we have the ROMAN ALPHABET of CAPITAL letters
-(Upper-case), and second the alphabet which printers call ROMAN
-LOWER-CASE. The latter, tho' derived from the Capitals, is a distinct
-alphabet. Third we have the alphabet called _ITALIC_, also derived
-from the Capitals but through different channels. These are the three
-alphabets in common use for English people.
-
-Are there no others? It might be held that there are several; there
-are, for example, the alphabet called Black Letter, and that called
-Lombardic. But these are only partial survivals, and very few people
-could, without reference to ancient books, write down even a complete
-alphabet of either. As far as we are concerned in modern England,
-Roman Capitals, Lower-case and Italics are three different alphabets,
-and all are current "coin." But however familiar we are with them,
-their essential differences are not always easily discovered. It is
-not a matter of slope or of serifs or of thickness or thinness. These
-qualities, though one or other of them may be commonly associated with
-one alphabet more than another, are not essential marks of difference.
-A Roman Capital A does not cease to be a Roman Capital A because it is
-sloped backwards or forwards, because it is made thicker or thinner, or
-because serifs are added or omitted; and the same applies to Lower-case
-and Italics (see Fig. 1).
-
-[Illustration: Figure 1 illustrates the contention that slope in either
-  direction does not deprive Capitals, Lower-case or Italics of their
-                        essential differences.]
-
-     [Illustration: Figure 2 in which the upper line of letters is
-   essentially "Roman Lower-case"; the lower essentially "Italic."]
-
-The essential differences are obviously between the forms of the
-letters. The following letters, abdefghklmnqrtu and y, are not Roman
-Capitals, and that is all about it. The letters shown in the lower
-line of Fig. 2 are neither Capitals nor Lower-case. The conclusion
-is obvious: there is a complete alphabet of Capital letters, but the
-Lower-case takes ten letters from the Capital alphabet, and the Italic
-takes ten from the Capitals and twelve from the Lower-case. Figure 3
-shows the three alphabets completed, and it will be seen that CIJOPSVWX
-and Z are common to all three, that bdhklmnqrtu and y are common to
-Lower-case and Italics; that ABDEFGHKLMNQRTU and Y are always Capitals;
-and that aef and g are always Lower-case.
-
-[Illustration: Figure 3 shows the differences and similarities between
- the three "current" alphabets. Note: the curve of the Italic y's tail
-             is due to exuberance, and not to necessity.]
-
-But tho' this is a true account of the essential differences between
-the three alphabets, there are customary differences which seem
-almost as important. It is customary to make Roman Capitals upright.
-It is customary to make Lower-case smaller than Capitals when the
-two are used together; and it is customary to make Italics narrower
-than Lower-case, sloping towards the right and with certain details
-reminiscent of the cursive hand-writing from which they are derived.
-Fig. 4 shows the three alphabets with their customary as well as their
-essential differences.
-
-   [Illustration: Figure 4 shows the Capitals, Roman Lower-case and
- Italics with their customary as well as their essential differences.]
-
-Properly speaking there is no such thing as an alphabet of Italic
-Capitals, and where upright or nearly upright Italics are used ordinary
-upright Roman Capitals go perfectly well with them. But as Italics are
-commonly made with a considerable slope and cursive freedom, various
-sorts of sloping and quasi-cursive Roman Capitals have been designed to
-match. This practice has, however, been carried to excess; the slope of
-Italics and their cursiveness have been much overdone. In the absence
-of punch cutters with any personal sensibility as letter designers,
-with punch cutting almost entirely done by machine, the obvious remedy
-is a much more nearly upright and non-cursive Italic, and for Capitals
-the ordinary upright Roman. Even with a nearly upright Italic, the mere
-presence of the Italic aef and g alters the whole character of a page,
-and with a slight narrowness as well as a slight slope, the effect is
-quite different from that of a page of Lower-case.
-
-The common practice of using Italics to emphasize single words should
-be abandoned in favour of the use of the ordinary Lower-case with spaces
-between the letters (l e t t e r - s p a c e d). The proper use of
-Italics is for quotations and footnotes, and for books in which it is
-or seems desirable to use a lighter and less formal style of letter.
-In a book printed in Italics upright Capitals may well be used, but if
-sloping Capitals be used they should only be used as initials--they go
-well enough with Italic Lower-case, but they do not go with one another.
-
-We have, then, the three alphabets, and these are the printer's main
-outfit; all other sorts of letters are in the nature of fancy letters,
-useful in inverse proportion to the importance and quantity of his
-output. The more serious the class of book he prints, the wider the
-public to whom he appeals, so much the more solemn and impersonal and
-normal will be and should be his typography. But he will not call
-that book serious which is merely widely bought, and he will not call
-that a wide appeal which is made simply to a mob of forcibly educated
-proletarians. A serious book is one which is good in itself according
-to standards of goodness set by infallible authority, and a wide appeal
-is one made to intelligent people of all times and nations.
-
-The invention of printing and the breakdown of the medieval world
-happened at the same time; and that breakdown, tho' hastened by
-corruption in the Church, was chiefly caused by the recrudescence of a
-commercialism which had not had a proper chance since the time of the
-Romans. The invention of double-entry book-keeping also happened about
-the same time, and though, as with modern mechanical invention, the
-work was done by men of brains rather than men of business, it was the
-latter who gained the chief advantage.
-
-Printing, a cheaper method of reproducing books than hand-writing,
-came therefore just at the right moment. Since its first fine careless
-rapture, and in spite of the genuinely disinterested efforts of
-ecclesiastical presses, University presses and the work of many notable
-individual printers and type-founders, the history of printing has been
-the history of its commercial exploitation. As is natural with men of
-business, the worse appears the better reason. Financial success is,
-rightly, their only aim, and technical perfection the only criterion
-they know how to apply to their works.
-
-TYPOGRAPHY (the reproduction of lettering by means of movable letter
-types) was originally done by pressing the inked surface or "face" of a
-letter made of wood or metal against a surface of paper or vellum. The
-unevenness and hardness of paper, the irregularities of types (both in
-respect of their printing faces and the dimensions of their "bodies")
-and the mechanical imperfections of presses and printing methods made
-the work of early printers notable for corresponding unevennesses,
-irregularities and mechanical imperfections. To ensure that every
-letter left its mark more or less completely and evenly, considerable
-and noticeable impression was made in the paper. The printed letter was
-a coloured letter at the bottom of a ditch.
-
-The subsequent development of typography was chiefly die development
-of technical improvements, more accurately cast types, smoother
-paper, mechanically perfect presses. Apart from the history of its
-commercial exploitation, the history of printing has been the history
-of the abolition of the impression. A print is properly a dent made by
-pressing; the history of letter-press printing has been the history of
-the abolition of that dent.
-
-But the very smooth paper and the mechanically very perfect presses
-required for printing which shall show no "impression" can only be
-produced in a world which cares for such things, and such a world is
-of its nature inhuman. The industrial world of today is such, and it
-has the printing it desires and deserves. In the industrial world
-Typography, like house building and sanitary engineering, is one of the
-necessary arts--a thing to be done in working hours, those during which
-one is buoyed up by the knowledge that one is serving one's fellow men
-and neither enjoying oneself like an artist nor praising God like a man
-of prudence. In such a world the only excuse for anything is that it is
-of service.
-
-Printing which makes any claim on its own account, printers who give
-themselves the status of poets or painters, are to be condemned;
-they are not serving; they are shirking. Such is the tone of the
-more romantic among men of commerce; and the consequence is a
-pseudo-asceticism and a bastard aesthetics. The asceticism is only a
-sham because the test of service is the profits shown in the accounts;
-and the aesthetics is bastard because it is not founded upon the
-reasonable pleasure of the mind of the workman and of his customer,
-but upon the snobbery of museum students employed by men of commerce
-to give a saleable appearance to articles too dull otherwise to please
-even the readers of _The Daily Mail_.
-
-Nevertheless, as we have already shown, commercial printing, machine
-printing, industrial printing would have its own proper goodness if
-it were studiously plain and starkly efficient. Our quarrel is not
-with such a thing but only with the thing that is neither one nor the
-other--neither really mechanically perfect and physically serviceable
-nor really a work of art, i.e., a thing made by a man who, however
-laughable it may seem to men of business, loves God and does what he
-likes, who serves his fellow men because he is wrapped up in serving
-God--to whom the service of God is so commonplace that it is as much
-bad form to mention it as among men of business it is bad form to
-mention profits.
-
-There are, then, two typographies, as there are two worlds; and, apart
-from God or profits, the test of one is mechanical perfection, and
-of the other sanctity--the commercial article at its best is simply
-physically serviceable and, per accidens, beautiful in its efficiency;
-the work of art at its best is beautiful in its very substance and, per
-accidens, as serviceable as an article of commerce.
-
-The typography of Industrialism, when it is not deliberately
-diabolical and designed to deceive, will be plain; and in spite of
-the wealth of its resources--a thousand varieties of inks, papers,
-presses and mechanical processes for the reproduction of the designs
-of tame designers--it will be entirely free from exuberance and fancy.
-Every sort of ornament will be omitted; for printers' flowers will not
-spring in such a soil, and fancy lettering is nauseating when it is
-not the fancy of type-founders and printers but simply of those who
-desire to make something appear better than it is. Paradoxical though
-it be, the greater the wealth of appliances, the less is the power of
-using it. All the while that the technical and mechanical good quality
-is increasing, the de-humanizing of the workmen is also increasing.
-As we become more and more able to print finer and more elaborate
-and delicate types of letter it becomes more and more intellectually
-imperative to standardize all forms and obliterate all elaborations and
-fancifulness. It becomes easier and easier to print any kind of thing,
-but more and more imperative to print only one kind.
-
-On the other hand, those who use humane methods can never achieve
-mechanical perfection, because the slaveries and standardizations
-of Industrialism are incompatible with the nature of men. Humane
-Typography will often be comparatively rough and even uncouth; but
-while a certain uncouthness does not seriously matter in humane works,
-lack of uncouthness is the only possible excuse for the productions of
-the machine. So while in an industrialist society it is technically
-easy to print any kind of thing, in a humane society only one kind
-of thing is easy to print, but there is every scope for variety and
-experiment in the work itself. The more elaborate and fanciful the
-industrial article becomes, the more nauseating it becomes--elaboration
-and fancifulness in such things are inexcusable. But there is every
-excuse for elaboration and fancy in the works of human beings, provided
-that they work and live according to reason; and it is instructive to
-note that in the early days of printing, when human exuberance had
-full scope, printing was characterized by simplicity and decency; but
-that now, when such exuberance no longer exists in the workman (except
-when he is not at work), printing is characterized by every kind of
-vulgarity of display and complicated indecency.
-
-But, alas for humanity, there is the thing called compromise; and
-the man of business who is also the man of taste, and he of taste
-also who is also man of business will, in their blameless efforts
-to earn a living (for using one's wits is blameless, and earning
-a living is necessary), find many ways of giving a humane look to
-machine-made things or of using machinery and the factory to turn out,
-more quickly and cheaply, things whose proper nature is derived from
-human labor. Thus we have imitation "period" furniture in Wardour
-Street, and we have imitation "arts and crafts" in Tottenham Court
-Road. The-man-of-business-who-is-also-man-of-taste will tend to the
-"period" work, the-man-of-taste-who-is-also-man-of-business will tend
-to the imitation handicrafts. And, in the printing world, there are
-business houses whose reputation is founded on their resuscitations
-of the eighteenth century, and private presses whose speed of output
-is increased by machine-setting and gas engines. These things are
-more deplorable than blameworthy. Their chief objectionableness lies
-in the fact that they confuse the issue for the ordinary uncritical
-person, and they turn out work which is neither very good nor very
-bad. "Period" printing looks better than the usual vulgar products of
-unrestrained commercialism, and there is no visible difference, except
-to the expert, between machine-setting and hand-setting, or between
-sheets worked on a hand-press and those turned out on a power-driven
-Platen.
-
-Nevertheless, even if these things be difficult to decide in
-individual instances, there can be no sort of doubt but that as
-industrialism requires a different sort of workman so it also turns out
-a different kind of work--a workman sub-human in his irresponsibility,
-and work inhuman in its mechanical perfection. The imitation of the
-work of pre-industrial periods cannot make any important ultimate
-difference; the introduction of industrial methods and appliances into
-small workshops cannot make such workshops capable of competition with
-"big business." But while false standards of good taste may be set up
-by "period" work, this "good taste" is entirely that of the man of
-business and his customers; it is not at all that of the hands--they
-are in no way responsible for it or affected by it; on the other hand,
-the introduction of mechanical methods into small workshops has an
-immediate effect on the workmen. Inevitably they tend to take more
-interest in the machine and less in the work, to become machine-minders
-and to regard wages as the only reward. And good taste ceases to be the
-result of the restraint put upon his conscience by the workman himself;
-it becomes a thing imposed upon him by his employer. You cannot see the
-difference between a machine-set page and one set by hand. No, but you
-can see the difference between Cornwall before and after it became "the
-English Riviera"; you can see the difference between riding in a hansom
-and in a motor-cab--between a "cabby" and a "taxi-man"; you can see
-the difference between the ordinary issue of _The Times_ today and its
-ordinary issue a hundred years ago; you can see the difference between
-an ordinary modern book and an ordinary book of the sixteenth century.
-And it is not a question of better or worse; it is a question of
-difference simply. Our argument here is not that Industrialism has made
-things worse, but that it has inevitably made them different; and that
-whereas before Industrialism there was one world, now there are two.
-The nineteenth century attempt to combine Industrialism with the Humane
-was necessarily doomed, and the failure is now evident. To get the best
-out of the situation we must admit the impossibility of compromise; we
-must, in as much as we are industrialists, glory in Industrialism and
-its powers of mass-production, seeing that good taste in its products
-depends upon their absolute plainness and serviceableness; and in so
-much as we remain outside Industrialism, as doctors, lawyers, priests
-and poets of all kinds must necessarily be, we may glory in the fact
-that we are responsible workmen and can produce only one thing at a
-time.
-
-That if you look after goodness and truth beauty will take care of
-itself, is true in both worlds. The beauty that Industrialism properly
-produces is the beauty of bones; the beauty that radiates from the work
-of men is the beauty of the living face.
-
-                      COMPOSED IN PERPETUA TYPES
-
-
-
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                           FREDERIC W. GOUDY
-
-           [Illustration]TYPES AND TYPE DESIGN[Illustration]
-
-    The Syracuse University School of Journalism awarded its first
-  medal of honor to F. W. G. in 1936, "for distinctive achievement in
-   typographic design." His address then, reflecting the typographic
- philosophy and practice of two-score years, is reprinted as published
-                      by the University in 1936.
-
-
-It would be mere affectation on my part were I to pretend not to be
-touched by the signal honor you extend to me this evening, and I would
-be ungrateful indeed if I neglected to voice my very great appreciation
-of your kindness. I wish that I might express that appreciation in
-words that would leave no shadow of doubt in your minds as to the depth
-and sincerity of my feeling.
-
-I am not conscious of any outstanding reasons for the kind words spoken
-here tonight of my work. At the same time I am under no illusions as to
-the ultimate value of the work I have _attempted_ to do, although it
-is, after all, merely the every-day work of an earnest craftsman who
-endeavors to perform each task well and the next one, if possible, even
-better; and withal no thought or expectation of acclaim.
-
-My craft is a simple one. For nearly two score years it has been my
-constant aim and endeavor to create a greater and more general esteem
-for printing and type design; to give to printers and readers of print
-more legible and more beautiful types than those in current use. This
-has involved some little sacrifice; the missionary seldom acquires much
-more than the satisfaction of work well done, and yet, on the whole, I
-haven't done badly, since my work has brought me a wealth of friendship
-beyond measure.
-
-And now to the subject which has been assigned to me for this
-occasion--something about types of the past, type revivals, and a bit
-about type design, as I see it. I trust you will not find that my brief
-postprandial attempt bears out Gay's lines too literally:
-
-          _So comes the reckoning when the banquet's o'er,
-          A dreadful reckoning, when men smile no more._
-
-One hundred and twelve years ago type design was generally imagined to
-be a matter that concerned only the letter cutter. J. Johnson, author
-of _Typographia_ (published in 1824), wrote of a type face that the
-printer needed only to "observe that its shape be perfectly true, and
-that it lines or ranges with accuracy, and that by noting certain
-mathematical rules the letter cutter may produce Roman characters of
-such harmony, grace and symmetry as will please the eye in reading;
-and by having their fine strokes and swells blended together in due
-proportion, will excite admiration." He says further that "if the
-letter stands even and in line, which _is the chief good quality in
-letter_, it makes the face thereof sometimes to pass, though otherwise
-ill-shaped." Type design as a profession evidently did not exist in
-1824. And even today many printers are uninformed as to the various
-steps that must be taken between the inception of a type face in the
-designer's mind and its eventual appearance on the printed page.
-
-Today the designing of type is practiced by few artists as a separate
-craft; it is an humble art at best--and a minor one. Yet every user of
-types demands in them certain artistic qualities, i.e., invention,
-novelty, style, beauty, distinction (a few insist on legibility); most
-of those users forget or do not realize that these are qualities an
-artist only may secure, and even the artist cannot always insure that
-his design will present all of them.
-
-First: Invention requires that we soar above mere caprices of fashion
-or the demands of passing fancy. Our letter forms have become fixed in
-their essentials by long use and tradition, yet a study of all that has
-gone before will enable the designer seeking new expressions to infuse
-new life and character into traditional shapes and inspire him to
-create new designs based on the broad impressions stored in the granary
-of his mind.
-
-Second: Novelty gives us some new impression suited to and brought
-about by new conditions of life and environment--by the changes that
-time has wrought. By novelty I do not mean, however, the imitation
-novelty so frequently met with and presented as something new; too
-often it means simply some older thing newly described. Achieving the
-fantastic quality reminiscent of the "slimy trail" of _Art Nouveau_,
-which you older ones will recall as rampant in the 1890's, produces
-freaks of fashion in an attempt to be novel, but may not, necessarily,
-always secure the novelty desired. Traditions of the past need not
-be disregarded nor overlooked in order to meet the prejudices of the
-present.
-
-Just now a seemingly insatiable demand for novelty is giving us a
-senseless and ridiculous riot of "beautiful atrocities." The inundation
-of freak types is largely due to a revival of some former products of
-ignorance bringing in their train new designs even more bizarre in the
-attempt to secure "novelty"--a detestable word used frequently, I fear,
-like charity, to cover a multitude of sins. It has no place in artistic
-considerations, as a thing that really is good should be good for all
-time. Sporadic outbreaks in the name of novelty inevitably occur from
-time to time and fortunately have usually only their little day in the
-sun before vanishing forever into the limbo of the forgotten.
-
-I do not wish to imply that novelty itself is undesirable--by no
-means; striving for newness keeps things fresh and alive. It is the
-re-presentation of the extraordinarily ugly and bizarre types of
-the middle of the last century with no exceptional artistic warrant
-for their revival, in an attempt to do something different, that I
-deprecate. Newness for its own sake only may not always be worth while.
-
-I find it difficult to speak dispassionately of some of the types
-advertisers are using nowadays, because I am too deeply steeped in
-the traditions of the past to accept them. I cannot be accused of
-intolerance, however. The best art of the designer, the highest skill
-of the printer, and the clear, lucid argument of the advertisement
-writer must be requisitioned. Yet in much of the typography of today
-many of the new types display a marked avoidance of everything that
-is plain, simple and legible. Why are simplicity and easy readability
-no longer esteemed as desirable qualities in print? Why are these
-outlandish characters selected? For four hundred years the Roman types
-of the early Italian printers have furnished models to suit all tastes
-and serve every purpose.
-
-For several years past advertisers and even our magazine and book
-printers have somewhat strayed from a definite standard of dignity
-and beauty in the quest for novelty. Foreign types, imported to add a
-touch of novelty to our advertising (types which, no doubt, are good
-enough for the conditions in the bailiwicks that gave them birth), too
-frequently impart to print a fantastic or a too fanciful effect when
-used under the entirely different conditions found here. These types
-are likely to impart to our printing an air of incongruity displeasing
-to the trained taste. _En passant_, I am reminded of a suggestion
-offered by Reinhardt, the scenic designer: "Do not try to inspire from
-foreign ideas. Be interested in them, of course, and they will help to
-fertilize your own."
-
-Third: Style is a subtle quality that comes from an intelligent use
-of a good tradition renewed and advanced into our own times; it is
-a quality inseparable from the tools and materials employed, and is
-not to be acquired simply by taking thought or by a determination to
-attain it. Style is the living expression controlling both the form and
-the vital structure of the vehicle which presents thought in tangible
-form--an intimate and inseparable something in the work of a craftsman
-wholly unconscious of style or of any definite aim towards beauty for
-itself.
-
-Fourth: Distinction is more difficult to secure, yet, when a type
-presents an unassuming simplicity; when it expresses thought in every
-detail; when it is clear, elegant, strong; nothing in it that is loose
-and vague, no finesse of design, but showing clearly in every line the
-spirit the designer has put into the body of his work, that type can
-hardly fail of real distinction. To meet the demands of utility and to
-preserve also an esthetic standard is the problem the type designer
-must attempt to solve. Obviously a large order for a mere amateur (or
-even for a professional designer).
-
-As to legibility, I shall not here comment. Everyone knows (or thinks
-he knows) just what constitutes it; I fear I do not, or I would never
-permit myself consciously to make a type that was not the quintessence
-of legibility.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-I am frequently asked how I design a type face. There are so many
-things that lead up to one that it is difficult to give a specific
-reply. I once told a student that "I think of a letter and then mark
-around the thought." That is hardly real designing. It may be easy to
-think of one letter, but to think also of its twenty-five relations
-which with it form the alphabet and so to mark around them that they
-will combine in complete harmony and rhythm with each other and with
-all--that is the difficult thing, the successful doing of which
-constitutes design. What is the inspiration for a new face? That also
-is difficult to answer. In the first place, it is hardly possible to
-create an absolutely new type or one that will not be reminiscent of
-the past.
-
-It is quite within the province of the letter artist to take his
-inspiration for a new face from any source--the lapidary inscriptions
-of the first centuries of the Imperial age of Rome; a mediaeval brass
-that marks the last resting place of a departed ruler; a manuscript
-letter by some unsung scribe of the Renaissance, or an early type of
-the golden age of typography. Or maybe he may even strive to put into
-tangible form on his drawing board some vision from out of nowhere--the
-realization of a chance thought straying through an idle reverie which
-he will whip into a satisfactory medium of intellectual exchange. On
-the other hand, he may prefer to attempt the re-creation of new letter
-from the bones of a more ancient form, endeavoring to secure in it a
-new expression of life and vigor, with new graces suited to our times
-and our use.
-
-If the designer chooses to disregard old types and go direct to
-their source, the manuscript hands of the scribes, well, why not? By
-revising their forms, refining them, eliminating their whimsicalities
-and vagaries and formalizing their irregularities, he may meet, too,
-the mechanical requirements and technical limitations of type founding.
-This, probably, is the more legitimate method, since in this way he
-will inspire from the real beginnings of our lower case forms. For
-myself I am inclined to agree with a writer who maintains that "it
-is doubtful whether the type designer benefits from a close study of
-hand lettering," meaning of course the manuscript hands of the past.
-Interesting as old manuscripts are, I find them of little practical
-use as offering models for new types. Speaking for myself only I find
-it more feasible to get my inspirations from a study of the earlier
-types that appeal to me. They frequently offer opportunity for new
-expression. With no attempt to copy their particular forms, or to make
-changes merely in weight or serif, I endeavor rather to tear from them
-the qualities and the spirit that makes them good, for incorporation in
-my own letter shapes.
-
-I realize, of course, that the letters I may select as my models were,
-without doubt, inspired by some manuscript hand that personally I may
-find offers little for use in my own work. With complete independence
-of calligraphy I attempt, instead, to secure the negative quality
-of unpretentiousness; I strive for the pure contour and monumental
-character of the classic lapidary forms of the first centuries of the
-Christian era; I endeavor in my work to avoid any bizarre quality or
-exhibition of conscious preciosity. (It has been said that in this
-latter aim I sometimes fail.)
-
-Once in a while a type face by some other designer seems to present an
-interesting movement or quality that I like. I take early opportunity
-to make it mine, frankly and openly, in the same way that a writer
-might use exactly the same words as another, but by a new arrangement
-of them present a new thought, a new idea, or a new subtlety of
-expression. Or as two painters using identical tools and colors, each
-might produce a masterpiece, yet the work of one probably would not
-resemble that of the other in any detail. By copying carefully a few
-characters of the type that appeals to me drawn by another hand, I try
-to secure in my own drawings some certain movement or rhythm his may
-present. I soon discard my model and proceed from there, as it were,
-under my own steam, and sometimes produce a face which my good friend
-Kent Currie says "has an acid, typy quality" and (in substance) that it
-is regular and well-ordered, that it has interest, color, movement, and
-sometimes quaintness.
-
-Several years ago I accepted a commission to make a type for a
-magazine of large circulation. At that time it was my practice to make
-drawings from which matrices were engraved for me by the late Robert
-Wiebking of Chicago. His death occurred just about the time I was to
-send him my originals for translation into "mats" from which to cast
-the type. In order to carry out my arrangement with the magazine, and
-finding difficulty in procuring the work elsewhere, I determined to
-try doing also the mechanical work of matrix engraving myself. Like
-Moxon, I "learnt it of my own genuine inclination," with no previous
-instruction in the craft. With no engraving or casting plant ready to
-my hand I began the getting together of the various paraphernalia of a
-type foundry. Procuring machines for a type foundry was comparatively
-simple; the operation of them, making patterns for use in the engraving
-machines, the lining and fitting of the cast types, etc., all after I
-had reached my sixtieth birthday, was something else. Looking back, I
-am amazed at my temerity. It was literally a case of rushing in where
-angels might well fear to tread. Yet, since that time I have engraved
-many hundreds of matrices.
-
-And now, one other personal note. It is my credo. For nearly two score
-years I have made use and beauty the great _desiderata_. I have never
-permitted myself intentionally to utilize the message I was attempting
-to present, to serve as a mere framework or scaffolding upon which to
-exploit my own skill, nor ever to allow my craft to became an end in
-itself instead of a means only to a desirable and useful end.
-
-                      COMPOSED IN DEEPDENE TYPES
-
-
-
-
-           [Illustration]THEODORE LOW DE VINNE[Illustration]
-
-                         _The Old and the New_
-
-             A FRIENDLY DISPUTE BETWEEN JUVENIS AND SENEX
-
-                   with a note by FREDERIC W. GOUDY
-
-       Published by The Village Press, Marlboro, New York, 1933.
-
-
-_Juvenis_: What is it that you admire in the types of old books? Don't
-you love them more for their quaintness than for their beauty? I have
-seen originals or accredited facsimiles of the best books of Gutenberg,
-Jenson, Aldus, Kerver, Caxton, and other notable printers, but I prefer
-modern types.
-
-_Senex_: Then you have seen the pointed black-letter, the round gothic,
-the aldine Italic, the flemish black, and the early Roman. Did not any
-of these styles please you?
-
-_Juvenis_: Not one. To try to read the pointed black of Gutenberg
-and Kerver is as repelling as a walk through the crypts of an old
-church; the round gothics are as scraggy as a heap of oyster shells;
-the Aldine italics are squeezed as to width, elongated as to height,
-and incongruously mated with absurdly small capitals; the flemish
-black-letter is the 'tour de force' of a literary acrobat. In all these
-characters I see bad drawing and disregard of proportion. The founding
-is as bad as the design; some characters are fitted too near, others
-too wide, and many letters are out of line.
-
-_Senex_: You surely cannot censure Jenson's Roman for bad fitting?
-
-_Juvenis_: I do except that, for Jenson was a good mechanic, and so
-was Kerver. Their types are well fitted and neatly lined. But I have
-small praise to give Jenson for his much admired Roman letter. Better,
-no doubt, than any other Roman of the period, but was it perfection?
-Bibliophiles forget that this Jenson Roman was out of fashion fifty
-years after his death, and that his models have been altered by every
-succeeding punch-cutter.
-
-_Senex_: How, then, can you explain the favor shown to the recent types
-of William Morris? His 'Golden' type is based on the Jenson model; his
-'Troy' and 'Chaucer' types are modeled after the round gothic of the
-fifteenth century.
-
-_Juvenis_: I do not pretend to explain freaks of fashion in typography
-any more than in religion or art or music. The Athenians who worshiped
-an unknown or forgotten god have successors in every generation.
-There are Englishmen, nursed in the Catechism, who try to be devout
-Buddhists; there are Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, and Wagnerians.
-
-The lover of singularity who can invent nothing that is new must hunt
-up something that is old, or at least odd, to keep up his reputation
-for discernment. It is enough for me to know that the literary world,
-outside of Germany, moved by common impulse, discarded all the
-early types. The sacred black-letter of Gutenberg, and other forms,
-went to oblivion for good reason. All were of bad form and hard to
-read--obscured by abbreviations, misuse of capital letters, absurd
-divisions, and inconsistent orthography. Much as a student of our time
-may profess admiration for early typography, he will not consult the
-'Bible of Forty-two Lines' for a disputed text, when a more readable
-edition is accessible.
-
-_Senex_: You confound two features of typography that should be kept
-separate. The shapes of early types should be considered apart from
-the skill, or want of skill, in their compositors. The black-letter
-types of the fifteenth century are often fair copies of the admirable
-manuscripts of the period.
-
-_Juvenis_: The black-letter of every early printer was but a servile
-copy of the manuscript most attainable. Malformations were copied,
-but the flowing graces of penmanship could not be reproduced in
-mechanically square types. No punch-cutter of the period improved on
-the manuscript copy. All the early books abound in infelicities of
-design and cutting, indicating that the work was not as thoughtfully
-done as similar work is done now. It is a begging of the question
-to assume that the early punch-cutters were demigods in art. To say
-that they were right is to say that Albrecht Dürer and Geoffroy Tory,
-who wrote books on the true proportions of letters, and Granjon and
-Garamond, who gave a lifetime to type-making, were wrong. I prefer to
-accept the teachings of known artists as of higher authority.
-
-_Senex_: Is not the difficulty of reading old black-letter due to its
-unfamiliar abbreviations and to mannerisms in type-setting now out of
-fashion? Would not modern types be obscure if similarly treated?
-
-_Juvenis_: They would; but the fault begins with the shapes of the
-printed letters. You note it in the modern German fraktur, always
-a perplexity to every English-born student. The Germans themselves
-practically admit its inferiority. Their scientific books are usually
-in Roman. Their preference for Roman is a confession that Roman types
-are better, and that the printers of the seventeenth century did wisely
-in their general abandonment of pointed letters. The reading world had
-outgrown them. Why should we revive them?
-
-_Senex_: Let us not trouble ourselves about pointed letters. There is
-no probability that they will ever be accepted by Americans for the
-texts of ordinary books. Let us consider the Roman types that have been
-in use by the Latin races and by English-speaking people for three
-centuries. Are modern types as readable as those of Jenson? Here is his
-Pliny of 1472, and here is the 'soprasilvio' of Bodoni, as exhibited in
-his _Manuale Tipografico_ of 1818. Which is better?
-
-_Juvenis_: I am surprised at the question. Every character in the
-Bodoni type is correctly drawn; every system of uniform thickness,
-every hair-line and serif sharp as a knife-edge. Curves are true and
-graceful, angles exact; fitting and lining beyond criticism. In the
-Jenson type there is not one perfect letter. The hair-lines are scant
-and of unequal thickness, the serifs are stubby, the stems of uneven
-width, the characters out of proportion. Raggedness of drawing and
-roughness of cutting are not concealed by its fairly good fitting and
-lining. No publisher of the last two centuries would dare to print, and
-no reader consent to buy, a contemporary book in this type.
-
-_Senex_: Can you not see something more in this Jenson type? Is it not
-more readable? I put them side by side at a distance of ten feet, where
-you can read the Jenson and cannot read the Bodoni.
-
-_Juvenis_: True: but types in great primer are not made to be read at
-ten feet distance.
-
-_Senex_: True again; but the mannerisms that obscure the Bodoni type
-at ten feet are more distressing in his small types, usually read at
-the distance of fifteen inches. The over-sharp hair-line, the dazzling
-serif, and the vanishing curve are more irritating in the smaller than
-in the larger sizes. Ordinary eyesight does not seize at a glance the
-entire face of modern type; it dimly sees hair-lines or serifs; it
-deciphers the stems only; it sees but half of the letter, and guesses
-at the invisible. The type of Bodoni is a wearying strain on the eye.
-
-_Juvenis_: Your remarks do not fairly apply to readers of good sight.
-
-_Senex_: They do apply to the majority of readers. It is a mistake to
-make for ordinary texts types with lines that cannot be easily seen by
-all.
-
-_Juvenis_: If you think boldness of most importance in a type, why make
-Jenson's type your model? Why not go back still farther? Why not take
-up the lapidary letters of old Rome, Greece, or Etruria?
-
-_Senex_: They are uncouth and wasteful of space. Designed to be
-chiseled on stone, they are unfit for types. The 'Caroline minuscule,'
-which is the basis of our Roman text letter, is more compact, quite as
-irregular, and much more readable.
-
-_Juvenis_: If you believe that there was a gradual improvement in the
-shapes of letters between the first and fifteenth centuries, why stop
-at the fifteenth? Why not admit that this improvement continues?
-
-_Senex_: Because the changes that followed were not always
-improvements. The faultless curves, sharp lines, and exact angles of
-Bodoni were disfigurements made at the expense of readability. Types
-are made to be easily read, not to show the skill of the designer. When
-they fail in readability the fault is fatal. The proper development of
-typography was checked by the invention of copper-plate that trod on
-its heels. Its delicacy of line, its perfect graduation of shadows, its
-vigorous blacks, and its facile rendering of a receding perspective
-put out of fashion all strong and manly work on wood. Dürer's 'Little
-Passion,' Holbein's 'Dance of Death,' and Vostre's _Book of Hours_ were
-put aside, and the insipid effeminacies of overworked line-engraving
-took their place. Punch-cutters of the sixteenth century thought
-that printing would be improved if they imitated the methods of
-line-engravers, and so they cut their types sharper and thinner.
-They would not see that relief engraving and incised engraving are
-diametrically opposed in theory and practice, and that the imitation
-of one process by the other is impossible. Repeated failures did
-not check this desire to imitate. Increasing refinements in types
-produced a corresponding degradation in printing. The inferiority
-of the average book of the eighteenth century is largely due to the
-so-called 'improved' faces of type. The most irrepressible imitator of
-copper-plate effects was Bodoni of Parma. William Morris is right in
-saying that his imitations of copper-plate delicacy indicate a real
-abasement of the typographic art.
-
-_Juvenis_: If correct drawing, exact proportion, and high finish are
-merits in other arts, why should they be faults in type-making?
-
-_Senex_: 'Finish' is a merit only when it improves; when it
-over-elaborates, when it leads the reader to think more of the means
-employed than of the object sought, it is a fault. Bodoni's careful
-drawing and finical cutting defeat the purpose for which types were
-made. They do not fully show the letter; they do show Bodoni; and it
-is a fair supposition that he was more intent on showing his skill
-than he was on aiding the reader. Your ideal of merit in types is that
-of mechanical precision. You forget that letters are of irregular
-shapes, with intent to make them distinct. The more you prune away the
-irregularities, the more indistinct they become. Readers do not isolate
-and critically examine each letter; they read words at a glance. They
-prefer characters with enough of irregularity to arrest the eye and
-fix the thought of the writer. It is with types as with penmanship.
-Has it been your misfortune to revise a long manuscript written in
-feminine style with a crow-quill pen, and with admirable precision,
-but with almost invisible hair strokes? Recollect your exasperation at
-its mechanical precision and wearisome monotony. How gratefully you
-turned to a jagged and masculine but readable style of penmanship,
-in which you were content to have all the rules of writing-masters
-violated! Recall these experiences, and then understand why I prefer
-old types. Not because they are old, or of faultless form, but because
-the letters are more distinct. They were made, not to show the skill of
-the punch-cutter, but to help the reader; and they deserve the credit
-due to straightforward workmanship.
-
-
-                      A NOTE BY FREDERIC W. GOUDY
-
-_In 1898 the name "De Vinne" meant little more to me than the name of
-a then popular display printing type, until the day, in a book-shop
-in Detroit, I chanced on a copy of_ The Book-lover's Almanac _for
-1896. Of the eight or ten articles listed in the table of contents
-one was by Theo. Low De Vinne. The article was written in the form of
-a discussion between "Senex" and "Juvenis" on the comparative merits
-of the early type faces and those of Bodoni and his successors. This
-was, I believe, my first realization that "De Vinne" was the name of a
-living personality._
-
-_I was just becoming interested in the history of the typography of
-books and was making also a closer study of type design, but it did not
-occur to me that such study would ever lead to the actual practise of
-the art I have since made peculiarly my own...._
-
-_When I first read Mr. De Vinne's article it seemed to me that "Senex"
-had rather the better of the argument, indeed, I have not found, during
-the nearly two score years that have elapsed, any statements elsewhere
-that have changed materially the opinions then formed as to the
-soundness of his asseverations...._
-
-_If I were asked to say what I think has been the greatest single
-influence in my work as a type designer I would be hard put to find
-a satisfactory reply; but there is no doubt in my mind that the
-principles set forth in this article and in his book_ Notable Printers
-of Italy During the 15th Century _have certainly loomed large in
-crystallizing the character of my types. The consistency of thought
-he displayed, his sound knowledge of old types, his fairness in the
-consideration of each moot point, the simple yet lucid presentation of
-his ideas and opinions interested me; they influenced my own thought,
-and in turn are reflected in my work._
-
-_If, to my more mature consideration of this discussion there is any
-lapse of the author's pen, it seems to me it is, that "Senex" failed
-to stress more strongly a demand for greater grace and beauty in types
-in closer combination with legibility. I feel that the proper standard
-of beauty in types basically resides in their utility, but there are,
-nevertheless, secondary esthetic attributes which may be included
-without any sacrifice of life and vigor and legibility. A certain
-rugged beauty is perceived without difficulty, and irregularities
-which in isolated or individual characters, might seem objectionable
-from the standpoint of grace alone, may prove highly desirable in the
-composed line. Readability is of course to be considered above every
-other quality, because, failing this it fails utterly, regardless of
-every other excellence; yet, while striving for legibility, beauty of
-form should also be given almost equal consideration.... I venture to
-disagree with Senex's statement that "the lapidary letters of old Rome
-are uncouth and ... unfit for types"...._
-
-_Marlboro, N. Y., May_, 1933
-
-
-
-
-                            [Illustration: Bruce Rogers]
-
-                        PARAGRAPHS ON PRINTING
-
-  From _Paragraphs on Printing_. Copyright 1943 by William E. Rudge's
-         Sons. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher
-
-
-_NOTE: The text for this book on the functions of the book designer
-was elicited from B.R. in talks with James Hendrickson. These informal
-observations on typographical problems were accompanied by numerous
-reproductions of pages of Mr. Rogers' design, by way of illustration
-and example._
-
-You think of the _book_, the size and shape of the book, before you
-consider type or anything else. What kind of a volume should it be? In
-what particular form and in what face of type would _you_ like to read
-it? The type and format should be governed by your conception of the
-character of the subject matter. As an instance take Conrad's tale,
-_The Tremolino_, recently printed. It is a slight but vivid story, to
-be read almost at a glance, so it would have been a misfit to make it
-larger, say in octavo size. The vividness is indicated by the dramatic
-little cuts in color, the slightness by the dimensions and open
-character of the pages.
-
-After the size is determined the selection of a suitable type
-comes next. And that depends usually on what types are available
-in the office in which the book is to be made. Even this is not
-always necessary, as many offices have composition done outside by
-type-composition firms, so that an almost unlimited choice may be
-yours. There are so many varieties of type now, that for almost any
-size or kind of book you plan you will readily find an appropriate
-face. At any rate it isn't so vitally important as other things.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-It is a great advantage in laying out a page, especially a title or
-display page, if the designer can handle pen or pencil; and the more
-definitely he can represent the type he proposes to use, the greater
-saving of time and expense there will be when it comes to the setting
-of it. It is true that some masters of printing do not resort to
-sketching--at least not more than mere lines on the paper, labeled
-with the kinds and sizes of type they represent. But to visualize the
-completed page in such slight indications is an unusual gift, and if
-one does not possess this gift there is the probability that the first
-setting of the page will have to be torn apart several times before a
-satisfactory one is produced. It is sometimes well worth while to work
-a page out very carefully, even in pen-and-ink, so that it will be a
-pretty close approximation to the finished thing; especially if you
-have to submit the scheme to a customer for his approval, or if he asks
-to see alternative treatments.
-
-Of course, after many years of familiarity with type faces, it isn't
-necessary to draw them accurately for your own guidance, even though
-you should possess that ability; but some nevertheless find it a
-pleasant thing to see the page take form under their pencil or pen
-before it goes into actual type. Frequently, however, there is a sense
-of disappointment in seeing the first type proof, for the freedom and
-swing of your sketch has usually vanished in its translation into type;
-and the more formal the style of type the less it will retain the
-quality of your sketch.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-Making an "allusive" format for a book--that is, casting it in the
-style of the period of the original text--is in a small way something
-like planning the stage setting for a play. An up-to-date style for
-an ancient text would compare with staging _Hamlet_ in modern dress.
-However novel and effective in its own way, you feel it to be strange,
-and this sense of strangeness is an annoying distraction; you are
-forced to think of the setting and the designer rather than of the text.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-The character of the text to be printed is of course the first thing
-to consider in selecting the kind of type; and the number of pages
-to which the book will probably run is the determining factor as to
-what size of type is possible. The width and length of the type page
-are then to be proportioned to the paper page, which in turn also
-helps to determine the size of the type. All these considerations are
-interlocking.
-
-There have been several rules formulated for page proportions. One is
-that the width of the page should approximate one-half of the diagonal.
-Another is that the length of line should be one-half more than the
-length of a line of the twenty-six lower-case letters of the type used.
-But all such rules are only guides, to be discarded when the effect
-you are after seems to require something else; this something else to
-be determined only by the judgment of the designer and his feeling for
-the appearance of the page. In the reproduction of the styles of early
-typography the designer should avoid setting small type in too wide a
-measure. The old printers in their folio volumes did not seem to mind
-very long lines of comparatively small type. But most of these ancient
-books in Roman type were never intended for rapid reading. They were
-generally Latin texts where the eye follows the line better than in
-English or French composition. Latin composition naturally makes more
-beautiful pages on account of the preponderance of short letters--m, n,
-u, etc., with comparatively few ascenders and descenders. The evenness
-of spacing that the early printers got came from their abundant use of
-Latin abbreviations and their indifference as to how many consecutive
-word divisions occurred at the ends of lines, but it was never a
-conscious effort to obtain what is called "texture" in the page. There
-should be no laboring to produce a perfectly spaced page but rather an
-endeavor to avoid a badly spaced one.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-The amount of leading that a page requires depends on so many factors
-that it is difficult to give any fixed method of procedure. The kind of
-type, the size of type, the length of line and the general character of
-the text all bear on this point. Generally speaking, most types should
-be at least slightly leaded, especially if the lines are fairly long.
-This helps the eye to catch the following line in rapid reading more
-easily than when the type is set solidly. The solid pages were usually
-adopted when old-style types were used exclusively; but when modern
-type came in, beginning with Bodoni, the custom of leading, sometimes
-double-leading, arose. The effect of these new types was helped by
-a generous amount of white paper between the lines. This applies to
-Bodoni, Bulmer, and the Scotch face and their derivatives. Antique
-types were, however, occasionally very freely leaded, especially in
-Spanish books of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
-
-The conventional use of quotation marks is to place a double mark at
-the beginning and end of the passage quoted, with single marks for
-any quotations within it. In books with much conversation the use of
-double quotes frequently results in very mottled typography, and for
-many years some English printers have adopted the single mark for the
-major quotations, using double marks only if an inner quote occurs.
-This violates, a little, one's sense of relative importance, but in
-a book where there are only simple quotations there is no reason why
-the single mark should not suffice, much to the visual improvement of
-the typography. There is some possibility of confusion if the last
-word of the extract should chance to be a possessive plural, with
-an apostrophe, as the two marks are identical; but this occurs so
-infrequently as to be negligible.
-
-Inverted commas were used for opening quotes in most founts until
-comparatively recent years, but now a separate pattern is provided for
-most founts. Reversed, instead of inverted commas now accompany many
-founts, particularly the reproductions of late nineteenth- and early
-twentieth-century types, at which time they were first introduced.
-
-French, Spanish and other continental founders furnish a special design
-of marks, « »; but these look rather strange to Anglo-Saxon eyes.
-
-In Elizabethan printing the quotation marks sometimes ran entirely
-down the margins of the extracts, and if, as was frequently the case,
-the page was enclosed with rules, they were often placed outside
-the rules. This treatment occurs in one of the handsomest books of
-that period, _Nobilitas Politica vel Civilis_, printed in 1608 by
-William Jaggard, the printer of the First Folio fifteen years later.
-The _Nobilitas_ is generally accounted the masterpiece of his press,
-and in itself comprises nearly all of the various typographical
-features of books of that time. Large and small types, Roman, Italic,
-black-letter and Anglo-Saxon, both solid and leaded pages, tabular
-work with handsome braces, side notes, woodcut initials, head-pieces
-and tailpieces, and a series of costume plates engraved on copper and
-printed within the rules on folioed blank pages left for them in the
-form--all go toward making a book that is a compendious example for
-students of Elizabethan typography.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-Red is the most satisfactory secondary color with black, and you will
-often find that it is better to use just one spot of color on the page.
-In using red for an occasional display line, blue-red or purple-red or
-orange-red should be avoided. A red such as the early printers had, a
-full-bodied, rather dull vermilion, which will hold up well with the
-black, is the most successful. If it is desirable to employ the blue
-for a border or an initial it shows up much more brilliantly when
-the design is in white on a solid or stippled ground of the blue. An
-outline design in blue is too light in mass to accompany the black of
-the type. But black and blue alone are never so pleasing a combination
-as when red is introduced as the second color, with blue as the third.
-
-The black for the text or reading types should be intense without being
-glossy, because the gloss causes a reflection of light and interferes
-with legibility. The same objection does not apply to colors, for a
-moderate gloss enriches them and overcomes a sort of dustiness that
-their surfaces take on.
-
-The text pages of most books should be printed in black ink.[36] The
-tendency of a young printer is often to try for novelty by printing
-with color rather than with black, not realizing that most types were
-not designed for anything but black on white. If, however, the job is
-somewhat aside from the usual run of books, and is not of too great
-extent, a brown or green ink may be substituted for black if the tint
-be dark enough to afford perfect legibility. But the result then
-acquires something of the character of an object of art rather than a
-book.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Letter-spacing is often misused. It is safe to say that lower-case
-type should practically _never_ be letter-spaced, for the individual
-letters were designed for close combination with other letters of the
-alphabet. If it becomes necessary to fill out a line it is preferable
-to put all the extra space between the words even though the resultant
-"holes" are distressing to the eye. Sometimes with very large types
-it is permissible to letter-space in a minor degree, as the spaces
-between the letters naturally are larger and letter-spacing does not
-detract too much from the appearance of the line, especially if it is
-distributed according to the irregular space between the different
-letters as normally set.
-
-With capitals or upper-case letters the conditions are different.
-Then it is frequently a great advantage to use letter-spaces, even
-considerably; but this depends upon the general style of the typography
-adopted for the book. In the hands of some contemporary printers the
-Aldine practice of wide letter-spacing of small capitals has been
-followed quite skilfully in title- or subtitle lines, chapter headings,
-and other display work. This is of particular advantage with the rather
-heavy-faced modern types, i.e., Scotch, Bodoni, etc.
-
-It is well to avoid too many, and too open letter-spaced lines in any
-kind of display composition, for the effect is sometimes disastrous.
-Baskerville was very fond of letter-spacing and most of his work is, in
-that respect, extremely ugly.[37] He sometimes pushed spacing to the
-point of absurdity; notably in his great Bible, where in the heading of
-the Book of Job he set the letters J O B in capitals of about 48-point
-size with three inches of space between them. It could hardly be called
-a word, but rather just a bad job of type-setting.
-
-The practice of letter-spacing to produce blocked-out lines of
-capitals must be done with great caution and skill or else a very
-uneven texture will be produced. Frequently it is better to abandon
-the idea of a block of type if the spacing cannot be done with a
-fairly uniform effect. It is a mistake to start with a determination
-to produce a block of type and then to persist in it at any cost of
-legibility or appearance. When lines of capitals are set without
-leading, letter-spacing should never be used. The leading should be
-in proportion to the spacing in order to keep the continuity of the
-lines of type, otherwise you will produce columns of letters instead of
-lines. It is hardly necessary to say that the best letter-spacing is
-not done with uniform spaces between the letters. The spacing on either
-side of a letter should be determined by the shape of the adjacent
-letters. Most compositors have now learned to use spaces according to
-the shape of the letters, but the cutting of such letters as V, W, to
-make them set closer than their natural width is usually very much
-overdone. The new logotypes cut for this purpose are equally faulty
-in this respect. The resulting effect is more noticeable and more
-objectionable than the natural setting of the type would be. Anything
-that strikes the eye as strange or unusual in a line of type is to be
-avoided.
-
-Periods and commas of letter-spaced capitals should not be set off from
-the last letter of the word, regardless of the amount of spacing used
-elsewhere in the line.
-
-Colons and semicolons have traditionally been set apart from the word
-they follow, whether in capitals or lower case. In old books they are
-frequently centered in the space between the words where they occur.
-Exclamation and interrogation points should if possible be set off
-with thin spaces because they often form disagreeable and confusing
-combinations with the last letter of the word, such as ff!, ll!, f?,
-etc.
-
-                 COMPOSED IN CENTAUR AND ARRIGHI TYPES
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[36] Of the more than half-thousand books that Mr. Rogers has designed,
-only four come to mind as having the text matter printed in anything
-other than black; and these four were all slight volumes, more or less
-in the gift-book classification.
-
-[37] "When we look at his books we think of Baskerville; while to look
-at the work of Jenson is to think but of its beauty, and almost to
-forget that it was made with hands!" UPDIKE, _Printing Types_, II, p.
-116.
-
-
-
-
-                     ADVENTURER WITH TYPE ORNAMENT
-                         [Illustration: B.R.]
-
-                           _Paul A. Bennett_
-
-Revised and amended from P.M., Vol. II, No. 5, New York, January 1936.
-
-
-To anyone who has set or handled type, the achievements of Bruce Rogers
-in combining decorative type units to form a design are extraordinary.
-This may seem undiluted enthusiasm; actually and sincerely it is but
-simple fact.
-
-How? Why? Only a detailed examination of a particular B.R. design with
-type ornaments will reveal. An examination, that is, accompanied by
-simultaneous scanning of a proof of the individual elements comprising
-the design. When one sees the units alone--some of them so seemingly
-useless that one wonders that anything, even second-rate stuff, could
-possibly be done with such drab material--then one appreciates the
-typographic magic B.R. has accomplished.
-
-_How_ he sees anything in some of the units he uses so dexterously, I
-don't know. When and how he first became interested in doing designs
-with type ornaments is worth considering.
-
-His experiments date back to Riverside Press days, though in
-that period no attempts were made to use type ornament except by
-conventional combinations into borders or head-pieces. But even
-at that time he had several seventeenth-century flowers recut
-for the decoration of a collection of early American documents,
-titled _Sailors Narratives of Voyages Along the New England Coast,
-1524-1624_, edited by George Parker Winship.
-
-Interest in combining type ornaments was shown again while at the
-University Press in Cambridge, England, during 1918-19, but he
-developed it there into nothing more than the revival of two or
-three other earlier ornaments which were used, as at Riverside, in
-conventional ways. A page of his scrapbook shows also a number of
-trials with Egyptian hieroglyphs, but apparently nothing came of these.
-
-The germ of his allusive use of ornaments is probably to be found in
-the "Goosefest" menu which he concocted at Carl Rollins' Montague
-Press; when at the bottom of an elaborate bill of fare three of Will
-Bradley's strutting little figures are set (or laid) flat on their
-backs in a row, with the legend, "Turn over (not us but the leaf)."
-
-The earliest traceable use of ornaments and punctuation marks that
-in combination bear directly upon the text thus decorated was in the
-heading for the first page of _The Symbol and the Saint_, where a line
-of parentheses, a cross and three dolphins symbolize the overseas
-quest of the hero of the tale. This same motif was developed and
-elaborated later in _Joseph Conrad the Man_, _The Ancient Mariner_,
-and other pieces. His scrapbook shows many unused variations on this
-theme. The sea and leaping dolphins and palms seem to be his favorite
-preoccupation.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-Probably the most difficult compositions of this kind he has produced
-are to be found in Conrad's unfinished novel, _The Sisters_; where in a
-space the width of the page and one-quarter to one-half inch in depth
-may be found suggestions of illimitable Russian wheat fields, Paris
-with its mansard roofs and French roads leading into it, a farewell
-scene at sunset on a winding Spanish road, etc., each based upon some
-phrase or paragraph in the story itself.
-
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-Most certainly B.R.'s accomplishments surpass those decorative
-combinations of type ornaments shown in early printers' and
-type-founders' specimens--yes, even including the foremost achievements
-of the hallowed rule benders.
-
-Little research is necessary to support these rather inclusive
-statements. An excellent example is the _Utopia_ title page, done for
-the Limited Editions Club. Here is swirling movement in a border, if
-ever you saw it. And accomplished, mainly, with two traits of ornament
-and their reverses. The entire border took but several more.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-Setting them out individually, doesn't give a hint of their
-possibilities. Yet look at the result of their use by B.R., scan the
-design closely to discover just where and how each element is placed
-with such telling effect--and you begin to appreciate the man's ability.
-
-Another example--old stuff B.R. will call it--is the title page of a
-little Christmas book issued a dozen years ago by Rudge. Could one
-reasonably expect anything remotely approaching typographic whimsy from
-a few typographic toy soldiers, a dog, an elephant, a few Christmas
-trees, a half moon and some stars? Just glance at _The Symbol and the
-Saint_ title page though, and see how B.R.'s subtle skill utilized
-material teetering toward the junk pile.
-
-"Never," your perceptive collector will say, "has anything more
-masterful been done with type ornaments than in the Grolier Club
-_Pierrot of the Minute_." Few would disagree, for if ever there was
-a typographic jewel, the _Pierrot_ is it. Yet B.R., in discussing
-it critically, termed it "French millinery. Probably all right for
-its purpose. Rather over-decorated, but then the poem itself seems
-over-decorative."
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-There are dozens of other examples of B.R.'s mastery of typographic
-decoration. But space is not limitless, and I want particularly to
-say something about some designs with Linotype ornaments (drawn by T.
-M. Cleland) that Mr. Rogers devised a few years ago for the Linotype
-Company. These were used for the first time in the insert discussing
-the auction prices of twenty B.R. books, which appeared in _Barnacles
-From Many Bottoms_, several of which are shown on pages 290, 299 and
-300.
-
-That "something" may best be told, I believe, by excerpts from letters
-written to a Company executive, in April and May 1931, by B.R., who
-then was in London:
-
-"... In an odd hour I got to playing about with some of the Cleland
-ornaments, cutting them out of a specimen and pasting them into a
-design which finally evolved itself into several amusing compositions.
-Later on it occurred to me that you might be able to use them in some
-piece....
-
-"Having only a limited number of proofs, and no slugs whatever, I was
-able to work out the idea in only the roughest fashion--not fit to show
-anyone--but the principal one of the designs is for a page heading ...
-or the elements composing it could be used singly--as tail pieces,
-initial letters, etc.
-
-"This probably is an impractical idea [a suggestion by Mr. Rogers on
-how the material might be used], but I only make it to put into action
-more or less work that I have already done to save it from the scrap
-basket--work that might be useful to your firm as a demonstration of
-what can be done with some of your product. I really don't think anyone
-has yet worked out the possibilities of your ornamental material, much
-of which is the best on the market."
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-Additional proofs of the Cleland ornaments were sent immediately to Mr.
-Rogers in London. With them he made eight designs, cutting the proofs
-and pasting the ornaments to show the desired effect. This tree, for
-instance, was used on the title page of the _Barnacles_ insert:
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-This was printed from a line engraving made direct from Mr. Rogers'
-paste-up, and used "as is" to show how accurately his layouts for this
-type of work reach the composing-room.
-
-A month later, in May 1931, Mr. Rogers returned his layouts with
-this note: "... I have only just been able to complete the designs
-I had begun.... One or two other combinations occurred to me, which
-I have also put in--but we could go on endlessly, almost, when once
-started on this kind of thing.... I would have built up the designs
-with impressions from sections of a slug, had you sent an inch or two
-of each unit; but it is perhaps better, though slower, to cut and
-paste proofs, as each cutting is a guide to the compositor as to how
-and where trimming or beveling the ornaments are necessary. But only
-a few such trimmings are required, and all the bevelings are at 45
-degrees--as is the diagonal composition of the oak tree heads.
-
-"If at all possible I would like to have a chance to revise proofs of
-these, before they are actually printed--but if that isn't feasible,
-then I must rely on the compositors getting the closest possible
-approximation to my pasted-up designs. As close setting as possible
-is the secret of most work of this kind. The various parts must
-hang together well--though I do not mind a slight indication at the
-joints that they are made of individual pieces of type. I once had
-an over-zealous electrotyper fill up all the joints with solder--and
-ruined the appearance of the design--it looked like a drawn one."
-
-It wasn't possible to show Mr. Rogers what had been done with his
-layouts for the insert in _Barnacles_, which was essentially a surprise
-book distributed as a keepsake at a dinner in his honor.
-
-The "fighting cocks," to cite one instance, were originally suggested
-by B.R. to be used to dress a page folio at the bottom of the page; in
-the insert they were raised to the top of the page and printed with his
-initials. Other slight adaptations of similar character were taken in
-that piece of printing.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-"Typographic whimsy," wrote Carl Purington Rollins in
-_B.R.--America's Typographic Playboy_, in 1927, "is a pretty
-difficult achievement. The compositor at the case is too much concerned
-with the practical minutiæ of his craft to have much time for such
-trivialities, and the man who designs printing at a draughting
-board is apt to find his humor, if he attempts it in type, limping
-like a thrice-told jest. Mr. Rogers has had the advantage of enough
-familiarity with type to know what can be done, and he has been able
-at times to work with compositors who take a large and robust view of
-their calling."
-
-That "whimsy" Mr. Rollins had reference to lies in many of B.R.'s more
-ephemeral efforts, frequently reproduced. It is reflected to a measure,
-by _The Symbol and the Saint_ page. But there is considerably more than
-whimsy in the type ornament designs by B.R. These have graced dozens
-of books of varying subjects ... and the marvel of it all is, to me,
-that the man never repeats himself--he swings off on a new tack ...
-adventurous, exploring, mastering new trails, scattering typographic
-inspiration for dozens of others, pointing up paths they previously
-never even suspected.
-
-
-_Postscript_, 1951:
-
-It is fitting to add a note concerning one of
-B.R.'s more distinguished recent projects, the great folio Bible
-designed for The World Publishing Company, which was four years in the
-making.
-
-The design of the World Bible employed decorative treatment for the
-bordered title page, the sixty-six book openings, initial letters
-and numerous tailpieces. "These, together with the type selected [a
-revised, special cutting of Goudy New-style], are intended to give a
-slightly oriental flavor to the volume," B.R. pointed out, "indicative
-of the Syriac and Hebrew sources of the text on which the King James
-translators based their classic version."
-
-In discussing the matter of ornaments in the Bible with the publishers,
-B.R. revealed his thinking concerning their use: "... Most of the Books
-will probably not begin at the top of the page and the use of ornaments
-are to me necessary to separate the end of the preceding book from the
-title of the following one.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-"The Bible has always been a book on which much decoration and
-illustrations have been lavished, and there is no reason in tradition
-why it should be treated solemnly in that respect. The very first
-edition (of which I have specimen sheets and a whole Bible printed
-from the same type and with the same decorations by the same printer,
-twenty-five years later, 1635) is just peppered with woodcut
-decorations and type ornaments. So we have a good precedent for a
-decorated treatment--if any were needed. You know the Bible is on the
-whole one of the most exciting texts in existence, and the modern
-'practical' treatment of it as mainly a book of devotion is ignoble, to
-say the least...."
-
-Some of the typographic decoration and initials used in the Bible
-are included here. William Targ's detailed account, _The Making
-of the Bruce Rogers World Bible_, contains most of the decorative
-elements--initials, tailpieces and chapter initials--and reveals the
-intimate story of the progress of the book's production through the
-four years. It was published by World in 1949, in a limited edition of
-1875 copies, 500 of which were for sale.
-
-                 COMPOSED IN CENTAUR AND ARRIGHI TYPES
-
-  [Illustration: Book labels devised with typographic ornament by B.
-  R. In the originals, a second color was used for each excepting the
-                               Reydel.]
-
-
-
-
-                 SOME TENDENCIES IN MODERN TYPOGRAPHY
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                       _Daniel Berkeley Updike_
-
-From _Some Aspects of Printing Old and New_ by D. B. Updike. Copyright
- 1941 by the author. Reprinted by permission of the Providence Public
-                  Library, Providence, Rhode Island.
-
-
-Not very long since I was asked by a printer to what extent he should
-accept or avoid modern trends in the design of types and books. I
-attempt here to answer that question.
-
-I have a friend, connected with one of the great companies supplying
-machines for type composition. Not long since he spoke to me in
-unflattering terms of the examples of typography shown at an exhibition
-of the products of the Bauhaus School, originally of Weimar and
-later of Munich. He protested against a practice there manifested
-of discarding capital letters and depending solely on those in the
-lower-case. I consoled him by showing him a French book, printed
-entirely in this style. This volume, entitled _Typographie Économique_,
-was published in Paris in 1837 and so far as it had any influence on
-printing, then or later, is as dead as Queen Anne. The author, the
-Count de Lasteyrie, who promoted this scheme, was one of a race of
-French scientists, of some intellectual and social importance--one of
-the daughters of Lafayette married into that family. In the eighteenth
-century no less a person than the German writer Grimm tried a similar
-typographical plan. In the Fairy Tales containing "Snow White and
-the Seven Dwarfs," later compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the
-practice was not continued. This supports the contention that many
-new and disturbing experiments, under the patronage of distinguished
-names, are merely survivals or revivals of ancient failures. Thus in
-the light of experience, there is in Bauhaus typography nothing for my
-acquaintance--or anybody else--to be excited about.
-
-Now Bauhaus typography is of the essence of modernism. That its
-position may be fairly stated I quote the following from a _Bauhaus
-Year Book_:--_verbatim_ and (I may add) _literatim_:
-
- ["] why should we write and print with two alphabets? both a large and
- a small sign are not necessary to indicate one single sound.
-
- _A_ = _a_
-
- we do not speak a capital A and a small a.
-
- we need only a single alphabet. it gives us practically the same
- result as the mixture of upper and lower-case letters, and at the
- same time is less of a burden on all who write--on school children,
- students, stenographers, professional and business men. it could be
- written much more quickly, especially on the type-writer, since the
- shift key would then become unnecessary, typewriting could therefore
- be more quickly mastered and typewriters would be cheaper because of
- simpler construction, printing would be cheaper, for fonts and type
- cases would be smaller, so that printing establishments would save
- space and their clients money. with these common sense economies in
- mind ... the bauhaus made a thorough alphabetical house-cleaning in
- all its printing, eliminating capitals from books, posters, catalogs,
- magazines, stationery and even calling cards.
-
- dropping capitals would be a less radical reform in english. indeed
- the use of capital letters occurs so infrequently in english in
- comparison with german that it is difficult to understand why such a
- superfluous alphabet should still be considered necessary.["]
-
-Now in German printing all nouns have capital letters. In the sentence
-"A Dog chases a Cat into a Barn," dog, cat, barn are all capitalized.
-No one can be blamed for wanting to be rid of so much capitalization.
-But when Germans purge anything the innocent invariably suffer with
-the guilty. Thus all capitals must go. While it may have overcome a
-difficulty felt in Germany, this imported missionary zeal corrects
-no difficulty in the printing of English prose or poetry. In some
-instances such a custom brings about surprising results. Suppose,
-for example, a newspaper says "the white house favors black and
-prefers even green to a dyed-in-the-wool red." To make the sentence
-intelligible would need the addition of a number of words--which would
-not be _typographie économique_! We need labour this point no further
-but leave these experiments to the advertising of Coty and Elizabeth
-Arden. Such effects have what is called attention value--like Neon
-signs--but I am not considering that kind of typography. I have,
-however, here traced the source of a current fashion of printing signs
-and advertisements without capital letters.
-
-I have been classed by my work as a conservative, but I am a liberal
-conservative or a conservative liberal--whichever you like or dislike.
-All I wish to conserve, either in traditionalism or modernism, is
-common sense. What little I have was gained by experience. I regard
-many typographic experiments with good will and many traditional
-viewpoints with tolerance. I agree wholeheartedly with neither. I
-remember--or try to do so--that every generation has in turn to be
-told that there was once a man named Caesar, who wrote a very dull
-book called the _Commentaries_, of which the first sentence is all
-that most people remember; that the makers of Baker's Chocolate did
-not invent the familiar picture of a chocolate girl, which was an
-eighteenth-century painting by Jean Etienne Liotard now in a Dresden
-picture gallery, and that William Blake did not write, but only
-illustrated, the Book of Job. We who have long known these things
-forget that people are born not knowing them. We should therefore look
-tenderly on many typographic experiments. To us elders they may seem
-akin to lighting a fire with kerosene or applying one's tongue to metal
-in zero temperatures, but it is by such unwise ventures that we outgrow
-them. And as I have spent a long life learning, and to most questions
-do not yet know the answers, I have no right to frown on more youthful
-and enterprising enquirers.
-
-Obviously some of the eccentricities of present-day typography are
-a natural reflection of that rather tortured world in which we find
-ourselves. If art, the drama, literature, and music reflect current
-trends of life it is natural that printing should in a measure do
-so. If we throw overboard old standards of conduct, we may far more
-readily throw over old standards of taste. When one casts a convention
-away as useless and outmoded, we often learn for the first time why
-it was there! It is urged that fuller expression of individuality,
-unhampered by rules, is development. It seems to me more accurate to
-say that through the experience of trying these experiments development
-comes--though not always of a kind expected. Such development
-ought never to stop until in the exact sense of the word we are
-"accomplished"--finished--which few live to be.
-
-The _problem_ is to distinguish between a true development, and a
-false one. In judging either modernistic or retrospective typography,
-that is what must be decided. Do these developments--wise or otherwise,
-produce a well-made and readable book--in short a good book? "In the
-printing of books meant to be read," says an authority, "there is
-little room for 'bright' typography. Even dullness and monotony in
-the type-setting are far less vicious to a reader than typographical
-eccentricity or pleasantry. Cunning of this sort is desirable, even
-essential in the typography of propaganda, whether for commerce,
-politics, or religion because in such printing only the freshest
-survives inattention. But the typography of books, apart from the
-category of narrowly limited editions, requires an obedience to
-convention which is almost absolute--and with reason."
-
-It is the fashion, just now, to decry typographic conventions. Some
-conventions and traditions deserve to be decried and some have already
-been laughed out of existence. There are, however, good and bad
-conventions and traditions in printing, just as there are true and
-false developments, and the trick is to know which is which! Convention
-and particularly tradition are, generally, the crystallized result
-of past experiments, which experience has taught us are valuable. In
-some of the extreme modernistic typography a little more tradition
-might come in handy. The trouble with the modernist is that he seems
-afraid not to throw everything overboard and mistakes eccentricity for
-emancipation. Thus some books of today seem to be the arrangement of a
-perverse and self-conscious eccentricity. Such printing is often the
-work of eager, ambitious, and inexperienced men, and because they are
-young and God is good, one can afford to be patient; sure that they
-will, in the long run, outgrow the teething, mumps, and measles of
-typography. Their convalescence will possibly be hastened by meditating
-on the saying of Lord Falkland that "when it is not necessary to
-change, it is necessary not to change."
-
-No movement ever accomplishes all that its first promoters intended
-or hoped for; almost all movements make some lasting contributions to
-our common stock. Every new idea, every new invention brings along with
-its expected benefits unforeseen evils. Modernistic architecture is
-at present exciting because new and unusual; when more common it will
-become commonplace. When it becomes difficult to differentiate the
-exterior of a modernistic church from a warehouse, we may get very,
-very tired of it. Then a compensating reaction will set in and balance
-will be restored. The same thing is true of modernistic typography.
-At present, it shocks us into attention, but we get tired of being
-shocked, for we do not want printing to surprise but to soothe us. The
-modernist must remember, too, that "such a thing as an underivative
-work of art does not and cannot exist, and no great master in the
-arts has thought or asserted otherwise." We gladly admit that some
-modernistic formulas have had good results. In architecture, perhaps to
-some degree in typography, they have taught us to get rid of clutter
-and useless ornamentation. But neither the one nor the other leads
-anywhere--except to a dead end.
-
-The conservative, however, need not think that all truth is on his
-side. However much he tries to practise retrospective or "period"
-typography, consciously or unconsciously his work will show the
-influence of his time. Just as there is a popular idiom in speech which
-varies in each decade, so there is a current idiom in printing. All
-these idioms, literary and typographic, have not come to stay, but some
-become accepted terms. Under Theodore Roosevelt we suffered from the
-word "strenuous." President Harding inflicted the word "normalcy" on
-American speech. We now have "reactions," and "contacts." Clergymen
-"challenge" things, have "spiritual adventures," talk of "strategic
-positions" for their parish houses and aid parochial charities by
-"clarion calls," though if confronted with a "clarion" (if this
-instrument exists outside of sermons) they would be quite unable to
-blow it. All these catch-words and stock phrases are in the air. We
-suffer much the same thing in typography, about which there is also a
-new jargon which replaces the old _clichés_ of my youth about rhythm,
-balance, and colour. Neither in speech nor printing can one make a
-clean sweep of the past nor help being of the present, no matter how
-hard one tries. I deplore violent attempts to make current printing
-accord with the spirit of the age. It always has, always will, and does
-now.
-
-Nor need the conservative sniff at typographic experimentation. To
-turn to another department of daily life, what would happen if no one
-had ever tried experiments with food? In the distant past there was
-the first human being who--as an experiment--ate an oyster, though
-perhaps first trying jelly-fish with less comfortable results. Others
-died of eating toadstools before people learned that they could survive
-on mushrooms. Almost all our vegetable food we owe to gastronomic
-adventurers. Thus the hide-bound conservative owes sustenance to the
-fruits, and vegetables, of experiment.
-
-To speak more seriously, both modernist and conservative should lay
-to heart what Benedetto Croce says in his _Autobiography_ about "the
-impossibility of resting on the results of past thought" and the
-necessity of modesty in stating one's present position. "I see," he
-writes, "a new crop of problems springing up in a field from which
-I have but now reaped a harvest of solutions; I find myself calling
-in question the conclusions to which I have previously come; and
-these facts ... force me to recognize that truth will not let itself
-be tied fast.... They teach me modesty towards my present thoughts,
-which tomorrow will appear deficient and in need of correction, and
-indulgence towards myself of yesterday or the past, whose thoughts,
-however inadequate in the eyes of my present self, yet contained some
-real element of truth; and this modesty and indulgence pass into a
-sense of piety towards thinkers of the past, whom now I am careful not
-to blame, as once I blamed them, for their inability to do what no man,
-however great, can do ... to fix into eternity the fleeting moment."
-
-There is, to the reasonable mind, no real quarrel between modernism and
-traditionalism in printing, _except in degree_. Modernism must and does
-influence the conservative in spite of himself--if by modernism we mean
-a healthy awareness of the needs of the time in which we are living.
-Tradition must and does influence the modernist, if by tradition
-we mean patient and respectful appraisal of what that accumulation
-of yesterdays, which we call the past, has to teach. It is only by
-experience that we can effect a wise blend of the two. Then we produce
-books which, while representing the best practice of our time, will
-outlast it. The appraisal of their ultimate values we must leave to the
-future.
-
-"There is no past that we need long to return to," said Goethe, "there
-is only the eternally new which is formed out of enlarged elements of
-the past; and our real endeavor must always be towards new and better
-creation."
-
-                        COMPOSED IN BELL TYPES
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]PETER BEILENSON[Illustration]
-
-                        _The Amateur Printer_:
-
-                     HIS PLEASURES AND HIS DUTIES
-
- From _Graphic Forms: The Arts As Related to the Book_. Copyright 1949
-by Harvard University Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-
-Although the title of this piece is sufficiently long to be impressive
-and important-sounding, all I really want to write about is printing as
-fun. I am going to write about the amateur printer, and the amateur is
-the fellow who has fun.
-
-I do not wish to belittle the affection a professional printer may
-have for his work. He should love his work. But he can love it only in
-a different way: for after all he is essentially a businessman about
-it. His work, like that of any other businessman, is something he has
-to sit down to by nine in the morning and something he can't leave
-until five at night. It is something that involves landlords and labor
-unions, payrolls and tax inspectors, truckmen, office-boys, salesmen,
-compositors, pressman, bindery workers--and customers. He has to worry
-about payments, and depreciation, and publicity, and time sheets.
-
-The professional has to concern himself with all these things which are
-not printing at all, because he is in business and has to make money.
-His primary yardstick of success as a professional is: _How much money
-did we make last year?_ Of course he has other minor yardsticks of
-success too: he may be successful because his presses turn out useful
-things like timetables, or gratifying things like corporation reports
-for the year, or beautiful things like four-color reproductions of
-Varga girls. To make these things well is a kind of fun; and insofar
-as the fun comes from the satisfaction in the thing itself rather
-than in the profit that derives from it, I'd like to call it amateur
-satisfaction.
-
-But essentially our professional printer--and permit me to limit
-myself to the professional book printer--is supposed to make money,
-not to have fun. And he makes money best, nowadays, if his plant is
-equipped with the efficient modern machinery which is designed for
-maximum production. Such machinery is a wonderful creation of man;
-it is thrilling to watch in action; and it gets results. But it has
-its disadvantages. Now that mechanization is becoming more and more
-complete in more and more places, we can begin to see clearly the
-greatest disadvantage of all: under such mechanization individual
-workers have lost pride and satisfaction in their work, because they
-have become mere replaceable units of less and less importance; whereas
-the machines they operate are more and more important, and have become
-the essential units.
-
-A generation ago the professional printer might have boasted of his
-skilled compositors, who could set type more expertly, or his skilled
-pressmen, who could make more careful overlays or match ink better
-than someone else's craftsmen. Today he boasts of his remote-control
-composing machines, his presses which come close to eliminating
-make-ready altogether, and his ink supplier's new gadget which matches
-colors scientifically. Today the most successful printer is the one
-who with the least possible dependence on man-power, can keep the most
-presses running fastest for the greatest number of hours per day and
-days per year. He is not the one with the most skilled craftsmen.
-
-In such a world, where the executive's function is to feed the machine
-and the workman's is to tend it, the human spirit begins to cry out
-for the fun in work which I have called the amateur satisfaction. It
-is true that today's shorter working hours--which the machine makes
-possible--permit people to have more outside fun; permit the manager to
-play more golf, and the workman to play more softball (or more pinball)
-in the late afternoon; it is true that more people now see more beer
-advertised on more television programs, and may even drink more of it,
-in the evenings. But managers and workmen alike turn so avidly to such
-kinds of fun because they no longer get fun out of their daily work. It
-is becoming harder and harder for people to equate work and happiness.
-
-Now I do not set myself up as a social reformer dedicated to the dream
-that all people should be happy in their work. Nor do I propose as a
-step to this end that we revert, smash the wonderful machines, and go
-back to the good old days when everyone really _did_ work with his
-hands--usually from dawn to dark, six days a week. There was no pinball
-or television then, but _still_ I do not wish to go back! Nor do I
-suggest that the solution is the promised thirty-hour week, with all
-the workmen driving their own Buicks home at two each afternoon, and
-taking out the wife and kiddies to Braves Field or the Gardner Museum.
-
-But I do suggest that some of you people who really love printing, but
-are too involved with the nine-to-five daily business of it to enjoy
-it much, should enrich your lives by becoming amateur printers in your
-spare time. You will have fun.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-I yield to no man in my boredom with vegetables and salads. I see
-green at every meal save breakfast. I have eaten enough stringbeans
-to stretch--if they were straightened out and laid end to end--from
-Fordhook Nurseries in Delaware to the city of Burbank, California. If
-you could see all the lettuce leaves I have consumed in my lifetime,
-piled leaf on leaf and dripping in their oils, their vinegar, their
-mayonnaise, and their roquefort dressings, you would be absolutely
-appalled. But, bored as I am with green things on the table--bored
-because despite their goodness they have been too plentiful and too
-easily come by--I am not bored on those occasions when, like Candide,
-I cultivate my garden, get my hands into the dirt, and smell God's
-good fragrance in the loam. To watch the power of living things like
-salad greens and stringbeans pushing their way out of the seed, up
-through the earth, reaching down for water and up for sunlight with
-an irresistible drive, is to realize afresh the power of life on
-this planet. It is a reinvigorating and religious experience. It is
-impossible to watch seeds grow into plants and flowers and fruit and
-still to believe cynically in a mere mechanistic explanation for such
-a life drive. To get back to the seed, the earth, and the root is to
-re-experience the fun and meaning of life.
-
-In the same way that I have become bored with salad, we have all
-become bored with words, printed words. We have seen too many of
-them, we have read too many of them, we have measured, or proofread,
-or edited, or sold, too many of them. We have forgotten their primal
-power, their irresistible living urge. We have forgotten that sincere
-authors have not put them down on paper because of two cents a word or
-10 per cent of the retail gross--that they have been written (in the
-best cases) out of human necessity, human ebullience, human passion,
-human sympathy, or human understanding. The industrial book-printing
-world cannot ever think of words in that way. It must always think of
-them as areas of type 22 by 28 picas, as numbers of pages which do or
-do not make up a multiple of thirty-two, as units of sale at $3.00 less
-40 per cent.
-
-To go back to nature and become an amateur printer in such an
-industrialized book world is like working in the garden when you
-are bored with salad. You really get back to the roots of words.
-If you are a genuine amateur printer, and set the type and print
-the pages yourself, you actually can share in the creative agonies
-and satisfactions of the author. For you put down his words, letter
-for letter in your type-stick, just as he did with his quill or his
-battered Remington. The best way on earth to appreciate an author and
-his creative spirit (or for that matter to realize more quickly the
-faults in him) is to pick him up letter by letter from a California
-case. An even more acid test is to distribute the type after printing
-him. In such a case you pick up half a dozen lines of type at once and
-work backwards, distributing the last word of the last line first. It
-is a revelation how the hollowness of an author can show up under this
-treatment. It is especially cruel to poets, for every word which is not
-really necessary, which is there just for padding or for a rhythm or
-a rhyme, becomes as noticeable as the well-known sore thumb. But the
-genuine, sincere author with a pure style stands up beautifully under
-such treatment, and has his reward in your pleasure at this discovery.
-
-After you have set your author's type you must make up his pages,
-choose his decorations or illustrations, and set his headings. You must
-decide whether to stretch him to twenty-four pages or condense him to
-sixteen. You must buy his paper, lock up his pages in your chase, make
-him ready, curse your press which is printing him, apply your ink to
-his words, and impress him for posterity. Perhaps you will thereafter
-fold him, sew him, and encase him in boards.
-
-In so doing, you become, to the extent of sixteen or twenty-four
-pages, in an edition of one hundred or three hundred copies, God. You
-have created something which did not exist before, and which would not
-have existed save for your thinking brain and tired back and dirty
-hands. True, you have not created Heaven and Earth, and you have
-undoubtedly worked at your creation for more than the original quota of
-six days. But anyway you have given the world something which was at
-first only words you loved, and is now a whole, real book, which you
-love all the more because it is your book, your child, your embodiment
-of those words. That is the fun and satisfaction of being an amateur.
-In our printing world there is no other satisfaction equal to it.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-Good old Ralph Waldo Emerson was mortally right when he wrote down his
-doctrine of Compensation. His doctrine of Compensation says that every
-pleasure carries some penalty, every gain some kind of loss. Every duty
-accepted gives you a satisfaction, and every satisfaction received
-involves you in a duty. Thus far I have written of the satisfaction of
-your being an amateur printer. Now I wish to write of your duty and
-obligation.
-
-The amateur book printer has a duty which, if he will accept it, will
-in the long run return to him the greatest satisfaction. This duty is
-to teach the professional, by example, about the outer cultural world,
-and to experiment for him in matters of printing style. Now this is
-directly contrary to what ninety out of one hundred current amateurs
-would seem to think, and I must therefore beg their ninety pardons if I
-disturb their habits of mind.
-
-Most amateurs either don't trouble their minds about problems of
-printing style at all, or else they fall too easily into the habit
-of working in the Colonial style, or Venetian style, or some other
-historical style, rather than in a contemporary one. Maybe they do so
-for psychological reasons. And maybe not. I am too set in my diction
-to learn the trick of talking in psychological terms. I would express
-their case like this: Amateurs who work in historical styles do so
-because they are romantics, romantics who turn away from the impersonal
-machine world of the present for a breath of the more human and
-glamorous-seeming past. I sympathize with such an instinct, and hold
-myself ready to defend any man who seeks to re-inject a human element
-into the printing craft.
-
-The trouble is, such amateurs think that because printing in the past
-was done by hand, and because there is something more satisfying and
-human about printing by hand, they must therefore work in an antique
-printing style and make Colonial and Venetian books in order to enjoy
-themselves. This is a false syllogism. I strongly recommend printing by
-hand to amateurs because it will give them greater satisfaction, not
-because it will make their books look like antiques. It is too easy to
-fabricate such antiques, and to do so will in the long run give you
-less enjoyment than making something which in style is original and new.
-
-As a matter of fact it is already too late to think in terms of
-revivals and reproductions. In printing, the revival habit started over
-a hundred years ago with Whittingham and Pickering, when they dusted
-off the forgotten Caslon types and the eighteenth-century style. It has
-been going on ever since, and reached a climax of understanding and
-skill in our century at the hands of Updike, Rogers, Rollins, Goudy,
-and others. This revivalism was a kind of search for humanism, and a
-kind of rebellion against commercialism. These men were not unique. In
-every generation since 1800, in every art and craft, every field of
-thought, the Industrial Revolution has prompted men to make the same
-search backward for satisfactions which the modern world did not seem
-to offer.
-
-Too many of our amateurs are still making the same search, although
-the Industrial Revolution is well over one hundred years old, all the
-necessary backward searching has been done, and all the historical
-styles have been reworked. Our predecessors have made it unnecessary
-for us to go through the process once again. We can see now that their
-work was an escape perhaps for them, but that it can never be a durable
-way of creative realization for us. From now on, we must join up with
-the forward-looking crowd who think they can build a new world.
-
-The book-printing industry has not been very forward-looking in matters
-of style. With the exception of a few printers and designers, book
-printers have been unhealthily backward. Therefore the time is ripe for
-amateur book-experimentalists to prod and teach them. The amateur can
-do it.
-
-He is, or should be, a man with interests in other fields of culture
-than his own. He is aware already of what has been done in painting
-and music, in fabrics and furniture design, in architecture too--most
-important of all. He must now help printing to develop its own new
-styles, equivalent to those in other fields. That he can do so is
-evidenced by the fact that in recent years the greatest strides forward
-have been taken not by the professionals but by people who in a sense
-are amateurs, but who have known how to apply modern ideas from other
-fields.
-
-The Bauhaus group first became notable, between the wars, by applying
-the functional theories of modern architecture to the printed page.
-The Black Sun Press and Harrison of Paris applied the ideas of Monroe
-Wheeler and others who were stimulated by modern painting. There may
-be similar publishing projects in this country today, but they are
-not yet influential. The most effective, most vocal, most lovable
-of contemporary American influences is that rugged individual Merle
-Armitage, whose ideas have been influential in shaping my own attitude.
-Such people all know that the world has changed; that it will never
-turn back again; and that it is up to us to catch on to the flying
-coattails of Today. I urge other amateurs to join the ranks of these
-apostles of change. It will be a great day for all of us when ninety
-out of one hundred are experimentalists, and not the other way around.
-
-Of course in urging amateurs to develop new styles, I am not
-recommending any easy hobby. It is simple, but dull, to copy an old
-style. It is hard, but exciting, to work out a new one. And while you
-are working at it, you must expect cynical observers to give your
-experiments the adjective "wacky"; you must expect certain curious
-kinds of people to praise your work for the wrong reasons; and you must
-expect alternating moods of conceit and frustration. The proofs you
-gloat over at night will become commonplace by dawn. Your wife may go
-back to her mother in rage and despair. You may need sleeping pills.
-
-You will make misjudgments about the intelligence of ordinary readers.
-You will make mistakes of taste. You will find it too easy to get an
-effect by means of shock, and you will forget that any book, even a
-twenty-first-century book, must be a coherent unit. And you will often,
-since there are no highway markers for the explorer, feel lonely and
-discouraged, and want to go back to the old familiar well-traveled
-roads again.
-
-But if you go through with it, or even if you just play with it
-sometimes as a hobby, you can have great fun. For it will put you out
-in the open, free to please yourself, with the boss and the customer
-left far behind. You can be subtle or bold, as you feel the urge, for
-you do not have to please the great common denominator, the common man.
-You can advance your own work by looking to other fields of creation,
-enjoying and profiting by the experiments going on in them. You can
-feel yourself a part of the whole forward-looking culture of your day,
-and not someone off in a little forgotten corner.
-
-And, if you do strike a vein with the glitter of real gold in it,
-you will become rich indeed. For you will have become a creator in
-a new sense; your duty done as an amateur will be compensated with
-a twenty-four-carat satisfaction. At such a moment of realization
-you will have earned the privilege to rest and feel content. As on
-a seventh day after six of creation, standing late at night with
-bloodshot eyes and inky fingers and aching back in a paper-littered
-room, you have become a creator. You have not merely escaped from the
-flattened monotony of the machine age--you have become one of the
-shapers of its future. More power to you in that work!
-
-
-
-
-                             T. M. CLELAND
-
-                             _Harsh Words_
-
-An address delivered at a meeting of The American Institute of Graphic
-  Arts, in New York City, February 5th, 1940, on the occasion of the
- opening of the eighteenth annual exhibition of the Fifty Books of the
-    Year. Copyright 1940 by T. M. Cleland. Reprinted by permission.
-
-
-Mr. Chairman and Members of The American Institute of Graphic Arts:
-
-The generosity of your invitation to me to speak on this important
-occasion leaves me a trifle bewildered. I am so accustomed to being
-told to keep my opinions to myself that being thus unexpectedly
-encouraged to express them gives me some cause to wonder if I have,
-or ever had, any opinions upon the graphic arts worth expressing. But
-since it is the theory of your Committee that I have, and it may never
-be anybody's theory again, and they have gone so far as to give me no
-instructions or suggestions as to the scope or the limitations of what
-I might say, it would seem as ungracious to decline such an exceptional
-offer as it would be to abuse it. So if I accept it as wholeheartedly
-as I believe it was given--if I take you at your word and say things
-that I have long wanted to hear somebody say--I hope it will not be
-thought an abuse of this kindly tendered privilege.
-
-I realize that, nominally at least, my subject must be that of
-printing and typography as exemplified by the selection of the fifty
-best books of the year which we are here to celebrate; and I suppose,
-by comparison to deplore the fifty thousand worst books which may be
-seen elsewhere. But by what may seem a very odd paradox, I don't quite
-know how to stick to this subject without wandering a good way off it.
-Or, perhaps I should say that I cannot approach it directly except by a
-very roundabout way.
-
-If I have a thesis for these remarks, I can only develop it in terms
-of a tree. This is because I do not believe that invention in the arts
-can be picked from empty space like objects in a prestidigitator's act.
-Fruits really grow on trees and trees have roots in the earth. The tree
-I have in mind is cultural civilization: one of its limbs is art and a
-branch of this we call the graphic arts, and a twig on this branch is
-printing and typography. I promise not to dig into the roots of this
-tree, but I may be found, monkey-wise, climbing all over it before I am
-through.
-
-I am at some disadvantage in that I do not belong to any organizations
-for the advancement of typography and the graphic arts--not even to
-this one--and I am ill-informed and out of touch with what is going on
-in these fields except by casual observation. But as members of this
-very useful organization, you are not engaged in printing or other
-graphic arts, I take it, solely for each other, but for the enjoyment
-and delectation of the world at large. So there is a partially
-compensating advantage in my being "at large" myself, and thus able to
-speak of present trends in the graphic arts as they appear from the
-outside, looking in. But this advantage may in turn be offset by the
-fact that I cannot honestly speak of what I see with much enthusiasm.
-I can bring you no message of hope or light of inspiration. Much as I
-am filled with admiration and respect for many individual talents and
-accomplishments that still contrive to exist, they seem to me to stand
-unhappily isolated in what I can't help viewing as artistic bankruptcy
-and cultural chaos. Among them are printers making beautiful books
-and other things about as well as these things have ever been made.
-But as to the general volume of printing, no one has asked me, to be
-sure, what I thought was the lowest point of artistic taste in the five
-hundred years of its existence which we are celebrating this year,
-but if anyone _should_ ask me, I would be bound to say that we have
-reached that point just about now. Things may get worse, but it's hard
-to see how they can. To paraphrase a remark in the concluding chapter
-of Updike's classic work on printing types, it has taken printers and
-publishers five hundred years to find out how wretchedly books and
-other things can be made and still sell.
-
-I am not forgetting that there were some very benighted periods of
-taste in other centuries that would seem to refute this sweeping
-assertion. Perhaps it is worth noting here--and the fact is peculiarly
-ironical--that the design and style of official and governmental
-things--money, postage stamps, bonds and stock certificates--was
-created and solidified into a seemingly unalterable convention at
-that hitherto all time low point of the decorative arts in the
-mid-nineteenth century. So powerful is this convention that we would
-be suspicious of a ten dollar bill that was not visually saturated
-with ugliness. A counterfeiter with aesthetic sensibilities must not
-only sweat blood but weep tears over the job of imitating one. But in
-the sadly perverted taste of that epoch there was a kind of innocence:
-standards were still respected, and proficiency, though overworked and
-misdirected, was recognized and not condemned.
-
-Today when I look about in the bookstore, and more especially on the
-newsstands, or open the pages of most of the magazines with the biggest
-circulations, I want to do what the little boy did in the story which
-was a favorite of my friend, the late Hal Marchbanks. The little boy
-had been to his first party, and when he arrived home, his mother
-said: "Did mama's little boy have a nice time at the party?" "Yep," he
-replied. "What did mama's little boy do at the party?" "I thow'd up."
-
-Against this steady decline in both taste and workmanship, your fifty
-books selection and exhibit each year has been a noble effort, and in
-this country, almost the only concerted one of consequence to uphold
-some standards. You have inspired both publishers and printers to
-earnest endeavor to improve their products with frequently admirable
-results. But these are only fifty books out of how many other books
-and other printed things. Without this good work of yours, one wonders
-if any standards at all would survive the flood of cheap and easy
-mechanization, careless workmanship and bad taste. Not that there
-is anything wrong with machines. The first hand press, it should be
-remembered by its sentimental admirers, was also a machine. We have
-not learned to use the machines at their best, but accepted them like
-fruits in the Garden of Eden, and thought of nothing but how much we
-could get out of them in speed and quantity and profit. Because we can
-do with them easily what formerly demanded time and pains to do at all,
-we have too easily assumed that they delivered us from the need of any
-time or pains.
-
-Before I go any farther on or off the track with these random
-remarks, I should like it to be understood that I am addressing them
-particularly to any students and beginners in the graphic arts that may
-be present, rather than to those who are arrived. I am a student and
-still a beginner myself, and so my interest and my heart are naturally
-with my own kindred. I speak as an old beginner to younger ones. I am
-at a great disadvantage with regard to the number of years I have left
-in which to get started, and if I have any advantage at all, it is
-only in experience with the bewilderments and illusions that clutter
-our common way in learning and trying to practice one or more of the
-graphic arts. The confusions and distraction of this day make the path
-of the student and beginner rough and tortuous. Having travelled it for
-more years than I like to admit, when I look backward, I am astonished
-to discover the number of twists and turns and pitfalls I might just as
-well have spared myself.
-
-Perhaps the most foolish of these was the fear of not being
-original--what Romain Rolland calls "the fear of the already said."
-The notion that I must do something new every day, or I would not be
-creative--forgetting that God made the planets all the same shape
-as far as we can see, and that the oak tree does not alter the
-form of its leaves from year to year. There is no supposition so
-pathetically misleading as that creative originality is within your
-own volition--the notion that it can be acquired leads to deplorable
-results. It distracts the mind and energies of the young student from
-gaining needful technical competence--from learning his trade, and in
-more mature stages tempts the would-be artist into vulgar mannerisms
-and formulas which he will call his "style."
-
-The idea that originality is essential to the successful practice
-of the graphic arts is more prevalent today than it ever was in the
-days when the graphic arts were practiced at their best. The current
-belief that everyone must now be an inventor is too often interpreted
-to mean that no one need any longer be a workman. Hand in hand with
-this premeditated individualism goes, more often than not, a curious
-irritation with standards of any kind. The conscious cultivator of his
-own individuality will go to extravagant lengths to escape the pains
-imposed by a standard.
-
-But of all the perils that lie in wait for adolescent artists there
-is none more seductive than the bewildering array of ologies and isms
-that leer and beckon to him at every crossroad of his journey. Just as
-isms and ologies have taken the place, in social and political life, of
-right and wrong; so have they become the accepted terms of the arts.
-In fact, nonsense is now so universally the language of art that it is
-nearly hopeless to try to make oneself understood in any other.
-
-Brood mare to all of these extravagancies--and I have lived to see many
-of them come and go--is that one which achieves the super absurdity of
-calling itself "modernism"; and none has been expounded and exploited
-in more contradictory and antic ways. To deliberately call oneself
-"modern" is no less ludicrous than something an old Danish friend
-told me years ago about a line in one of the books of a very prolific
-writer of historical romances in his country. In a tale with a medieval
-setting this writer had one of his knights in armour cry out to
-another: "We men of the middle ages never take insults, etc."
-
-Embraced with fanatic enthusiasm by many architects and designers is
-the current quackery called "Functionalism." It, in common with its
-many predecessors, offers a new gospel for the regeneration of our
-aesthetic world by restricting all design to the function of its object
-or its materials. Like the new religions and philosophies that have
-paraded in and out of our social history for countless generations, it
-purports to be an original concept. It has brought to us such gladsome
-gifts as concrete boxes with holes in them for buildings, chairs of
-bent pipe with no hind legs, glass fireplaces, beds of cement blocks
-joined by structural steel, the queer agglomeration of unsightly
-edifices we call the World's Fair and many other specimens of stark and
-forbidding claptrap. Unless all signs are misleading me, it is another
-mass vulgarity like the age of golden oak and mission furniture, even
-now on its way to the junk pile or the attic, perhaps to be someday
-rediscovered there and dragged out by future generations in search of
-quaintness.
-
-It seems to me, ladies and gentlemen, that _all_ art was _modern_ when
-it was made, and still is if it is suitable to life as we now live
-it; and I look in vain for any applied art worthy the name that was
-not also, in some sense functional. From the buttresses of a gothic
-cathedral to the gayest Chippendale chair one finds, upon analysis,
-a perfect work of engineering perfectly adapted to its purpose. If
-this were not so, these things would hardly have endured for so long
-a time. So that common regard for function which has always been the
-basic principle of first-rate design, assumes the impressive aspect of
-a religion, with high priests and ritual, by the simple addition of an
-"ism." As students and beginners in search of truth, we are today being
-pushed and pulled about by no end of such bogus preachments--familiar
-faces with false whiskers--old and common principles dolled up with new
-names and often used to account for incompetence and laziness.
-
-And what is the meaning of this term "functionalism"? Must a design be
-related to no functions except mechanical and material ones? Might not
-the most fantastic and elaborate works of the geniuses of the baroque
-and rococo styles have also been functional in that they expressed the
-spirit and fitted perfectly the life they were intended to serve?
-
-We hear much holy talk of "simplicity" in this day and the idea of
-simplicity expressed by a total absence of everything not essential to
-mechanical function has been elevated to a fetich. We have divorced
-simplicity from its old mate charm as we might break up the happy
-relationship of ham and eggs or pork and beans. But in this reverent
-renunciation of all adornment not strictly functional in this limited
-sense, have we paused to ask whether we are in fact following a basic
-human instinct, or merely attempting to make a virtue out of poverty of
-invention? There is no evidence that man is imbued with an instinctive
-love of simplicity in the objects with which he finds it useful to
-surround himself. Indeed, our museums are bulging with evidence to
-the contrary. From the Cro-Magnon cave to gothic cathedrals, from the
-temples of India to the palace of Versailles, the earth has been made
-to flower with man's inherent love of ornament. It would seem then that
-ornamentation is deeply rooted in the human instinct since no tribe,
-however primitive in other respects, is without it. The restraints of
-this instinct and the tempering of it with what we call taste is a
-cultivated faculty like the restraint of our other appetites; but to be
-a teetotaler in ornament or in anything else, is to confess to either
-weakness of control or incapacity for enjoyment. "A teetotaler," said
-Whitman, "is just another kind of toper."
-
-This instinctive yearning for ornamentation is well demonstrated in
-the case of our own Rockefeller Center; where it has been catered to
-with peculiar ineptitude. Here all the important structures have been
-piously stripped of everything non-essential to mechanical function.
-Pillars, pilasters, cornices and mouldings--ornaments that at least
-have their genesis in structural functions--have all been piously
-renounced. And then because it was found that the human spirit could
-not tolerate such barren starkness, and business might suffer from it,
-ornaments have been pasted around its doorways and approaches like gold
-paper lace on a pasteboard box--ornaments completely unrelated to any
-structural function of any kind. Sculptures, fountains, trees, flowers
-and awnings have all been pressed into service to compensate for this
-spurious simplicity. Many of these things are beautiful in their own
-right like Mr. Manship's golden figure of Prometheus. One of the little
-office girls that further decorate the scene at the noon hour, was
-overheard the other day explaining to another that this was a statue of
-"Primiscuous escaping from Responsibility."
-
-So under this wildly flapping banner of "Modernism" marches a quaint
-array of worn and shabby syntheses for art, each day parading a
-new dress and a new alias. The common urge for self-expression can
-always find one or another of them at its service. For those who are
-particularly deficient in the talent, energy and patience demanded
-for the mastery of an art, something called "non-objective" art has
-been invented. For this the only things required are a box of paints,
-brushes and a surface to exercise them on. With these simple and easily
-procurable tools you express your own inner emotions and need not
-trouble yourself with anyone else's or with what anyone else sees. If
-you watch the others you will see that it is mostly being done with
-triangles, circles or vortexes of paint just as it comes from the tube.
-If you have no paint, toothpaste will do as well. If, after a few
-minutes of this, you are tired, stop--you will have added spontaneity
-to its other attractions. The fact that it deals only with your own
-emotions will not prevent you putting it on exhibition for other people
-to enjoy. If anyone balks at enjoying it, you smile wanly and shrug
-your shoulders and pity them for their dumb enslavement to outworn
-tradition. It works like a charm--no one will dare attack you--they
-will all be afraid that you've got something there. People have a
-terror of making mistakes--as if they had not been made by the best
-people in all ages. It is the most perfect device yet invented for
-attracting attention to yourself with the least trouble. A generation
-ago we heard a great deal about "art for art's sake": now it is art
-for the artist's sake, like bread for the baker's sake or medicine
-for the doctor's sake. And I say, for God's sake, tell me what art
-made through the vision of a human eye with a brain behind it is _not_
-"non-objective"? No two men will ever draw or paint the same picture
-of the same object. Only the lens of a camera will render it quite
-objectively, and even the camera in the hands of an artist is capable
-of some degree of subjectivity.
-
-And since I have inadvertently mentioned the camera, I ought to say
-a good word for it too. It is just now in its hey-day and people are
-taking greater pains with it than they are willing to take with any
-other medium of artistic expression. I see a great many very fine
-pictures made with it, in spite of its obvious limitations. But it
-has also been tortured into serving as a medium for self-conscious
-originality until its "new ideas" have come to be, in their way, in
-their monotony and staleness, an intolerable bore.
-
-The marvels of color photography have revealed to us hitherto
-unsuspected depths of aesthetic sordidness. This factual reproduction
-of what we are told are "Nature's colors," I am given to understand, is
-not yet wholly perfected. Only when it is will we know the worst--only
-then will we know what the things that through our eyes have stirred
-us by their beauty, really are! Perhaps another super instrument of
-disillusionment will be invented to reveal us, not in form and color
-alone, but in spirit, to each other as we really are. Good-by then to
-human love, respect and friendship!
-
-I have strayed a good way from my subject, as I warned you that I
-might; and these remarks must appear by now to be not only ramblings
-but the ravings of an old reactionary who is blind to anything that
-is new. That deduction will be almost literally correct, ladies and
-gentlemen. There is no denying that I am old, and toward much that I
-see around me, I am reactionary; and I have learned nothing in all my
-years of striving for knowledge, more convincing than that statement in
-the Book of Ecclesiastes to the effect that there is nothing new under
-the sun. I plead guilty to this hideous indictment and throw myself on
-the mercy of this court. I am even happy to have learned that much, and
-wish, in the manner of the camp meeting revivalist, that I might pass
-on something of this blessed revelation to the "brethern and sistern"
-present.
-
-While I thus brazenly deny the existence of anything really new, and
-fail to recognize what is called "progress" and deplore the waste of
-talent and energy that is dissipated in striving for these things, I
-am far from blind to the value of revolt. Our creative sense is all
-too prone to doze off into dreams of past glories. From these, and the
-sterile copying of them, we may be awakened and rescued by even the
-crudest of revolutions. We may benefit from them provided we do not let
-them tear up our roots--provided we still can recognize an illusion
-when we meet it. The squirrel in his revolving cage must have some
-illusion of progress, else he would not take any exercise, and without
-exercise he would fatten and sicken and die.
-
-And, remember, there is always progress to be made within yourselves,
-no matter if it is the same progress in the same direction that has
-been made by countless other souls. And there will, I hope, always be
-things new to you, as there are every day things new to me, even if the
-sun has seen them all before. I don't want to live a day longer than I
-can learn.
-
-There is no reason to suppose that there is not today as much latent
-talent for the arts in existence, as at any time in their history. But
-talent for art is not talent for being an artist--one may have much
-of the one, without much of the other. It seems to me that there are
-more temptations and distractions working against the talent to be an
-artist today than ever before. More alluring short cuts and seductive
-philosophies--a disturbing babel of undigested ideas and indigestible
-objectives. If in this riot you can keep your heads and not lose sight
-of the important difference between "a grain of truth" and the whole
-truth, if you can grow in understanding of what it is you want to do,
-you may, even now, have a good chance of doing it.
-
-But what has all this to do with printing and typography and their
-related graphic arts? I seem by now to be so far off the track that it
-will take a derrick and wrecking crew to get me back on again. As a
-matter of fact I have not forgotten the subject altogether and have,
-in my lumbering way, been working toward it. But because I can't think
-of typography as an art in itself, unrelated to all the other arts, I
-could not approach it except by the way I have.
-
-All of these things that I have been complaining about in the other
-arts, have their counterparts in present-day typography and printing.
-The same restless craving for something "new," the same preoccupation
-with isms, the same monotonous sameness. But this poison is aggravated
-in the case of printing and typography, by the fact that of all the
-arts, it is, by its very nature and purpose, the most conventional.
-If it is an art at all, it is an art to serve another art. It is good
-only in so far as it serves well and not on any account good for any
-other reason. It is not the business of type and printing to show off,
-and when, as it now so frequently does, it engages in exhibitionistic
-antics of its own, it is just a bad servant.
-
-For this reason the embarrassing ineptitude of the current efforts
-toward a "new typography" are even more distressing than similar
-contortions in other fields. Typography, I repeat, is a servant--the
-servant of thought and language to which it gives visible existence.
-When there are new ways of thinking and a new language, it will be time
-enough for a new typography. When we have altered all of our manners
-and social customs, only then will it be time to radically alter the
-well grounded conventions of this very minor art. Within them there
-is now ample room, as there always has been, for the exercise of
-ingenuity, skill and individual taste. I suggest that those who cannot
-abide the conventions of typography are mostly those who have never
-tried them.
-
-In what does the newness of this new typography consist? It seems to be
-new as the neu in neurosis from which it largely derives. It is new as
-it would be new for a man to enter the dining room on his hands instead
-of his feet, and instead of eating his soup, to pour it into his
-hostess's lap. It is as new and agreeable and pleasing to look at as
-delirium tremens which it closely resembles. The new typography engages
-in such side-splitting pranks as putting the margins of a book page in
-just the opposite arrangement to that which practical utility and well
-founded tradition have always placed them. It might with equal reason
-and originality, turn the type page upside down. In advertising display
-it makes use of that highly original and refreshing device of printing
-what is to be read at a cockeyed angle. The make-up expert indulges
-that other fresh and original dodge of bleeding pictures off the edge
-of the page so that a flat two dimensional photograph is viewed without
-a frame on two of its sides and must compete with a background of all
-the three dimensional things in the room.
-
-I refuse to bore you or myself by enumerating all the tiresome
-stock-in-trade eccentricities of the typographic expert in search of
-something new--the epileptic fits he throws to attract attention to
-himself at the expense of the words he is printing. You see enough of
-them every day to know what I mean. Nearly every magazine and newspaper
-page, not to mention a good many books, present the same revolting
-spectacle--the order of the day, it seems, is disorder.
-
-And speaking of magazines, it has fallen to my lot from time to time
-in the past thirty-five years to design and redesign a number of
-periodicals of one kind and another. Such jobs require really very
-little actual work--it's by endless argument and conference that
-they can wear you to the bone. My simple purpose with these things
-has always been to bring any measure of order the case will permit
-out of the disorder in which I generally find it. My mission, if I
-have any, is to suppress typography, not to encourage it--to put it
-in its place and make it behave like a decently trained servant. I
-find magazines rolling in the gutter covered with the accumulated
-mud of years of dissipation. I pick them up and brush them off, give
-them a cup of black coffee and a new suit of clothes and start them
-off on respectable typographic careers. But like other missionaries,
-more often than not, I find them a year or so later, back in the same
-gutter, drunk and disorderly and remorselessly happy about it.
-
-If the philosophy of functionalism has hit the new typography as it
-has the other applied arts, I see no evidence of it. On the contrary,
-in this field, anything goes, so long as it is eccentric, free from
-the restraints of reason, and can successfully discourage the reader
-from reading. All the distortions of the Roman alphabet that were
-discarded a half century ago--in fact any types which are as nearly
-unreadable as types can be made--have been dragged out again and called
-"modern." These range from the elaborately ornamental letters of the
-most depraved periods of design to the stark diagrams of letters that
-were called by type-founders in my youth: "Printer's lining gothic"--as
-absurd a misnomer as could be imagined, since they have nothing
-whatsoever to do with gothic letters or any other letter forms known
-to history. Laymen called them, more accurately, "block letters"; but
-in the new typography they are elegantly referred to as "sans serifs"
-because, among other features of the Roman alphabet which they lack, is
-a total absence of serifs. They bear the same relation to Roman letters
-as would an engineer's drawings for a trolley track. At the moment
-they are very much in vogue and are widely believed to be modern and
-to be a simplification in harmony with the new architecture, furniture
-and other things. They are supposed to represent the spirit of our day
-like the noise of rivetting hammers in a modern musical composition.
-They simplify the traditional forms of type as you might simplify a man
-by cutting his hands and feet off. You can no more dispense with the
-essential features of the written or printed Roman alphabet, ladies
-and gentlemen, than you can dispense with the accents and intonations
-of human speech. This is simplification for simpletons, and these are
-block letters for blockheads.
-
-The users of typography and printing, the publishers and advertisers,
-are also confused by illusions of their own. Foremost among these is
-the notion that they require every week new types to give freshness and
-effectiveness to what they print and publish. This wholly unwarranted
-assumption is undoubtedly a godsend to the type-founders, however
-disastrous it is to the development of a sane and ordered typography.
-It has peopled the earth with typographic experts who know "the latest
-thing" and not much else, and it has relieved the designers of printing
-from the burden of knowing anything about design. It is so much easier
-to buy new types than to learn how to use effectively the types we
-already have. And if, instead of flooding our composing rooms with
-new types, which are seldom more than variations upon old themes of
-distortion, our type-founders would give us at least twice as many
-sizes as they now make, of a few good types, we should have a really
-flexible medium to work in. We would have to make fewer compromises
-with good design, and they might profit commercially, as typography
-surely would profit artistically.
-
-And this constructive suggestion reminds me that I ought perhaps
-to temper this hurricane of destructive criticism with some further
-helpful hints. At the moment I can only think of two that might relieve
-the dreadful situation that I have pictured. One is that we organize a
-pogrom of all type designers--a little hard on them perhaps, but they
-would gain martyrdom to a cause--and the other is that we establish
-a concentration camp in which to intern all those who think up or
-think they think up new ideas in typography for such time as it will
-take them to recover from their delusion. There they might while
-away pleasant hours in the distinguished company of the inventors of
-paper-towels, pasteboard milk bottles and beer in cans.
-
-With my younger colleagues still in mind, I ought to say something of
-the practical problems that we encounter in professing and practicing
-one or other of the graphic arts. We are, or should be, if we are
-really artists, more concerned with what we give to our art than with
-what we get out of it. But we have to live--or think we do--and to do
-that by the practice of art is certainly no easier now than it ever
-was. If anything, it's a little harder. Beyond that inner satisfaction
-with what we can give--and there is only a little of that and at rare
-intervals--the only two things to be got _out_ of art are money and
-fame; and I daresay there are few of us who would not welcome a little
-of both. But we must compete today with a great many of those who work
-for nothing else; and who, under the banner of one or another of these
-isms of which I've been prating, can concentrate upon that unique
-objective unhampered by any serious interest in art itself. They are
-devotees of success, like their commercial brethren, and by means of
-the same promotional paraphernalia they succeed so well that one is
-tempted at times to believe that the only living art is the art of self
-promotion.
-
-Another curious development of these times is the classification of
-artists according to political ideology. We hear now of "left wing"
-artists. As nearly as I can discover, these are to be recognized by
-their contempt for any sort of craftsmanship and a peculiar inability
-to keep their drawings clean. They make penury--the unhappy lot of
-nearly all artists--a pious virtue, and they are not infrequently big
-with pretension to being the only serious interpreters of life and
-truth. These are balanced on the other end of the political see-saw
-by a school of "economic royalists" who have made of art a commercial
-opportunity. As Industrial Designers with large staffs and control
-boards and troops of indefatigable press agents, they have welded art
-and commerce so successfully that it is nearly impossible to tell them
-apart. Somewhere between the two is the artist; and he is as often
-as not a forgotten man. Not quite poor enough to be picturesque or
-heartrending, just well enough off to keep his collar and his drawings
-clean, he must nevertheless spend an exorbitant part of his life and
-energies in worrying about bills.
-
-And now to stop the clamor of the butcher, the baker _et al._, to whom
-must we sell our graphic arts? For the most part, I suppose, it will be
-to publishers, industrialists and advertising agents. The publisher is
-a pretty decent sort, on the whole, but if he is a book publisher, he
-can generally be recognized as such by the fact of having very little
-money to spend on art. In my own experience, the most generous and
-appreciative customer for our wares has been the industrialist. What
-you do for him can often increase his profit very materially, and he is
-not slow to recognize that fact.
-
-The advertising agent, speaking very generally and with the particular
-exception of one very dear friend in mind, deals largely in what might
-be called scientifically organized fraud. I am aware that to say this
-now is to risk being called a "communist transmission belt"--whatever
-that may be. It has even been suggested that by these animadversions
-upon advertising, I am biting the hand that fed me; but I suggest that
-I am biting the hand that I have fed until I am fed up on feeding it.
-It may be that you will find, as I sometimes have, in the ranks of
-these shock troops of deception, sympathetic and amiable clients for
-your work who can deal differently with artists than they deal with
-the public--but not very often. Each of them employs what is called an
-Art Director whose importance is derived, not so much from art as from
-the financial size and number of advertising accounts toward which he
-directs it. It is his duty to furnish you with what he calls "ideas,"
-upon the theory that an artist is not mentally up to having any of his
-own. Ten to one he will end by altering your drawing to give it the
-"wallop" thought to be essential to all advertising. A public, already
-groggy and half blind from the incessant battering of advertisements
-with a punch, will hardly notice the difference.
-
-"To think at all," says the Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset,
-"is to exaggerate." A careful measurement of anatomical detail in
-the drawings and sculptures of Michelangelo will reveal startling
-exaggerations of fact, but these enlargements upon fact are but his
-medium for truthful expression. He gives us the figure of a man or
-woman more essentially true than could be made by any anatomist with
-micrometer calipers. So, I humbly pray, ladies and gentlemen, that you
-will apply no instruments of precision to my words--they are the best I
-could find in this emergency for saying what I believe to be true. If
-you think me guilty of exaggeration, the foregoing remarks are my only
-defense. But if you accuse me of being facetious, I will tell you that
-I have never been more serious in my life.
-
-                     COMPOSED IN BODONI BOOK TYPES
-
-
-
-
-                 [Illustration]OSCAR OGG[Illustration]
-
-               _A Comparison of Calligraphy & Lettering_
-
-Copyright 1947 by the _American Artist_. Reprinted by permission of the
-                         publisher and author.
-
-
-Superior writing and able lettering have never made inconsequential
-literature valuable, nor have poorly conceived, incompetent calligraphy
-and lettering ever invalidated good literature. Letters which are well
-considered, expertly executed, conscientiously fitted to their purpose,
-however, can create visually a spiritual state in a reader which will
-influence him to be receptive to the message he reads. It may even be
-possible that beautiful writing, aside from the intense pleasure it
-gives us as graphic art, helps to make uninspired authors seem more
-profound.
-
-Perhaps it is this realization that has made graphic artists in recent
-years exhibit a notable increase in interest in American "calligraphy."
-The quotes are intentional. So much which is not calligraphy has had
-the term applied to it and so much which is calligraphy has been
-considered something else, that some sort of evaluation and comparative
-definition now appears to be wise.
-
-The aura of romance which has surrounded the tools, the methods, and
-the products of the scribe has tended, we believe, to place them in the
-eyes of practicing letter artists somewhat higher in the scale of the
-arts than those of the letterer. Hence the "lettering man" likes to
-call himself a "calligrapher." This same snobbishness is often evident
-between easel painters and illustrators, between book illustrators
-and magazine illustrators, between book designers and advertising
-typographers. And all of it is false. By simple definition lettering
-and writing are related but certainly not competitive arts.
-
-_Calligraphy_ is "beautiful writing."
-
-_Lettering_, in modern usage, refers to built-up, designed forms.
-
-Stanley Morison, in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, says: "Calligraphy
-is the art of fine writing. Writing is a means of communication by
-agreed signs; if these signs or symbols are painted or engraved on
-stone or wood [or paper] we have that extension and application of
-writing known as _lettering_, _i.e._ a script generally formed with
-mechanical aids such as the rule, compass, and square. But it is the
-essence of hand-writing that it be free from such, though not from
-all, government.... Calligraphy may be defined as freehand in which
-freedom is so nicely reconciled with order that the understanding eye
-is pleased to contemplate it."
-
-[Illustration: The same nib was used for built-up and written forms in
-     this freely rendered fragment of a ninth-century manuscript.]
-
-Built-up and written forms each have their place. One of the tenets
-of fine letter art is that the forms be in perfect taste; that is,
-that the letter and its method of production be in harmony with its
-use. A delicately drawn cursive is as out of place on a subway card
-advertising a cough remedy as is a poster _egyptienne_ on the title
-page of a small volume of romantic poetry. To assume, however, that
-either the written or the drawn form is the more aristocratic is
-unsound. To attempt a representation of either by the other is likewise
-illogical. Written letters, based on traditional manuscript usage,
-are more serious in concept than their less restrained contemporary
-built-up characters and do not permit of the same unconcern with
-anatomical discrimination. Both, properly executed, can be superb
-examples of letter art--and both can be terrible.
-
-[Illustration: A simple Roman, executed entirely with a broad nib.
-Characteristic strokes employed in writing the above.]
-
-[Illustration: A similar letter designed and built up using a brush.
-Characteristic outlines to be filled in for above.]
-
-The growing practice of calling all script-like letters "calligraphy"
-is unjust to writing and lettering alike. Particularly the practice
-of producing with a pointed pen or brush the built-up, tricked-out
-impersonations of broad nib writing must be abandoned if the art of
-making letters is to remain honorable.
-
-Having defined, then, the general limitation of the terms, let us
-look at some of the principal differences in character between the
-two. Historically, we find them side by side. Since they were both
-produced by scribes and illuminators working in like tradition, there
-was no question of fitness one with the other. Both stemmed from the
-same source and were produced with the same type of tool. They were
-necessarily in harmony.
-
-Contemporarily, however, much lettering is executed by craftsmen who
-neither know or care about the historical background of the alphabet.
-The responsibility for this lies, we believe, as much with the
-purchaser as with the producer of letters. The art director, working
-in a viciously competitive field, demands of the letterer something
-"different." The result is usually a built-up form which has little in
-common with its ancestors, either in shape or method of production.
-But, if it is handsome in itself, it may have a real affinity for a
-text of type. A written element may also serve beautifully as a foil
-for the rigidity of a type page.
-
-  [Illustration: These two treatments of a title are by no means the
- only likely ones by either method. The lower form was actually used.
-  The letter was designed in the spirit of the type which was used in
- conjunction with it. Perhaps if a written title had been chosen, one
- based on an Italian rather than an English hand would have been more
-  suitable. The great difference in these two treatments is that the
- written serves as a contrast, while the built-up harmonizes with the
-                          type on the page.]
-
-To establish further the variance between calligraphy and lettering,
-a brief inspection of the methods of production may be advantageous.
-The designed form is conceived as a drawing--it is a device which may
-be finished up with any instrument at hand. The only limitation which
-the designer must not exceed is the recognizability of the particular
-letter.
-
-The written form depends upon tradition for letter shape and upon
-tool for letter character. Distortion is possible and poor form not
-unusual, but since the pen is essentially _the_ letter-making tool, the
-natural action of a properly cut pen eliminates at least some of the
-opportunities for improbable forms.
-
-[Illustration: These two letters, enlarged from the two renderings
-of "Wartime Correspondence," illustrate the control which is
-exerted by the cut and size and handling of a square nib upon the
-calligraphic form as opposed to the freedom from constraint in the
-built-up treatment. The tool decided the shape of the first. A careful
-patterning of curves and weights to conform to the type of the book
-page (Poliphilus) determined the second. A Soennecken steel pen was
-used for the written, and a pointed brush for the built-up.]
-
-The calligraphic and the built-up approach to the execution of a book
-title may indicate how each may be employed frankly and honestly
-without recourse to camouflage to procure particular effects. The size,
-general weight, and disposition of the letters are indicated in the
-rough layout. The artist who executes the built-up rendering will keep
-the weight of letters _even_ by constant checking of one against the
-other. The calligrapher will cut a reed or pen to this weight and thus
-maintain even color.
-
-It will be noted that the designed form is completely and finally
-established in the penciled form. The laying-out for the written form
-is less accurate and is the product of a double pointed tool, set to
-the width of the nib to be used. In any but a very tight design such
-as this, the pen-executed letter requires rather less preliminary
-penciling than is here indicated. A line for the bottom of the letters
-is usually sufficient.
-
-It has been impossible to crowd all one should like to write on this
-subject into these few words. If, however, this first voicing of a need
-for a sane concept of the relations between lettering and calligraphy
-has even the smallest influence, the author will bear with pleasure the
-rightful criticism of incompleteness.
-
- [Illustration: The width of the nib is that of the widest part of the
-      down-stroke. Strokes 5 and 6 fill the openings thus left.]
-
-      [Illustration: Layout and demonstration of the written form
-                           (calligraphic).]
-
-[Illustration: The center line is drawn by compass. Width of the swell
- is arrived at by moving the point 1/2 this width to right and left.]
-
-     [Illustration: Layout and demonstration of the designed form
-                             (lettered).]
-
-
-
-
-               [Illustration]ALDOUS HUXLEY[Illustration]
-
-             _Typography for the Twentieth-Century Reader_
-
-  The introduction from _Printing of Today_, an illustrated survey of
- post-war typography in Europe and the United States, by Oliver Simon
-  and Julius Rodenberg. Copyright 1928 by Peter Davies, Ltd., London,
-  and Harper and Brothers. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-
-
-In our enthusiasm for the spirit we are often unjust to the letter.
-Inward and outward, substance and form are not easily separated. In
-many circumstances of life and for the vast majority of human beings
-they constitute an indissoluble unity. Substance conditions form; but
-form no less fatally conditions substance. Indeed, the outward may
-actually create the inward, as when the practice of religious rites
-creates religious faith, or the commemoration of the dead revives, or
-even calls into existence, the emotions to which the ceremonial gives
-symbolical expression.
-
-There are other cases, however, in which spirit seems not to be
-so closely dependent on letter, in which the quality of the form
-does not directly affect the quality of the substance. The sonnets
-of Shakespeare remain the sonnets of Shakespeare even in the most
-abominable edition. Nor can the finest printing improve their quality.
-The poetical substance exists independently of the visible form in
-which it is presented to the world. But though, in this case, the
-letter is powerless to make or mar the spirit which it symbolizes, it
-is not for that reason to be despised as mere letter, mere form, mere
-negligible outside. Every outside has a corresponding inwardness. The
-inwardness of letters does not happen to be literature; but that is not
-to say that they have no inwardness at all. Good printing cannot make a
-bad book good, nor bad printing ruin a good book. But good printing can
-create a valuable spiritual state in the reader, bad printing a certain
-spiritual discomfort. The inwardness of letters is the inwardness of
-any piece of visual art regarded simply as a thing of beauty. A volume
-of the Penny Classics may give us the sonnets of Shakespeare in their
-entirety; and for that we may be duly grateful. But it cannot at the
-same time give us a work of visual art. In a finely printed edition
-we have Shakespeare's sonnets _plus_ the lovely equivalent of, say a
-Persian rug or a piece of Chinese porcelain. The pleasure we should
-derive from bowl or carpet is added to that which the poetry gives us.
-At the same time our minds are sensitized by the contemplation of the
-simple visual beauty of the letters: they are made more susceptible of
-receiving the other and more complex beauties, all the intellectual
-and spiritual content, of the verse. For our sensations, our feelings
-and ideas do not exist independently of one another, but form, as it
-were, the constituent notes of what is either a discord or a harmony.
-The state of mind produced by the sight of beautiful letters is in
-harmony with that created by the reading of good literature. Their
-beauty can even compensate us, in some degree, for what we suffer from
-bad literature. They can give us intense pleasure, as I discovered
-in China, even when we do not understand what they signify. For what
-astounding elegances and subtleties of form stare out in gold or
-lampblack from the shop-fronts and the hanging scarlet signs of a
-Chinese street! What does it matter if the literary spirit expressed by
-these strange symbols is only "Fried Fish and Chips," or "A Five Guinea
-Suit for Thirty Shillings"? The letters have a value of their own
-apart from what they signify, a private inwardness of graphic beauty.
-The Chinese themselves, for whom the Fish-and-Chips significance is
-no secret, are the most ardent admirers of this graphic beauty. Fine
-writing is valued by them as highly as fine painting. The writer is an
-artist as much respected as the sculptor or the potter.
-
-Writing is dead in Europe; and even when it flourished, it was
-never such a finely subtle art as among the Chinese. Our alphabet
-has only six and twenty letters, and when we write, the same forms
-must constantly be repeated. The result is, inevitably, a certain
-monotonousness in the aspect of the page--a monotonousness enhanced
-by the fact that the forms themselves are, fundamentally, extremely
-simple. In Chinese writing, on the other hand, the ideographs are
-numbered by thousands and have none of the rigid, geometrical
-simplicity that characterizes European letters. The rich flowing
-brushwork is built up into elaborate forms, each form the symbol of a
-word, distinct and different. Chinese writing is almost the artistic
-image of thought itself, free, various, unmonotonous. Even in the
-age of hand-writing, the European could never hope to create, by
-means of his few and simple signs, an art of calligraphy comparable
-to the Chinese. Printing has rendered the Chinese beauty yet more
-unrealizable. Where the Chinese freely painted we must be content with
-reproducing geometrical patterns. Pattern making is a poorer, less
-subtle art than painting. But it is still an art. By some one who
-understands his business the printed page can be composed into patterns
-almost as satisfyingly beautiful as those of the carpet or the brocade.
-
-The problem which confronts the contemporary printer may be briefly
-stated as follows: to produce beautiful and modern print-patterns by
-means of labour-saving machinery. There have been numerous attempts in
-recent years to improve the quality of printing. But of these attempts
-too many have been made in the wrong spirit. Instead of trying to
-exploit modern machinery, many artistic printers have rejected it
-altogether and reverted to the primitive methods of an earlier age.
-Instead of trying to create new forms of type and decoration, they have
-imitated the styles of the past. This prejudice in favour of hand-work
-and ancient decorative forms was the result of an inevitable reaction
-against the soulless ugliness of nineteenth-century industrialism.
-Machines were producing beastliness. It was only natural that sensitive
-men should have wished to abandon the use of machines and to return to
-the artistic conventions in vogue before the development of machinery.
-It has become obvious that the machine is here to stay. Whole armies
-of William Morrises and Tolstoys could not now expel it. Even in
-primitive India it has proved itself too strong for those who would,
-with Gandhi, resist its encroachments. The sensible thing to do is not
-to revolt against the inevitable, but to use and modify it, to make it
-serve your purposes. Machines exist; let us then exploit them to create
-beauty--a modern beauty, while we are about it. For we live in the
-twentieth century; let us frankly admit it and not pretend that we live
-in the fifteenth. The work of the backward-looking hand-printers may be
-excellent in its way; but its way is not the contemporary way. Their
-books are often beautiful, but with a borrowed beauty expressive of
-nothing in the world in which we happen to live. They are also, as it
-happens, so expensive, that only the very rich can afford to buy them.
-The printer who makes a fetish of hand-work and medieval craftsmanship,
-who refuses to tolerate the machine or to make any effort to improve
-the quality of its output, thereby condemns the ordinary reader to a
-perpetuity of ugly printing. As an ordinary reader, who cannot afford
-to buy handmade books, I object to the archaizing printer. It is only
-from the man with the machine that I can hope for any amelioration of
-my lot as a reader.
-
-To his credit be it spoken, the man with the machine has done his duty.
-He has set himself to improve the sordid typographical surroundings in
-which the impecunious reader was so long condemned to pass his life.
-He has shown that cheap books need not necessarily be ugly, and that
-machinery directed by a judicious mind can do as well as, or much
-better than, the hand of an uninspired craftsman. There are publishers
-in business today whose seven-and-sixpennies, regarded as typography,
-are worth a guinea apiece. (What they are worth as literature is
-another question.) There are a dozen Presses producing fine work at
-moderate prices. The men behind the machines have used their brains.
-
-Some of our excellent machine-printers are still, it is true, too fond
-of using decorations borrowed from the past, and types that savour of
-another age than ours. So long as our sense of period remains as strong
-as it is, so long as we retain our love of the quaint and its more
-modern equivalent, the "amusing," this tendency to substitute pastiche
-for original creation is bound to persist. There is an incessant
-demand for the antique: we should not be too hard on the printers who
-supply it. If they are sinning, they are at least sinning in company.
-Let the architects and painters, the interior decorators, and the
-theatrical producers throw the first stone. There are pastichers among
-the printers, just as there are pastichers among the professors of
-every art. But there are also more original men, who are prepared to
-encourage modern decorators and to use types that are elegant and
-striking without being affectedly archaic.
-
-With this last phrase I may seem to be damning the moderns with
-the faintest of praise. But the truth is that Typography is an art in
-which violent revolutions can scarcely, in the nature of things, hope
-to be successful. A type of revolutionary novelty may be extremely
-beautiful in itself; but, for the creatures of habit that we are, its
-very novelty tends to make it illegible, at any rate to begin with.
-I know a rather eccentric German typographical reformer, for whom
-legibility is the greatest enemy, the infamous thing that must at
-all costs be crushed. We read, he argues, too easily. Our eyes slide
-over the words, and the words, in consequence, mean nothing to us. An
-illegible type makes us take trouble. It compels us to dwell on each
-separate word: we have time, while we are deciphering it, to suck
-out its whole significance. Putting his theory into practice, this
-reformer had designed a set of letters so strangely unlike those with
-which the typographical practice of generations has made us familiar,
-that I had to pore over a simple English sentence as though it were
-Russian or Arabic. My friend was perhaps justified in thinking that we
-read too much and too easily. But his remedy, it seems to me, was the
-wrong one. It is the author's business to make reading less facile, not
-the printer's. If the author concentrated more matter into the same
-number of sentences, his readers would have to read more carefully
-than they do at present. An illegible type cannot permanently achieve
-the same result, for the simple reason that it does not permanently
-remain illegible. If we are prepared to make the effort to read until
-the novel forms have become familiar, the illegible type will come to
-be perfectly legible. In practice, however, we are reluctant to make
-this effort. We demand that typographical beauty shall be combined
-with immediate legibility. Now, in order that it may be immediately
-legible, a type must be similar to the types with which we are
-familiar. Hence, the practical printer, who has to live by selling
-his wares to a large public, is debarred from making revolutionary
-innovations in the designs of his type. He must content himself with
-refining on the ordinary, accepted types of commerce. If he has great
-typographical reforms in view, he must proceed towards them by degrees,
-modifying the currently accepted designs gradually, so as not to repel
-the ordinary lazy reader, who is frightened by the idea of making
-any unnecessary effort. In other arts, where form and substance are
-directly associated, revolution is possible, may even be necessary. But
-the outward form of literature is not typography. The association, in
-a book, of literature with one of the graphic arts is in the nature of
-an accident. The printer who would at one stroke revolutionize his art
-frightens away readers, for whom the idea of revolution in literature,
-or in any one of the graphic arts that is independent of literature,
-has no terrors. The reason for this is obvious. People buy books for
-the sake of the literature contained in them and not, primarily,
-as specimens of graphic art. They demand of the typography that it
-shall be beautiful, yes; but also that it shall give them immediate
-and unhampered access to the literature with which it is associated.
-Printers may desire to be revolutionary; but unless they can afford
-to sell no books, they are compelled by the force of circumstances to
-adopt a cautious policy of gradual reform. The Communist must either
-turn Liberal or retire from business.
-
-
-
-
-                            MERLE ARMITAGE
-
-                               NOTES ON
-                            MODERN PRINTING
-
-    From Notes on Modern Printing by Merle Armitage. Copyright 1945
-   by William E. Rudge's Sons. Reprinted by permission of author and
-                              publisher.
-
-
-HOW DOES ONE DESIGN A BOOK? I CONCLUDE AS I BEGAN WITH A FEW GENERAL
-IDEAS AND SUGGESTIONS:
-
- 1. Allow the subject of a book to determine its design and format.
-
- 2. Design a book for effortless reading, utilizing the format to
- enhance or interpret the text.
-
- 3. Use the prime materials--type, paper and space--to achieve your
- results. Meaningless decorations disclose the designer's poverty of
- invention.
-
- 4. Simplicity is the best policy.
-
- 5. Make no attempt to design every page ... let type and space have
- their natural rhythm.
-
- 6. Understand the text ... know your primary aims ... let form follow
- function.
-
- 7. Type ornaments have their place ... but an ornament designed for
- general use has no particular significance.
-
- 8. A brilliantly designed book can't save a dull or mediocre text.
-
- 9. A page of type can be a thing of unique, arresting beauty.
-
- 10. Mere type legibility is to a book as mere shelter is to
- architecture.
-
- 11. Book design should be a synonym for the arrangement and
- integration of materials--paper, binding, illustration, type and space.
-
-My friends of the musical world believe that music is the most
-important thing in life. Painters are absolutely certain that
-the reformation will come only through an understanding of art.
-Acquaintances among the engineers are sure that by technological
-development alone can emancipation come to man, while scientists
-rightfully take the credit for progress in the contemporary world.
-Friends in industry insist that mass production is the great panacea.
-The photographers can prove that photography makes the pictorial
-painters unnecessary, and the writers I have encountered are convinced
-that the written word is the one route to world unity.
-
-However, the painter ... the musician ... the engineer ... the
-photographer ... the industrialist ... the scientist ... and the writer
-have a rendezvous with the book. Here, the knowledge, the romance,
-the fiction, the facts, the speculations, the opinions, and the
-accomplishments of the world are made permanently articulate.
-
-This is our day, our time, our environment. We can make a statement,
-through the employment of design, that is valid and true ... not
-divorced from tradition, but using the great works of the past as a
-springboard toward new horizons!
-
-                      COMPOSED IN GILL SANS TYPES
-
-
-
-
-                          Benjamin Franklin:
-                         PRINTER and PUBLISHER
-
-                           JOHN T. WINTERICH
-
-    From _Early American Books and Printing_ by John T. Winterich.
-Copyright 1935 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Reprinted by permission of
-                      Curtis Brown, Ltd., agent.
-
-
-Josiah Franklin was reared a dyer in the village of Ecton in
-Northamptonshire, but soon after his arrival in America, about 1682,
-he foresaw a greater future in the trade of tallow-chandler and
-soap-boiler. It was a calling which seems humble enough in a day that
-has evolved such mouth-filling occupational designations as sales
-engineer, merchandising counsel, and mortician. Josiah Franklin, had
-the locution been available in his era, might have asserted with all
-accuracy that he was an important factor in public utilities--even
-our own catch-phrase epoch has not been quite equal to the coinage
-of the label "public utilitarian." For when the Boston town watch
-wanted fresh candles they bought them from Josiah Franklin--from other
-tallow-chandlers too, perhaps, but at least some, by documentary
-evidence, from Josiah Franklin.
-
-The close relationship between progress in the science of artificial
-illumination and progress in the dissemination of the printed
-word could be charted with almost mathematical accuracy.... Most
-of the books of colonial days were designed for the use of those
-whose professions exacted some considerable amount of "required
-reading"--ministers, physicians, lawyers, public officials, schoolmen.
-The man who toiled with his hands (and hands are eminently useful in
-the building-up of a new country) labored while the light of heaven
-would let him and then returned to a home wherein the conveniences were
-hardly such as to make reading a pleasure. Lincoln studied by the glare
-of blazing pine-knots, but the middle-class Bostonian and New Yorker
-and Philadelphian of the generations immediately preceding Lincoln (to
-say nothing of their country cousins) had to depend on illuminants that
-offered no greater inducements to either the solace or the benefits of
-type.
-
-Josiah Franklin's wife and their three children accompanied him to
-America. Before her death she bore him three more children. Josiah
-remarried, and of the second union ten children were born. Of this
-multitudinous offspring thirteen grew to maturity--a remarkable
-proportion for the time and region. The eighth child and last son of
-the second marriage, christened Benjamin after a paternal uncle, was at
-first intended for the Church, but Josiah could not afford to give him
-the education which this most learned of the professions demanded, and
-at the age of ten, after receiving as thorough an intellectual rearing
-as could be expected in so short a space, Benjamin Franklin quit
-school to assist his father in the fabrication of candles and soap. An
-elder brother, John, had already become proficient in the twin arts
-of illumination and sanitation and had gone to the bustling colony of
-Rhode Island to practice them. Another brother (and another Josiah) had
-also investigated them, found them not to his liking, and run away to
-sea.
-
-Benjamin, also, made it clear that the parental pursuits were not
-to taste, and a wise father, fearing another abrupt departure, took
-Benjamin walking about Boston, that he might "see joiners, bricklayers,
-turners, braziers, etc., at their work" and thereby, boywise, make
-known to his elder which way his inclinations lay. A patent leaning
-toward books at length persuaded the father to make him a printer,
-despite the fact that another brother, James, Benjamin's elder by nine
-years ... had adopted the craft. Benjamin conceded a preference to
-the claims of printing over those of tallow-chandlery, but he still
-sniffed, with the true landsman's appetite, the tang of the salt breeze
-that blew in from the east. Josiah, however, was insistent, and the
-parental insistence of 1718 was no toy scepter to swing above the head
-of a sub-adolescent boy. Accordingly, Benjamin was duly indentured to
-James "to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one years of age,
-only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year."
-
-Before long, Benjamin was writing odds and ends of verse, and James,
-with the inbred Franklin sagacity, encouraged him in his endeavors and
-let him put some of his compositions in type.
-
- One (declared Benjamin) was called _The Lighthouse Tragedy_, and
- contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with
- his two daughters: the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of
- Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the
- Grub-street-ballad style; and when they were printed he sent me about
- the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event being
- recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity; but my
- father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me
- verse-makers were generally beggars.
-
-The importance of these two pieces consists in the fact that they were
-"the first with which Franklin's name can be identified as either
-author or printer," according to Dr. William J. Campbell, who adds
-that "no copy is known to exist, nor is the exact title of either of
-them known." This was true in 1918, when Dr. Campbell's admirable
-catalogue of _The Collection of Franklin Imprints in the Museum of the
-Curtis Publishing Company_ was issued, and it is unfortunately still
-true today [1935]. If they were at all like similar productions of
-both earlier and later date, they were broadsides--single sheets that
-were distributed like handbills, the main difference being that they
-commanded a price. They would command a fantastic price today, together
-or singly, and their eventual discovery is by no means beyond the
-bounds of possibility. A copy of one--or copies of both--may be tucked
-away in some forgotten contemporary theological compendium which has
-not been opened for a century.
-
-The disappearance of these broadsides is regrettable on many counts,
-not least of which is the fact that even if Benjamin had never
-accomplished anything else, he could at least claim credit for
-sponsoring perhaps the most textually interesting productions of his
-brother's press. James Franklin was a skilled printer--London trained,
-and "no slovenly self-taught colonial," in Paul Leicester Ford's
-phrase--and James was not, of course, in any degree responsible for the
-dullness of the copy that was brought to his shop. A brief glance at a
-few of his imprints of this period is of interest mainly because of the
-certainty that Benjamin worked on many of them.
-
- The product of James Franklin's press (says Ford in _The Many-Sided
- Franklin_, New York, 1899) is a dreary lot of "gone-nothing-ness." A
- few of the New England sermons of the day; Stoddard's _Treatise on
- Conversion_; Stone's _Short Catechism_; _A Prefatory Letter about
- Psalmody_, in defense of church singing, which many Puritans still
- held to be unholy; an allegory styled _The Isle of Man, or, Legal
- Proceedings in Manshire Against Sin_; Care's _English Liberties_;
- sundry pamphlets on the local politics of the moment, such as _A
- Letter from One in the Country to his Friend in Boston_, _News from
- the Moon_, _A Friendly Check from a Kind Relation to the Chief
- Cannonneer_, and _A Word of Comfort to a Melancholy Country_; two
- or three tractates on inoculation, and one aimed half at the Boston
- clergy and half at the fair sex, entitled _Hooped Petticoats Arraigned
- by the Light of Nature and the Law of God_, were the chief output of
- the new printer during the years his brother served him.
-
-In the summer of 1721, James Franklin established a newspaper, _The
-New England Courant_. Two years earlier he had been engaged to print
-the _Boston Gazette_, but with the transfer of its management a few
-months later the contract had gone elsewhere. The _Courant_ was a
-new departure even for the novelty that was American journalism--so
-extensive and violent a departure, indeed, that in the following
-year the authorities sentenced the printer-proprietor to a month's
-imprisonment for his insolence. The punishment did not improve him;
-free again, he pressed the thorn of the _Courant_ deeper into the flesh
-of his persecutors, with the consequence that he was soon forbidden "to
-print or publish" either the _Courant_ "or any other pamphlet or paper
-of the like nature" unless it were first submitted to the secretary of
-the province.
-
-There were two apparent ways out of the dilemma, and one was as
-eminently unsatisfactory as the other. The first was to quit printing
-and publishing. The second was to submit to the censorship. James
-hit upon a more ingenious solution. He turned the _Courant_ over to
-sixteen-year-old Benjamin. Benjamin's indentures as apprentice to
-James had five years to run, and in order to forestall any objection
-on the part of the authorities that an apprentice was not competent to
-manage the paper, the indentures were ostentatiously canceled and a
-new document drawn up as a private and confidential (but none the less
-binding) memorandum which in theory was no one's affair save James's
-and Benjamin's. The half-sheet issue of the _Courant_ for February
-4-11, 1723, identified it as "printed and sold by Benjamin Franklin in
-Queen Street, where Advertisements are taken in." Benjamin Franklin's
-name thus first appeared in an imprint. It remained on the tail-board
-of the _Courant_ until the paper's discontinuance in 1726, long after
-Benjamin had left Boston.
-
-The gratifying tableau of two stalwart brothers battling loyally side
-by side for freedom of the press, however, was not the whole picture.
-James and Benjamin had differences, and Benjamin later admitted
-that he himself was "perhaps ... too saucy and provoking," and that
-James, despite "the blows his passion too often urged him to bestow
-upon me," was "otherwise not an ill-natur'd man." Benjamin, at all
-events, decided to take advantage of the freedom accorded him by the
-cancellation of his indentures, which act he later conceded to have
-been "not fair" and "one of the first errata of my life." James spread
-the tidings of this perfidy throughout Boston, and every local printing
-establishment thereupon became a closed shop to Benjamin Franklin.
-
-If James assumed that Benjamin would thus be forced to return to his
-own shop, he reckoned without his Benjamin. For not long thereafter,
-with the connivance of a friend, John Collins, Benjamin was smuggled
-aboard a New York-bound sloop, and three days later, thanks to a fair
-wind, he was in a city which was not yet a metropolis judged even
-by easy colonial standards. He called on "old Mr. William Bradford"
-(aged sixty), who had nothing to offer, but who suggested that his son
-Andrew, then flourishing (after a fashion) in Philadelphia, might have
-a position for him, since Andrew's "principal hand," Aquila Rose, had
-just died.
-
-Franklin set out by water by way of Perth Amboy. It is interesting to
-note, in view of the dispute regarding the earliest New Jersey imprint
-... that the trip from New York to the New Jersey port took thirty
-hours. All in good time he reached Philadelphia.
-
-Washington did not cut down a cherry tree and then inform his father
-that he could not tell a lie; Wellington did not say "Up, Guards, and
-at 'em!" or Pershing, "Lafayette, we are here." The dear old legends
-explode all about us; it is gratifying to recall that there is one at
-least the accuracy of which is unimpeachable. Walking up Market Street,
-Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin did pass the home of his wife-to-be
-with a roll under each arm and munching a third, and his wife-to-be did
-see him and note that he made "a most awkward, ridiculous appearance."
-
-Andrew Bradford had nothing to offer--the vacancy left by the death of
-Aquila Rose had already been filled. But Franklin was not yet done with
-the ghostly trail of Aquila. At Andrew Bradford's suggestion he waited
-on Samuel Keimer, who had recently set up as a printer despite a meager
-endowment of equipment, native ability, or acquired skill. He found
-Keimer "composing an Elegy on Aquila Rose" directly from the type.
-
- So there being no copy (recorded Franklin), but one pair of cases,
- and the Elegy likely to require all the letters, no one could help
- him. I endeavor'd to put his press (which he had not yet us'd, and of
- which he understood nothing) into order fit to be work'd with; and,
- promising to come and print off his Elegy as soon as he should have
- got it ready, I return'd to Bradford's, who gave me a little job to
- do for the present, and there I lodged and dieted. A few days after,
- Keimer sent for me to print off the Elegy. And now he had got another
- pair of cases, and a pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work.
-
-This broadside poem, therefore, was the first piece of Philadelphia
-printing with which Franklin's name is clearly identified. The
-"pamphlet to reprint" may have been _A Letter to a Friend in Ireland_,
-_The Doctrine of Absolute Reprobation Refuted_, _A Letter from One
-in the Country to His Friend in the City_, _A Parable_, or (and this
-would certainly have been Franklin's choice) _The Curiosities of
-Common Water_, all of which Keimer imprints of 1723 are listed in the
-short-title check list which follows the Curtis catalogue. No more
-specifically is it possible to identify the "little job" which Andrew
-Bradford gave him.
-
-It is not likely that Franklin would have long continued with Keimer
-(who was "an odd fish; ignorant of common life, fond of rudely opposing
-receiv'd opinions, slovenly to extream dirtiness, enthusiastic in some
-points of religion, and a little knavish withal") even if a roundabout
-coincidence had not brought him to the attention o£ the governor of
-the province, Sir William Keith, whose quarrel with William Bradford
-had been one of the impulses that had established the latter as New
-York's first printer. Keimer "star'd like a pig poison'd" one day when
-no less a worthy than Sir William entered the shop in search of the new
-assistant from Boston. Governor and assistant adjourned to a tavern,
-where the former disclosed a grandiose idea for setting the newcomer
-up in a shop of his own. He must first, of course, go to London to
-buy equipment, and to this end the governor loaded him down with
-enthusiasm and letters of credit. After a short visit to Boston, where
-all "made me welcome, except my brother," who "receiv'd me not very
-frankly, look'd me all over, and turn'd to his work again", Franklin
-sailed for London, which he reached the day before Christmas, 1724--to
-learn, to his intense mortification, that Sir William's letters of
-credit were worthless, since that gentleman's prowess as a promiser and
-his shortcomings as a performer were rather more familiar in the old
-country than in the new.
-
-Franklin, however, had little difficulty in extricating himself from
-the crisis into which he was precipitated on his arrival in London
-by the non-negotiability of Sir William Keith's commercial paper.
-"I immediately got into work at Palmer's," he says, "then a famous
-printing house in Bartholomew Close, and here I continu'd near a year."
-Samuel Palmer, declares John Clyde Oswald in _Benjamin Franklin,
-Printer_ (New York, 1917), "was more than an ordinary printer. He had
-visited America, was letter-founder as well as printer, and was engaged
-in the writing of 'A History of Printing,' only a third of which he had
-completed when he died in 1732."
-
-Franklin identifies only one of the jobs on which he worked at
-Palmer's. "I was employed," continues the _Autobiography_, "in
-composing for the second edition of Wollaston's _Religion of Nature_."
-The name of William Wollaston (1659-1724) now survives mainly by virtue
-of this adventitious association with a nineteen-year-old immigrant
-compositor. _The Religion of Nature Delineated_ first appeared in 1722
-in a small privately printed edition. Presumably this first edition
-is now rare, but no collector is impressed thereby, preferring above
-it that on which Franklin worked (the third in strict sequence, but
-the second published edition), which, happily, is relatively common.
-It bears the imprint: "London: Printed by S. Palmer, and sold by
-B. Lintott, W. and J. Innys, J. Osborn, J. Batley, and T. Longman.
-1725." The printer from America pondered over the copy as he set it,
-and out of his ruminations came a pamphlet reply to the recently
-deceased author: _A Dissertation on Liberty And Necessity, Pleasure
-and Pain_ (London, 1725). Franklin printed one hundred copies, gave a
-few to friends, and then, repenting of his materialistic agnosticism,
-"burnt the rest except one copy"; pride of authorship would not wholly
-down. That copy may be one of the four known to survive today, all in
-institutional collections.
-
-Receiving a better offer from John Watts, who conducted a larger
-printing establishment, Franklin went thither, remaining six months,
-when he accepted the proposal of a Philadelphia merchant then in London
-that he return and act "as his clerk, keep his books, in which he
-would instruct me, copy his letters, and attend the store." In leaving
-London, therefore, Franklin supposed that he thereby "took leave of
-printing forever."
-
-Man proposes. Franklin and his new employer reached Philadelphia; the
-store was duly opened and its new clerk installed; four months later
-the employer died. The establishment was taken over by the executors
-and Franklin was out of work. Keimer wanted him back as foreman of his
-new and larger shop, but Franklin, who knew well his Keimer, first
-sought a place at his new trade of clerk and salesman. Nothing offered,
-so he reluctantly accepted Keimer's bid. The affiliation did not last
-long. Franklin and Keimer quarreled over "a trifle" that represented
-the culmination of a long series of abuses:
-
- A great noise happening near the courthouse, I put my head out of the
- window to see what was the matter. Keimer, being in the street, look'd
- up and saw me, call'd out to me in a loud voice and angry tone to mind
- my business, adding some reproachful words, that nettled me the more
- for their publicity, all the neighbors who were looking out on the
- same occasion, being witness how I was treated. He came up immediately
- into the printing-house, continu'd the quarrel, high words pass'd
- on both sides, he gave me the quarter's warning we had stipulated,
- expressing a wish that he had not been oblig'd to so long a warning.
- I told him that his wish was unnecessary, for I would leave him that
- instant; and so, taking my hat, walk'd out of doors.
-
-Had affairs not fallen out thus ludicrously, then some other incident
-would have "snapt our connections." If no "great noise" had occurred
-near the courthouse (what, one wonders, was the cause of the
-disturbance?), there would still have been a subsequent great noise
-in Keimer's shop, and the hireling would have spoken his piece to the
-overlord and walked out of the identical door to the fulfillment of his
-high destiny.
-
-Franklin was of more than half a mind to return to Boston, in which
-event Philadelphia would one day have been compelled to seek another
-patron saint. Fortunately for Philadelphia, while working at Keimer's,
-Franklin had struck up a friendship with Hugh Meredith, a fellow
-craftsman, who suggested a partnership. A secret agreement was drawn
-up, and pending the completion of arrangements for launching the
-venture, Franklin sought temporary work at Bradford's. Keimer meanwhile
-was negotiating with the provincial government of New Jersey for the
-printing of an issue of paper money at Burlington, and urged Franklin
-to accompany him if he was awarded the job. The plan went through, and
-the pair were in Burlington three months. "There is not a single piece
-of this paper money known to exist today," says Dr. Campbell, "and of
-the New Jersey Laws that they printed at the same time there are only
-two known copies...."
-
-In the summer of 1728 the new firm of B. Franklin and H. Meredith came
-into existence. They had scarce "opened our letters" (their cases, that
-is, not the morning mail) when a friend "brought a countryman to us,
-whom he had met in the street inquiring for a printer." The identity
-of this bucolic, casual, but superlatively important patron of the
-typographic arts is unknown and probably forever unknowable, for he
-could hardly have been aware that he was the instrument of Providence
-chosen to motivate the first imprint issued by Franklin as a master
-printer. Dr. Campbell surmised the job was "probably stationery or a
-small handbill." Whatever it was, it has probably vanished beyond hope
-of recall, or at least beyond hope of positive identification.
-
-Almost on the heels of this first customer came another--none other
-than Samuel Keimer, whose general ineffectualness and chronic state
-of panic provide much of the comic relief in the history of early
-American printing. Keimer had been working off and on for three years
-on William Sewell's _History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the
-Christian People Called Quakers: The Third Edition, Corrected_. The end
-was not in sight, and Keimer, evidently in a condition of acute mental
-distress, rushed to the new shop for assistance. Franklin and Meredith
-composed and printed "forty sheets," totaling nearly a third of the
-seven hundred pages--the first known job to issue from their shop, even
-though it did not bear their imprint. Sewell's _History_ is doubly a
-Franklin item, as Franklin must have worked on the book while he was
-still in Keimer's employ.
-
-Thanks to the diligence of its proprietors--or of one of them, for
-Meredith "was often seen drunk in the streets, and playing at low games
-in alehouses"--the new shop prospered. But about the middle of 1730 it
-encountered a hazard which its sponsors had not foreseen. Meredith's
-father had advanced one hundred pounds to put the enterprise on its
-feet and had promised another hundred. When the time came for him to
-meet his obligation, he could not, and "the New Printing-Office near
-the Market" was faced with a creditor's suit. This crisis confirmed
-young Meredith's conviction that he was not cut out for the printing
-business; moreover, he was anxious to join a company of fellow Welshmen
-who were planning a settlement in North Carolina. Two of Franklin's
-friends offered to come to the aid of the senior partner, and the
-difficulty was amicably adjusted. Thus was the "B. Franklin" imprint
-born. It appeared for the first time not on anything in English, but at
-the bottom of the title-page of _Mystische und Sehr Geheyme Sprueche_,
-by Conrad Beissel, whose religio-communistic Ephrata colony, itself to
-become one day an important printing center, had been organized only a
-few years before.
-
-Shortly before the dissolution of the firm of Franklin and Meredith
-there had been another odd run-in with Keimer. Franklin was already
-planning a newspaper, and "foolishly" imparted the secret to a friend
-who forthwith made it known to Keimer. Toward the end of 1728 the
-not-to-be-anticipated Keimer issued the first number of _The Universal
-Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette_. It was
-Keimer's inescapable genius to start what he could not finish, and he
-was soon glad to dispose of the paper to Franklin and Meredith, whose
-control dates from October 2, 1729. One of Franklin's first acts as a
-newspaper publisher--his memory must have harked back to the old Boston
-days--was to shorten the too comprehensive title to _The Pennsylvania
-Gazette_.
-
-Probably some three months after the departure of Meredith, Franklin
-initiated a new partnership. He married. "Partnership" is no romantic
-figure of speech. The name of Deborah Read has an honored place on
-the roster of women who helped to make American printing. By her
-husband's own testimony, her share in the work of the establishment
-included, in some measure, the "folding and stitching" of pamphlets,
-and it is not unlikely that her hands had a busy share in the
-preparation of some of the series of pamphlets with which, more
-than with any other, Franklin's name is most clearly associated as
-author-printer-publisher--the _Poor Richard_ almanacs.
-
-The importance of the almanac in the colonial scheme has already
-been stressed. Franklin was naturally alert to this importance; in
-fact, as soon as the house of Franklin and Meredith was in existence
-he had commissioned Thomas Godfrey to compile an almanac. Godfrey was
-"a self-taught mathematician, great in his way," but "he knew little
-out of his way," and there was considerable of the prima donna in his
-make-up. He prepared almanacs for 1730, 1731, and 1732, and then, in
-an outburst of temperament, transferred his skill to the shelter of
-Andrew Bradford. The fortunate result, certainly not anticipated by
-Thomas Godfrey in his dudgeon, was, as Paul Leicester Ford defines it,
-the birth of American humor. Franklin initiated the _Poor Richard_
-series, compiling the bulk of the contents himself, but attributing
-their authorship to Richard Saunder or Saunders, whose almanacs
-had enjoyed enormous popularity in England and were still enjoying
-it, though Saunders had been gone this many a year. A _Poor Robin_
-series of almanacs was also popular in England, and James Franklin a
-few years earlier had begun a series of Rhode Island almanacs under
-this title. _Poor Richard_ was an immediate success, and though the
-first number was not advertised in _The Pennsylvania Gazette_ until
-December 19, 1732, which was rather late in the year for a new almanac,
-three printings were necessary to supply the demand. _Poor Richard_
-thereafter issued regularly every December under Franklin's own
-editorship until 1757 (for 1758).
-
-_Poor Richard's_ rich wisdom has become part of common speech wherever
-English or any other language is spoken. Everyone from China to Peru
-knows that God helps those that help themselves, that three removes are
-as bad as a fire, that
-
-  _Vessels large may venture more,
-  But little boats should keep near shore._
-
-A recent commentator--Carl L. Becker in the _Dictionary of American
-Biography_--says of the _Poor Richard_ almanacs:
-
- Nothing better exhibits the man, or better illustrates his ingenuity
- as an advertiser.... "Richard Saunders," the Philomath of the
- _Almanack_, was the Sir Roger de Coverley of the masses, pilfering the
- world's store of aphorisms, and adapting them to the circumstances and
- the understanding of the poor. "Necessity never made a good bargain."
- "It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." "Many dishes make
- diseases." "The used key is always bright." The _Almanack_ was
- immediately successful and commonly sold about ten thousand copies.
- "As Poor Richard says" became a current phrase, used to give weight to
- any counsel of thrift. The work made Franklin's name a household word
- throughout the colonies.... The introduction to the last _Almanack_
- (Father Abraham's speech at the auction) spread the fame of Poor
- Richard in Europe. It was printed in broadsides and posted on walls in
- England, and, in translation, distributed by the French clergy among
- their parishioners. It has been translated into fifteen languages, and
- reprinted at least four hundred times.
-
-Franklin's rise to the position of the most important printer in the
-colonies after the well-entrenched Bradfords was now rapid. Before long
-he was official printer to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Of
-the bulk of his non-governmental productions, Ford writes that while
-generally "of little moment," still "there can be no doubt that as
-a whole they contain more of genuine merit than those of any other
-printer of the same or previous periods in the colonies, the amount
-of doctrinal and polemical theology being a minimum, and bearing a
-less proportion to the whole mass than can be found in the books of
-contemporary American printers." In 1735 appeared over Franklin's
-imprint James Logan's _Cato's Moral Distichs Englished in Couplets_.
-Nine years later Franklin sponsored Samuel Richardson's _Pamela_--not
-only the first American edition, but the first novel to be printed
-in America, "Price 6 s." In the same year, 1744, he issued what is
-generally regarded as the typographical masterpiece of his press, _M.
-T. Cicero's Cato Major, or His Discourse of Old-Age: With Explanatory
-Notes_ (also Englished by James Logan), referring to it in a four-page
-foreword of his own composition as "this first Translation of a Classic
-in this Western World." This was a wide error, for George Sandys had
-translated Ovid on the banks of the James River a life-span earlier,
-and the translation had been printed in London in 1626; moreover,
-Franklin forgot those _Moral Distichs_ of Cato and James Logan which he
-himself had issued in 1735.
-
-In 1748, Franklin formed a partnership with an alert young Scotchman
-whom he had engaged five years before, and the "Franklin and Hall"
-imprint thereupon replaced (with a few exceptions) the familiar "B.
-Franklin." A few earlier connections must be mentioned. Franklin's name
-is found on several German titles in combination with that of Gotthard
-Armbruester and with that of Johannes Böhm, and, apparently once only,
-with that of Johannes Wüster, but these seem to have been purely
-partnerships of convenience, and suggest no such dual affiliations as
-those with Meredith and Hall. The Hall partnership lasted eighteen
-years, and during that period Franklin's connection with printing
-and publishing became less and less important as the crisis in
-international affairs that was bringing on the American Revolution
-grew more and more acute. But the printer in him could not wholly be
-suppressed. When he went to Paris in 1776 as representative of the
-colonies, he established a little press for his own amusement at his
-home in Passy, then a suburb, now as much a part of the metropolis as
-Greenwich Village is of New York. It was not quite such a toy as Robert
-Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne were one day to set up
-in Switzerland, the main difference being that the Stevenson-Osbourne
-combination knew nothing about printing and was joyously aware of it,
-whereas Franklin, with just as joyous awareness, knew as much about it
-as any man of his time. One factor the two private presses of Passy
-and Davos-Platz have in common--their productions are excessively rare
-and costly collector's playthings. The story of the French venture
-is authoritatively set forth in Luther S. Livingston's _Franklin and
-His Press at Passy_, issued by the Grolier Club of New York in 1914.
-Livingston listed thirty-two entries, and since his monograph was
-published six others have come to light, according to Will Ransom's
-_Private Presses and Their Books_ (New York, 1929).
-
-The output of Franklin's press from 1729 to the termination of the Hall
-partnership (1766) is statistically impressive. The following summary
-is tabulated from the short-title check list of all Franklin imprints
-known in 1918 which Dr. Campbell appended to the Curtis catalogue
-(excluding _The Pennsylvania Gazette_ and the numerous issues of paper
-currency printed by Franklin from 1731 to 1764):
-
-          1729       8       1748      30
-          1730      15       1749      33
-          1731       8       1750      19
-          1732      15       1751      24
-          1733      14       1752      18
-          1734      15       1753      16
-          1735      20       1754      15
-          1736       8       1755      27
-          1737      13       1756      26
-          1738       9       1757      31
-          1739      12       1758      13
-          1740      46       1759      16
-          1741      45       1760      10
-          1742      31       1761      12
-          1743      25       1762       8
-          1744      25       1763      15
-          1745      15       1764      18
-          1746      23       1765      19
-          1747      27       1766       4
-
-Any book, pamphlet, broadside, or periodical that bears a Franklin
-imprint, alone or in combination, is worth treasuring on that account
-alone. In general, the scale of desirability is set by scarcity, this
-scale one might suppose, should follow the line of chronology with
-reasonable accuracy, but it happens that it does not. The Sewell
-_History_, for instance, ought by chronological measurement to be an
-excessively rare book as the first book on which Franklin worked as an
-independent printer, and rare it assuredly is, but by no means to the
-point of utter elusiveness.
-
-Twelve years later the total of Franklin imprints was moving toward two
-hundred--and in that twelfth year, 1740, there issued from his press
-the second edition of David Evan's _A Short, Plain Help for Parents
-and Heads of Families, to Feed Their Babes with the Sincere Milk of
-God's Word. Being a Short, Plain Catechism, Grounded Upon God's Word,
-and Agreeable to the Westminster Assembly's Excellent Catechism._ No
-copy of the first edition is known to be extant--Dr. Campbell quoted
-the title imperfectly from a contemporary advertisement--and neither
-Hildeburn nor Campbell knew that a second edition had ever been issued.
-Neither did anyone else until 1929, when a copy came to light and won
-its way to a New York book-seller's catalogue. The book is mentioned
-here, not because it possesses great intrinsic importance (it would be
-of trivial note if a hundred or two copies of it survived), but as an
-indication of the fact that unrecorded Franklin imprints are likely
-to appear at any time, and as indication, further, that the scarcity
-of Franklin imprints does not altogether parallel the dates of his
-activity as printer and publisher.
-
-In these notes it has been necessary to neglect Franklin, the author
-(save as Poor Richard), in favor of Franklin, the printer and
-publisher. But it would be an effrontery to allude even briefly to
-Franklin without mention of the _Autobiography_. Begun in 1771 in
-the quiet charm of an English country-seat, the first great American
-classic never was completed. The manuscript first appeared in print, by
-an odd series of accidents, in French in 1791. Subsequently Franklin's
-grandson, William Temple Franklin, issued it in a Bowdlerized English
-version that would have afforded the old man quiet and somewhat
-indignant laughter. The text was not definitely published until 1868,
-soon after John Bigelow had come into possession of the original
-manuscript.
-
-Franklin's epitaph is easily the most familiar in American history,
-and almost as well-known a document, perhaps, as Lincoln's Gettysburg
-Address. It is not generally known, however, that the original version
-of it was composed in 1728, the very year in which its author, a youth
-of twenty-two, entered into partnership with Meredith. The version
-written in that year, which differs in minor details from the final
-draft, was this:
-
-                              THE BODY OF
-                          B FRANKLIN PRINTER,
-                    (LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK
-                         ITS CONTENTS TORN OUT
-                AND STRIPT OF ITS LETTERING & GILDING)
-                      LIES HERE, FOOD FOR WORMS.
-                    BUT THE WORK SHALL NOT BE LOST;
-            FOR IT WILL, (AS HE BELIEV'D) APPEAR ONCE MORE,
-                   IN A NEW AND MORE ELEGANT EDITION
-                        REVISED AND CORRECTED,
-                            BY THE AUTHOR.
-
- _Note_: A documented account of the various transcripts of Franklin's
- celebrated epitaph appeared in _The New Colophon_, Volume 3, New
- York, 1950. It discusses the date of its composition, place of first
- publication and the differing texts, and was written by Lyman H.
- Butterfield, associate editor of the Jefferson papers.
-
-                     COMPOSED IN BASKERVILLE TYPES
-
-
-
-
-           [Illustration]EARNEST ELMO CALKINS[Illustration]
-
-                        _The Book & Job Print_
-
- From _The Colophon_, New Graphic Series No. 1. Copyright 1939 by the
- publisher. Reprinted by permission of the author and Mr. Elmer Adler.
-
-
-                                   I
-
-The printing office was a long narrow room over a store. One front
-window was appropriated to a cubicle known as "the office"--seldom
-used, its desk piled high with galley proofs and dusty government
-reports. Frames for type cases occupied the two remaining front
-windows and the three at the back. In between were the hand-power
-cylinder press, the two Gordon jobbers, an imposing stone for the
-newspaper and one for job work. Along the walls ran the dump--sloping
-shelves divided longitudinally by strips of wood, holding galleys and
-standing jobs tied up with white packthread. The prevalent odor was a
-mixture of benzine and warm roller composition familiar to old-time
-printers, but sweeter than the scents of Araby to the young apprentice
-about to be initiated into the craft and mystery of printing.
-
-They seated him on a high stool before a case in the darker part of
-the room, with a composing stick, a setting rule, and a piece of
-patent medicine reprint. A slug on a string hung on his upper case to
-hold the copy in place, for the oldest rule of the printing trade is
-"follow copy though it goes out the window." In each corner of the
-lower case boxes Big Sweeny, the foreman, had stuck letters from a job
-font to guide the youngster in learning the case.
-
-For days the tyro was absorbed in the seemingly impossible task of
-setting a stick full of type and "dumping" it on the galley. The first
-lot exploded in the air; it took hours to distribute the "pi."
-
-In a few weeks he had learned his case, except the small boxes around
-the edge, double ffls and ffis and little-used punctuation points.
-He could distinguish a 3-em space from a 5-em, and justify a line by
-distributing them judiciously, remembering, as was often impressed on
-him, to put more space between words ending in tall letters. He began
-to look about him and take stock of the curious world in which he
-found himself.
-
-For years he had dreamed of printing, his appetite whetted by the life
-of Franklin in the Harper Story Books, and a manual of instructions
-for young printers in the same volume. He pored over type specimen
-books obtained from Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, and reveled in
-the amazing faces shown. Other boys had their ambitions--firemen,
-policemen, railroad engineer--but his hero was the journeyman printer,
-a green shade over his eyes, sleeves rolled to display a bright red
-undershirt, spitting tobacco with an accuracy that missed nothing
-but the spittoon. Tales told by typographical tourists, the tramp
-printers, were his folklore, and for some years after he learned his
-trade his chance to work came mostly in "subbing" for printers frankly
-laying off to get drunk.
-
-Type had two names. He was setting brevier Roman; the smaller size
-used for quotations and for county correspondence was nonpareil. Other
-sizes with equally picturesque names piqued his curiosity. In the
-early eighties the point system had not reached the prairies. Later he
-became familiar with it. The old names of the types with approximate
-sizes in points that prevailed in the days of our young apprentice
-were as follows:
-
-Diamond, 4-1/2-point; Pearl, 5-point; Agate, 5-1/2-point; Nonpareil,
-6-point; Minion, 7-point; Brevier, 8-point; Bourgeois, 9-point; Long
-Primer, 10-point; Small Pica, 11-point; Pica, 12-point; English,
-14-point; Columbian, 16-point; Great Primer, 18-point; Paragon,
-20-point; Double Pica (strictly this should be Double Small Pica),
-22-point; Two-line Pica, 24-point; Two-line English, 28-point;
-Two-line Great Primer, 36-point; Two-line Double Pica, 44-point;
-Canon, 48-point.
-
-It must not be supposed that all these sizes were found in the office
-of the Book & Job Print, nor for that matter probably anywhere but
-in the warehouses of Barnhart Bros. & Spindler, Marder, Luse & Co.,
-MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan Co., Bruce, or other type-founders.
-
-Our apprentice was afflicted with one of those curious prying minds
-that sought to know the reason for all things. Much typographical
-history lurked behind the names given to type sizes. _Diamond_,
-_agate_ and _nonpareil_, it seemed, were merely fancy names, but
-_brevier_ was so-called because it had been used to print breviaries;
-_canon_, from the first lines of the canonical mass, and _primer_ for
-primaries or elementary prayer books. _Bourgeois_ has been attributed
-to the city of Bourges, to a printer named Bourgeois, and to having
-been used in cheap books for the middle classes, the bourgeoisie.
-_Minion_ was said to be the French word _mignon_, darling. But the
-origin of _pica_, so constantly used as a yardstick for measuring
-leads, slugs, reglets, and the width of columns and pages, is as
-fascinating as it is baffling.
-
-_Pica_ is Latin for magpie, and it has been ingeniously supposed
-that some work now lost, an account of that thievish and mischievous
-bird, was printed in type now bearing that name. De Vinne[38] cites a
-far more amusing derivation: "Like great primer, pica takes its name
-from its early use as a text letter. 'The Pie,' writes Mores, 'was
-a table showing the course of the service of the church in the time
-of darkness. It was called the Pie because it was written in letters
-of black and red, as the Friars de Pica were so named from their
-party-colored raiment black and white, the plumage of the magpie.'"
-And is it not at least probable that "pi," a jumble of unsorted type,
-is also derived from the same source, either because of the pied
-feathers of the bird, or from its habit of assembling a miscellaneous
-collection of objects in some hiding place?
-
-As he explored his upper case, our apprentice discovered that while
-the capitals and small capitals were ranged in alphabetical order,
-_J_ and _U_ were left to the end like substitute ball players on
-the bench. By studying an unabridged dictionary he learned that
-those letters were late comers into the alphabet; the old scribes,
-finding that _I_ tended to become confused with the last stroke of
-the previous letter, gave it a tail to distinguish it. The two forms
-were used indiscriminately for the consonant and vowel sounds of _I_
-until in due course they were separated. In the same way _V_ was half
-of _W_, distinguished as singleyou and doubleyou. _V_ was carelessly
-written as _U_ and even as _Y_, and had all the sounds, but was at
-length assigned one job, and the _U_ added to the alphabet. How long
-ago that happened! So conservative was the printing art that even
-after two hundred years the case had not been shifted to accommodate
-them, and dictionaries as late as 1800 still used both forms in the
-same classification. Our apprentice felt that the office where he was
-learning his trade had not changed greatly, typographically at least,
-since Plantin.
-
-
-                                  II
-
-The number and variety of faces at the disposal of the master printer
-equalled their ugliness, though this apprentice considered them
-all beautiful. There were of course the Roman faces, some of which
-were good, and still are, but these were strangely distorted as
-condensed, extra-condensed, extended, expanded, as well as shaded,
-open, skeleton, contour, sloped (both ways), ornamented, and hair-line
-letters.
-
-One would think these were enough for all the printing anyone would
-want to do, but there was also a bewildering multitude of so-called
-job types of fancy and fantastic design. Each foundry put out a book
-as big as a dictionary, filled with bizarre creations in which the
-innocent alphabet was twisted and tormented and decorated until some
-of its masterpieces were illegible.
-
-Among them were a number informally standardized and cast by all
-foundries. Such were Antique, Boldface, Gothic, Lightface, Clarendon,
-Caledonian, Ionic, Doric, Egyptian, Runic, Celtic, Rustic, Script,
-Grecian, Monastic, Norman, Title, and these too were also condensed,
-extended and otherwise squeezed, stretched and pulled about. When the
-type-writer came there was added that monstrosity, type-writer type.
-But the pride of each foundry was its own exclusive creations, to
-which were given names as fantastic as the designs, putting Pullman
-nomenclature to shame, such as Pansy, Olive, Asteroid, Van Dyke,
-Vulcan, Schwabacher, Florist, Teuton, Text, Eastlake.
-
-From such an array the country printer was expected to choose the
-types to equip his shop. His outfit consisted of fair quantities of
-Roman, nonpareil, brevier and long primer for straight matter--the
-weekly newspaper, booklets and pamphlets, with larger sizes for job
-work, too many faces with few fonts large enough to set more than a
-line or two. This did not matter since it seemed obligatory to set in
-a different letter each line of display, advertisements, title pages,
-as well as dodgers and handbills, the greater the contrast and variety
-the better, with "ands" and "thes" in lines by themselves, centered
-and flanked by flourishes on each side. Type larger than two-line
-canon was made of wood, and was called "stud-horse type" because
-used for the big bills tacked up on barns and trees to advertise the
-services of a stallion.
-
-Small fonts of job type were listed in foundry catalogues "5A 13a," to
-indicate quantity, other letters being in proportion. There was seldom
-more than one of little used letters, necessitating a shift to another
-font when a line turned up with two Xs or two Zs. Job types were laid
-in cases like the uppers of Roman, the boxes all of a size, capitals
-on one side, lower case on the other.
-
-New type was an abomination. The compositor's fingers, already tender
-from the lye used to wash forms, were cut by the sharp edges, and his
-eyes blinded by the glare from sorts, and the printers were forever
-prowling the shining metal. There was chronic clack of up and down the
-live bank with tweezers, pulling out the needed letters, and inserting
-an equal-sized type upside down to mark the place. Another source of
-trouble was the font from a different foundry, supposedly the same
-body, but with a slight variation, that was forever getting into the
-wrong case and being set up, dropping out when the form was lifted.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-The apprentice was kept too busy to have much time for the acquisition
-of abstract knowledge. In return for instruction in the art and
-mystery of printing he was expected to perform the duties of a
-"devil." He arrived at half-past six, started the fire in the
-pot-bellied stove, swept up (no light job, for the continuous barrage
-of fine-cut and plug formed a coping around the feet of every frame,
-and the trimmings from the big knife lay in windrows). All day he ran
-errands with proofs, handbills, billheads, advertisements, to submit
-to customers; wet down paper for the weekly run of the newspaper, and
-pasted the subscribers' names on them for the mail; distributed "pi,"
-and rushed the growler for thirsty journeymen.
-
-But he learned that the printers in one shop were a "chapel," the
-head was the "father," who was not the foreman. It thrilled him that
-such expressions went back to the time when Caxton had his press in
-Westminster Abbey. A small group of men working on the same job was a
-companionship, and had strict rules as to who was to do what. Points
-of procedure, such as the first or a "fat take," or the selection of a
-victim to set up the beer, was determined by a curious custom. The men
-gathered around the imposing stone, and each in turn shook out a few
-em-quads, five or seven, throwing them on the stone like dice. The one
-with the most nicks uppermost was the winner.
-
-These were time-honored practices, but each shop had customs peculiar
-to itself. He learned not to whistle at his case, for a sponge of
-dirty water was apt to take him squarely in the mouth. When late he
-found lines set up in his composing stick, which he had to distribute
-before he began work, at his own expense--when he was finally promoted
-to piece work,--
-
-         _A diller, a dollar, a ten-o'clock scholar,
-           What makes you come so soon?
-         You used to come at ten o'clock,
-           But now you come at noon._
-
-For some time his tormentors had alluded mysteriously to the "type
-louse" that haunted the forms, and promised to show him one when
-found. A journeyman working at the stone over a newspaper form wet
-down for distribution called him over, and pointing excitedly, cried,
-
-"Now, there, look!"
-
-He looked.
-
-Handfuls of type had been removed, and the water gathered in small
-pools between the columns. The apprentice bent over eagerly to behold
-the strange insect, whereupon the journeyman shoved up a column of
-type, forcing the water to rise like a fountain into the apprentice's
-innocent face, while the force roared with laughter and pounded with
-their composing sticks on the frames.
-
-
-                                  IV
-
-In a small office in pre-union days, every printer was or became
-an "all-round" man. Not only could he stick type (and some old-time
-printers had a wonderful instinct for spacing), but he could "kick"
-a jobber, impose, make ready, and feed a cylinder press. Some of the
-vagabond printers who drifted back and forth across the West, working
-a few days at each halt, were not only craftsmen but characters. It
-was amazing how promptly they became at home in a strange shop, in a
-few moments working as if they had been there for years. The saga of
-the typographic tourist has yet to be told.
-
-It was not long before he found himself standing on one leg like
-a stork, working the treadle of the Gordon jobber with the other,
-feeding some small job, milk tickets or dodgers or billheads, against
-three 3-em quads pasted to the tympan in lieu of gaugepins. As the
-press had no grippers the feeder must grab the printed sheet before
-the ink pulled it off and insert the next, regulating the speed
-according to his need. Pasting scraps of cardboard on the quads to
-project a bit helped hold the printed card or paper. The regular
-gaugepins sold never seemed to work as well as quads, and anyway,
-old-time printers were self-helpful and never bought what they could
-make.
-
-From feeding press he graduated to making ready and locking up
-forms. There were always enough odds and ends of furniture for small
-jobs without cutting new, but for big work, particularly a book or
-pamphlet, the furniture was cut to fit the job. The form was "locked"
-by driving quoins, wedge-shaped bits of hard wood, along the tapering
-side sticks with an implement known as a shooting stick, notched at
-one end. The form was planed with a block of wood beaten over the
-form to drive down type that might stick above the printing surface.
-Something like this still prevails, no doubt, but not with such
-primitive tools, and very little printing is now done from the type.
-I am sure the shooting stick and wooden quoins must be as obsolete as
-ink balls.
-
-The night before the newspaper was run off, the paper was laid down
-on a broad platform, a quire at a time, drenched with water, covered
-with a wide board, and a heavy stone placed on top to squeeze the
-water out. Dampening was necessary to make the ink stick. Subscribers
-received their papers so wet they had to dry them before reading. The
-press was a cylinder with a large flywheel having a handle attached.
-It was run by human power--a husky Negro, who also furnished the
-muscle for the big knife, or guillotine, with which books were
-trimmed. In the words of the proprietor he "always gives a scent back
-no matter what we pay him." The apprentice and devil doubled for the
-porter when he was otherwise engaged, but shortly steam was installed,
-adding greatly to the excitement on press day.
-
-Feeding the dampened sheets against the gripper was not easy, and
-often he missed. To stop the press he grasped the long switch lever
-and threw the overhead belt on to the idle pulley. If it failed, as it
-sometimes did, the tympan was inked, and several sheets must be run
-through before it ceased to offset on the wrong side of the paper, a
-waste of which his employer made him emphatically aware. It had been
-easier to stop the press when it was turned by hand.
-
-A daily chore which fell to his lot cruelly sharpened the appetite
-of a hungry boy toward the noon hour. This was the menu card from
-the local hotel with corrections for the day's dinner (square meal,
-25 cents). He picked up the standing type, slid it on a galley, and
-proceeded to pull out yesterday's banana fritter and stewed corn and
-insert today's pear fritter and stewed tomatoes. He then ran off
-thirty copies, taking extra care as the stock was special and had the
-word _Menu_ embossed in gold and other decorations. It was a sort
-of Barmecide's feast for him, whetting an appetite that needed no
-whetting.
-
-Every printing office boasted one of those geniuses expert at rule
-twisting, who with shears, file and pliers bent brass rule into
-patterns that would print scrolls and flourishes around headlines
-and on title pages, ornaments for the corners of boxes, and when
-needed extra long braces. Some could create intricate designs, birds
-with streamers in their beaks in which type could be set, like
-those that were the pride of the writing masters. Like leads, brass
-rule was bought in lengths of a foot or so, and cut as needed. Much
-ingenuity was required to make the corners meet, until the arrival of
-"labor-saving," with corners mitered or beveled.
-
-
-                                   V
-
-When work in the printing office became slack he was moved to the
-bindery, where the files of Godey's, Peterson's and Ballou's Magazines
-were put in dull black covers with names lettered on the spine. Its
-principal work, however, was the manufacture of account books, made to
-order to fit the individual book-keeping methods of bank or merchant.
-The ancient ruling machine of mahogany looked something like a loom
-for weaving cloth. Until the advent of loose-leaf books and adding
-machines, business men kept their accounts in three enormous tomes
-labeled respectively Day Book, Journal, and Ledger. Every transaction
-was entered in the Day Book chronologically. It was reëntered in the
-Journal to separate outgo from income. Finally, each item appeared in
-the Ledger under the name of the customer, or creditor, to show the
-status of individual accounts.
-
-Sheets of paper, bearing picturesque old names--Royal, Crown, Demy,
-or Foolscap--were fed to the ruling machine, and came into contact
-with a battery of pens, each with its own little fountain of ink, red
-or blue, as the line demanded--both colors ruled at once. The sheets
-were then printed at the top of each page with the name of the firm,
-numbered by hand, and bound in the familiar heavy books, with covers
-half an inch thick, hinges of rawhide, red leather backs and corners,
-and sides decorated with marbled paper.
-
-The marbled paper was made in the shop. A square tray or pan of slate
-was filled with a thin sizing of water and gum tragacanth. On its
-surface were gently shaken little blobs of color that spread slowly
-on the surface of the pool. The fashion in blank books seemed to run
-to red, blue and white. The spots of color were combed into the wavy
-patterns peculiar to such books. A sheet of paper laid on the surface
-of the water took off a fine impression of the pattern. These sheets
-were used for end-papers as well as covers. The edges of the book were
-also marbled. All this was once done in a small printing office in a
-prairie town of about 12,000 inhabitants. The books were sturdy and
-durable. I have seen many of them preserved in vaults beneath banks,
-filled with the neat Spencerian hand of the bookkeepers of that era,
-the pupils of the writing masters who drew without taking pen from
-paper the flowing florid birds trailing messages from their bills.
-
-He was for some years a "two-thirder." A two-thirder received
-two-thirds the wages of a journeyman printer, which were fifteen
-dollars a week. They did not have piece work at the Book & Job Print,
-but later he entered another world, worked on the evening newspaper
-of the town and tasted the excitement of a race against bogie,
-the average day's work of ten thousand ems, the printer's measure
-familiar to all crossword puzzle fans. The piece rate was twenty-five
-cents a thousand, whether leaded brevier or solid nonpareil. A rapid
-compositor could set ten or more thousand a day, according to luck
-with "takes." One learned the fine art of jockeying for position,
-slowing up when the next take on the hook, was an undesirable one, or
-speeding in the race for a fat one. Fat takes were pickups--railroad
-time table, baseball score, market report, taken from the live bank,
-corrected and added to one's string to be paid for as if set. Each
-compositor had a numbered slug that he dumped on the galley with his
-stickful of set matter. When the galley was proved he kept a copy,
-and at the end of the day pasted up his work, being careful to join
-the takes closely, signed his name and turned it in. As soon as the
-paper was up there was a let-down, the tension relaxed, pipes were
-lit, conversation was possible, and the men picked up incredibly long
-handfuls of type from the forms returned from the pressroom, and
-proceeded to throw in a thumping big case against next day's work.
-
-Cuts, if any, were of wood. There was an engraver in the town who
-supplied illustrations when badly enough needed and plenty of time was
-available. He made both the drawing and the block, and was a better
-engraver than artist. His pictures were what is now modernist and even
-surrealist. An ingenious method of making cuts in an emergency was
-nipped in the bud by the progress of zinc etching. That was the chalk
-plate. A metal plate coated with a film of chalk could be drawn on
-with a sharp instrument, cutting through the chalk to the plate. The
-plate was then used as a matrix to make a casting that would print the
-lines drawn, something after the manner of a stereotype.
-
-But the pride of the country press was its stock of ready-made
-cuts--Lodge emblems: Masonic, Odd Fellows, I.O.G.T.; patriotic:
-eagle, star, flag, Liberty Bell; trade symbols: mortar and pestle,
-false teeth, piano, anvil, watch, domestic animals, together with
-the inevitable pointing finger (fist) and clasped hands. There were
-houses, ships, buggies, and, even still on hand in some offices,
-runaway slaves. These were used to embellish circulars, invitations,
-or programs, and were also used in small ads in the newspaper.
-
-There were molds for casting rollers that looked much like huge candle
-molds. The roller composition was a mixture of glue and molasses,
-consistency varying according to the season of the year. It was
-more practicable to buy rollers by this time, but homemade rollers
-were still cast occasionally. In a near-by village as late as 1889
-a four-column folio weekly newspaper was run off--pulled, I should
-say--on a hand-lever press, one page at a time, the same method and
-almost the same press as that which printed the _Virginia Gazette_, or
-the earlier _Saturday Evening Post_, or for that matter all incunabula.
-
-It is quite likely that all the old-time editors of country
-newspapers were printers. The tradition no longer holds, but one
-apprentice printer in my old shop whose destiny was no doubt
-influenced by this early contact with type was John Finley, who
-became editor of the country's greatest newspaper. There are still
-men, though not so many as there were once, playing important roles
-in world affairs who at some time in their lives experienced the
-thrill of handling the twenty-four (now twenty-six) potent little lead
-soldiers that change the history of the world. No man ever loses that
-sense of the importance of printing, or can look upon a printed thing
-with indifference, who has once felt it. Nor for that matter does he
-ever forget the lay of the case. It is a craft that gets into the
-blood.
-
-In 1889 or thereabouts I witnessed a scene which foretold the great
-change that was coming to the art I had learned with such patience and
-diligence, as revolutionary as the change of shipping from sail to
-steam. There arrived and was set up a machine intended to set type.
-Its name was Thorne, and its principle was to release the letter
-called for when the key was pressed by means of nicks in the body of
-the type, like the tumblers of a Yale lock. The type travelled in
-the channels to a galley, and was justified by hand, if I remember
-rightly. Obviously the device depended upon a hair-trigger nicety of
-adjustment. Even the mechanics who came with it had difficulty in
-making it work. It jammed repeatedly, and before many hours the floor
-was covered with broken sorts. After a few months it was packed up
-and sent back, and the old-fashioned method of setting by hand was
-reinstated, until that day when that office, like every one of its
-class, was equipped with a battery of linotypes. Thus vanished a craft
-that had been four hundred years in the making, that uncanny skill
-with which a good printer manipulated type.
-
-The tramp printer, with his thirst, his steel setting rule, his budget
-of gossip of all the printing offices in a wide territory, has become
-extinct. The callous forefinger of the printer is as much a legend as
-the miller's sensitive thumb.
-
-
-                                  VI
-
-Did they print books in those far-away prairie printing offices? They
-certainly did. One of the rarest items of Western Americana bears a
-Galesburg imprint. A pioneer of that town, a genius who played the
-flute and made many inventions, one of them the rotary plow still
-used to clear snow from the tracks of western railroads, was Riley
-Root. In 1849 he caught the gold fever and made the trip to Oregon and
-California over-land in a covered wagon. He had many adventures, and
-on his return wrote a book that was printed in Galesburg and is now
-a collector's item. A famous Boston book-seller became excited when
-he discovered a copy. "Unknown," he wrote in 1932, "to Wagner, Smith,
-Cowan, or as far as we know to any other bibliographer of the West,
-and unrecorded in the entire run of American Book Prices Current."
-
-The front wrapper reads:
-
- Journal of Travels / from / St. Josephs to Oregon / with /
- observations of that country / together with / a Description of
- California, / its agricultural interests, / and / a full description /
- of / its Gold Mines. / By Riley Root / Galesburg, Ill. / Intelligencer
- Print / 1850.
-
-The matter on the wrapper is repeated on the title page with some minor
-variations. The book is a substantial pamphlet, size 9-1/2 by 6 inches,
-144 pages, uncut. The Boston bookman continues:
-
-"Riley Root's Journal has everything that a rare piece of Western
-Americana should have. In the first place, it _looks_ rare. Like
-several rare Western items of which only a few copies exist, it was
-printed in a small mid-Western town. 'Galesburg, Illinois, 1850' is an
-imprint that has charm for the collector."
-
-It must be excessively rare. The only other copy of which I know,
-besides the one described, is now appropriately in the Seymour Library
-of Knox College. Of this copy the librarian said (when he acknowledged
-the gift to the Library in 1931):
-
-"This little unbound pamphlet was written by Riley Root who came with
-his family to this prairie country in 1836, when he was 37 years
-old, and helped to build the houses of Log City, the forerunner of
-Galesburg.... It was printed in Galesburg in 1850 by the 'Intelligencer
-Print' and bears in the border of the cover the name of the compositor,
-Southwick Davis, who graduated from Knox in the first class--that of
-1846. This creditable piece of printing was done only about fourteen
-years after Galesburg was staked out and when Knox College was
-graduating its fifth class.
-
-"In April 1848 Riley Root left Galesburg to make this over-land
-journey, crossing the continent by way of the Oregon Trail to Oregon
-City, a distance of 1846 miles from St. Josephs on the Missouri River,
-which was regarded as the starting point for the long journey through
-the Indian Country. Although gold had been discovered at Sutter's
-sawmill in California on February 10th, 1848, nearly two months
-before Mr. Root left Galesburg, it is not probable that he learned of
-that famous event until he reached Oregon in mid-September. The news
-spread slowly even on the Pacific coast, credible reports reaching
-San Francisco only in May. Mr. Root says that the excitement ('yellow
-fever,' he calls it) began in Oregon about the middle of August, and
-that within one month nearly 2,000 persons left Oregon for the gold
-fields. The purpose of Mr. Root's over-land journey to Oregon is not
-stated, but it would seem from an entry in his diary seven months
-after reaching Oregon City, to the effect that he had been 'roaming up
-and down the valley, in pursuit of information,' that he was scouting
-for new lands on a new frontier. Finding himself in the midst of all
-the gold rush 'commotion' he may very well have been attacked by the
-'yellow fever' bug himself. At any rate he left Oregon in April, 1849,
-just a year after leaving Galesburg, and going to San Francisco and the
-California gold fields, spent five months, returning to Illinois by way
-of Panama and New Orleans. He arrived in Galesburg, January 8, 1850.
-
-"This little pamphlet records the details of this epic journey, and if
-Riley Root's reputation rested on this alone he would take high rank
-as a historian. It is extremely well done and is a faithful journal of
-not only the day to day happenings, but of the country and its climate,
-the wild animals, the Indians, the geology and botany, the mountains,
-the forests and streams, and many other features that give evidence of
-the observant eye of the author. One interesting and important chapter
-relates the harrowing details of the Indian massacre of November,
-1847, in which Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife lost their lives. This
-story was supplied to Mr. Root by eye-witnesses and is said to be its
-earliest publication in book or pamphlet form."
-
-Among the many changes of ownership of presses in Galesburg, it would
-be difficult to decide whether the shop in which I learned my trade was
-a descendant of the Intelligencer Print or not, but it was produced in
-just such a primitive and resourceful plant.
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[38] _Plain Printing Types_, Theodore L. De Vinne, New York, 1902.
-
-
-
-
-                             _James Shand_
-
-        _AUTHOR AND PRINTER: G.B.S. AND R. & R. C.: 1898-1948_
-
-   From _Alphabet and Image_: 8, Winter, 1948. Copyright by Art and
-  Technics, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
-
-
-    [Illustration: Topolski's drawing from the illustrated Penguin
-                             _Pygmalion_.]
-
-Author and printer, publisher and book-seller; these conjunctions
-flow too easily from the pen. They cover an immeasurable sum of human
-experience, both melancholy and magnificent, in the long history of the
-book trade; they should be used with more reserve.
-
-Fortunately for the reader, the writer is no doctor in bibliography
-expounding the perils and diseases of textual transmission, but a
-typographical reporter, with an interim case-history of a particular
-author, a particular printer and a healthy body of work in progress.
-
-Our author is George Bernard Shaw, sometime of Dublin: our printer, R.
-& R. Clark, now, as always, of Edinburgh. The association is unique in
-more than a geographical sense; in time it covers fifty years; in space
-it defies quantitative analysis. Bernard Shaw's quota, if consigned to
-the Society of Authors, would probably make that body independent of
-the publishing trade for years to come.
-
-Miss Marjorie Plant has pointed out, in her always readable economic
-history, _The English Book Trade_, that there was once a time when
-"the person who was of no account whatever in the early years of the
-book industry was the author." At a later period when the printer was
-dominated by book-seller and publisher, Dr. Johnson wrote in _The
-Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1739, "We can produce some who threatened
-printers with their highest displeasure for having dared to print books
-for those who wrote them!"
-
-In the history of English literature the relations of author, printer
-and publisher have often been bitter and obscure, posing many problems
-in bibliography and textual criticism. Dr. McKerrow, introducing the
-literary student to bibliography, suggests that "the best way of
-obtaining a clear and lively comprehension of the processes by which
-the books of Shakespeare's time were produced" would be by actually
-composing a sheet or two in exact facsimile of an Elizabethan quarto
-and printing it on a hand-press. "Once he does this," he adds, "he
-will find that the material book, apart altogether from its literary
-content, can be a thing of surprising interest."
-
-The surprise of Dr. McKerrow's student trying to disentangle the
-impositions by which the Penguin edition of more than a million copies
-of Shaw's plays were produced on modern perfector printing presses and
-automatic folding machines would indeed be considerable. Nevertheless
-it is to be doubted whether there are as many bibliographical vagaries
-and obscurities in Shaw as in the folios and quartos of Shakespeare.
-Certainly there is something of the same fascination in the printing
-and production of the "material" books of the later playwright; apart
-from the literary antics of an ebullient Irish author with that most
-emotional of all romantic characters: seemingly hard-headed Scots
-printers.
-
-Since we are presenting the romance of playwright and printer,
-without benefit of publisher, let us set our characters in their
-dramatic place and scene. The place is Edinburgh; the scene R. & R.
-Clark; the principal characters, Edward Clark, Bernard Shaw and William
-Maxwell; with a faint echo off-stage from that habitual bankrupt,
-Grant Richards, later deserted for the more solid attractions of a
-"commissioned" Constable.
-
-[Illustration: Shaw's original shorthand draft of his letter to Maxwell
-              on the centenary of R. & R. Clark in 1946.]
-
-Professor G. M. Trevelyan, in one of those two brilliant chapters on
-Scotland in his _English Social History_, points out that rapidly
-developing eighteenth-century Edinburgh "was hardly less important than
-London in the British field of letters."
-
-Mr. Stanley Morison, speaking in Edinburgh in 1944 on the subject
-of _The Typographic Arts_, pointed out that the first history of
-typography ever written for the instruction of the trade was James
-Watson's _The Art of Printing_, published in Edinburgh in 1713.[39] A
-few years later the Edinburgh book-seller, Alexander Donaldson, who
-set up shop in the Strand and put Edinburgh printed classics on sale
-at 30 per cent to 50 per cent below the usual prices, was largely
-responsible for the creation of a "permanent and enlarged printing and
-type-founding industry in Edinburgh." Mr. Morison also asserts that in
-the last quarter of the eighteenth century Scotland led the interest in
-technicalities of printing.
-
-The first edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, printed in
-Edinburgh in 1771, was brought out by "a Society of Gentlemen of
-Scotland." John Bell's _British Poets_ and _British Theatre_ were
-printed at the Apollo Press by Gilbert Martin, an Edinburgh printer of
-whom Mr. Morison would gladly know more.
-
-"The social, imaginative and intellectual life" of Scotland in the
-early nineteenth century centred largely in Edinburgh on Burns and
-Scott, Adam Smith and _The Edinburgh Review_. The familiar publisher
-names, Ballantyne, Blackwood, Chambers, Constable, Nelson, were also
-printers. In type-founding, Miller & Richards' Scotch Roman cut in
-1803, and the later Old Style, were widely used throughout the trade,
-at home and abroad, right up to the present day.
-
-It was in 1846, six years before Alexander Phemister cut the now
-famous Old Style, that Robert Clark, with a loan of £200, laid the
-modest foundations of R. & R. Clark. After serving his apprenticeship
-in Montrose as compositor and pressman (what is called in the Edinburgh
-trade a "twicer") he sought experience in London as a journeyman,
-before returning to Edinburgh to start his own business. His London
-experience must have been of some value to him because it was not long
-before he and his partner, James Kirkwood, had developed an active
-business with London publishers: Macmillans, Bentley, John Murray,
-Smith Elder, A. & C. Black, amongst others.
-
-Robert Clark's policy of providing fine quality, with conscientious
-service at the highest possible price, no doubt contributed to the
-financial success of a rapidly developing business which moved to the
-present printing works at Brandon Street in 1883. Robert Clark's only
-surviving son, Edward, took over sole control after his father's death
-in 1894. William Maxwell first appears on the scene at this time,
-entering R. & R. Clark as a shorthand writer in 1892.
-
-It was in 1892 that Shaw's first play, _Widowers' Houses_, was
-produced; 1898 when _Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant_, published by Grant
-Richards, were printed by R. & R. Clark.
-
-Few living authors nowadays can claim continuous direct relations
-with one printer over a period of fifty years. Books are now the
-product of mechanical composing machines, automatic printing presses,
-and mechanized binderies. They require expert control by experienced
-production staffs dealing with many different paper-makers, printers
-and binders. For this reason alone the printed works of such a
-productive author as Bernard Shaw are a remarkable exception to the
-general rule in the highly-organized printing and publishing trades.
-
-Commission publishing is the resort of authors whose reputation
-guarantees a lucrative circulation and who can afford the necessary
-capital. Shaw now deals directly with his printer and binder, buying
-and paying for his own composition, machining, paper and binding.
-
-Shaw had always very definite ideas about the format of his books and,
-with the complete and friendly co-operation of his present publisher,
-has dealt continuously with R. & R. Clark since 1898. Clarks are now
-102, Shaw 92, Maxwell 75; this unique association of author and printer
-is also a competition in longevity.
-
-[Illustration: Page from the Standard Edition, which began publication
-   in 1931, in Fournier small pica, 1-1/2 points leaded, large crown
-                         octavo, 5x8 inches.]
-
-The influence of Bernard Shaw on our time has been profound; in
-the theatre, in films and in broadcasting. The circulation of his
-printed works has been immense. His direct collaboration with his
-printer over a long period is of more than professional interest to
-publishers, printers and bibliographers. This unique author-printer
-relationship provides an unusual aspect for us of the wit, vigour and
-working methods of one of the most successful authors and playwrights
-of our time; demonstrating also in no uncertain terms the integrity,
-craftsmanship and mechanical resource of the printing house of R. & R.
-Clark, so soundly based and flexibly developed over the last hundred
-years in the solid traditions of the Edinburgh book-printing trade.
-
-In 1946, on the occasion of the centenary of R. & R. Clark, Shaw wrote
-of that renowned Edinburgh printing firm, "Ever since it printed my
-first plays, _Pleasant and Unpleasant_, in 1898, it has been as natural
-a part of my workshop as the pen in my hand." Few printers can ever
-have received so eloquent a tribute from so eminent an author.
-
-As a young author, Shaw's experiences with publishers had not been
-exactly encouraging. Between 1879 and 1883, as regularly as clockwork,
-at the rate of one a year, they rejected all his novels. The climate
-in publishing at that time is best described by Shaw himself writing
-to Daniel Macmillan in 1943. The letter is quoted in full in Charles
-Morgan's _The House of Macmillan_; a small portion bears reprinting
-here. After describing how Meredith turned him down for Chatto's
-without extenuating circumstances; how Blackwood accepted his first
-novel but reneged; how Smith Elder were polite and asked to see future
-efforts, Shaw goes on to write: "I am now one of the few who personally
-remember the Grand Old Men of the publishing world of that day:
-Alexander Macmillan, Longmans and Bentley. They were so powerful that
-they held the book-sellers in abject subjection, and were denounced by
-Walter Besant and his newly-organized Society of Authors as remorseless
-sharks. When they died and were succeeded by their sons, the hereditary
-system did not always work as well as it did in Bedford Street; and
-the book-sellers got the upper hand. John Murray's Byronic prestige was
-so select that I did not dream of trying him until years later, when
-I was an author of some note and had already helped to bankrupt three
-publishers. I offered him _Man and Superman_. He refused in a letter
-which really touched me. He said he was old-fashioned and perhaps a bit
-behind the times; but he could not see any intention in my book but to
-wound, irritate and upset all established constitutional opinion, and
-therefore could not take the responsibility of publishing it. By that
-time I could command sufficient capital to finance my books and enter
-into direct friendly relations with the printers (this began my very
-pleasant relations with Clarks of Edinburgh). I took matters into my
-own hands and, like Herbert Spencer and Ruskin, manufactured my books
-myself, and induced Constables to take me "on commission."
-
-Sidney and Beatrice Webb sent Shaw to their Edinburgh printer. An
-informative and amusing correspondence reprinted at length by Grant
-Richards in _Author Hunting_ reveals how he was ruled and educated by
-Shaw in the choice of type, "Morris" margins, specimen pages, paper
-and other details of production. Holbrook Jackson has pointed out in
-an article in number four of _The Fleuron_ that Shaw's books followed
-the model of William Morris's _Roots of the Mountains_, printed in
-Caslon Old Face at the Chiswick Press in 1892. Shaw, Socialist intimate
-and admirer of Morris, was also in close touch with Emery Walker, and
-familiar no doubt with the typographical ideas of Morris, Walker and
-Cobden-Sanderson, first elaborated in Edinburgh in 1889 at a meeting
-of the National Association for the Advancement of Art, and later
-published in _Arts and Crafts Essays_ printed in Edinburgh in 1893.
-
-In preliminary discussions of the production of _Plays Pleasant and
-Unpleasant_, Shaw insisted on a trade union printer. Grant Richards
-doubted whether a union house could do justice to his ideal of the
-book beautiful. "I had few notions of what makes a union house," wrote
-Grant Richards. "I do not think I had a union house on my list. The
-problem shifted to the question of fair wages, and R. & R. Clark were
-approved." Shaw, in a letter to Grant Richards in 1897, observed,
-"Clark is all right; a first-rate house. I enclose a letter which you
-can hold as a certificate of compliance with my fair wages clause."...
-
-Edward Clark doubtless also got much entertainment from his dealings
-with a teetotal, non-smoking, vegetarian, Socialist of an author. There
-is a story that, on one specimen, Shaw's instructions for close and
-mechanically-equal spacing between words were so precisely followed by
-the pragmatical Scots, that at the end of some closely spaced lines
-the definite article "the" was divided "t-" and "he" turned over, and
-the indefinite article "a-" with "n" turned over. Shaw's comment when
-returning the specimen, as Maxwell tells the story, was, "Excellent;
-but please do not go so far as to prove the author is really a damn
-fool." Shaw denies the story; nevertheless, true or untrue, it has a
-Shavian flavour.
-
-Shaw's choice of Caslon for his original edition was inevitable. We
-know that he picked up the pre-Kelmscott formula ready-made from
-William Morris; but, unlike the founding fathers of the private press
-movement, he lacked the unearned income to indulge in a privately-cut
-type-face. In 1897 we must remember that there were only two text-types
-available in most book-houses: Old Style or Modern. More often than
-not, before mechanical type-setting, there was not even any choice.
-Publisher and author often had to accept the type of which there
-happened to be, at any given moment, the greatest amount of "dis."
-
-Shaw's original hand-set page in type-founder's Caslon, long primer
-solid, stood up to thirty years' constant use. To our post-war eyes,
-conditioned by authorized economy standards, the precise and consistent
-setting of the plays, with their even Roman small caps, lower-case
-italics in square brackets, with occasional lower-case Roman words
-letter-spaced, has considerable nostalgic typographical charm. Here is
-sense and sensibility in book-making, well ahead of its typographical
-time. Of course, there are many people, William Maxwell and Bernard
-Newdigate amongst them, who protested that long primer Caslon set solid
-was too small and too difficult to read. But Shaw proved faithful to
-his original style and to his original setting until the plates wore
-out. He liked a colourful block of letter-press without white "rivers."
-He complains that modern printing ink is not black enough.
-
-In the middle twenties when the project of a Limited Collected Edition
-was discussed, Shaw still preferred Caslon, but agreed to a larger
-size, pica solid, on a larger page, medium octavo. But, and to William
-Maxwell it was a considerable but, Shaw specified hand-setting. As
-a disciple of William Morris, Shaw objected to setting his books by
-machine. Our William from Edinburgh thereafter called on Shaw with
-two different specimen pages, one hand-set in original Caslon and one
-"machine-justified" in Monotype Caslon. Both were submitted to Shaw
-without saying which was which. The suspected Monotype "justification"
-was preferred. Maxwell triumphed. Emery Walker, consulted by letter,
-also approved the machine-set page.
-
-What a victory for the machine! Or rather, what a subtle example of
-Maxwell's typographical tact and persuasiveness! The re-setting of the
-whole of Shaw by hand would have been an inexcusable and expensive
-drudgery. Maxwell convinced Shaw that the mechanical composing machine
-could equal hand-setting in typographical quality and close spacing
-between words and sentences.
-
-The devotion to Monotype Caslon in the middle twenties seems strange
-to us now, looking back from a wealth of typographical equipment,
-including Bembo, Bell and Times. But if we look round the literature
-of the trade at that time, particularly at _The Fleuron_, we note
-that Caslon in its Monotype version had a vogue, almost a kind of
-typographical Indian summer. _The Fleuron_ number one was set in the
-"then fashionable" design known as Garamond; number two in Baskerville;
-numbers three and four reverted to Caslon. When Mr. Stanley Morison
-took over the editing of numbers five, six and seven, and the printing
-moved from Curwen to Cambridge, the final volumes were all set in
-Fournier.
-
-It was about this same time that William Maxwell told Shaw that his
-old Caslon plates were worn out and suggested complete resettings in
-a new Standard Edition in large crown octavo in small-pica Fournier
-1-1/2-points leaded. In the final choice of type for the Standard
-Edition, we detect again how Shaw trusted William Maxwell's judgment
-and accepted his advice. No doubt there was an improvement in
-readability over the original edition, but my own feeling is that the
-Standard Edition, as at present printed, has none of the evocative
-charm of the original edition. It may be that the Sundour binding seems
-prosaic. But Shaw, disgusted by the fading of his green covers, was
-converted to Sundour by a Winterbottom director emphasizing that not
-even the Indian sun could change it.
-
-When Shaw first saw Maxwell's specimens for the new Standard Edition
-in various type-faces, Caslon, Baskerville, Scotch Roman, Old Style
-and Fournier amongst others, he replied, "I like them all but I'll
-stick to Caslon until I die: and after I am dead you can do what you
-like." Fortunately, Shaw is still alive and the Standard Edition is in
-Fournier.[40]
-
-I cross-examined William Maxwell closely and at some length on this
-switch from Caslon to Fournier. His persuasive and peculiar ability to
-get his own way, even in face of such a do-or-die statement of Shaw's,
-must be remarked here. I am afraid, however, the only light I can
-throw on this, the greatest typographical conversion of all time, is
-that Maxwell himself is very fond of Fournier italics. Maxwell is no
-hard-headed Scot. He comes from the soft Hyperborean north, where the
-Gulf Stream makes the fuchsias grow six feet high. When he confesses
-to an affair with an elegant French type there isn't much chance for
-even an Irish author, much less the English public, to break up the
-"auld alliance." Thus Shaw's Standard Edition, now running into some
-thirty-five volumes, began publication in Fournier in 1931 and has
-steadily reprinted in this type and format at intervals ever since.
-
-In an article on "Author and Printer" in the eleventh impression of
-the ninth edition of Collins's _Authors' and Printers' Dictionary_ Dr.
-R. W. Chapman observes: "The prolixity of modern writing, fostered by
-cheap paper and print, by the habit of making books out of articles and
-lectures, by the use of typewriters and stenographers, is a positive
-evil."
-
-  [Illustration: Shaw's meticulous proofreading is indicated by this
-heavily-corrected proof of _On the Rocks_, with a complete retyping of
-                          the passage below.]
-
-Shaw's method, probably verging on the diabolical to Dr. Chapman, is to
-write everything first in shorthand. A double-spaced typescript then
-becomes his working copy, to be sent to the printer only after careful
-emendation and revision, in Shaw's always clear hand.
-
-The manuscripts, typescripts, galley, page and final press proofs,
-indeed the whole apparatus of the Shavian "workshop" in William
-Maxwell's collection, show the great pains Shaw takes in writing
-and revising before setting. His meticulous proof reading is as
-characteristic as the clarity of his proof correction. William Maxwell
-tells me that Shaw's first-proof corrections are often heavy, sometimes
-involving considerable re-setting and re-make-up. But wherever lengthy
-excisions or additions are made in final proofs, Shaw is always careful
-to supply the exact number of words; sometimes in shorter corrections
-counting individual letters in substituted words in order to avoid
-over-running and re-justification.
-
-By all the standards of Horace Hart and Howard Collins, Shaw would
-qualify as an admirable and expert author in the technical aspect of
-his relations with his printer--except, perhaps, for Dr. Chapman's
-scholarly strictures on prefatorial prolixity and diabolonian
-authorship.
-
-Shaw's plays are drafted in what he calls Author's Shorthand
-(simplified Pitman); typed by his secretary; revised; printed; and
-passed for press after two more revisions. For rehearsal, fifty copies
-are struck off as "By a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature." If
-more are required they are "By Bernard Shaw." These sets are "privately
-printed." Alterations and additions in rehearsal and during the run of
-the play are incorporated as final corrections before publication.
-
-One of the most interesting Shaw exhibits in William Maxwell's
-possession is the original of the filmscript of _Pygmalion_. Shaw
-allowed no hand but his own on the scripts of his films. The corrected
-copy of the play, with alterations in dialogue and time scheme for the
-screen and the additional scenes and sequences, is in itself remarkable
-visual evidence of Shaw's nimble-witted inventiveness. Few playwrights
-at the age of eighty-five have tackled so successfully the transition
-into another medium, cooperating with director and producer to present
-in all its freshness and verve the authentic Shavian touch on both
-sound-track and screen.
-
-The original edition, the Limited Collected edition, the Standard
-edition, form the bulk of Shaw's printed works; his printed ephemera
-are not my concern here. There are, however, various editions of what
-we might call out-of-the-run-plays-and-prefaces books: _The Intelligent
-Woman's Guide_, _Everybody's Political What's What_, the two-column
-quarto editions of the _Prefaces_ and _The Complete Plays_, the
-illustrated _Black Girl_, the illustrated _Good King Charles's Golden
-Days_ (there was also an illustrated edition of _Geneva_ printed by the
-Chiswick Press) and the illustrated Penguin edition of _Pygmalion_.
-"Omnibus" editions of the _Plays and Prefaces_ have been published by
-Odhams, cheap editions by Penguin; and _Back to Methuselah_ by the
-Oxford University Press in World's Classics. The Odhams omnibus was
-reprinted from Shaw's plates; the Penguin editions were re-set in Times.
-
-_The Intelligent Woman_ was instructed in Caslon on a page dimension
-decided by William Maxwell; a binding design by Douglas Cockerell;
-and a four-colour half-tone jacket from an original drawing by Eric
-Kennington of a nude female Intelligencer looking down a well. She,
-needless to add, had a much less shapely figure than the Black Girl.
-
-The typography of _The Intelligent Woman's Guide_ (1928) is in the
-Caslon formula. We need only note in passing that the drop initials at
-the beginning of chapters are tightly fitted and spill over into the
-margins. The binding suggests that too much Cockerell can spoil a trade
-binding. The jacket was regrettable: the externals of this book seem
-out of character with the rest of Shaw's production. A more acceptable
-popular edition, printed from the same plates, with reduced margins in
-small demy octavo, was published a year later in 1929.
-
- [Illustration: Shaw's note on the corrected _Pygmalion_ filmscript in
-  which he altered the dialogue and time scheme, providing additional
-scenes and sequences for the film as shown in the two pages following.]
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-The two-column edition of the _Complete Plays_, set in Scotch Roman
-in quarto, is a skillful piece of book-making; a pleasant, readable
-page, which William Maxwell can appropriate entirely to his own credit.
-For size, weight and general colour the Scotch Roman was eminently
-successful for all the plays in one volume, not too heavy in the hand,
-in a format which makes for easy reference and re-reading.
-
-The contrast of the two-column Fournier setting of the _Prefaces_ with
-the two-column setting of the _Complete Plays_ in Scotch Roman is to
-the advantage of the Scotch Roman. The small pica Fournier is too large
-in relation to the width of the column and, to my eye, does not look at
-all happy in this two-column setting.
-
-_Everybody's Political What's What_ provides us with an interesting
-example of the close collaboration in proof-reading between William
-Maxwell, his press-readers and Shaw. Shaw, to illustrate some argument,
-asserted erroneously that so many codfish were being caught at one
-period that great quantities were being thrown back into the sea.
-Maxwell pointed out that codfish were never thrown back into the sea;
-they are salted, dried, preserved and disposed of in many other ways.
-Shaw, hazy about varieties, intended fish in general and not codfish in
-particular.
-
-Also in this book, Shaw mentioned that when an outsider wins a race,
-book-makers lose. William Maxwell, no mean expert in the making of
-these other kinds of "books" and having absorbed, no doubt, from Edward
-Clark some knowledge and appreciation of "the sporting spirits,"
-questioned this; and innumerable letters from punters and bookies
-overloaded Shaw's letterbox. He re-worded the passage to silence the
-rule-of-thumb practitioners.
-
-We have all been afflicted from time to time in prefaces and authors'
-notes with the names of odd people who have also "read the proofs."
-There can be few authors who get the benefit of skilled press-reading
-and skilled scrutiny from a managing director so knowledgeable about
-fish and about "bookies." The codfish and "bookie" stories are an
-interesting indication of how every page of Shaw's goes through a
-double sieve at Brandon Street, such is the passion of Scots for
-accuracy in type-setting. The Scots' passion for perfection in
-press-work comes to light in this association with the production of
-_The Black Girl_.
-
-Some time prior to 1932, Shaw asked Maxwell to suggest an
-engraver-illustrator for this Voltairean tale; Maxwell suggested John
-Farleigh. With that thorough attention to detail characteristic of the
-Scot, he not only ensured that Shaw should have an illustrator capable
-of interpreting his ideas, he also took care that the engravings,
-paper and ink should all be happily matched and tested. By accepting
-full responsibility for the typography of the illustrated page, he
-undoubtedly produced an illustrated Shaw of a quality and at a price
-which was a credit to author and printer.
-
-My typographical feelings about _The Black Girl_ are mixed. The
-engravings seem rather too heavy for the Fournier setting; it may be
-an odd observation to make about a Shaw book, but the illustrations
-overload the text of this slim book; the binding is too much and too
-black. Shaw's own wash drawings of the Black Girl are much more subtle
-in suggestion than John Farleigh's white line. But there was little
-doubt about the success of _The Black Girl_ with a large public. It is
-an interesting and successful example of a short book with text and
-illustrations printed at one impression, and without any complications
-in binding.
-
-The contrast between Farleigh's sharp white line and Topolski's loose
-black squiggle in the illustrated edition of _Good King Charles's
-Golden Days_ demonstrates what I mean by the rigidity of _The Black
-Girl_ page. Shaw as an author is impossible to illustrate; he can only
-be annotated and decorated. There is an engaging light-hearted quality
-about Topolski's cosmopolitan draughtsmanship which seems to suit Shaw
-better than Farleigh's engravings.
-
-Maxwell's earliest recollection of meeting Shaw is of going to see Mrs.
-Shaw at the Adelphi about the printing of her translations of some
-plays by Brieux, the author of _Damaged Goods_. Shaw had written an
-introduction to them.
-
-In the centenary letter to William Maxwell in November 1946, Shaw
-wrote: "I remember Edward Clark very kindly and very well; but it was
-with you that our business relations developed into a cordial personal
-relationship which has been of inestimable value to me as an author...."
-
-   [Illustration: Correction in popular edition of _The Intelligent
-Woman's Guide_ showing careful count of words and letters for exact fit
-                       of substituted passage.]
-
-William Maxwell at an early stage in his career became aware of the
-printer's responsibility to the author. Clark's work for Robert Louis
-Stevenson must often have been recollected and discussed. Many other
-authors have passed through Brandon Street on their way. It is one of
-the doubtful pleasures of a book-printing establishment to deal direct
-with authors. Maxwell has had his full share of that kind of mixed
-pleasure and responsibility with Hardy, Kipling, the Webbs, Sir James
-Frazer, Hugh Walpole, Virginia Woolf, Charles Morgan, Osbert and Edith
-Sitwell.
-
-I began with an Edinburgh book-printer; I conclude with an honorary
-LL.D. of Edinburgh University. In 1947 that ancient University
-conferred on William Maxwell that honour which he values above any
-personal recognition. It was a deserved compliment to R. & R. Clark and
-to Scottish printing as a whole.
-
-No man is self-made; but so far as any one individual can by his own
-efforts raise the standard of his trade, the renown of his firm and add
-to the lustre of his native city, Dr. William Maxwell has done so by
-his devoted and sedulous years in the service of many authors and many
-publishers....
-
-This inadequate typographical report is in no sense intended to be
-either accurate or inclusive. Nor do I make any claim for startling
-innovations in graphic design or any particularly noteworthy
-contributions to typography. This productive association has covered
-fifty of the most inventive years in the mechanical development of
-book-printing; Bernard Shaw himself wrote, "I have not had to think
-about my printing. I have left it to do itself, which means that R. &
-R. Clark had to do it." All the same he thought a lot about it.
-
-I may well conclude with the final paragraph of Shaw's letter to
-William Maxwell of November 1946. "Long may you and R. & R. Clark Ltd.
-flourish after we have said our last farewell which we shall both, I
-hope, be still too busy to attend to."
-
-                      COMPOSED IN CALEDONIA TYPES
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[39] Two excerpts are included in this book, see pages 86 and 87.
-
-[40] A specimen page from _The Devil's Disciple_ is shown on page 386.
-
-
-
-
-              [Illustration]PAUL A. BENNETT[Illustration]
-
-                       _On Type Faces For Books_
-
-
-It is simple enough to understand that type, paper and ink are
-components of book printing. But not so easy to comprehend the reasons
-for the variety of papers available, nor the many dozens of type faces
-offered for book composition.
-
-The reasons for this great variety are partly functional, partly
-aesthetic, and competitive. Papers differ in many ways--color, finish,
-opacity, strength and bulk are some of them.
-
-Type faces differ, too, and for equally valid reasons. There are the
-important design and style differences that comprise the old style,
-transitional and modern faces suitable for books. And distinctions in
-weight or "color"; distinctions in roundness, in degree of compactness,
-and distinctions in legibility, and in size.
-
-To the designer of books, type face selection is important in relation
-to the character of the text to be printed. The size of type selected,
-and the amount of "leading," or space between its lines, has a bearing
-upon the number of pages the manuscript will make.
-
-Some shorter manuscripts, for instance, need to be "driven out" or
-padded, to make the book appear greater in content than it actually is,
-to justify its price. Others need every possible degree of compression
-to get the manuscript into a lesser number of pages, which, in turn,
-means fewer "forms" to print, fewer "signatures" to bind, and less
-paper to use.
-
-To turn from the functional use of type to the aesthetic, and also make
-a rather loose analogy, one may think of the type face as a garment
-with which the designer dresses the author's words.
-
-In this instance the designer selects a type face to develop an
-"allusive" format--to reflect something of the style of the period
-of the manuscript. Bruce Rogers, the greatest master of allusive
-book-making, in his "Paragraphs on Printing" points out that in a small
-way this is "like planning the stage setting for a play.
-
-"An up-to-date style for an ancient text would compare with staging
-_Hamlet_ in modern dress. However novel and effective in its own way,
-you feel it to be strange, and this sense of strangeness is an annoying
-distraction; you are forced to think of the setting and the designer
-rather than the text."
-
-It is easier to suggest a feminine appeal with types like Estienne
-or Fairfield or Garamond, than with less decorative faces such as
-Baskerville, Bodoni or Janson. Yet it is foolish to go too far in this
-direction. Strictly speaking, there are no definitely feminine or
-masculine types--the way type is handled has much to do with the mood
-it evokes. And it is dangerous to pin labels on types without knowing a
-great deal of their background and derivation.
-
-The idea of using many distinguished types for the composition of this
-book was deliberate: The intent was to demonstrate, on a uniform paper
-surface and under identical printing conditions, the "behavior" of
-twenty of the finest types of our time.
-
-And to afford a basis for comparison that might not only illumine some
-of the points mentioned, but also provide reference specimens of these
-notable book faces. To that end, a complete alphabet showing in caps
-and lower-case of each face is included, with a brief account of its
-background and development.
-
-Not every essay will be equally appealing, typographically. Yet the
-variety of faces used in setting them seems more successful than would
-be the less sensitive treatment of uniform typography. Reading the
-articles and studying the performance of the individual types should
-provide an increased appreciation of the part typography plays in
-developing the book's format.
-
-In this present instance, the designer has chosen one basic
-"background" face, Janson, for the majority of the essays. And has
-"interleaved," so to speak, many of the essays set in different types.
-This treatment lessens any tendency toward uneven color and spottiness,
-and minimizes some of the potential "scrap book" feel of many differing
-type specimens.
-
-The problem of coupling face with essay was carefully considered. There
-could be none but the obvious selection of the author's own design
-in connection with five of the essays: Electra for W. A. Dwiggins'
-"Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books"; Perpetua for
-Eric Gill's "Typography"; Times Roman for Stanley Morison's "First
-Principles of Typography"; Deepdene for Frederic Goudy's "Types
-and Type Design"; and Centaur for the extracts from Bruce Rogers'
-_Paragraphs on Printing_.
-
-Some background on the type selections for other essays may be of
-interest: Monticello, a recutting of one of the earliest American
-types, was a natural and excellent choice for Lawrence Wroth's "First
-Work with American Types," as was Bembo, one of Beatrice Warde's
-favorite faces for her "Printing Should Be Invisible." Bell, which
-Mr. Updike was one of the first to use with distinction--he called it
-Mountjoye when he acquired it in 1903--was the choice for his "Some
-Tendencies in Modern Typography."
-
-The selection of Poliphilus for Sir Francis Meynell's "Some Collectors
-Read" seemed appropriate in recognition of the many fine Nonesuch
-books he had set in English Monotype faces; while that of Baskerville
-for John Winterich's essay on Franklin as printer and publisher was
-because Baskerville was a type Franklin greatly admired. Caledonia, an
-original Dwiggins face influenced by Scotch Roman, was the more subtle
-choice for Scot printer James Shand's revealing account of George
-Bernard Shaw's relations with his printer--more appropriate to Shand's
-preference and background, than would have been the choice of Caslon or
-Fournier, in which Shaw's books have been set.
-
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-The brief mention of old style, transitional and modern faces may need
-amplification. And also the descriptive terms Linotype and Monotype,
-which are trade-marked words that indicate _methods_ of composition.
-
-In _Linotype_, the product is an actual line of type, called "slug"
-in printer's parlance. This is produced by one machine, from matrices
-assembled through finger action on a keyboard. In operation, the
-assembled line moves to the mold for casting and the matrices are then
-returned (distributed) to their channels in the magazine for use in
-other lines.
-
-In _Monotype_, the product is individual pieces of type--letters and
-spaces assembled into a line of many elements, as in hand type. The
-Monotype machine consists of two units: the keyboard (which resembles
-a type-writer) punches holes in a roll of paper, not unlike that in
-a player piano. This roll is then fed into the casting unit, where
-it functions by controlling levers which bring the matrix of each
-character into position for casting letters and spaces in sequence in
-the lines.
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-The distinctions between type faces called old style, transitional
-_or_ modern, are apparent at a glance to the technician. Just as,
-for instance, you distinguish instantly between a Scandinavian, a
-Latin-American, or a Mongolian. Analysis may indicate that the chief
-factor in your instant recognition of these types is memory of features.
-
-So too in type faces. Here the differences are more minute, and
-essentially a matter of design distinctions: the weight and relation
-of thick and thin strokes, the treatment and stress of curves, and the
-handling of "serifs." There is little difference in the actual shapes
-of letters, which is as it should be.
-
-One of the more lucid accounts of the development of letter forms is W.
-A. Dwiggins' "The Shapes of Roman Letters," included in his _Mss. by
-WAD_. Illustrations from this minor classic are used here by permission.
-
-Remember that most of the letter forms we meet are modifications of
-written letters, shaped by pen action. Some differences in the details
-of serif treatment are indicated by these Dwiggins drawings:
-
-                            [Illustration]
-                      _a_     _b_    _c_    _d_
-
-_a_ shows a commonly designed serif detail, much better handled by
-natural pen action in _b_. The arch of a letter, frequently handled in
-type as _c_, is more crisp and attractive in _d_, the natural pen form.
-
-In type, serifs help carry the eye in a horizontal direction, a
-designer friend points out, setting up a "flow" from letter to letter
-within the word, and from word to word across the line.
-
-                           [Illustration]
-                         _e_           _f_
-
-Contrast the "degenerate, commonly used" form of o shown in _e_, with
-the more attractive pen form in _f_. Here is graphic distinction in the
-treatment and stress of curves.
-
-The two most common classes of type faces are "old style" and "modern."
-The "transitional," a merging of the old style form into the modern--is
-typified by the illustration of Bulmer, between the Janson and Bodoni
-specimens used for the visual presentation on page 404.
-
-Our old style faces descend from the early Italian Roman types and
-differ in minor details and "national" characteristics. Among the old
-style faces used in this book are Bembo and Centaur, which reflect
-the Italian form; Estienne, Granjon and Garamond, which reflect the
-French form; Caslon and Janson, typical of the English-Dutch form; and
-Fairfield and Times Roman, as differing expressions of contemporary old
-style types.
-
-Modern faces, the result of a swing of taste in the opposite
-direction, stemmed from an effort to copy in type the letters of
-eighteenth-century copper-plate engravers. Bodoni, the classic form of
-the modern, is included in its lighter rendering, named Bodoni Book.
-The first English modern, named Bell, is also included; together with
-two contemporary moderns, the Dwiggins-designed Electra and Caledonia
-faces, cut by Linotype. All three are less severe than Bodoni and
-retain elements of the transitional form in some letters.
-
-The two really transitional faces included are the classic Baskerville,
-and Monticello, which verges somewhat more to the old style character.
-
-"Letters," as Mr. Dwiggins illustrates graphically, "are made out of
-thick 'stems,' thin 'hair-lines,' loops and 'serifs,' or finishing
-strokes."
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-How the variations that produce the different styles of Roman types
-actually came about is easily understood by seeing how the nib of the
-pen is slanted to write an old style letter like Caslon (_g_), as
-against holding it at right angles to the written line for the modern
-letter, such as Scotch (_h_):
-
-                          [Illustration]
-                            _g_    _h_
-
-Differences in curve and finish are a natural result of these two pen
-positions.
-
-As Mr. Dwiggins explains: "In writing lower-case 'a,' for example, the
-stroke begins at the little bulb at the upper left-hand corner, passes
-over the arch at the top, descends to form the straight stem, and
-finishes with an upward flick; a second motion forms the loop. As the
-line moves, it swells and thins in accordance with the shape of the pen
-and the direction of the movement.
-
-                        [Illustration]
-                          _i_    _j_
-
-"In the Caslon letter (_i_), the swelling at the top begins at the bulb
-or dot; the arch expands throughout its whole curve; the loop has a
-decided tilt, as has the finishing stroke.
-
-"In the Scotch letter (_j_), the arch is a thin line; the expansion
-does not begin until the downward stroke of the stem; the swelling of
-the loop is at right angles to the line of writing, and the letter ends
-with a perpendicular flick.
-
-"In the 'b,' one notices the difference in the loops and in the serifs
-at the tops of the letters.
-
-                      [Illustration]
-                         _k_   _l_
-
-"The typical 'old style' serif at the top (_k_) tilts as the pen is
-tilted; the loop is a tilted sweep of the slanted pen; while the serif
-and loop of the 'modern' letter (_l_) partake of the perpendicular
-position of the pen. These characteristics of tilt or perpendicularity
-appear in all the lower-case letters and to a limited extent in the
-capitals."
-
-To check the distinctions in different characters in the following
-twenty types, a magnifying glass will be helpful.
-
-"The artistic quality of a type letter," Mr. Dwiggins concludes, "is
-determined by its degree of grace of line and proportion. The standards
-of grace and proportion are to be looked for in the natural motions
-of the pen. But the quality called art is dependent, too, upon the
-artist's appreciation of the material in which he works--namely metal.
-The draughtsman does not attempt to copy _exactly_ the form of his
-pen-written model, but modifies the pen form to a shape suitable to its
-final state--that of a metal punch."
-
-
-
-
-               NOTES ON THE TYPE FACES USED IN THIS BOOK
-                         _By Paul A. Bennett_
-
-
- NOTE: The following specimens are set in a 10 point type size, except
- Centaur, in 14 point, and Eldorado, in 11 point, which were the only
- sizes available for this book.
-
-
-BASKERVILLE, the fine transitional face named for the
-eighteenth-century English printer, is available in several
-contemporary versions. The Linotype cutting used here, most faithful
-to the original Roman, was produced from a complete font cast from
-the original matrices, exhumed at Paris in 1929. For twenty years
-Baskerville has been a favored type with American book-makers.
-
-  [Illustration: BASKERVILLE was used for setting _Benjamin Franklin:
-                 Printer and Publisher_, pp. 352-367.]
-
-BELL, the fine English transitional-modern, was cut by Richard Austin
-about 1788 for John Bell, a leading English book and newspaper
-publisher. The English Monotype version used here was reproduced
-in 1931 from the original punches, then in possession of the
-Stephenson-Blake foundry in Sheffield. Bruce Rogers used the type
-(calling it Brimmer) for many fine Riverside Press books.
-
-  [Illustration: BELL was used for setting _Some Tendencies in Modern
-                       Typography_, pp. 306-312.]
-
-BEMBO, the fine Venetian old face, is a revival by English Monotype
-of one of the earliest Aldine romans. That was cut before 1500 by
-Francesco Griffo of Bologna, the designer responsible for the first
-Italic type a half-dozen years later, and named for Pietro Bembo, the
-humanist scholar (later Cardinal and secretary to Pope Leo X), whose
-_De Aetna_ was printed by Aldus in 1495.
-
-     [Illustration: BEMBO was used for setting _Printing Should Be
-                       Invisible_, pp. 109-114.]
-
-BODONI BOOK, a light weight rendering of the popular A.T.F. Bodoni, is
-widely used in the United States for book and periodical composition.
-Introduced in 1910, it is not a copy of the types of the great Italian,
-Giambattista Bodoni, but rather a version retaining his principle of
-modern letter design. The lessened degree of contrast between its thick
-and thin lines make it gain in reading ease.
-
-  [Illustration: BODONI BOOK was used for setting _Harsh Words_,
-                           pp. 321-336.]
-
-CALEDONIA, a contemporary Linotype face designed by W. A. Dwiggins,
-was inspired by the work of Scotch type-founders, in particular by a
-lighter weight, more slender transitional face cut by William Martin
-for Bulmer around 1790. Christened for its forebears, Caledonia
-resembles neither--though it has touches of both Bulmer's Martin and
-Wilson's Scotch, and also "something of the simple, hard-working,
-feet-on-the-ground quality of Scotch Modern."
-
-  [Illustration: CALEDONIA was used for setting _Author and Printer:
-                  G.B.S. and R. & R. C._, pp. 381-401.]
-
-CASLON, the great eighteenth-century English old style, has suffered
-more from "improvement and refinement" by succeeding generations of
-type founders than most celebrated types. A development based on Dutch
-models rather than an original creation, Caslon has been eloquently
-termed "the finest vehicle for the printed conveyance of English speech
-that the art of the punch-cutter has yet devised." Monotype's excellent
-rendering used here (No. 337) reflects the essential qualities of the
-original.
-
-  [Illustration: CASLON was used for setting _Typographic Debut_, pp.
-                 78-82 and _Metal-Flowers_, pp. 83-84.]
-
-CENTAUR, a distinguished Italian Renaissance face designed by Bruce
-Rogers, was cut by Robert Wiebking of Chicago in 1914, in the 14 point
-size. Its first use by BR was in a limited edition of De Guerin's _The
-Centaur_, printed at Carl Rollins' Montague Press. The face, recut by
-English Monotype in 1929, seemed to D. B. Updike to be "one of the best
-Roman founts yet designed in America." The Italic is Arrighi, designed
-by Frederic Warde, used since there is no Centaur Italic.
-
- [Illustration: CENTAUR was used for setting _Paragraphs On Printing_,
- pp. 281-289, and _B.R.: Adventurer With Type Ornament_, pp. 290-305.]
-
-DEEPDENE, designed and cut by Frederic W. Goudy in 1927, was named
-for his estate at Marlboro-on-Hudson. In his _A Half Century of Type
-Design_, Mr. Goudy mentions the face was "suggested by a Dutch type
-(the Lutetia of Van Krimpen) which had just been introduced ... but as
-with some of my previous designs, I soon got away from my exemplar to
-follow a line of my own." The Monotype recutting, done later, is used
-here.
-
- [Illustration: DEEPDENE was used for setting _Types and Type Design_,
-                             pp. 267-273.]
-
-ELDORADO, the latest Linotype face designed by W. A. Dwiggins, was
-developed through the war years and completed in 1951. It was suggested
-by an uncommonly compact and distinctive eighteenth-century face
-used in Madrid by the Spanish printer, DeSancha. In no sense a copy,
-Eldorado retains in its letter anatomy something of the treatment
-of curves, arches and junctions that brought distinction to its
-antecedent, as well as flavor of Spanish typographic tradition.
-
-[Illustration: ELDORADO was used for setting _What is a Private Press_,
-                             pp. 175-181.]
-
-ELECTRA, an original modern, designed for Linotype by W. A. Dwiggins,
-reflects the warmth and distinction of his personal lettering. The
-effort was to work into Electra letter shapes, where possible, some
-of the twentieth-century spirit: electricity, high-speed steel,
-streamlined curves, the readers' familiarity with newspaper and
-type-writer faces ... to develop letters filled with energy, human
-warmth and personality. Electra is available with either an oblique
-Roman lower-case companion form, or the more familiar cursive.
-
-  [Illustration: ELECTRA was used for setting the _Investigation Into
-   the Physical Properties of Books_, pp. 129-144 and _Twenty Years
-                         After_, pp. 145-152.]
-
-EMERSON was designed by Joseph Blumenthal and cut by Monotype in
-England in 1934. The face is a duplicate of his Spiral Press type,
-designed several years earlier and cut for him by Louis Hoell in
-Frankfort, Germany, in 1931. This face was initially used for a
-limited edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on _Nature_, printed
-on a hand press at Croton Falls in 1932, and privately published. The
-accompanying Emerson Italic was designed in 1936.
-
-  [Illustration: EMERSON was used for setting _Typography of William
-                         Morris_, pp. 233-238.]
-
-FAIRFIELD, a slightly decorative, original and contemporary old style,
-was designed for Linotype by Rudolph Ruzicka, the distinguished
-American wood engraver. Sharply cut, as though the letters came from
-the artist's graver rather than pen, Fairfield was designed for reading
-by "one of the most knowledgeable men in the country about letter forms
-and their style." To invite continuous reading, the designer feels,
-"type must have a subtle degree of interest and variety of design."
-
- [Illustration: FAIRFIELD was used for setting _The Fun and Fury of a
-                     Private Press_, pp. 220-225.]
-
-GARAMOND was introduced in America by ATF in 1919, when their cutting,
-based on the _caractères de l'Université_ of the Imprimerie Nationale,
-appeared. Since, at least eight other versions have been made: by the
-English and American Linotype and Monotype, by Intertype, Ludlow, and
-the Stempel foundry. A documented article considering the XVI and
-XVII sources of the Garamond types, by Paul Beaujon, appeared in _The
-Fleuron_, V. This version is the American Monotype.
-
-[Illustration: GARAMOND was used for setting _Colophons_, pp. 31-44.]
-
-GILL SANS, designed by Eric Gill in 1928, was patterned after lettering
-done for the Douglas Cleverdon book-shop in Bristol. First offered by
-English Monotype as a titling font (caps, figures and points only), the
-lower-case was added as the face grew in favor. Today, Gill is the most
-popular sans serif in England. It ranges through a variety of weights,
-including light, normal, heavy, extra heavy, and shadow and outline
-display and condensed versions.
-
-    [Illustration: GILL SANS was used for setting _Notes on Modern
-                        Printing_, pp. 350-351.]
-
-GRANJON was designed for Linotype by the late George W. Jones, one of
-England's greatest printers. It is neither a copy of a classic face nor
-an original creation, but rather something between the two, with its
-basic design stemming from classic Garamond sources. An exceedingly
-compact and useful old style, Granjon is exceptionally clear in
-small sizes. Its space-saving virtues are important in the book and
-periodical field.
-
-  [Illustration: GRANJON was used for setting _Printers as Men of the
-                          World_, pp. 88-102.]
-
-JANSON, the distinguished seventeenth-century old style face, is
-presumed Dutch in origin. It was issued by Anton Janson, a Leipsic
-punch-cutter and type-founder, between 1660 and 1687. Little is known
-of Janson to supplement his first type specimen issued in 1675. The
-original matrices, bought in Holland from the heirs of Edling, Janson's
-successor, are possessed by the Stempel foundry in Frankfort, Germany.
-The Linotype recutting of Janson was made from type cast from the
-original matrices.
-
-[Illustration: JANSON was used for setting all the essays in this book
-              excepting those indicated in other faces.]
-
-MONTICELLO is a recutting of the famous Binny & Ronaldson Roman No. 1,
-a distinguished early American face cut in 1796 in Philadelphia. Type
-cast from the original matrices by A. T. F. has been favored for years
-by such discriminating printers as D. B. Updike, Fred Anthoensen and
-the Grabhorns. Linotype's remodeling of the type for modern use was
-named for the _Papers of Thomas Jefferson_, a fifty-volume publishing
-project by Princeton, for which the face was adopted.
-
-  [Illustration: MONTICELLO was used for setting the _First Work With
-                      American Types_, pp. 65-77.]
-
-PERPETUA was designed by Eric Gill, the eminent English sculptor and
-maker of letters with pen, chisel and graver. Mr. Gill's account of
-his type (cut in England): "from drawings made by me. Those drawings
-were not made with special reference to typography--they were simply
-drawn with brush and ink. For the typographical quality of the fount,
-as also for the remarkably fine and precise cutting of the punches, the
-Monotype Corporation is to be praised."
-
-[Illustration: PERPETUA was used for setting _Typography_, pp. 257-266.]
-
-POLIPHILUS is a literal reproduction of the Aldine Roman used in the
-_Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ in 1499, cut by Francesco Griffo. The
-recutting, by the English Monotype organization in 1923 (from sheets of
-the book) was attempted with the thought of providing a type to convey
-an old-world atmosphere appropriate for reprinting fifteenth-century
-classics. The accompanying Italic, named _Blado_, was the first of a
-number of Chancery italics to come from European type-founders.
-
-[Illustration: POLIPHILUS was used for setting _Some Collectors Read_,
-                             pp. 191-211.]
-
-TIMES ROMAN was designed by Stanley Morison for the London _Times_,
-and first used in that great newspaper. Its masculine simplicity,
-directness of design and excellent color makes it exceptionally useful
-for periodicals and general commercial work. The basic design objective
-of maximum legibility in minimum space has resulted in the larger
-letter-structure that makes each point size seem the equivalent of a
-size larger in most other types.
-
- [Illustration: TIMES ROMAN was used for setting _The First Principles
-                     of Typography_, pp. 239-251.]
-
-
-
-
-                                 INDEX
-
-
-  Adler, Elmer, 221
-
-  advertising card, 160-61, 167, 168
-
-  _Aesop_ (Parma, 1483), 57
-
-  Aldine Poets series, 156
-
-  Aldine type face, 241
-    Italic, 274
-
-  Aldus; _see_ Manutius, Aldus
-
-  alphabet
-    Greek, 4-14
-    Hebrew, 13-14
-    letters of, 6-13
-    Phoenician, 4-14
-    Roman, 4-14
-    sources of, 3-14
-
-  American Institute of Graphic Arts, xiv, 170
-    "Fifty Books of the Year," 165, 321-22
-    Trade Book Clinic, 164, 165
-
-  American Type Founders Co., 254
-
-  Ames, Joseph, _Typographical Antiquities_, 38, 78
-
-  Anabat, 154
-
-  Anne of Austria, 105
-
-  Anthoensen, Fred, 419
-
-  Antigone Greek type, 207
-
-  Apollo Press, 384
-
-  appendix, 163
-
-  Applegarth, Augustus, 27
-
-  Armitage, Merle, xii-xiv, 319
-    _Notes on Modern Printing_, 350
-
-  Arnoullet, Balthazar, 60
-
-  Arrighi type face, 414
-
-  Arrivabene, Georgius, 53
-
-  Ashbee, C. R., _The Private Press_, 180
-
-  Ashendene Press, 181, 188, 215
-    _Bibliography_, 181
-    _Virgil_, 209
-
-  Austin, Richard, 92, 99, 411
-
-
-  back matter, 163-64
-
-  Bagford, John, 64
-
-  Bailey, Francis, 76
-
-  Baldwin, Stanley, 197 n.
-
-  Barker-Mill, Peter, 218
-
-  _Barnacles from Many Bottoms_, 297
-
-  Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (Chicago), 254, 369
-
-  Bartlett, Edward E., 164
-
-  Baskerville, John, 60, 64, 92, 98, 186
-    letter-spacing of, 287-88
-
-  Baskerville type face, 155-56, 244, 404
-    specimen, 411
-
-  bastard title, 160, 168
-
-  Bauhaus School, typography of, 306-7, 319
-
-  Bay, Jacob, 69-77
-
-  Bayer, Herbert, xii, xiv
-
-  Beaujon, Paul, 417
-
-  Becker, Carl L., 363
-
-  Begg, John, xiv
-
-  Beilenson, Peter, xiii, 164, 165, 168
-    _Graphic Forms_, 313
-
-  Bell, John, 92, 411
-    _British Poets_, 100, 384
-    _British Theatre_, 78, 384
-    career of, 99-100
-
-  Bell type face, 403
-    specimen, 411
-
-  Belloc, Hilaire, 192
-
-  Bembo, Pietro, 53, 94, 412
-
-  Bembo type face, 403
-    specimen, 412
-
-  Beneti, Cyprian, 41
-
-  Bennett, Arnold, 203
-
-  Bennett, Paul A., xv, 290
-
-  Bensley, Thomas, 92
-
-  Benton, Linn Boyd, 254
-
-  Benton, Morris Fuller, 254
-
-  Berghen, Adrien van, 46, 48
-
-  Bernard, St., _Sermones_ (1481), 44
-
-  Berners, Juliana, comp., _Book of St. Albans_, 107
-
-  Berthelet, Thomas, 50
-
-  Besant, Walter, 387
-
-  Bible
-    Estienne, 97
-    first printed, 183-84
-    German (1478), 18
-    Gutenberg, 226-27
-    Latin (1456), 18
-    Plantin polyglot, 96
-    printing monopoly in England, 184 n.
-    Rogers _World_, 302-4
-    Sower's German, 67, 70
-    Vulgate (Venice, 1487), 53
-
-  bibliography, 163
-
-  binding, 119
-
-  binding, limp vellum, 230
-
-  Binny, Archibald, 76
-
-  Binny & Ronaldson (Philadelphia), 77, 252, 419
-
-  Birrell, Francis, 199
-
-  black-letter
-    Gutenberg, 274-76
-    modern, 241
-
-  Black Sun Press, 319
-
-  Blado, Antonio, 54
-
-  Blado Italic type face, 54, 420
-
-  Blaeu, Willem J., 89
-
-  Blumenthal, Joseph, 164, 165
-    Emerson, 255, 416
-
-  Blunt, Wilfrid, 192
-
-  Bocard, Andrieu, 41
-
-  Bodoni, Giambattista, 60, 64, 92, 98
-    _Manuale Tipografico_ (1818), 276
-
-  Bodoni Book type face
-    specimen, 412
-
-  Bodoni's 'soprasilvio,' 276-78, 284, 287
-
-  Bologna, Francesco da, 92
-
-  book, anatomy of; _see under individual headings_
-
-  book design, principles of, 115-28, 281-89, 350-51
-
-  _Book of St. Albans_, 107
-
-  Bourdillon, F. W., 79
-
-  Boydell, John, _Shakespeare_, 78
-
-  Braby, Dorothea, 218
-
-  Bradbury & Evans, 157
-
-  Bradford, Andrew, 356-57, 362
-
-  Bradford, William, 356, 358
-
-  Bradley, J. W., _Dictionary of Miniaturists_, 40
-
-  Bradley, Will, 253, 291
-
-  Bradley type face, 253
-
-  Bridges, Robert, 238
-
-  Brimmer type face, 411
-
-  Browning, Robert, 192
-
-  Buckland-Wright, John, 218
-
-  Buell, Abel, 65-66, 68, 71-73, 252, 255
-
-  Bull of Pius IX (Mainz, 1463), 42, 53
-
-  Bulmer, William, 92, 100, 413
-
-  Burn & Oates, 194, 196
-
-  Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 233, 236, 238
-
-
-  Caledonia type face, 255, 404
-    specimen, 413
-
-  Calkins, Earnest Elmo, 368
-
-  calligraphy, 255, 337-43
-    defined, 337-38
-
-  Cambridge University Press, 51, 158, 184 n., 185, 291
-
-  Campbell, Dr. William J., _Collection of Franklin Imprints_, 354, 357,
-    360, 365
-
-  Canstein, Baron von, 29
-
-  Capell, Edward, _Prolusions_, 78
-
-  capital letters, 257-61
-
-  Cary, Mary, _Diary_, 197
-
-  Caslon, William, 63, 64, 89, 92
-
-  Caslon type face, 142, 156, 195, 204, 241, 254, 391
-    rediscovery of, 318
-    Shaw's preference for, 390
-    specimen, 413
-
-  Catherine de Médici, 106
-
-  Catherine the Great, 106
-
-  Caxton, William, 19, 29, 42, 49, 89, 92, 184-85
-    _Dictes or Sayengis_, 19, 80
-
-  Caxton Club, 33
-
-  Centaur type face, 220, 255-56, 403
-    specimen, 414
-
-  Central Type Foundry (St. Louis), 253
-
-  _Century Dictionary_, 34
-
-  Champollion, J. F., 3
-
-  Chapman, Dr. R. W., 392, 394
-
-  Chappe, Paulinus, 18
-
-  Charlemagne, 12
-
-  Charles, Thomas, 29
-
-  Cheltenham type face, 254
-
-  Chesterfield, Earl of (Philip Stanhope), 90
-
-  Chiswick Press, 217
-
-  Christie, E. D., 95
-
-  _Chronicles of the londe of England_, 40
-
-  Cicero, _Epistolae_ (Venice, 1469), 40
-
-  Clark, Edward, relations with Shaw, 382-401
-
-  Clark, Robert, 384-85
-
-  Clark, R. & R., Shaw's printer, 381-401
-
-  Claudin, Anatole, 176
-
-  Cleland, T. M., xiii, 112-13
-    _Harsh Words_, xi, 321
-    type ornaments, 297, 299
-
-  Cleve, Johann von, _Cantiones_, 42
-
-  Cloister type face, 254
-
-  Cobbett, William, _Rural Rides_, 208
-
-  Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., 180-81, 188, 229, 388
-
-  Cockerell, Douglas, 395
-
-  Cockerell, Sir Sydney, 233
-
-  Coleridge, S. T., _Table Talk_, 157
-
-  Colines, Simon, 185
-
-  Collins, F. H., _Authors' and Printers' Dictionary_, 392
-
-  Collins, Howard, 394
-
-  Colman, Morris, 164, 166-67
-
-  colophon, 32-44, 52
-    defined, 32-38
-    examples of, 38-42, 44
-
-  composition, defined, 242
-
-  Conkwright, P. J., 164, 166
-
-  Conrad, Joseph, 116
-
-  Cooper, Oswald, 254
-
-  Copland, Robert, 185
-
-  copyright, notice of, 161, 166, 167, 168
-
-  Coward, Noel, 208
-
-  Cowper, Edward, 26-27
-
-  Croce, Benedetto, _Autobiography_, 312
-
-  Crompton, 26
-
-  Currer, Mrs. Richardson, 107
-
-  Currie, Kent, 272
-
-
-  Daniel, Rev. C. H. O., 178, 187
-
-  Daniel Press, 187, 234, 238
-
-  Darton, F. J. H.; _see_ Sawyer, C. J.
-
-  Davies, Peter, 208
-
-  Davis, Southwick, 379
-
-  Dawson, Thomas, 51
-
-  Day, John, 50, 80
-
-  Daye, Matthew, 97
-
-  Daye, Stephen, 97
-
-  _Deceyte of Women, The_, 53, 61
-
-  Decretals of Gregory IX (Rome, 1474), 41
-
-  dedication, 161-62, 166-68
-
-  Deepdene type face, 223, 403
-    specimen, 414
-
-  de La Haye, Corneille, 60
-
-  Dent, J. M., 157
-
-  DeSancha, Antonio, 415
-
-  De Vinne, Theodore Low, x, 31
-    _Notable Printers of Italy_, 279
-    _Plain Printing Types_, 370
-    _Treatise on Title-pages_, 42-43, 274
-
-  De Vinne type face, 253
-
-  Diamond Classics, 156, 236
-
-  Diane de Poitiers, 106
-
-  Dibdin, T. F., 104
-
-  _Dictionary of American Biography_, 363
-
-  Didot, Firmin, 26
-    career, 100
-
-  Didot, François Ambroise, 92
-
-  Didot family, 64, 90, 92, 101
-
-  _Diui Athanasii_ (Paris, 1500), 41
-
-  Dolet, Etienne, 94-96
-
-  Donaldson, Alexander, 384
-
-  Dorici brothers, 53
-
-  double-page spread, 168
-
-  Doves Press, 117, 180, 188, 229
-
-  Du Barry, Countesse, 105
-
-  du Bois, Simon, _Hours_ (1527), 154
-
-  Dunlap, John, 76
-
-  Dunster, Henry, 98
-
-  Dunster, Mrs. Henry, 98
-
-  Dürer, Albrecht, 55, 92, 275, 277
-
-  Dwiggins, W. A., x
-    Caledonia, 255, 413
-    Eldorado, 415
-    Electra, 255, 415
-    _MSS by WAD_, 129, 405
-    "Shapes of Roman Letters," 405-7
-
-  Dyck, Christoffel van, 92
-
-
-  Edinburgh, publishing history of, 384-85
-
-  Ege, Otto, ix, 3
-
-  Eldorado type face, specimen, 415
-
-  Electra type face, 255-56, 403
-    specimen, 415
-
-  Elizabeth, Queen, 105-6
-
-  Elzevir family, 60, 92, 97
-
-  Emerson type face, 255-56
-    specimen, 416
-
-  _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 35, 227, 239, 338
-    first edition, 384
-
-  engraving
-    for illustration, 218
-    invention of, 25
-
-  Enschedé Foundry, 221-22
-
-  Erasmus, Desiderius, 94
-    _Adagia_, 29
-    _Colloquia Familiaria_, 29
-
-  Essex House Press, 180
-
-  Estienne, Robert, 94 n.
-    career, 96-97
-
-  Estienne family, 92, 96 n., 185
-
-  Eugene, Prince of Savoy, 211
-
-  Evans, Sir Arthur, 4
-
-  Eve, Clovis, 105
-
-  Eve, Nicolas, 105
-
-  _Exercitium super Pater Noster_, 23
-
-
-  Fairfield type face, 255-56
-
-  Fairfield type faces, specimen, 416
-
-  Faques, William, 50
-
-  Farjeon, Herbert, 209
-
-  Farleigh, John, 399
-
-  Fell types, 178, 187, 196
-
-  Fichet, Guillaume, 153-54
-
-  Field and Tuer, 157
-
-  Figgins, Vincent, 92
-
-  Fine, Oronce, _Quadrans Astrolabicus_, 56
-
-  Finley, John, 378
-
-  _Fleuron, The_, x, 388, 391, 417
-
-  Flower, Desmond, 100, 153
-
-  Ford, Paul Leicester, _Many-Sided Franklin_, 354-55, 362, 363-64
-
-  foreword; _see_ preface
-
-  format; _see_ book design
-
-  Foulis, Andrew, 186
-
-  Foulis, Robert, 186
-
-  Fournier, P. S., 57, 59, 64
-
-  Fournier family, 92
-
-  Fournier type face, Shaw's choice of, 392
-
-  Fox, Emmanuel, 70, 76
-
-  Fox, Justus, 67-77
-
-  _Fragment of World Judgment_, 18
-
-  François I, 49, 94-95, 97
-
-  Franklin, Benjamin, 29
-    _Autobiography_, 366
-    career, 101-2; as printer, 352-67
-    _Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity_, 359
-    epitaph, 366-67
-    and Hall, 365
-    imprints, 357, 361, 364, 366
-    "Improvement of Printing Backwards," 227
-    _New England Courant_, 355-56
-    _Pennsylvania Gazette_, 362
-    _Poor Richard_ almanacs, 362-63
-
-  Franklin, Deborah Read, 362
-
-  Franklin, James, 353-56, 358, 362-63
-    imprints, 354-55
-
-  Franklin, Josiah, 352-53
-
-  _Freeman's Oath, The_, 97-98
-
-  Froben, Johann, 62
-
-  front matter
-    elements of, 160-63, 166-68
-    typography of, 246-49
-
-  Fuhrmann, Dr. Otto, 224
-
-  Funk & Wagnalls' _Standard Dictionary_, 34
-
-  Fust, Johann, 18, 38-39, 42, 49, 53, 91, 92, 183
-
-
-  Galesburg imprint, 378-80
-
-  Galloway, Joseph, 74
-
-  Garamond, Claude, 92, 93, 276
-
-  Garamond type face, 62, 223, 256
-    specimen, 417
-
-  Gardiner, Thomas, 51
-
-  Garnett, David, and Nonesuch Press, 191, 198-99, 205, 209
-
-  Garnett, Porter, xiii, 115, 178
-
-  Garnett, Richard, 37-38
-
-  Garvin, J. L., 194
-
-  Gaunt, Sydney, 254
-
-  _Geistliches Magazien, Ein_, 67-69, 71
-
-  Geminus, Thomas, _Anatomy_, 57
-
-  Gentry, Helen, _Chronology_, 91
-
-  Gering, Ulrich, 154
-
-  _Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke_, 31
-
-  Gibbings, Robert, 218
-
-  Gilgamesh, epic of, 214
-
-  Gill, Eric, xiii, 218, 257, 417
-    Perpetua, 419
-
-  Gill Sans type face, specimen, 417
-
-  Glick, Milton, 164, 166
-
-  Glogoviensis, Johannes, 53
-
-  glossary, 163
-
-  Godfrey, Thomas, 362
-
-  Golden Cockerel Press, 212-19
-    imprints, 217-18
-
-  Golden Hind Press, 164, 220-25
-    imprints, 220-23
-
-  Goltzius, Hubert, 60
-
-  Gooden, Stephen, 199, 206
-
-  Goodhue, Bertram G., 254
-
-  Gordon, Watson, 129
-
-  Goudy, Frederic W., xiii, 222, 232, 267, 274, 279, 318
-    Deepdene, 414
-    _Half Century of Type Design_, 414
-    type designs, 222, 255
-
-  Grabhorn, Edwin, xiii, 226
-
-  Grabhorn Press, 181, 226-32, 419
-    Whitman, _Leaves of Grass_, 232
-
-  Graf, Urs, 55
-
-  Granjon, Robert, 57, 276
-
-  Granjon type face, specimen, 418
-
-  Granniss, Ruth Sheppard, 31, 107
-
-  Greene, Belle Da Costa, 107
-
-  Greenhood, David; _see_ Gentry, Helen
-
-  Grevill, Sir Foulk, 203
-
-  Grien, Hans Baldung, 55
-
-  Griffo, Francesco, 412, 420
-
-  Grimm, Baron Melchior von, 306
-
-  Grimm, Jacob, 307
-
-  Grimm, Wilhelm, 307
-
-  Grolier, Jean, 92, 94
-
-  Grolier Club, 51, 83 n., 107, 365
-    Dowson's _Pierrot of the Minute_, 297-98
-
-  Grotefend, G. F., 3
-
-  Gryphius, Sebastian, 95
-
-  Gutenberg, Johann, 18, 23-24, 90-92, 183
-    Bible, 226-27
-    Rushmore hoax, 223-24
-    types of, 274
-
-  Guthrie, James, 179
-
-
-  Hadrian type face, 255
-
-  Haebler, Dr. Konrad, 53
-
-  Haight, Anne Lyon, 103
-
-  half title, 163, 165, 167-68
-
-  Hall, D., 364-65
-
-  Han, Ulrich, 41
-
-  Hardouyn brothers, 154
-    _Book of Hours_ (1500), 154
-
-  Harmsworth, Cecil, 208
-
-  Harmsworth, Desmond, 208
-
-  Harmsworth, Eric, 208
-
-  Harper & Brothers, 221, 225
-
-  Harrison, Henry, 319
-
-  Hart, Horace, 394
-
-  Harter, Evelyn, ix, 88, 164-66
-
-  Hayward, John, 205
-
-  Heber, Richard, 107
-
-  Hector, Benedictus, 48
-
-  _Heiligen_, 22
-
-  Hendrickson, James, 281
-
-  Henry II of France, 106
-
-  Hind, Arthur M., 23
-
-  Hodgson, Ralph, 199
-
-  Hoell, Louis, 416
-
-  Hogben, Lancelot, ix, 15
-
-  Holbein, Hans, the Elder, 55
-
-  Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 55
-    "Dance of Death," 277-78
-
-  Hopfer, Daniel, 55
-
-  Hornby, St. John, 188, 215
-
-  Hroswitha, 104
-
-  Hughes-Stanton, Blair, 218
-
-  Huxley, Aldous, xiii, 344
-
-  _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, 420
-
-
-  imposition, defined, 242-43
-
-  impression, 119-20, 229-30
-
-  index, 163-64
-
-  ink
-    colors used, 286-87
-    varnish in, 229
-
-  _Inland Printer_, 254
-
-  Intelligencer Print (Galesburg), 378-80
-
-  introduction, 162-63
-
-  Italic type, 257-61
-    first used, 412
-    proper use of, 261
-
-
-  Jackson, Holbrook, xi, 155, 388
-    _Anatomy of Bibliomania_, x
-    _Fear of Books_, x
-    _Printing of Books_, x, 157-58, 233
-
-  Jacobs, S. A., xiv
-
-  Jaggard, William, _Nobilitas Politica_ (1608), 285-86
-
-  Janson, Anton, 418
-
-  Janson type face, 210, 403
-    specimen, 418
-
-  Jenson, Nicolas, 34, 92, 274, 288 n.
-    _Pliny_ (1472), 276
-
-  Jenson's Roman type face, 274-77
-
-  John of Speier (Spire), 19, 40
-
-  Johnson, A. F., 52
-
-  Johnson, J., _Typographia_, 78 n., 268
-
-  Johnson, Samuel, 382
-
-  Jones, David, 218
-
-  Jones, George W., 418
-
-  Josephy, Robert, ix, xiii, 169
-
-  Judith, Countess of Flanders, 104
-
-
-  Kauffer, E. McKnight, 205-6
-
-  Keimer, Samuel, 357-58, 359-62
-    imprints, 357
-    _Universal Instructor_, 362
-
-  Keith, Sir William, 358
-
-  Kelmscott Press, 43, 177-80, 187-88, 233-38
-    binding, 230
-    _Chaucer_, 101, 209, 236
-    paper, 228-29
-    _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, 237
-    types, 253, 255
-    _see also_ Morris, William
-
-  Kennington, Eric, 395
-
-  Kent, Henry Watson, xiv
-
-  Kerver, Thielman, 274
-
-  Keynes, Geoffrey, 205
-
-  Kipling, Rudyard, 7
-
-  Kirkwood, James, 385
-
-  Koberger, Anton, 92
-
-  Koch, Rudolph, design, 207
-
-  König, Friedrich, 26
-
-  Krantz, Martin, 154
-
-  Kromberger, Johann, 97
-
-
-  Laboratory Press, 178
-
-  Lamb, Charles, 32
-
-  Lane, John, 157, 194
-
-  Lang, Andrew, _The Library_, 103-4
-
-  Lansbury, George, 197-98
-
-  Lasteyrie, Count de, _Typographie Economique_ (1837), xii, 306
-
-  Lawrence, T. E., 209, 218
-
-  leading; _see_ letter-spacing
-
-  Lee, Marshall, ed., _Books for Our Time_, xiv
-
-  Lee Priory Press, 186
-
-  Leeu, Gerard, 40
-
-  LeRouge, Pierre, 50
-
-  lettering, 338-43, 405-7
-    defined, 338
-
-  letter-spacing, 287-88
-    leading, 243-44, 284
-    "driving out," 250, 402
-
-  Lewis, W. S., 98-99
-
-  ligature, 80-81
-
-  Linotype, defined, 404
-
-  list of illustrations, 162
-
-  Livingston, Luther S., _Franklin and His Press at Passy_, 365
-
-  Longlond, J., _A Sermon_ (1536), 58
-
-  Lowell, Amy, 107
-
-  lower-case letters, 257-61
-
-  Lowinsky, Thomas, drawing, 204
-
-  Lutetia type face, 232, 414
-
-  Luther, Martin
-    _To the Christian Nobility_, 29
-    tracts, 55
-
-  Lydgate, John, 53
-
-  Lydian type face, 255-56
-
-
-  McCulloch, William, 69-71, 74, 76
-
-  MacDonald, James Ramsay, 197 n.
-
-  Machiavelli, Nicolò, _Discorsi_ (1531), 54
-
-  Mackall, Leonard L., "Notes for Bibliophiles," 34
-
-  McKerrow, Ronald B., ix, 78
-    _Introduction to Bibliography_, 31, 35-36, 382
-
-  Macmillan, Daniel, 387
-
-  McMurtrie, D. C., _The Book_, 18-19, 23, 27, 28
-
-  Madan, Falconer, 176
-
-  Maillet, Jacques, 47, 50
-
-  _Mainz Diary: New Light on the Invention of Printing_, 224
-
-  Malory, Sir Thomas, _Morte d'Arthur_, 41
-
-  Mansion, Colard, 19
-
-  Manutius, Aldus, 48-49, 50, 89, 92, 156, 185
-    Bembo's _De Aetna_, 412
-    career, 93-94
-
-  Marchant, Guy, 47
-
-  Marguerite of Navarre, 105
-
-  Marie Antoinette, 105
-
-  Martin, Gilbert, 384
-
-  Martin, John, _Bibliographical Catalogue of Books Privately Printed_,
-    175-76
-
-  Martin, William, 92, 413
-
-  Mary Stuart, 105
-
-  _Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter_, 66
-
-  Mathews, Elkin, 157
-
-  Maxwell, William, 206
-    relations with Shaw, 381-401
-
-  Mazarin, Jules, 105
-
-  Mendel, Vera; _see_ Meynell, Vera
-
-  Meredith, George, 192, 387
-
-  Meredith, Hugh, 360-62
-
-  Mergenthaler, Ottmar, 27, 254
-
-  _Merry England_, 193-94
-
-  Merrymount Press, xii, 181
-
-  Merrymount type face, 254
-
-  metal flower; _see_ printer's flower
-
-  Meynell, Alice, 192-94
-    _Ten Poems_, 197
-
-  Meynell, Everard, 192
-
-  Meynell, Sir Francis, xiv, 158, 189, 231
-    Nonesuch Press, 191-211
-    "Printer's Flowers and Arabesques," x
-    on type-setting machines, 227-28
-
-  Meynell, Vera
-    and Nonesuch Press, 191, 198-99, 201, 205, 206-7
-
-  Meynell, Wilfrid, 192-96, 199
-
-  Middle Hill Press, 178
-
-  Middleton, Henry, 80
-
-  Miller & Richards, 384
-
-  Miller-Parker, Agnes, 218
-
-  missals, first printed, 22-23
-
-  Mitchelson, David, 66-67
-
-  Monotype, 158, 189
-    defined, 404
-
-  Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 211
-
-  Montague Press, 291
-    De Guerin's _The Centaur_, 414
-
-  Monticello type face, 403
-    specimen, 419
-
-  Moore, George, 193
-    _Ulick and Soracha_, 206
-
-  Mores, Edward Rowe, ix, 83, 370
-
-  Morgan, Charles, _House of Macmillan_, 387
-
-  Morgan, Gwenda, 218
-
-  Morison, Stanley, x, xiii, 99, 116, 158, 196, 384
-    on calligraphy, 338
-    "First Principles of Typography," 239
-    Times Roman, 420
-
-  Morris, William, xi, 179, 390
-    achievement and influence, 187-88, 227, 228-29, 230, 253
-    career, 100-1
-    _Note on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press_, 180
-    _Roots of the Mountains_, 236, 238, 388
-    typography of, 233-38, 275, 278
-    _see also_ Kelmscott Press
-
-  Mountjoye type face, 403
-
-  Moxon, Edward, 83, 157
-
-  Moxon, Joseph, 57
-
-  Murray, John, 157, 387-88
-
-  Musurus, Marcus, 94
-
-
-  Nash, John, 218
-
-  National Association for the Advancement of Art, 388
-
-  Nelson, George, xiv
-
-  _New Colophon, The_, xv
-
-  _New England Courant, The_, 355-56
-
-  New York _Herald Tribune_, 34
-
-  Newdigate, Bernard H., 181, 390
-
-  Niccolo, Simon di, 41
-
-  Nichols, Dr. Charles L., _Justus Fox_, 70
-
-  Nonesuch Press, 158, 181, 189, 228
-    history of, 191-211
-
-  Nonesuch Press, imprints, 195, 200, 204-5, 207, 209-10
-    press mark, 199
-    and Random House, 208
-    _Shakespeare_, 209
-
-  _Nuremberg Chronicle, The_, 41, 91, 92
-
-
-  O'Connor, John, 218
-
-  Ogg, Oscar, ix, 337
-
-  Olpe, J. von, 91
-
-  Orcutt, William Dana, _Manual of Linotype Typography_, 160-65
-
-  Original Old Style type face (Italic), 223
-
-  ornament; _see_ type ornament
-
-  Oswald, John Clyde, _Benjamin Franklin, Printer_, 358
-
-  _Oxford English Dictionary_, 34-35
-
-  Oxford type face, 256
-
-  Oxford University Press, 51, 79, 158, 184 n., 185, 196
-
-
-  Palmer, Samuel, 358-59
-
-  Pannartz, Arnold, 78, 153
-
-  paper, 16-18, 26-27
-    Chinese invention of, 17
-    dampening of, 229
-    esparto grass, 26
-    mills, 17-18, 26-27
-    papyrus, 17
-    rag, 26
-    texture of, 119
-    wood pulp, 26
-
-  Patmore, Coventry, 193, 194
-
-  Pelican Press, 198
-
-  Pelliot, Paul, 25
-
-  Pembroke, Countess of (Mary Herbert), 106
-
-  Penguin Books, 158
-    editions of Shaw, 381-82, 395
-
-  _Pennsylvania Gazette, The_, 362-63
-
-  _Pennsylvania Mercury, The_, 65, 68, 71-74
-    types for, 74-76
-
-  Perpetua type face, 403
-  specimen, 419
-
-  Peter Pauper Press, 165
-
-  Petit, Jean, 41
-
-  Phillips, Fred, _Old-Fashioned Type Book_, 255
-
-  pi, derivation of name, 370
-
-  pica, derivation of name, 370
-
-  Pickering, William, 156-57, 234, 318
-
-  Pigouchet, Phillipe, 154
-
-  Pio family, 94
-
-  Plant, Marjorie, _English Book Trade_, 382
-
-  Plantin, Christopher, 60, 96
-
-  playing cards, 21-22
-
-  Pleydenworff, Wilhelm, 41
-
-  Poe, E. A., "The Gold Bug," 8
-
-  point system, x, 369
-
-  Poliphilus type face, 200, 403
-    specimen, 420
-
-  Pollard, Alfred W., xi, 35, 36-37, 176, 182
-    _Essay on Colophons_, 33, 37-38, 40-41
-
-  Pollard, Graham, 78 n.
-
-  Pompadour, Mme. de, 105
-
-  Poulton, T. L., 206
-
-  preface, 162-63
-
-  printer, amateur, 182-90
-    _see also_ private press
-
-  printer's flower, 57-59, 83-84, 156-57
-    _see also_ type ornament
-
-  printer's mark, 45-51
-
-  printing
-    development of, 15-30
-    importance of, 85-87
-    principles of, 226-32
-    restricted in England, 185-86
-
-  private press
-    defined, and aims of, 175-81, 182
-    influence of, 186-90
-    principles and pleasures of, 313-20
-    types of, 177-79
-    _see also_ printer, amateur
-
-  Proctor, Robert, 188
-
-  Proctor's Greek type face, 188
-
-  Psalter (Mainz, 1457), 38-39, 49, 183
-
-  punch-cutting machine, Benton pantograph, 252-54
-
-  punctuation marks, 81-82, 285, 289
-
-  Püterschein, Dr. Herman, 224
-
-  Pynson, Richard, 53
-
-  Pythagoras, 12
-
-
-  Rabelais, François, _Pantagruel_, 95
-
-  Radin, Simon, 41
-
-  Random House, and Nonesuch Press, 208
-
-  Ransom, Will, ix, 254
-    _Private Presses_, 175, 365
-
-  Ratdolt, Erhard, 53, 55
-
-  Ravilious, Eric, 218
-
-  Rawlinson, Sir Henry C., 3
-
-  Read, Herbert, _Grass Roots of Art_, 155, 157
-
-  _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, 19, 49
-
-  Regiomontanus (Müller, J.), _Calendar_, 53
-
-  Reichl, Ernst, xiv, 164-65, 168
-
-  Reinheckel, Andreas, 42
-
-  Reuchlin, Johann, 94
-
-  Richards, Grant, 384, 385
-    _Author Hunting_, 388
-
-  Ricketts and Shannon, 188
-
-  Riverside Press, 231, 291, 411
-
-  Rochester Press, 177
-
-  Rodenberg, Julius; _see_ Simon, Oliver
-
-  Roeder, Ralph, 93
-
-  Roffe, Edwin, 177
-
-  Rogers, Bruce, xiii, 164, 165, 188, 220, 318, 411
-    Centaur, 255, 414
-    designs, 290-305
-    influence, 231
-    _Paragraphs on Printing_, 181, 281-89, 403
-    _World_ Bible, 302-4
-
-  Rollins, Carl Purington, xiii, 98, 164, 166, 252, 291, 318, 414
-    _B. R.--America's Typographic Playboy_, 300-1
-
-  "Romney Street Press," 196-97
-
-  Root, Riley, _Journal of Travels_ (Galesburg, 1850), 379-80
-
-  Rose, Aquila, 356-57
-
-  Routledge, George, 26
-
-  Rudge, William, 231
-
-  Rudge Press, 295
-
-  running head, 245
-
-  Rushmore, Arthur W., ix, 164, 167-68, 220
-
-  Russell, Bertrand, 198
-    _Unpopular Essays_, xii-xiii
-
-  Ruzicka, Rudolph
-    design, 51
-    Fairfield, 255, 416
-
-
-  Sandford, Christopher, _Cockalorum_, 212
-
-  sans serif type face, 332-33, 417
-    specimen, 417
-
-  Sassoon, Siegfried, 198
-
-  Savonarola, Girolamo, tracts, 53
-
-  Sawyer, C. J., and Darton, F. J. H.,
-    _English Books 1475-1500_, 176
-
-  Schöffer, Peter, 38-40, 42, 49, 53, 91, 183
-
-  School Press, 179
-
-  Scotch Modern type face, 284, 287, 413
-
-  Schwartz, Joseph, xv
-
-  Schwartz, Miriam, xv
-
-  serifs, 255, 405-7
-
-  Shand, James, xiv, 381
-
-  Shaw, G. B., xiv
-    editions, 385-88, 391-92, 395, 398-99
-    filmscripts, 393-95
-    letters quoted, 383, 387-90
-    proof correction, 393-94, 396-97, 398, 400
-    relations with R. & R. Clark, 381-401
-    shorthand, 383, 394
-    type preferences, 391-92
-
-  Shaw, Mrs. G. B., 399
-
-  _Ship of Fools, The_ (1494), 91
-
-  Sidney, Sir Philip, _Arcadia_, 106, 203
-
-  Simon, Oliver, 154, 158
-    and Rodenberg, Julius, _Printing of Today_, 344 n.
-
-  Sitwell, Sir Osbert, 208, 213
-
-  Smithers, Leonard, 157
-
-  Sower, Christopher, Jr., 67-70, 72, 74-75
-
-  Sower, Samuel, 76
-
-  Sparrow, John, 206
-
-  Spiral Press, 165, 416
-
-  Squire, Sir John C., 192
-
-  Steele, Robert, _Revival of Printing_, 181
-
-  Stevenson, R. L., 7
-
-  Stiles, Rev. Ezra, _Literary Diary_, 71-72, 252
-
-  Stöckel, Wolfgang, 53
-
-  Stone, Reynolds, 218
-    design, 102
-
-  Strawberry Hill Press, 176, 186
-
-  Strozzi, Piero, 106
-
-  Sutton, Hannah, 107
-
-  Sweynheim, Conrad, 78, 153
-
-
-  table of contents, 162, 167
-
-  Targ, William, xv
-    _Making of the Bruce Rogers World Bible_, 304
-
-  Tatham, Elizabeth, 107
-
-  Tauchnitz, Bernhard, 234
-
-  Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, _In Memoriam_ (1850), 157
-
-  Thomas, Isaiah
-    _Additions to Thomas's History of Printing_, 69-70, 74
-    _Specimen of Printing Types_, 63
-
-  Thompson, Francis, 192-94
-
-  Times Roman type face, 403
-    specimen, 420
-
-  title page
-    Bagford collection, 64
-    development of, 42-43, 52-64
-    engraved, 57-60
-    type ornaments, 57-60
-    typographic, 60-64
-    typography of, 161, 167-68, 246-47
-    woodcut, 53-57
-
-  Tomkinson, G. S., _Select Bibliography of Modern Presses_, 181
-
-  Topolski, Feliks, 399
-    drawing, 381
-
-  Tory, Geoffroy, 60, 62, 92, 154, 185, 275
-
-  Tournes, Jean de, 55, 95
-
-  Trautwein, Joseph, xv
-
-  Trenholm, George, 254
-
-  Trevelyan, G. M., _English Social History_, 384
-
-  Tschichold, Jan, 158
-
-  type faces
-    modern, 170-71, 174, 404-6
-    old style, 404-5
-    principles of design, 267-73
-    transitional, 404-6
-    used by job printers in 1880's, 369-72
-    _see also_ typography, _and under individual names_
-
-  type founding, early history of, in U. S., 65-77
-
-  type ornament, 57-59
-    Cleland's designs, 297, 299
-    Rogers's designs, 290-305
-    _see also_ printer's flower
-
-  typographer, and publisher, 153-59
-
-  _Typographie Economique_; _see_ Lasteyrie, Count de
-
-  typography
-    Bauhaus, 306-7
-    characters in early English, 78-80
-    defined, 239-40
-    in modern trade books, 169-74
-    of William Morris, 234-38
-    old vs. modern, 274-80
-
-  typography, principles of, 109-14, 160-68, 239-51, 257-66
-    problems in modern, 344-49, 402-7
-    tendencies in modern, 306-12, 321-36
-    _see also_ type faces
-
-  Typophiles, The, 102, 129
-
-
-  Ulhard, Philip, 42
-
-  Updike, Daniel Berkeley, xii, xiii, 92-93, 95, 188, 223, 288 n.,
-     318, 403, 414, 419
-    _In the Day's Work_, x, 158
-    _Notes on the Merrymount Press_, 181
-    _Printing Types_, x, 88
-    _Some Aspects of Printing_, x, 181, 306
-
-
-  Vale Press, 188
-
-  Valéry, Paul, _Les deux vertus d'un livre_, 122
-
-  Van Doren, Carl, 101
-
-  Van Hoesen, H. B., _Bibliography_, 36
-
-  Vascosan, Michel de, 60
-
-  Vele, Abraham, 53, 61
-
-  Verrue, Countesse de, 105
-
-  Vico, Enea, 60
-
-  Vincentino, Lodovico, 54
-
-  Vorsterman, Willem, 50
-
-  Vostre, Simon le, 154
-    _Book of Hours_, 278
-
-
-  Waflard, 92
-
-  Walker, Emery, 188, 228, 229, 388
-
-  Walpole, Horace, 98-99, 178, 186
-
-  Walter, F. K., _Bibliography_, 36
-
-  Wang Cheng, 25
-
-  Warde, Beatrice, xiii, 109
-
-  Warde, Frederic, 414
-
-  Warton, Thomas, _History of English Poetry_, 37
-
-  Watson, James, ix
-    _Art of Printing_, 85, 384
-
-  Watts, John, 359
-
-  Waugh, Evelyn, 213
-
-  Way & Williams, 177
-
-  Webb, Beatrice, 388
-
-  Webb, Clifford, 218
-
-  Webb, Sidney, 388
-
-  Webster's _Dictionary_, 35
-
-  _Week-End Book, The_, 199
-
-  _Weekly Register, The_, 194
-
-  Weiditz, Hans, 55
-
-  Westcott and Thomson (Philadelphia), xv
-
-  Westminster Press, 194
-
-  Wheeler, Monroe, 319
-
-  Whitnash Press, 179
-
-  Whittingham, Charles, 156, 318
-
-  Wiebking, Robert, 254, 273, 414
-
-  Wight, John, 50
-
-  Williams, Iolo, _Elements of Book-Collecting_, 36
-
-  Willoughby, Edwin Eliott, 45
-
-  Wilson, Alexander, 89
-
-  Winship, George Parker, 88-89
-    _Sailor Narratives_, 291
-
-  Winterich, John T., xiv, 176
-    _Early American Books and Printing_, 352
-
-  Wolff, H., Co., 165
-
-  Wolgemut, Michael, 41
-
-  Wollaston, William, _Religion of Nature Delineated_, 358-59
-
-  women, as bibliophiles, 103-8
-
-  wood-block printing
-    Chinese origins, 21
-    _Heiligen_, 25
-    playing cards, 21-22
-
-  Worde, Wynkyn de, 57, 58
-
-  Wordsworth, William, _Prelude_ (1850), 157
-
-  World Publishing Co., xv
-    _World_ Bible, 302-4
-
-  Wroth, Lawrence C., 65
-
-
-  Yeats, W. B., 192
-
-  Young, Thomas, 3
-
-
-      _This book was composed in twenty-two different type faces
-              by Westcott & Thomson, Inc., Philadelphia.
-               Typography and design by Jos. Trautwein._
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Books and Printing; a Treasury for
-Typophiles, by Various
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-
-Project Gutenberg's Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles, by Various
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles
-
-Author: Various
-
-Editor: Paul A. Bennett
-
-Release Date: November 12, 2020 [EBook #63730]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND PRINTING ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Tim Lindell, Stephen Rowland, Lis, Gen Knit, Andrés Galia
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp47" id="cover" style="max-width: 47.75em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class='tnote'>
-
-<p class='p2 big2 center'>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:</p>
-
-<p>There are some characters quoted in the text that cannot be reproduced
-in the text version of the book.</p>
-
-<p>The sign ſ represents the ancient long s; the
-sign [ct] represents the ct ligature and the sign [ffi] represents the
-ffi ligature.</p>
-
-<p>A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
-variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
-has been kept.</p>
-
-<p>Not all the font families used for the different articles included
-in the book were availabe for the HTML version. The font families
-that could be used for the transcription are Times New Roman, Gill
-Sans, Garamond, Bodoni MT (instead of Bodoni Book), Baskerville,
-Centaur, Perpetua and Bell. Most of the currently available browsers
-are compatible with those fonts. However, it is not certain that the
-currently available hand-held devices would be able to reproduce the
-text with those fonts.</p>
-
-<p>Punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.
-Nevertheless, there are some portions where the author quotes text
-written in ancient style in which the punctuation rules applicable nowadays
-were not followed. Those have been left unchanged.</p>
-
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="half-title">FORUM BOOKS</p>
-</div>
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="icolophon" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_colophon.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="p6">
-      <hr class="chap" />
-     <p class="center big2"><em>This ebook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders<br />
-                           20th Anniversary.</em></p>
-      <hr class="chap" />
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h1>BOOKS<br />
-AND PRINTING<br />
-<small>A TREASURY FOR TYPOPHILES</small></h1>
-
-<p class="p2 center big2"><em>edited by Paul A. Bennett</em></p>
-<div class="figcenter illowp60" id="ititle" style="max-width: 6.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_title.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p class="p2 center"><em>Forum Books</em><br />
-<big>THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY</big><br />
-CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="p6 center">A FORUM BOOK<br />
-Published by The World Publishing Company<br />
-2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p22 center">Revised Edition</p>
-
-<p class="center"><small>First Forum printing February 1963</small></p>
-
-<p class="p2 small1 center">Copyright 1951 by The World Publishing Company.<br />
-All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in<br />
-any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief<br />
-passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper or magazine.<br />
-Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 52-612</p>
-<p class="center p1">Printed in the United States of America. <small>WP263</small></p>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[Pg v]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</h2>
-
-<p>I am deeply grateful to many friends who have helped in the preparation
-of material for this book, and have freely granted permission to reprint
-their brain children.</p>
-
-<p>To the Typophiles of New York, and to the individual authors in their
-series of Chap Books, I am indebted for including: T. M. Cleland's <cite>Harsh
-Words</cite>; W. A. Dwiggins' celebrated "Investigation Into the Physical
-Properties of Books," first published for the Society of Calligraphers and
-included in <cite>Mss. by WAD</cite>; Evelyn Harter's <cite>Printers As Men of the
-World</cite>; and Lawrence C. Wroth's "First Work With American Types,"
-from <cite>Typographic Heritage</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>To the editors of <cite>The Colophon</cite>, and the three authors, I am indebted
-for reprinting the essays of Earnest Elmo Calkins on "The Book and Job
-Print," Ruth S. Granniss on "Colophons" and Sir Francis Meynell's
-"Some Collectors Read."</p>
-
-<p>To the individual authors, the editors of <cite>The Publishers' Weekly</cite> and
-its publisher, R. R. Bowker Company, I am indebted for permission to
-include W. A. Dwiggins' "Twenty Years After," the sequel to his "Investigation";
-excerpts from two articles by Robert Josephy; and Will Ransom's
-introduction from his <cite>Private Presses and Their Books</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>To Beatrice Warde, who has graciously permitted reprinting her classic
-"Printing Should Be Invisible."</p>
-
-<p>I appreciate greatly the counsel of the good friends who made possible
-the symposium on "The Anatomy of the Book": Peter Beilenson, Joseph
-Blumenthal, P. J. Conkwright, Morris Colman, Milton Glick and Evelyn
-Harter, William Dana Orcutt, Ernst Reichl, Carl Purington Rollins,
-Bruce Rogers and Arthur W. Rushmore. To Mergenthaler Linotype
-Company I am indebted for reprinting the text of the "Anatomy," now
-slightly revised, from <cite>The Manual of Linotype Typography</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>To both authors and their publisher, William E. Rudge's Sons, I am
-indebted for including the extracts from Bruce Rogers' <cite>Paragraphs on
-Printing</cite> and Merle Armitage's <cite>Notes on Modern Printing</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>To George Macy, and the directors of the Limited Editions Club, I am
-indebted for reprinting Porter Garnett's prize-winning essay, "The Ideal
-Book." And also for the illustration of the punch-cutting machine (from
-<cite>The Dolphin</cite>, No. 2) to accompany Carl Purington Rollins' essay,
-"American Type Designers and Their Work," for which permission to
-reprint was granted by R. R. Donnelley &amp; Sons Company, Chicago.</p>
-
-<p>To my good friend, James Shand, publisher of <cite>Alphabet and Image</cite> in
-London, I am indebted for including his account of George Bernard
-Shaw's relations with his printer (first published in <cite>A &amp; I</cite> No. 8), and
-for assistance in securing electrotypes of the illustrations.</p>
-
-<p>To Oscar Ogg and the editors of <cite>The American Artist</cite> I owe thanks
-for reprinting his "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its illustrations.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[Pg vi]</span></p>
-
-<p>To Edwin Grabhorn I am indebted for including "The Fine Art of
-Printing," his address to the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco.</p>
-
-<p>I particularly appreciate the assistance of the late Otto Ege, Mrs. Anne
-Lyon Haight and Lawrence C. Wroth in revising their essays for publication
-here, and the thoughtfulness of Robert Josephy, Will Ransom and
-Arthur W. Rushmore in writing postscripts to enhance their essays.</p>
-
-<p>I am thankful to Mrs. Caroline Anderson of Los Angeles; my colleague
-Jackson Burke at Linotype; to Christopher Morley of Roslyn,
-L. I., and Arthur W. Rushmore of Madison, N. J., for valuable suggestions
-and help in research.</p>
-
-<p>For assistance in securing illustrative material I am indebted to my
-Typophile friends: John Archer, A. Burton Carnes, Lester Douglas,
-George L. McKay and William Reydel. To Fred Anthoensen of Portland,
-Maine, I am thankful for help in securing electrotypes to illustrate
-two articles.</p>
-
-<p>The publisher, and I as editor, acknowledge our appreciation to the
-authors of the other essays included, and to their editors and publishers,
-for permission to reprint this valuable material, for which detailed mention
-of copyright and publication date is printed elsewhere.</p>
-
-<p>And I hope my apologies may be accepted, should there be inadvertent
-omission of appreciation to the numerous other individuals who have so
-generously assisted me in preparing this book for the printer.</p>
-
-<p class="right" style="padding-right: 3em; ">P.A.B.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[Pg vii]</span></p>
-
-<p class="p4 center big2">CONTENTS</p>
-</div>
-<div class="autotable-container">
-<table class="autotable"  border="0" summary="content">
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION</small></td>
-<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_ix"><em>Page ix</em></a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>OTTO F. EGE</small>. The Story of the Alphabet</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_3">3</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>LANCELOT HOGBEN</small>. Printing, Paper and Playing Cards</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_15">15</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>RUTH S. GRANNISS</small>. Colophons</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_31">31</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY</small>. Printers' Marks</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_45">45</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>A. F. JOHNSON</small>. Title Pages: Their Forms and Development</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_52">52</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>LAWRENCE C. WROTH</small>. The First Work with American Types</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_65">65</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>RONALD B. MCKERROW</small>. Typographic Debut</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_78">78</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>EDWARD ROWE MORES</small>. Metal-Flowers</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_83">83</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>JAMES WATSON</small>. The History of the Invention and<br />
-Progress of the Mysterious Art of Printing &amp;c.</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; ">&nbsp;<br />
-<a href="#Page_85">85</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>EVELYN HARTER</small>. Printers As Men of the World</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_88">88</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>ANNE LYON HAIGHT</small>. Are Women the Natural Enemies of Books?</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_103">103</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>BEATRICE WARDE</small>. Printing Should Be Invisible</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_109">109</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>PORTER GARNETT</small>. The Ideal Book</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_115">115</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>W. A. DWIGGINS</small>. Extracts from an Investigation<br />
-into the Physical Properties of Books</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; ">&nbsp;<br />
-<a href="#Page_129">129</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>W. A. DWIGGINS</small>. Twenty Years After</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>DESMOND FLOWER</small>. The Publisher and the Typographer</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_153">153</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT</small>, <small>BRUCE ROGERS</small>, <small>CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS</small>,<br />
-<small>JOSEPH BLUMENTHAL</small>, <small>P. J. CONKWRIGHT</small>, <small>ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE</small>, <br />
-<small>MILTON GLICK</small>, <small>MORRIS COLMAN</small>, <small>EVELYN HARTER</small>, <small>PETER BEILENSON</small>,<br />
-and <small>ERNST REICHL</small>. The Anatomy of the Book: A Symposium</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; ">&nbsp;<br />
-&nbsp;<br />
-&nbsp;<br />
-<a href="#Page_160">160</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>ROBERT JOSEPHY</small>. Trade Bookmaking: Complaint in Three Dimensions</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_169">169</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>WILL RANSOM</small>. What Is a Private Press?</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_175">175</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>ALFRED W. POLLARD</small>. The Trained Printer and the<br />
-Amateur: and the Pleasure of Small Books</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_182">182</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>SIR FRANCIS MEYNELL</small>. Some Collectors Read</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_191">191</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD</small>. Printing for Love</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_212">212</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE</small>. The Fun and Fury of a Private<br />
-Press: Some Voyages of The Golden Hind</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; ">&nbsp;<br />
-<a href="#Page_220">220</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>EDWIN GRABHORN</small>. The Fine Art of Printing</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_226">226</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>HOLBROOK JACKSON</small>. The Typography of William Morris</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_233">233</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>STANLEY MORISON</small>. First Principles of Typography</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_239">239</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS</small>. American Type Designers and Their Work</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_252">252</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>ERIC GILL</small>. Typography</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_257">257</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>FREDERIC W. GOUDY</small>. Types and Type Design</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_267">267</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>THEODORE LOW DE VINNE</small>. The Old and the New:<br />
-A Friendly Dispute between Juvenis &amp; Senex</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; ">&nbsp;<br />
-<a href="#Page_274">274</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>BRUCE ROGERS</small>.  Paragraphs on Printing</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_281">281</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>PAUL A. BENNETT</small>. B.R.&mdash;Adventurer with Type Ornament</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_290">290</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE</small>. Some Tendencies in Modern Typography</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_306">306</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>PETER BEILENSON</small>. The Amateur Printer: His Pleasures and His Duties</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_313">313</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>T. M. CLELAND</small>. Harsh Words</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_321">321</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>OSCAR OGG</small>. A Comparison of Calligraphy &amp; Lettering</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_337">337</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>ALDOUS HUXLEY</small>. Typography for the Twentieth-Century Reader</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_344">344</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>MERLE ARMITAGE</small>. Notes on Modern Printing</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_350">350</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>JOHN T. WINTERICH</small>. Benjamin Franklin: Printer and Publisher</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_352">352</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>EARNEST ELMO CALKINS</small>. The Book &amp; Job Print</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_368">368</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>JAMES SHAND</small>. Author and Printer: G.B.S. and R.&amp;R.C.: 1898-1948</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_381">381</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>PAUL A. BENNETT</small>. On Type Faces for Books</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_402">402</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl hang"><small>PAUL A. BENNETT</small>. Notes on the Type Faces Used in This Book</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_411">411</a> </td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><em>Index</em></td>
-<td class="tdr" style="padding-right: 1em; "><a href="#Page_421">421</a> </td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a>[Pg viii]</span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[Pg ix]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
-<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /></h2>
-
-
-<p>Labeling these observations "introductory" isn't to confuse
-the purist. He knows that the terms preface, foreword and introduction
-become mixed frequently, he doesn't like it and he much prefers
-retaining the proper distinctions.</p>
-
-<p>"An introduction," he will insist, "should be solely concerned
-with the subject of the book, and introduce or supplement its text.
-And the preface or foreword should properly deal with the book's
-purpose, and define its limitation and scope. Let's keep things that
-way."</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately, there isn't one term that covers comment which
-flows from one division to the other in a miscellany like this. At
-times&mdash;and at the risk of editorial modesty&mdash;I may seem something
-of a typographic barker, singing the praises of certain essays and
-pointing up different attractions. At others, the text will be supplemented
-with an explanatory note, or amplified to bring it up to
-date, as in the Josephy, Ransom and Rushmore articles.</p>
-
-<p>It amounts to an assist in getting back to purpose: that of informing
-on matters typographic, and on books, their printing and some
-of the fascinating steps along the way. In selecting material of appeal
-to the collector, printer, typographer and student, I have not overlooked
-the professional curiosity of editors and technicians. That's
-the thinking behind the inclusion of extracts from McKerrow and
-Mores and Watson, among other scholarly contributions.</p>
-
-<p>Where there was a choice, the preference was for the author with
-a point of view and the ability to express it interestingly. Four
-articles indicate this approach. "Printing, Paper and Playing Cards,"
-the brilliant survey of Lancelot Hogben, illumines the birth and
-spread of writing and printing as nothing else I know. Otto Ege's
-brief account of the development of our alphabet, with its memorable
-letter-diagrams, has a different, not less valuable appeal, as does
-Oscar Ogg's comparison of "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its
-specimens of his own distinguished hand. And in "Printers As Men
-of the World," Evelyn Harter writes of a number of great printers
-as men of intellect, at home in the world of ideas. Her stimulating<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[Pg x]</span>
-text suggests the compensation of looking at the background of
-printing in relation to world events.</p>
-
-<p>There was no preconceived attitude to consider in evaluating the
-essays included: no restriction by country of origin; no fixation
-about the traditional or modern in typographic approach; no desire
-to slant, or plant, ideas; no intent other than to select much of the
-best writing in English by authors of substance. That the gathering
-may provide riches to be added to "the savings account of your
-memory" is my hope.</p>
-
-<p>In a quite real sense, the experience has been something like spending
-many long weekends with friends in good, solid talk&mdash;some of it
-controversial, much of it illuminating and informing. The re-reading
-has not only opened "doors and windows for a welcome flood" of
-ideas, it has suggested new trails and made for valuable comparisons
-of favorites first met with years ago.</p>
-
-<p>It has been difficult to resist the temptation to include more essays
-of historic and technical appeal to typographers and printers. Many
-of the present generation, I presume, may not know De Vinne's
-authoritative account of the development of the American Point
-System, which occurred in the late eighties and is detailed at length
-in his <cite>Plain Printing Types</cite>; or the invaluable Meynell and Morison
-essay on "Printer's Flowers and Arabesques," with its fascinating
-reproductions, from <cite>The Fleuron</cite>. I have omitted these two with
-reluctance, and have used the space they would occupy for a half-dozen
-shorter essays not less worthy in themselves, but on different
-topics.</p>
-
-<p>Since space was limited, I needed to be. I would have welcomed
-the opportunity to include additional essays by D. B. Updike, whose
-incomparable <cite>Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use</cite>; <cite>In
-the Day's Work</cite>, and <cite>Some Aspects of Printing: Old and New</cite>, and
-other writings on typography should not be missed; by W. A.
-Dwiggins, the distinguished American letter artist and designer, who
-writes as well as he draws; and by Holbrook Jackson, the great English
-critic, literary historian and essayist, whose <cite>Anatomy of Bibliomania</cite>,
-<cite>Fear of Books</cite> and <cite>Printing of Books</cite> are required reading.</p>
-
-<p>There are other favorites omitted too, for unlike Jackson's remark
-about the house of books, "There are many mansions and room
-for all trades, whims, and even fads"&mdash;this book could comfortably
-hold no more.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi"></a>[Pg xi]</span></p>
-
-<p>It has not seemed desirable, as it would be possible, to eliminate a
-degree of duplication in part among some of the essays. That would
-have required an amount of editorial surgery and revision unfair to
-the authors concerned. More importantly, it would have assumed
-that every reader would read every essay&mdash;hardly an attainable ideal.</p>
-
-<p>Nor has any documentation been attempted to reconcile opposing
-viewpoints&mdash;that of A. W. Pollard and Holbrook Jackson, for instance,
-in respect to William Morris as printer and typographer.
-Happy will that reader be who finds this and other instances sufficiently
-provocative to embark upon further research of his own.</p>
-
-<p>And while it is easier to come upon material in a collection such as
-this than to track down each item individually, much of the fun of
-the search is missing, along with the memorable thrills of discoveries
-in scattered places. There's much gold yet to be found by even
-moderate digging.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The greatest area for argument is that within the opposing views
-of the modern and traditional approach to book design. It is unrealistic
-to oppose the concept that contemporary typography should
-reflect some of the differences that mark our time from other epochs.
-Defining distinctions and relating them precisely to the arts of the
-book is something else again.</p>
-
-<p>In his eloquent <cite>Harsh Words</cite>, T. M. Cleland decries the restless
-craving for something new. "This poison is aggravated in printing
-and typography," he insists, "by the fact that of all the arts it is, by
-its very nature and purpose, the most conventional. If it is an art at
-all, it is an art to serve another art. It is good only so far as it serves
-well and not on any account good for any other reason.</p>
-
-<p>"It is not the business of type and printing to show off, and when,
-as it so frequently does, it engages in exhibitionistic antics of its
-own, it is just a bad servant.... Typography, I repeat, is a servant&mdash;the
-servant of thought and language to which it gives visible existence.
-When there are new ways of thinking and a new language, it
-will be time enough for a new typography."</p>
-
-<p>The modern designer disagrees. He believes books can be freshened,
-made more appealing to eye and hand, and more inviting to
-read, just as product-packaging has benefited by the imaginative
-conceptions of skilled industrial designers. He concedes that books
-remain unsurpassed as a medium for transmitting thought to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xii"></a>[Pg xii]</span>
-reader's mind&mdash;and admits they do it best with a minimum of visual
-distraction. But, he asks, "is it not reasonable to remain open-minded
-and appraise the modern artist for what he may contribute?</p>
-
-<p>"Books, to be sure, are much more than packages to be styled for
-shelf attention and sparkle. Yet it seems reasonable to believe they
-also may benefit by traveling the road of visual appeal and design
-attractiveness, and that they may be assisted in typographic handling
-to convey the author's words with a minimum of reading effort."</p>
-
-<p>It isn't difficult to dismiss the modern approach and call it uninformed
-nonsense, but that doesn't lift the curtain and illumine the
-problem&mdash;or settle the continuing debate.</p>
-
-<p>I recall discussing modern typography some years ago with the
-late D. B. Updike, in his library at the Merrymount Press in Boston.
-A catalog from the Museum of Modern Art was at hand, designed
-by Herbert Bayer of Bauhaus fame.</p>
-
-<p>It looked strange in its all-lower-case typography, and seemed to
-slow reading because of that strangeness. To many it was the newest
-of the new ... perhaps it would institute a trend? Mr. Updike smiled,
-reached to a shelf for a book. It was printed more than a hundred
-years earlier in Paris and set throughout in lower-case. "So far as this
-had any influence, then or later," he remarked, "the experiment of
-<cite>Typographie Economique</cite> is as dead as Queen Anne."</p>
-
-<p>All of which points up Bertrand Russell's remarks, "On Being
-Modern Minded," in his recent <cite>Unpopular Essays</cite><a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>: "The desire to
-be contemporary is new only in degree," he declares, "it has existed
-to some extent in all previous periods that believed themselves to be
-progressive.</p>
-
-<p>"The Renaissance had a contempt for the Gothic centuries that
-had preceded it; the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered
-priceless mosaics with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised
-the age of the heroic couplet.... But in none of these
-former times was the contempt for the past nearly as complete as
-it is now.</p>
-
-<p>"From the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century men
-admired Roman antiquity; the Romantic movement revived the
-Middle Ages.... It is only since the 1914-18 war that it has become
-fashionable to ignore the past <em>en bloc</em>.</p>
-
-<p>"The belief that fashion alone should dominate opinion has great
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiii"></a>[Pg xiii]</span>advantages. It makes thought unnecessary, and puts the highest intelligence
-within reach of everyone."</p>
-
-
-<p>Really thinking through the design potential not only seems the
-nub of the matter, but is basically sound typographically. Read Peter
-Beilenson attentively as he discusses the amateur printer and the
-development of a new style (page 313). "It is simple, but dull, to
-copy an old style," he points out. "It is hard, but exciting, to work
-out a new one. And while you are working at it, you must expect
-cynical observers to give your experiments the adjective 'wacky';
-you must expect certain curious kinds of people to praise your work
-for the wrong reasons; and you must expect alternating moods of
-conceit and confusion. The proofs you gloat over at night will
-become commonplace by dawn....</p>
-
-<p>"You will make misjudgments about the intelligence of ordinary
-readers. You will make mistakes of taste. You will find it too easy
-to get an effect by means of shock, and you will forget that any
-book, even a twenty-first-century book, must be a coherent unit.
-And you will often, since there are no highway markers for the
-explorer, feel lonely and discouraged and want to go back to the
-old familiar, well-traveled roads again....</p>
-
-<p>"You can be subtle or bold, as you feel the urge ... you can
-advance your own work by looking to other fields of creation,
-enjoying and profiting by the experiments going on in them. You
-can feel yourself part of the whole forward-looking culture of today
-... and if you do strike a vein with the least glitter of real gold
-in it, you will become rich indeed. For you will have become a
-creator in a new sense; your duty done as an amateur will be compensated
-with a twenty-four-carat satisfaction...."</p>
-
-<p>There's sense in that essay, as there is in the views of Merle
-Armitage, T. M. Cleland, Porter Garnett, Eric Gill, Frederic W.
-Goudy, Edwin Grabhorn, Robert Josephy, Aldous Huxley, Stanley
-Morison, Bruce Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins, D. B. Updike and
-Beatrice Warde on related topics. Admittedly, some are in opposition&mdash;yet
-that very quality of provocativeness may help in dispelling
-the fog.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Whether we like it or not, the factor of competition affects the
-sale of books and their reading. Because so many elements compete
-for reading time, we frequently forget that they comprise the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiv"></a>[Pg xiv]</span>
-obvious: sports and the allure of the outdoors, newspapers and magazines,
-the theater and movies, radio and television, as well as social
-and family distractions.</p>
-
-<p>These elements are real, measurable to a degree, and materially
-affect the reading of books and consequently their sales. To the
-trade publisher and printer they affect the business future and may
-be considered opponents. To them, the question of whether the
-modern approach is more effective than the traditional is no
-academic matter.</p>
-
-<p>We have indicated the problem at length, though only in part,
-because of its consuming interest. For a comprehensive and sympathetic
-account of the modern view, see <cite>Books for Our Time</cite>. That
-illustrated record of the exhibition sponsored by the American Institute
-of Graphic Arts (recently published by Oxford University
-Press), was designed and edited by Marshall Lee, and has essays
-by Merle Armitage, Herbert Bayer, John Begg, S. A. Jacobs,
-George Nelson and Ernst Reichl.</p>
-
-<p>It was Henry Watson Kent who sagely pointed out that the collector
-who has affection for the book's format is not necessarily
-indifferent to its soul&mdash;"the thought enshrined in it." And so, as the
-one may proudly discuss his Kelmscott, Doves or Ashendene items
-and their literary background, so the other&mdash;more knowledgeable in
-graphic arts lore&mdash;may find equal pleasure in his discoveries: John
-Winterich on Franklin as printer and publisher, possibly, or Sir
-Francis Meynell on collectors who also read, or James Shand's revealing
-account of G.B.S., his interest in typography and his relations
-with his printers.</p>
-
-<p>Instead of asking the fine press enthusiast to show his Doves Bible,
-his B. R. <cite>Pierrot</cite>, Nonesuch Dickens, or Grabhorn <cite>Leaves of Grass</cite>,
-the collector who reads about the making of books may get even
-more satisfaction in discussing his favorite essays or his most recent
-"find."</p>
-
-<p>That the one can be as satisfying as the other is quite definite in
-my mind. In fact, I am certain that the collector who learns to appreciate
-book-making details will find the greater pleasure: his knowledge
-becomes a part of him as prized items on his shelves never can;
-he will enjoy looking <em>in</em> books even more than looking <em>at</em> them.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>A concluding typographic note: Excepting for strictly type specimen
-material, and the degree of typographic expression attempted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xv"></a>[Pg xv]</span>
-in Parts six and seven of <cite>The New Colophon</cite> for a different reason,
-I don't recall any other book set in such a variety of distinguished
-body types. Yet that seemed so natural and sensible an idea for this
-that it has been stimulating to work it out.</p>
-
-<p>Much of the detail and burden has fallen to the willing hands of
-Joseph Trautwein, the able designer responsible for this format, and
-the continuing interest of Joseph and Miriam Schwartz of Westcott
-and Thomson, the superior Philadelphia typesetters, whose wealth of
-typographic resources is evidenced in these pages.</p>
-
-<p>Some of the reasons for coupling specific essays and types are
-detailed in the final chapter, which includes also a brief specimen of
-each face with a note on its attribution.</p>
-
-<p>And finally, I want to salute William Targ, World's editor, for
-inviting me to put this miscellany together, and for his patience in
-watching the book develop. That hasn't proved anything like the
-challenging experience I envisioned, but instead became a spare-time,
-weekend pleasure I've enjoyed for months. Indirectly, of
-course, this is related to the great fraternity of book-makers and typophiles,
-rich in its friendships and international in scope, that I have
-been privileged to enjoy through the years. As I scan the contents
-again, I see not only the names of many good friends and the rewarding
-associations they bring to mind, but also some of their best writing.
-My chief regret is that there just wasn't room for more of it in
-this collection. But that's a different adventure&mdash;and possibly another
-book.</p>
-
-<p class="right" style="padding-right: 2em; ">P<small>AUL</small> A. B<small>ENNETT</small></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xvi"></a>[Pg xvi]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Bertrand Russell, <cite>Unpopular Essays</cite> (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950).</p></div></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[Pg 1]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p class="center big40">
- <img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />
-BOOKS AND PRINTING  <img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle"  alt="flow2" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[Pg 2]</span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[Pg 3]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />OTTO F. EGE<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite><small>The Story of the Alphabet</small></cite></h2>
-
-<p class="center p1 big2">ITS EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT</p>
-
-<p class="p2 center small1">Copyright 1921 by Norman T. A. Munder &amp; Company. Reprinted by permission
-of the author.</p>
-
-<p class="p2"><em>Do you know your A B C's? Each Letter Character Has a History
-and a Reason for Its Present Form. Have you Ever Questioned
-the Origin and Significance of the Alphabet?</em></p>
-
-
-<p>Our transition from barbarism to civilization can be attributed
-to the alphabet. Those great prehistoric discoveries and inventions
-such as the making of a fire, the use of tools, the wheel and the
-axle, and even our modern marvelous applications of steam and
-electricity pale into insignificance when compared with the power
-of the alphabet. Simple as it now appears after the accustomed use
-of ages, it can be accounted not only the most difficult, but also
-the most fruitful of all the achievements of the human intellect.</p>
-
-<p>Man lived by "bread alone" and without the alphabet untold
-ages, and with a practical alphabetic system not more than 3,000
-years. So important and wonderful was this step deemed by those
-who lived nearer the time of its inception&mdash;in the time before the
-wonder of its extraordinary powers had been blunted by long
-possession and common use&mdash;that its invention, as well as that of
-writing, was invariably attributed to divine origin.</p>
-
-<p>Modern investigation always seeks sources other than mythological
-ones, and thus the science of ancient hand-writing, paleography,
-came into existence. In the last hundred and twenty-five
-years the writing of the ancient Egyptians, which was a "sealed
-book" for nearly twenty centuries, has been deciphered through
-the efforts of Champollion and Young; the mysterious cuneiform
-characters of ancient Assyria and Babylon have been interpreted
-by Grotofend and Rawlinson, and the "missing link" to connect
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[Pg 4]</span>our present alphabetic system to these ancient ones is being partly
-completed by Sir Arthur Evans, who is compiling and analyzing
-Cretan characters and pre-Phoenician writing. The story, however,
-will probably never be told in its entirety.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The forms of our letters, with the exception of G, J, U, W,
-reached their full development two thousand years ago. The
-Roman letter was the parent of all the styles notwithstanding the
-diversity that has appeared in Europe since the beginning of the
-Christian era. With a little imagination it is not difficult to note
-the resemblance between similar letters of the old Roman capitals
-and those following that have been designated as script, Italic,
-Old English or black-letter, versal, uncial and an endless list of
-alphabet families. The desire for speed, and the influence of the
-tool, pen, reed, chisel, brush, were the determining factors in the
-change of form. Curiously enough instead of being archaic, the
-Roman alphabet, which is now 2,000 years old, is still the most
-useful because of its legibility, and also the most beautiful.</p>
-
-<p>We derived twenty-three of our letters from the Romans.
-They had taken probably eighteen of these from the Greeks about
-the fourth century <small>B.C.</small> and afterwards borrowed elsewhere or
-invented seven more. Instead of giving them names as the Greeks
-did, they simply called them by the sounds for which they stood:
-A (ah), B (bay). They introduced the curve wherever possible,
-whereas the early Greek letters were all angular&mdash;what an interesting
-analogy is evident in the architecture of those two peoples,
-the temple pediment and angularity of the Greeks as contrasted
-with the dome and arch of the Romans.</p>
-
-<p>The Greeks, in their contact with those great traders and
-"Yankees of ancient time," the Phoenicians, saw the value of their
-alphabetic writing and inaugurated its use about the time of the
-first Olympiad, 776 <small>B.C.</small> Three or four centuries before they
-gave it to the Romans the ancient Greeks found use for fifteen
-of the Phoenician letters and then conceived enough to round
-out an alphabet of twenty-four characters. The changes that took
-place in the shape of their letters can be attributed to their sense
-of order; the letters are balanced better and the parts better
-related.</p>
-
-<p>The Greeks were interested in the sound value only, not in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[Pg 5]</span>
-the picture value of the symbol, and, therefore, they probably
-did not notice that A, for instance, had ever been a picture of the
-head of an ox and that it was now drawn upside down; and that
-the Phoenician name "Aleph" meant ox and that they mispronounced
-the sound in calling it "Alpha."</p>
-
-<p>The Romans borrowed from the Greeks and the Greeks had
-borrowed from the Phoenicians, but where did the Phoenicians
-obtain their letters? Did they invent them? To what extent were
-these letters influenced by earlier systems of writings as those
-employed by the Cretan, Assyrian and Egyptian civilizations?
-These are questions that probably will never be answered satisfactorily.
-Many arguments and theories are advanced. We can,
-however, trace back with certainty a number of our letters to the
-Phoenician alphabet of 1000 <small>B.C.</small> Beyond this all is, at present, a
-matter of conjecture.</p>
-
-<p>The Phoenician alphabet consisted of twenty-two pictures of
-familiar objects. These pictures were rudely and simply made, for
-writers and readers soon recognized the fundamental characteristics
-and all unnecessary details were eliminated. The great
-advance that can be credited to them is that they realized that a
-small number of sound-expressing characters, if well selected, are
-sufficient to express any word. Other races at this period had
-phonetic systems but they consisted of numerous symbols and
-cumbersome appendages of non-alphabetic characters&mdash;"eye pictures"
-side by side with "ear pictures." No doubt earlier Phoenician
-writing passed through the stages of development traceable
-in so many countries:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>1. The pictures or characters suggesting the thing or incident
-(picture writing).</p>
-
-<p>2. The pictures or characters symbolizing the thing or idea
-(ideographic or symbolic writing).</p>
-
-<p>3. The pictures or characters representing the sound of the
-thing or idea (phonograms).</p>
-
-<p>4. The sign suggesting the various sounds of the language
-(alphabetic system).</p></div>
-
-<p>To free this last stage from the others was the great Phoenician
-contribution.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[Pg 6]</span></p>
-
-
-<h3>A</h3>
-
-<p>Why is A the first letter? It represents one of the commonest
-vowel sounds in ancient languages. Naturally the Phoenician alphabet
-makers selected a familiar object in the name of which
-this particular vowel sound was emphasized. Since food is of
-primal importance, it is not surprising to find that he chose the
-ox&mdash;"Alef" (ah´lef), or rather the head of the ox, for the characteristics
-of animals are chiefly embodied in the head. Not only
-was the ox important as food but also as a beast of burden, for
-the ox had been harnessed to the plow centuries before the horse
-was domesticated. Thus one of the earliest and most important
-of man's friends among the brute creatures was honored.</p>
-
-<p>In making this letter repeatedly and rapidly they became careless
-and instead of crossing the letter V they tried to make it with
-one continuous scratching, hence when the Greeks became
-acquainted with it three to five centuries after its invention, the
-picture had deteriorated almost beyond recognition. They introduced
-balance and the V was inverted, and the cross-bar was
-retained between the lines. Unknowingly they were drawing
-the ox head upside down; and it remains so with us to this day.
-The Greeks called the first letter alpha, the Romans called it
-A (ah) and we call it A (ay), a sound it never possessed in Latin.</p>
-
-
-<h3>B</h3>
-
-<p>The second letter of the alphabet represents a crude house,
-roughly outlined. After food, shelter is an important consideration
-and this fact was expressed by the early alphabet maker.
-The Greeks again were ignorant of the picture and careless or
-indifferent as to the exact name of the character, and thus two
-triangles instead of the square supporting a triangle were made
-and the name changed from "beth" to "beta" (ba´ta). Combine
-the Greek names for the first two letters and we have (alphabeta)
-"alphabet." The Romans shortened the name "beta," calling
-it B (bay) and introduced the curved loops. The original name
-is familiar to us through names found in the Scriptures: Bethel
-(house of God) and Bethlehem (house of bread).</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[Pg 7]</span></p>
-
-
-<h3>C-G</h3>
-
-<p>The "ship of the desert," the camel, gave its name to the third
-letter. Our name for this animal is traceable back to the Phoenician
-"gimel" (ghe´mel) or "gamel" (gah´mel). The long neck and
-the peculiar angle of the neck in relation to the head could easily
-be represented. The Greeks made changes similar to those in other
-letters&mdash;they improved the shape and changed the name to
-"gamma." The Romans did not forget the curve and gave it both
-the hard and soft sounds (kay and gay). Later on, about the third
-century <small>A.D.</small> to distinguish the "g" sound from the "k" sound
-they added a little bar below the opening. Thus we get both
-C and G from the picture of the camel.</p>
-
-<p>Stevenson said that when he was a child the capital G always
-impressed him as a genii swooping down to drink out of a handsome
-cup. Kipling's story of the invention of the alphabet is
-filled with similar delightful stories of the picture origin of letter
-forms.</p>
-
-
-<h3>D</h3>
-
-<p>The next letter, D, came from a representation of a door&mdash;"daleth"
-(dah´leth). It probably pictures the door of a tent. A custom
-that prevails among the Arabs and in a number of countries
-gave particular importance to the door of a tent&mdash;a stranger, or
-even an enemy, if he entered through the door of a tent must
-receive food, drink and shelter. "Daleth" became "delta" with
-the Greeks and D (day) with the Romans, who, of course,
-rounded the angle.</p>
-
-
-<h3>E</h3>
-
-<p>The house picture gave us B, the door, D, and the window,
-E. "He" (hay) meant to look, to see, or window, and one writer
-asserts our familiar street cry "hey, there" can be traced to these
-ancient times. One side bar of the window was lost early.</p>
-
-<p>The Greeks at first used this sound for the long "e" (epsilon)
-but afterwards employed the character H or "eta" for the long
-sound. The Romans at first made no change except to call it "eh."</p>
-
-<p>This is the letter that occurs so frequently in English words,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[Pg 8]</span>
-and many no doubt recall the interesting use that Poe makes of
-this fact in his story "The Gold Bug."</p>
-
-
-<h3>F</h3>
-
-<p>Our letter order does not agree with that of the Phoenicians
-or the early Greeks. Our sixth letter, F, is missing in classical
-Greek, but it is found in earlier writings. It comes from a Phoenician
-representation of a hook or nail (?) "vau." The Hebrew
-form resembles the latter object. The nail was important in shipbuilding,
-a common industry of the early traders. When the
-Greeks used this letter they called it "digamma" (double gamma)
-and its form represented one "gamma" (Greek c) superimposed
-over the other. The Romans called it F (ef) and during the reign
-of Emperor Claudius the consonant V was represented by the
-F inverted. This was done because the Latin alphabet had but
-one character to represent U and V and OCTAVIA became
-OCTAℲIA.</p>
-
-
-<h3>H</h3>
-
-<p>Two fence posts and three horizontal boards gave us our
-eighth letter, H. The fence was called "cheth" (haith). The
-Greeks omitted the upper and lower boards thus making it like
-our H, and called it "eta" (ata). The Romans gave it a soft sound
-H (hah) just as we do today.</p>
-
-
-<h3>I-J</h3>
-
-<p>The parts of the human body also played an important part in
-giving form to the letters of the alphabet. The early peoples
-recognized the value of the hand and the head and these members
-gave rise to the letters I and K, and Q and R respectively.
-The hand in profile bent at the knuckles and wrist gives us the
-character "yod" (the hand) as used by the Phoenicians. The
-Greeks, who always liked to have their words end in vowels,
-added "a" and called it "Iota" (e-o´ta). When the Romans received
-it, it was simply a vertical stroke, I (ee) which represented
-the same long "e" sound as it did with the Greeks, but later they
-used it both as a consonant and vowel, differentiating the consonant
-by making the letter I longer, J; but they did not give a
-distinct letter form for the capital J until the sixteenth century.</p>
-
-<p>The small j came into being nearly a century later. The dot over
-the i was first introduced in a thirteenth century manuscript.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[Pg 9]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp53" id="i009" style="max-width: 22.1875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_009.jpg"  alt="" />
-<p class="small1">(*) Until the 3rd Century <small>B.C.</small> the character <em>c</em>
-represented the sounds of both <em>g</em> and <em>k</em> when a slight modification
-of the character <em>c</em> was made for the <em>g</em> sound.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">In a table of this sort, dates, forms, and even meanings must be arbitrary.
-For instance, <em>Koph</em> can be spelled <em>Goph</em> or <em>Qoph</em>; He may have no meaning;
-<em>Lamed</em> (<em>Lamedh</em>) may mean <em>teacher's rod</em>; <em>Samech</em> (<em>Samekh</em>) may mean <em>fish</em>
-or <em>fulcrum</em>; <em>Zayin</em> may mean <em>olive</em> or <em>balance</em>.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[Pg 10]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<h3>K</h3>
-
-<p>The silhouette of the open hand, with its radiating lines, discloses
-the origin of the letter K, "kaph," which signified hollow
-or palm. We know that palmistry was practiced by the ancients,
-and probably the association of reading the hand and writing
-influenced the inclusion of this character. The Greeks added
-their favorite vowel sound, "a," again and thus obtained their
-"Kappa." The Romans had no need for this letter at first, as C
-furnished the same sound. When they did accept it, they made
-no change.</p>
-
-
-<h3>L</h3>
-
-<p>The ox goad or whip lash, "lamed" (lah´med) gave rise to the
-next letter. Herding oxen and sheep was the important occupation
-of the slaves of the Phoenicians and hence the last, an object
-so unfamiliar to us, was easily recognized by them. The Greeks
-again added an "a" and called it "lambda" and made it in the
-form of an inverted V. The Romans, strangely, adhered more
-closely to the original form than did the Greeks.</p>
-
-
-<h3>M-N</h3>
-
-<p>The Phoenicians were lovers of the sea, and from this source
-two letters were derived, M and N. They explored not only all
-of the Mediterranean shore at an early date, but they also sailed
-boldly through the gates of Gibraltar, and "beyond the world"
-where they found Britain. They were the first navigators that
-sailed by night and it is said they discovered the north star. Therefore
-it is not surprising that water "mem" (maim) is the source
-of M and that fish, "nun" (noon) the source of N. The letter M
-has changed but little in form, it is the Greek letter "Mu" and
-the Roman M (em). The head of the fish, from which the letter
-N is pictured, was simplified even more than the head of the ox,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[Pg 11]</span>
-in A. It no doubt represents the fisherman's viewpoint&mdash;not a
-swimming fish but a suspended one. The Greeks reversed the
-stroke and called it "Nu" and the Romans did not change its
-form but called it N (en).</p>
-
-
-<h3>O</h3>
-
-<p>In Phoenicia, as in Egypt, China and Mexico, the eye is one of
-the commonest elements found in the writing. It was called
-"Ayin" (ah-yin). The Greeks used it for two sounds now designated
-by "Omicron," little "o," and "omega," great "o," the letter
-which, strangely, was placed at the end of the Greek alphabet.
-We find in the Bible: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning
-and the end, the first and the last." How many today
-would think of using the alphabet for such an important illustration?
-It is easy to trace the Roman O (oh) from its Greek parent,
-"omicron."</p>
-
-
-<h3>P</h3>
-
-<p>Many letter pictures run in pairs&mdash;finger and hand, water and
-fish&mdash;and now after eye we find mouth "pi" (pe) which represents
-the lower lip. The Greeks made little change in the name
-or shape at first, but later they introduced the angles and made
-the downward strokes equal. The Romans formed the letter by
-continuing the curve farther than the Phoenicians and called it
-"pe" (pay).</p>
-
-
-<h3>Q-R</h3>
-
-<p>Now we come to Q and R, the letters which were mentioned
-above as those probably coming from the head. Whether Q
-(koph) was derived from the picture of the back view of the
-head and neck, or whether it represents a knot, which, no doubt,
-was as important to navigators then as it is now, is a mooted
-question. The Q sound is guttural and the tail of the letter is supposed
-to indicate the throat sound. The Greeks soon discarded
-"koppa," as it was called, and the Romans went back to the
-original source for their Q (koo).</p>
-
-<p>The back view of the head is the unusual one, for as we look<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[Pg 12]</span>
-at the drawing of the early races, or memory pictures, or the
-delineations of a child of seven or eight we find they are almost
-without exception profile pictures. The Phoenician "resh" represents
-the profile and shows very little resemblance to a human
-being, although at first the features may have been more clearly
-indicated. The Greeks, as was to be expected, turned the letter
-around, and later, oddly enough, introduced a curve making it
-exactly like the Roman letter P. The extra stroke which we find
-in the Roman letter was no doubt due to the carelessness in copying.
-They pronounced it R (air).</p>
-
-
-<h3>S</h3>
-
-<p>There is a common legend explaining S, the letter with the
-hissing sound. Because of its curved shape and its hissing sound
-many people believe it to be derived from a snake. Its real history
-is easily followed from Phoenician "shin" or "sin" (teeth) to the
-present day. Its form closely resembled our W. The Greeks made
-it perpendicular for their "sigma" and the Romans simplified
-and curved it giving S (ess).</p>
-
-
-<h3>T</h3>
-
-<p>Our twentieth letter, T, is particularly interesting because it
-is derived from "tahv" a mark or cross made by people who
-could not write, and no doubt their signature frequently resembled
-it. We must not forget that even Charlemagne and other
-kings of the middle ages had to make their mark or trace their
-initials through stencil plates. The only change of "tahv" to
-Greek "tau," and to Roman T (tay) was the raising of the cross-bar.</p>
-
-
-<h3>U-V-Y</h3>
-
-<p>The letters U, V and Y were all taken from the letter "Upsilon,"
-and it may have been derived from the queer Hebrew
-form of "Ayin" which closely resembles Y. The letters U and
-V were interchangeable. Upsilon, known as the "Samian letter,"
-was used by Pythagoras as an emblem to represent the parting
-of the ways&mdash;the young man making a choice in life.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[Pg 13]</span></p>
-
-
-<h3>W</h3>
-
-<p>Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers contributed two letters, W
-(wen) and another often confused with Y, called "thorn." These
-were introduced during the thirteenth century. The French always
-called the former letter double vay, and in English it may
-be said to represent double U, as its name indicates. The letter
-"thorn" had the value of the digraph "th," and "ye" in old English
-should be pronounced "the" like the definite article.</p>
-
-
-<h3>X-Z</h3>
-
-<p>Although we have no direct need for the letter X, for Z can
-be substituted for it when it is used as an initial letter, and "ks"
-when used elsewhere, it has remained in the alphabet since its
-frequent use by the Greeks. It came from the Roman X (eex)
-which may have been derived from the Greek "ksi." The latter
-resembles the Phoenician character "samech," meaning a post or
-support.</p>
-
-<p>The dagger "zayin" from which we obtain our Z must have
-been important in the daily lives of the Greeks, Hebrews and
-Phoenicians for it occupies the sixth place (Zeta) and the seventh
-in the latter alphabets. The Romans did not change its name or
-shape, but although there has been little change in 2,000 years
-we see little resemblance to the short sword in the letter the
-Romans gave to us.</p>
-
-
-<p>Many slight changes that have occurred in the formation of
-the letters of the alphabet may be accounted for. At first the
-Greeks wrote from left to right in one line and from right to
-left on the next line&mdash;a mode of writing which has been termed
-"boustrophedon" because it runs as an ox plow does in a field, up
-one furrow and down another. It is due to this fact that many
-letters were reversed from their original prototypes. It is interesting
-to note that recently books for the blind have been embossed
-in this manner.</p>
-
-<p>The small letters of the alphabet, sometimes called "lower case"
-letters because printers keep them in a case below the capitals, or
-"minuscule letters" in contrast with "majuscule," or capital let<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[Pg 14]</span>ters,
-illustrate further changes due to rapid writing of capitals in a
-cursive or running hand.</p>
-
-<p>The few characters selected by the Phoenicians, the great
-traders, artificers and farmers of the ancient world, not only influenced
-Greek literature and life, Roman and modern nations
-in Europe, but also spread eastward to the very walls of China.
-The Hebrews copied them as a whole and retained the original
-names with only slight variations. They did change the shapes
-because a different writing instrument was employed.</p>
-
-<p>According to a legend, Jehovah gave the letters to Moses, hence
-all the left curves in Hebrew letter form turn upward&mdash;as symbols
-of a finger pointing heavenward.</p>
-
-<p>The Phoenician alphabet is also the parent of the Arabic, Indian,
-Javanese, Corean, Tibetan, Coptic syllabaries and alphabets.
-No small country ever gave such a great gift to humanity; no
-large country could have given a greater gift.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="center p2">
-THIS ARTICLE COMPOSED IN JANSON TYPES, AS ARE THOSE<br />
-ARTICLES FOLLOWING FOR WHICH NO OTHER<br />
-TYPE FACE IS INDICATED.</p>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[Pg 15]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />LANCELOT HOGBEN<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite><small>Printing, Paper and Playing Cards</small></cite></h2>
-
-<p class="center p22 small1"><cite>From Cave Painting to Comic Strip</cite> by Lancelot Hogben. Copyright 1949 by
-The Chanticleer Press. Reprinted in abridged form by permission of author
-and publisher.</p>
-
-<p>Twenty thousand years or more separate the way of life of
-the Aurignacian hunters, who contributed the first pictures to
-the modern symposium of human communications, from the
-beginnings of settled community life and the beginnings of a
-priestly script. Fully three thousand years separate the way of
-life of the first Semitic trading folk who had an alphabet from
-the vast expansion of knowledge which occurred in Northern
-Europe after the spread of printing from movable type during
-the half century before the voyages of Columbus. Civilised mankind
-had to surmount many hurdles before it was possible to
-exploit to the fullest extent the considerable economy signalised
-by the introduction of alphabetic writing.</p>
-
-<p>At first, there were few people who had any use for the art of
-writing except as a convenience of commercial intercourse. There
-was in fact no incentive to adapt the art of writing with letters to
-the flexible uses of daily speech.... An age-long popular tradition
-of community singing and community dancing lies back of Aeschylus,
-Euripides and Aristophanes; but it was one which could
-assume so novel an aspect only in the trading communities of the
-islands in the Mediterranean, where constant interchange of personnel
-promoted conditions less propitious to the dominance of a
-priestly class of avaricious landed proprietors than under the
-earlier dynasties of Egypt and the near East. Thus and there, at
-an early date, a segment of tribal ritual crystallises as a secular
-pursuit; and where there is a flourishing drama there is also a
-motive for writing, equally aloof from association with the
-repetition of sacred texts or from the limited requirements of the
-counting-house. There is, in fact, an incentive to write down
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[Pg 16]</span>what is more than a ceremonial password, an epitaph or a bill of
-goods, an incentive to record in writing what living people actually
-speak.</p>
-
-<p>It is indeed a far cry from the Greek drama to the free-and-easy
-visual speech of a modern novel or of a modern newspaper in
-the Western world; but we unduly belittle our too often overrated
-debt to Greek civilisation, if we fail to pay tribute to an
-innovation which entitles Greek literature to rank as a cardinal
-contribution to the self-education of the human species. To a
-far greater extent than the Romans, the Greeks wrote about the
-life of their times with an intimacy and liveliness which foreshadows
-the adaptation of writing to all the familiar uses of
-speech. For the Latin which generations of schoolboys reluctantly
-construed in the grammar schools, Latin in the Gladstone tradition,
-was actually dead when committed to writing, a language
-as remote from the common speech of the Italian peninsula as the
-idiom of Gertrude Stein from that of the contemporary American
-household.</p>
-
-<p>Within the framework of Greco-Latin society, the written
-word became available to the more prosperous citizens on a scale
-unprecedented in the civilisations which had preceded them; but
-there were still very few who read much or read often. The
-spoken word was still the main instrument of instruction and of
-political persuasion. Even among those who could read, there
-were still few who could also write. There were in fact two formidable
-impediments alike to the use of the written word as a
-medium of instruction or of propaganda and to the availability of
-any considerable body of written matter for those with inclination
-and training in the art of reading. Needless to say, one was the
-laborious nature of the only available means of multiplying the
-products of the pen, when it was necessary to copy every script
-individually by hand; and since this was a labour commonly entrusted
-to slaves, deficiency in penmanship gave little affront to
-self-esteem among the still privileged few who could read with
-ease. The other handicap was the writing surface itself, often of
-its very nature inadaptable to free circulation and at best costly.</p>
-
-<p><small>PAPER</small> is so much a part of every-day life that we too easily
-overlook the significance of writing material as a circumstance
-limiting the advancement of literacy. It is on that account worthy
-of more than a single sentence. The clay tablets of Babylon and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[Pg 17]</span>
-Crete might serve the purpose of stocking a temple or a palace
-library; but no household of modest size could have accommodated
-the contents of several issues of the <cite>New Yorker</cite>, if transcribed
-in the cuneiform tradition. Much the same may be said
-about the wax tablets in common use among the Roman contemporaries
-of Cicero. Indeed the advantage Egyptian civilisation,
-and thereafter the mainland Greek, Alexandrian, and late Latin,
-enjoyed from the use of <em>papyrus</em> is difficult to exaggerate. Papyrus
-consists of longitudinal ribbons of reed laid on a wet surface,
-stuck with gum to an overlaying layer of similar strips at right
-angles, dried in the sun and subsequently polished. It has a double
-advantage over clay and wax. It is not bulky, and its smooth
-surface permits an easy cursive style of writing. On the other
-hand, its manufacture is tedious; and it does not stand up to a
-moist climate.</p>
-
-<p>Long before printing began in Europe&mdash;during the Han dynasty
-in the first century <small>A.D.</small>&mdash;the Chinese had taken a lesson
-from the wasp, which makes its nest by chewing vegetable fibre
-and pressing the moist suspension into a film of even thickness. As
-a source of vegetable fibre, the Chinese used anything which came
-to hand: old fishing nets, worn-out rope and hemp, macerating
-it in tubs before removing with a sieve the artificial detritus. It
-is then possible to compress the latter to required thickness, and
-the triturated fibres adhere when dry. The Mandarin had now
-material far superior to papyrus, alike for copying or for storing
-the written word; but he lacked the incentive to share the advantage
-of this invention with his underprivileged compatriots.
-Chinese literature received a new impetus; but there were still
-few who could enjoy its benefits....</p>
-
-<p>The capture of Samarkand by the Arabs in <small>A.D.</small>  750 marks
-the date when paper starts on its trek to the as yet non-existent
-printing presses of Europe. The Moslem invaders of Spain and
-Sicily brought it with them into the territories they conquered,
-and with it a recipe for deriving the fibre basis from old rags.
-For three centuries after its introduction to Christendom, somewhere
-about <small>A.D.</small> 1200, it had to compete with parchment or
-vellum made from stretched, pressed and dried animal membranes.
-What was probably decisive in establishing its supremacy was the
-spread of water mills in the two centuries before Caxton. Power
-was necessary to speed up maceration of the raw material; and we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[Pg 18]</span>
-have record of paper mills in Germany by <small>A.D.</small> 1336. Had it not
-been for this new tempo and economy of production of thin,
-smooth and flexible material for the impress of the written word,
-the vastly increased volume of written matter put into circulation
-by the printing press could not have come about.</p>
-
-<p>As we all know, printing from movable type began in Europe
-about fifty-years before Columbus set out on his first voyage; but
-few of us reflect upon the dramatic speed with which the new
-trade spread from one city or one country to another. A single
-leaf of a sibylline poem called the <cite>Fragment of World Judgment</cite>
-is supposedly the earliest extant product of the new technique,
-probably issued about the year 1445 from the press of Gutenberg,
-a master printer, then resident in Strasbourg. From law-suit records
-we know that Fust, a goldsmith of Mainz who financed
-Gutenberg's earliest trials, was printing there during the fifties;
-and McMurtrie, author of <cite>The Book</cite>, states that</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>the first <em>dated</em> piece of printing preserved to us appeared in 1454,
-which is thus the earliest date that can be set beyond any speculation
-or controversy. In that year four different issues of a papal
-indulgence appeared in printed form. The occasion was historic.
-Constantinople had fallen to the Turks the year before. At the
-solicitation of the king of Cyprus, Pope Nicholas V granted indulgences
-to those of the faithful who should aid with gifts of
-money the campaign against the Turks. Paulinus Chappe, as
-representative of the king of Cyprus, went to Mainz to raise
-money of this cause. Ordinarily, these indulgences would have
-been written out by hand, but in this case, as there were a considerable
-number to be distributed, the aid of the new art of
-printing was enlisted, and forms were printed with blank spaces
-left for filling the dates, the names of the donors to whom they
-were issued, and other details.</p></div>
-
-<p>The new art turned out to be a double-edged weapon in the
-hands of papal authority. A Latin Bible in two columns of forty-two
-lines to the page came out in 1456, most probably, according
-to McMurtrie, from the press of Fust, now in competition with
-Gutenberg. As early as 1478, a Cologne master printer issued a
-Bible in two different German dialects with well over a hundred
-illustrations. There were 133 editions of it during the next fifty
-years. To be sure, a century was to elapse before printed Bibles<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[Pg 19]</span>
-were available in the home tongue throughout Germany, Britain,
-Scandinavia and the Low Countries; but it was a disastrous step
-to make the poorer clergy Bible-conscious.</p>
-
-<p>Within ten years of the issue of the Indulgence mentioned
-above, printing by movable type was going on in several German
-cities other than Mainz and Strasbourg. German printers brought
-the art to Rome in 1467, and two years later John of Spire, like
-Fust a goldsmith, had started work in Venice. In Switzerland,
-says McMurtrie, it seems likely that "the first printing office in
-Basle began work about 1467." Printing in Paris starts about a
-year later. In 1469, Caxton, a Kentishman, who had occupied
-consular status to the English Merchant Adventurers at Bruges,
-began translating into his own tongue for the press the <cite>Recuyell
-of the Histories of Troye</cite>, printed there in 1475. A year later,
-he returned to England, set up business with Colard Mansion in
-the Almonry near Westminster Abbey, and from that office
-produced <cite>The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers</cite>. This, states
-McMurtrie,</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>was the first dated book printed in England, the Epilogue being
-dated 1477 and in one copy November 18. Though this was the
-first <em>dated</em> book, it was not certainly the first issue of the press,
-Caxton's translation of Jason and a few other publications of
-slight extent having probably preceded it.</p></div>
-
-<p>Within twenty years from the start, on the threshold of the
-discovery of the New World, printing from movable type is thus
-in full swing throughout Europe. The speedy and consequent
-intellectual ferment is an oft-told tale, scarcely worth further
-comment, if it were not too customary to dwell on the alleged
-impact on natural knowledge, as on biblical criticism and political
-theory, of Greek scholarship imported into Europe by Byzantine
-immigrants in flight from the victorious Turks. The fact is that
-the positive outcome of Alexandrian mathematics, astronomy,
-medicine and mechanics had long ago penetrated north-western
-Europe through visits of students to the Moorish universities in
-Spain, where positive knowledge had attained a higher level than
-ever before through the marriage of Alexandrian science to Hindu
-number-lore. Equally indisputable is the fact that the universities
-of Toledo, Cordova and Seville were midwives of the cartography
-which Jewish pilots put at the service of Henry the Navigator.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[Pg 20]</span>
-That the new technique of printing made available for the great
-explorations of the fifteenth century a new scientific amenity for
-which there was a pre-existing and insistent demand is evident
-from the mounting number of nautical almanacks published
-between Gutenberg's first productions and the project of Columbus.
-Soon there were to follow manuals of military science propounding
-problems of ballistics created by the introduction of
-gunpowder into warfare&mdash;like paper, from Chinese sources by
-way of the Moslem world.</p>
-
-<p>Why monks, such as Adelard of Bath, should disguise themselves
-as Moslems to study in the Moorish universities during the
-twelfth century is easy to understand. The Church had assumed
-the responsibilities of the ancient priesthoods as custodians of the
-calendar, and hence of astronomical lore, when Christianity became
-the official religion of the Roman Empire. As founders of
-hospitals in conformity with the beatitude of the sick visitor, they
-were prohibited from active participation in the advancement of
-medicine as a science by Papal bulls against dissection of the
-human body, but on that account the more well-disposed to
-Jewish missionaries of the Moorish culture, when the latter set
-up schools of medicine on the campuses of the mediaeval universities....</p>
-
-<p>That Ionian scientific speculations exerted a salutary influence
-on Newtonian science, when the atomic concept invaded modern
-European thought after the seventeenth-century translations of
-Gassendi and others, is not open to dispute. Nor need we rob
-the fugitive scholars of Constantinople of the credit for playing
-a minor part in this climax off-stage; but the efflorescence of
-science in the seventeenth century was the immediate consequence
-of technological advances made in the preceding century,
-and put into circulation through a commercial undertaking which
-had to sell science to a reading public of master pilots, mining
-engineers, artillery commanders and spectacle-makers before
-naturalistic science had paid its way into university cloisters under
-a more accommodating sobriquet as natural philosophy.</p>
-
-<p>With this overdue obituary on the immigrants from the fall of
-Constantinople in the year preceding the first dated product of
-the new printing technique let us leave them; and again get into
-focus the astonishing speed of its spread in an age when the craft
-guilds jealously guarded their secrets. Here is a technical revolu<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[Pg 21]</span>tion
-of the first magnitude at a time when technical innovations
-diffused leisurely against menacing obstacles of custom thought
-and of legal sanctions. As such, its tempo is a challenge to curiosity;
-and part of the answer to the enigma is that there was already
-a flourishing craft of printing to take advantage of the economy
-of movable type, when Gutenberg and Fust began their partnership.</p>
-
-<p>Again, we must pause to pay a debt of gratitude to China, and
-to civilisations far older than the Chinese. We have seen that the
-seal is the oldest form of signature; and that all our knowledge
-of one of the earliest literatures of the world comes from clay
-tablets on which the Sumerian priesthoods engraved their sign-language
-with a punch to which it owes the characteristic style
-called cuneiform. The same impulse to impose the signature of a
-sky-sign on the clay tablet had led men to impress symbols of
-ownership or good omen on the soft clay products of the potter's
-wheel before the baking began. A stamp is, after all, a seal to carry
-a pigment; and the practice of stamping pottery with coloured
-patterns is of great antiquity. The next step is intelligible in its
-own territory. In China, whence the silkworm made its lethargic
-way across the great trade routes of Asia, stamping patterns on
-silk was probably a practice before the Christian era began; and
-it was China which produced the first paper. Probably about
-<small>A.D.</small> 700, though it may well be earlier, the practice of stamping
-charms by wood blocks on paper began there. In <small>A.D.</small> 767 the
-Empress Shotoku of Japan ordered a million Buddhist charms to
-be printed from wood blocks on paper for placing in miniature
-pagodas.</p>
-
-<p>The Chinese predilection for games such as <em>Mah Jongg</em> is an
-ancient tradition; and an early use of block printing&mdash;long before
-it came into Europe&mdash;is the production of <em>sheet dice</em> or, as we
-should say, playing cards. As charms&mdash;pictures of saints&mdash;and as
-playing cards, wood-block printing established a market in Europe
-at least a century before Gutenberg's Bible. Fortunately, we
-know some facts about this, as often by a happy dispensation.
-For the age-long obstruction of the legal mind to progress conspires
-with its obsessional drive to record its own ineptitudes and
-us to perpetuate milestones of progress by the resistance it
-offers to innovation. Thus we have the record of a prohibition
-issued by the Provost of Paris in <small>A.D.</small> 1397 against working men<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[Pg 22]</span>
-playing cards on working days; and there were many such prohibitions
-in German towns about this time. We have also originals
-of contemporaneous wood-block prints portraying saints for sale
-at shrines by travelling pedlars and palmers, encouraged to foregather
-by papal indulgences for the pilgrims.</p>
-
-<p>Like <em>Snap</em> and other children's card games of today, the first
-playing cards were wholly pictorial, in suits exhibiting the feudal
-hierarchy, starting with the king and queen. The joker is a relic.
-Sometimes, the wood block of the picture card accommodated a
-title or epithet, and often the <em>Heiligen</em>, or shrine charms promoted
-by the clergy as an antidote to the carnal indulgence of card-playing,
-would carry the name of the saint. Either way, the next
-step was inevitable. We are now in sight of printing as a medium
-for the rapid circulation of knowledge; but we have to take stock
-of several features of the folk ways of Europe in the Middle Ages
-before we take the next hurdle.</p>
-
-<p>When we reach the threshold of the fifteenth century, writing
-is no longer the prerogative of a priestly caste. There are merchants
-with big balances in the wool trade, the herring trade and
-the spice trade. There are pilots who have to rely on their <em>rutter</em>
-books to navigate cargoes of the spice trade over long ocean
-routes. There is a mounting volume of manorial accountancy and
-litigation connected with the exchange of produce between the
-countryside and the boroughs where master-craftsmen and merchants
-are now aspiring to domestic conveniences heretofore inaccessible
-to the landed gentry. All this signifies the pre-existence
-of considerable semi-literate personnel to provide a market for
-the products of Gutenberg's trade. It is necessary to say this, because
-school history too often exhibits the Church and the Law
-as the custodians of literacy.</p>
-
-<p>What is true is that the monks, and to a less extent the lawyers,
-were the only people who had time to write <em>at length</em> during the
-century we have now reached. The lawyers we may leave to
-their own sadistic pursuits.... The Church deserves kinder consideration,
-even if the Church had outstayed its welcome. For
-Catholicism kept alive the lucidity of picture-language in an age
-when a new technique of illustration offered the only means of
-grace to the few men who saw the light of science through a
-miasma of verbal puns.</p>
-
-<p>In short, we are here talking of the <em>Missals</em>, a form of sacred<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[Pg 23]</span>
-art with a charm to which even a hard-boiled technician such as
-the writer is not entirely indifferent. There is a pathetic earnestness
-about the tender care with which the monks illuminated their
-copies of devotional texts, and one which established what we
-may fairly call the first experiment in visual education for the
-people. The monks who made the missals offered a helping hand
-to the new industry. To be sure, we read a lot of rubbish written
-about what we owe to them; but they did one thing of enduring
-value besides starting hospitals and nursing the spectacle trade
-for the benefit of "poor blind men." They made <em>block-books</em>
-possible. In the admirable book already cited, this is what McMurtrie
-has to say about their contribution:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>There is ... one exceedingly primitive block book, the <cite>Exercitium
-super Pater Noster</cite>, in which the illustrations are printed
-from woodcuts and the text added in manuscript.... The costume
-is that of the Burgundian court of the second quarter of the
-century, and this feature, in conjunction with the technique of
-design and cutting led Hind to date the book about 1430 and
-hardly later than 1440.</p></div>
-
-<p>There is still argument about whether devotional block-books
-with both illustrations and text produced from fixed blocks antedated
-or synchronised with printing from movable type; but it
-seems fairly certain that block-books were in circulation before
-the wastefulness of cutting the same letter over and over again
-on the same block occurred to Gutenberg, and likely enough to
-many others. The issue is of academic interest only. What we can
-say certainly is that the printers of playing cards and of <em>Heiligen</em>
-were already involved in the book industry before it occurred
-to anyone to make punches and dies for letters of the alphabet
-in order to dispense with the necessity of repeatedly carving the
-same sign on a composite block. Metal-founders of the thirteenth
-century already knew the art of using stamps with single letters
-in relief to make an impress on fine sand for molten metal when
-making inscriptions, themselves to appear in relief on the finished
-casting. In bell foundries, among craftsmen who made pewter
-vessels with inscriptions, in the minting of coin and the casting
-of medals, the use of metal single-letter punches and dies was
-also commonplace.</p>
-
-<p>In short, there is already in existence an industry of master<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[Pg 24]</span>
-printers when the record of Gutenberg's law-suit bequeaths the
-first documentary evidence of printing as we use the term today&mdash;moreover
-an industry working in close contact with ancillary
-crafts which had already solved the technical problems on whose
-solution printing on a larger scale at less cost was attendant. There
-is a market for books, with richer profits if the printer can solve
-the technical problem of outsmarting the monks in the art of
-making the first copy, as he can already outsmart them by reproducing
-the first copy without limit. In one sense, we now have a
-press.</p>
-
-<p>Still, we have not explained the phenomenal rapidity with
-which the new technique of cutting stamps to make up a frame
-of continuous type spread throughout Europe, unless we look at
-our period in its social entirety; and if we are to do so we must
-take stock of many things which were not happening in China,
-the parent civilisation of the printing art. One of them is sufficiently
-obvious to be easily overlooked in an age of central heating.
-Europe, as post-war American tourists will agree, is rather
-cold and rather cloudy. That is why it is important to bring glass
-into the picture. <small>GLASS</small> is an invention of great antiquity, being
-in fact an early Egyptian amenity; but the very qualities we
-admire in the iridescent glass of Etruscan or Roman vessels make
-it equally unsuitable to the uses of domestic life or to the science
-of gas or temperature measurement. Before you have leisure to
-read, in the chilly north of the Hanseatic League or the Flemish
-wool trade, you must have a technique of house design utterly
-different from what meets your requirements in the sunny south
-of Greece and Italy, Crete or Egypt. It is therefore relevant that
-there is now, in the fifteenth century, a prosperous burgher class
-with houses equipped with windows made of glass, glass of poor
-quality by our standards but vastly better fitted to its principal
-use than the glass of antiquity. Nor is it irrelevant that spectacles
-are now coming into use for the old folk who have time on their
-hands.</p>
-
-<p>The very fact that we now have windows brings into focus that
-we have an emergent class of semi-literate and relatively prosperous
-merchants and craftsmen, a class which is beginning to send
-its sons to grammar schools to get a smattering of reading and of
-the art of cyphers. This consideration prompts reflection upon
-the almost ubiquitous association of the goldsmith as the patron,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[Pg 25]</span>
-partner or financier of the earliest master printers of books. There
-is now a wealthy craft of jewellers and armourers skilled in the art
-of using punches and dies to make patterns in relief on a metal
-surface, with a secure trade among the nobles and the wealthier
-merchants; and there are already the beginnings of a new trade in
-pictorial reproduction fostered by artists seeking patrons among
-them. Before printing by movable type begins, the wood-block
-illustration is competing with a better technique. Instead of smearing
-a sticky ink on a raised surface, it is now possible to achieve
-the same end by filling the crevices in a metal plate wiped clean;
-and who should be more concerned with promoting the use of
-pictorial reproduction by engraving than goldsmith and jeweller
-well versed in the uses of impressing a pattern in relief or intaglio?</p>
-
-<p>What is happening in the fifteenth century is not the outcropping
-of inborn genius. Contrariwise, we should regard it as the
-confluence of a large number of new techniques, individually of
-little import to human advancement, collectively with a new
-momentum. Nor need we pride ourselves on the fact that European
-civilisation proved equal to exploiting to greater advantage
-what it had thanklessly received from the Eastern world. Paul
-Pelliot has discovered wooden types attributed to Wang Cheng
-in the beginning of the fourteenth century, well over a hundred
-years before the first dated printing from movable type in Germany;
-and if this invention came to nothing, have we far to seek
-the explanation? With twenty-six pigeonholes for a box of letter
-type at his elbow, the European compositor of the fifteenth century
-enjoys an immeasurable advantage over his fourteenth-century
-fellow craftsman who has to manipulate several thousand
-Chinese characters. Korea took up movable type, probably
-through Chinese influence, about fifty years before Europe.</p>
-
-<p>No intelligent Anglo-American needs to be told at length how
-printing contributed to the diffusion of knowledge previously
-transmitted by oral tradition, how much more the master printers
-and book-makers from Gutenberg to Benjamin Franklin contributed
-to the making of our language habits than all the professors
-of their time, how much the trade in reading matter contributed
-to the great enlightenment of the four centuries which followed,
-how it also contributed to the liberation of Christendom from
-papal authority, what it bestowed on the age of Galileo and
-Newton, how it catalysed man's thought about human dignity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[Pg 26]</span>
-and fundamental human rights. What we are prone to forget is
-how much water had to pass under the bridges before the homeland
-of Caxton or that of Franklin could assert the ability to read
-and to transcribe the written word as the birthright of every
-citizen.</p>
-
-<p>In North America and in Northwestern Europe, literacy is
-today a medical diagnosis. That a person cannot read or write is
-now a sufficient criterion of mental defect; and this is so in a
-sense which would have been utterly false of Britain or the
-United States alike when Charles Dickens wrote an uncharitable
-record of his transatlantic itinerary. Until the middle of the nineteenth
-century there was everywhere a large underprivileged
-class cut off from the possession of books and without the incentive
-to purchase reading matter....</p>
-
-<p>By attaching a cast of the hand-set type to cylinders it was possible
-to take advantage of the introduction of steam power with
-considerable economy of time entailed in running off the printed
-sheet; but it was impossible to reap the harvest of this economy
-while it was still necessary to set type by manual extraction from
-a box of each die for a letter, cypher or punctuation mark. Also,
-the manufacturer of paper from rag was a relatively costly process
-by modern standards; and the discovery of a cheaper source
-of raw material was a precondition of expanding trade in the
-printed word. Rag, be it said, is simply woven fibre of cotton or
-flax; and any vegetable fibre is good enough for the work of the
-wasp. It was therefore a great advance, when it was possible to
-use the by-products of the lumber camps for paper manufacture.
-Wood pulp as a source of paper came into its own in the eighties,
-though its use goes back to a German patent about 1840. In 1857
-Routledge had introduced, as an alternative source of raw material,
-esparto grass from Spain and North Africa; and there had
-been notable advances in the mechanics of paper production during
-the preceding fifty years.</p>
-
-<p>In 1803 the French printer Didot brought into England a
-device which took advantage of steam power by running wet
-pulp on to a moving, endless belt of wire mesh through which the
-water drained off. It could run off in a day six miles of paper
-of uniform width. In 1821 Crompton invented the process of
-drying by steam-heated rollers. Between 1803 and 1815 König in
-Germany and Cowper in Britain had perfected power-driven<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[Pg 27]</span>
-machinery for printing off a continuous roll of paper from cylinders
-carrying the type cast. The four-cylinder machine patented
-by Cowper and Applegarth in 1827 ran off 5,000 sheets per hour
-of the London <cite>Times</cite> simultaneously printed on both sides. The
-Walter Rotary of 1866 appears to have been the first cylinder
-machine to print on both sides of an unwinding roll of paper
-with a power-driven mechanism to cut the sheets, previously fed
-to the machine by hand. By that time a cheaper source of paper
-was available.</p>
-
-<p>The advent of cheap paper accommodated the purchase of
-reading matter to the purse of the poorer classes in the community;
-but it did not bring into their lives a daily stimulus to
-read. While type-setting remained a manual operation, the maintenance
-of a daily press was beset by many difficulties and possible
-only because it did not as yet aspire to the topical immediacy
-which could coax a large semi-literate section of the population
-into the habit of daily reading. What made possible a truly popular
-press was an invention thus described by McMurtrie:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Setting extensive manuscripts by hand is, of course, a very slow
-and laborious process, and as the printing industry grew in extent
-and importance it was only natural that efforts should be
-made to devise a means of setting type mechanically at greater
-speed and less cost.... The failures were myriad. All efforts to
-take the foundry type used by the compositor and set it up
-mechanically came to naught. Finally, however, Ottmar Mergenthaler
-invented a machine which, by the action of a keyboard
-somewhat resembling that of a type-writer, assembled not type
-but matrices and, when a whole line was set and spaced, cast this
-line in one piece, or "slug," of type metal. This machine, which
-was first put into practical use in 1886, and appropriately christened
-a "linotype," gave a revolutionary impetus to the printing
-industry ... as with all new inventions of importance it was
-expected that thousands of compositors would be thrown out of
-work. But, again as usual, the industry grew so fast that more
-men were employed than before.</p></div>
-
-<p>This device is not the only machine which sets type. On its
-heels came the monotype which employs the pianola principle for
-power transmission and is for some purposes preferable. The
-technical advantages of one or the other are irrelevant to our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[Pg 28]</span>
-theme. What makes printing by linotype an outstanding achievement
-of nineteenth-century technology is that it permits type-setting
-to keep pace with the tempo of topical affairs at a time
-when a railroad schedule co-ordinated by telegraphy has made
-man minute-conscious for the first time in history. It is at once
-a new goad to the new social discipline of punctuality and a new
-means of satisfying an appetite for sensation among a section of
-the population not as yet attuned to habitual reading....</p>
-
-<p>That the Moslem world of Omar Khayyam and Alkarismi
-transmitted so many of the benefits of Chinese civilisation to the
-West, reaping themselves no advantage from the invention of
-printing, illustrates a truth which Marxist dogma ignores. Fruitful
-innovation is, as the Marxist rightly asserts, the result of interplay
-between human needs and natural resources; but the
-triple formula of means, motive and opportunity suffices to account
-for the vagaries of man's history only if we recognise the
-inherent inertia of human motivation. Beliefs do not come from
-heaven; but they have a remarkable tenacity in the teeth of
-worldly profit, a tenacity forcefully illustrated by two facets of
-the Moslem creed. In the racy, though none the less scholarly,
-account of the history of printing already cited several times in
-this chapter, McMurtrie states:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The Koran forbade games of chance.... The Koran had been
-given to the Moslems in written form, and writing, therefore,
-was the only means by which it might ever be transmitted. To
-this day the Koran has never been printed from type in any
-Mohammedan country; it is always reproduced by lithography.</p></div>
-
-<p>One consequence of this is that Moslem countries, and African
-communities which have received their script from Moslem missionaries,
-suffer from the educational disability of a cursive style
-which is ill-suited to easy reading. If we are tempted to ascribe
-this to defective hereditary equipment of peoples whose culture
-was the inspiration of Europe in the Middle Ages, we may
-well reflect with moral and intellectual benefit to ourselves on the
-complacency with which western scholars disown the constructive
-tasks of language-planning at a time when scientific journals
-embodying new discoveries are appearing in twenty or more languages.</p>
-
-<p>Statistics which convey a clear picture of the mounting volume<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[Pg 29]</span>
-of printed matter issued annually during the four centuries of
-European printing are hard to come by. The number of editions
-printed in England increased from 13 in 1510 to 219 in 1580, to
-about 600 a year in the first two decades of the nineteenth century
-and 12,379 in 1913. Unhappily, an edition is a grossly misleading
-index of production, even of new books. What we call a
-modern best seller signifies a first edition of over 25,000 copies.
-In the fifteenth century, the average edition was about 300 copies.
-Till the middle of the eighteenth, an edition rarely exceeded 600;
-but there were notable exceptions. There were 34 editions of the
-<cite>Adagia</cite> of Erasmus, each of a thousand copies, in the first few
-decades of the sixteenth century, and 24,000 copies of his <cite>Colloquia
-Familiaria</cite> came out in the same author's lifetime. Of Luther's
-tract <cite>To the Christian Nobility</cite> 4,000 copies were sold within
-five days. The Bible Society, founded in 1711 by Baron von Canstein
-in Halle, printed within a short space of time 340,000 copies
-of the New Testament and 480,000 copies of the Scriptures as a
-whole. The British and Foreign Bible Society, founded in 1804
-by Thomas Charles of Bala as an incident in his crusade against
-Welsh illiteracy, was responsible for the issue of 237 million
-copies in the three decades 1900-1930....</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>So far, we have taken no cognisance of the formative role of
-the master printer <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vis-à-vis</i> the culture of contemporary western
-civilisation. We shall now try to get into focus the consequences
-of something quite new in the history of our species, the emergence
-of a social personnel with a vested interest in the enlightenment
-of mankind. Of such was the inventor of the first saleable
-electrical device, the originator of the very names positive and
-negative in their now most common technical context, a man who
-rendered signal service for his country at the court of France and
-put his signature to the Declaration of Independence, the man
-whose last will and testament begins "I, Benjamin Franklin,
-Printer...."</p>
-
-<p>At first, the master printer was also a publisher, till the trade
-began to expand a book-seller as well, and sometimes, like Caxton,
-translator or author. Nor is it surprising that printing and bookselling
-still preserve the professional outlook of the mediaeval
-craftsman far more than any other contemporary commercial
-undertaking, with <em>mores</em> peculiar to themselves. Today, as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[Pg 30]</span>
-throughout the past four centuries, there is still a place for the
-small-scale high-quality firm in printing, publishing or bookselling
-alike. Throughout the five centuries of printing from movable
-type the small proprietor has ever been the ally of novel
-thought; and the book trade still thrives on the free expression
-of views which are anathema to big business, oil politicians and
-Wall Street tycoons. To say this is not to say that every publisher,
-every partner in a printing firm or every back-street book-seller is
-in the vanguard of liberal sentiment and fertile cerebration; but
-to be blind to their contribution to our common culture is to be
-blind to one of the burning issues of our age. Even to say that the
-publisher, the printer or the book-seller is always ahead of his
-business colleagues in joining the bandwagon of progress is to
-dispel a miasma of moral indignation which distorts our view of
-a decision contemporary man has to make wisely or incur the
-prospect of a dark age of superstition and authority....</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[Pg 31]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="garamond">
-<h2 class="nobreak"> Colophons.  Ruth S. Granniss</h2>
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i031" style="max-width: 30.8125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_031.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p class="center p22 small1">Copyright 1930 by <cite>The Colophon</cite>. Reprinted by permission of the author.</p>
-
-<p>The late printer-scholar, Theodore Low De Vinne, was
-wont to exclaim with regret over a puzzling bookish
-question, "Alas, bibliography is not an exact science!"
-Since his day, what with the learned publications of
-bibliographical societies (first and foremost&mdash;that of England),
-with such scholarly independent productions as Ronald B. McKerrow's
-<cite>Introduction to Bibliography</cite> and some of its followers,
-and with such undertakings as the <cite>Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke</cite>&mdash;not
-to speak of the many masterly library catalogues and
-bibliographies which these late years have brought us&mdash;we are
-almost tempted to reverse his dictum. We have all these, added
-to the wealth of pioneer writings of book-lovers like Richard
-de Bury, Gabriel Naude, Guillaume François De Bure, Gabriel
-Peignot, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, and the more scientific but no
-more (nor less) book-loving Panzer, Hain, Brunet, Renouard, Bradshaw,
-Haebler, Proctor, Claudin, and our own Wilberforce Eames.
-We pause for breath, but have only picked a few random names
-from the long roll of those who have loved and worked for the arts
-that go into the making, and the science that goes into the understanding
-of a printed book&mdash;the vehicle which must continue to
-preserve and to carry down through the ages the results of men's
-thoughts and the records of their deeds.</p>
-
-<p>All this is as it should be, but of late, and especially in connection
-with the present vogue for collecting the works of living
-authors, a certain quality (shall we call it self-consciousness) has
-crept in, an undue stressing of small technicalities, and we blush to
-confess a confused feeling of sympathy for the modern book-hunter,
-who is having so much of his fun taken away from him by neat little
-textbooks and articles, bristling with allusions to "points," "right
-copies," "firsts" and the like (with the inevitable quotation marks)
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[Pg 32]</span>and filled with weighty questions of dollars and pounds&mdash;the seemingly
-all-important matter of the investment value of our treasures.
-This surely is not the fine frenzy which possessed Charles Lamb
-when he wrote: "Do you remember the brown suit which you made
-to hang upon you, till all your friends cried 'Shame upon you!' It
-grew so threadbare&mdash;and all because of that folio 'Beaumont and
-Fletcher,' which you dragged home late at night from Barker's
-in Covent Garden. Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks
-before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not
-come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday
-night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too
-late. And when the old book-seller with some grumbling opened
-his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards),
-lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures, and when you lugged
-it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome, and when you presented
-it to me, and when we were exploring the perfectness of it
-(<em>collating</em> you called it), and while I was repairing some of the
-loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer
-to be left till daybreak&mdash;was there no pleasure in being a poor
-man!"</p>
-
-<p>Where there is much smoke, however, there is fire, and it is
-assuredly good that this interest in bibliographical things should
-have swept the country, and incidentally that the joys of the bibliomaniac
-and the bibliophile are being experienced today by many
-more than the elect few of the past, on whom we love to dwell.
-But if we moderns are doomed to buy our first editions ready labelled
-and to have our equations worked out in advance, if a fine
-copy must be termed immaculate and the back of a book must be
-its spine, etc., etc., ad infinitum, let us start with the right premises,
-and hold on to the terms which were proverbial before we were
-born. Which brings us to our point&mdash;What is a Colophon?</p>
-
-<p>The question would seem a reflection upon the intelligence of
-the average book-lover, at this late day, were it not that there seems
-to be a growing tendency, shared (even instigated) by lexicographers,
-to mis-define the word, or to use it out of its truly bibliographical
-and philological meaning. To book-lovers and collectors
-of even the preceding generation, acquainted as they were with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[Pg 33]</span>
-the niceties of their vocation, or avocation, the suggestion of more
-than one signification would have seemed well-nigh an insult.
-Perhaps it is even because we are living in this late day that heresies
-have crept in. After all, it is nearly a quarter of a century since
-the Caxton Club of Chicago brought out <cite>An Essay on Colophons</cite>,
-by Dr. Alfred W. Pollard, later Keeper of Printed Books at the
-British Museum, whose word on all bibliographical matters carries
-the highest authority&mdash;the Club thereby performing one of those
-great services to students of bibliography for which it and similar
-institutions are acclaimed by an appreciative, if limited, circle. Perhaps
-the very limits of the circle are accountable for lack of knowledge,
-and it may be that a book, printed nearly twenty-five years
-ago in an edition of some two hundred and fifty copies, may never
-have come within the ken of a writer on bookish things today&mdash;even
-of an earnest one. But that is just where our quarrel begins&mdash;ought
-anyone to write on colophons, or on anything else, without
-some knowledge of at least the chief literature of the subject, and
-should the next man, and the next, be allowed to hand on an error,
-or perhaps a misconception, without a thought of the original
-sources of information? For that is just what has been happening
-in America in this matter, and what it seems must also be occurring
-in greater ones. There is plenty of thorough scholarship here,
-scholarship that shrinks from no drudgery&mdash;then why is it that
-so much hasty, slipshod work is allowed to pass?</p>
-
-<p>But we were speaking of colophons&mdash;a word which, to many
-people who trouble with it at all, seems to mean almost anything,&mdash;for
-instance the mark or device of a printer or publishing firm,
-placed anywhere at random in a book, possibly bearing a motto or
-a name. Indeed, this is the signification which has frequently been
-given to it of late in print and in common speech by people who
-should have known better, and whom a little thought or a little
-more research would have taught better. For instance, a publisher's
-assistant suggested that a given place upon the title page is the
-proper location for the colophon; a librarian wrote to request a
-copy of the "colophon of the Grolier Club" to add to a collection;
-a book-trade magazine issued an article on devices or trade-marks
-of publishers of today, appearing on the title pages of their publi<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[Pg 34]</span>cations,
-and dubbed them all colophons; a college professor used
-the term in like manner; and all this occurred within a period of a
-few months.</p>
-
-<p>The only protest to be raised in print seems to be that of Leonard
-L. Mackall, in his dependable "Notes for Bibliophiles," a department
-of the <cite>Herald Tribune's</cite> Sunday magazine, <cite>Books</cite>. In the issue
-of March 17, 1929, he wrote: "Right here we must call special
-attention to the fact that, some modern ignorant or careless misuse
-to the contrary, notwithstanding, a colophon is not really a colophon
-at all unless it appears at the end of the book. Most certainly
-the word does not properly mean merely a publisher's device wherever
-used, as stated in a [recent] anonymous illustrated article."</p>
-
-<p>No one has heeded him, however, and my own like-minded objections
-were met with the advice to look in the dictionary, and
-then the blow fell! It is true that some dictionaries, but by no
-means all, countenance this usage of colophon as a device upon
-a title page. Before quoting their definitions, let us look at the
-Oxford English Dictionary, where we find:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>1. "Finishing stroke"; "crowning touch," <cite>obs.</cite></p>
-
-<p>2. The inscription or device, sometimes pictorial or emblematic,
-formerly placed at the end of a book or manuscript, and containing
-the title, the scribe's or printer's name, date and place of printing,
-etc. Hence, <em>from title page to colophon</em>.</p></div>
-
-<p>It may be noted that, of the various examples (1774-1874)
-quoted by the Oxford English Dictionary, not one refers to the
-colophon as placed elsewhere than at the end of the book.</p>
-
-<p>Our Century Dictionary is sound on the subject, but we have in
-Funk &amp; Wagnalls' Standard Dictionary:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>1. An inscription or other device formerly placed at the end of
-books and writings, often showing the title, writer's or printer's
-name and date and place of printing.</p>
-
-<p>2. An emblematic device adopted by a publisher and impressed
-on his books, usually on the title page of each volume (accompanied
-by an illustration of the printer's mark of Nicolas Jenson,
-inscribed: "Colophon of Nicolas Jenson" [1481]).</p></div>
-
-<p>The phrase "usually on the title page" (not in the Oxford Eng<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[Pg 35]</span>lish
-Dictionary) seems to us absolutely wrong, and not to be countenanced
-for a moment by bookmen who have proper regard for
-the correct usage of words.</p>
-
-<p>The corresponding definition in late editions of Webster's Dictionary
-is:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>An emblem, usually a device assumed by the publishing-house,
-placed either on the title page, or at the end of a book.</p></div>
-
-<p>In what subtle way this secondary and inadequate definition has
-crept into American usage we do not know, and we plead earnestly
-for its abandonment.</p>
-
-<p>In the encyclopedias consulted, there is nothing disturbing, the
-definition of the <cite>Encyclopaedia Britannica</cite>, written by Dr. Pollard,
-being especially clear and concise. It runs in part as follows:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>... a final paragraph in some manuscripts and many early
-printed books, giving particulars as to authorship, date and place
-of production, and sometimes expressing the thankfulness of the
-author, scribe or printer on the completion of his task ... the
-importance of these final paragraphs slowly diminished, and the
-information they gave was gradually transferred to the title page.
-Complete title pages bearing the date and name of the publishers
-are found in most books printed after 1520, and the final paragraph,
-if retained at all, was gradually reduced to information as
-to the printer and date. From the use of the word in the sense of
-a "finishing stroke" (from the story that the final charge of the
-cavalry of Colophon was always decisive) such a final paragraph
-as has been described is called by bibliographers a "colophon,"
-but this name for it is quite possibly not earlier than the eighteenth
-century.</p></div>
-
-<p>Let us turn from general works to those specifically bibliographical.
-In his <cite>Introduction to Bibliography</cite>,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Dr. McKerrow writes:
-"In the early days of printing, the end of the book was the normal
-place for the printer's name and the place and date of printing to
-appear. The history of the colophon is merely that of the gradual
-transference of this information to the title page. When this was
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[Pg 36]</span>complete the colophon was as a rule of no use and it was abandoned."</p>
-
-<p>Later, among his cataloguing instructions we find: "A colophon
-should always be noticed, if there is one. It is also, I think, desirable
-to record the occurrence of a printer's device (even without a verbal
-imprint) at the end of a book, as this often appears to take the
-place of a colophon."</p>
-
-<p>Iolo Williams' <cite>Elements of Book-Collecting</cite><a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> contains this paragraph:
-"In the earliest printed books the title page's functions were
-performed by the colophon, a word which is a transliteration of the
-Greek, a summit or finishing stroke. The colophon is put, not near
-the beginning of the book, like the title page, but at the end, and it
-usually takes the form of a statement that here ends such-and-such
-a book, written by so-and-so, printed by so-and-so at such-and-such
-a place and date. The use of the colophon has been revived in certain
-finely-printed modern books, but such modern volumes usually contain
-both a title page and a colophon."</p>
-
-<p>Though not quite as satisfying, the following allusion in Van
-Hoesen and Walter's <cite>Bibliography</cite><a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> should be quoted, as occurring
-in a modern American treatise on the subject: "The early printers
-used the colophon at the end of the book instead of a title page, and
-the colophon is still used to indicate the printing firm in cases where
-it is not part of the publishing firm given on the title page."</p>
-
-<p>These are the latest printed words that we have noticed. Suffice
-it to say that we have nowhere found in earlier important manuals
-anything but the (to us) proper explanation of the term. In other
-words, we gather from important sources that, while a colophon
-may include or even take the form of a printer's mark or device,
-such a mark, placed upon a title page, is not a colophon.</p>
-
-
-<p>Aroused by the dictionary findings, and discovering those American
-students of bibliography whom I consulted to be in agreement
-with me, I wrote to Dr. Pollard, as to a court of final appeal,
-to inquire if he considered it meticulous to object to the intrusion of
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[Pg 37]</span>this illogical trade definition which some dictionaries and many
-people are giving us. His answer, which I am allowed to quote,
-seems definite and wise enough to carry conviction, coming as it
-does from the admitted authority on the subject: "If a sufficient
-number of people misuse a word, Dictionaries have to record the
-wrong use as well as the right, as in the case of <em>hectic</em> and crowds of
-other words. But the misuse of the word <em>colophon</em> as a synonym
-for the printer's mark or device, without regard to position, has not
-yet gone as far as this and should be strenuously resisted. By standard
-use as well as by etymology, the word means the crowning
-stroke, or finishing touch, to a book or part of a book, and it must
-come at the end of the book, or part of a book, rightly to be given
-this title.</p>
-
-<p>"In cataloguing early books it would not in my judgment be
-incorrect to enter the printer's device at the end of a book, under
-the heading colophon."</p>
-
-<p>And now, the unpleasantly controversial side of the matter having
-been disposed of (if so large an adjective as controversial may
-be applied to so small a paper), let us devote our little remaining
-space to the colophons themselves, first turning our attention to Dr.
-Pollard's book,<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> with his own rendering into English of the unwieldy
-fifteenth-century Latin.</p>
-
-<p>In the introduction, Dr. Richard Garnett gives a brief sketch of
-the derivation and earliest uses of the term. He quotes the Greek
-word <em>colophon</em>, the head or summit of anything, usually used in a
-figurative sense, the position on a crest of the City of Colophon
-(whence its name), the first appearance of the word in the seventeenth
-century, with its secondary classical sense of a "finishing
-stroke" or a "crowning touch," and goes on to say: "Of the use of
-the word <em>colophon</em> in the particular significance elucidated in this
-essay&mdash;the end or ultimate paragraph of a book or manuscript&mdash;the
-earliest example quoted in the New English Dictionary is from
-Warton's <cite>History of English Poetry</cite> published in 1774. A quarter
-of a century before this it is found as a term needing no explanation
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[Pg 38]</span>in the first edition of the <cite>Typographical Antiquities</cite> of Joseph Ames,
-published in 1749. How much older it is than this cannot lightly
-be determined. The bibliographical use appears to be unknown
-to the Greek and Latin lexicographers, medieval as well as classical.
-Pending further investigation, it seems not unlikely that it may
-have been developed out of the secondary classical sense already
-mentioned sometime during the seventeenth century, when the interest
-in bibliography which was then beginning to be felt would
-naturally call into existence new terms of art."</p>
-
-
-<p>While acknowledging the great interest that many authors have
-found in individual colophons, Dr. Pollard states that his task is
-the more ambitious, if less entertaining one of making a special
-study of this feature in fifteenth century books with the object of
-ascertaining what light it throws on the history of printing, and on
-the habits of the early printers and publishers. His first conclusion
-being that colophons are the sign and evidence of the printer's
-pride in his work, he draws attention to the utter lack of such information
-as they give in the very earliest books of all, as contrasted
-with the self-glorification of Fust and Schöffer when, printing
-independently, they affixed the first known printed colophon
-to their Psalter of 1457 (in at least one copy accompanied by their
-device):</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The present copy of the Psalms, adorned with beauty of capital
-letters, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus
-fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing, and stamping
-without any driving of the pen. And to the worship of God has
-been diligently brought to completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of
-Mainz, and Peter Schöffer of Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord
-1457, on the vigil of the Feast of the Assumption.</p></div>
-
-<p>Of Peter Schöffer's later allusion to the shields of his device Dr.
-Pollard writes: "Needless discussions have been raised as to what
-was the use and import of printers' devices, and it has even been
-attempted to connect them with literary copyright, with which they
-had nothing whatever to do, literary copyright in this decade depending
-solely on the precarious courtesy of rival firms, or possibly
-on the rules of their trade-guilds. But here, on the authority of the
-printer who first used one, we have a clear indication of the reason
-which made him put his mark on a book&mdash;the simple reason that
-he was proud of his craftsmanship and wished it to be recognized
-as his. 'By signing it with his shields Peter Schöffer has brought
-the book to a happy completion.'"</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[Pg 39]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp42" id="i039" style="max-width: 28.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_039.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="times">
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><em>Psalter. Mainz, Fust and Schöffer</em>, 1457. THE FIRST PRINTED COLOPHON.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[Pg 40]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Again he calls attention to the boast of John of Speier at Venice,
-"primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis," by which he asserts
-his individual priority over any other firm in that city. And here is
-the rhyming colophon used by the same John, in which he boasts
-with some ambiguity of the number of copies of Cicero which he
-has printed in his two editions:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container pw25">
-<div class="poetry">
-<p class="p1">From Italy once each German brought a book.<br />
-A German now will give more than they took.<br />
-For John, a man whom few in skill surpass,<br />
-Has shown that books may best be writ with brass.<br />
-Speier befriends Venice; twice in four months has he<br />
-Printed this Cicero, in hundreds three.<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a><br />
-</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>In wording their colophons, the early printers were only following
-the constant practice of medieval scribes, of whose many colophons
-a selection of examples is given in Bradley's <cite>Dictionary of
-Miniaturists</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>The moving of printers from one town to another, transference
-of their stocks, their quarrels, their boastings and pleas for favor
-with those in high places, all are followed, and much information
-gathered in the <cite>Essay</cite>. There is simple pathos in the colophon of
-the <cite>Chronicles of the londe of England</cite> printed at Antwerp in 1493,
-which records the death of its famous printer, Gerard Leeu,</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>a man of grete wysedom in all manner of kunnyng; whych nowe
-is come from lyfe unto the deth, which is grete harme for many
-of poure man. On whos sowle God almyghty for hys hygh grace
-haue mercy. Amen.</p></div>
-
-<p>"A man whose death is great harm for many a poor man must
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[Pg 41]</span>needs have been a good master, and a king need want no finer epitaph,"
-writes Dr. Pollard.</p>
-
-
-<p>The days when we find the book trade highly organized and the
-functions of printers and publishers clearly separated, are pictured
-in the following colophon:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Here you have, most honest reader, six works, etc. It remains,
-therefore, for you to make grateful acknowledgement to those who
-have produced them: in the first place to that eminent man Master
-Simon Radin, who saw to their being brought to light from the
-obscurity in which they were buried; next to F. Cyprian Beneti for
-his editorial care; then to Jean Petit, best of book-sellers, who
-caused them to be printed at his expense; nor less than these to
-Andrieu Bocard, the skilful chalcographer, who printed them so
-elegantly and with scrupulous correctness, June 28, 1500. Praise
-and glory to God.<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>Here are men making aspersions on the editions of rival publishers,
-with warnings against them:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Here end the Decretals, most correctly printed in the bounteous
-city of Rome, queen of the whole world, by those excellent men
-Master Ulrich Han, a German, and Simon di Niccolo of Lucca:
-with the ordinary glosses of Bernard of Parma and his additions,
-which are found in few copies; both printed and corrected with
-the greatest diligence. Purchase these, book-buyer, with a light
-heart, for you will find such excellence in this volume that you
-will be right in easily reckoning other editions as worth no more
-than a straw.<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>We find that the Nuremberg Chronicle is the only book which
-Dr. Pollard can call to mind that gives explicit information as to its
-illustrators, Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenworff; and
-finally we come to books where the author takes a hand, and we
-sometimes have a double colophon, as in the case of the <cite>Morte
-d'Arthur</cite>. Here we have Sir Thomas Malory's colophon, requesting
-the reader's prayer for his deliverance, and for the repose of his
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[Pg 42]</span>soul, and William Caxton's business-like statement as editor,
-printer and publisher.</p>
-
-
-<p>The author's struggle with the printer, to obtain his own way, is
-no new thing, as proved by this late colophon of the musician,
-Johann von Cleve, affixed to his <em>Cantiones</em>, 1580:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>As I come to the end of my task it seems worth while to inform
-students and amateurs of music that this collection of Motets was
-in the first place entrusted to Philip Ulhard, citizen and printer of
-Augsburg, to be printed, and that he (as often happens), being
-made unreasonably capricious by bodily ill-health, often did not
-carry out our intention, and compelled me, by leaving out some
-motets (which however, if life bears me company and God helps,
-will shortly be published), to abridge the work, and more especially
-as the same printer, when the work was not yet finished,
-came to an end of his days, and there upon the work was entrusted
-to Andreas Reinheckel to be completed, if anything, therefore, is
-found which might disturb a connoisseur, I pray musicians to bear
-with it with equanimity. Farewell. In the year of the Lord 1580,
-in the month of January.</p></div>
-
-<p>We have noted one rhyming colophon, a mannerism much
-affected by Italian printers. Another fanciful custom by which the
-early printers called attention to their colophons was the use of
-eccentric arrangements of types, by which these final paragraphs
-appeared in the shape of wedges, funnels, diamonds, drinking
-glasses and the like.</p>
-
-<p>The earliest known title page is in a Bull of Pius IX, printed in
-Mainz by Fust and Schöffer in 1463, but it was some twenty years
-before the custom became common. At first the title only, taking
-the form of a single sentence, appeared at the top of a title page,
-but it was not long before, either in the interests of decoration or of
-advertising, a simple woodcut or the device of the printer appeared
-below the title. In his <cite>A Treatise on Title-pages</cite>, 1902, Mr. De
-Vinne proposes the following ingenious explanation of the evolution
-of the printer's mark: "It was hoped that the distinctiveness
-of a peculiar device would be remembered by the book-buyer who
-had forgotten the name of his preferred printer.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[Pg 43]</span></p>
-
-<p>"In the beginning the device was put at the end of the book,
-above or below the colophon. It was at first a small and simple
-design ... but the eagerness to have a device that should be striking
-led to its enlargement and afterward to an entire change of
-position. When the greater part of the last page was preoccupied
-by the last paragraph of the text, the device required a separate
-page. This led to making full-page devices and afterward to the
-putting of the device on the first page."</p>
-
-<p>As time went on it was only natural that the remaining space at
-the foot of the title pages should be utilized for brief details of
-printing and publishing, but the transition was gradual and unsystematic.
-Indeed, some printers continued to use colophons alone
-well into the sixteenth century, and there are frequent instances
-during that century of books containing both title pages and colophons,
-the latter being a repetition, at the end of the book, of the
-imprint, as the few business-like lines at the foot of the title page
-had come to be named.</p>
-
-<p>By the time that title pages were firmly established, publishing
-had become a separate business, and the publisher was not long in
-assuming the ascendency, often pushing the printer altogether into
-the background and appearing alone in the imprint. For a long time
-the printer modestly tucked in his name wherever he could, sometimes
-on the verso of the title page, and sometimes at the bottom
-of the last page, but in a formal manner, without the naive and
-often delightful and useful details which make the early colophons
-so interesting.</p>
-
-<p>With the nineteenth-century revival of interest in typography,
-the printer came to the fore again and we see his name appearing
-in a new place, the certificate, preceding the title page&mdash;an entire
-leaf, moreover, on which are set forth the details in which he is
-interested, the paper, number of copies, and so on. This use seems
-to have been introduced by the finely printed volumes of the French
-book clubs, with their "Justification du tirage," and it was followed
-through the later decades of the nineteenth century, in the publications
-of book clubs and many other privately and finely printed
-volumes. Simultaneously with these came the publications of the
-Kelmscott and other private presses, which revived the use of colophons
-in the early manner. The separate page, placed at the end
-of the finely printed book of today, giving details of the making of
-the volume, is the result of this modern impetus in book-making<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>&mdash;the
-interest in fine production of the person for whom the book is
-made, added to the desire of the modern printer for recognition of
-himself as the producer.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp83" id="i044" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_044.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><em>St. Bernard.</em> <em>Sermones.</em> <em>Rostock</em>, <cite>Fratres Domus Horti Viridis</cite>, 1481. <br />
-COLOPHON WITH PRINTER'S MARK.</p>
-
-<p>This is but the very logical expression in the books themselves
-of the modern trend, so assiduously cultivated, toward the making
-of good books, and the return to prominence of the printer after
-the long period of his subservience to the publisher. In the present-day
-notice of its makers, on the final page of a book, the colophon
-is revived, and once more the printer has the last word!</p>
-
-<hr class="tb"/>
-
-<p class="center p2">COMPOSED IN GARAMOND TYPES</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[Pg 44]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-
-<p class="center p22 big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Ronald B. McKerrow, <cite>An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students</cite>
-(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1927).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Iolo Williams, <cite>The Elements of Book-Collecting</cite> (London: Elkin Mathews,
-1927).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> H. B. van Hoesen [and] F. K. Walter, <cite>Bibliography, Practical, Enumerative,
-Historical</cite> (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> Alfred W. Pollard, <cite>An Essay on Colophons, with Specimens and Translations</cite>;
-with an Introduction by Richard Garnett (Chicago: The Caxton
-Club, 1905).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> Cicero, <cite>Epistolae ad Familiares</cite>, Second edition (Venice, 1469).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> Diui Athanasii, contra Arium, etc. (Paris, 1500).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> Decretals of Gregory IX (Rome, 1474).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> We may note that the French technical term for the modern colophon,
-"achevé d'imprimer," emphasizes this importance of the printer.</p></div></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[Pg 45]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite><small>Printers' Marks</small></cite></h2>
-
-<p class="center p22 small1">From <cite>Fifty Printers' Marks</cite> by Edwin E. Willoughby. Copyright 1947 by
-the author and reprinted by his permission. Published by the University of
-California Press.</p>
-
-<p>A printer's mark is a trade-mark. Printers used them in the
-fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the same purpose
-that printers employ them today&mdash;to ornament their books
-and to make each volume readily recognizable as the product of
-the printing establishment which produced it.</p>
-
-<p>The printer's mark was but one of the many types of marks
-which, largely because of the widespread illiteracy of the people,
-were used throughout all phases of medieval life. The ownership
-of objects, for example, was often shown by means of a regularly
-used mark. Two examples of this type of mark, the seal and the
-cattle brand, go back to the dawn of history and have continued
-in use to the present time. Merchants in the Middle Ages often
-identified their property by placing on it their merchants' marks.</p>
-
-<p>The mark of a merchant was legally recognized as his by his
-guild or by the town government. Often it was a representation
-of the tools of the man's trade or a replica of his house sign.
-Sometimes it was an animal or object which formed a pun on the
-merchant's name. Frequently, simple geometric designs were
-used. Toward the latter part of the Middle Ages, as merchants
-grew richer and more powerful, they aped the upper class by
-making their marks resemble, as closely as they dared, the heraldic
-devices of the knights and nobles. These marks enabled employees
-or hired porters to recognize at a glance a merchant's
-property.</p>
-
-<p>Places, as well as objects, were identified by means of marks.
-Inns, shops and similar public places in those days before houses
-were numbered were designated by house signs. The Tabard, the
-inn from which Chaucer's pilgrims started for Canterbury under
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[Pg 46]</span>the leadership of its host, Harry Baillie, took its name from its
-sign&mdash;a representation of a short outer jacket. An equally famous
-tavern, patronized by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other "sirenical
-gentlemen," bore the "Sign of the Mermaid." And over the
-door of the Globe, Shakespeare's theater, hung a picture of Atlas
-bearing the world on his shoulders.</p>
-
-<p>Printing houses, like other business establishments, were
-known by house signs. The printer's mark of Adrien van Berghen
-supplies an illustration. <a href="#i048">[Page 48.]</a></p>
-
-<p>Not only were objects and places designated by marks in the
-Middle Ages, but under certain conditions people were recognized
-by them also. A knight, his face obscured by his helmet,
-made his identity known by wearing on his helmet, shield and
-tabard simple pictures or symbols by which he could be recognized.
-As it was usual for members of the same family to wear the
-same emblems, these simple pictures, many of which became
-conventionalized, descended from father to son, indicated relationships,
-and finally developed under the control of officers of
-the king into the elaborate system of heraldry.</p>
-
-<p>Marks, then, were widely used in the Middle Ages. It was inevitable
-that they should be used to identify the makers of manufactured
-goods. Craftsmen with pride in their work naturally
-desired others to recognize their products. As a result, the use
-of trade-marks became common. Craftsmen of every trade were
-frequently compelled either by law or by guild regulations, to
-affix a mark to their products as a guarantee of their honesty and
-good workmanship. Such marks were required especially of goldsmiths,
-silversmiths and other artisans who were under unusual
-temptation to misrepresent the quality of their goods. In England,
-to take another example, arrowheads, the quality of which
-might determine the issue of a battle, were ordered, by a statute
-of Henry IV, to be "marked with the mark of him who made the
-same."</p>
-
-<p>These trade-marks performed much the same function as the
-house mark or the merchant's mark; indeed, the three were often
-the same. They enabled a purchaser, literate or illiterate, to identify
-the maker of a product and to buy thereafter according as he
-had been satisfied or displeased with the first article purchased.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[Pg 47]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp60" id="i1-047" style="max-width: 15.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i1-047.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">GUY MARCHANT printed his first book at Paris in 1483. His motto, <cite>Sola fides sufficit</cite>
-(Faith alone suffices) appears above the clasped hands, with the first
-word represented by the musical notation, <em>sol</em> and <em>la</em>.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp60" id="i2047" style="max-width: 15em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i2_047.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">JACQUES MAILLET began publishing at Lyons in 1482, and probably began printing at the
-same time. His mark represents a shield, supported by two dogs, which
-bears his initials and a mallet (<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">maillet</i> in French), hanging from a tree.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[Pg 48]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>The printer, to be sure, was under few of the compulsions to
-use a trade-mark that beset his fellow craftsmen. His patrons
-were literate; they could read his name and address&mdash;when he
-chose to set them down&mdash;either in the colophon at the end of the
-book or on the title page. But the example of other craftsmen was
-not to be resisted. Besides, a well-made printer's mark, or a publisher's
-device, could be both useful and ornamental. Put at the
-end of the book, it could give it a fitting close. Used in the middle
-of a book, it could set off chapters and parts. Above all, especially
-when it was printed in red, it could give life and balance to a title
-page.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp57" id="i048" style="max-width: 14.3125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_048.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">ADRIEN VAN BERGHEN in his mark pictures his printing house "at the Sign of the Great Golden
-Mortar in the market place" at Antwerp, where he started in 1500.</p>
-
-<p>By the printer's mark, also, a prospective purchaser could recognize
-at a glance the product of a press. It could prevent a careful
-purchaser from being deceived by a false imprint. "Look at
-my sign," warns Benedictus Hector of Bologna, "which is represented
-on the title page and you can never be mistaken." It was
-harder to counterfeit a printer's mark than to filch his name.</p>
-
-<p>Even a mark, however, was not infallible protection. The
-"prince of printers," Aldus Manutius, complains that his Florentine
-competitors "have affixed our well known sign of the dolphin
-wound around an anchor. But," he adds, "they have so man<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[Pg 49]</span>aged
-that any person who is in the least acquainted with the books
-of our production cannot fail to observe that this is an impudent
-fraud; for the head of the dolphin is turned to the left, whereas
-that of ours is well known to be turned toward the right."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp64" id="i049" style="max-width: 16.1875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_049.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">WILLIAM CAXTON, the first English printer, printed his own translation of a French romance,
-<cite>Recuyell of the Histories of Troy</cite>, in 1474. At his press at
-Westminster he completed nearly eighty books between 1477 and 1491,
-many of which he also translated from the French.</p>
-
-<p>In one country only, and there for but a brief period, was the
-use of a mark made compulsory. In 1539, François I, in an act
-intended to suppress both the piracy of copyrighted works and
-the printing of heretical books, ordered every printer and book-seller
-in France to have his own device so that purchasers might
-easily ascertain where books were printed and sold.</p>
-
-<p>Although (with this exception) the use of marks was voluntary
-with printers, they were early adopted. In 1457 Fust and
-Schöffer, the successors of Gutenberg, first employed one in the
-Mainz Psalter, the first book to contain the name of the printer
-and the place and date of printing. [Page 39.] The device con<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[Pg 50]</span>sisted
-of two shields resembling coats of arms. Other printers
-quickly followed their example. As the fifteenth century saw the
-rise of the mercantile class, it is not surprising that printers used
-in their marks heraldic devices, if they had the right to bear arms,
-or shields displaying their merchant's marks in a manner often
-resembling armorial bearings.</p>
-
-<p>Frequently, printers used as the central part of their marks the
-signs which served to designate their places of business. Pierre
-LeRouge, for example, used a red rosebush for his sign and in
-his device. The London printer, Berthelet, used in like manner
-the figure of Lucrece.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp45" id="i050" style="max-width: 9.5625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_050.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 smal11">WILLIAM FAQUES began printing in London about 1503. His mark represents a hexagram
-of interlocking triangles bearing biblical quotations, which enclose his
-monogram pierced by an arrow. The initials "GF" are those of the
-French form of his name.</p>
-
-
-<p>If the printer's name could be punned on, it was common to
-use for a mark an object the name of which sounded like the
-printer's own. Jacques Maillet's surname means mallet. He made
-it easy to remember by displaying a mallet in his device. [Page
-47.] A few printers, among them Aldus Manutius, John Day,
-John Wight and Willem Vorsterman, even used their own
-portraits in their marks.</p>
-
-<p>Many other signs and emblems were employed. In an age fond
-of symbolism it is not surprising to find that many marks had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[Pg 51]</span>
-symbolic and mystical meanings&mdash;not only in the earlier period,
-when ecclesiastical symbols were often used, but in the later
-period also, when devices were frequently copied from emblem
-books. Sometimes a printer would use a woodcut to illustrate a
-book and then, because it struck his fancy, adopt it as his mark.
-Thomas Gardiner and Thomas Dawson, partners, on the other
-hand, had a block which contained, around a central open square,
-figures forming a rebus of their names: a gardener, a daw and the
-sun. With their initials in the open square, it served as a mark;
-with the appropriate display letter, it was a factotum bearing the
-initial letter of the first word of a chapter.</p>
-
-<p>Printers' marks, in fact, took a multitude of forms during the
-fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the late seventeenth,
-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they became
-conventionalized and were used infrequently; but they did not
-die out altogether. The Oxford and Cambridge University
-presses, for example, continued to put them on the title pages of
-their books.</p>
-
-<p>The revival of printing late in the nineteenth century saw an
-increased use of the printer's mark. This was almost inevitable,
-for when the craftsmen strove to do fine printing, they desired,
-just as did the craftsmen of the fifteenth century, to have their
-work easily recognized. Today, private presses which specialize
-in fine printing, some university presses, and many publishing
-firms, frequently use marks which both ornament their title pages
-and identify for the reader the creator of the volume.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i051" style="max-width: 19.75em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_051.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">THE GROLIER CLUB. A rendering of the Club's familiar mark by Rudolph Ruzicka.</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[Pg 52]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />A. F. JOHNSON<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<small><em>Title Pages:</em> THEIR FORMS AND DEVELOPMENT</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>One Hundred Title Pages</cite>: 1500-1800, selected and arranged with an
-Introduction and Notes by A. F. Johnson. Copyright 1928 by John Lane, The
-Bodley Head, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.</p>
-
-
-<p>It is a curious fact that the title page was evolved at a comparatively
-late date in the history of the book, and is indeed almost
-unknown before the printed book. There are a few examples
-among early surviving manuscripts of a separate leaf being used
-for the title, but they are quite exceptional, and even these give
-the title on the back of this leaf. The usual practice of the calligrapher
-was to give any information considered desirable as to
-the author and the date and place of the making of the manuscript
-in the colophon. This practice was taken over by the
-printers, although in the first years of the new art they frequently
-said nothing as to place of printing, probably with the
-deliberate intention of concealing the fact that the book was produced
-by mechanical means. The title page as we know it, giving
-the title, author's name and an imprint, being, in fact, a kind of
-advertisement of the book, was not well established until some
-years after 1500....</p>
-
-<p>The title page owes its origin, according to one theory, to the
-fact that printers found it necessary to protect the first leaf of
-the text. Whereas a manuscript would be bound as soon as the
-calligrapher had finished the text, most of the copies of a printed
-edition were delivered to a book-seller in sheets, and many might
-remain unbound for years. Hence arose the practice of beginning
-the book on the second leaf or on the back of the first leaf. The
-first page could then be used for the purpose of advertising the
-book, for the fully-developed title page arose out of a commercial
-need. A few early examples of the addition of a brief title on
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[Pg 53]</span>the first page are known, the first being that of a Bull of Pope Pius
-II, printed by Fust and Schöffer at Mainz in 1463. But the blank
-title leaf is found for many years after that date, and to the end
-of the fifteenth century a title leaf containing a brief description
-in a few words is common. As late as 1548 we find the brothers
-Dorici at Rome printing several volumes of the works of Cardinal
-Bembo with the title on the back of the first leaf. An edition of
-the Vulgate printed at Venice in 1487 by Georgius Arrivabene
-offers an example of the most rudimentary form of a title page,
-with the single word <em>Biblia</em> on the first leaf.</p>
-
-<p>The example of Ratdolt at Venice, who in 1476 printed a Calendar
-of Regiomontanus with woodcut borders and an imprint
-on the first leaf, was not followed by contemporary printers. Even
-this solitary case hardly presents a title page in the form in which
-we know it, since the leaf, in place of a title, has a poem in praise
-of the book. Of the fully developed title page, giving title, author
-and full imprint, Dr. Haebler, the German authority on incunabula,
-knows of only one instance in the fifteenth century, a book
-by Johannes Glogoviensis printed by Wolfgang Stöckel at Leipzig
-in 1500; the title itself, however, is cut on wood.</p>
-
-<p>The lettering of the simple fifteenth-century title page was
-often that of the text of the book, or sometimes a larger, heading
-type was used. Very frequently the words were cut on wood, and
-since for the printer it was as easy to print from a block containing
-a design in addition to a brief title, the woodcut illustration
-on the first leaf soon followed. The examples of the John
-Lydgate, printed by Pynson, <em>c.</em> 1515, and of the <cite>Deceyte of
-Women</cite>, printed by Abraham Vele about 1550, are typical title
-pages of popular books of the earlier printers. In Spain especially
-this combination of title and illustration, in that country often an
-heraldic cut, both cut on wood, became the fashion and persisted
-for many years in the next century. Scenes from school life
-often illustrated educational texts, while a school of woodcutters
-at Florence designed a famous series of illustrations which decorated
-the title pages of devotional tracts by Savonarola and other
-works. The first printers' devices, the two shields of Fust and
-Schöffer and the double cross rising out of a circle at Venice,
-were added to the colophons, and it was only when the French
-printers began to use large devices surrounded by borders, for
-which there was no room on the last leaf, that the printer's name,
-or at least mark, began to appear on the title page. Thus one further
-step was taken towards the title page as we know it.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[Pg 54]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp55" id="i054" style="max-width: 30em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_054.jpg"  alt="" />
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">MACHIAVELLI, SOPRA LA PRIMA DECA DI TITO LIVIO,
-ANTONIO BLADO, ROME, 1531. The formal Italic below the device, designed by Lodovico Vincentino, the
-calligrapher, was used in many of Blado's books. It has been revived and is
-known as Blado Italic. (Size, 5-1/2x8-1/4 inches.)</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[Pg 55]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The sixteenth century is especially the age of the woodcut
-title-border (or metal-cut, for the material used for blocks was
-frequently metal). The practice of decorating the first leaf of the
-text with a woodcut border had been started by Ratdolt at
-Venice, and after 1490 was common among the printers of that
-city. In fact, several of the borders originally used for an opening
-were actually converted into title-borders after 1500. During
-the following century the variety of borders used in all the countries
-where printing was practised is remarkable. In Germany
-especially, during the years of the Reformation, when the printing
-press was unusually active, a very large number of decorative
-borders were cut, many of them by artists of the first rank, including
-even Dürer and Holbein. The work of the Holbeins and
-Urs Graf at Basle is well known to English book collectors. Perhaps
-less familiar is the work of Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Weiditz
-and Daniel Hopfer at Strasbourg and Augsburg, and that
-extraordinary series of designs which appear on the Luther tracts
-printed at Wittenberg and on similar works produced in Saxony.
-Many of these borders are highly successful as decorative pieces.
-The fact that they are less familiar to us may be accounted for
-by two circumstances. In the first place the earlier book collectors
-were almost all collectors of the classics, and the first writers
-on the history of printing, except in the matter of the invention
-of printing, approached the subject from the point of view of the
-student of the Greek and Roman classical writers. In the second
-place the German printers cut themselves off from Western Europe
-by clinging to the gothic letter after Italy, France and
-finally England had adopted Roman and Italic, even for books in
-the vernacular....</p>
-
-<p>There is one point about the early woodcut borders which
-must seem strange to the printer of today, and that is the suitability
-of the decoration to the subject matter of the book. The
-sixteenth-century printer naturally found it economical to ignore
-the fact that a border originally intended for a Bible was not
-suitable for a medical work. He did not regard it as incongruous
-to use a border depicting scenes from Greek mythology on a
-French medieval romance. Even a printer of the class of Jean de
-Tournes uses the same piece on the title page of a <cite>Xenophon</cite> and
-of a book of French verse. Nor was the average printer very particular
-about the state of a block. Especially in England, where
-the general standard was lower than on the Continent, a damaged
-block would be used as long as it held together.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[Pg 56]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp54" id="i056" style="max-width: 30em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_056.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">O. FINE, QUADRANS ASTROLABICUS, S. DE COLINES, PARIS, 1534.
-The border was probably designed by the author. His mathematical diagrams
-are generally decorated with leaf forms like the "petits fers" of this title.
-(Size, 7-5/8x11-5/8 inches.)</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[Pg 57]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>In the second half of the century two rival fashions of decoration
-were developed which finally banished the woodcut border,
-first the method of decoration by type ornaments or printers'
-flowers, and secondly the engraved title page. There is one example
-of type ornament known even in the fifteenth century, in
-an <cite>Aesop</cite> printed at Parma in 1483. After 1500, examples of borders
-made up of separate cast pieces are fairly frequent and are
-especially common in England in the books of Wynkyn de
-Worde and his contemporaries. But it is not until about 1560 that
-we find borders built up of type ornaments worked into arabesque
-patterns. It seems to have been Robert Granjon, the engraver
-of types at Paris and Lyons, who cut arabesque fleurons,
-divided them up and built up fresh patterns out of their component
-parts. The use of printers' flowers in borders is found at
-most centers of printing towards the end of the century and obtained
-its greatest popularity in the Netherlands and in England.
-Many fine examples are found in English books from about 1570
-for the next fifty years. Joseph Moxon, who wrote on English
-letter-founding in 1683, tells us that they were considered old-fashioned
-in his day. They were revived again in the eighteenth
-century by P. S. Fournier at Paris, who cut many new designs
-which were copied all over Europe. Fournier's flowers could
-be built up to form all manner of ornaments and were more adaptable
-than the arabesques of the sixteenth century, when the original
-unit always resulted in the same pattern. Just as Granjon had
-devised a method of decorating without the use of the woodcut
-block, so Fournier designed his new flowers in order that printers
-might dispense with engraved vignettes. However, the vogue
-of the Fournier designs had a shorter life, and may be said to have
-been killed by the classical school of printing of the end of the
-century.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[Pg 58]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp52" id="i058" style="max-width: 30em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_058.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">J. LONGLOND, A SERMON, LONDON, 1536. Wynkyn de Worde and his
-contemporaries used cast pieces as ornaments, at least from 1504.
-Although their use was frequent, the arrangement of this title page is
-uncommon. (Size 5-1/4x7-1/4 inches.)</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[Pg 59]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Engraving on copper was practised in the fifteenth century,
-but the engraved title page originates about 1550. Curiously
-enough, the earliest known engraved border occurs in an English
-book, the Anatomy of Thomas Geminus, printed in London
-in 1545. In the following year we find a second example, cut by</p>
-
-<p>Corneille de La Haye for Balthazar Arnoullet at Lyons, where there
-was a remarkable group of engravers at work about this time. From 1548
-the books of Enea Vico printed at Venice begin the fashion in Italy,
-where, after 1550, examples are fairly numerous. In the Netherlands
-also, beginning with the work of Hubert Goltzius at Bruges, they
-are met with almost as frequently as in Italy. It was, perhaps,
-Christopher Plantin at Antwerp who, more than any other printer, made
-the engraved title-border the fashion for all larger and more important
-publications. But it is with the seventeenth century especially that
-engraved borders are associated. The Elzevirs used them even on their
-pocket editions, while at the other extreme the massive volumes
-issued at Amsterdam and at Paris in the reign of Louis XIV are almost
-invariably introduced by an elaborate engraved frontispiece....</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[Pg 60]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp49" id="i059" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_059.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
- <p class="pc1 small1 center">DUGUÉ, ARIETTE, FOURNIER, PARIS, 1765. This rather
-ornate border shows what could be done with Fournier's new type
-ornaments. (Size, 7-1/4x10-1/4 inches).</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p>Perhaps the worst examples of these overloaded frontispieces
-are to be found in German books of the period. Often, also, the
-engraved border is only a bastard title, the proper title page being
-set up in type. The earlier examples, dating from the sixteenth
-century, are in general the best, being simpler and not yet overburdened
-with a mass of detail. The good taste of the eighteenth
-century brought about a reform. But at Paris most books of this
-period had a typographic title page and the work of the famous
-school of French engravers was lavished on the illustrations.
-However, the engraved vignettes of that age were often very
-effectively used. Even Baskerville did not always disdain the
-vignette, and it was the last form of decoration abandoned by
-Bodoni.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>One other form of decoration may be mentioned, that of metal
-rules. Rules have been used occasionally at almost all periods, by
-Geofroy Tory, for example, among others. But as far as title
-pages are concerned they are found most often in the seventeenth
-century.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[Pg 61]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp51" id="i061" style="max-width: 30em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_061.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">THE DECEYTE OF WOMEN, A. VELE, LONDON, C. 1550.
-The combination of black-letter and a woodcut is a usual title page in
-an early English book. This undated example is probably mid-century, as
-the printer, Vele, is not heard of before 1548. The cut seems to date
-much earlier. (Size, 5-1/4x7-1/2 inches.)</p>
-
-<p>The purely typographic title page is naturally of greater interest
-to the modern producer of books. At all periods the title
-page which was effective mainly by the arrangement of type has
-been common, and at most periods there have been printers who
-preferred to dispense with ornament of any kind. In the sixteenth
-century the books of the Paris printer, Michel de Vascosan,
-illustrate this severer manner, and the classical style of the great
-printers at the close of the eighteenth century was likewise independent
-of decoration. Some sort of arrangement of the letters
-displayed on the title page suggested itself from the first, and
-very soon various shapes were tried. Perhaps the commonest
-arrangement was the conical one, or the so-called hour-glass
-shape, in which the lines of type begin by being long, to become
-short at the center, lengthening again in the imprint at the foot.
-Others have preferred a natural arrangement, printing the matter
-exactly as if on a page of the text. Geofroy Tory, a book producer
-whose work was of great importance in the history of the book,
-seems to have been against the fashion of his day in his choice of
-the natural layout. It has certainly been the usual custom to
-aim at some sort of pattern in the division of the lines of type.
-In this respect the earlier printers had one advantage which was
-not enjoyed by their successors. They felt no difficulty about
-dividing a word in a title, even when the second part of the word
-was to be set in a different size or even a different kind of type.
-Frequently we find examples of such breaks in words as custom
-has made impossible for the modern printer. The simplification of
-the task for whoever was responsible for the layout is obvious.
-One rule which seems to have been almost universally observed
-is that the mass of the type must be in the top half of the page
-and not evenly distributed. [<a href="#Page_69">Page 69</a>.]</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[Pg 62]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Equally important with the distribution of the matter is the
-question of the kind of type to be used, the sizes of type, upper- or
-lower-case, and the number of different fonts. The simplest
-manner of using the letter employed in the text met with little
-favour and was soon displaced by the use of larger types and
-especially by the use of capitals. The heavy, square Roman capitals,
-like those of Froben at Basle, for the first line, with smaller
-capitals for succeeding lines, were more or less customary in
-Northern Europe in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. In
-some countries a mixture of a "lettre de forme" and Roman capitals
-was not unusual at the same period. With the introduction
-of the new Garamond romans at Paris about 1530 began the fashion
-of using the Canon and Double Canon sizes of the lower-case
-letters for titles. In the seventeenth century we find large and
-heavy Roman capitals again in favour, often balanced by a woodcut
-ornament or a basket of flowers. This century, undoubtedly
-the worst in the history of typography, notwithstanding the Elzevirs,
-is especially remarkable for its crowded title pages. It had
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[Pg 63]</span>
-become the custom to give as much information as possible about
-the contents of the book and the qualifications of author, editor,
-etc., and the printer took the opportunity of displaying as large a
-variety of his types as possible. No doubt the use of title pages
-as posters for advertising is partly responsible for the custom. It
-has been established by documentary evidence that such methods
-of advertising books were usual in England and in Germany, and
-probably this was so in other countries also. Incidentally it may
-be pointed out that the posting up of title pages accounts for some
-of the early collections, such as that of Bagford, now in the
-British Museum. Bagford has been attacked for his vandalism in
-mutilating books for the sake of his hobby, but it now appears
-that he may have been quite innocent of the charge. In any case
-the result on the title page as a specimen of typographical arrangement
-was deplorable....</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="figcenter illowp45" id="i063" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_063.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">ISAIAH THOMAS, A SPECIMEN OF PRINTING TYPES, WORCESTER, 1785.
-As with most type specimens, this early American title page displays many
-different types and flowers. (Size, 5-3/8x7-5/8 inches.)</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[Pg 64]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>With the eighteenth century title pages became simpler and
-letters became lighter, and the result is again work as good in its
-different style as that of the sixteenth century. The eighteenth
-century is certainly a great period in the history of book production,
-with its center in Paris. In England the influence of Caslon
-and Baskerville at length raised our typography to a level with
-Continental work. For one innovation P. S. Fournier is mainly
-responsible, the introduction of outline and other decorative capitals
-which were so successfully used at Paris. At the end of the
-century we have the work of the Didots and Bodoni, the classical
-school, whose technical achievement has hardly been surpassed
-at any period. One may cavil at their conception of the
-ideal shape of letters, one may dislike their excessive use of hair
-lines and their flat serifs, but it must be admitted that as practical
-printers and type-cutters their work was of first rate quality.
-These classical printers were proud of their types and wished
-them to stand alone. Bodoni, who at the beginning of his career
-used ornaments copied from Fournier and engraved vignettes, in
-his later years more and more abandoned decoration and outline
-letters. The classical title page is composed in Roman capitals of
-varying size, but without the admixture of lower-case letters or
-italics and without the aid of decoration. Like Baskerville, these
-printers considered that type is itself sufficiently interesting to
-stand alone.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[Pg 65]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">Lawrence C. Wroth<br />
-<small>THE FIRST WORK WITH AMERICAN TYPES</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Typographic Heritage</cite>. Copyright 1949 by The Typophiles.<br />
- Reprinted by permission of the author.</p>
-
-<p>On 7 April 1775 there appeared in Philadelphia the initial issue
-of Story &amp; Humphrey's <cite>Pennsylvania Mercury</cite>. This newspaper was
-referred to by a contemporary diarist as "The first Work with Amer.
-Types" and with certain qualifications, later to be made, it seems to
-be entitled to the distinction of priority implied in this descriptive
-phrase. Type founding in the colonies went through those phases of
-tentative effort, complete failure, and partial achievement which are
-normal to the beginnings of great industries, and before going on with
-the story of the font of type from which the <cite>Pennsylvania Mercury</cite> was
-printed, it is proposed to give briefly an account of earlier attempts
-at the establishment of letter founding in English America. By doing
-this it will be possible to secure correctness of sequence and of
-relationship among the several elements of this study in origins.</p>
-
-<p>The first font of types cast in English America was that which
-resulted from the painful efforts of Abel Buell, a silversmith and
-lapidary of Killingworth, Connecticut. Shortly before 1 April
-1769 Buell cast a small font of letters, crude in design and in
-execution, from which proofs were taken for the examination and
-the criticism of his friends. In October of the same year, using a
-different and much better type of his own making, he presented to
-the Connecticut Assembly a printed petition in which he asked
-that body for financial assistance in his proposed establishment of
-a letter foundry. In reply to this memorial he received a loan from
-the colony for the purposes of his venture, and soon afterwards he
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[Pg 66]</span>removed to New Haven and prepared to manufacture type for the
-printers of a continent. The story of his failure at this time, and
-of his success on a much smaller scale twelve years later, is a part
-of the present study only in the sense which has been indicated
-in the introductory sentences.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp95" id="i066" style="max-width: 21.875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_066.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><em>Abel Buell's First Font. From a proof of May 1769.<br />
-Courtesy of the Yale University Library.</em></p>
-
-<p>Buell was not without a rival in his ambitious plans. David
-Mitchelson of Boston, possibly acting under the direction of John
-Mein, a printer of that city, is reported by a contemporary newspaper
-writer to have attained as great a degree of success as the
-Connecticut silversmith in the difficult art of letter casting. In the
-<cite>Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter</cite> for 7 September
-1769 there appeared among the local news items a report
-on recent developments in American manufacturing activities in
-which are certain sentences of interest in the story of colonial type
-founding. "We are assured by a Gentleman from the Westward,"
-said the writer, "that Mr. Abel Buell, of Killingworth in Connecticut,
-Jeweller and Lapidary, has lately, his own Genius, made himself
-Master of the Art of Founding Types for Printing. Printing
-Types are also made by Mr. Mitchelson of this Town [Boston]
-equal to any imported from Great-Britain; and might, by proper
-Encouragement soon be able to furnish all the Printers in America
-at the same price they are sold in England." The absence of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[Pg 67]</span>
-known specimen of Mitchelson's letters or of any specific information
-as to his operations is enough, however, to require a verdict of
-"not proven" on any claim to priority in American type casting that
-has yet been made on his behalf.</p>
-
-<p>Because of the unfruitful nature of the enterprises which have
-been spoken of, the year 1770 found the American printer still
-dependent upon European importation for his printing type, and
-at the moment there existed little prospect of relief from a situation
-which in the years of the Revolution was to become a hardship
-rather than the simple inconvenience of the earlier period. The
-policy of non-importation, however, was stirring the colonies to
-the establishment of local manufactures, and under the whip of
-necessity, type founding, among other essential industries, was to
-take its rise in the United States. The carrying to success of this
-manufacture in Pennsylvania in the year 1775 was undoubtedly
-assured by the political and economic situation of the country, but
-its beginning, which must first be described, had its cause in a set
-of circumstances of a more general character.</p>
-
-<p>"The secular history of the Holy Scriptures," wrote Henry
-Stevens, "is the sacred history of printing." In these words the
-Vermonter gave sententious expression to the truth that the printing
-of the Bible has been in all ages an appreciable factor in the
-development of typography. The successful beginnings of type
-founding in English America, it is believed, may be traced to the
-desire of Christopher Sower Jr. of Germantown, Pennsylvania, to
-issue a third edition of that German Bible which first had made its
-appearance at the pains and expense of his father in the year 1743.
-It is said that the younger Sower's dissatisfaction with the conditions
-of type importation from Germany led him to conceive the idea of
-importing thence matrices and moulds instead of finished type, and
-with these placed in the cunning hands of Justus Fox, his journeyman,
-of casting his own letters for use in the proposed edition of
-<cite>Die Heilige Schrift</cite>. An enterprising man, a religious zealot, and the
-proprietor of one of the most extensive printing offices in America,
-he was able, partly at least, to carry out his intention.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp43" id="i068" style="max-width: 23.625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_068.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><em>Abel Buell's Second Font, October 1769.<br />
-Courtesy of the Connecticut State Archives.</em></p>
-
-<p>The exact date of the first use by Sower of locally cast German
-letters evades determination. Sometime in the year 1770, he began
-the publication of the "second part" of a periodical known as <cite>Ein
-Geistliches Magazien</cite>. The title page of No. <small>I</small>, Part <small>II</small>, of this early
-religious magazine tells us that it was printed by Christopher Sower
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[Pg 68]<a id="Page_69"></a>[Pg 69]</span>at Germantown in the year 1770, and the undated colophon of No.
-<small>XII</small> of the series contains information of singular interest in the
-words, "Gedruckt mit der ersten Schrift die jemals in America
-gegossen worden." The probability is that this issue of <cite>Ein Geistliches
-Magazien</cite> was published late in 1771 or early in the ensuing
-year. Upon the basis of this quoted statement and in view of the
-knowledge that when his estate was sold in 1778 there were disposed
-of to Jacob Bay and others certain lots of letter moulds, crucibles
-and a large quantity of antimony<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> it becomes clear that Sower's
-interest in type making developed well beyond the stage of thinking
-it would be a nice thing to do.</p>
-
-<p>The initiatory efforts of Sower have a particular significance in
-the story of American type founding; for the tradition is that while
-engaged in the casting process of type making in the Germantown
-foundry, Justus Fox and Jacob Bay learned the more difficult mysteries
-of an art in which later they attained proficiency. Because of
-the link of continuous effort thus formed between Sower's initiation
-of the business in 1770 and the later cutting and casting of Roman
-letter by these artisans, there must be conceded to him the distinction
-of having begun in English America the industry of type manufacturing,
-regardless of whether or not his casting of German letter
-from imported matrices was as extensive as has been supposed.</p>
-
-<p>Our knowledge of Fox and of Bay is derived largely from the
-<cite>Additions to Thomas's History of Printing</cite>, a body of tradition of
-uneven reliability transmitted to Isaiah Thomas by William
-McCulloch, a Philadelphia printer active in the early years of the
-century. Selections from the six communications of the period
-1812-1814 in which this information was transmitted were incorporated
-by Thomas in the revision of his book upon which was
-based the second edition brought out by the American Antiquarian
-Society in 1874. Long afterward the series of letters was published
-as a whole in the <em>Proceedings</em> of the Society for April 1921
-under the title, <cite>William McCulloch's Additions to Thomas's History
-of Printing</cite>.</p>
-
-
-<p>In these letters to Isaiah Thomas, McCulloch was recording his
-own memories and the accepted Philadelphia tradition. Because he
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[Pg 70]</span>was well advanced in years at the time of writing, one is not surprised
-to find that now and then he trips over the barrier that separates
-documented fact from hearsay and personal recollection. It is
-much to our comfort in the present instance, however, to learn that
-he possessed and made use of unusual opportunities to obtain correct
-information as to the craftsmen who are the subject of our
-interest. These facts which he records of Justus Fox, for example,
-he obtained from Emmanuel, the son and partner in type founding
-of that artisan, and in <cite>Justus Fox, a German Printer of the Eighteenth
-Century</cite>, Dr. Charles L. Nichols accepts his testimony as of
-general reliability. He was indebted to various relatives of Bay,
-among them a sister, "a plump lady of 68," for the account of him
-which is found in the pages of the <cite>Additions</cite>. It is possible to compare
-various items in McCulloch's sketches of these men with records
-unknown to him, but available to us, with results so little at
-variance that one is inclined to accord a high degree of credence
-to all that he wrote concerning their activities.</p>
-
-<p>At the time of Sower's importation of German equipment, McCulloch
-informed Isaiah Thomas, he had among his journeymen an
-ingenious general mechanic, Justus Fox, whom he charged with
-the responsibility for casting the letters to be used in the great
-Bible. In April 1772 he employed a newly arrived Swiss silk
-weaver, Jacob Bay,<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> to assist Fox. Two years later Bay left Sower's
-service and set up a foundry on his own account in a near-by house
-in Germantown. Fox remained in Sower's establishment, presumably
-engaged in casting the large quantity of type required to
-keep standing an edition of the Bible. In addition to this routine
-work he is said to have cut and cast an unspecified amount of Roman
-letter before 1774, the year of Bay's separation from the
-Sower establishment. Working in his separate foundry, it is recorded
-by our volunteer historian, Bay "cast a number of fonts,
-cutting all the punches, and making all the apparatus pertaining
-thereto, himself, for Roman Bourgeois, Long Primer, etc."</p>
-
-
-<p>That this reported activity in type casting in Germantown about
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[Pg 71]</span>the year 1774 was not a play of the imagination on the part of its
-historian is made certain by the definite statement that occurs in
-one of the non-importation resolutions of the Pennsylvania Convention.
-On 23 January 1775 the Convention "Resolved unanimously,
-That as printing types are now made to a considerable
-degree of perfection by an ingenious artist in Germantown; it is
-recommended to the printers to use such types in preference to any
-which may be hereafter imported."<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Referring somewhat vaguely
-to this resolution, both as to content and as to origin, McCulloch
-tells us that even at the time of its passage Fox and Bay each
-claimed the honor implied in its terms. To this day the identity of
-the "ingenious artist" remains uncertain.</p>
-
-<p>It is not clear by what evidence it was known to the Convention
-that "a considerable degree of perfection" had been attained in the
-making of type in Germantown. The only known specimen of
-printing type cast at that place before the meeting of the Convention
-in January 1775 is the German letter employed in Sower's
-periodical, <cite>Ein Geistliches Magazien</cite>, and it is not likely that this or
-any other specimen of German type would have led the Convention
-to a recommendation as sweeping as that which has been
-quoted from its journal. It could only have been a Roman letter
-that the delegates had in mind for a usage so general as was indicated
-in their resolution, and we must remain in doubt as to what
-specimen or specimens they had seen of locally cast type in this
-character. It is certain, however, that at the time of their action a
-font of Roman letter had been completed, or at any rate, that it was
-then in the process of casting. It is quite possible that a trial specimen
-of this font had been submitted to the Convention for its examination
-and approval.</p>
-
-
-<p>It is a satisfaction to be able to introduce the new font through
-the medium of a contemporary reference to its use. We are indebted
-to the correspondence and to the diary of the Rev. Ezra
-Stiles of Newport, later President of Yale College, for some important
-information on early American type founding. Excited by
-Buell's efforts to make type in the year 1769, his interest in the
-manufacture seems to have remained in being, for on 9 May 1775
-he appended the following comment to an entry in his Diary: "Extracted
-from the Pennsylv<sup>a</sup> Mercury, whose first N<sup>o</sup> was pub. the
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[Pg 72]</span>7th of April last: printed with types of American Manufacture.
-The first Work with Amer. Types: tho' Types were made at N.
-Haven years ago."<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> The fact that Ezra Stiles was one of the earliest
-patrons of Abel Buell's venture in letter casting, supported as this
-fact is by his interest in American manufactures generally, lends a
-certain amount of weight to any observation that he might make on
-the subject of American type founding, although it is probable that
-he was ignorant of Sower's partial achievement of the art, just as
-Sower some years earlier in his claim to priority had seemed to be
-unaware of Buell's technically successful effort. If we may interpret
-Dr. Stiles's words as meaning that Story &amp; Humphreys's
-<cite>Pennsylvania Mercury</cite><a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> of 7 April 1775, Vol. <small>I</small>, No. <small>I</small>, was the
-first published work printed in Roman letter which had been cut
-and cast in English America, we may unhesitatingly repeat his description
-of it as "The first Work with Amer. Types."</p>
-
-<p>The Philadelphia newspaper which has been referred to is one
-of the rarest of American journals of the period. Complete files,
-comprising issues from 7 April to 27 December 1775, are found
-only in the Library of Congress and in the Harvard College Library.
-From the first page of its first issue, the publisher's announcement
-is here reproduced.</p>
-
-<p>A glance at the pages of the newspaper in which the new Roman
-letter was first used makes us feel that in his commendable willingness
-to admit imperfection the publisher paid small tribute to the
-skill of his "ingenious artist." The letters of "rustic manufacture"
-were far from perfect, it is true, and in later issues of the newspaper
-it is observable that they had not worn especially well, but
-nonetheless they composed agreeably and they were sufficiently
-well executed to entitle them to something more than the half apology
-with which they were offered to the public. Their interest,
-however, as the first American-made Roman type to be used in a
-publication intended for circulation transcends considerations of
-worth and appearance.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[Pg 73]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp44" id="i073" style="max-width: 25.4375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_073.jpg"  alt="" />
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1"><em>Extract from The Pennsylvania Mercury of 7 April 1775.<br />
-Courtesy of the Harvard College Library.</em></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[Pg 74]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Rejoicing in their encouragement of native manufactures, the
-practical support they were giving to the Pennsylvania non-importation
-resolutions of six months earlier, the publishers of the <cite>Mercury</cite>
-advertised on 23 June 1775 <cite>The Impenetrable Secret</cite> as a
-work "Just Published and Printed with Types, Paper and Ink,
-Manufactured in this Province." If they had added, as possibly
-they might have done with truth, "on a press of Philadelphia
-make," we could regard this statement as the declaration of independence
-of the American printer from the English manufacturer.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
-
-
-<p>Isaiah Thomas says that the <cite>Pennsylvania Mercury</cite> was established
-with the backing of Joseph Galloway as a substitute for the
-<cite>Pennsylvania Chronicle</cite>, that disastrous earlier venture in journalism
-in which the Quaker politician had engaged with William Goddard.
-If this was the case, certain features of the new publication
-must have been displeasing to the silent partner, for Galloway the
-Tory could hardly have rejoiced with the publishers in their virtuous
-encouragement of native type founding, with all its patriotic
-implications. Furthermore, from an advertisement of John Willis
-and Henry Vogt in the first issue of the paper one learns that the
-publishers were making use of other articles of printing equipment
-made by these general craftsmen, who here announced their
-ability to make presses and any and all of the mechanical appurtenances
-required in a printing shop. This well-advertised Americanism
-of the publishers, however, seems not to have availed them in
-the attainment of success, and after their establishment had been
-destroyed by fire in the closing days of the year the business was
-never resumed.</p>
-
-<p>It is not certainly known who was the maker of the significant
-<cite>Mercury</cite> types. Assuming that Sower's foundry was in full operation
-in the early months of 1775, we must assume also, in the absence
-of knowledge to the contrary, that its principal activity was
-in the manufacture of German letters for the great Bible, first published
-in 1776, and that Sower would not have been likely to engage
-in the making of Roman type on a large scale until this work
-had been completed. Because of our ignorance of other possibilities
-there remain to be considered only the two craftsmen, Fox and
-Bay, as the probable makers of this first successful American letter.
-According to McCulloch, Fox had cut and cast Roman letter at
-some period before the year 1774 while still working for Sower.
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[Pg 75]</span>
-This statement contains all that is known of his efforts at making
-Roman type during the years that he remained with Sower, but
-there is the chance to be taken into account that the <cite>Mercury</cite> font
-was the result of his experimentation during this period in an art
-which later he pursued with no small degree of local success. On
-the same authority it is said, it will be remembered, that Jacob
-Bay had left Sower in 1774, and in a near-by house in Germantown
-had set up a type foundry on his own account. In this separate
-establishment, it is likely that he was able to devote to the business
-such time and energy as would be required in making a font of
-sufficient size to accommodate the needs of such a newspaper as
-the <cite>Pennsylvania Mercury</cite>. The fact of his separate foundry having
-been established sometime in 1774, the reference in the Convention
-resolution of January 1775 to the "ingenious artist" at Germantown
-and the appearance in April 1775 of the new font of type
-acclaimed by the publishers as "an attempt to introduce so valuable
-an art into these colonies" are considerations which, taken in their
-order, seem to give ground for an assumption that it was Jacob Bay
-who cut and cast the letters for "The first Work with Amer.
-Types." Until proof is forthcoming, however, this must remain an
-assumption and nothing more.</p>
-
-<p>It is certain that both Fox and Bay maintained their interest in
-letter casting for many years. At the sale of Sower's confiscated
-property in the year 1778 both of these artisans were present as
-purchasers of type-making tools and material.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> Bay especially
-seems to have taken advantage of the opportunity to secure equipment
-at this dispersal of his old master's goods. Among other purchases
-which he made at the sale of what was probably at the time
-the largest typographical establishment in the country were "a lot
-of letter moles" at three pounds, "a Box with 9 Crusibles" at £5
-15<em>s.</em>, a quantity of worn type at 8<em>d.</em> a pound and antimony worth
-£8 18<em>s.</em> 3<em>d.</em> He was living at the time in a house rented from
-Sower,<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> and at the sale of the printer's real property in September
-1779 he purchased another house belonging to the estate for
-£4200, a sum which he paid in two installments before 28 October
-1779.<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> In recording from tradition the fact that Bay secured at
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[Pg 76]</span>this time one of the Sower houses, McCulloch asserts that he purchased
-it from John Dunlap, the printer, whom he paid in type of
-his own making. It is possible that he borrowed the purchase price
-from Dunlap on this or a similar basis of repayment, a transaction
-that would explain McCulloch's version of the story. It is said that
-he conducted his foundry until the year 1789, and that between
-this year and 1792 he sold the business to Francis Bailey. Fox continued
-the making of type until his death in the year 1805, when
-his son and partner Emmanuel Fox sold the equipment to Samuel
-Sower of Baltimore, the son of Christopher Sower, the Second, of
-Germantown, whose enterprise had been the determining cause of
-its existence.</p>
-
-
-<p>McCulloch was emphatic in his praise of the sturdiness of Fox's
-types, but when he remarked to Archibald Binny upon the excellent
-wearing quality of a set of figures and capitals cast by the Germantown
-founder, which he and his father before him had been
-using for many years, that gentleman replied with scorn that they
-were "at first so devilish ugly ... the longest using cannot mar their
-deformity."</p>
-
-<p>The type-founding operations of Fox and of Bay have greater
-importance in the history of the art in America than is usually conceded
-them. When they are referred to at all by general writers,
-their activities are mentioned briefly or in such a manner as to give
-one the impression that their efforts were sporadic or tentative. It
-is with the work of the Scotch founder Baine, using imported equipment,
-that the story of American type founding is usually begun,
-but with the <cite>Mercury</cite> font before us, cut and cast thirteen years before
-Baine's first operations, and with assurances by McCulloch
-that Fox cut and cast the letters used in the McKean edition of the
-<cite>Acts of the Pennsylvania Assembly</cite>, printed by Francis Bailey in
-1782,<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> and with references by McCulloch to fonts produced by
-Bay, it seems certain that there exists material which will require
-a revision of the story of American type-founding origins. Beginning
-with the incontestable fact of the successful <cite>Mercury</cite> font of
-1775 and accepting McCulloch's relation of later events as a working
-hypothesis, there is seen to exist a field for research which
-should prove productive of discoveries, inasmuch as the fact and
-the tradition indicate a continuous activity on the part of one or the
-other of these early Pennsylvania founders, Fox and Bay, from
-1775 to 1805. In the course of these years other founders, better
-known to us, began their work, and between the years 1796 and
-1801, more than one hundred American printers, from Massachusetts
-to Georgia, purchased type from the foundry of Binny &amp;
-Ronaldson of Philadelphia.<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
-
-<p>The identification of the various fonts of locally made type used
-in Pennsylvania in the quarter century following "The first Work
-with Amer. Types" would form an interesting chapter in the story
-of early American type founding.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb"/>
-
-<p class="center p2">COMPOSED IN MONTICELLO TYPES</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[Pg 77]</span></p>
-<div>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-
-<p class="center p22 big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> Editor's Note: <cite>Pennsylvania Archives</cite>, 6th Series, 12:887-919. In <cite>Typographic
-Heritage</cite>, the second printing of this essay, Sower's type founding
-venture is more extensively treated, and the rare existing issues of Part <small>II</small> of
-<cite>Ein Geistliches Magazien</cite> are located (pp. 143-144).</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> McCulloch, p. 181, gives the middle of December 1771 as the date of
-Bay's arrival in Philadelphia. In Rupp's <em>Collection of Thirty Thousand
-Names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French, and other Immigrants in Pennsylvania
-from 1727 to 1776</em>, p. 398, Jacob Bay is among the arrivals on the
-Brig <cite>Betsey</cite> on 1 December 1771. The name is spelled Bey by McCulloch,
-Bäy by Rupp, Bay in various lists and documents in the Pennsylvania Archives.
-The last-named spelling is used in the present study on this authority.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
-... (1776-1781), Volume the First (Philadelphia, 1782), p. 33.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> Ezra Stiles, <cite>Literary Diary</cite>. Ed. by F. B. Dexter. 3 vols. (New York,
-1901), I:549.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> Story &amp; Humphreys's <cite>Pennsylvania Mercury, and Universal Advertiser</cite>.
-Evans 14477. No copy seen by Hildeburn.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> It well may be that this production was not a book or pamphlet but a
-popular card game of the educational sort. See A. T. Hazen, <cite>A Bibliography
-of Horace Walpole</cite>, p. 173, and the same author's bibliography of the Strawberry
-Hill Press, pp. 145-148.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:887-919.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> McCulloch's statement is borne out by the inventory of Sower's real
-estate in Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:872-873.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:918-919.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> McCulloch gives the date indefinitely as about the year 1784. His father,
-John McCulloch, from whom he received much information embodied in
-the "Additions," was at one time foreman in Bailey's shop.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> <cite>One Hundred Years</cite>, MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan Foundry, Philadelphia,
-Pennsylvania (1896), p. 12, where is given a list of printers found
-in Binny &amp; Ronaldson's ledgers from 1796 to 1801. The original books are
-in the Typographic Library and Museum of the American Type Founders
-Company, now a part of the Columbia University Library.</p></div></div>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[Pg 78]</span></p>
-</div>
-<h2 class="nobreak">RONALD B. McKERROW<br />
-<em><small>Typographic Debut</small></em></h2>
-
-<p class="p1 center big1">Notes on the Long &#383; and other Characters in Early English Printing.</p>
-
-<p class="center p22 small1">From <cite>An Introduction to Bibliography</cite> by Ronald B. McKerrow.<br />
-Copyright 1927 by the Clarendon Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.</p>
-
-<h3><em>The letters &#383; and s</em></h3>
-
-<p>From the beginning of printing until towards the end of the
-eighteenth century &#383; was used initially and medially and s
-finally, following of course the practice of the MSS. There were
-certain exceptions: Sweynheim and Pannartz, setting up the
-first press in Italy at Subiaco in 1465, used a type transitional
-in character though with marked gothic features, which used
-the long &#383; in all positions, a practice which may have been
-imitated from Neapolitan MSS. of the period. Other printers
-sometimes followed the same usage in Roman type.</p>
-
-<p>The first book to discard &#383; is said to have been Joseph Ames's
-<cite>Typographical Antiquities</cite> of 1749, but this was regarded as an
-eccentricity, and the normal &#383; is used in Herkert's edition of
-1785-90. The effective introduction of the reform has been
-credited to John Bell who in his <cite>British Theatre</cite> of 1791 used s
-throughout, the same practice being followed in the Boydell
-<cite>Shakespeare</cite>, of which vol. <small>I</small> appeared in 1792.<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
-
-<p>It is worth noting that Capell in his <cite>Prolusions</cite>, 1760, had
-attempted a modification of the usual practice. He there uses s
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[Pg 79]</span>medially for a z-sound, retaining &#383; for an s-sound, thus:
-easily, visible, rais'd, &amp;c., but ver&#383;es, pur&#383;uit, &#383;ati&#383;fy.</p>
-
-<p>In London printing the reform was adopted very rapidly
-and, save in work of an intentionally antiquarian character, we
-do not find much use of &#383; in the better kind of printing after
-1800. The provincial presses seem, however, to have retained
-it somewhat longer and it is said to have been used at Oxford
-until 1824.</p>
-
-
-<h3><em>The letters i, j, u and v</em></h3>
-
-<p>As a general rule, until early in the seventeenth century there
-was only one capital letter, I (in Roman) or <img src="images/let_i-p79.jpg"  alt="" /> (in black-letter),
-for the letters now represented by I and J; and only one capital
-letter V (in Roman) or <img src="images/leth_p79.jpg"  alt="" /> (in black-letter) for the letters U and
-V. As was pointed out by F. W. Bourdillon, this has in early
-French books the odd result that a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">libraire juré</i> is liable to
-appear in capitals as "I V R E." When reprinting a black-letter
-text in Roman it seems logical to represent these by I and V in
-all cases, though some editors have preferred to use J and U,
-perhaps because the black-letter forms approximate more
-closely to these letters in shape.</p>
-
-<p>In lower-case most founts had i, j, u and v, but j was only used
-in the combination ij (often a ligature) or in numerals, as xiij,
-while v and u were differentiated according to position, not
-according to pronunciation; v being always used at the beginning
-of a word and u always medially.</p>
-
-<p>Thus the following are the normal spellings: iudge, inijcere or
-iniicere (= <em>lat.</em> injicere), vse, euent, vua (= <em>lat.</em> uva). Certain
-printers varied the practice in a few books, but the rule followed
-by most was absolutely rigid. It is quite incorrect to say that
-the letters were used indifferently, or that the sixteenth-century
-usage was the converse of the modern.... Rimes and puns show
-that the Elizabethans <em>called</em> V by the name we now give to U
-(hence W is called double-u). I have failed to discover the
-originator of the modern name "ve...."</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[Pg 80]</span></p>
-
-<p>In England no example of the distinction [between i and j,
-u and v] seems to have been found earlier than J. Banister's
-<cite>History of Man</cite>, printed by John Day in 1578. The new method
-is followed in a few other books of Day, and in 1579-80 we
-find it followed by Henry Middleton in reprinting a Latin Bible
-from a Frankfurt edition in which the distinction had been
-made. From that time onwards to the end of the century we
-find a certain number of books following the new system either
-completely or with certain modifications, and thereafter the
-number gradually increased until between 1620 and 1630 it
-became the general rule.</p>
-
-<p>The majuscule U at first employed was of the general design
-of the lower-case u with a small tail or serif at the foot (which
-has been revived in some modern fonts). The modern U begins
-to come into use in English printing about the middle of the
-seventeenth century.</p>
-
-
-<h3><em>The letter w</em></h3>
-
-<p>In early fonts this is often represented by vv. In later times
-the same is often found in fonts of extra large size (presumably
-of foreign origin), and in ordinary fonts when there happened
-to be a run on the w and the compositor had not enough.</p>
-
-
-<h3><em>Ligatures</em></h3>
-
-<p>Two or more letters joined together, or differing in design
-from the separate letters, and cast on one type-body, such as
- <img  src="images/ct.jpg"  alt="" /> or &#64259;, are called a ligature. There were two reasons for their
-being so cast, custom and convenience.</p>
-
-<p>In the early fonts the great majority of the ligatures were
-due to custom alone and represented a following of scribal
-practice which commonly joined together certain pairs of letters.
-Thus in the fount used by Caxton in the <cite>Dictes and Sayings of
-the Philosophers</cite> we find such ligatures as ad, be, ce, ch, co, de,
-en, in, ll, pa, pe, po, pp, re, ro, te, &amp;c., all of which owe their
-existence solely to imitation of MSS. of the time. Many of these
-customary ligatures persisted throughout the sixteenth century,
-and even later in black-letter founts ... while a few have combi<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[Pg 81]</span>nations
-with certain capitals such as Ch, Sh, Th, Wh.... Even in
-Roman founts we find <img src="images/ct.jpg"  alt="" />, &#xA74F;, &amp;c., of which <img src="images/ct.jpg"  alt="" /> has persisted until
-modern times. In Italic fonts we also find <em>es</em>, <em>us</em>, <em>&#64262;</em>, and others.
-(The original Aldine Italic had many more.)</p>
-
-<p>When a letter part of which overhangs the body of the type,
-such as f or <img src="images/f-lig.jpg"  alt="" />,
-happens to be followed by such an upright letter
-as l or h, or by an i, the overhanging part or "kern" of the first
-letter comes in contact with the top of the second, and either
-the two types do not fit together properly or the kern of the
-first letter gets broken off. To avoid this, most fonts even at
-present have ligatures of f with l, i and another f (the end of the
-curve of the first letter or the dot of the i being suppressed),
-and of &#64256; with l and i. In early times these ligatures for convenience
-included also a set with &amp;#383;. The f and
-<img src="images/f-lig.jpg"  alt="" /> ligatures are
-also presumably copied from the MSS., where they frequently
-occur, though not in all hands....</p>
-
-
-<h3><em>Punctuation marks</em></h3>
-
-<p>/ In quite early fonts this sign is used for the comma, or
-perhaps we should rather say to indicate any short pause in
-reading.... The modern comma seems to have been introduced
-into England about 1521 (in Roman type) and 1535 (in black-letter).
-It occurs in Venetian printing before 1500.</p>
-
-<p>? The query mark seems to have been used in England from
-about 1521.</p>
-
-<p>; The semicolon seems to have been first used in England
-about 1569, but was not common until 1580 or thereabouts.</p>
-
-<p>. The full stop was commonly used <em>before</em> as well as <em>after</em>
-Roman, and sometimes also arabic, numerals until about 1580.
-Thus ".xii." It was also used before and after i (.i. = id est) and
-&#383; (.&#383;. = scilicet), and I have found it once with q = cue: "as
-though his .q. was then to speake."</p>
-
-<p>‘ and ’ were used indifferently in such abbreviations as th’
-or th‘ for ‘the.’ It may be noted that ‘t’is’ or ‘t‘is’ (instead
-of ‘ ’tis’) was so common in the Elizabethan period that it
-should perhaps be regarded as normal.</p>
-
-<p>" Inverted commas were, until late in the seventeenth century,
-frequently used at the beginnings of lines to call attention
-to sententious remarks. Modern editors have occasionally regarded
-such passages as <em>quotations</em> and completed the quotes,
-which is generally wrong. So far as I have observed they were
-not especially associated with quotations until the eighteenth
-century, although, owing to their use for calling especial attention
-to a passage, they often appear in passages which are
-actually quoted.</p>
-
-<p>Even after they become clearly used to mark quotations they
-generally appear at the beginning of the passage and at the
-beginning of every line, but not always at the <em>end</em>. The practice
-of closing the quotation with two apostrophes seems to be
-comparatively modern. (I have found it in the middle of the
-eighteenth century, but it does not seem to have been regularly
-observed until much later.)</p>
-
-<p>Inverted commas, as well as many other signs, Greek letters
-(sometimes inverted) &amp;c., were used in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
-printing as reference marks directing to side- or
-footnotes.</p>
-
-<p>( ) were often used in the sixteenth century where we now
-use quotation marks, and were indeed the general way of indicating
-a <em>short</em> quotation, e.g.:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>"she was neuer heard to giue any the lie, nor so much as to
-(thou) any in anger."&mdash;S<small>TUBBES</small>, <cite>Christal Glasse</cite>, 1591.</p></div>
-
-<p>They also seem sometimes to be used merely for emphasis, e.g.:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>"What yesterday was (<em>Greene</em>) now's seare and dry"&mdash;C<small>OOKE</small>,
-<em>Greene's Tu Quoque</em>, 1614.</p></div>
-
-<p>[ ] Square brackets are common in some Elizabethan fonts,
-being used as we now use round ones. They were also sometimes
-used instead of round ones for the purposes mentioned above;
-e.g.:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>"which is as much as [of olde] or [in times past]."&mdash;P<small>LUTARCH</small>,
-<cite>Morals</cite>, 1603.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="tb"/>
-
-
-<p class="center p2">COMPOSED IN CASLON 337 TYPES</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[Pg 82]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-
-<p class="center big1 p22">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> N<small>OTE</small>: In the Birrell &amp; Garnett catalog, <cite>Typefounders' Specimens</cite>, London 1928,
-pp. 39-40, it is pointed out that the short s was effectively introduced by the Martins
-"who worked the Apollo Press at Edinburgh, and their London publisher, John Bell.
-The first book of theirs that I have seen is the series of Poets, for example the Dryden
-of 1777...." Graham Pollard relates there the instructive and amusing history of the
-error, for which Hansard was responsible: J. Johnson in <cite>Typographia</cite>, London 1824,
-wrote "... for which we are indebted to the ingenious Mr. John Bell, who introduced
-them in his edition of the British Classics." In copying this, Hansard (1825) made the
-error in transcribing "British <cite>Theatre</cite>." He was followed by C. H. Timperley in 1842,
-who added the qualifying phrase "about 1795," by J. B. Nichols in his <cite>Illustrations of
-Literature</cite>, 1858, and by R. B. McKerrow in 1927, "where it has been given a new lease
-of life by correcting the obvious mistake in date to 1791."</p></div></div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[Pg 83]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">EDWARD ROWE MORES</h2>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i083" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_083.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class= "p1 center"><em>Metal-Flowers</em></p>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From a Dissertation upon English Typographical Founders and Foundries by
-Edward Rowe Mores. London 1778. Reprinted by The Grolier Club, 1924.</p>
-
-
-<p>Metal-flowers were the fir&#383;t ornaments u&#383;ed in printed books,
-to be &#383;et at the head of the fir&#383;t page and the tail of the la&#383;t page,
-as well as at the head and tail of any &#383;eparate part of the whole
-work, and they were &#383;ometimes u&#383;ed as an edging to the matter
-according to the ta&#383;te of the author or the printer, they were
-u&#383;ed &#383;paringly and with &#383;mall variety, but in time they became
-more numerou&#383;, and were cut in &#383;everal &#383;hapes, forms and devices,
-and continued in reputation till <cite>Cutters in Wood</cite> &#383;upplanted
-them, when <cite>Mr. Moxon</cite> wrote they were accounted old-fashioned.
-but the u&#383;e of them was revived by the <em>French</em> and
-<em>Germans</em> and the variety of them con&#383;iderably encreased by
-the Two <em>Mr. James's</em> in <em>England</em>.</p>
-
-<p>The <em>flower</em>-matrices in their foundery have been divided into
-<em>old</em> and <em>new</em>, which to be &#383;ure is a divi&#383;ion, but &#383;uch as conveys
-nothing or a fal&#383;e idea to the under&#383;tanding.</p>
-
-<p>We are to ob&#383;erve then that the latter, though mo&#383;tly now
-in vogue, are mere figures of fancy, made up of circular oval and
-angular turns, contrived to look light, airy and unmeaning, and
-to try the genius or patience of a compo&#383;itor.</p>
-
-<p>But the former expre&#383;&#383;ed &#383;ome meaning and were adapted to
-other purpo&#383;es than barely to dress and decorate a page. they
-were formed from real objects natural and artificial, civil and
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[Pg 84]</span>military, as from weeds and flowers of the field and garden,
-leaves, branches, fruits, flower-ba&#383;kets, flower-pots, urns, cro&#383;&#383;es,
-banners, launces, &#383;words, and tilting &#383;pears, and other &#383;amples
-culled from the fields of nature and of heraldry; yet germane to
-the &#383;ubject matter of the work.</p>
-
-<p>They were frequently emblematical and monitory; as cherubs'
-faces for the hymns of charity girls, hour-gla&#383;&#383;es for lugubrious
-orators, and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mort</i>-heads for the pari&#383;h-clerks. they were &#383;ymbolical
-of nations; as the crown and ro&#383;e, the crown and lyz, the
-crown and harp;&mdash;of dignities and orders; as diadems, crowns,
-mitres and coronets; the red hat called at <em>Camb.</em> the <em>Cardinal's
-cap</em>, where too the mitre is called the <em>golden night-cap</em>; the
-courtelass; the arms of <em>Ul&#383;ter</em>, and the anchor of hope; the <em>Scotch</em>-thi&#383;tle
-and &#383;prigs of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">rue</i>; both <em>&#383;ub</em>-&#383;ymbolical; the former rendered
-more &#383;o by the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cry de guerre</i> "<cite>Noli me Tangere</cite>";&mdash;of
-&#383;tates and conditions; as the myrtle, the weeping willow, and the
-bugle-horn. with many others which to enumerate would be
-tedious here.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i084" style="max-width: 6.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_084.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="center p2">COMPOSED IN CASLON 337 TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[Pg 85]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />JAMES WATSON<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>The</small></em> <small>HISTORY</small> <em><small>of the Invention and Progress of the Mysterious Art of</small></em> <small>PRINTING</small> <em><small>&amp; c.</small></em></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>The History of the Art of Printing</cite> ... printed by James Watson,
-Edinburgh, 1713.</p></div>
-
-<p>If the Ignorant look upon PRINTING without admiring
-It; it is, because they do not understand the same: The Learned
-have always judged far otherways; and have, with Reason,
-thought, That, for almost the Three Ages wherein this Wonder
-hath been seen in Europe, the Wit of Man did never invent any
-Thing that was either more lucky, or more useful for Instruction.</p>
-
-<p>This Truth is so universally acknowledged, that it needs no
-Proof: Every one knows, that, without this marvellous Art, the
-Studies, Labours, and Works of great Men, would have been of no
-Use to Posterity. We are then obliged to this Art, for the Knowledge
-of the Works of the old Philosophers, Physicians, Astronomers,
-Historians, Orators, Poets, Lawyers, Theologues; and, in a
-Word, of all that hath been writ upon any Art, and Science whatsoever.
-It is by the Means of PRINTING that Theologues do
-attain to the sacred Mysteries of our Religion; That the Doctors of
-Law, do teach those admirable Laws, which do regulate the Society
-of Men; That Historiographers do furnish us with Examples,
-which we are either to follow or shun; That Astronomers do make
-every Day such fine Discoveries in the Heavens. It is this very Art
-which furnisheth Physicians with Means to preserve and recover
-the Health of Man's Body; Which discovereth to Philosophers
-the more hid Secrets of Nature; Which furnisheth Geometricians
-with Ability to measure the Earth; And to Arithmeticians, to
-give every Man his Due. In fine, what would the Moderns know
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[Pg 86]</span>in any one Science, and Art, if PRINTING did not furnish
-them with All that the Ancients found out? All the Elogiums
-which we make of PRINTING, and the Honours which we
-pay to It, come far short of It's Merit: And we cannot but easily
-consent to this, if we consider the vast Expences which the Ancients
-were obliged to be at, in procuring Manuscripts....</p>
-
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="center p1"><em>THE PUBLISHER'S PREFACE TO THE<br />
-PRINTERS IN SCOTLAND</em></p>
-
-<p><em>Gentlemen</em>,</p>
-
-<p><em>That Men are not born for themselves, but for the Republick,
-is an ancient and universally applauded Maxim. And it is so agreeable
-to right Reason, that the wisest and best Part of Mankind,
-in every Age since the Creation, have endeavour'd to lay the
-Foundation of a lasting good Name, by every Action of their
-Life; whereby they might improve the Body or Society of which
-they were Members. To this Principle it is, that we owe the Invention
-or Improvement of all the Arts and Sciences that are
-instructive or beneficial to Man. 'Mongst which the Invention,
-and vast Improvement, of the no less honourable, than useful and
-admirable Art of PRINTING, which we profess, deserves a
-very eminent Place: Since by It, all Sorts of Learning, Sacred or
-Profane, and every Kind of profitable Instruction and Invention
-are both publish'd and preserv'd; as my Author, I here give you
-the Translation of, shews clearly and copiously enough.</em></p>
-
-<p><em>This Book, being the History of the Beginning and Advancement
-of our Art, shews the Character of the Men who first profess'd
-It, the Marks of Honour paid them, wilst alive; nay, and the
-Monuments rais'd to preserve their Memories after Death. By all
-which 'tis plain, That those illustrious Persons were honour'd,
-and ranked among the best of their fellow Citizens, in those
-Times: Whereas now we are scarcely class'd or esteem'd above
-the lower Forms of Mechanicks. How we came to lose that Honour
-and Respect due to our Profession, (since the present Age is
-much more learned, and I believe, as just too, and discerning of
-Merit as their Ancestors) shall be a little inquir'd into. But first
-let me give some general Account of this Work.</em></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[Pg 87]</span></p>
-
-<p><em>It bears the Title of</em>, The History, <em>&amp;c.</em> of our Mysterious
-Art; <em>and the Author, with great Exactness and Candor, fairly
-shews the Claims, Reasons and Authority supporting them, on
-both Sides, in the lasting Contest betwixt the Towns of</em> Mentz <em>and</em>
-Harlem; <em>for the Glory of the Invention. A clear Mark, what a
-solid Honour 'tis esteem'd for a Town to have been the noble
-Theatre, where so wonderful an Art was first brought to Light.</em></p>
-
-<p><em>He next gives the Names of the first learned Printers, together
-with a Catalogue of the Works printed by them, and the
-Marks of Honour paid to them by their Fellow-Citizens and
-Country-Men; which will more than enough justify what I have
-affirm'd above.</em></p>
-
-<p><em>The Author wrote in</em> French, <em>and I have caus'd translate it
-for my own, and the common Benefit of these practising the Art
-in this Part of</em> Britain; <em>without proposing any other Advantage
-or Gain by it, but the Improvement of the Art, or at least raising
-It to the Pitch of Perfection It was at here in former Times. And
-since we are, I trust, all of us honest Men, and of better Spirits
-than to propose the Earning our Bread as the chief and only End
-of our Labour; I entertain a settled well grounded Hope, that the
-Perusal of this, will inspire us all with a noble and generous Emulation
-of equalling, nay, exceeding, if we can, the best Performances
-of our laudable Ancestors in the Employment. That since
-our Native Country has at present as many good Spirits, and
-Abundance of more Authors than in any former Age; we may
-make it our Ambition, as well as it is our Interest and Honour, to
-furnish them with Printers that can serve them so well, that they
-need not, as many of our former Authors have been forc'd to do,
-go to other Countries to publish their Writings, lest a learn'd
-Book should be spoil'd by an ignorant or careless Printer.</em></p>
-
-<p><em>Thus, Gentlemen, we shall have this Honour, which is truly
-more valuable than immense Sums of Money or opulent Estates,
-that, for the Glory of our Country, we have retrieved the Art of
-PRINTING, and brought It to as great Perfection as ever It
-was here in former Times....</em></p>
-
-
-<p class="p1"><small>EDINBURGH, MAY 29TH, 1713</small></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[Pg 88]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">Printers as Men of the World</h2>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i088" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_088.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="center p1">EVELYN HARTER</p>
-<p class="p22 center small1">Copyright 1947 by The Typophiles. Reprinted by permission of the author.</p>
-
-
-<p>Printers are usually judged as printers, and there are those
-who hold that this is as it should be, that the printer should stick
-to his pica rule and follow copy out the window. But in their
-spare time printers also eat, vote, marry and go to war. It would
-therefore be possible to look at them from various points of view,
-as, for instance, how many were vegetarians, anarchists, bigamists
-and top sergeants. This could be so of any group of craftsmen. If
-we look at printers from another viewpoint, as to whether they
-were men of the world, it is because of the nature of the stuff with
-which they work.</p>
-
-<p>I should like to begin obliquely by speaking first of an approach
-to the history of printing. Probably the history of printing is more
-limited, definite and easy to encompass than that of almost any
-subject. That is not to say that anyone can ever learn all of it, or
-that we cannot go on learning something new about it all our
-lives. But printing started fairly recently in time; it is its own
-record. Excluding the science of bibliography, the literature is not
-large compared, for example, with that of art or philosophy or
-geology. Yet few people know as much of it as they might know
-with pleasure, and perhaps the reason for that might be a faulty
-approach. It is customary to send beginners to study Updike, but
-it is easy for beginners to get bogged down in <em>Printing Types</em>,
-particularly if they start to read it from the beginning. Updike's
-magnificent work is, in its writing and its outline, gratifying to
-the student whose basic knowledge has been fixed and matured.
-Beginners move more freely in the pages of George Parker Win<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[Pg 89]</span>ship,
-possibly because he related printing events to world events
-to a greater extent than does Updike. Usually the person who
-wishes to learn more about printing has already at hand a lot of
-names and dates and places vaguely relating to world events of
-the past. To such a person printing history lends itself readily to
-the method of study by association. It can be a good game to find
-out what was happening in printing when Napoleon was looking
-at the Pyramids, or when Charles I was beheaded. If one is
-interested in art, he can correlate artists and printers, and find
-that Leonardo was born about the same time that printing was
-born in Europe, or he can correlate printing with advances in the
-knowledge of medicine or agriculture. There are small but interesting
-links between the history of printing and that of music.
-For instance William Caslon the elder loved music, and it is possible
-that the composer Handel sometimes played his new pieces
-at the concerts held in Caslon's organ room, since the two men
-had mutual friends in the musical world of London.</p>
-
-<p>There have been printers who were interested in other worlds.
-The Dutch printer Blaeu studied astronomy under Tycho Brahe,
-and himself produced in 1600 a celestial globe. The Scottish type-founder
-Alexander Wilson, although educated as a doctor, became
-interested in type and left a considerable foundry to his sons
-before he himself moved on to become professor of astronomy at
-the University of Glasgow.</p>
-
-<p>If you wish to make the most of this method, you must do it
-yourself. Then it is you who will have the fun, and then what you
-learn will stick. What follows illustrates the method briefly by
-looking at a number of printers in the past five hundred years
-from one angle, judging them not simply as printers but as men
-of the world.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>It would be nice if we could start with a definition of "man of
-the world" and a definition of "printer" but actually this small
-investigation is an attempt at definition. We cannot mean "man
-of the world" in the Chesterfieldian sense, although there have
-been many printers who knew how to dress and carry themselves
-in court and salon, notably Aldus, Caxton and members of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[Pg 90]</span>
-Didot family. Chesterfield would be obliged to allow some of our
-printers in his company, but I doubt if we could allow him in ours,
-for in one of his letters to his son he says, "Due attention to the
-inside of books and due contempt for the outside is the proper
-relation between a man of sense and his books." Perhaps he was
-thinking of the vanity of fancy bindings, though it is more likely
-that he was beguiling himself into one of those untruths common
-to aphorizers. However that may be, our man of the world does
-not mean gentleman of the world as Chesterfield thought of gentleman,
-although there are printers who are both&mdash;not all dead.</p>
-
-<p>If we were to speak of the printer as a citizen of the world, we
-would be coming a little closer to it, but citizen implies being at
-home in the geographical world, whereas we are thinking of him
-being at home in the world of ideas. When we say "of" the world,
-we mean that he knows that he belongs to his contemporary
-world, that the people and events are of interest to him, the politics,
-art, science and poetry&mdash;not only some particular dexterity, professional
-specialization or money-making device of his own.</p>
-
-<p>It might be argued that the bulk of printing has not now, and
-never has had, much relation to ideas, that in the early days its
-chief business was dubious theological disputes and that its chief
-business now is advertising soap flakes and the like. But printing,
-in its entirety, is a description of the world, and if a great deal of
-print is devoted to murder cases, toothpaste ads and income tax
-blanks&mdash;well, that must be the kind of world we have. However,
-when new ideas have been advanced, they have been advanced in
-print, so that the printer has never been safe from them. Even
-now, in the event that they be promulgated by radio, they must
-be fixed in print in order to stick and sink in. Let us only say then
-that with regard to gaining knowledge of the world in which we
-live, the printer is in an exposed position&mdash;nothing more.</p>
-
-<p>Although we do not know much about Gutenberg,<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> the first</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[Pg 91]</span></p>
-<p>printer, we doubt that he was a man of the world in our sense.
-How could he have been? For the preceding four or five hundred
-years to be a man of the world was to be unworldly; people had
-been concerned with building cathedrals, making religious paintings,
-going on crusades. Printing was the chief factor in making
-the man of the world in our modern sense. Printing enabled him
-to know what was going on so that he might take part in it, although
-printers did not realize this during the cradle days of
-printing. Great events were occurring then; the Turks captured
-Constantinople; the Hundred Years' War came to an end with the
-English driven off the continent of Europe; the Portuguese sailed
-to the Canaries and the Azores; but these events found little mention
-in early printing. <cite>The Nuremberg Chronicle</cite>, as Helen Gentry
-and David Greenhood point out in their <cite>Chronology</cite>, made no
-mention of Columbus' discovery of America in the previous year.
-First came religious books, then school books, law books and
-classics. It is true that Fust and Schöffer printed proclamations and
-information for the archbishop, but it was not until Von Olpe at
-Basle printed <cite>The Ship of Fools</cite> in 1494 that we have "a book
-dealing with contemporary people and their exploits instead of
-with historical accounts of the past."</p>
-
-<p>Although Gutenberg had been involved in the politics of Mainz
-in his youth, probably he thought of nothing but printing after
-he began work on his invention. We have an old book of stories
-for children which describes Gutenberg in a dream: "He thought
-of the great harm which might be done through the printing of
-bad books&mdash;how they would corrupt the minds of the innocent,
-how they would stir up the passions of the wicked. Suddenly he
-seized a heavy hammer and began to break his press in pieces.
-But then a voice seemed to come from the press itself saying,
-'Hold your hand, John Gutenberg. The art of printing will enlighten
-the world.'" I have no idea where the author could have
-found source material for this little fantasy, for we can feel quite
-sure that Gutenberg had little conception of the influence of his
-invention. He was all craftsman and inventor and carried his
-world in his head. His financial reverses alone would indicate that.</p>
-
-<p>The word "printer" has been an elastic word from the very<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[Pg 92]</span>
-beginning, including scholars and artists, businessmen and craftsmen.
-If we were to consider the term "printer" narrowly in the
-sense of a typesetter or a pressman or a man who supervises these
-operations, we should still have to make room in our history for
-men like Jean Grolier, the patron, and Geoffroy Tory, the artist.
-We know of many printers who were first and last businessmen.
-Johann Fust was a banker until he put money in Gutenberg's
-project. The first English printer, Caxton, was a retired wool
-merchant who liked to translate French romances for his friends
-and became tired of writing them out in longhand. Anton Koberger,
-who was Dürer's godfather, the publisher of <cite>The Nuremberg
-Chronicle</cite> and a great entrepreneur in his day, began as a
-printer; he printed books in various languages, did sub-contracting
-and printed advertising circulars. Probably if the plain motives
-of most printers could be discovered, making a living would loom
-large.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>There have been many printers who were also scholars, beginning
-with Aldus and including the Estiennes and the Didots. And
-there are the typecutter-printers who combined letter-founding
-and printing&mdash;Nicolas Jenson, Giambattista Bodoni, John Baskerville,
-as well as the names equally brilliant in printing history
-of those who devoted themselves to founding&mdash;Claude Garamond,
-William Caslon and the Fourniers. A general haze surrounds the
-subject of the contribution of less well-known type-cutters to printing.
-Although the use of a distinguished type may be one of the
-chief reasons for the printer's success, compare the fame of the
-printer Aldus with that of his type designer, Francesco da Bologna,
-of John Bell with that of Richard Austin, of Thomas Bensley with
-that of Vincent Figgins, of Bulmer with William Martin, of Elzevir
-with Christoffel van Dyck, of François Ambroise Didot with
-that of Waflard. On the subject of the share which these printers
-had in suggesting the nature of the type to the men who cut it,
-typographical writers are almost consistently inexplicit, although
-we do know that William Martin brought his types with him
-when he started work for Bulmer. Even Updike, who gives credit
-to the type designer and cutter wherever he is known, says, "At<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[Pg 93]</span>
-first the best printers were often type-founders too, although Garamond
-merely (<em>sic!</em>) cut and cast type for the use of others."
-Binders and papermen, ink-makers and machinery manufacturers
-have always had an affectionate and proprietary air about printing.
-Rather than try to define "printer" strictly, it may be truer to
-say that printers are an adjectival lot, and that printing can honorably
-be a very inclusive term, but that we might have a new
-printing terminology which would better define the various
-contributions.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>What was happening in the world about the year 1500 when
-Aldus Manutius<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> had his great printing shop in Venice working
-at its peak? Columbus had made several voyages, and the Portuguese
-had been around the tip of Africa although Magellan had
-not yet sailed around the world. Leonardo da Vinci had left Milan
-for political reasons, and was working in Venice, as was Giovanni
-Bellini and his pupils Titian and Giorgione. Northern Italy was
-the scene of much brawling between rival princes, with Emperor
-Maximilian I stepping in now and then to make things worse.
-The battles were nuisances to Aldus, for they interfered with the
-production and distribution of his books. I do not know how much
-he knew about the geographical discoveries of his time, but we
-can be sure that a man of his cultivation knew about the great
-painting and sculpture being done. Ralph Roeder says of this time
-that its "triumphs are preserved in art, its reverses in its spiritual
-story, and both are the result of the same cause&mdash;its supreme
-vitality."</p>
-
-<p>It is one more indication of that vitality that Aldus at the age of
-forty embarked on a project which was to bring about a tremendous
-enlargement of the conception of the purpose of books. Many
-printers in history have drifted into printing or its allied trades by
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[Pg 94]</span>chance, but there seems to be no doubt that Aldus knew exactly
-what he was doing all the time. He was a man who knew what he
-wanted. He had been a scholar and tutor to Alberto and Lionello
-Pio, princes of Carpi, when he first saw printed books and realized
-what could be done to make classical manuscripts generally available.
-With the aid of the Pio family he went to Venice, which,
-since the fall of Constantinople, had been the richest repository of
-manuscripts and a residence of Greek scholars. In order to have
-reference books available for his proof-readers and editors, he first
-printed a Greek dictionary and a Greek grammar and himself
-prepared a Greek-Latin dictionary. He gave Venice a university
-when he started the New Academy of Venice. For his press he
-hired the finest scholars of the day&mdash;Bembo and Reuchlin, Musurus
-and Erasmus. We, in the twentieth century, have a tendency to
-think of scholars as removed from the affairs of life. Aldus was a
-scholar who was also in the midst of life, because scholarship was
-an important affair in the world of Renaissance man. He must
-have been a true cosmopolitan as well, commanding, as he did,
-the friendship of men as different as Erasmus of Rotterdam and
-Jean Grolier of France, from whom he had a commission to print
-special copies of his books on vellum.</p>
-
-<p>The 1500's were a time of religious bickerings and of religious
-wars, of Henry the VIII's break with Rome, of the German wars
-following the death of Martin Luther, and the Inquisition in Spain.
-In the early part of the century there was working at Lyons, which
-was then second only to Paris as a printing center in France, a
-young scholar and printer named Etienne Dolet.<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> There is a story
-that he was the illegitimate son of Francis I, but at any rate he
-came of a wealthy family, having been to Venice as secretary to
-the French Ambassador and to Toulouse to study law. By the
-time he was twenty-seven he had published a Latin Dictionary
-which was "one of the most important contributions to classical
-scholarship in the century" and was given a license by Francis I
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[Pg 95]</span>providing that Dolet might print for ten years any books written
-or supervised by him. His great range of taste and interests may
-be judged by the fact that he printed the New Testament in Latin
-and Rabelais in French.</p>
-
-<p>He had met Rabelais when he first went to Lyons to work under
-Sebastian Gryphius as proof-reader, and there gained his practical
-knowledge of printing under the foreman, Jean de Tournes. E. D.
-Christie, Dolet's biographer, says that Dolet, arriving in Lyons
-with a fever, may have been taken directly to Rabelais, who was
-at that time practising medicine, with the position of Physician
-to the Great Hospital. Christie also thinks it possible that Dolet
-may have seen Rabelais perform a dissection on a man's body ten
-years before Vesalius. Everything Dolet did shows him to have
-been a man with lively fearless intellect and no talent for playing
-safe and keeping out of trouble. He spent several terms in jail for
-lack of orthodoxy on religious questions, was pardoned by Francis
-I for killing a man, and was denounced by Rabelais for printing
-an unexpurgated edition of <cite>Pantagruel</cite> after Rabelais had fixed it
-up to suit the Sorbonne.</p>
-
-<p>At Lyons in the months of April and May, 1539, there occurred
-the first large organized printers' strike. It was no wonder, for
-Updike says that it was not unusual for the printers' day to begin
-at two in the morning and last until eight or nine at night. The
-workmen said that the masters did not supply sufficient food, that
-wages had been reduced, that there were too many compulsory
-holidays. The Seneschal of Lyons was empowered to meet a committee
-of journeymen and one of masters; at this conference rules
-were drawn up. But the trouble spread to Paris, and as a result of
-arbitration there, the working day was set from five in the morning
-till eight at night. Then there was a flare-up at Lyons again because
-the master printers threatened to move away; this was some
-years in settlement.</p>
-
-<p>Of all the master printers of Lyons, the only one who sided with
-the strikers was Dolet. This was held against him later when he
-was imprisoned on a charge of atheism, tortured, hanged and
-finally burned on his thirty-seventh birthday. (See <cite>Chronology of
-Books and Printing</cite>.) On his way to his death he made a Latin<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[Pg 96]</span>
-pun on his name. If we speak of him as a man of the world, the
-accent is on man.</p>
-
-<p>It is said that it was this event&mdash;the burning of Dolet&mdash;which
-decided Christopher Plantin<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> to leave France in 1548 for Antwerp,
-though Plantin never exhibited the uncompromising attitude of
-Dolet; rather he showed a business toughness and adaptability
-which enabled him to survive and stay in this world, which was
-no small feat for a printer in the sixteenth century. It was a time
-when empires and ideologies were in tremendous conflict; the
-period of the German religious wars following the death of Martin
-Luther; of Spain and England in unrelenting struggle for control
-of the sea, culminating in the destruction of the Spanish Armada
-in 1588. Antwerp itself was a focal point of disorder after Philip II
-sent the Duke of Alba to subdue the Netherlanders. Plantin had
-built up a good printing and publishing business when, in 1562,
-it was liquidated because of his alleged unorthodoxy. Within a
-few years he had recovered to the extent that he was made Printer
-to the King of Spain, from whom he received assurances of help
-on his Polyglot Bible. Again, in the sack of Antwerp by Spanish
-soldiers in 1576 his business was all but ruined; he went to Leyden
-for a few years, but returned to finish his days at Antwerp. To a
-man living in those times, the issues must have seemed even more
-confused and difficult than ours do now. Recent investigations
-indicate that Plantin belonged to a sect of heretics for which he
-printed books secretly, while also doing books for the church.</p>
-
-<p>Another sixteenth-century printer who could hardly be oblivious
-to the events of his time&mdash;he was so knocked about by them&mdash;was
-Robert Estienne.<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> Even though he was at one time Royal Printer,
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[Pg 97]</span>liked and respected by Francis I, he sometimes had to seek the
-sanctuary of the King's court to escape the King's censors. Robert
-must have been a man of stature, for he published his <cite>New Testament</cite>
-in defiance of the Sorbonne, and only after Francis I died
-did he leave Paris for Geneva. He was a believer in one of the
-springs of Renaissance thought&mdash;that through scholarship it is
-possible to come to the truth, and through printing all men may
-recognize and know the truth.</p>
-
-<p>It would be possible for a man of the world to be so without ever
-stirring from the town of his birth, yet oftener than not the man
-with breadth of interest is a cosmopolitan and a traveller. Such
-cosmopolitans were fourteen members of the Elzevir<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> family,
-who, over a period of one hundred and thirty years, engaged in
-printing and selling small books chiefly intended for poor scholars.
-This Dutch family of practical internationalists established their
-bookshops and printing offices in nearly every large city on the
-continent, from Denmark to Italy, printing their books in Latin
-and Greek, French and Arabic, on subjects ranging from medicine
-to political science. All this in spite of the Thirty Years' War,
-which was to bring about the decline of the artificial internationalism
-of the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire, and in spite
-of similar disturbances before and after.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the geographical
-boundaries of printing were extended vastly outside of Europe.
-The colonization of North and South America was going forward.
-The first press in America had been established at Mexico City in
-1539 by agents of Kromberger of Seville. European printing was
-carried to India in 1561, to China in 1589, and to Japan in 1591.
-The first printing was done in Russia in 1563.</p>
-
-<p>Credit for doing the first printing in the American colonies,
-<cite>The Freeman's Oath</cite>, was once given to Stephen Daye, is sometimes
-latterly given to his young son, Matthew Daye. Were they
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[Pg 98]</span>more than mechanic, compositor and pressman? Who chose the
-copy, proofread it, set policies, pushed the work along? Possibly
-some of the founders of the new Harvard College, or possibly Mrs.
-Glover, the widow of the man who originated the idea of the
-press. She was probably a woman of education, since she settled
-in Cambridge to be near the new college and later married the
-President, Henry Dunster. She undoubtedly shared her first husband's
-independent views&mdash;he had been suspended from his parsonage
-in Surrey because of his nonconformity; she might have
-picked <cite>The Freeman's Oath</cite> for the first copy. She may have been
-more of a printer and more of a woman of the world than the
-fragments of knowledge which we have about her disclose....
-Whoever guided the destiny of the first press, it was a person not
-completely confined by dogma, for the books included almanacs,
-law books and college thesis lists, as is pointed out by Carl Purington
-Rollins, himself perhaps our best example of a modern fine
-printer conscious of what is going on around him.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>During the late 1700's the Industrial Revolution began, but its
-implications were not guessed by artisan or statesman, and the best
-printers were still in the age of elegance. Baskerville was businessman,
-eccentric, free-thinker, but his printing, as much as that of
-Bodoni who was employed by the Duke of Parma, was regal.</p>
-
-<p>Probably Horace Walpole,<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> more than any other printer, felt
-that the world was his house, in which he could move about freely
-from room to room, always at ease. He had the wit and manners
-to be an ornament to French salons, the originality to introduce
-a new brand of literature in his <cite>Castle of Otranto</cite>&mdash;the forerunner
-of our mystery novel of today, the personal force to influence the
-trend of English architecture with his "little Gothic castle" at
-Strawberry Hill in Twickenham. In one of his letters to the artist
-Richard Bentley he says that he can't resist going to fires, and
-there is something of this spirit in his activities. The collector
-W. S. Lewis says, "He was not only, in his own word, a 'gazetteer'
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[Pg 99]</span>but the historian of English painting and gardening, an essayist,
-poet, novelist, pamphleteer, dramatist, printer, antiquarian, and
-<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">arbiter elegantiarum</i> and in the modern sense and phrase a 'debunker'
-of historical figures.... It was his main purpose in life
-to be the official historian of his time."</p>
-
-<p>Although he had a seat in Parliament, he paid little attention to
-the nation's business. He represented those parts of life in the
-eighteenth century which had natured and were drawing to a
-close, as Fielding and Goldsmith, the American Revolution and
-the French Revolution represented things to come. Printing being
-one of his minor activities, he is of more interest as a human being
-than as a craftsman.</p>
-
-<p>If Walpole was a man of the world and man of letters, John
-Bell<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> was man of the world and man of business. During a lifetime
-of eighty-six years he was, as Stanley Morison pictures him,
-book-seller, printer, publisher, type-founder and journalist. Like a
-lesser Franklin&mdash;he had not Franklin's scientific interest, integrity,
-or vision&mdash;he was endowed with the ability to grasp the salient
-facts of a trade or profession, and a wealth of exuberant interest in
-life around him. At the beginning of his career as a book-seller, he
-published a sort of early version of Wilson's <cite>Cumulative Book
-Index</cite>, a list of current books for the use of the trade. As type-founder
-(and introducer of the short "s") he employed the talent
-of the punch cutter Richard Austin to produce the first English
-"modern" type. In addition to a successful fashion magazine, he
-published at different times four newspapers. At one time he even
-made himself a war correspondent, when he visited the British
-Army then fighting the French Revolutionaries in Flanders. He
-reported the action at Ypres, made a march with the troops from
-Courtrai to Tournai and pursued his object of finding "active and
-well-informed persons in different parts of the continent" who
-would act as regular correspondents for his paper, <cite>The Oracle</cite>.
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[Pg 100]</span>
-The books he published included law books, Shakespeare, a series
-of the poets of Great Britain; he engaged members of the Royal
-Academy to illustrate the plays of a series called <cite>The British
-Theatre</cite> and hired the best engravers of the day to copy the paintings.
-He knew the literary men of the day&mdash;Sheridan wrote for
-his <cite>World</cite>&mdash;and even had a balloonist for a friend&mdash;Lunardi, who
-made the first ascent in London. Compared to his contemporary
-Bulmer, who could be called a printer's printer, Bell was a promoter
-whose medium was printing.</p>
-
-<p>Of all the Didots, and they seem to have been able men, Firmin
-Didot<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> is of most interest to us. He taught many of the printers of
-Greece out of sympathy for the cause of Greek independence, the
-same for which Byron died. He wrote plays, translated classics,
-and after he retired from business he entered the Chamber of
-Deputies; he learned Spanish at the age of sixty-three. Desmond
-Flower says, in writing of him, "Printing is a curious and perhaps
-unsatisfactory hybrid between a profession and an art; the men
-who have caught the sense of it most successfully have been intelligent
-people who could see it whole&mdash;scholar-printer-publishers&mdash;for
-whom some other rivers flowed beyond the simple floods
-of printing ink." Perhaps when Mr. Flower wrote this he had
-forgotten how "tacky" printing ink is, but his meaning is a large
-part of what I am trying to say.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The question of what world one chooses to recognize&mdash;that of
-courts and salons or of slums&mdash;arises in connection with the great
-printer of the nineteenth century, William Morris.<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> He saw what
-was happening as a result of machinery and large industry, and
-he did not like it. He must have seen it very plainly in order to
-revolt against it so strongly. His printing period was the last in his
-life, following the chintzes, stained glass windows, tapestries, rugs
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[Pg 101]</span>and furniture. He felt that people would be better people if they
-made and owned beautiful things, and he also saw, like his contemporary,
-Karl Marx, that the economic structure would have
-to be changed before the best qualities in people could operate,
-though he was not willing to follow Marx in his methods. When
-we think of the William Morris who printed the Kelmscott
-<cite>Chaucer</cite>, we do not always remember the William Morris who
-stood in Hyde Park near the Marble Arch talking to the street
-crowds about socialism, wondering if the police were coming;
-who for years travelled about speaking in a thousand stuffy halls
-in England, Ireland and Scotland. When he was old, tears would
-come to his eyes when the misery of the poor was mentioned. It is
-easy to say that his socialism was vague and his desire to return to
-the methods of the thirteenth century unrealistic, but considering
-the sincerity of his motives and the breadth of his interests, I think
-that we must say that he was not so much a man of this world as
-a man of a better world.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Perhaps we must return to America to find the printer who has
-made the greatest contribution to political history. We can hardly
-detail here the cosmopolitan accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin.
-We might rather examine what right we have to call him a
-printer, in view of the magnitude of his other accomplishments.
-He liked to think of himself as a printer, and started his will with
-the words, "I, Benjamin Franklin, printer." Once when he visited
-the establishment of the Didots in France he stopped at a hand
-press and pulled a few proofs. When the workman exclaimed at
-his dexterity he said, "Do not be surprised. Printing is my real
-trade." Wherever he went in England or France he corresponded
-with printers and visited their establishments. We know about his
-private press at Passy and about his wholesome influence on American
-printing. Carl Van Doren, in his biography of Franklin, says
-that when he died the printers of Philadelphia walked in his
-funeral procession and that the printers of Paris gathered to honor
-him, listened to a eulogy by one of them while others set it in type
-as fast as it was delivered and distributed printed copies as souvenirs.
-If then we can claim him as a printer, we can feel sure that
-the man who helped draft the Declaration of Independence, who
-was sent to negotiate the peace and was a delegate to the Constitutional
-Convention was, more than any other printer, a man of the
-world.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>It could hardly be maintained that being connected with printing
-makes one a man of the world. It might even be argued and
-proved by examples past and present that preoccupation with the
-problems of the craft is a narrowing influence. Since most of the
-circumstances of our lives are arranged for us when we are born,
-it is possible to travel through life as on a conveyor belt, having
-things done to us along the way, and this can be as true of a fine
-printer as of a bank president. Each can go through life utterly
-ignorant of the economic and mental processes that bring food to
-his table and send his son to the wars. It was always a question,
-now more than ever critical, what part of a man's life must be
-given to being a citizen against the claims of livelihood, philosophy,
-family and amusement. The events of the past few years
-have dramatized the dilemma. Printing has helped bring us to
-this place in history. And so, although we cannot condemn a good
-craftsman because he is interested in nothing except shop talk, we
-might say that printers who are also men of the world realize that
-they are working in a bigger shop.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp59" id="i102" style="max-width: 18.75em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_102.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">WOOD ENGRAVING BY REYNOLDS STONE, 1937.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN GRANJON TYPES</p></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[Pg 102]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> Johann Gutenberg (c. 1397-1468). Gutenberg is considered the effective inventor
-of printing, but his biography is written darkly only in the records of the
-law courts to which he was constantly summoned on money matters. His was a
-complex of inventions: he not only cast type in single pieces, but devised a chase
-to hold it, mixed suitable ink and perfected a technique for register and good
-impression, with the result that the first printing remains among the best.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> Aldus Manutius (1450-1515). Aldus' contributions to printing&mdash;small capitals,
-the first Italic, the popularization of the small type page&mdash;centered about his wish
-to help scholars. He wrote to a friend: "We send these Satires to you, my dear
-Scipio, that they may through their brevity become once more your intimate
-friends, as they were formerly during your stay at Rome as a young man, when
-you possessed them as thoroughly in your memory as your own fingers and fingernails."</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> Etienne Dolet (1509-1546). Dolet belongs with the great scholar-printers Aldus
-Manutius and Robert Estienne, although he did not live long enough to compare
-with them in volume of work. His career of collision with the authority of the
-church, the state and other printers terminated when he was tortured, hanged and
-burned on his thirty-seventh birthday.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> Christopher Plantin (1514-1589). Plantin, a Frenchman who migrated to
-Belgium, printed in many languages, using fonts by the best contemporary type-cutters;
-he undertook work for the King of Spain and the City of Antwerp, which
-honored him in death by burying him in its cathedral, with the inscription "...
-king of typography."</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> Robert Estienne (c. 1503-1559). In Robert Estienne, as in Aldus and Dolet, the
-scholar and printer combined to produce tools for humanism: dictionaries, lexicons,
-grammars, editions of the classics. On his death his son Henri Estienne, grandson
-of the first Henri, augmented the family tradition of scholarly publishing, though
-he never surpassed the books of his father and grandfather in typographical
-brilliance.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> Louis Elzevir (1540-1617). About one hundred and thirty years after the invention
-of printing, Louis Elzevir became the first publisher in the modern sense;
-not primarily a scholar or craftsman, but a businessman who undertook the risk
-of production and distribution of quantities of books for a variety of readers
-throughout Europe.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> Horace Walpole (1717-1797). Walpole is the great example of the gentleman-amateur
-in printing. His fame as a printer has been bolstered by his renown in
-other fields, especially in literature and architecture.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> John Bell (1749-1831). Bell was a journalist and impresario in printing whose
-enterprises ranged from publishing fashion magazines to sets of Shakespeare. If he
-did not entirely realize the ambition announced when he started his foundry&mdash;"...
-I am not without hopes of raising my fame in this pursuit beyond the reach
-of competition in any country whatever"&mdash;the type which bears his name remains
-today his best memorial.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> Firmin Didot (1764-1836). The Didot family illustrates again that printing
-ink seems to linger in the blood longer in France than in other countries; of the
-Didots, Firmin stands out as a man who loved his profession and constantly
-looked beyond it.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> William Morris (1834-1896). William Morris was a man who looked backward
-in the crafts and forward in human relations, yet had a full life in the world
-of his own time. As a printer he had great influence, not all good.</p></div></div>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[Pg 103]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />
-ANNE LYON HAIGHT<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>Are Women the Natural Enemies of Books?</small></em></h2>
-
-<p class="center p22 small1">From <cite>Bookmaking on the Distaff Side</cite> by Anne Lyon Haight. Copyright 1937
-by the author and reprinted by her permission.</p>
-
-<p>In my search for knowledge about lady bibliophiles I climbed
-the library ladder and among the books on collecting saw <cite>The
-Library</cite>, by Andrew Lang, London, 1881. Confident that I
-would find some charming and sympathetic essay on the subject, I
-took it down and turned to the index, but evidently I had forgotten
-Lang's prejudice, for to my horror the startling lines
-"Women the natural foes of books" met my eye. They were
-classed with the other enemies of books: damp, dust, dirt, book-worms,
-careless readers, borrowers, book stealers, book-ghouls,
-etc., so I hastily turned to the page and read: "Almost all women
-are the inveterate foes, not of novels, of course, nor peerages and
-popular volumes of history, but of books worthy of the name. It
-is true that Isabelle d'Este and Madame de Pompadour and Madame
-de Maintenon were collectors; and, doubtless, there are many
-other brilliant exceptions to a general rule. But broadly speaking,
-women detest the books which the collector desires and admires.
-First, they don't understand them; second, they are jealous
-of their mysterious charms; third, books cost money, and it really
-is a hard thing for a lady to see money expended on what seems
-a dingy old binding, or yellow paper scored with crabbed characters.
-Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war against book-sellers'
-catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have had to
-practise the guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase
-across their own frontier. Thus many married men are reduced
-to collecting Elzivers, which go readily into the pocket,
-for you cannot smuggle a folio volume easily."</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[Pg 104]</span></p>
-<p>Poor man, his experience with the fair sex must have been a
-very unfortunate one. Perhaps he had been disillusioned by reading
-of the sixteenth-century abbess of the convent of Rumsey
-in Hampshire, whom Dibdin tells about. She was bibulously
-rather than bibliographically inclined and bartered the books
-of the abbey for strong liquors and consequently was accused of
-immoderate drinking, especially in the nighttime when she invited
-the nuns to her chamber to participate in these excesses. But
-fortunately the women whom Lang describes in his diatribe are
-really the rare exception to the rule and only lack of space prevents
-my writing a folio volume about the many famous women
-collectors who have been friends not foes to books throughout the
-ages.</p>
-
-<p>It is true though that the female of our species has never been
-as susceptible to the malady of book madness as the male, possibly
-because she has not had the same opportunity. Unless a woman
-is economically independent there are many demands upon her
-allowance and consequently she must really want a book very
-much to buy it instead of a new hat or something else that is dear
-to her heart. She is not as apt to buy for speculation or because
-a book is one of the conventional collector's items, but is more
-independent and adventurous in following her personal taste,
-although the spirit of a true collector of books is the same whether
-it be possessed by man or woman.</p>
-
-<p>Strange to say, the first bibliophile on record is a woman. She
-was a Benedictine abbess named Hroswitha. She lived in the Nunnery
-of Gandersheim in Saxony in the tenth century. She not
-only read all the parchment rolls and great codices which came
-into her hands, but caused books to be written for her Convent,
-wrote plays in Latin and translated Terence. Hroswitha probably
-knew but little Greek, as certain monks of the period considered
-the language an invention of the devil. Her example was
-followed in the next century by the lovely and intelligent Countess
-Judith of Flanders, who, wherever she followed her warring
-English husband, caused the most exquisite illuminated manuscripts
-to be made. She continued her interests on the continent
-when she later married the Duke of Bavaria. Four of her manuscripts,
-magnificently bound, are now safely housed in the Pierpont
-Morgan Library where "though they are books worthy of
-the name" their beauty may be appreciated by women who are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[Pg 105]</span>
-not even "the brilliant exception to the general rule" of collectors.</p>
-
-<p>The Golden Age of women bibliophiles in France from the
-fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries must have been a glorious
-time to have lived. The Queens, the Princesses, the Mistresses
-of the Kings and all the great ladies had their libraries. They were
-composed of beautifully illuminated breviaries, missals and manuscripts,
-and from the presses of the great printers of the day came
-romances, histories, plays and religious books, veritable works of
-art. These books and manuscripts were bound in gold and silver
-and jewels, embroidered velvet, and in some of the most beautiful
-leather bindings the world has ever seen. Briefly: Marguerite of
-Navarre was one of the famous scholars of her day and the author
-of a collection of love stories, <cite>The Heptameron</cite>. It is said of her
-"L'amour du livre, chez la fille de Catherine fut une véritable passion."
-Her books were bound by the famous Clovis and Nicolas
-Eve and were decorated with daisies. Madame de Pompadour was
-for many years an inspiring influence in art and letters, although
-she owned more plays, novels and other "productions légères"
-than serious works. She had a printing press at Versailles and also
-etched plates for illustrations and as gifts for her friends. La
-Countesse de Verrue was a discriminating collector, a patroness
-of all the arts and a fascinating woman. The Du Barry acquired
-1,068 volumes. When she began to form her library she could
-scarcely read or write. However, with practise, she soon learned
-to read well, but like many of us never to spell. Anne of Austria
-was fortunate in having her friend Mazarin, a kindred spirit in
-bibliomania, to advise her. Marie Antoinette had two libraries.
-She kept her particular books in her boudoir in the Trianon and
-the titles in the catalogue are very entertaining. Mary Stuart had
-a catholic taste in literature and her books were exceptionally
-well chosen. In deference to the loss of her first husband some
-were bound in black with black edges. It is comforting to know
-that when she left France as a young widow to return to her
-native Scotland where so much tragedy awaited her "qu'elle
-avait pour les livres un goût profond, et ils etaient pour ainsi dire
-sa seule consolation loin de ce beau Pays de France." In England,
-one of the most fortunate of the many ladies who appreciated
-literature was Queen Elizabeth, for she lived in an age when
-masterpieces were being written, many of them dedicated to her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[Pg 106]</span>
-and many inspired by her. When she was young she embroidered
-velvets in gold and silver threads to bind her treasures. Among the
-manuscripts in the Bodleian Library are the <cite>Epistles of St. Paul</cite>,
-etc., which was Elizabeth's own book. She has written at the beginning
-"I walke many times into the pleasant fields of the Holy
-Scriptures, where I plucke up the goodlie-some herbes of sentences
-by pruning: chaw them by musing: and laie them up at
-length in the hie seate of memorie by gathering them together:
-that so having tasted their sweetness I may the less perceave the
-bitterness of this miserable life."</p>
-
-<p>One of the most touching and beautiful tributes ever written
-to a woman is Sir Philip Sidney's dedication of his <cite>Arcadia</cite> to his
-"deare ladie and sister," the Countess of Pembroke, to whom he
-wrote in part: "you desired me to do it, and your desire, to my
-hart is an absolute commandment. Now it is done onely for you,
-onely to you." She was his great inspiration and helped him in
-the editing of the book.</p>
-
-<p>Where there's a will there's a way and women seem able to
-smuggle folios as well as duodecimos into the library. Catherine
-de Médici, for instance, had such a passion for books that she
-got them by fair means or foul. She longed for the library of her
-cousin Marshal Strozzi and as soon as he died appropriated it for
-her own. Catherine neglected to pay for it and owed the book-sellers
-as well, so after her death when her books were about to be
-seized by her creditors, De Thou raised the money to pay for
-them and they were saved for the state. The fascinating and glamorous
-Diane de Poitiers was a practical business executive as well
-as a bibliophile, for it was she who supposedly advised Henry II
-to pass an ordinance requiring publishers to present a copy of
-each book they published to the royal libraries at Blois and Fontainebleau,
-thereby increasing these collections by more than
-seven hundred volumes. Thus the present-day copyright law was
-initiated by a woman. Catherine of Russia was also courageous
-in her methods of gratifying her literary tastes. She partitioned
-Poland in 1772 and seized enough books to form the foundation
-of the Imperial Library at the Hermitage. She used to ask the
-Ambassadors, particularly the Ambassador from England, to get
-foreign books for her and if she did not have the money to pay for
-them at the time she conveniently forgot about it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[Pg 107]</span></p>
-
-<p>In later days there were women in the young colony in America
-who enjoyed their books in the midst of their primitive surroundings.
-In 1643 in Emans, New York, the inventory of the
-Widow Bronck included Danish books. Mrs. Willoughby of
-Virginia left over one hundred volumes at her death in 1673, and
-in 1700 Elizabeth Tatham of New Jersey left five hundred and
-fifty-two volumes, while their New England contemporary,
-Hannah Sutton, acquired a library of about seventeen hundred
-volumes.</p>
-
-<p>In the early nineteenth century Miss Richardson Currer of
-Eshton Hall, Craven, Yorkshire, amassed a large and scholarly
-collection of books on many subjects. It was housed in a great
-room with a gallery which must have been the envy of all book-lovers.
-She was the fond possessor of the rare <cite>Book of St. Albans</cite>,
-written and compiled by Juliana Berners, prioress of the nunnery
-of Sopwith in Hertfordshire. It is said that the ardent book collector
-Richard Heber, being unable to secure the book in any
-other way, ardently proposed marriage to Miss Currer. She was
-firm in her refusal however, preferring to keep this first book
-about sport to be written by a woman to herself.</p>
-
-<p>One of the most learned lady bibliophiles of this century in
-America was Miss Amy Lowell of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
-Her books and manuscripts, including her collection of Keats,
-are being preserved for posterity in the Harry Elkins Widener
-Memorial at Harvard. She always enjoyed smoking a good cigar
-while writing or carrying on her sparkling conversations, as she
-thought it made her thoughts flow more easily.</p>
-
-<p>One could not write of women in connection with books without
-speaking of two distinguished custodians of famous libraries,
-scholars, who are as well known abroad as in America: [the late]
-Miss Belle Da Costa Greene, the brilliant Director of the Pierpont
-Morgan Library, and Miss Ruth Sheppard Granniss, former
-Librarian of the Grolier Club and sympathetic friend of all
-bibliophiles, male or female. They, of course, come under Lang's
-category of exceptional examples.</p>
-
-<p>But what of the many other exceptions? Would Lang have
-thought that Miss Lowell could not understand books? Or that
-Diane de Poitiers could be jealous of their mysterious charms?
-Or that Catherine of Russia would hesitate to spend what money<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[Pg 108]</span>
-she could procure to satisfy her passion for them? What could
-his lady friends have been like to be classed with the enemies of
-books&mdash;and such enemies at that?</p>
-
-<p>It would appear that book collecting is a truly feminine pastime,
-containing many elements which appeal to their sex; romance,
-intellectual curiosity, love of the beautiful and the quest
-of something difficult to obtain. But feminine collectors should
-beware of pitfalls, for sometimes this mania arouses the baser
-instincts such as envy, extravagance and self-indulgence. Wives
-have even been known to spend their marketing money on books
-instead of daily bread, and to waste hours reading book catalogues
-instead of attending to their housewifely duties. Book collecting,
-however, is a common denominator of all ages and a medium
-through which the minds of both sexes may meet with pleasure,
-and therefore greatly to be recommended as a delightful occupation.</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[Pg 109]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />BEATRICE WARDE<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<small>PRINTING SHOULD BE INVISIBLE</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">Copyright 1932 by The Marchbanks Press. Reprinted by permission of the
-author.</p>
-
-<p>Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose
-your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so
-that it be a deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets
-before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns.
-The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent.
-Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I
-shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you
-have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the
-sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost ten
-thousand dollars; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the
-amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything
-about it is calculated to <em>reveal</em> rather than to hide the beautiful
-thing which it was meant to <em>contain</em>.</p>
-
-<p>Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you
-will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wineglass are parallel
-in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates finger-prints
-on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your
-eyes and the fiery heart of the liquid. Are not the margins on book
-pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-page?
-Again: the glass is colorless or at the most only faintly tinged
-in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its color
-and is impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms
-in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[Pg 110]</span>port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that
-looks too small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is
-weighted; you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of
-setting lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the
-reader subconsciously worried by the fear of "doubling" lines, reading
-three words as one, and so forth.</p>
-
-<p>Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold
-his wine was a "modernist" in the sense in which I am going to use
-that term. That is, the first thing he asked of this particular object was
-not "<cite>How should it look?</cite>" but "<em>What must it do?</em>" and to that extent
-all good typography is modernist.</p>
-
-<p>Wine is so strange and potent a thing that it has been used in the
-central ritual of religion in one place and time, and attacked by a
-virago with a hatchet in another. There is only one other thing in the
-world that is capable of stirring and altering men's minds to the same
-extent, and that is the coherent expression of thought. That is man's
-chief miracle, unique to man. There is no "explanation" whatever
-of the fact that I can make arbitrary sounds which will lead a total
-stranger to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be
-able to hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on
-paper with an unknown person half-way across the world. Talking,
-broadcasting, writing and printing are all quite literally forms of
-<em>thought transference</em>, and it is this ability and eagerness to transfer and
-receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for
-human civilization.</p>
-
-<p>If you agree with this, you will agree with my one main idea, <em>i.e.</em>,
-that the most important thing about printing is that it conveys
-thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds. This statement
-is what you might call the front door of the science of typography.
-Within lie hundreds of rooms; but unless you start by assuming
-that <em>printing is meant to convey specific and coherent ideas</em>, it is very easy
-to find yourself in the wrong house altogether.</p>
-
-<p>Before asking what this statement leads to, let us see what it does
-not necessarily lead to. If books are printed in order to be read, we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[Pg 111]</span>
-must distinguish readability from what the optician would call legibility.
-A page set in 14-point Bold Sans is, according to the laboratory
-tests, more "legible" than one set in 11-point Baskerville. A public
-speaker is more "audible" in that sense when he bellows. But a good
-speaking voice is one which is inaudible <em>as</em> a voice. It is the transparent
-goblet again! I need not warn you that if you begin listening to
-the inflections and speaking rhythms of a voice from a platform, you
-are falling asleep. When you listen to a song in a language you do
-not understand, part of your mind actually does fall asleep, leaving
-your quite separate aesthetic sensibilities to enjoy themselves unimpeded
-by your reasoning faculties. The fine arts do that; but that is
-not the purpose of printing. Type well used is invisible <em>as</em> type, just
-as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission
-of words, ideas.</p>
-
-<p>We may say, therefore, that printing may be delightful for many
-reasons, but that it is important, first and foremost, as a means of
-doing something. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed
-piece a work of art, especially fine art: because that would imply that
-its first purpose was to exist as an expression of beauty for its own
-sake and for the delectation of the senses. Calligraphy can almost be
-considered a fine art nowadays, because its primary economic and
-educational purpose has been taken away; but printing in English
-will not qualify as an art until the present English language no longer
-conveys ideas to future generations, and until printing itself hands its
-usefulness to some yet unimagined successor.</p>
-
-<p>There is no end to the maze of practices in typography, and this
-idea of printing as a conveyor is, at least in the minds of all the great
-typographers with whom I have had the privilege of talking, the one
-clue that can guide you through the maze. Without this essential
-humility of mind, I have seen ardent designers go more hopelessly
-wrong, make more ludicrous mistakes out of an excessive enthusiasm,
-than I could have thought possible. And with this clue, this purposiveness
-in the back of your mind, it is possible to do the most
-unheard-of things, and find that they justify you triumphantly. It<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[Pg 112]</span>
-is not a waste of time to go to the simple fundamentals and reason
-from them. In the flurry of your individual problems, I think you
-will not mind spending half an hour on one broad and simple set of
-ideas involving abstract principles.</p>
-
-<p>I once was talking to a man who designed a very pleasing advertising
-type which undoubtedly all of you have used. I said something
-about what artists think about a certain problem, and he replied with
-a beautiful gesture: "Ah, madame, we artists do not think&mdash;we <em>feel</em>!"
-That same day I quoted that remark to another designer of my
-acquaintance, and he, being less poetically inclined, murmured:
-"I'm not <em>feeling</em> very well today, I <em>think</em>!" He was right, he did think;
-he was the thinking sort; and that is why he is not so good a painter,
-and to my mind ten times better as a typographer and type designer
-than the man who instinctively avoided anything as coherent as a
-reason.</p>
-
-<p>I always suspect the typographic enthusiast who takes a printed
-page from a book and frames it to hang on the wall, for I believe that
-in order to gratify a sensory delight, he has mutilated something infinitely
-more important. I remember that T. M. Cleland, the famous
-American typographer, once showed me a very beautiful layout for
-a Cadillac booklet involving decorations in color. He did not have
-the actual text to work with in drawing up his specimen pages, so he
-had set the lines in Latin. This was not only for the reason that you
-will all think of, if you have seen the old typefoundries' famous
-<cite>Quousque Tandem</cite> copy [<em>i. e.</em>, that Latin has few descenders and thus
-gives a remarkably even line]. No, he told me that originally he had
-set up the dullest "wording" that he could find [I dare say it was from
-the <cite>Congressional Record</cite>], and yet he discovered that the man to
-whom he submitted it would start reading and making comments
-on the text. I made some remark on the mentality of Boards of Directors,
-but Mr. Cleland said "No: you're wrong; if the reader had not
-been practically forced to read&mdash;if he had not seen those words suddenly
-imbued with glamor and significance&mdash;then the layout would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[Pg 113]</span>
-have been a failure. Setting it in Italian or Latin is only an easy way
-of saying 'This is not the text as it will appear.'"</p>
-
-<p>Let me start my specific conclusions with book typography, because
-that contains all the fundamentals, and then go on to a few
-points about advertising.</p>
-
-<p>The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between
-the reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author's
-words. He may put up a stained glass window of marvellous beauty,
-but a failure as a window; that is, he may use some rich superb type
-like text gothic that is something to be looked at, not <em>through</em>. Or he
-may work in what I call transparent or invisible typography. I have
-a book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever as
-far as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three
-Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets
-of Paris. The third type of window is one in which the glass is broken
-into relatively small leaded panes; and this corresponds to what is
-called "fine printing" today, in that you are at least conscious that
-there is a window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it.
-That is not objectionable, because of a very important fact which has
-to do with the psychology of the subconscious mind. This is the fact
-that the mental eye focusses <em>through</em> type and not <em>upon</em> it. The type
-which, through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of "color,"
-gets in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is a bad type.
-Our subconsciousness is always afraid of blunders [which illogical
-setting, tight spacing and too-wide unleaded lines can trick us into],
-of boredom, and of officiousness. The running headline that keeps
-shouting at us, the line that looks like one long word, the capitals
-jammed together without hairspaces&mdash;these mean subconscious
-squinting and loss of mental focus.</p>
-
-<p>And if what I have said is true of book printing, even of the most
-exquisite limited editions, it is fifty times more obvious in advertising,
-where the one and only justification for the purchase of space is
-that you are conveying a message&mdash;that you are implanting a desire,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[Pg 114]</span>
-straight into the mind of the reader. It is tragically easy to throw
-away half the reader-interest of an advertisement by setting the simple
-and compelling argument in a face which is uncomfortably alien to
-the classic reasonableness of the book-face. Get attention as you will
-by your headline, and make any pretty type pictures you like if you
-are sure that the copy is useless as a means of selling goods; but if you
-are happy enough to have really good copy to work with, I beg you
-to remember that thousands of people pay down hard-earned money
-for the privilege of reading quietly-set book-pages, and that only
-your wildest ingenuity can stop people from reading a really interesting
-text.</p>
-
-<p>Of course every one of you realizes that whatever interesting
-effects you can produce with displayed advertising, Direct Mail is
-your paradise. It is here that you approach the august precincts of the
-designer of books; here you can deal in the fascinating questions of
-paper, ink, presswork, and all those minute and thrilling technicalities
-by which the craftsman proves his worth. You also have the satisfaction
-of knowing that the better and more mannerly Direct Mail
-advertising looks, the more solid returns it will bring in.</p>
-
-<p>To sum up: printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of
-which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious
-and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving
-the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline.
-When you realize that ugly typography never effaces itself,
-you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness
-by aiming at something else. The "stunt typographer" learns the
-fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long
-breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting
-of hair spaces. Nobody [save the other craftsmen] will appreciate
-half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment
-in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to
-hold the vintage of the human mind.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN BEMBO TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[Pg 115]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />PORTER GARNETT<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite>The Ideal Book</cite></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">Copyright 1931 by The Limited Editions Club. Reprinted by permission of
-the publisher.</p>
-
-<p>In adopting a prescribed title for this paper, I must begin by
-registering my dissent to its validity. There is no such thing nor
-can there be such a thing as "the ideal book." No single book, no
-particular style of book can be said to represent in itself an ideal
-below which all other books and other styles which differ from
-it fall. A certain book may be ideal for its purpose, but books
-can no more conform to a fixed ideal than can churches, cocktail-shakers,
-or hats. The best that one can do is to attempt to
-enumerate and codify those elements of good book-making that
-enter into what may be called the "fine" book.</p>
-
-<p>It is difficult to declare oneself an advocate or exponent of fine
-printing or fine book-design without being misunderstood. Such
-a declaration, however, is not to arrogate superiority. It merely
-means that one believes in certain principles of craftsmanship and
-in upholding certain standards based upon a scrupulous and uncompromising
-observance of refinements and minutiæ. It is a
-mistake to assume that the word "fine," as applied to printing and
-to books, is a comparative term meaning a grade or measure of
-merit. Consider for a moment its true meaning: delicate, studied,
-subtly calculated. It represents not a grade of excellence, but a
-<em>quality</em>, a quality distinguishing those books and pieces of printing
-which the term properly describes from other books or pieces
-of printing. It may be allowed, however, that fineness is itself a
-comparable term; that there are, in other words, degrees of fineness.
-Thus a book may be fine without being of the first order of
-fineness. But if we are to seek for a standard of excellence equivalent
-to what is implied by the word "ideal," it should be obvious
-that only fineness of the first order can be considered. A fine
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[Pg 116]</span>book of the first order is the end-result of a sedulous effort on the
-part of designer, printer, and binder to bring to their artifact
-every care for physical and technical details, every revision in
-the interest of betterment, of which they are capable, to the end
-that the finished product shall represent the capacity of each for
-the fulfilment of his artistic wish, his desire for perfection. To
-slacken this effort, to compromise wittingly (or wilfully), to
-surrender to expediency, is to repudiate fineness of the first
-order.</p>
-
-<p>It is this concern for perfection that Mr. Stanley Morison means
-when he says "The fine printer begins where the careful printer
-has left off." It is this concern with perfection that Conrad celebrated
-when he wrote:</p>
-
-<p>"Now the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive,
-the redeeming and ideal aspect of this bread-winning, is the
-attainment of the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsman.
-Such skill, the skill of technique, is more than honesty; it is
-something wider, embracing honesty and grace and rule in an
-elevated and clear sentiment, not altogether utilitarian, which
-may be called the honor of labor. It is made up of accumulated
-tradition, kept alive by individual pride, rendered exact by professional
-opinion, and, like the higher arts, it is spurred on and
-sustained by discriminating praise. This is why the attainment
-of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with attention to the
-most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of vital concern.
-Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally
-in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond&mdash;a
-higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride
-beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work
-that finish which is almost art, which <em>is</em> art."</p>
-
-<p>In dealing with the constituents of the fine book I intend no
-disparagement of seemly, modest, and honestly-made books to
-which the term "fine" is not strictly applicable. Even the humblest
-volume, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ad pauperum commoditatum</i>, may be, by virtue of
-its suitability to purpose and its seemliness, wholly admirable.
-As for the better class of trade books, the productions of university
-and great commercial presses, they often display qualities
-of design and workmanship of a high order. Though not of the
-first order of fineness, they represent, with gratifying frequency,
-what Conrad called "efficiency of a practically flawless kind."<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[Pg 117]</span>
-That the best of them belong, however, to a lower stratum than
-the truly fine book may be, I think, quite easily demonstrated.
-One does not have to consider the work of the Doves Press or
-the Bremer Presse or the finer examples of French printing of the
-sixteenth or eighteenth century the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ne plus ultra</i> of book-making
-in order to recognize in them a quality (mark the word) which
-the trade edition, however charming, never does and never can
-attain. By reason of this quality&mdash;the quality of fineness&mdash;they are
-<em>different</em> from trade books, whether or not they are <em>superior</em> must
-remain for each of us a question of personal values. Since that is
-true, let us now&mdash;having cleared the ground and removed perhaps
-the possibility of a misapprehension with regard to the title of this
-paper&mdash;consider the values and the physical constituents of the
-fine book.</p>
-
-<p>These constituents fall into three divisions: first, <em>Dimensional</em>
-(size and proportions); second, <em>Tectonic</em> (plan and construction);
-and third, <em>Visual</em> (appearance).</p>
-
-<p>It would be absurd to contend that, ideally, a book should be
-of a certain size. Very large books are, of course, awkward to
-handle and are unsuitable, let us say, for reading in bed or in a
-railway train. But it does not follow that, because our habits of
-life differ so radically from those of the more leisurely and contemplative
-past, the tall volume is no longer justified. The large
-book is not an impediment to meditative reading and, although
-the "handy volume" will, in most circumstances, serve every purpose,
-there are those who, undeluded by pragmatism and undebased
-by false ideas of efficiency, may still, in the seclusion of
-study or library, find pleasure in the leisurely perusal of, let us
-say, <cite>The Golden Legend</cite>, in folio, nobly enthroned upon its lectern.
-Again, there is nothing incongruous or unpractical about
-the scholar (perhaps I should say, "research-worker") making
-use of a huge volume, spread before him on a library table. Large
-volumes are, moreover, frequently justified by the fact that illustrative
-plates of a large size are often desirable or essential. Who
-will deny that reproductions of Egyptian papyri, of eighteenth
-century engraved portraits, of Oriental carpets, in fact, of almost
-all works of art other than such small objects as miniatures or
-jewelry, would be better in folio than in octavo or duodecimo?
-It can be said, I think, that the very large book should be unconditionally
-condemned only when its size defeats the purpose to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[Pg 118]</span>
-which, by reason of its content, it would normally be put. Stateliness
-of form imparts dignity. It may be argued, therefore, that
-a great work on engraved gems, imposing in size, with plates,
-each showing many specimens, comports better with the character
-of its subject matter quite aside from any advantage it offers
-for comparative study, than would the same work printed as a
-book one might slip in one's pocket. Stateliness of form implies
-stateliness of content, and vice versa. Let a book be, for a generation,
-of such good report that it may be said to have become a
-classic, and a large-paper edition is justified. Let those who must
-cavil do so. If they cannot rise above the utilitarian ideal, they
-can easily obtain the work in a small format and be happy.</p>
-
-<p>It may not be out of order to say at this point that, while a considerable
-range in the size of books is not only permissible but
-desirable, there are limits at both ends of the scale where practicability
-ceases to exist and we pass into the realm of curiosities
-and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tours de force</i>. Thus the miniature book, for all its charm,
-lies outside the confines of normal book-design. As to the maximum
-size that may be legitimately allowed for a book, it should
-never, I think, exceed the normal folio height (defined approximately
-by the larger moulds employed for manufacturing hand-made
-paper) while its bulk and weight should not preclude the
-possibility of holding it by the spine with one hand while turning
-the leaves with the other, when such a method of referring to
-its contents may be necessary. And now a final word as to dimensions.
-Large or small, the most perfect book will always be one
-of which the thickness bears a just and agreeable relation to its
-height and width. Small and slender books are delightful objects
-which no one could wish to abolish (one cannot say as much
-for the lamelliform folio, a veritable atrocity), but their inferiority
-to books of a meet thickness becomes apparent when,
-with (or, worse yet, without) their vertical, neck-twisting titles
-they are placed on a shelf.</p>
-
-<p>We must next turn our attention to those aspects of a book
-which have to do with its plan and construction and which we
-have called <em>tectonic</em>.</p>
-
-<p>In its physical character a book addresses itself to two of our
-senses, the sense of sight and the sense of touch. Because the tactile
-qualities of a book are relatively of less importance than its visual<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[Pg 119]</span>
-aspects, let us first deal with those elements which are, in part at
-least, evaluated through the sense of touch.</p>
-
-<p>Our first impression of a book is received from its exterior, its
-binding. Now the qualities to be looked for in the binding of a
-book are: (1) the character and quality of the material, (2) suitability,
-(3) soundness and charm of design, (4) agreeable color
-(a relative term), (5) workmanship, (6) pleasantness to the
-touch. Granting adequacy in all of these (and no book can pretend
-to fineness without such adequacy), there is still another
-<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">desideratum</i> less easy to specify. It might be called (7) "the
-evidence of durability." A book when taken in the hand should
-have a feeling of compactness, almost of solidity. I do not mean
-by this that it should feel like a block of wood, but it should,
-when picked up, when opened, or when its hinges are tested, give
-the impression that leaves and cover are so firmly (and honestly)
-knit together that they constitute a unit, having in its "feel" the
-evidence (or the assurance) of durability.</p>
-
-<p>The next characteristic of a book to be noted through the
-sense of touch is the <em>texture</em> of the paper. By "texture" several
-things are meant: a surface agreeable to the hand, the degree of
-crispness, an impression of toughness (again the evidence of durability),
-and the degree of flexibility. Ideally, the paper in a
-book should satisfy all these requirements and should possess as
-well certain qualities of character, style, and color, pleasing to the
-informed eye. These will be dealt with in their proper place.
-The paper should be flexible, without the flimsiness characteristic
-of papers weak in substance. It should bend readily when the
-leaves are turned and should flow smoothly through the hand
-when all the leaves are bent at once. Stiffness in the leaves of a
-book (an all too common defect) is not, it should be observed,
-always the fault of the paper. It is often due to the choice of a
-paper too heavy for the size of the leaf. The same paper in a
-larger leaf might have the desired flexibility.</p>
-
-<p>The final tactile test of a fine book (applicable, alas, to very
-few books indeed) resides in the character of the impression of
-the type on the paper. In the best printing, the surface of the
-page, if rubbed with the palm of the hand, shows a slight and
-pleasant roughness due to the sinking of the type into the paper.
-Such printing is rare in modern books because it is difficult of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[Pg 120]</span>
-attainment with machines designed for quantity production. To
-attain the effect described the paper should be dampened before
-printing, and an ink employed that is adaptable only to the hand
-press. Dry paper, particularly when heavily sized, resists a deep
-impression. It can be <em>heavily</em> impressed, but there is not the same
-difference between the impressed and unimpressed portions, due
-to the impaction of the substance caused by the pressure of the
-type, which results when dampened paper is used. In the latter
-instance, the depth of impression is <em>within</em> the sheet, not an embossment
-on the reverse side. This incisiveness, without a corresponding
-relief on the back of the sheet, is shown when an
-impression without ink is made on a hand press with dampened
-paper and a hard packing.</p>
-
-<p>In printing on dry paper it is necessary, if adequate color is to
-be obtained, to use such a quantity of ink, of a consistency suitable
-to machine-press printing, that a really deep (not merely
-heavy) impression cannot be imparted to paper without "spreading,"
-which slightly modifies the sharpness of the type. The machine
-printer must choose therefore between a surfacy quality
-with sharpness and a heavy (not necessarily deep) impression
-with a loss of sharpness, neither of which is ideal. There are some
-that will question the truth of this statement, calling attention to
-specimens of machine printing on dry paper in which the ink has
-been driven into the sheet and perfect sharpness maintained. It
-may be said, however, in support of our contention, that, under
-the test of hand and eye, this perfectly printed dry sheet will be
-found, in the last analysis, to lack, in comparison with a sheet perfectly
-printed by hand on dampened paper, a certain almost-indefinable
-something that can perhaps be best described as a <em>living</em>
-quality. This ultimate grace arises, I think, from the fact that in
-competent hand-press printing the third dimension is not merely
-suggested but actual; we have, in other words, not merely sharpness
-but crispness; the effect attained is sculptural. No printing
-that is lifeless, or to which such terms as "slick" and "dry" may
-be appropriately applied can be called fine printing.</p>
-
-<p>Turning now from the tactile to the visual elements of the fine
-book, we shall consider, first of all, that fundamental factor of
-all books, the text-page, upon the form or "layout" of which all
-other typographic elements must, to a large extent, depend. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[Pg 121]</span>
-text-page is of primary importance because by its rightness or
-wrongness a book must stand or fall.</p>
-
-<p>The elements of the text-page that call for consideration may
-be grouped under three heads: first, <em>Form</em> (the proportions&mdash;width
-to height&mdash;of the type-page and the balance of the rectangle
-of type with the rectangle of paper); second, <em>Space</em> (the
-ratio between the areas of the type-page and the paper-page);
-third, <em>Tone</em> (the tonal value of the type mass and the relation
-between its tone and the white area of the margins). In the perfect
-text-page all these elements may be observed in nice adjustment,
-severally and mutually.</p>
-
-<p>There are those who contend that a proper relation of margins
-to type-page may be arrived at by employing ratios identical
-with those to be found in the well-proportioned pages of the
-early printers. Others declare that correct margins can be created
-by the application of an arithmetical or a geometrical formula.
-It can be admitted that such procedures are, at least, <em>safe</em>;
-that is to say, the danger of malproportioned margins will be
-avoided. But neither the method nor the result can be ideal for
-the simple reason that, while providing for the factors of form
-and space, they fail to provide for the factor of tone. It should
-be obvious that a rectangle of black type, with no space (leading)
-between lines, and a rectangle of the same shape and size printed
-from light-face type and generously leaded call for different margining.</p>
-
-<p>All of this may seem to be supervacaneous, but the stubborn
-fact remains that no one of the factors set forth above can be
-ignored. It is perfectly true that the accomplished book designer
-will compass the desired end through a sagacious application of
-his knowledge and taste, but we are concerned here with presenting
-the elements of the ideal book and it is therefore essential
-that <em>all</em> the elements, no matter how much the initiated may take
-some of them for granted, should be, for the benefit of the layman,
-categorically enumerated.</p>
-
-<p>It is necessary at this point to allude to the dictum&mdash;voiced in
-high places as well as in low&mdash;that a book is primarily something
-to be read; that every factor which does not contribute to that
-end is an impertinence. The worthy champions of this faith
-would be on firmer ground if they heaped their condemnation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[Pg 122]</span>
-upon such adjuncts of a book as actually <em>lessen</em> its readability.
-M. Paul Valéry has disposed of the matter so effectively from the
-aesthetic point of view in his essay, <cite>Les deux vertus d'un livre</cite>,
-that nothing remains to be said on that side of the question. But
-there are other objections to be raised to this <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ipse dixit</i> of the
-mechanists. Their contention that what we all grant is at once the
-basic and paramount function of a book, its readability, is its only
-function would, if carried to its logical conclusion, lead to a doctrine
-in book design equivalent to what is known in present-day
-architecture as "functionalism." Since functionalism or, as it is
-sometimes called, the "machine and function" principle, demands
-that the design of a building must grow out of and be restricted by
-its predetermined use or purpose, it should follow that, if the sole
-purpose of a book is that it be something to read, there is no
-reason, based upon utility, for not using the whole area of the
-paper-page, with margins of no more, let us say, than a quarter
-of an inch or so. The uncomely, marginless illustrations of certain
-recent books represent an application of this principle. If the protagonists
-of the utilitarian ideal admit that margins are other than
-a waste of usable space, they make a concession to the aesthetic
-conception of a book, for the determination of margins, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mise
-en page</i>, is primarily an element of design. It will be argued no
-doubt, in contravention of this statement, that margins make for
-ease of reading (utility), but that this is an untenable defensive
-assumption should be proved by the perfect readability of newspaper
-columns separated only by a light rule, or by the two-column
-book or magazine page with only a pica of white between
-the columns. Since it cannot be denied that the margins of a book,
-if well proportioned, promote pleasure, an aesthetic function, the
-true functionalist should, to be consistent, insist upon doing away
-with them.</p>
-
-<p>We may turn now from that major fundamental of the fine
-book&mdash;a text-page of perfect seemliness&mdash;to a consideration of
-other elements. But before doing so, it may be proper to explain
-what some of my readers may deem an omission. I have said
-nothing about the choice of type. It is axiomatic that good letter
-is a prime essential of the good book. There are only two kinds of
-type, good and bad. Good types, whether based upon classical
-models or the quasi-original forms of contemporary type-designers,
-are sufficiently numerous to make a suitable selection, pro<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[Pg 123]</span>vided
-the printer knows anything whatever about the subject,
-quite simple. It should be pointed out, however, that, other things
-being equal, type cast from matrices struck from hand-cut
-punches is superior to machine-cut type. This superiority is a
-matter of real importance, chiefly in printing by means of the
-hand press. Only in such printing is the difference between the
-hand-cut and machine-cut letter fully apparent.</p>
-
-<p>No type is good if some of the characters are marked by eccentricity.
-Unorthodox peculiarities in the forms of certain letters
-sometimes lend charm to a type-face, but there is a difference
-between a peculiarity of shape thoughtfully and discreetly arrived
-at and freakish variations which do not justify themselves
-and bespeak only a stupid desire for novelty at any cost.</p>
-
-<p>Given the seemly text-page as the prime requisite of the fine
-book, our next consideration should be what may be called
-<em>integration of the parts</em>. Here we must again think in terms of
-architecture, with which art book-design has so much in common.
-Let the parts of a book be few or many, simple or complex, it
-is of the first importance that they be, one to the other and each
-to all, harmoniously correlated.</p>
-
-<p>In the simple undecorated and unillustrated book it is not only
-desirable that sunken pages, if any (the first pages of chapters
-or sections, for example), should show an equal sinkage. But all
-isolated typographic elements, such as half-titles, elements of the
-title page, copyright notice, dedication, headings of preliminary
-and supplementary matter, etc., should fall on levels which,
-though not necessarily identical, bear a mensural, not an arbitrary,
-relation one to the other and to the structure of the book as a
-whole. This requires, perhaps, some elucidation. Suppose we give
-the first pages of our chapters a uniform sinkage. These pages,
-let us say, establish three levels for us&mdash;(1) the chapter heading,
-(2) chapter title, and (3) the first line of text. If we adopt the
-same sinkage for Contents, Illustrations, Appendices, and Index,
-putting the headings of this group on the same level as the chapter
-headings (L<small>EVEL</small> 1), the first text lines of this group should be
-on the same level as the chapter titles (L<small>EVEL</small> 2), or on the level
-of the first text lines of the chapters (L<small>EVEL</small> 3). If, on the other
-hand, we adopt a different sinkage (smaller) for the second group,
-we may still relate it mensurally to the first group by placing the
-first text lines of Group 2 on the same level as the chapter headings<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[Pg 124]</span>
-of Group 1. Suppose further that we place our half-titles on one of
-the three or four levels that have been established. We still have
-to deal with a copyright notice, perhaps a limit notice, a bibliographical
-note, and a dedication. It is not essential that all of these
-should fall on the same level, but it <em>is</em> essential that each be <em>related
-to some one of the established levels</em>. Finally, it is desirable that
-such major elements of the title page as a subtitle or the author's
-name should be placed on one of the established levels.</p>
-
-<p>An observance of this principle makes for homogeneity of
-design. In reading a book so put together we are spared (without
-knowing that we are spared) the disturbance of our sense of
-balance which results, almost without our knowing it, when our
-eyes fall upon a page some part of which is not "tied in" architecturally
-with the rest of the book. The effect is similar to that
-of a many-paneled room with an impost cornice at a certain
-height in all the panels except two or three where it is either
-higher or lower. We have, in one case, faulty architecture; in the
-other, faulty book-making. In judging a book or a building, it
-should be borne in mind that, however charming its parts, it must
-be regarded as a whole. If our contemplation of it is to be attended
-with pleasure and comfort, its parts must be so disposed, so correlated,
-that they will not produce a "jumpy" effect.</p>
-
-<p>It is not contended that every book in which this refinement
-of perfectly integrated parts has been ignored should be considered
-a failure because it is less than perfect. If that were true,
-few books would pass the test. It would indeed be hypercritical
-to insist that a failure to observe this principle actually spoils an
-otherwise well-made book. It is desirable, however, that the principle
-should be observed <em>as far as the material will permit</em>. It must
-be recognized, also, that sometimes the elements are so diverse&mdash;chapter
-headings or the internal titles of essays, short stories or
-poems&mdash;that a strict adherence to the principle becomes impossible.
-In such instances, the designer's task is still to strive for
-order and integration. Perfect order, symmetry, and balance may
-be unattainable, but this does not justify him in being haphazard.
-When order is observed we may not be conscious of it; when it
-is not observed we are aware of its absence. Movement is of the
-highest importance as a factor of design&mdash;such movement, for
-example, as is imparted to a book by this very diversity of its
-elements&mdash;but good design demands movement that is ordered,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[Pg 125]</span>
-not arbitrary. If liberties are taken (and it is desirable, in the
-interest of vitality and charm, that they should be taken) they
-must justify themselves aesthetically; they should not only please
-us in themselves but as evidence of the designer's intelligence, his
-insight, subtlety, sensitiveness, discrimination, and tact. However
-diverse the elements or parts of a book may be, however they
-may, by reason of such diversity, render perfect order and balance
-impossible, their arrangement should at least possess a
-<em>rationale</em>.</p>
-
-<p>This need of a fundamental balance has its basis in its pleasure-giving
-value. I have adverted to the analogy between book-design
-and architecture, let me point now to an equally pertinent analogy
-with the structure of poetry. "Verse," says Poe, "originates
-in the human enjoyment of equality, fitness. To this enjoyment,
-also, all the moods of verse&mdash;rhythm, meter, stanza, rhyme, alliteration,
-the refrain, and other analogous effects&mdash;are to be referred."
-Specifically, the parts of a book&mdash;half-titles, headings, etc., etc.&mdash;should
-be, severally <em>and collectively</em>, related as are such structural
-elements in verse as recurrent rhythms, rhymes, and refrains.</p>
-
-<p>We must now consider the decorated or illustrated book. In
-the first place, it should be understood that no form of decoration
-or illustration is legitimate in the strictly fine book except such
-as are printed from wood or metal engraved by hand, preferably
-in relief which comports with type both in physical character and
-in the means by which the image is imparted to the paper. Process-engravings
-are disqualified not only because of the preponderant
-mechanical factor, but because mechanical engraving in relief
-cannot produce a line of the delicacy and purity obtained with
-the engraving tool. As a corollary to the principle of integration
-set forth above let us take first the type of decorated book to
-which most obviously it applies. A book carrying on various pages
-head-bands of varying depth and varying tone&mdash;deep, shallow,
-black and heavy, light and delicate&mdash;will produce a disturbing
-effect. Less obvious but hardly less disturbing is a succession of
-initial letters differing in size, in tone, or in position on the page.
-The book with initial letters strewn through the text, sometimes
-several on a single page, is a challenge to the designer. When thus
-arbitrarily employed it is important, in order that the initials shall
-not be obtrusive, that they be so selected as to size (in proportion
-to the page) and so integrated with the book as a whole that their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[Pg 126]</span>
-"accidental" character is either disguised or lost and their recurrence
-actually contributes to the unity of the volume by virtue
-of their consistent accentual value.</p>
-
-<p>An arbitrary arrangement of tailpieces is likely to produce a
-"jumpy" effect. Since the spaces (at the ends of chapters or sections)
-within which tailpieces may be placed differ in area, such
-decorative elements cannot always fall on the same level. This
-irregularity can be compensated for in a measure by adjusting
-the size of the decoration to the area of the space it occupies. By
-what may seem to be a negation of the law of balance here
-insisted upon, such a variation is more productive of architectural
-harmony than tailpieces of uniform size would be if disposed in
-spaces of varying area.</p>
-
-<p>Returning for a moment to the undecorated book, it may be
-remarked in passing that verse, particularly a collection of short
-lyrics, does not lend itself to good book-design. It should be
-enough to point out that the disproportion between type mass
-and white paper caused by short measure and the frequently
-meager letter-press deprive books of verse of the book's basic
-structural factor, the rectangle of type. How decoration can be
-employed to overcome this deficiency is perfectly exemplified in
-the original edition of Dorat's <cite>Les Baisers</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>With the principles of balance and unity still in mind, it will
-hardly, I think, admit of contradiction that the scattering of odd-sized
-illustrations through the text is incompatible with both of
-these principles. Such illustrations, particularly those of irregular
-shape bounded on two or three sides by type, are as destructive
-of balance and unity as is poor fenestration in a building. It is not
-enough that something like a balance is effected on facing pages
-(an elementary principle in layout); the lack of a complete integration
-of the pictures with the book and the disturbance
-created by distorting the letter-press into odd shapes preclude the
-possibility of such a book being regarded as well-planned, much
-less ideal, however charming it may be in detail.</p>
-
-<p>We have seen, while considering the major aspects of book-design,
-in what wise paper must be judged with regard to those
-first or immediate impressions gained from seeing and feeling it.
-I must now carry the consideration of paper a little farther. Since
-style and character are essential qualities of the fine book, we must
-insist upon these qualities in every element of its substance. Now<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[Pg 127]</span>
-style and character at their utmost are peculiar (for reasons that
-have to do with the methods of manufacture) to hand-made
-paper only, laid or wove, and, it may be further insisted, to only
-the best hand-made paper. Desirable as wove paper is for certain
-purposes, it cannot be denied that it has less character than the
-laid sheet. It is also true that no feature of fine laid paper gives
-more character to a sheet than the so-called "antique" factor, a
-slight thickening of the pulp and greater opacity along the chain-lines.
-By an "improved" method of mould-making, introduced by
-Baskerville, this thickening was eliminated, but, whatever mechanical
-superiority its absence may represent, there can be no
-question but that it represents a loss of character. All book papers
-produced by machinery (particularly the laids in which the effect
-of laid lines is mechanically faked) are as much imitations of and
-substitutes for hand-made paper as machine-made lace is a substitute
-for hand-made lace, and the disparity in quality is as
-great. We speak of "imitation lace" and "real lace," meaning
-machine-made and hand-made; we might, with equal propriety,
-speak of "imitation paper" and "real paper." Ideally, then, the
-fine book, in the fullest and strictest sense of the term, can be
-printed on no other than paper that is hand-made and of the best
-quality.</p>
-
-<p>As to the color of paper for fine books, the whole question may
-be considerably clarified at once by the statement that everything
-suggestive of artificiality should be avoided. A paper that is
-chalky white or bluish white tells us at once that the rags which
-went into its manufacture were chemically (that is to say, artificially)
-bleached. A great many toned papers, described as
-"cream" or "india," are artificially colored and show it. The most
-desirable tone for fine book paper is the "natural" tone of unbleached
-(and sorted as such) linen rags. Its slight creamish color
-is at once pleasant to the eye and holds the promise of that agreeable
-mellowness which comes, very slowly, with age. A number
-of very pleasant books have been printed in recent years on gray,
-blue, green, and brownish papers (the last usually a deliberate
-simulation of ancient paper), but, despite their charm, they are,
-I think, open to the charge of affectation, against which, if true,
-there is of course no defense. If not actually "arty," they come
-perilously near to it.</p>
-
-<p>It has not been my purpose in this paper to lay down the rules<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[Pg 128]</span>
-for making a fine book, for, after all, rules are of no use whatever
-(in an art or in a craft) except to be broken&mdash;wisely. Neither has
-any attempt been made, since this is not a technical treatise, to
-outline the methods by which the results described may be produced.
-I have tried merely to set forth the various criteria by
-which fine books should be judged and the principles (quite
-different from rules) that underlie them. If the "specifications"
-seem over-exacting, if they are to be dismissed as <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">trop raffinés</i>, I
-must ask the caviler if that which purports to be "fine" can be
-"too refined"? Let those who wish to compromise (with popular
-taste, with outlay and returns, with honesty, with self-respect,
-or with machinery) do so, but unless the thing they produce
-represents, with eloquence and beauty, the full and unconditional
-employment of <em>every realizable aid to betterment, physical and
-technical</em>, it is something other than a fine book of the first order.
-We must discourage ourselves in order that we may be strong.</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[Pg 129]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />W. A. DWIGGINS<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<small>EXTRACTS FROM <em>AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF BOOKS</em><br />
-AS THEY ARE AT PRESENT PUBLISHED UNDERTAKEN BY THE SOCIETY OF CALLIGRAPHERS, 1919</small></h2>
-
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">Copyright 1919 by L. B. Siegfried. Reprinted by permission of the author.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>N<small>OTE</small>: <em>The accompanying extracts from the Transactions of the
-Society of Calligraphers are published with the approval of the
-Society. They form a part of the exhaustive and unbiased Report
-returned by the Committee in charge of the Investigation, which
-Report will be presented in its entirety in the Annual Bulletin.
-The report is of so surprising a nature that it was deemed unwise
-to withhold all notice of the findings until the annual publication.
-The Society, therefore, has the honour to present certain portions
-of the Inquiry together with an abstract of the Committee's recommendations.</em></p></div>
-
-<p class="right" style="padding-right: 2em; ">W. A. D<small>WIGGINS</small>, <em>Secretary</em></p>
-
-<p>384<small>A</small> <em>Boylston Street, Boston</em><br />
-<em>December 1, 1919</em></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p><em>Editor's Note</em>: In commenting on the reception of the now famous
-<cite>Investigation</cite>, Watson Gordon pointed out (in <cite>Mss. by WAD</cite>, a collection
-of the writings of Dwiggins on various subjects, published by
-The Typophiles, New York, 1947) that it "received wide attention
-in publishing circles where some exceptions were taken to the findings.
-Certain publishers felt sure that some of those replying to the
-pertinent and impertinent questions of the investigator were members
-of their organizations who preferred to remain anonymous." The
-complete report, with its original note and illustration, as well as the
-sequel of twenty years later, follow.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[Pg 130]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>It may be said in introduction that the Society's Investigation into the
-Physical Properties of Books was undertaken by a special committee
-whose personnel insured that its consideration would be
-thorough and unbiased.</p>
-
-<p>The Committee began its labour by an examination of all
-books published in America since the year 1910. This examination
-forced upon the investigators the conclusion that "All Books
-of the present day are Badly Made." The conclusion was unanimous.</p>
-
-<p>Working out from this basic fact in an effort to arrive at the
-reasons underlying the evil, the Committee held numerous sittings
-in consultation with men concerned with various branches
-of printing and publishing. From these sittings there developed
-a mass of information of an unusual and stimulating character.</p>
-
-<p>The publishers have chosen from the Record of the examination
-a few examples, not because they are extraordinary but
-because they present typical points of view. They are transcribed
-verbatim. It will be obvious that in certain cases it has been no
-more than courteous to suppress the names of the persons assisting
-the investigation. For the sake of uniformity it has been
-deemed wise to follow this practice throughout.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">I. M<small>R.</small> B.</p>
-
-<p>Q: Mr. B&mdash;&mdash;, will you please tell the committee why you printed
-this book on card-board?</p>
-
-<p>A: To make it the right thickness. It had to be one inch thick.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Why that thick, particularly?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Because otherwise it would not sell. If a book isn't one inch
-thick it won't sell.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Do you mean to say that people who buy books select them
-with the help of a foot rule?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;They have to have some standard of selection.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[Pg 131]</span></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;So that it is your practice to stretch out the text if it is too
-short by printing it on egg-box stock?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Not my practice, particularly. All publishers do it. We are
-obliged to use this and other means to bring the book up to a
-proper thickness. You must remember that our prices are not
-based on the contents of a book but on its size.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp71" id="i131" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_131.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">A chart showing the percentage of excellence
-in the physical properties of books published since 1910.</p>
-
-
-<p>&mdash;You mention other methods. Would you mind telling us
-what other method you use?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;We can expand the letter-press judiciously. We limit the
-matter to seven words on a page, say, and so get a greater number
-of pages. We can use large type and can lead considerably.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But does not that practice hurt the appearance of the page?
-Make a poor-looking page?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I am afraid I do not get your meaning.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I mean to say, is not the page ugly and illegible when you
-expand the matter to that extent?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[Pg 132]</span></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You don't consider the look of a page in making a book. That
-is a thing that doesn't enter into the production of a book. If I
-understand you correctly, do you mean to say that it matters how
-a book looks?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;That was the thought in my mind.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;That's a new idea in book publishing!</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>&mdash;You were speaking of the pressure of industrial conditions
-since the war. Under these conditions what percentage of the
-traditions of the craft can you preserve, would you say?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The traditions of what craft?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The craft of printing, obviously. What I am trying to get at
-is this:&mdash;There are certain precise and matured standards of workmanship
-in the printing craft; these standards are the results of
-experiment through nearly five hundred years. How far are these
-standards effective under your present-day conditions?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Those standards, so far as I know anything about them, are
-what you would call academic. In the first place, book-manufacturing
-is not a craft, it is a business. As for standards of
-workmanship&mdash;I can understand the term in connection with
-cabinet-making, for example, or tailoring, but I should not apply
-the expression to books. You do not talk about the "standards
-of workmanship" in making soap, do you?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Then in your mind there does not linger any atmosphere of
-an art about the making of books?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;When you talk about "atmosphere" you have me out of my
-depth. There isn't any atmosphere of art lingering about making
-soap, is there?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You would class soap-making with book-making?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I can see no reason why not.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;May I ask you why you were selected by &mdash;&mdash; Company to
-manage their manufacturing department?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Really, I must say that you overstep the borders&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Please do not misinterpret my question. It is really pertinent
-to the inquiry.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;It should certainly be obvious why a man is chosen for a given<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[Pg 133]</span>
-position. I am employed to earn a satisfactory return on the shareholders'
-investment. Is that the information you want?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I think that is what we want. Would you then consider yourself
-as happily employed in making soap as in making books?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Quite as well employed, if making soap paid the dividend.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>&mdash;While we are on this subject, may I ask you how you choose
-the artists who make your illustrations?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;My practice is to select an illustrator whose name is well
-known.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Is that the only point you consider?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I should say, yes. I am not aware of any other reason for
-spending money on this feature. It is always an uncertain detail
-and this way of making a choice puts the matter on a safe basis.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;It is sometimes assumed that the illustrations should have a
-sympathetic bearing on the story. Does not that consideration
-have some weight with you in choosing your artist?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;None, I should say. You see, the pictures are not really a
-necessary part of the book. They are a kind of frill that the public
-has got in the way of expecting, and we have to put them in.
-Illustrations as a rule stand us as a dead loss unless they are made
-by a well-known artist. Then, of course, they help sell the book.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">II. M<small>R.</small> M<small>C</small>G.</p>
-
-<p>A: The gentlemen of the committee must remember that the
-book-publishing business is a gamble. Each new issue, particularly
-in the department of fiction, is a highly adventurous risk. Our
-percentage of blanks would astonish you if we dared to state it.
-But any book may turn out a best-seller. This hope keeps us going.
-It is absolutely a gamble, as I say. You can see that under
-these conditions we cannot spend very much money on non-essentials.
-We have to strip the books down to the barest necessities.</p>
-
-<p>Personally I should like to see the firm put out nothing that is
-not well designed and well printed. But as an agent of the firm I
-have to set aside my personal preferences. The directors are very
-much down on what they call art.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[Pg 134]</span></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Has the firm ever looked into the question of good workmanship
-as a possible aid to sales?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Not under the present management. The founder looked at
-good work as more or less a marketing advantage.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;What do you think caused the present management to
-change from that opinion?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;They haven't changed. They never had it. They get at the
-matter from another angle altogether. Their policy is to reduce
-the production cost to the minimum. The minimum in theory
-would be reached when the public complained. The public hasn't
-complained, so you can't tell when to stop cheapening.</p>
-
-<p>You see the directors don't look at a book as a fabricated thing
-at all. Books are merely something to sell&mdash;merchandise. Our
-management&mdash;and all the rest of them, for that matter&mdash;come
-from the selling side of the business and do not have any pride in
-the product. Old Mr. &mdash;&mdash; was a publisher because he liked
-books. That made an entirely different policy in the old firm, of
-course.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;To get back to the question of good workmanship helping
-sales:&mdash;Here are two books published abroad to be sold at 50 cents
-and 80 cents. They can very well be called works of art. Do you
-not think that these well designed paper covers would stand out
-among other books and invite customers to themselves?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Undoubtedly they would.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Have you ever tried the experiment of putting out editions in
-paper covers of attractive design?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Never. It couldn't be done. People wouldn't buy them.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But you said a moment ago&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Moreover the difference of cost between cheap cloth
-sides and paper covers of the kind you have there is so slight that
-it wouldn't pay to try the experiment. People want stiff board
-covers. It doesn't much matter what is inside, but they insist on
-board covers.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;How do you arrive at that fact?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Through our salesmen.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;And you say that paper covers have never been tried?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[Pg 135]</span></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Never. None of our travellers would go out on the road with
-a sample in paper covers.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>&mdash;A little while ago you said something about your salesmen
-helping you to an understanding of the public taste. I infer that
-you get considerable help from this source?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Most valuable help indeed. We depend entirely on the reports
-the sales force turns in in these matters. The salesmen are in
-direct contact with the retailers and are naturally in a position to
-feel the public pulse, so to speak. Their help is invaluable. They
-can anticipate the demand very often.</p>
-
-<p>I had reference more particularly to the way books are made.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Oh, on that point too. We never make a final decision on a
-cover design, for instance, without showing it to the salesmen.
-They very often make valuable suggestions as to changes of
-colour, etc. They run largely to red.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;It would seem, then, that the designing of the books is very
-much in the hands of the salesmen?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Quite in their hands.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Are the office-boys often called into consultation?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Mr. &mdash;&mdash; finds his stenographer a very great help in passing
-upon certain points&mdash;illustrations, etc.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Does it appear to you that the sales department would be the
-one best qualified to pass on points of design?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Well, there, you see&mdash;the books have to be sold&mdash;that is what
-we make them for&mdash;and the sales department is the one in closest
-touch with the people that buy the books&mdash;that knows just what
-they want.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The standards of quality, then, are set by the people who buy
-the books?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Oh, absolutely so. How else would you move the books? It
-is a merchandising proposition, you must remember.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But do you not think that people would buy decently made
-books as willingly as poorly made books?</p>
-
-<p>At the same price, yes. No question about it. The book-buying<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[Pg 136]</span>
-public doesn't worry its head about the way books are made. It
-doesn't know anything about it. And well made books cost more.
-The trade is committed to a dollar-and-a-half article and can't risk
-going above it.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Your opinion is that the price of a well made book would be
-so high as to prevent its sale?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;In the case of fiction, yes. The price has become almost a
-fixture.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;We shall have to go outside of fiction, then, to look for well
-made books?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;It amounts to that.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You have said that certain unproductive factors prevent you
-from spending what you otherwise might on good workmanship.
-What specific factors would you mention?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Plates&mdash;electros. We plate everything on the chance of its
-running into several printings. 80 per cent of the books are not
-reprinted. You can see that the money tied up in plates is a very
-considerable sum, and, as I say, 80 per cent of it is dead loss. We
-are obliged to take the chance, however.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Has any remedy occurred to you?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;If stereotyping could be revived as an accurate process it
-might help us out. It would cost much less to make and to store
-paper matrices than to make electrotypes. The difficulty here is
-that no one knows how to make good stereotypes, and the stereotype
-plates at their best are more trouble to make ready. Trouble
-with the press-room, you see.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Is it possible under good conditions to get satisfactory results
-from stereotype plates?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Unquestionably. The books printed from this kind of plates
-in the first days of the invention are entirely satisfactory.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">III. M<small>R.</small> L.</p>
-
-<p>Q. Can a trade-edition book be well made and sell for $1.50?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;That depends on how high you set your standard.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Well, let us not be too rigorous. Can it be made better, say,
-than this book?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[Pg 137]</span></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Beyond question. It will all depend upon whether or not the
-printer has a few lingering memories of the standards of printing.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But should not the setting of standards come from the publisher?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Oh yes, under ideal conditions. Both printer and publisher
-should have a hand in it.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;How would you make a book of fiction to be sold for $1.50?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Well, such a book could have a good title-page as cheaply as
-a bad one&mdash;and the whole typographic scheme would cost no
-more if it were logically done instead of crudely strung together.
-By logically done I mean with well proportioned, practicable
-margins and legible headings, etc. The press-work on books is
-reasonably good but the "layout" or design is entirely neglected.
-It calls for a little planning, of course, but no more than should
-be available in any reputable plant. It isn't so much that these
-books are badly planned as it is that they are not planned at all.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But most printing firms have a planning department, do they
-not?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The planning in most presses is concerned with the handling
-of material, not with the <em>designing</em> of material. This is no doubt
-due to the fact that the Taylor System has not yet got around to
-Aesthetic Efficiency.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Are not the typographical unions concerned to train their
-men on these points of design that you mention?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The unions have only one idea&mdash;and it is not concerned with
-the improvement of printing.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Are there any trade schools that teach these things? Are not
-the employers' associations promoting schools to train men in
-the craft?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The employers' associations have one idea&mdash;a little different
-from the idea of the unions, perhaps, but not concerned with the
-improvement of printing. There are trade schools but they teach
-only the mechanics of the craft.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Apparently, then, there is no place in this country where one
-can learn how to design printing?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You can safely say that there is no such place.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[Pg 138]</span></p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">IV. M<small>R.</small> A.</p>
-
-<p>Q: What is your own opinion on the subject of illustrations in
-books?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;In what particular do you mean?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I mean, do you think that illustrations help or hinder the
-quality of a book?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The question is too general to be answered easily. May I ask
-you to be more specific?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;For example, here is a "best-seller" with several&mdash;five or six&mdash;half-tone
-illustrations. Do you consider that these pictures make
-the book a more complete thing as a specimen of book-making?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Most certainly not.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Then would you say that illustrations in such books were a
-detraction?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Illustrations such as these, yes. Though it would be hard to
-detract from this particular book.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;It is a standard book&mdash;a standard type of book.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I fear that it is.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;What kind of illustrations would you favour?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;For many books, none at all. In these books of current fiction
-the pictures are either futile or else detrimental to the development
-of the plot. They give the game away, so to speak, when the
-author may wish to hold the story in suspense. The effort to avoid
-this disaster accounts for the multitude of undramatic pictures
-you see in books.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Your theory of no pictures should appeal to the publishers
-but I doubt if the illustrators will stand with you.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Illustration is a trade as well as an art.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;True. But we are trying to limit the inquiry to the artistic side
-at present. When, then, according to your deductions, would illustrations
-be called for?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;When they can make a stage-setting for the story. When
-they ornament it or suggest it, perhaps, instead of reveal it. Impressions
-and "atmosphere" instead of literal diagrams with a
-cross marking the spot where, etc.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But perhaps people like the cross marking the spot where.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[Pg 139]</span></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;We are limiting the discussion to the artistic side, are we not?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;What about the half-tone process of engraving?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The process is a way of doing a thing that cannot be done
-cheaply by any other means.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Do you consider it a process that adds to the artistic possibilities
-of book printing?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You mean according to the standards that prevailed in the
-earlier days of the craft?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I do. Yes.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;According to those standards it seems to me that half-tones
-will always have to be considered as necessities forced upon the
-book-printer. They demand a kind of paper that is never a satisfactory
-book-paper. In the case of the kind of books we are talking
-about the relief line methods have always given the most
-artistic results, because they are so closely related to the character
-of type.</p>
-
-<p>One regrets, however, to give up the chances for tonal designs
-that the half-tone process provides. Probably the designers and
-printers will work out a satisfactory relation between half-tones
-and type when the craze for photographic detail passes a little.
-As things stand, I should say that the best results are to be had
-with uncoated book-papers and with line plates. It is true books
-are rarely illustrated this way&mdash;current fiction, I mean&mdash;but the
-method might be used to produce a very attractive and unusual
-result.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Then you would condemn the use of half-tones in this kind
-of book?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;If you mean the usual kind of half-tones printed separately
-and inserted, I do. But if you are making a book of travel, for
-example, the half-tones from photographs explain and justify
-themselves.</p>
-
-<p>But on this whole subject of book illustration it strikes me that
-if you are to make the design from the start you might as well
-make it in harmony with the kind of paper and printing you are
-planning to use, and get all the artistic advantage of fitting your
-means to your limitations.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[Pg 140]</span></p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Are you familiar with the Christy-Holbein Test?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Yes. That is to say, I have heard of your applying it, and remember
-that the percentages were very much against Holbein.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Ninety-three to seven, on an average. How do you explain
-such a crudity of taste in these groups of people otherwise well educated?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;By the deduction that they are not educated. That is to say
-that these people, cultivated in other ways, react precisely like
-savages when confronted with pictures or drawings. They "go
-for" the tinsel and glitter and are opaque to the higher and more
-civilized values. They get the most pleasure from drawings that
-they think they could make themselves. This is the basis of the
-Eight-year-old Formula widely applied in the department of
-newspaper comics: "Make your drawing so that it can be understood
-by a child eight years old."</p>
-
-<p>All of this is clearly lack of training, because their taste is good
-in other matters&mdash;music, for example, and house furnishings.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You would deduce, then, that the periodical and book-publishing
-industry has failed to train the taste of its public in such
-matters?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;It has done worse: it has depraved that taste. Because there
-was, not very long ago, a fine tradition in this country in the line
-of illustration.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Why should the publishers find any advantage in depraving
-the taste of the public&mdash;as you say they have done?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Because they turned their backs on the standards of the publishing
-business and became merchandisers solely. They had to
-sell the goods and they had to "sell" a big new public. The quickest
-way to this public&mdash;through flash-and-crash tactics&mdash;they
-adopted. And naturally ran themselves and the public down hill.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;May there not be other sides to it, too? May it not be that the
-art schools are not now producing draughtsmen of a calibre to
-support the fine tradition you mention?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;That may have something to do with it. But even that is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[Pg 141]</span>
-mixed up with the other. I think that the chief difficulty is with
-the publishers.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;And the public?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The public will follow if the publishers lead.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">V. M<small>R.</small> S.</p>
-
-<p>A. Are you not making the mistake of keeping too close to the
-publishers? It seems to me that you will not get at all the facts
-behind the situation until you get in touch with the people we
-sell the books to. <em>They</em> are the factors that bring about the conditions
-you object to. The publisher is merely a machine for selling
-the public what it wants.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Then the publisher has no selective function?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Absolutely none.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;How does the public bring about the condition we object to?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Obviously by buying the books.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I mean to say, how does the public prevail upon you to sell
-it trashy books instead of well made books?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The public is entirely uneducated on the subject of books,
-in your sense. People know nothing at all about paper or printing
-or pictures or things of that sort. One book is as good as another
-to any educated man so long as he can read it. He doesn't know
-that there is any such thing as good printing or bad printing or
-good or bad taste in making books. Under these conditions we
-should be fools to spend money on features that do not have any
-bearing on sales. It's a simple business proposition.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Would the public that you are discussing buy well made
-books as willingly as trashy books?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Oh, absolutely. It's the books they are interested in&mdash;what
-they contain, not how they are made. They wouldn't know the
-difference.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">VI. M<small>R.</small> G.</p>
-
-<p>A: What's the use of talking about standards in connection with
-things like these? These are not books. They aren't fit to wad a
-gun with. I wouldn't have them in the house. Nobody pays any
-attention to stuff like that.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[Pg 142]</span></p>
-
-<p>There isn't what you would call a book on the table, except
-this one, perhaps. That's printed in England and sent over in
-sheets and bound on this side. But that one is set in a bastard
-Caslon. It isn't the original Caslon but a revision with the
-descenders cut off. See how he's got his O upside down!</p>
-
-<p>Those others&mdash;what's the use of talking about them at all? It
-reminds me of the story about the Chinaman&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But, Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, do you not think it possible to get up this
-class of books in a manner that would suit you better?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You can't hope to get anything like a decent book until you
-do away with the damnable cheap paper and the vile types. And
-then you will have to start in and teach the printer how to print.
-There aren't more than a half a dozen presses in the country that
-know how to print. Most printing looks like it had been done
-with apple-butter on a hay-press&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;What you say is unhappily true. What we are trying to find
-out are the causes of this state of things.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The causes are everywhere&mdash;all through the rattletrap, cheap-jack,
-shoddy work that is being done in every kind of trade. Nobody
-cares for making decent things any more.</p>
-
-<p>The only cure is to get back to decent standards of workmanship
-in everything again. But the case seems to me to be hopeless.
-I try to do printing up to a decent standard&mdash;and that is about all
-any of us can do. I don't believe you can hope to do much good
-through your societies and investigations. I believe in each one
-doing his own job in the best way he knows how. That's the only
-way you can raise the standard. It's the work you turn out that
-counts.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p2 center">A<small>N</small> A<small>BSTRACT OF THE</small> C<small>OMMITTEE'S</small> R<small>ECOMMENDATIONS</small></p>
-
-<p>Two main questions resulting from the Inquiry present themselves
-to the Committee. The first question is: Is it within the
-power of the Society of Calligraphers, of any society, or of Society
-itself, to restore to the printing of books a standard of good work?
-The second and major question: Are books necessary to the
-present social state?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[Pg 143]</span></p>
-
-<p>I.  When the Committee began its work it assumed as a matter
-of course that the established standards of printing would serve it
-as guide-posts and criteria. It expected to traverse a country where
-the highways were in need of repair, perhaps, and the marks of
-direction dim, but on the whole a negotiable country. It found
-a very different state of things.</p>
-
-<p>Instead of roads to be followed with some excusable discomfort
-it found not even trails. Such highways as had once been
-charted were obliterated. Not only hair-lines but the most elementary
-blazemarks were overgrown and lost beyond any hope
-of recovery. Instead of following the planned course of visit and
-consultation the Committee was forced to reorganize itself into
-an expedition of discovery. It has been fortunate to return at all.</p>
-
-<p>The collected data of the exploration can lead to but one conclusion:
-That the whole fabric of Standards of Workmanship
-will have to be rebuilt from the beginning. Whether this can be
-done under the present state of society is a matter to be discussed
-in connection with the second question.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>II. Are books necessary to the present social state? The Committee's
-finding is, unanimously and conclusively, No.</p>
-
-<p>During the past twenty years many influences have been at
-work to wean mankind from the use of books. Automobiles, the
-motion-picture drama, professional athletics, the <cite>Saturday Evening
-Post</cite>&mdash;these operated even before the Great War to discourage
-the habit of reading. Since the war the progress of society&mdash;culminating,
-in America, in the dictatorship of the proletariat&mdash;has
-effectually completed the process. Books as an element vital
-to the welfare of the race have been eliminated.</p>
-
-<p>The Society of Calligraphers is thus freed at one stroke from
-the obligations implied in the first question. But there are still
-books in existence, and for these the Committee feels a professional
-concern. For the Investigation, if it has done nothing else,
-has disclosed the most cogent and ineluctable fact: that wherever
-there is contact between books and the public, the effect upon
-the books is deleterious.</p>
-
-<p>So far as the immediate situation is concerned, the public, by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[Pg 144]</span>
-discontinuing the contact, has obviated the danger. But in a
-period of revolution no condition can be taken for granted as
-fixed. It is quite within the range of possibility that the public,
-under compulsion, may turn again to books and reading; and
-this, the Committee believes, is a contingency the Society should
-be prepared to meet.</p>
-
-<p>Publishers as a group promise, for the immediate future, to be
-a harassed and unimpressionable body. Influence upon them can
-be brought to bear only through public demand. Should a public
-demand for books revive, it will be imperative for the Society
-either to quench it altogether&mdash;a project which the Committee
-has discarded as visionary&mdash;or to take it in hand at its inception
-and give it constructive shape by forcing upon public attention
-such knowledge of the more elementary points of good taste as
-shall make impossible the further prostitution of standards. As
-the most direct means to this end it is urgently recommended by
-the Committee that the Society take up at once the study of
-advertising.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb"/>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[Pg 145]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />W. A. DWIGGINS<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<small>TWENTY YEARS AFTER:</small> M<small>R.</small> M<small>C</small>G., M<small>R.</small> A., M<small>R.</small> L. <em>and</em><br />
-T<small>HE</small> S<small>OCIETY OF</small> C<small>ALLIGRAPHERS</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Publishers' Weekly</cite>, Sept. 2, 1939. Copyright 1939 by R. R. Bowker Co.<br />
-Reprinted by permission of the publisher.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-<p>N<small>OTE</small>: <em>In 1919 the Society of Calligraphers published a pamphlet</em>:
-Extracts From An Investigation Into the Physical Properties of
-Books. <em>In the summer of 1939, three of the people who reported
-in the investigation were visited again and their opinions solicited
-as to what had happened in the interval of twenty years to change
-the physical characteristics of books. Transcriptions of parts of
-the three interviews follow.</em></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p1 center">M<small>R</small>. M<small>C</small>G.</p>
-
-<p>Q: Twenty years ago you were kind enough to discuss book-manufacturing
-with us.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Twenty years. Remarkable memory!</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;It meant a great deal to us&mdash;your help. It was in 1919. We
-were conducting an inquiry&mdash;perhaps you remember&mdash;into the
-physical qualities of books.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Oh, yes! How you could improve them, and so on. Yes.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Now we are back again&mdash;to see what you think now.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Good. Interesting idea. Ask me questions.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;For instance ... Does it strike you that trade books have improved
-in the twenty years?&mdash;as physical objects,&mdash;packages?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Packages. Very neat. Sums up the situation.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;We mean, both as implements, tools, for getting a job done;
-and as pleasant things to look at, handle, use ... or the contrary.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Well. Let's see. Yes. I think trade books have improved decidedly
-in twenty years. Decided improvement.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;What points of improvement, would you say?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Well. More care taken with the get-up, margins, format as
-you call it, title pages. Real design coming into it. And much
-more careful about the type&mdash;legibility and all that&mdash;paper, suita<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[Pg 146]</span>bility
-for reading, good surface for the eye, etc., etc.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You said, twenty years ago, that your directors' lack of interest
-in the product hampered you. Since you have been in charge
-here have you been able to bring your books up to a level that
-suits you better?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Yes ... and no.... Costs have climbed in twenty years,
-materials, labor. We've pushed up retail prices, but the manufacturing
-costs eat up all we gain. More than eat it up. Less margin
-now for design or style or whatever than twenty years ago,
-I'd say.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;That looks like faulty adjustment somewhere, doesn't it?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Situation needs adjusting, certainly!</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I mean, maybe you are paying out money for quite unnecessary
-features.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Possibly.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Not a strictly <em>factual</em> meeting of the conditions, perhaps?&mdash;not
-"realistic," as the dictators say. Have you ever thought how
-you might study the market-product relations from an entirely
-new and fresh angle?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Now there! ... that's interesting ... I have. I've thought a lot
-about it. When I get off into the Maine woods and look back at
-it there's one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb. We've got
-into a rut. The whole trade has. Not a shadow of a doubt about it.
-We let ourselves be ruled by a whole catalog of standards and
-values and "musts" that are as dead as the dodo. Standards inherited
-from an entirely different state of society. A thousand
-years different, you might say. It is amazing how conservative a
-tribe we are, we book people.... Take the cover of a book, for
-example. Take this cover here, for instance. We spent a lot of
-trouble and money dickering it up&mdash;worry about the colors and
-the design&mdash;cost of dies, cost of stamping, cost of foil ... and not
-a soul will ever see it! It's all hidden away under the jacket, and
-it'll <em>stay</em> hidden under the jacket! All this book-cover stuff is ...
-what's the word? ... vestigial&mdash;like your appendix&mdash;something no
-longer used&mdash;something useless left over from an earlier stage of
-evolution. Did you ever see anybody in a book store turn the
-jacket back and look at the cover? Did you ever hear of a cover<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[Pg 147]</span>
-that helped sell a book?&mdash;to the slightest extent? No. And when
-they get 'em home and read 'em and lend them to their friends
-the jacket stays on. Never comes off. Book-covers are just expense&mdash;useless
-expense&mdash;the decoration and things, I mean.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You would do away with covers, then?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;No. It's got to be in boards&mdash;people want them that way&mdash;it's
-one of your "realistic" details.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;In your "new angle" volume would you have the insides as
-you do them now?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;No. There again I'd let the demand shape the product. Your
-market doesn't give a hang about the type and printing so long
-as they can read it.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;That sounds like twenty years ago!</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I know. Very likely it does.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Haven't things changed?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Not much. It's as true now as it was then.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;But all this talking and writing and lecturing....</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Two or three thousand persons, perhaps&mdash;two or three thousand
-have become "book conscious" as they say&mdash;the limited
-edition crowd. I'm dealing with the ten million.... There's a lot
-of whoosh in all that book beautiful stuff, you know.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Mr. &mdash;&mdash; thinks it helps to tell them about type and paper,
-etc.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I know. It doesn't. They don't understand his little notices&mdash;it's
-all shop talk. He likes 'em. He thinks they give the books tone,
-I daresay. I think it doesn't matter a damn one way or the other.
-All that shop detail is zero. They don't care to know and they
-don't <em>need</em> to know. Just make your book so it will read handily
-and let it go at that.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Have you got this "new angle" idea to a point where you
-could describe a book made that way?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Well. I might. Take the cover&mdash;I'd have board covers and
-cloth. But I wouldn't stamp them. Bright color. Gay. Patterned
-cloth sometimes. I'd have the simplest kind of paper label on the
-backbone. Printed from type&mdash;standard affair&mdash;library label that
-you could read. No embroidery, just plain function. On the least
-expensive terms possible. Make it a kind of house-trademark<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[Pg 148]</span>
-feature.... Inside I'd forget all I knew about fine printing&mdash;the
-art&mdash;it's a great art&mdash;forget all I knew&mdash;start fresh with the <em>use</em>.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;<em>You</em> like fine printing.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;That's right. I do. In its place. The place isn't trade books.
-You can't have fine printing in trade books. All you can have
-along <em>that</em> line is cheap imitation&mdash;celluloid collar and no shirt.
-If you go out with your imitation fine printing as a mark to shoot
-at you come back with what we turn out now, all of us&mdash;shabby
-genteel, to the limit. My book won't try to get by with a paper
-collar. My book won't have <em>any</em> collar. It will get down to the basis
-of realism&mdash;a handy, efficient, <em>cheap</em> tool for temporary use. Read
-it&mdash;throw it away. Who saves a book now? If you save it, where
-are you going to put it? In the car?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;That suggests question of size&mdash;what do you think about size?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Oh, small, by all means. For the usual job not larger than the
-5-1/2x7-3/4 range. Smaller than that when you can.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You think people do not want a big package for their money?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Not when they want a book to read. If we can get the price
-down they'll flock to small size, I'm sure. When they pay two-fifty,
-three, perhaps they want their poundage. Books for gifts too, possibly&mdash;want
-'em impressive. But on my basis of a good workable
-tool they'll like them small and handy.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Your point in general, then, is that modern books should be
-looked at as temporary affairs.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Absolutely. Temporary affairs. Like magazines. And they
-ought to be <em>produced</em> as temporary affairs. Paper a little better
-than newsprint, but not much better&mdash;better color, on the
-warmish side instead of blue-grey. "Guaranteed by the Bureau
-of Standards to last three hundred years." Bosh. Presswork: set
-your standard at the level of legibility. That's low&mdash;look at the
-newspapers. Get it so you can read it easily and let the fine points
-ride. Give up points of paper and make-ready to get a cheaper
-package. You are making a tool, remember, not a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bijou</i>&mdash;you're
-making a sound, efficient, easy-working tool&mdash;tools don't need
-paper lace and fake-leather upholstery to make them sound&mdash;when
-a tool is efficient it has a style of its own, inevitably.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Your dictum is, "books as tools."</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[Pg 149]</span></p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Books as tools. Right. But here's a point. All this is on the
-technical side. Treat a book as a temporary affair. But while it
-lasts I'd take considerable pains to have it be a <em>lively</em> affair. Not
-freakish&mdash;you can't play tricks with the reading process&mdash;but
-lively, like a good, interesting talker. Little fresh twists, but hardly
-noticeable in detail. A lot of ways to do it in an inconspicuous
-way. Mustn't be conspicuous&mdash;mustn't interfere with the
-reading job. Little touches of ornament in the right places. Pictorial
-bits&mdash;pictures are coming back into trade books again, in a
-new form&mdash;easy, swift, simple illustrations that fit in with the
-"temporary affair" style. Some of the money saved by a strategic
-retreat from impossible printing standards I'd put into things like
-that&mdash;to keep the pages gay and interesting.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;In this connection, do you think that modern books ought to
-be "modernistic" in design?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Absolutely <em>not</em>. As I said a minute ago, you can't play tricks
-with the process of reading.... One of the necessities of the
-modernistic stuff is the necessity to shock you&mdash;to make people
-jump. You can't set off firecrackers on a book page every few paragraphs
-without taking the reader's mind off the text. You simply
-can't read in the neighborhood of modernistic design. It isn't
-because you are not used to it. It's in the very nature of the style....
-I'm talking about books, of course. For advertising, it's prime.
-Have all the modernistic design you want on your jacket. The
-more the better.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;And that brings us....</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Yes. I've been waiting for it. That brings us to book-jackets!</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Yes. What do you think....</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Now <em>there</em> you are in another country entirely. Now's the
-time to beat the drums and run up the flags and drape the bunting....
-All the money you can't afford to spend on covers you <em>can</em>
-afford to spend on jackets. Because, first, the jacket <em>is</em> the cover;
-and second, the jacket helps directly in selling the book. Jackets
-are advertising&mdash;posters&mdash;billboards&mdash;so make 'em shout.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Attractive?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;If you mean <em>pretty</em>, not so important. If you mean oomph,
-by all means. Feminine charm, in the prevailing mode.... But<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[Pg 150]</span>
-sock-'em-in-the-eye. Make them strong. Make them so people
-can't miss seeing them.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;What is your own formula?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Formula? I haven't any formula.... If I had I think it would
-be <em>contrast</em>. Contrast with all the other books on the table. Don't
-follow anybody's style. Get away from the prevalent "successful"
-style of the moment. Take a look at the tables&mdash;what would stick
-out now more than plain white paper with plain black type? I'd
-probably varnish it. Contrast.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Do jackets sell books?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Oh ... no. Jackets don't sell books. They <em>help</em>. What sells a
-book is the stuff inside&mdash;story&mdash;text. But books need to be <em>seen</em>.
-Jackets help make them visible.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>&mdash;You save on covers and spend on jackets. You save on paper
-and printing, and put some of the saving into pictorial and design
-features. Would you come out with enough saving to get the
-retail price down from two fifty?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I think so. I think if the thing were studied out on our "new
-angle" basis you'd find that you not only liked my books a lot
-better&mdash;as "packages"&mdash;but that you'd be able to buy more of
-them.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">M<small>R</small>. A.</p>
-
-<p>Q: One thing I wanted to ask ... you have had a considerable part
-in shaping your juvenile department.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Yes. I have.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;My question may seem a little ... cool.... Do you prepare
-your juvenile titles with the children themselves in view&mdash;the ultimate
-consumers?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;The question's quite proper. I am glad you asked it&mdash;it goes
-straight to the heart of a big trouble about children's books....
-The children themselves in view, eh? The ultimate consumers....
-No. I am sorry to say, we do not. We can't. Because children do
-not buy books.... You see, a juvenile, like any other book on our
-list, has to please the person that's likely to buy it. And that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[Pg 151]</span>
-means, a book to please adults&mdash;a book that a grown-up will mark
-down as something a child ought to like. <em>Ought</em> to, you see&mdash;the
-adult's judgment, not the child's. We can't get past it. We can't
-find out what the child really <em>does</em> like. When children rally to an
-author, or a style of book, then we get a glimpse of the children's
-state of mind. But that is our only contact.... All our <em>new</em> ventures
-have to be baited and primed to catch the fancy of the
-mothers and the cousins and the aunts&mdash;<em>against</em> the interests of
-the ultimate consumer, you might say, when that is necessary.
-Sometimes a juvenile runs to large sales purely on the strength of
-adult appreciation alone, like Ferdinand, for instance.... If it
-were possible, there is nothing I should like better than to deal
-with the children direct. I have children of my own. I think I understand
-them ... to a certain extent. I think I could please them.
-Once or twice&mdash;this is a confession&mdash;I did take a direct hand&mdash;made
-a couple the way I thought they ought to be. <em>My</em> judgment
-against the child's, eh?... Complete failures&mdash;drugs.... I couldn't
-move them&mdash;couldn't get past the censor&mdash;couldn't sell the
-grown-ups.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Have you ever thought of ways for getting into direct touch
-with the children?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I can see no practicable way. As the case stands you can't
-penetrate the Adult Front Line.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">M<small>R</small>. L.</p>
-
-<p>Q: This scheme of Mr. McG.'s for a different kind of book&mdash;what
-do you think of it?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;If he can <em>control</em> his "decline from a high estate" I am with
-him, emphatically. Books need to be cheaper. Books <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vis-à-vis</i> market
-certainly need to be studied all over again&mdash;from a new base
-line. I agree with his findings about shabby-genteel. And I'm sure
-that I'd like his "cheap" books much better than the kind I buy
-now, <em>if</em> he can liven them up as he suggests. The question is, can
-he stop his "strategic retreat" at the right point? It's like inflation:
-easy to start, but...! He drops the standard of material and
-process&mdash;will his proofreading go down hill too?... Many French
-books in paper wrappers&mdash;made at the lowest cost-level, badly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[Pg 152]</span>
-printed on cheap paper&mdash;have an air and a style that our own more
-expensive affairs can't quite achieve. <em>Somebody</em> laid a finger on
-them. Who, in Mr. McG.'s scheme, is to be this somebody whose
-touch creates liveliness and interest? A highly important factor
-in the product!... If we <em>can</em> get the liveliness and interest, we will
-be glad to trade more expensive paper and printing to get it. Our
-books are pretty dull.... But, <em>just</em> inferior printing on cheap
-paper, <em>without</em> the lively touch and style, is going to bore us worse
-yet!</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You mean dull in content?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I mean dull optically, visually.... Like&mdash;to put it into terms
-of sound&mdash;like a long, droning recital of a tedious story&mdash;no inflection&mdash;no
-climax&mdash;no motion. ... I like Mr. McG.'s figure of
-a "good, interesting talker."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You'd spice it up with "modernist" feeling?</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;No. He's right, there. No fireworks. Keep the explosions <em>outside</em>
-the book.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;<em>You</em> have used "contemporary" design.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;Yes, but you'll notice, not in places where <em>reading</em> is going on....
-Another point: letting the market set the <em>tone</em> is not good
-merchandising. The market needs to be led, by a tone a little
-higher than its average taste.... And Mr. McG.'s good tool isn't
-made by majority vote in Congressional committee&mdash;it's made by
-somebody who knows, expertly and practically, just what the tool
-is intended to do and how it works.</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;You are for "books as tools."</p>
-
-<p>&mdash;I am for books as tools&mdash;and that means cheaper books....
-I think, too, that a lot of the things that make books expensive are
-false value&mdash;brummagem.... But the trade is so firmly established
-in the tradition of false-front and bustle-rear that I'm afraid it's
-going to take an awful tussle to get it back to real values again&mdash;to
-the tool basis&mdash;to the simplicity and directness and general fitness-for-its-job,
-for example, that makes a carpenter's plane a
-masterpiece of appropriate design.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN ELECTRA TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[Pg 153]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />DESMOND FLOWER<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite><small>The Publisher and the Typographer</small></cite></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>The Penrose Annual</cite>, Vol. 44. Copyright 1950 by Lund Humphries
-Ltd., London, and Pitman Publishing Corp., New York. Reprinted by permission
-of the publishers.</p>
-
-<p>We live in an unhappy age. I suppose that it must be the most
-wretched known in history since the hordes of Genghis Khan
-swept across the face of the eastern world. Yet it is not the physical
-losses&mdash;though these are bad enough&mdash;which are responsible for
-the malaise, but a spiritual shortcoming: a lack of direction and
-a lack of faith. Ours is an age in which there is no single thing,
-not great or small, which can escape our petty probing, our
-questioning and our doubts. Nothing is because it is: a shadowy
-reason must be sought behind.</p>
-
-<p>In the course of man's desire to examine and explain away
-everything, one of the multitudinous minutiæ which have come
-in for worried attention is the position of printers, particularly in
-relation to the publishers they serve. The first four centuries of
-printing produced ninety-nine per cent of all the books which
-are worth looking at: yet, at what time during that period did
-anyone worry about the division of responsibility in a book's
-production? Then, it was a matter which somehow got done;
-now, unfortunately, it is a subject for discussion.</p>
-
-<p>When Sweynheim and Pannertz started work at Subiaco in
-1465 they were at the same time both printers and publishers,
-and this represents a dual personality. But when Fichet, the
-Rector of the Sorbonne, decided to set up the first French press
-five years later within the precincts of the University, he imported
-three printers from Germany, and possibly the first printer-publisher
-relationship was born. That this relationship was a living
-thing is shown by the fact that Fichet had the books which the
-press produced printed in Roman type. Soon after the great Rector
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[Pg 154]</span>had gone into voluntary exile for his political opinions, the press
-moved out of the University precincts to become a normal commercial
-printing shop, and Gering and Krantz reverted to the
-use of gothic type! Since the use of Roman lay within the high
-road of French classical development&mdash;France being the only
-country in Europe which did not begin its printing history in
-gothic&mdash;this stands as the first instance of the views of a publisher,
-as a man ordering the print, being in advance of the more timorous
-craftsmen, who were glad to revert to their old, safe and conventional
-ways as soon as the refining influence was removed.</p>
-
-<p>French printing as a whole in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
-centuries is full of printer-publisher problems for our
-questing minds. Simon le Vostre, the great ecclesiastical publisher
-of his age, used Pigouchet mostly for his printing; the Hardouyn
-brothers commissioned several lovely books from Anabat: why,
-and who dictated the terms? The balance of power may then well
-have lain with the printer, since in the Hardouyn's 1500 <cite>Book of
-Hours</cite> the first page is filled with Anabat's superb device. But
-what shall we say of the <cite>Hours</cite> printed in 1527 by Simon du Bois,
-but which bears on every page the unmistakable stamp and signature
-of its publisher, Geoffroy Tory? Now, they say, too, that
-Tory was not a binder: yet from him we have two gilt panels
-done to his order and to his design, matching exactly the work
-which he hired his printers to do for him.</p>
-
-<p>I feel we are too certain in our minds that in the past printers
-were <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ipso facto</i> publishers, or that those "for" whom they printed
-were merely agents. Like a fatal crack hidden for many years
-in the foundations of an outwardly sound edifice, the split between
-printer and publisher had occurred at the Sorbonne in
-1470, but was patched, mended and ignored from time to time
-for long thereafter. Yet like that neglected flaw which, having
-widened until it defies repair, will in the end bring the whole
-building down, the printer-publisher relationship has now some
-time ago irrevocably divided.</p>
-
-<p>Today the publisher and the printer are two separate men:
-there are few exceptions to this rule. Mr. Oliver Simon recently
-began one of his all too rare essays with the words "Printing is
-a way of life"; and later he remarked that "if he (the printer)
-is not something of an artist, he cannot hope to evolve and maintain
-a typographic style." But these words must be read in con<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[Pg 155]</span>junction
-with one of Holbrook Jackson's many wise remarks:
-"whether it (printing) is an art or not is a secondary affair, so
-long as it is good printing. 'Art happens' says Whistler, and the
-printer who sets out to be an artist is liable to make a mess of both
-art and print." One further quotation will show how readily Holbrook
-Jackson's wisdom can be thrown out of the window; in
-these pages last year Mr. Herbert Read criticised the English and
-American editions of his own book, <cite>The Grass Roots of Art</cite>. He
-wrote "On balance, I do not find much to choose between these
-two designs from a functional point of view, but discounting a
-poverty due to material restrictions imposed on the English publisher,
-there is a certain liveliness in the American production,
-which, were I a purchaser faced with a choice, would induce
-me to buy the American edition, even if it cost me rather more.
-But if the English edition had been printed on better paper, it
-would have been the easier of the two editions to read...." With
-the exception of the last sentence, the whole of this passage seems
-misleading and irrelevant. The use of the word "functional" is
-one of the crosses which we in the twentieth century have to
-bear, but, since it has occurred, we must presume the function of
-printing to be that of presenting the written word to the reader
-in its most easily assimilated form; if the English edition in question
-is, apart from its paper, more easily readable, how can both
-editions be equally functional? The implication that a piece of
-printing&mdash;particularly when the text is a work of serious criticism&mdash;is
-to be purchased (even at a higher price) for its liveliness at
-the expense of its readability is particularly unfortunate. If for
-"liveliness" we read "speciousness" or "pretention" we have found
-a ready definition of the one quality which should be excluded
-from book printing at almost any cost. For this reason I am
-frightened of Mr. Simon's statement that "printing is a way of
-life"; good printing implies a philosophy, it is true, but I fear
-that printers who are far from good may assume airs above their
-station and, when they produce a perfect horror, state "that is
-my way of life&mdash;take it or leave it." If they do, they may be astonished
-at how fast any decent publisher will embrace the latter
-course. I disagree with a great deal more which Mr. Read wrote
-in his article, but there is room here for comment only upon
-his remarks about Baskerville type. Baskerville is <em>not</em> an easy type,
-nor a safe one (though printers may find that it satisfies their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[Pg 156]</span>
-customers). The "gentlemanly sort of type which passes unnoticed,
-unquestioned" is undoubtedly Caslon and all its derivatives.
-Baskerville with its broad face and flourishing Italic is hard
-to handle, and in consequence is employed in a higher percentage
-of bad printing than any other type face.</p>
-
-<p>It is generally agreed that when an irresistible force meets an
-immovable body, the result is a stalemate; equally obviously,
-whichever power wanes first will suffer an immediate eclipse.
-From this we may proceed by a process of elimination. A publisher
-who knows what he wants employs a printer who is an
-artist, and the result should be a masterpiece of give and take. A
-publisher who does not know what he wants employs a printer
-who is an artist, and the result should be a piece of fine printing.
-A publisher who knows what he wants employs a printer who is
-not an artist, and the result will depend on the degree of taste of
-the publisher. A publisher who either does not know what he
-wants or does not care, and employs a printer who is not an artist,
-will both get and deserve a shambles. From these simple equations
-one constant factor emerges&mdash;the publisher; and this fact is not
-at all at variance with the traditional saw that he who pays the
-piper calls the tune.</p>
-
-<p>There have been a number of eminent publisher-printer relationships
-in the past. I have mentioned the French of 1500-1550,
-where there seems already to be evidence of a publisher's taste
-exerting an influence. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
-offer no examples which are worthy of study: the works undertaken
-by one printer on behalf of a syndicate of publishers produce
-no evidence of the book's appearance being dictated by any
-taste other than that of the printer himself.</p>
-
-<p>The nineteenth century saw the publisher come into his own.
-One of the greatest publisher-printer partnerships in the history
-of British book-production is that of Pickering and Whittingham.
-It would be reasonable to suppose that Pickering was the
-moving force in this partnership, since the ideas are publishing
-ideas mainly exemplified by the Aldine poets and the Diamond
-classics, and their starting point is Pickering's choice of the
-anchor and dolphin with the motto grouped about it: <cite>Aldi Discip.
-Anglus</cite>. To the same taste of Pickering and his delight in the
-printing of Aldus and his contemporaries may be attributed the
-gracious and restrained use of sixteenth-century fleurons which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[Pg 157]</span>
-in the eighteen-thirties are not readily to be found elsewhere, and
-the curiously appropriate renaissance borders occasionally introduced.
-Another partnership in which I suspect that the publisher
-had a considerable say was that of Edward Moxon and Bradbury
-&amp; Evans. In 1850 Moxon issued the first edition of two most important
-works, Wordsworth's <cite>Prelude</cite> and Tennyson's <cite>In Memoriam</cite>;
-both were printed by the same printer. But eight years
-later we may point to John Murray's edition of Coleridge's <cite>Table
-Talk</cite>; this, too, was printed by Bradbury &amp; Evans with more than
-a glance over the shoulder at Pickering's publications, but without
-the guiding hand of Moxon. It is an interesting book, for it
-just fails before every problem which the text sets. Pickering
-would have set the solid prose at least a point smaller and increased
-the margins; in the same way he would have managed to
-get more space between each specimen of <cite>Table Talk</cite>. Instead of
-a page of grace and readability, there is in consequence a slightly
-crowded air and the eye skips disconcertingly from line to line.</p>
-
-<p>Little more than thirty years later British book production was
-influenced by the most powerful small group of publishers which
-had ever turned printing upside down: it was indeed a small group&mdash;it
-consisted of three men: John Lane, Elkin Mathews and Leonard
-Smithers. The splendid series of publications for which each
-of these extraordinary individuals was responsible need no enumeration
-here ... but it is worth pointing out that they were the
-pioneers of the asymmetry which Mr. Read praises as an unusual
-and notable feature in the American edition of his book
-already mentioned. Holbrook Jackson said the last word on the
-publisher-printer relationship: "it was publishers like Pickering,
-Moxon, Field and Tuer, Elkin Mathews, John Lane and J. M.
-Dent who by their example in the nineteenth century helped to
-<em>defend</em> [my italics] printing from printers who were content to
-do as they were told, and, if no one told them, to follow rule-of-thumb
-methods which tended always to become worse rather
-than better."<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
-
-
-<p>To quote again from Holbrook Jackson: "It was long before
-the average printer took advantage of the awakening of typographical
-taste which began in the eighteen-nineties. The men
-who extended and consolidated that taste came from anywhere
-but the printing offices. The majority of modern typographers
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[Pg 158]</span>are intellectuals or scholars who have forced themselves on the
-trade, often through the publishing houses." In almost every age
-there have been a few commercial printers of first-class standing,
-but perhaps it is no coincidence that it would be difficult to name
-one who was at work in the eighteen-nineties&mdash;the most lively
-age of the publisher's influence. The situation has not materially
-changed by the middle of the twentieth century, except that in
-our own age we are fortunate in having among us a few printers
-who bow to no man, and have left their mark upon this country's
-production. First among them stands Mr. Oliver Simon, whose
-steady output of fine printing must command unqualified admiration.
-Both the Cambridge and the Oxford University Presses
-have evolved styles of their own, and there are a few others who
-are fine printers in their own right. But on the other side of the
-ledger there is Sir Francis Meynell, who, despite the criticism that
-much of his work is pastiche, showed with exquisite taste [in the
-first hundred Nonesuch Press books] what could be made of the
-types and ornaments which Mr. Stanley Morison had made available
-through the Monotype Corporation, and all this with a multitude
-of printers who were set to work and produced but one
-result&mdash;pure Meynell. There is also the more recent example of
-Mr. Jan Tschichold at work in the Penguin pool.</p>
-
-<p>This lamentable lack of taste among the generality of printers
-led publishers to give instructions as to their wishes, and this in
-turn has created a new position in publishing offices: the typographer.
-Once this person made his appearance on the payroll, the
-initiative passed from the printer for ever. In the first place, if the
-publisher employs a typographer he is going to be sure he gets
-his money's worth; in the second, human nature being what it is,
-most printers will willingly accept a publisher's design because
-it is the line of least resistance, and because, according to the
-best principles of business, the customer is always right.</p>
-
-<p>I cannot see why the initiative in design should ever pass back
-to the printer. The problem was admirably expressed by D. B.
-Updike in his little book of essays on the craft, <cite>In the Day's
-Work</cite>: "If printers had more of a standard and a stiffer one, both
-about the types they employ and the way in which they use them,
-printing would be better. The printer, if he has no standard, <em>must</em>
-allow the customer to dictate his own wishes about types." I hope
-that there will always be the handful of printers who are great
-enough to say "you will do it my way&mdash;or else," but the rest will
-do as they are told by publishers' typographers, which amounts
-to the substitution of house styles for printers' styles. Printing,
-like so many arts, has fallen into the hands of the middleman&mdash;for
-such indeed the publisher is. There I am sure it will remain,
-and it is now for the middleman to justify himself. If he will
-take his responsibilities seriously he can do nothing but good.
-The good printer's compositor who is "something of an artist"
-will go on setting the target; but the publisher's typographer can,
-if he will, go far towards dragging the mediocre printers up towards
-the same high standard. If this is done, design in British
-printing will show a welcome overall improvement.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[Pg 159]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> <cite>The Printing of Books.</cite></p></div></div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[Pg 160]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite>The Anatomy of the Book</cite></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From the Manual of Linotype Typography, Copyright 1923 by Mergenthaler
-Linotype Company, Brooklyn, N. Y. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
-Corrected and amended by the Editor.</p>
-
-<p>The experienced designer is familiar with the successive parts
-of a complete book. All less formal embodiments of the book idea
-have some of these parts, and their position in the whole scheme
-should be governed by the traditions of the book proper.</p>
-
-<p>In order to leave complete freedom as to number of pages, the
-favorite custom is to number the text pages in arabic folio numbers,
-beginning with 1. The front pages are then numbered with
-Roman folios, and thus it makes no difference with the body how
-many or few front pages are finally found necessary.</p>
-
-<p>The typographical treatment of front matter and chapter pages
-throughout the book should be in perfect harmony, whether the
-treatment is simple typography or calls for elaborate embellishment.
-The character of the book is largely decided by what is
-done in this respect, and the intelligent designer fully realizes its
-importance and the chance thus given him for distinguished work.</p>
-
-<p>The following summary gives these parts in proper sequence,
-and the nature of each.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">BASTARD TITLE (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>Nowadays this page (often miscalled "Half Title") is used
-merely because custom demands the familiar resting place for
-the eye in advance of the Title Page. It should never be omitted
-in work of any pretension to style and quality, and it should
-never be made unduly prominent by decoration or other treatment.
-Conventional dignity is the safe note for this page in the
-book.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">ADVERTISING CARD (<em>always a left-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>If an Advertising Card or other similar announcement is required,
-it should be typographically a part of the book, no mat<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[Pg 161]</span>ter
-what the client's style in his advertising typography may be.
-If a customer has a special or unique form of advertising, and
-insists on its use, the printer should inform him that it conflicts
-with the harmony of the book to do so.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">THE TITLE PAGE (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>The Title Page gives the reader his sense of the whole book's
-quality. It should, therefore, be as nearly perfect as may be. Its
-first essential is that the eye shall read instantly the three important
-facts that it has to tell: the title of the book, the name
-of the author, and the imprint. In the case of a business volume
-this means the merchandise or business subject, the name of the
-business house, and the address or addresses. The typography
-should make these three divisions clear at a glance. There should
-be as little else on the title page as possible. Everything that can be
-left out is an aid to quality. The principle of the page is that it is
-an announcement of the book's contents and that it should not go
-beyond a very few display lines. It is the door to the house. White
-space is of the greatest value in this part of the book. If decoration
-is used, it should never be made more important than the type
-lines. The use of different faces of type is almost always bad,
-and success is obtained only occasionally by a genius. So important
-is harmony that it is not safe even to combine lines of
-capitals and lower case letters, except after careful planning and
-with assured understanding and talent.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">COPYRIGHT (<em>always a left-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>The Copyright of the volume should be placed a little above
-the center of the page. The best taste calls for caps and small
-caps, or small caps alone. It is customary to use the bottom of
-this page for the printer's imprint or the international requirement,
-"Printed in the United States of America," or both, but
-the size of page should be considered.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">DEDICATION (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>The character and purpose of the Dedication dictate that its
-treatment should always be formal. The "monumental" style is
-appropriate and correct. Small caps are the best. The Dedication<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[Pg 162]</span>
-should always be a right-hand page. Its reverse must be left
-blank.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">PREFACE [<small>OR</small> F<small>OREWORD</small>] (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>A Preface that has simply the ordinary character usual to most
-prefaces should be set in the same size of type as the body of the
-book, and in the same face. For any preface of unusual importance,
-the page may be double-leaded, or set in a type one
-size larger than the body. If the book has both Preface and Introduction,
-the Preface may be set in italics to mark the distinction.
-Italics may also be employed if the Preface has been written
-by a person other than the author. In this case, however, the
-Preface is preferably placed after the Contents and the List of
-Illustrations.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">CONTENTS (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>The Contents or Table of Contents, filling as many pages as
-necessary, follows the Preface. The quality of this part of the
-book-job depends on the little niceties of spacing, margin, and
-proportion of white space to type which are too often ignored,
-even in otherwise pretentious books. The Contents pages are
-almost as important as the Title Page in establishing a sense of
-quality.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>The List of Illustrations follows the Contents pages, but no
-matter where the Contents finishes, the List of Illustrations should
-begin on a right-hand page. Obviously its typographical style
-should be the same as the Contents.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">INTRODUCTION (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>The Introduction follows the List of Illustrations, and its composition
-should be in the same size and face as the body of the
-book. Any typographical distinction between Preface and Introduction
-should be limited to the former, as stated under
-"Preface." Authors are not always clear in their understanding
-of the difference between a Preface and an Introduction. Their
-Introduction often is really a Preface, and should be so entitled<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[Pg 163]</span>
-and placed in the book accordingly. The Preface is the author's
-personal remarks to the reader, and these may be of any character,
-treating of any subject. The Introduction, on the other
-hand, should treat specifically of the subject of the book, and
-should contain only statements of direct bearing and importance.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">HALF TITLE (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>As the Bastard Title always precedes the Title Page, so the
-Half Title always precedes the first page of the text&mdash;the page
-which carries the title of the book at its top. The Half Title
-must always be on the right-hand page immediately preceding
-this page, and it should consist of not more than the title of the
-volume. Half Titles may run through a book before various
-divisions.</p>
-
-<p>Those sections of a book which follow the text must be treated
-with the same typographic care as the pages which precede the
-text. These sections are usually as follows:</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">APPENDIX (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>This should be set in the same face as the text, but in one size
-smaller type. If the text ends on the left-hand page, a Half Title
-may be thrown between the text and the Appendix.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">GLOSSARY (<em>preferably a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>The size of type used for the Glossary depends wholly upon
-its nature, but it usually is two full sizes smaller than that used in
-the text of the volume. A Half Title may be thrown in before
-the Glossary, if the text ends on the left-hand page.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">BIBLIOGRAPHY (<em>preferably a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>The comments made under "Glossary" apply equally to the
-Bibliography. The combination of titles of books and the names
-of authors offers an attractive opportunity for artistic treatment.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">INDEX (<em>always a right-hand page</em>)</p>
-
-<p>If the text ends on the left-hand page, a Half Title may be
-thrown in before the Index. The type used for the Index is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[Pg 164]</span>
-usually 8 point size set in double column. There is so much difference
-in the way the index entries read that great care should
-be exercised to select a model which will fit the particular case
-in hand.</p>
-
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>A SYMPOSIUM: <em>By Bruce Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins,
-Joseph Blumenthal, P. J. Conkwright, Arthur W. Rushmore,
-Milton Glick, Morris Colman, Evelyn Harter, Peter Beilenson
-and Ernst Reichl.</em></p></div>
-
-<p>Have there been any material changes in the anatomy of the
-book in the past quarter century? Should there be, to have the
-contemporary book reflect the times in which it is designed, set
-and printed?</p>
-
-<p>As these and other questions occurred, we re-appraised the
-Anatomy of the Book summation in <cite>The Manual of Linotype
-Typography</cite>, reprinted in the foregoing pages. That text seemed
-to stand up pretty well. It was written originally by William
-Dana Orcutt for the <cite>Manual</cite>, whose typographical plan and
-critical comment was prepared with the co-operation of the late
-Edward E. Bartlett, then Director of Linotype Typography.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>What revisions or additions would Mr. Orcutt suggest for a
-reprinting? What would other prominent designers and book-makers
-suggest?</p>
-
-<p>The idea of a symposium appealed. The counsel of Bruce
-Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins and Joseph Blumenthal, in the
-field of fine and privately printed books, was invited, with that
-of P. J. Conkwright in the university press field.</p>
-
-<p>Trade book-makers would also have opinions and suggestions,
-in all probability. Counsel was sought from Milton Glick, who
-heads the Viking Press design and production activity; Morris
-Colman, former chairman of the A.I.G.A. Trade Book Clinic
-and one of Viking's top designers; Arthur W. Rushmore, former
-Harper vice-president in charge of design and production, now
-retired to the delights of his Golden Hind Press, at Madison,
-N. J.; and Ernst Reichl, one of our ranking modern designers,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[Pg 165]</span>
-whose long association in book manufacturing with H. Wolff
-and as a free-lance brought an unmatched experience in working
-with many publishers. Mr. Reichl also has been prominent in
-A.I.G.A. Book and Magazine Clinic activities.</p>
-
-<p>The comment of an author and a publisher also seemed in
-order, and happily one in each field with a considerable appreciation
-of the graphic arts was obtained: Evelyn Harter, whose
-novel, <cite>Dr. Katherine Bell</cite>, was recently published by Doubleday,
-and who formerly headed design and production activity for
-Random House, Smith and Haas and other firms before retiring
-to private life as Mrs. Milton Glick. As publisher-designer-printer
-all in one, Peter Beilenson was invited to comment. He, with Mrs.
-Edna Beilenson, directs the Peter Pauper Press in Mt. Vernon,
-and is consistently represented in the A.I.G.A. "Fifty Books of
-the Year" selections.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>"So far as I know," Mr. Orcutt wrote, "the Anatomy remains
-the same today and I can think of no changes I would want to
-make. I may be wrong, but I am still hoping that it is one thing
-that doesn't change."</p>
-
-<p>To Joseph Blumenthal, who directs the Spiral Press in New
-York, and whose books are famed for their simplicity of design
-and excellence of typography and presswork, the statements of
-the Anatomy are sane and safe. "In the hands of a sufficiently
-experienced and versatile designer," he added, "no rule is absolute
-to the point where it cannot be broken, at least in part, where
-occasion requires."</p>
-
-<p>To Bruce Rogers, most distinguished of designers of books,
-the Anatomy "is an excellent short treatise that covers all the
-points of a well-designed volume.... I recommend it for the
-perusal of anyone engaged in book-making. Following it literally
-would result in a decided advance in that art."</p>
-
-<p>Several minor suggestions that B.R. made have been incorporated
-in the text of the Anatomy as here reprinted. These
-concerned the substitution of "should" for "must" in several
-instances, "in order not to be too dogmatic." His other points
-were: 1, "that it is frequently preferable to place the preface
-before the contents"; and 2, "that there seem to be too many
-half-titles recommended for anything else than a de luxe book&mdash;especially
-at the end, for the index and vocabulary."</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[Pg 166]</span></p>
-
-<p>To Carl Purington Rollins, Printer Emeritus to Yale University,
-lecturer and writer on the graphic arts and one of the foremost
-American masters of the book, the Anatomy "is a very
-sound and sensible guide for young book makers&mdash;and, to judge
-from the queer books coming out of New York, older ones could
-profit from it. I have no disagreement with it in any particular,"
-he continued, "and if it will not make a genius, it will at least
-prevent a diligent reader from going astray."</p>
-
-<p>P. J. Conkwright found the text clear and concise. "Any extensive
-elaboration would defeat its usefulness, I think, to those
-approaching the subject for the first time.</p>
-
-<p>"My only quarrel," he added, "is with the paragraph concerning
-Copyright. If there is no Dedication I like the Copyright
-statement and printer's imprint grouped together a little above
-the center of the page. If there is a Dedication, I like the Copyright
-statement at the top of the page lining with the top line of
-the title page, and the printer's imprint at the bottom of the page,
-lining with the bottom line of the title page.</p>
-
-<p>"This is a good example, however, of how an elaboration of the
-text can get too involved for a beginner."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>To several experienced trade-book designers with considerable
-production and manufacturing experience, the Anatomy text
-was less satisfactory.</p>
-
-<p>Both Evelyn Harter and Milton Glick found the text too
-dogmatic in its dicta. They were bothered most by the first two
-sentences under Copyright, the last sentence under title page and
-"references to 'genius.'" They both liked best the remarks regarding
-Contents, Preface and Introduction.</p>
-
-<p>"Ought not the topics of chapter openings be included," Mr.
-Glick inquired, "also illustrations, captions, running page heads,
-folios and such?"</p>
-
-<p>As an ex-designer turned author, Miss Harter has "come to
-appreciate more than ever the values of legibility and simplicity,
-with no extraneous tricks."</p>
-
-<p>Morris Colman concurred in feeling the Anatomy text is pretty
-arbitrary for today, and that chapter openings, running page
-heads and all other normal elements of a book should be included.</p>
-
-<p>"In particular," he added, "I would like to see the various
-arguments presented both in terms of tradition and also in terms<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[Pg 167]</span>
-of the particular function which each element of a book performs.</p>
-
-<p>"For example, the title page is not only the 'main entrance' but
-it also is the source of the bibliographic information which appears
-in hundreds of library cards, catalogs, etc., and its contents
-and arrangement determines whether it will be listed in all these
-places in such form that you or I could find it if we wanted it.</p>
-
-<p>"There are certain legal requirements which influence the form
-and content of copyright pages. Dedications, while formal in a
-technical sense, may need to be treated quite informally to express
-the spirit of the particular dedicator.</p>
-
-<p>"And with many kinds of contemporary books," he continued,
-"the contents page is made to precede any other preliminary
-matter, despite tradition, for the greater convenience of the
-reader. I am sure that this is always why the Index is invariably
-the last element in back matter."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>To Arthur Rushmore, the Anatomy "is darn good copy, clearly
-stated. There are a couple of amplifications that might help give
-more clarity:</p>
-
-<p>"<cite>Advertising Card</cite> seems a little vague. This is more likely to
-be a 'List of Author's Books' or 'Series Title and Titles of Books
-already issued' if the book is in a historical or other series.</p>
-
-<p>"<em>Copyright</em>: Relatively few books carry the Printer's name on
-copyright and the line 'Printed in the United States of America'
-looks better and obviates a printing problem if run as a line directly
-under the copyright notice. A single line at the foot of the
-page, after the first 500 impressions of 1951 printing, is either
-bold face or completely unreadable.</p>
-
-<p>"<em>Dedication</em>: To me, 'small caps are the best' is doubtful. Small
-caps are the worst printing of all characters in a font, and unless
-small caps of a larger size than text will look too weak and small.
-I'd say 'should be planned with the utmost care for balance and
-position on page.'</p>
-
-<p>"<em>Half Title</em>: First paragraph too dogmatic. If book is a novel,
-or book without 'Parts' then half title should be 'book title' backed
-blank and folioed in Roman front matter. If book has 'Parts,' the
-half title should not bear book title, but should carry the Part or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[Pg 168]</span>
-Section Title and folio arabic 1, backed blank 2 and first page
-of text folio 3. Similar half title for all other Parts or Sections
-folioed in."</p>
-
-<p>Peter Beilenson, whose comment on the pleasures and duties of
-the amateur printer is well worth reading (page 313), thinks the
-Anatomy "perfectly all right, so far as it goes. If it wavers from
-the perfect, it is in being too strict&mdash;<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vide</i> the remarks about the
-title page, the "it should never" of the bastard title, etc.</p>
-
-<p>"But," he asks in suggesting the text be extended, "what about
-additions to the coverage? Footnotes, running heads, chapter
-titles, initials, etc., are not the limbs of the anatomy, but they are
-organs. What about the binding? The jacket? The direction of
-the stamping of the title on the spine?"</p>
-
-<p>To Ernst Reichl, the Anatomy comprises "what might be
-called the basic minimum. Any designer worth his salt should
-not only start with this standard but also allow his imagination
-to roam far beyond it.</p>
-
-<p>"An 'anatomy,' however precise and objective, necessarily
-breaks down a living entity into component parts. These parts in
-reality show much more cohesion than is apparent in their piece-by-piece
-description.</p>
-
-<p>"In the modern book, in particular, we tend to treat the volume
-as a whole and to submerge the importance of the single page in
-it. The bastard title, for instance, might be left entirely blank;
-the title page may be spread over two pages and the advertising
-card incorporated into it; the copyright page and the dedication
-page might be treated as a double-page spread, etc.</p>
-
-<p>"The tendency today," he summarized, "is altogether to handle
-the double-page spread as the unit of the layout, rather than the
-single page. This may help to break down in some degree the
-rigidity and formality which awes ordinary human beings, and
-makes them as reluctant to touch a book as to put on a dress suit.
-It may also help to make our books a little more ordinary and
-lively."</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[Pg 169]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />ROBERT JOSEPHY<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>Trade Bookmaking</small></em>:<br />
-<small>COMPLAINT IN THREE DIMENSIONS</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Publishers' Weekly</cite>, Oct. 5, 1935. Copyright 1935 by R. R. Bowker Co.
-Reprinted by permission of the publisher.</p>
-
-<p>The development of trade book-making since 1920 has been
-an extraordinary phenomenon in the conservative business of
-publishing. At that time most publishers looked upon "manufacturing"
-as a necessary but routine activity, ranking with accounting,
-shipping and such, and on a far lower intellectual plane than
-the cultivation of authors and reviewers, or the writing of good
-blurbs. The production of books was usually entrusted to an
-uninspired saint who was expected to be hard on his printer's
-back and soft under his boss's feet. The idea of the publisher himself
-taking any interest in the <em>aesthetics</em> of book-making was
-thought to be a trifle queer.</p>
-
-<p>There was, to be sure, a small traffic in books printed for collectors,
-and the term "fine printing" had already come to mean
-"not printed to be read." Typography, as usual, was less than
-twenty years behind current architecture, and American type
-founders had already cleaned up the Renaissance and were well
-on their way into the eighteenth century, while American typographers,
-like interior decorators, were learning to hop nimbly
-from period to period. Everyone was learning to blame the machine
-for the things we were too greedy or too lazy to do properly;
-fortunately small power presses could be made to imitate
-hand-press printing, so it was not really necessary to do business
-at hand-press rates.</p>
-
-<p>In the field of general publishing, however, the hand-press page
-was out of the question, period styles were incongruous, and the
-real problem of designing the trade book had never been attempted,
-because it had never been seen with any clarity. There
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[Pg 170]</span>were many experiments with new binding materials and designs,
-and with printers' flowers and other typographic embellishment,
-but these were all attempts to "dress up" the old formats, and
-arose from no real understanding of the problem.</p>
-
-<p>Today [1935], thanks to the leadership of a very few publishers,
-the educational work of the American Institute of Graphic Arts,
-and perhaps to the enthusiasm of the designers themselves, there
-is a steadily widening appreciation of good trade book-making,
-and a better perception of the problem among book-makers. We
-are learning to plan books in <em>three</em> dimensions, considering proportion
-and weight and the texture of materials&mdash;designing for
-the hand as well as for the eyes. We are getting free of "period"
-styles and "period" motifs, and developing a new idiom to suit
-new methods of production. We are finally trying to make the
-physical aspect of our books bear some relation to the culture of
-our own time.</p>
-
-<p>Everyone has come to recognize certain aesthetic values in
-cheap machine-made glass and metal-ware, if it be designed for
-the machine and does not attempt to imitate the hand-made, and
-we find in it a quality different from, but not necessarily inferior
-to, that of the more elegant article. Thus in printing we are coming
-to realize that electrotyped plates, made from machine-set
-type and printed on wood-pulp paper on a perfecting cylinder
-press can produce a page quite as satisfactory, aesthetically, as the
-product of the hand-press. It is this new sense of values, born of
-respect for the machine and for what it can do if used with character,
-that must be the basis of the designer's attitude. If he is
-working with his fingers crossed, his work will show it.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The problem of suiting type to subject is the cause of much
-confusion. We give too little study to the characteristics of type-faces,
-and the announcements of the foundries and composing-machine
-people frequently attribute the most fantastic qualities
-to their new types.</p>
-
-<p>Furthermore, most of the faces available on the composing
-machines have been cut to reproduce some earlier design, and
-few to meet the contemporary technical or literary requirements,
-so that we have several great gaps in the line of type resources that
-need to be filled. Recent books examined, and a great part of all
-current book-making, show that we have largely thrown off the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[Pg 171]</span>
-reactionary hand-press ideal, and that we are learning to construct
-instead of decorate. We have finally obtained a supply of
-modern book cloth; Europe has given us a supply of modern display
-types; and we are anxiously awaiting the composing-machine
-companies' arrival in the Twentieth Century.</p>
-
-
-<p><em>Two years later</em>:</p>
-
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>From <cite>Publishers' Weekly</cite>, April 3, 1937. Copyright 1937 by R. R. Bowker Co.
-Reprinted by permission of the publisher.</p></div>
-
-<p>The end of a three-hour period spent examining a month's output
-of American trade books leaves one thinking much more
-about the book making situation in general than about the four
-books one has chosen. What impresses one is not that four books,
-or forty, are decently made, but that all the rest are so badly made.</p>
-
-<p>After my last experience in inspecting a collection of this
-kind, I wrote, with some satisfaction and much optimism: "We
-are learning to plan books in <em>three</em> dimensions ... designing for
-the hand as well as for the eye.... We are finally trying to make
-the physical aspect of our books bear some relation to the culture
-of our own time." Well, I still think we are only <em>trying</em>.</p>
-
-<p>Designing a book is a problem in <em>three</em> dimensions. The first
-essential is good and suitable materials, the second good proportions,
-the third a good type, and the last good typographic arrangement.
-Good decoration (or any decoration) is not essential
-at all. If the materials are poor in quality and unsuitable to the
-idea of a book; if the proportions detract from the aesthetic effect,
-or from the book's practical usefulness, typography can do very
-little to save it.</p>
-
-<p>In the last two years the publishers have been increasing trim
-sizes without increasing list prices, and at the same time increasing
-bulks, instead of reducing them to compensate. What that means
-in simple arithmetic is that when a novel is increased from a 7-1/2
-inch 12mo to an 8-1/8 inch large 12mo, and the bulk from 1 inch to
-1-1/8 inches, it requires a third more cubic inches of paper, a seventh
-more square inches of cloth, a sixth more board, etc.&mdash;all for
-the same money. It means even softer, less printable, less bindable
-paper; cheaper binding materials throughout; sewing in 32's and
-other skimping in workmanship. And it means clumsier, uglier,
-more perishable books.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[Pg 172]</span></p>
-
-<p>While other industries are seeking to make the implements of
-living more convenient and more durable and more beautiful, we
-are deliberately making books less convenient and less durable
-and less beautiful. While other industries are helping to develop
-popular taste and anticipating changes in it, we are waiting for
-our customers to get mad at us. While we see the masses getting
-wise to other frauds of branding and packaging, we still hand our
-"intelligent minority" the old fraud of inflated books.</p>
-
-<p>The digest magazines can get millions of readers, though magazines
-have always had <em>large</em> pages, but "that's not the book business."
-A few of the publishers can sell small books, but "that's all
-right for <em>their</em> lists." Booksellers can tell us the public is on to us,
-but "<em>their</em> customers aren't typical book buyers." Our friends can
-tell us they like to carry books in their pockets, and that they
-have no more room on their shelves, or under their beds, but
-they're only our crazy friends. Our salesman can tell us he got a
-bad order because the book was too thin&mdash;and ah! there we have
-the real and only truth.</p>
-
-<p>Publishers of new books blame this practice on the reprints,
-but they themselves control much of the offending reprint output.
-We allow the cheapest and shoddiest goods to set our styles;
-as if Fourteenth Street were to lead our dress industry, and jerry-built
-Queens our builders. Publishing is indeed, as we are so often
-told, a "different" kind of business!</p>
-
-<p>Most of the books I examined suffered from this inflation. In
-most cases the money spent on them would have produced a
-sound, handsome, and durable book in a smaller size, and without
-small type or crowding. Books printed on proper paper were so
-rare that I found myself reluctant to discard the few I found,
-however undistinguished in other respects some of them were.
-(I felt the same way about the few books with trimmed edges&mdash;but
-that is a delicate subject better discussed face to face, and with
-weapons, than in a family journal.)</p>
-
-<p>Most of the books suffered also from too much typography.
-I think we are all trying desperately to overcome typographically
-the handicap of paper and materials. Some of us find that if we
-don't do stunts the publisher will think we're not trying. Some of
-us are still suffering a little from Rogers-complaint. And some
-of us are perhaps just too anxious to express ourselves.</p>
-
-<p>Whatever the reason, we seldom have the courage to let a
-simple book stay simple. We are very particular about the type<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[Pg 173]</span>
-we select, and then we are afraid to use it boldly, and to depend
-on the design of the letter for our effects. Books with illustrations,
-diagrams, complicated heads, or other special matter, we are apt
-to handle well; but when the copy is simple we do insist on using
-rules and/or ornament. When we use ornament we are inclined
-to have meaningless little units repeated endlessly throughout the
-book, instead of a few positive, significant elements, used with
-proper restraint.</p>
-
-<p>In many of the books I saw, the design bore no relation to the
-subject matter, either in materials, format, or typography, and
-these were by no means all from the hands of inexperienced designers.
-Many suffered, of course, because good types are not
-available for certain problems. None of the composing machines
-has a really suitable type for books on contemporary subjects:
-the natural and social sciences, architecture and technology, etc.
-There should be several such types, comparable to the old numbered
-"moderns" and "old styles" but better in design, traditional
-in general form but impersonal and mechanized in drawing; and
-cut in several weights for different papers. If I may conclude by
-quoting again from my last effort in this medium, we are <em>still</em>
-"anxiously awaiting the composing-machine companies' arrival
-in the Twentieth Century."</p>
-
-
-<p class="p01"><em>Postscript</em>, 1951:</p>
-
-<p>Re-reading the above complaints, I am saddened to find how
-many of them I would repeat today. Many of them, but not all.
-The inflated book is becoming rare, but it took a world war to
-finish it off. With it we are losing the sloppy rough-cut fore-edge.
-"Period" typography is quite dead, but its belated and tortured
-passing is no credit to any of us.</p>
-
-<p>We still have too much typography, however; too many self-conscious
-tricks, too much un-discipline. And we still lack many
-of the types we need. The war may fairly be blamed for disrupting
-the programs of the machine people, for a book face takes
-years of labor and trial to produce. But where are the new hand-types?</p>
-
-<p>A healthy printing industry needs a prolific type design program.
-Creative type-founding stimulates the typographer, and
-paves the way for the machine cutting. We need ignore competition
-in the foundry field, and all we have is one tired monopoly.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[Pg 174]</span>
-Perhaps most of us are too polite to point, but let us not think that
-we can ignore the foundry situation, and supply the lack of types
-with calligraphy. Every creative period in printing history has
-produced its own new types. The present period can make no important
-contribution without doing the same.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[Pg 175]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">WILL RANSOM<br />
-<small>WHAT IS A PRIVATE PRESS?</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Private Presses and Their Books</cite>, by Will Ransom. Copyright 1929 by
-R. R. Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher. Corrected and
-amended by the author.</p>
-
-<p>Whenever private presses are mentioned, one of two questions
-is certain to be heard. The layman asks, "What do you mean, a private
-press?" while a collector smiles quizzically and inquires, with gentle
-malice, "How do <em>you</em> define a private press?" There have been many
-answers and much discussion, but common agreement has not yet fixed
-upon a single definite phrase. Perhaps one fascinating element of the
-subject is this very uncertainty.</p>
-
-<p>There is really little question about the meaning of "private" in any
-connection, with its connotation of complete personal freedom in
-thought and expression and exemption from exterior influence or compulsion.
-So it is a simple matter to define a private press in those terms.
-The usual argument, however, is less concerned with a fundamental
-definition than with its interpretation. The uncertainty is about which
-of the many presses of past and present shall be considered, from the
-collector's viewpoint, private enterprises as distinguished from commercial
-ventures. Actually the line of demarcation is so broad and nebulous
-that decision must always remain a matter of personal opinion. For a
-working basis, the following statements provide the best available
-material.</p>
-
-<p>John Martin, in his <cite>Bibliographical Catalogue of Books Privately
-Printed</cite> (1834), included certain presses whose productions "were not
-intended by the writers for sale, and the circulation of which has been
-confined entirely to their friends and connexions or to those who took
-an interest in the matter contained in them." The intent is apparent, but
-it applies equally to privately printed and private press printing, which
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[Pg 176]</span>are different matters. The restriction to "writers" is unfortunate, and
-Martin contradicts himself by including at least one press, Strawberry
-Hill, many of whose books were offered for public sale. On the other
-hand, he omitted many which were clearly within his own terms.</p>
-
-<p>M. Claudin, the French bibliographer, explains at greater length
-that a private press is "one set up in a monastery, a palace, a residence,
-or a private house, not the office of a printer. In fact it is a press reserved
-for personal and not for public use, patronized, held, owned, or hired
-for the occasion by a private person at his own house, or by a congregation
-in, or close to, their buildings. Whether the copies issued were
-merely intended for the use of an ecclesiastical order or to be presented
-to high personages, whether they were exposed for sale or reserved for
-exchange ... makes no essential difference." That seems to cover the
-ground pretty thoroughly.</p>
-
-<p>Alfred W. Pollard, one of the foremost English authorities, says:
-"For a press to be private a double qualification seems to be necessary:
-the books it prints must not be obtainable by any chance purchaser who
-offers a price for them and the owner must print for his own pleasure
-and not work for hire for other people." And Falconer Madan, another
-noted English bibliographer, condenses his decision into "a press carried
-on unofficially by a person or group of persons for his or their private
-purposes."</p>
-
-<p>The following paragraph, as originally written, erroneously ascribed
-the quotation to John T. Winterich. It should have read: Still
-another neatly phrased version occurs in <cite>English Books 1475-1900</cite>,
-by Sawyer and Darton: "Perhaps, in the end, the best definition of a
-private press is that it is an enterprise conceived, and masterfully and
-thoroughly carried out, by a creative artist who (whether or not he likes
-to cover some of his expenses by sales) does his work from a sincere
-conviction that he is so expressing his own personality."</p>
-
-<p>Except that any book offered for sale may easily come into the hands
-of "any chance purchaser" who learns of it, and that "creative artist" is
-a severe limitation, the common factor of independent expression is
-apparent in all these.</p>
-
-<p>Granting the connotation of "privacy" as an imperative factor, a survey
-of impulses and characteristics provides a better understanding of
-the matter. Actually, the principal differences of opinion and the major
-argument derive from the question of whether or not the productions
-of a press are sold or given away. But what difference does that make
-if the fundamental impulse and continued purpose prove monetary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[Pg 177]</span>
-return to be a minor consideration, a casual effect rather than a desired
-result? It is true that many private presses, even some of the greater
-ones, continued for longer and more prolifically than they would have
-without patronage, but that was because their subscribers liked the result
-of what was done in free personal expression. Even the Kelmscott Press
-produced an edition for Way and Williams with a Chicago imprint,
-but it should be noted that the publishers bought the book and the
-book-making of Morris' choice instead of engaging him to carry out
-their wishes. So there seems to be sufficient justification for disregarding
-the financial element, so long as it is clearly secondary, except to note
-that a private press must be free from the necessity of considering that
-phase of the matter.</p>
-
-<p>As individual expression chooses many avenues, each with its particular
-attraction, the reasons for establishing private presses are numerous
-and varied. They have sprung from the dreams and desires of
-craftsmen, authors and artists, prophets and dilettantes. Broadly, they
-divide into two general classes, one being concerned with literary content
-and the other with typographic form, with perhaps a third division
-concerned only with enjoying something to play with. The typographic
-viewpoint seems to attract popular interest to the greatest extent.</p>
-
-<p>The simplest and perhaps the truest type of private press is that
-maintained by one who is, at least by desire, a craftsman and finds a
-peculiar joy in handling type, ink, and paper, with sufficient means and
-leisure to warrant such an avocation. His literary selection may leave
-something to be desired and art may be disregarded or amazingly interpreted,
-but he has a good time. As a correspondent recently wrote:
-"This small effort shows the difficulties of an amateur both with ink
-and with type. But as it is a matter of the mere fun of the thing, rather
-than business, I am in that singularly fortunate position of being able
-to tell anyone who doesn't like it to go jump in the lake." Another
-version of the same spirit was happily expressed by Edwin Roffe (Rochester
-Press) in 1861:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container pw15">
-<div class="poetry">
-<p><em>I must confess,</em><br />
-<em>I love my Press;</em><br />
-<em>For when I print,</em><br />
-<em>I know no stint,</em><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><em>Of joy.</em></span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>At the other extreme is the author who is entirely or largely concerned
-with producing his own writings. He may turn printer by choice<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[Pg 178]</span>
-or for economy, or may hire a workman, but he must, to qualify as a
-private press, maintain the equipment in his own ownership or control.
-In this group the personal element is usually the one point of interest,
-as the typography is generally a mere means to an end. Somewhere in
-this rating may be included the secret presses devoted to political and
-religious propaganda in the days when free speech was a hazardous
-adventure; also those which, like Middle Hill, were established to preserve
-and distribute rare or unique items of information and record.</p>
-
-<p>Then there is the dilettante who dabbles a little in both phases but
-performs few of the functions in his own person. His viewpoint is more
-nearly that of a publisher, yet insofar as he maintains a press and follows
-an individual program he is a member of this goodly company. Horace
-Walpole was an excellent example. "Present amusement is all my
-object," he said at the start, and no doubt he accomplished that purpose
-not only for himself but for many of his friends.</p>
-
-<p>Another distinct approach to private press activity, most familiar because
-its results have been more significant and have affected typography
-as a whole more emphatically, is from the standpoint of aesthetic or
-artistic vision. Men with a fine feeling for beauty have done marvels
-with available materials, but the impulse usually includes type design.
-"Let's make a new fount of type" voiced the conception of the Kelmscott
-Press and the next ten or twelve years saw almost as many types
-designed, not all successful but certainly bearing the impress of individual
-expression. Even Dr. Daniel, with no assumption of creative
-ability, served the cause well by searching out and reviving the Fell
-types.</p>
-
-<p>Finally, there is a kind of press which may or may not be considered
-private but is certainly not commercial, a press maintained by a school
-for educational purposes of one form or another. Rarely do these reach
-a collector's attention, since their products are distinctly localized, but
-there are instances of significant accomplishment. The notable example
-is the Laboratory Press where, under the direction of Porter Garnett,
-students of printing learn something of typography in terms of the ideal,
-not to mention other cultural by-products. Mr. Garnett's statement may
-well be added to the definitions already quoted. "Issuing publications
-(for such, in spite of their slenderness, our students' specimens are),
-and having no commercial function, the Laboratory Press is, in the
-purest sense of the term, a private press; and its purpose being solely
-educational, it may be said to be the first private press to be dedicated
-exclusively to educational ends." On the sole point of priority the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[Pg 179]</span>
-Whitnash and School Presses might be offered in evidence, but no
-comparison of purpose can fairly be suggested.</p>
-
-<p>Somewhat in the same spirit is the use of a private press for experimental
-work, as proposed by James Guthrie, who has said: "The artist
-at the press is, before everything, an explorer. His true mission is to
-suggest and demonstrate, not ideas thirty years old, but new ideas,
-which may take our friend the fine printer (by easy methods) another
-thirty years to see the drift of!" That approach, as well as another stated
-intention towards "a gesture of protest and criticism," is of a part with
-the purpose animated by vision of new and finer achievement. That
-there was feeling of experiment in the first Kelmscott type and book
-is a matter of record, as is the fact that subsequent experience and development
-have changed the result in some important details.</p>
-
-<p>While these groups serve to distinguish the main differences between
-various kinds of private presses, very few individual instances lie within
-one classification. Craftsmen have turned to writing, authors to printing,
-and dilettantes to both. Some have achieved simultaneous distinction
-in type design, writing, and book-making. Such versatility is rare, yet it
-is illuminating to note that the outstanding figures, those who have
-contributed most of permanent worth to subsequent culture, of which
-William Morris is the chief example, are the ones who have combined
-the greatest number of elements in their activities.</p>
-
-<p>Out of all these has come something more than individual purpose
-and personal endeavor. Though the poorest of them have earned nothing
-more than pity or at best a genial tolerance, the significant presses
-have contributed richly to the program of typography and to aesthetic
-progress in general. Although the story of private presses is no more
-than a tiny chapter in the annals of graphic art, although all of them
-are but an infinitesimal part of the deluge of printers and printing since
-the middle of the fifteenth century, their influence, particularly upon
-book design, is strikingly impressive out of all proportion to their size
-and number. Verily, they are "the little leaven that leaveneth the whole
-lump."</p>
-
-<p>After all is said, the distinguishing quality of a private press is no
-less than a matter of spirit, indefinable except by inference. Whatever
-decision is made concerning the status of a press, with regard to its being
-private or not, must be based upon a recognition of the ideal apparent
-in its works, with due consideration for the human elements of its
-activities. Freed from the confining strictures of details, a private press
-may be defined as the typographic expression of a personal ideal, conceived
-in freedom and maintained in independence.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[Pg 180]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i180" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_180.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">PRESS MARK, ITS SECOND, BY FREDERIC W. GOUDY. Mr. Ransom was associated with the Village Press during its beginning
-months at Park Ridge, Ill., in the Summer of 1903.</p>
-
-<p>P<small>OSTSCRIPT</small>, 1951:</p>
-
-<p>Twenty-four years later the question is still academic. Instead of a
-few distinguished private presses there is now a spate of "press books,"
-some of which are produced in home privacy, others designed or printed
-or published by an outstanding personality, and a few, regrettably, on
-the border line of the commercial limited editions racket. But the meaning
-of "privacy" remains unchanged and a private press is what it has
-always been, a personal activity. I cannot improve on my original
-statement.</p>
-
-<p>To fill out the record with some definitions that were unknown or
-omitted in the earlier chapter, and to get all of the statements into one
-place, we may begin with William Morris's <cite>Note on His Aims in
-Founding the Kelmscott Press</cite> (1898): "I began printing books with
-the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to
-beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should
-not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity
-of form in the letters."</p>
-
-<p>C. R. Ashbee, of the Essex House Press, stated in <cite>The Private
-Press: A Study in Idealism</cite> (1909): "A private press as we understand
-it at the present day in England and America is a Press whose objective
-is first of all an aesthetic one, a press that if it is to have real worth
-challenges support on a basis of Standard, caters for a limited market
-and is not concerned with the question of the Commercial development
-of printing by machinery." In 1933 (also twenty-four years later) he
-repeated that definition in <cite>The Book-Collector's Quarterly</cite> (No. XI,
-p. 72) and added: "That, I think, is as near as we shall get."</p>
-
-<p>For the Doves Press, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson explained his purpose
-in the three <cite>Catalogues Raisonné</cite> of 1908, 1911, and 1916, shortened<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[Pg 181]</span>
-in the last: "... to attack the problem of Typography as presented by
-ordinary books in the various forms of Verse, Prose, and Dialogue and,
-keeping always in mind the principles laid down in the Book Beautiful,
-to attempt its solution by the simple arrangement of the whole Book,
-as a whole, with due regard to its parts and to the emphasis of its capital
-divisions rather than by the addition &amp; splendour of applied ornament."</p>
-
-<p>Among the commentators and bibliographers, Robert Steele, in <cite>The
-Revival of Printing</cite> (1912) makes no attempt at definition, and G. S.
-Tomkinson, in his <cite>Select Bibliography of Modern Presses</cite> (1928)
-"still seeks the right answers." In the latter book, Bernard H. Newdigate's
-introduction contains two statements which indicate the spirit
-that informs private presses and in recent years has expanded into more
-public book-making: "... a zeal in the pursuit of their art which has
-been inspired by something more than mere money-making, and in
-many cases by the attainment of a degree of excellence which invests
-their work with a peculiar interest for all those who study printing..."
-and specifically about operators of private presses who "have printed
-their books because they have judged the books worth printing for their
-own sakes, or worth printing in some particular way; and it is the particular
-way in which each of these printers has sought to give expression
-to his conception of how his books should be printed and the way in
-which he has overcome the limitations of his type and plant and solved
-the several problems which beset the studious printer in every detail of
-his work, that give them so much individual interest...."</p>
-
-<p>In later years, we have had noble bibliographies of the Nonesuch,
-Grabhorn, and Ashendene Presses, Bruce Rogers' <cite>Paragraphs on Printing</cite>,
-and Daniel Berkeley Updike's <cite>Notes on the Merrymount Press</cite>
-and <cite>Some Aspects of Printing, Old and New</cite>. All of these are required
-reading for collectors of press books, and each represents a personal
-viewpoint, but only one defines a private press.</p>
-
-<p>That is the Ashendene <cite>Bibliography</cite>, but one who seeks for a formal
-declaration will not find it. The few phrases that can be isolated&mdash;" ...
-the absorbing interest of an otherwise busy life...."&mdash;"The Press
-was started solely for the sake of the interest and amusement I expected
-to derive from it...."&mdash;"... the striving after an ideal...."&mdash;these
-casual comments are slender evidence. If, however, the entire Foreword
-is read, one discovers just why and how a private press is operated&mdash;"the
-letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="center p2">COMPOSED IN ELDORADO TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[Pg 182]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />ALFRED W. POLLARD<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>The Trained Printer and the Amateur:<br />
-and The Pleasure of Small Books</small></em></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From the Centaur announcement booklet, Lanston Monotype Corporation,
-Ltd., London, 1929.</p>
-
-<p>Printers, as a class, like all other craftsmen, can only thrive
-by supplying their customers with what they want at prices
-which they are willing to pay. Here and there an exceptionally
-gifted and courageous craftsman may rely on being able to obtain
-a better price for better work, and be rewarded for his confidence,
-but success will always depend not only on himself but
-also on two external factors over which he has very little control;
-the existence of enough customers, or potential customers, able
-to recognise better work than that which they have been getting,
-and the ability and willingness of these customers to pay a higher
-price for it as long as a higher price is necessary for its production.
-But occasionally the discriminating customer (or potential customer)
-may not find a master-craftsman able and willing to do
-for him what he wants, and if so, if he cares enough about it to be
-an enterprising amateur, he starts a press of his own to print the
-books he wants as he thinks they ought to be printed. Very often
-he fails; almost always he finds that he must engage at least one
-skilled journeyman to help him through. But occasionally he succeeds,
-and when he succeeds he brings new life into the craft of
-printing.</p>
-
-<p>Definitions of what constitutes an "amateur" have always
-proved difficult. The two characteristics of the class of which I
-am thinking are that they have been readers and lovers of books
-before they have become printers and that they will not knowingly
-print any book badly for the sake of making a profit off it.
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[Pg 183]</span>As a rule they will only print the books they like, and they will
-print them according to their own standards. That some of them
-have made a good living by their work, does not alter their status.</p>
-
-<p>In the early days of printing amateurs abounded, but not at the
-very first. When printing was invented it was applied first of all
-to multiplying a few much-used Latin grammars and calendars
-for which there was a large and steady sale, because the production
-of manuscript copies had been too slow and too expensive.
-These early efforts, which have come down to us mainly in fragments
-found in binding, are rude and ugly enough. There is no
-evidence of any effort to make them beautiful for the sake of
-making them beautiful, and there was no need to do so. Fifteenth-century
-schoolmasters did not cosset their pupils with pretty
-school-books; they beat them. Their standard in printing was
-strictly utilitarian. But when the adventure was once undertaken,
-whether it was by Gutenberg, or by Fust and Schöffer, of printing
-large Bibles for use in church, there was at once admitted a
-standard of dignity, and this the Church for centuries did more
-than any other body to maintain. Furthermore when the goldsmith
-Fust and the scribe Peter Schöffer, greatly daring, set
-themselves to produce psalters for use in choir which, by red
-printing and by large and small capitals in red and blue, should
-rival the beauty of the hand-written and hand-painted psalters
-then in use, to the dignity of the first Bibles there was added
-beauty and charm, and in a few years bookmen all over Europe
-were eager to apply the new craft to multiplying the books in
-which they were specially interested. A few secular highbrows
-stood aloof. As some old ladies still drive out in their carriage and
-pair (a very pleasant and dignified way of getting about) and abjure
-motor-cars, so there were a few great bookmen who clung
-to manuscripts and would not have a printed book in their libraries.
-In the same way for some twenty years bishops looked
-askance at presses and types, and it was not until 1474 that a
-printed missal was placed upon an altar, and not until 1479 that
-more than two editions were printed in any year, or anywhere
-outside Italy. But when Milan and Rome had continued to set the
-example, German bishops were content to follow it, and when
-they decided to print they found a vigorous way of maintaining
-a high standard. They commissioned the best printer they could
-get to do the work; they allowed him to charge an agreed price<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[Pg 184]</span>
-for it, and they obliged every Church in their province or diocese
-to provide itself with a copy before a specified date.<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
-
-<p>In France in several instances a Bishop, or the Canons of a
-Cathedral, arranged with a printer to come to the Cathedral town
-and print a missal or breviary under their supervision. These good
-men were perhaps rather amateur publishers than amateur printers
-working private presses with a hired man to do the heavy
-work. But if we choose to think of them only as customers, they
-were customers who knew what they wanted and brought the
-printer under their roof as the best means of seeing that they got it.</p>
-
-<p>As regards the printing of secular books in the fifteenth century,
-since the craft was a new one, it was necessarily run in the
-first instance by men who had been brought up in other occupations.
-In this sense nearly every native printer outside Germany
-was an amateur. At the outset the newcomers were largely clerks
-in minor orders and professional scribes; but merchants, professors
-and men of letters generally were attracted to the new
-craft, many of them doubtless only to make money, others to
-print books in which they were specially interested. Even more
-than in the case of the bishops or canons who commissioned missals
-and breviaries, we must think of this motley crowd of recruits
-rather as amateur publishers than amateur printers. It may be
-doubted whether even Caxton (who was by trade a mercer) in
-all his fifteen years in the business, set up the equivalent of one of
-his small folios with his own hands. He started his press because
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[Pg 185]</span>he wanted to get his books into print as the easiest way of circulating
-them; but there are no signs that he took any special
-interest in fine printing for its own sake, or took any joy in producing
-a handsome book. His standards were those of a competent
-but unenterprising scribe, who only wanted to set his words down
-accurately on the page so that they could be easily read. The master
-printers all over the Continent of Europe, when they had the
-courage to stand out against the pressure to cut prices or increase
-profits by using cheaper and cheaper paper, and crowding more
-on to it, were doing much better work than Caxton, and when
-they found customers who encouraged them to do their best,
-their work altogether outclassed his.</p>
-
-
-<p>When we turn to the scholar-printers of the sixteenth century
-I think it would be hard to deny the claim of Aldus and the Estiennes
-to a disinterested love of good printing, as well as a desire
-to get the books in which they were interested into print. It is
-true that the rich scholars of Italy and France were used to a high
-standard of excellence in the books, manuscript or printed, which
-they put on their shelves, but it is to the credit of Aldus and the
-Estiennes and Simon Colines and Geoffroy Tory that they
-catered also for the needs of less wealthy scholars, not by cheapening
-paper or crowding more old types on a page, but by designing,
-or causing to be designed, new fonts, with which they
-could print more economically without loss of beauty. Moreover,
-more especially at Lyons, the new ideals of compact printing,
-of the small book beautiful, were applied to printing not only in
-Greek and Latin, but in the vernacular, and these sixteenth century
-models can still be imitated without archaism or ostentation,
-which, when fifteenth century masterpieces are followed,
-are often difficult to avoid.</p>
-
-<p>"A penny, I trow, is enough for books," said one of Robert
-Copland's customers to him, somewhere about 1530, and the spirit
-of that remark haunted the vernacular English book trade for
-nearly a century and a half. Amid all the outpouring of the wonderful
-Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, though no printing
-was allowed in the provinces except at Oxford and Cambridge,
-there was not a sufficient demand for books in all England to provide
-work for more than about five and twenty master printers
-many of whom had only a single press, with a couple of journeymen
-and an apprentice. The Privy Council was always trying to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[Pg 186]</span>
-keep down the number, both of printers and presses, and its action
-in so doing is usually represented as solely dictated by the
-fear of their being employed in producing seditious or schismatic
-pamphlets. No doubt this fear was the main cause of the Council's
-action. But if there had been enough lawful work for twice
-as many printers and presses, the number might have been doubled
-with no increase of risk. The risk lay solely in the fact that a
-man who owned and could use a press, if he could not get enough
-lawful work to give him a living, might be tempted to take secret
-work. Unless they were desperate, men would not risk hanging
-to earn a few shillings, or a few pounds, but there is ample evidence
-that in Shakespeare's day some of the small master printers
-really were desperate, and it was only natural that they should do
-bad work&mdash;as indeed they did. All over Europe printing at the
-beginning of the seventeenth century was bad; in England it was
-very bad indeed.</p>
-
-<p>During the second half of the seventeenth century and the
-whole of the eighteenth, the wealth of England steadily increased,
-and with its wealth the standard of education. There was
-a much greater demand for books, and though printing was permitted
-after 1693 in the provinces without restrictions, there was
-clearly more work to do in London. Printing became neat, and
-on occasion elaborate, and throughout the eighteenth century,
-both in England and Scotland, there were constant experiments
-and efforts to improve it, to which full justice has not yet been
-done. Among these efforts to improve it there is no reason to include
-Horace Walpole's private press at Strawberry Hill, or any
-of the other private presses which, possibly in imitation of his
-example, subsequently sprang up, except perhaps that at Lee
-Priory. The Strawberry Hill books were handsomely printed
-according to the taste of the day, but they showed no originality,
-such as was displayed by Baskerville or even the Foulises, and they
-certainly started no style. The other private presses of the eighteenth
-and early nineteenth centuries were purely literary in their
-aims, and many of the books produced at them are below the
-average good commercial work of the day.</p>
-
-<p>In the middle of the nineteenth century the great spread of
-education caused a demand for very cheap books, both for amusement
-and instruction, which led to some lowering of standard.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[Pg 187]</span>
-More dangerous still were the very gaudy ideals of decorative
-work which found favour during the era inaugurated by the
-Great Exhibition of 1851. There was an epidemic of bad taste
-among book buyers and publishers, and therefore printers responded
-to it, as they always will, whether gladly or reluctantly,
-respond to any popular demand which brings grist to their mill.
-Meanwhile much quite good work was being done by the Chiswick
-Press and other firms, but the influence of the amateur on
-the professional printing of that period is not much in evidence,
-either for good or for evil.</p>
-
-<p>The Daniel Press, worked as an amusement by the Rev. C. H.
-O. Daniel, Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, for a good
-many years, beginning about 1874, seems to me one of the best
-examples of a really amateur press that can be adduced. The interest
-of its books is mainly literary, but it is also typographical,
-and though the performance is usually slight, and even thin, Dr.
-Daniel showed real <em>flair</em> in his revival of the old Fell types, his
-uses of italics, and the happy knack with which the work was put
-on the page. I think that Dr. Daniel's influence may possibly be
-traced, though only quite slightly, in some of the pretty books
-(often a little spoilt by the weakness of the ink) published by
-Kegan Paul, Trench &amp; Co., in the eighties, most of them printed
-by Messrs. Ballantyne. If this is true, it is so much more to Dr.
-Daniel's credit.</p>
-
-<p>We come now to the movement of which William Morris was
-the leader, which placed to the credit of English typography
-some of the finest books the world has ever seen. Morris must be
-classed as an amateur, and his press as a private press, because he
-printed to please himself, and no offer of money, however great,
-would have induced him to print anything he really disliked. We
-must not, however, allow the private income which enabled Morris
-to carry out his ideas without worrying over cash-returns, or
-the fact that he sold most of his books by means of circulars from
-a private house instead of over a counter, or any other consideration,
-to blind us to the fact that he was one of the world's greatest
-craftsmen, and certainly, if we consider his versatility, his sureness
-of touch and his imagination, the finest that the British Isles
-have ever produced. If he had had the largest printing house in
-London, and had printed the Kelmscott books in a special depart<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[Pg 188]</span>ment
-of it to advertise the rest, it could not have made him more
-of a craftsman than he was. He stands in a very real sense alone
-by virtue of his unique and splendid personality.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i188" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_188.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p>Admiration for Morris led to the setting up of several private
-or amateur presses, which did excellent work in his spirit: notably
-the Doves Press, conducted at first by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, an
-ex-barrister, who had produced some real masterpieces as a bookbinder,
-and Mr. Emery Walker, the photo-engraver, who had
-ever been ready to help anyone trying to promote good printing;
-afterwards by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson alone. There was also the
-Ashendene Press of Mr. St. John Hornby, one of the partners
-in Messrs. W. H. Smith &amp; Son, who, I fancy, has done rather
-more of the work with his own hands than most other private
-printers. Robert Proctor's Greek type, again, was brought into existence
-by love of Morris, but Proctor, like Messrs. Ricketts and
-Shannon, who were responsible for the Vale Press books, had no
-press of his own.</p>
-
-<p>The beauty of all these books reinforced the influence of the
-Kelmscott Press ones, by proving that what Morris had done on
-his own lines could be done by lesser men with the variations suggested
-by their individual tastes. They reinforced also the proof
-which Morris had given, that so long as it is regarded as a hobby
-(or in a commercial house as an advertisement) the production of
-really fine specimens of printing is not an impossibly expensive
-one. Morris made no profit from the Kelmscott books as a pub<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[Pg 189]</span>lisher;
-could allot himself no payment for all the magnificent
-decorative work which he put into them with his own hands. He
-got nothing from his venture save the joy of achievement and
-pleasure of giving copies to his friends. But he proved the existence
-of a public willing to pay for the cost of print and paper,
-even when both print and paper were the best which money
-could buy; and I believe that most venturers in the same field
-have been supported to about the same extent. From our present
-point of view, this is one of the most important results which
-Morris achieved. The direct influence of his work on men like
-Mr. Updike and Mr. Bruce Rogers can only be reckoned very
-slight. But if the Kelmscott books had not made the success they
-did, neither Mr. Updike nor Mr. Bruce Rogers would have been
-given his chance, and to make it possible for younger men to get
-their chance is one of the finest things a master craftsman can do.</p>
-
-<p>Private presses have multiplied greatly in the last thirty years,
-and some of them have done fine work. But the influence which
-they are exercising on the commercial printing of the present day
-is not in any way comparable to that which the Kelmscott and
-Doves books exercised a generation ago. There is no virtue in a
-book being printed in a small edition or in a private house, and
-no virtue in producing endless specimens of printing rather than
-books. Mr. Meynell and the Nonesuch Press (whose achievements
-I should admire much more joyously if it had not been
-called a "press") have shown what a diversity of interesting work
-can be obtained from commercial printers by a man who has
-good taste and knows how to get what he wants. When fine work
-can be obtained in this way private presses seem of little use save
-as an amusement to their owners. But no one is as yet making full
-use of the revolution (a much greater revolution than that inaugurated
-by the Aldine italics) which the "Monotype" machine
-has effected in modern printing just at the moment when (owing
-to the economic conditions, compositors having at last secured a
-fair wage) it was most needed. Thanks to the wonderful facility
-with which small types can now be cut and the greater quickness
-of machine-setting there is now only one obstacle to a new triumph
-of the Small Book Beautiful; and that is the obsession of
-the paymaster, the Customer, that it is unreasonable to expect
-him to pay anything approaching the same price for compact
-books in small clear type with no needless expanse of blank paper
-around the type page, as for the same number of words printed
-in larger type and with much more blank paper. The obsession is
-fostered by the fact that the reprints of popular books which
-have passed out of copyright and which often are produced in
-very pretty forms, are sold in large quantities at small prices, because
-no author has to make a livelihood out of them. But if a
-book does not appeal to a large public and yet has to earn money
-for its author it cannot be sold at a low price, and it is childish for
-the customer to insist that this fact should be concealed from him
-by books being made needlessly large in order that he may persuade
-himself that he is still getting plenty for his money. Publishers
-and Printers and Authors should unite to educate their
-paymaster the Customer on this point, and it is much to their
-interest to do so, for the book space which is now occupied by a
-couple of hundred volumes might easily hold two or three times
-as many if all books were printed with pleasant compactness. If
-an Amateur would arise who would help to train Customers to
-pay high prices for beautiful compact books he would be doing
-good service. At present most of the finely printed books are
-needlessly and inconveniently large.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[Pg 190]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> The story of Bible-printing in England runs on very much the same lines.
-As soon as it was decided that English Bibles were to be placed in all churches,
-the printers were chosen, the price was fixed and every Parish was ordered to
-supply itself with a copy. From that day to this, with only a very partial
-exception for a few years under Queen Elizabeth, the printing of the plain
-text of the Bible has been a monopoly in England. Since the seventeenth
-century it has been kept absolutely in the hands of the King's Printers and
-the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. From about 1770 onwards various
-provincial printers tried to circumvent this monopoly by printing Bibles with
-only a nominal amount of commentary, but hardly any of them found it worth
-while to issue a second edition. The monopolists knew that to maintain their
-rights in the nineteenth century, which made unrestricted competition into a
-fetish, they must give good value to buyers, ensure good workmanship, and
-give their workmen no ground for complaint. They have fulfilled all three
-conditions, and as a result we still have a Bible Trust in England, which is a
-Trust in the true meaning of the word, because it is worked in the interest
-of everyone concerned.</p></div></div>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[Pg 191]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />FRANCIS MEYNELL<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<small>SOME COLLECTORS READ</small></h2>
-
-<p class="center p22 small1">This essay appeared originally in <cite>The Colophon</cite>, Part IV, 1930. It was revised and
-retitled The Personal Element for inclusion in <cite>The Nonesuch Century</cite>, 1936, from which
-it is here reprinted.</p>
-
-<p>It wouldn't be easy to imagine an idea, a policy
-and a business more "personal" than our Nonesuch has been.
-This is my excuse for the personal (worse, the first-personal)
-character of these ensuing notes.</p>
-
-<p>Nonesuch was started by three of us in the close quarters of a basement
-room (two of the three became husband and wife); at our
-busiest and most successful we have never had an office staff of more
-than three, usually our friends as well as our associates; we later lived
-above and in our office; we have been responsible ourselves not only
-for every decision of policy of what to publish and not to publish
-but also for every piece of printing, of make-up, of advertising; for
-jackets, catalogues, specimen pages and a vast deal of miscellaneous
-editing. And, more than anything else, it is our own taste which has
-determined our choice of books and choice of styles. In short everything
-(except typing and account-adding in later days) has been done
-by Vera Meynell or David Garnett or me.</p>
-
-<p>When I set myself to the making of these notes I thought I should
-only have to remember, not to reconstruct. I had by heart all that was
-worth knowing about the beginnings of the Nonesuch in itself. But
-for its remoter beginnings in myself I found that I had in fact to go
-back to my childhood.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[Pg 192]</span></p>
-<p>What induced this revision of my opinion was a phrase (quoted
-in my brother Everard's "Life" of Francis Thompson) from a letter
-of my mother's. "Please return" she had written to Thompson, "the
-revise proofs sixteen pages at a time."</p>
-
-<p>First of all (said I to myself) I am the son of a mother who was not
-only a poet but who knew also that page proofs have to be dealt with
-in units of sixteen. Yes, and that was only a trifle of the family's
-knowledge. I have often seen my mother unflinchingly cut a treasurable
-phrase in one of her essays so that it should end to the line or
-paragraph of the printer's prescription; and correct a proof so that a
-word deleted here would be promptly balanced by an added word
-there to save the over-running of the corrected lines. Where did she
-learn this tenderness towards my craft? But from my father, of course.</p>
-
-<p>And then I realised that, if he likes it or not, the Nonesuch Press
-is really my father's grand-son. In establishing it I was doing no more
-than reverting to type.</p>
-
-<p>There was of course the literary background, the great names and
-exciting personalities of the writers who were my parents' friends.
-There was George Meredith whose limping descent of the staircase
-I can just, and whose yearly tip of a pound at Christmas I can very
-easily, remember. There was the silver teapot which I never carried
-to be replenished without remembering my father's solemn sanctification
-of it: "Robert Browning has taken his tea from this." There was
-W. B. Yeats standing owl-like at the door blinking to discover my
-mother through the smoke emitted from the Egyptian cigarettes which
-I had lately been sent at top speed to buy, my father sometimes going
-twice through his pockets before he assembled the necessary tenpence
-halfpenny. (Tenpence halfpenny was also the price of a box of soldiers,
-and once I thought of buying soldiers instead of cigarettes and
-running away from home.) There was Francis Thompson, "The
-Poet" as we children always called him, fragile, mannered, and complaining
-of the weather or of the quality of our food. Much later I
-remember Jack Squire discussing the plans for the first <cite>London Mercury</cite>;
-and Hilaire Belloc brought by Wilfrid Blunt because of my<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[Pg 193]</span>
-father's "discovery" of his first writing in the <cite>Morning Post</cite>. I don't
-remember Stevenson or Patmore; but framed holographs of <cite>In the
-Highlands</cite> and <cite>The Toys</cite> were set between the gold Japanese embroideries
-which surrounded the sitting room. This literary "atmosphere"
-was more continuously and intensively itself than anything I know
-today&mdash;even in psycho-analytic or Communist circles. "Does he
-write? Then do bring him." "Is he a Thompsonian? Of course he
-must come."</p>
-
-<p>Every Sunday afternoon and evening my parents were "at home."
-There was endless poetry-reading, endless "literary talk" by my
-mother's devoted admirers. No, not endless. There were two signals
-for their departure. The first gong, so to speak, was the arrival of the
-hot blackcurrant jam drink. The second was my father unbuttoning,
-almost unostentatiously, the top button of his boots.</p>
-
-<p>But all this was literature, not letters, and letters was after all the
-chief occupation of the house. A literary hot-house should have produced
-in me, very nearly did produce, an over-sensitive literary
-plant. And sure enough I wrote poetry, with three of my sisters and
-one of my brothers. (George Moore in one of the "Hail and Farewell"
-volumes has a disconcerting fancy of the young Meynells assembling
-for their verse-writing hour once a week.) But letters made me into
-a printer.</p>
-
-<p>In a play about Francis Thompson which was lately produced
-my father had necessarily to be represented. He objected to his portrayal
-under his own name, and he was therefore made to appear as
-John Oldcastle, his writing-name before I was born. In one scene
-he was shown sitting in the office of the paper which he edited,
-<cite>Merry England</cite>. He struck the bell twice for his sub-editor, once for
-his office boy, three times for his secretary. There was indeed such a
-magazine. But there was never an office, never a secretary, never a
-sub-editor, never an office boy. The whole work was done by my
-mother and father and amateur helpers on and about the library
-table. If I was allowed in the room on press-days the bargain was
-that I was to sit under the table. Mostly this was fun. I learned a lot<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[Pg 194]</span>
-about the leg-fidgets of writers. And "under the table" became my
-own kingdom, from which I could at the age of seven declaim without
-embarrassment Gray's "Elegy" to the Sunday night supper guests.
-But one memory survives which still carries horror with it&mdash;the memory
-of my mother suddenly going down on her knees, down to my
-level, and burying her face in her hands. She had just been told, in
-the midst of proof-correcting, of the death of Coventry Patmore.</p>
-
-<p>"The Poet" was one of the helpers&mdash;a feared helper. He would
-wish to engage all the rest in argument as to the desirability of this or
-that paragraph. On one occasion, J. L. Garvin, who could disturb
-by his brilliant relevance almost as much as Thompson by his dull
-irrelevance, made an unexpected call. Proofs were already overdue.
-By a masterly manoeuvre "the poet" was sent to entertain him. Garvin,
-the liveliest talker of our day, was overwhelmed by Thompson's
-discussion of the relative merits of Lyons and A.B.C. tea shops. He
-sat mumchance an afternoon through. Thompson reported: "Never
-have I known Garvin so brilliant."</p>
-
-<p><cite>Merry England</cite> was a monthly, but its crises were not less acute for
-that. You can put off so easily until too late what has to be done only
-once a month. But <cite>The Weekly Register</cite>, which was also my father's
-property, and which was written almost wholly by himself and my
-mother, was a weekly. The correction of proofs was a diurnal occupation
-with Thursdays as the grand climax. It was printed by the
-Westminster Press; and here, too, my father was the begetter of my
-trade. For he was part-owner of the Westminster Press and helped to
-establish with it a style of typography and a care for detail in printing
-which were far ahead of the run of commercial presses.</p>
-
-<p>When he was over fifty my father added the last segment to the
-circle. Magazine proprietor, editor, writer, printer, he now became
-book publisher, as managing director of Burn &amp; Oates. He transferred
-from John Lane Francis Thompson's books and my mother's,
-and he gave me my first job. He gave me also my first lesson in detail.
-<cite>The Collected Works of Francis Thompson</cite> were issued by Burns &amp;
-Oates a few months after I had joined the firm, and I was allowed to
-have a hand in designing the edition. When it was printed my father
-discovered that several commas had broken away from the ends of
-lines and that a number of the kerns or top loops of the letter "f" had
-been broken. Day after day piles of the imperfect volumes were
-massed in his flat, which was immediately above the office. We had
-a sort of fire-bucket drill. One of my sisters would find the page, my
-father would dab in the comma, I would do the blotting and another
-sister would restack the books. Some scores of thousands of pen
-corrections were thus made. I don't think my father would have
-trusted any one of us to do the actual pen work. He leant back, he
-quizzed, he admired after every stroke.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[Pg 195]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp42" id="i195" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_195.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">The title page of Bunyan's classic, composed in Caslon and Deutsche
-Zeitschrift, printed by the Kynoch Press, edition, 1600 copies.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[Pg 196]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>In 1913, pursuing a common typographical errand, I chanced to
-meet Stanley Morison, who had just emerged from a bank and was
-anxious to concern himself with book-production, and he joined
-forces with me at Burns &amp; Oates. A year later as a personal venture
-I purchased a hand press, which I kept in my dining room; and my
-next step was to persuade the delegates of the Oxford University
-Press to let me use some of their seventeenth century Fell types. They
-were very obliging, and they let me have what I wanted, charged me
-for it as if it were sold, but very properly kept the legal title to it, so
-that if I were to misuse this cherished type they could at any time call
-upon me to surrender it. I still have these Fell types in my possession.
-"The Romney Street Press," since I lived in that street, was my new
-"style," and I issued a prospectus, which I regard now with mixed
-feelings of shame and admiration at my audacity; for if ever there was
-a gold-brick prospectus this was one! Here it is:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>"The Romney Street Press at 67 Romney Street, Westminster,
-has been set up for the better and unaffected production of Books,
-&amp; Pamphlets, &amp; single sheets of poetry. The type of the Press (used
-for this prospectus) is the finest of the series imported from Holland
-in about 1660 by Bishop Fell for the Oxford University Press, by
-whose courtesy it is now used. The editions of the Romney Street
-Press will be limited to a maximum of fifty copies. The preliminary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[Pg 197]</span>
-costs of equipment amount to £40, &amp; Francis Meynell, the Director
-of the Press, invites subscriptions to cover this amount. Subscribers
-will have first call upon the publications of the Press at cost price,
-upon the amount of their subscription. The first publications will
-be Seven Poems by Alice Meynell, written since the issue of the
-Collected Poems. There will follow Mary Cary, the meditations,
-occasional poems and spiritual diary of the wife of a Cromwellian
-captain, now first published, from her MS. note-book; &amp; Love in
-Dian's Lap, by Francis Thompson. But the process of production
-will be slow. Suggestions for other books, particularly of 17th century
-reference, will be welcome. <small>APRIL</small> 1915."</p></div>
-
-<p>I may say at once that the only two books which I issued (<cite>Ten
-Poems by Alice Meynell</cite>, and <cite>The Diary of Mary Cary</cite>) were, with a
-good deal of difficulty, disposed of&mdash;yes, the whole of the fifty copies;
-but there were no general subscriptions to the Press, not one, and the
-cost of equipment, forty pounds, bore heavily upon me. Perhaps
-because of this, perhaps because my dining room was my workshop,
-and printer's ink was apt to get into the soup, I discontinued the
-venture&mdash;which in any case (since I had no technical assistance and
-very little competence myself) was decidedly irksome.</p>
-
-<p>Meantime decisive things had happened to me. I had met George
-Lansbury, inspiration of my politics, and I had met Bruce Rogers,
-inspiration of all eager typographers. For the next five years I worked
-in close association with George Lansbury. (I suppose that he has
-lately become one of the most generally loved men in England. To
-anyone who has known him in times of deep stress as intimately as
-I have that cannot be surprising. There is no qualification in my
-admiration and affection.<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>) In him I found a most ready support for
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[Pg 198]</span>my "propaganda" view of good printing and good craftsmanship of
-any kind. Lansbury secured the financial support which made it
-possible for me to start the Pelican Press. I think the Pelican was a
-pioneer in the policy of having very few types but all of them of good
-design. We set advertisements for commerce, which was in those days
-something of an innovation; and we printed political pamphlets in
-the Minority Labour interest. These pamphlets are odd to look at
-now. The slogan of "fitness for purpose" had not yet informed us. A
-report of the great meetings which we held at the Albert Hall after
-the first Russian revolution was designed with the mannered elegance
-which would have suited better an essay by Walter Pater. And I
-remember myself writing a double-page political manifesto for the
-<cite>Weekly Herald</cite>, calling upon the proletariat to rise and end the war,
-which was set in Cloister Old Face with a seventeenth century
-flower border and sixteenth century initials.... I set up with elegance
-what must be the rarest of Siegfried Sassoon first editions. I
-myself have no copy. Bertrand Russell brought him to see me when
-Sassoon had decided to refuse to go back to the war, and I made
-into a leaflet his letter of explanation to his Commanding Officer.
-I am now astonished at what we published without prosecution.
-Now it would be "seditious propaganda." I can only put it down to
-the innocent elegance of typography!</p>
-
-<p>Soon after the war I began making proposals from the Pelican
-Press to various publishers. Would they allow me to print for them
-this that and the other book in a "really nice" edition? I pointed out
-that if they were in fact wrecked upon the conventional desert island
-and wished to take with them the conventional choice of two books,
-Shakespeare and the Bible, they would not find a current edition of
-either fit for a tasteful shipwreck. But my arguments were fruitless&mdash;except
-of a plan for myself. Why shouldn't I do what I wanted them
-to do? Why wait on them? So I began to hanker after the as yet
-unnamed, unmanned and unfinanced Nonesuch Press. The next
-step was to bind David Garnett and Vera Mendel to the adventure.</p>
-
-<p>David Garnett's family history, like my own, is full of literature.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[Pg 199]</span>
-He is the son of two writers and the grandson of a third. He too, after
-a brief excursion into the Natural Sciences, reverted to type, opened
-a book-shop (with Francis Birrell), wrote his first novel and, in the
-same year, lent both the cellar of his book-shop and the assistance of
-his critical and book-learned mind to our new venture. He too
-"liked" books. He could, I mean, enjoy the feel of a book, its weight,
-shape, edges, the synthesis of sensitive things which is represented by
-that most insensitive word "format."</p>
-
-<p>Vera Mendel was the useful necessary incubator for our schemes.
-She provided our small capital and she did the routine work. She
-was also our fearless critic-in-chief. The things she stopped us doing!
-She, too, developed in me the sense which David Garnett already
-shared with her&mdash;the sense of responsibility about texts. And she put
-sobriety whenever she could into my lush "blurbs." Her flexibility of
-mind made our work, too, flexible. She translated Toller's first play,
-which was among our earliest books; and shared with me the editing
-of <cite>The Week-End Book</cite>. For the first eighteen months, while I was
-working full time at the Pelican Press and David Garnett at his
-book-shop, and before we felt justified in employing as much as an
-office girl, she did everything, from editing to stamp-licking, that I
-could not steal time to do.</p>
-
-<p>This about ourselves. Whence our corporate name? We began
-by looking not for a name, but for a device; and we found in a
-tapestry surviving from Nonesuch Palace the elements which Stephen
-Gooden made into our first "mark." In adapting the device, we took
-also the name; and I silenced an early objection that it was too boastful
-by pointing out that Nonesuch means "nonpareil" and so had
-an esoteric meaning. For nonpareil is the name of a very small and
-very humble size of type. Nonesuch was chosen, then, in a spirit of
-mixed hope and humility. Ralph Hodgson, the poet, who was interested
-in my enterprise, was most anxious that I should call it the
-Pound Press. (He had lately seen and admired my father's seventeenth-century
-farmhouse, which has in front of it a delightful yard
-or "pound.") Every book, he urged, warming to his subject, should
-weigh a pound and cost a pound! After some intensive correspondence
-his enthusiasm was routed, and the Nonesuch Press came into
-being.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[Pg 200]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp44" id="i200" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_200.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
- <p class="pc1 small1 center">Page from Montaigne's <cite>Essays</cite>, composed in Poliphilus and Koch Antiqua,
-printed by R. &amp; R. Clark. Published 1931; edition, 1375 sets of two volumes.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[Pg 201]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>So there we were, in 1923, in our cellar under Birrell &amp; Garnett's
-book-shop, book-enthusiasts, amateurs in the literal, though not, I
-hope, the derogatory sense of the word, tackling the donkey work of
-book production and the mule work of book distribution.</p>
-
-<p>For nearly two years we continued in the half light of our limited
-premises, producing illuminating works in limited editions, and
-varying the daily task with such occasional diversions as "invoice
-bees"&mdash;parties to which our friends were bidden in order to help us
-between drinks with the task of writing our invoices, "statements,"
-et caetera.</p>
-
-<p>It is scarcely worth recording the vicissitudes of those underground
-activities. Only when we tried to stop an ever-rising tide of Congreves&mdash;which,
-as with breaking back I eagerly unloaded the volumes
-from the lorries, narrowly escaping immuring V.M. in that
-unhistoric cellar for good&mdash;only then did we wonder whether, for
-purposes of self-preservation, the Press might not have to expand.
-(Indeed, one wall did bulge alarmingly.) Happily, part of the edition
-of Congreve got lost in Devonshire.... The lorries which were carrying
-the bound books from the printers at Plymouth broke down
-before we did.</p>
-
-<p>I myself travelled the first books, being received with varying
-degrees of courtesy by the book-sellers. Of those who were civil some
-were encouraging, some politely discouraging. When, very soon, we
-were obliged to "ration" orders, these were rewarded and persuaded,
-and the discourteous received no more than their small deserts.</p>
-
-<p>We meant to have fun with our business and fun we have had.
-Even when it had outgrown its puppyhood we continued to button-hole
-our customers and sell them not only our goods but our tastes
-and our views. Let me anticipate for a moment and quote a sample
-from the opening paragraph of our 1929 catalogue.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[Pg 202]</span></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>"In these days of literary censorship exercised by Sir Archibald
-Bodkin (of Savidge case fame), Sir William Joynson-Hicks and a
-Detective-Inspector of Scotland Yard, no publisher can be positive
-in his announcement that he will issue such and such a book.
-Chaucer? Fie, his language is coarse. Plato? The less said about
-Socrates and his young friends, <em>if</em> you please, the better. Shakespeare?
-He will perhaps pass unchallenged, for Lamb's Tales doubtless
-exhausted the censors' interest in this prurient author. Farquhar,
-Don Quixote even&mdash;these too may corrupt the corrupt, which is
-the current legal test of obscenity. With a propitiatory bow to Sir
-Archibald and to the potent and anonymous Detective-Inspector
-(the unlamented Home Secretary gets no more than a distant nod),
-we therefore give to this list of announcements the precautionary
-title, 'Bodkin Permitting.'"</p></div>
-
-<p>But this jape, and others, were part of a serious and deliberate
-policy. From the beginning we had a plan and hoped to have a
-public. In the words of our first (1923) catalogue, we intended to
-make books "for those among collectors who also use books for
-reading." We intended to choose our books to suit our tastes, not
-the imputed taste of a hypothetical public.</p>
-
-<p>Not that we felt ego-centric and exclusive about it, like the Californian
-millionaire who, I am told, caused a Shakespeare to be
-printed to suit his own taste and his own library&mdash;an edition of one
-copy. We have made now over a hundred editions to suit our own
-personal requirements&mdash;the author we wanted, the text we wanted,
-the format we wanted, the decorations we wanted. And if there had
-been no other profit from the Press, this shelf of my library would
-have seemed in itself a sufficient recompense for my share of the
-work. But fortunately, many other people also wanted these books.
-For our taste proved to be a normal contemporary taste. We did not
-create the vogue for Donne, for instance&mdash;we were ourselves part
-of that general tendency which has in these days found him afresh.</p>
-
-<p>My previous experience in printing had shown me quite clearly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[Pg 203]</span>
-that, in order to avoid monotony and to produce desirable editions
-at a reasonable cost, one must intelligently exploit the best mechanical
-equipment and the highest technical skill available. Today there
-is more fine typographical material to be had than even the largest
-printing house in the country could possess; and the various commercial
-presses have developed technical skill and variety along
-various lines. There was therefore no good reason, we thought, for
-a new "private press" in the old style, arrogantly self-contained, and
-with but one type and obsolete "hand" machinery.</p>
-
-<p>Our stock-in-trade has been the theory that mechanical means
-could be made to serve fine ends; that the machine in printing was
-a controllable tool. Therefore we set out to be mobilisers of other
-people's resources; to be designers, specifiers, rather than manufacturers;
-architects of books rather than builders.</p>
-
-<p>The propriety of our use of the word "Press" was called in question
-by Arnold Bennett and others. Pedantically it may be wrong; by the
-spirit it is nearly right. There is no exact word for our function,
-which was new. Nor for my own part in that function. When I have
-wanted to "sign" a book, at first I wrote "Typography by." But
-typography is only a quarter of my battle, and that phrase puts undue
-emphasis on one department, one only, of a job the essence of which
-is that it is manifold. A number of books I signed F. M. <em>Finx</em>. But
-"finxit" means "fashioned," and so "made," rather than "designed."
-I also used the phrase "under the care of," but this is vague and inaccurate,
-suggesting merely the oversight of someone else's designs.
-Perhaps "This book was planned by" is the least inaccurate formula,
-though this again leaves out the whole business of overseeing. Overseeing
-is no purely typographical matter. It means the planning and
-coordinating of the whole book&mdash;text, editor, and artist, as well as
-paper-maker, printer and binder. In fact, it involves an editorial as
-well as a typographical attitude.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[Pg 204]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter illowp40" id="i204" style="max-width: 24.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_204.jpg"  alt="" />
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">Opening page from Voltaire's <cite>Princess of Babylon</cite> with line drawing by
-Thomas Lowinsky. Composed in Caslon, printed by the Westminister
-Press. Published 1928; edition, 1500 copies.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[Pg 205]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Foulk Grevill writing of the posthumous edition of Sidney's
-<cite>Arcadia</cite> said "This requyres the care of his friends, not to amend (for
-I think that falls within the reach of no man living) but only to see
-to the paper, and other common errors of mercenary printing." My
-own interest and ambition in founding the Nonesuch was to see to
-the paper and other common errors of mercenary printing; but D. G.
-and V. M. aspired to tackle the question of amendments as well.
-From our fourth book onwards that policy has governed all our
-major publications. When, as sometimes happens, a text needs no
-more editing: when it is adequately and accurately "established,"
-there is still the quasi-editorial function of the illustrator. He may,
-he should, become in his designs more than a decorator; he should,
-I believe, become a significant <em>commentator</em>. "Kauffer on Burton" is,
-for example, how I would describe the drawings for our edition of
-<cite>The Anatomy</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>Our books were published in "limited editions" because we had
-to rope in the collector as well as the reader and student. We have
-found that it was necessary to impose another sort of limit on our
-output&mdash;a limit to the number of titles we could conveniently and
-properly publish in a given time. We came to the conclusion that
-eight books a year was about as much as we could manage if every
-detail was to be our personal concern and if all were to be freshly
-designed. The making of our books in a great variety of styles was
-an early principle, firmly held to. I did not want people to be able to
-say at the first sight of our books, "Oh yes, that must be a Nonesuch
-book." I wanted them to say, "That's not a bad looking book," and
-then to find that it was ours. My calculation&mdash;it was a calculation,
-not a programme&mdash;proved surprisingly right. Our first hundred
-books have taken us twelve years to make.</p>
-
-<p>Our friends have been our editors; and our editors have been our
-friends. We have had the most valuable suggestions for books, and
-the most valuable criticism of details of production even, from them.
-I have seldom "passed" a binding, for example, without asking
-Geoffrey Keynes's opinion of it. His well-wishing has been of extraordinary
-value to us, apart from the many editions which he has
-himself admirably edited for the Nonesuch. It was he who introduced
-us to those other excellent editors of our texts, John Hayward
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[Pg 206]</span>
-and John Sparrow&mdash;the former a keen critic and helpful adviser.
-E. McKnight Kauffer, Stephen Gooden and T. L. Poulton have
-also done for us much more than illustrate a number of our books.</p>
-
-<p>E. McKnight Kauffer (who drew us from the life for the last of
-his illustrations to <cite>The Anatomy of Melancholy</cite>) at one time had office-room
-with us. The hours I spent in discussing aesthetics with him
-were stimulating&mdash;over-stimulating, we found, when there was work
-to do. So, in the end, we nailed up a list of "red-herring words"
-("functional," "the Artist" and so forth) which were not to be used
-during office hours on pain of a fine of sixpence for each use. But
-there was no sixpenny escape from George Moore. While <cite>Ulick and
-Soracha</cite> was at the printers, he came almost daily, hung up his square
-bowler hat and settled down to read aloud to us the revisions he had
-made in his last batch of proofs. Each time it was an entirely new
-text. The first version was almost illiterate. The second grammatical
-but undistinguished. The third a transfiguration. It was fascinating
-to see the process of his composition at close quarters: and our feelings
-were undisturbed by anxieties about the printer's bill, for he had
-proposed at the outset that he should pay for his own corrections.
-They exceeded the original cost of the setting. In any event, who am
-I to be critical? For one book I had 37 different varieties of title-page
-set up. My friend William Maxwell, who printed this book, said
-that he did not mind "losing" (printers are like farmers) on the text
-of a Nonesuch book because he always made up his loss on the
-title-page....</p>
-
-<p>In 1925 we moved from our cellar to Great James Street and we
-decided (with some misgivings) to incorporate the firm. It seemed
-better to our auditors although we had suspicions that our subscribers
-might be discouraged from collecting when they saw first the
-formula "Ltd." on our letter-paper. We did them an injustice. The
-partners became directors and shareholders. Vera Meynell bought a
-little book entitled "The Secretary and His Directors" and, impressed
-by the legal penalties that hedge about these offices, occasionally
-wound up one of our long triangular discussions by taking down
-the minutes book and saying: "Well, I suppose that this might as
-well have been a board meeting." Once a year, for the benefit of
-Somerset House we (the directors) presented to ourselves (the shareholders)
-with all due formalities, a report on the year's accounts and
-progress. Otherwise it made no difference.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[Pg 207]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp40" id="i207" style="max-width: 23.75em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_207.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">The Antigone Greek type used in Homer's <cite>Iliad</cite>, decorated by Rudolph
-Koch. Printed by Joh. Enschedé en Zonen. Published 1931; edition, 1450 copies.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[Pg 208]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Even the "mundial bad-time" (to quote the phrase of an Indian
-friend) of 1930 did not seem to affect us or our customers much. But
-the second year of the great depression brought onto the market many
-hoarded copies of our books from the pickle-shelves of profiteers and
-deflated some of their more astronomical prices. Our survival-value
-(as luxury trades go) is perhaps due to the fact that even in boom-time
-we tried to be honest traders, not using our success with collectors
-to put prices as high as the traffic would bear, but giving a
-constant ratio of good value in the sheer materials of book-making,
-so that our paper, printing, binding were as good as any to be had
-at the price.</p>
-
-<p>No book-producing of our kind can subsist without sales in
-America. It was our good fortune to ally ourselves in 1927 with
-Random House of New York. No collaboration could be more
-satisfactory from a technical or a personal point of view. It survived
-the get-rich-quick temptations of 1929; it has survived the difficulties
-of the depression. New blood and money entered the Press two years
-ago when Cecil Harmsworth, Desmond Harmsworth and Eric
-Harmsworth joined our board. But they belong to our Second Century,
-not to our first.</p>
-
-<p>We have avoided antagonisms, even avoided competition. My
-friend Osbert Sitwell suggested that we should publish a satire on
-Noel Coward; Coward that we should publish his satire on the
-Sitwells. To both we said "no." How pleasant it would have been
-to issue them together in a single book! When I found that Peter
-Davies and the Nonesuch were both planning to reissue Cobbett's
-<cite>Rural Rides</cite>, we met and tossed for it. He won; and our editorial
-work was made over to him.</p>
-
-<p>Of all Nonesuch books that by which I should best like the venture
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[Pg 209]</span>
-to be judged is our Shakespeare, edited by Herbert Farjeon. It
-brought us, among other things, a characteristic contact with T. E.
-Lawrence. Lawrence had written a letter of fervent praise of the
-Shakespeare to David Garnett; and I sought permission to use it.
-David Garnett was himself our ambassador. Lawrence appealed
-to the group of friends with whom he happened to be. "I don't want
-my letter to be reprinted. I hate the advertising of my name and
-opinions," he protested. To his obvious chagrin (for Lawrence had
-a passion for publicity as great as his passion against it) his friends
-supported his view. "After all," said they "you are not a Shakespeare
-expert." That decided Lawrence. "I think it is my duty to give permission,"
-he said. This was his letter:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>"We turn over to the Nonesuch Shakespeare. There you have
-created a most marvellous pleasure. I have handled it ever so many
-times, and read THE TEMPEST right through. It satisfies. It is
-final, like the Kelmscot Chaucer or the Ashendene Virgil. And
-it is a book which charms one to read slowly, an art which is almost
-gone from us in these times. Every word which Shakespeare uses
-stands out glowing. A really great edition. The tact and grace of
-your editor have been surpassing. I think I like the size and shape
-and binding almost as much as the text. The paper, too, is just
-right. Altogether a triumph. One of the best things is that it can be
-done again. Nobody will ever dare to produce the old type of edition
-now, while your text stands there to reproach them. It means a
-permanent improvement in Shakespeares."</p></div>
-
-<p>"There they are, my fifty men and women." They must speak for
-themselves, and I have almost silenced them with my chatter. For
-their successors I can say only this: that it remains the ambition of
-the Press to make a worthy edition, textually and typographically,
-of every major English writer who has not already been appropriately
-served. It will make these books for money, and has no shame in that.
-We are not "Gentlemen Farmers" but workers at our trade. But we
-are enthusiasts also, even in our middle years; and still propagandists.
-Every well-designed book or advertisement or prospectus is the begetter
-of others; and good printing is one of the graces of life even where life
-is ungracious.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[Pg 210]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp42" id="i210" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_210.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">Title page for small book edited by Francis Meynell, composed in Janson and
-"printed on the premises" at the Press on Van Gelder mould-made paper. Edition,
-1250 copies.</p>
-
-<p>In a letter from Vienna in 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
-writes of Prince Eugene's library that it is "though not very ample,
-well chosen; but as the Prince would admit into it no editions but
-what are beautiful and pleasing to the eye and there are nevertheless
-numbers of excellent books that are but indifferently printed, this
-finikin and foppish taste makes many disagreeable chasms in this
-collection!"</p>
-
-<p>I should like to make Prince Eugene patron saint of the Nonesuch.
-And dear Lady Mary as well; for it remains the object of the Nonesuch
-Press to meet tastes finikin and foppish like his, studious like
-hers.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="center p2">COMPOSED IN POLIPHILUS AND BLADO TYPES</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[Pg 211]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> When we published the Compendious <cite>William Morris</cite> I sent copies to G. L., to
-Ramsay MacDonald and to Mr. Baldwin&mdash;the last a stranger to me. Their replies
-make almost a résumé of their political characters. G. L. saw in the social essays a
-conscience-pricking reproach about things left long undone. J. R. M. saw in them a
-cause for self-congratulation. Mr. Baldwin did not answer for nearly two years: the
-book had been mislaid. But when he did answer he covered two pages with his close
-hand-writing to apologise and explain. The Perfect Gentleman!</p></div></div>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[Pg 212]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>Printing for Love</small></em></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Cockalorum</cite>: A Bibliography of the Golden Cockerel Press, June 1943-December
-1948. (An address to the Art Society, University of the South West
-of England in Exeter, June, 1947.) Copyright 1950 by the Golden Cockerel
-Press. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher.</p>
-
-<div class="figleft illowp71" id="i212-2" style="max-width: 4.75em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_212-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div> <p>I have called this talk "Printing for Love."
-I have not come to preach a gospel to you, but,
-as I proceed to discuss printing and publishing
-and book-illustration, it will be apparent to you
-that one of the tenets of my religion is that we
-workers should do our job, whether it be farming,
-or gardening, book-keeping or building,
-hewing coal or engineering, <em>with a will</em>. In Ecclesiastes the
-Preacher advises us: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it
-with thy might." (Ch. 9, v. 10.) You may say that my job is a nice
-job; that it is all very well for me to talk. I can assure you that
-book-manufacture is a most intricate process. Things tend to go
-wrong at every stage of production. Of worries we printers have
-no end.</p>
-
-<p>I often feel like an Irish farmer driving his pig to market. In one
-hand he holds a stick to prod the pig. In the other a string tied to
-the pig's leg. The pig goes to the right and then to the left and
-the countryman wonders will he ever get that pig to the market.
-Many of my books are like that pig. They drive me to despair.
-And yet I love my printing like a mountaineer loves his mountains,
-which he climbs arduously with sweat and aching limbs.
-He has his reward when he reaches the summit and enjoys a fine
-view, much as I enjoy the appearance of a book which I have
-made with infinite pains. For both of us there is the joy of
-achievement&mdash;of something attempted, something done.</p>
-
-<p>"Oh, but," you may expostulate, "supposing you were a sewer-man,
-could you bring love into your work?" I am sure I would.
-In fact this case in point was quoted recently on the wireless. If
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[Pg 213]</span>I remember rightly, a speaker had referred with commiseration
-to the lot of the sewer-man working underground among the
-rats in the muck and stench of drains. He was called to task by
-a most insulted sewer-man, who explained that his was a good
-job&mdash;as good as any other. All the artists and the craftsmen who
-co-operate with me&mdash;the paper-makers, the cloth-makers, the
-tanners, the brass-cutters, the illustrators, the compositors, the
-pressmen, the binders&mdash;aye, and the authors too, who write and
-rewrite their text until it seems to me just right for the Golden
-Cockerel&mdash;all of them have their worries and their toil, but their
-work for me is done with love.</p>
-
-<p>This is a question you might ask yourselves: can a beautiful
-thing be made cynically? The dice is loaded against the unwanted
-child of a loveless marriage. You cannot divorce your work from
-your life. The two are parts of a whole. My religion is that love
-should be the basis of all one's living and all one's work. In
-so far as my books have been successful as works of art, it is because
-they have been made with love.</p>
-
-<p>Only with great self-restraint can I refrain from reading you
-again that beautiful thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle
-to the Corinthians on Faith, Hope and Love&mdash;you remember
-"Love suffereth long and is kind, love envieth not, love vaunteth
-not itself, is not puffed up." Please read it now and then. It is so
-important.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps, when you heard my talk was to be called "Printing for
-Love," you thought, "Oh, he means printing without financial
-reward." Believe me, love, too, hath its reward. Make what you
-have to make, and do what you have to do, the way I advocate,
-and you will have your reward. You must have <em>faith</em> in this. We
-have got to fight our battles against obstructions, but, if we fight
-well, and do what we are intended to do, everything is made
-possible for us: the most miraculous things happen in their due
-time.</p>
-
-<p>At the Golden Cockerel I never choose a book because I think
-it a good seller. Publishing friends are astonished when I admit that
-quite recently I refused books offered to me by Evelyn Waugh&mdash;one
-of the best selling novelists of today&mdash;and Sir Osbert Sitwell.
-Of course I do not disapprove of the authors. I admire them
-greatly. But in each case the manuscript submitted was not one I
-wanted for the Cockerel.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[Pg 214]</span></p>
-
-<p>I choose those books which I believe are <em>right</em> for this gay,
-mirthful, versatile bird. At times he likes to play, at times to be
-serious. He is interested in genuine old tales of adventure written
-by explorers and missionaries, who may have travelled in birch-bark
-canoes or quaint unwieldy ships. He is interested in old
-peoples and their poetry. At present he is printing a translation of
-the epic of Gilgamesh preserved on stone tablets. It is at least
-six thousand years old and refers to a flood&mdash;like Noah's Flood&mdash;which
-was recent history to people then. They were either more
-or less civilized then than we are now, according to your view
-of what constitutes civilization. They appear to have had more
-to eat than we have now; they spent more time in making life
-beautiful, and in thoughtful enquiry into spiritual things, such as
-survival after death. They had libraries of books, not printed like
-Golden Cockerels, but inscribed on series of stone tablets. There
-were several "copies" of the epic of Gilgamesh in the library at
-Nineveh.</p>
-
-<p>To return to the Golden Cockerel, he also loves the masterpieces
-of English and French literature and classical literature.
-He is really a very human bird, kind and sometimes very amorous,
-never spiteful, never morbid, never cruel. I personally pretend
-to run this Press, but you know this chimeric cockerel really
-rules the roost. When I and two friends took over the Press in
-1933, I had quite different ideas for it from those I had accepted
-a few months later. This Cockerel had his own personality and
-traditions. I have rather enjoyed following his gaudy plumage
-along the aerial avenues in which he seems to want to fly.</p>
-
-<p>This has not always been easy for me. From time to time I
-had partners to help me. Their ideas and mine naturally did not
-always coincide. They gave in to me so often that just occasionally
-I had, in common charity, to print and publish some book favoured
-by one of them and which I did not myself like. Usually on such
-occasions the finished book was to me abortive&mdash;a baby cuckoo
-among my own fledglings. And they usually did not sell well.
-Try as you may, you cannot do quite as well for someone else's
-offspring.</p>
-
-<p>It has always been of paramount importance that my books
-should sell. As a husband and a father of three children, I have
-had to make the Cockerel pay. Otherwise I should have had to
-work at something else. Obviously you cannot make a large<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[Pg 215]</span>
-income from the sale of, say, half a dozen books a year in small
-limited editions. But the Cockerel has never let me down and
-always made it possible for me to keep on with this work. The
-late St. John Hornby, who used to publish those monumental
-Ashendene Press books at prices in the neighbourhood of 100 gns.
-has said that, taken all over, he would just approximately cover
-his costs. No profit! He was in a financial position to ignore costs
-and the necessity to make his books pay. In theory that is good.
-In practice I think it is wholesome that the products of your
-labour should be commercially right. The absolute necessity
-for you to sell what you produce makes you take notice of the
-reactions of your patrons, keeps you from being too personal, too
-idiosyncratic, too precious, shall I say too amateurish? Here I am
-on difficult ground. It depends what you mean by amateurish. I
-think of myself as a professional, but, to the trade publishers (who
-would not dream of rejecting a manuscript from Evelyn Waugh),
-I, and others like me, are looked on as amateurs, because we do
-what we like.</p>
-
-<p>This type of amateur, who does what he likes, scientifically,
-is, I believe, very important. Into this category would fall research
-students, and poets, and scholars, and inventors, and all sorts of
-people. Has a scientific study ever been made of the amateur
-throughout the ages and his influence on our life? If not, <em>there</em>
-is a noble thesis for a research student, and he could make of it a
-most interesting and I think saleable book. Perhaps <em>one of you</em>
-will do it!</p>
-
-<p>Now you may be thinking, "here's this chap and they tell me
-he has a certain reputation as a printer. We get him down here
-to talk to us about printing, and off he goes gassing about love,
-and Noah's flood, and how to make money without trying to."</p>
-
-<p>Please forgive me! You see I started as a printer and taught
-myself how to dress a book according to my tastes. Then I became
-a publisher. Let us make no mistake: the important thing is
-the literary content of the book. How it is dressed is only of
-secondary importance. It <em>can</em> be dressed any old how. Obviously
-it is better when it is suitably dressed. But the dress, that is, the
-printing and binding, must not be accorded <em>too</em> great importance&mdash;it
-must not <em>vaunt</em> itself. If you ask a book-seller who has built
-up a circle of people who collect "cockerels" <em>why</em> they like
-cockerels, he will answer "because they are <em>cockerels</em>." By this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[Pg 216]</span>
-he does not, I hope, mean "because they wear cockerel dress"&mdash;or,
-shall I say, "plumage"?&mdash;but rather that they are, in their literary
-content, in their dress, and in their illustration, examples of the
-cockerel idea of what a book should be.</p>
-
-<p>Of course it is no good the author thinking he has done everything&mdash;it
-is the composite whole which is so engaging. I have
-known some illustrators who think the author doesn't count. And
-authors tend to think the artist a hack who should do what he is
-told. Both may think that my own small contribution, as the
-architect of the whole structure, is unimportant. Quite the greatest
-joy for me in publishing is being in constant delightful intercourse
-with these beautiful authors and artists. Beautiful is the
-right word. I don't mean physically, of course, but in their natures.
-Compare them if you like, to the most sensitive instruments designed
-by man and you behold these God-made beings a hundred-fold
-more sensitive. Go to the races and delight in the controlled
-nervousness and the pent-up fire of enthusiasm in those beautiful
-thoroughbred horses, and yet these dreamers of dreams, these
-passionate romancers, these scholars, in all the controlled exuberance
-of their knowledge and their zeal for research, these drawers
-of pictures, who "see the light that never was on sea or land": the
-horses are as nothing beside them!</p>
-
-<p>Now, who are these authors and scholars and artists? Well,
-some are, of course, professionals, in the sense that they live by
-their art, and others, a lot of them, are civil servants, or architects,
-or even prime ministers, who make their art a hobby. But can we
-end there? Is not every roadman tidying his road, every thatcher
-on the roof, or every good accountant neatly writing his accounts,
-and every worker planting his allotment of a summer's evening,
-an artist to a greater or less degree? He seems to me, watching him,
-to be working for love. And so with those of us who make
-seemly books.</p>
-
-<p>Normally you have the publisher who chooses what books he
-will publish, and contracts with the author to produce and sell his
-work in book form. You have also the paper-maker, the ink-maker,
-the type-founder, the maker of printing machinery and
-plant. You have the printer, with his compositors who prepare the
-type for press, his proof-readers, his pressmen who print the corrected
-type on the paper, and his warehousemen, who deal out the
-paper, and pack the printed sheets. You have the binders and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[Pg 217]</span>
-manufacturers of material and machinery used in binding. Normally
-a host of people have taken their part, however small, in
-processes which go to the making of the finished book.</p>
-
-<p>In a "private press" a very great deal of the work is concentrated
-in the hands of its owner. In certain cases the owner himself
-has set the type and printed it on a hand-press. His output has
-thus been severely limited to the productivity of one single pair
-of hands. This is not practical politics today&mdash;one's turnover is
-too small to cover overheads. An alternative is to employ skilled
-help with the type-setting and presswork. This was the method
-employed by the Golden Cockerel up to 1933. For reasons I need
-not go into, this method does not now pay.</p>
-
-<p>The survival of the Golden Cockerel, since I and my friends
-took it over in the midst of the great depression, has been due
-in large measure to the method of production which we adopted.
-By working in with the Chiswick Press, a famous old firm of
-trade printers, we arranged that the Cockerel should have the
-use of their plant and their skilled labour precisely as and when
-we wanted it, without the necessity for capital expenditure on
-plant or of providing the wages of skilled craftsmen, week in
-week out, whether or not fully employed. Those were terrible
-times, and our solution was the only one practicable. It was a
-great experiment, but it worked. Of all the important private
-presses in this country, the Cockerel alone has carried on&mdash;and
-right through the war. In the books of the Golden Cockerel a
-great tradition survives.</p>
-
-<p>But the survival of the Golden Cockerel, and of the tradition
-which it holds dear, is not achieved solely by its method of production.
-On the contrary, there are other prime factors. I have
-said that in my view the literary content of the book is more
-important than its dress. We must not print for the sake of printing.
-Firstly then I only print what I greatly desire to publish&mdash;something
-that is really good. I think I have been successful in
-finding a lot of new literary material which a sophisticated section
-of the community does enjoy to read. Of course some of my
-book-seller friends often beg me to print the old favourites, for
-which there is such a great demand. Occasionally I oblige. I have
-a Gray's <cite>Elegy</cite> at the binders now and a Keats' <cite>Endymion</cite> in the
-press. But generally the Cockerel prefers to be more enterprising.
-Look at all the literature we unearthed and published on the sub<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[Pg 218]</span>ject
-of the Mutiny on the Bounty&mdash;book after book. And then
-those volumes of Shelley's letters to Hogg. We found and published
-the journal kept by the Pilgrim Fathers when they went to
-America. Then there were the four previously unpublished books
-by that legendary character, Lawrence of Arabia, and so on.
-These are typical of the sort of thing we've found and published
-for the first time. Not the old favorites, but, because they add to
-literature and knowledge, so well worth making known.</p>
-
-<p>The second important feature of Cockerels is their illustration
-with engravings. More than any other process, engraving harmonizes
-with type. Engraved wood-blocks and copper-plates are
-very difficult to print as they should be printed, especially on a
-durable rag-paper. They are therefore little used in these days
-of mass-production. In the hands of the team of artists who work
-for the Golden Cockerel, engraving as an artistic medium is
-flowering as never before. By the enthusiasm and <em>love</em> which these
-artists bring to their work, they advance their techniques year by
-year, always improving on their own previous best, or the previous
-best of their competitors, till there sometimes seems to be no
-limit to the new effects they will obtain in their illustrations. It
-is an undying satisfaction to the Golden Cockerel to be able to
-encourage and advise talented engravers, and, by displaying their
-work to the best advantage, to build up for them the reputations
-they deserve. In the twenties it was Eric Gill, Robert Gibbings,
-Eric Ravilious, David Jones, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Agnes Miller-Parker
-and John Nash. In the thirties, and more recently, other
-engravers like Clifford Webb, John Buckland-Wright, Reynolds
-Stone, Gwenda Morgan, Peter Barker-Mill, and John O'Connor
-have come to the fore. You have seen a few examples of my own
-wife's work among the books I have brought along. And now
-we have others too, of an astonishing brilliance, like Dorothea
-Braby, coming on. It is impossible for me to be sufficiently grateful
-for the privilege of being able in my small way to nurture this
-flowering and progressive art.</p>
-
-<p>After their literary content and their illustration, the third feature
-of Cockerels which has sustained the Press, when other
-presses have fallen out, is my policy of co-operating with the buying
-public&mdash;of producing books which they can afford to buy.
-Obviously the very rich men who can pay 100 gns. for a book
-are now very few and far between. I have resisted the temptation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[Pg 219]</span>
-to compete with the 100 gn. books&mdash;the "museum pieces." I have
-resisted the temptation to spend so much on the production of my
-books that they are inaccessible. With the levelling of incomes
-there is now a considerable public, which, if it appreciates them,
-can buy Cockerels at the 2 guineas or 4 guineas which their
-production necessitates.</p>
-
-<div class="figright illowp68" id="i219" style="max-width: 4.75em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_219.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div><p>Those, then are the particular features of
-Cockerels which have maintained the Press
-through difficult years. That they are works of
-art&mdash;the conceptions of a book-architect&mdash;would
-not have sufficed, but, since they are expressions
-of the art of the book, let us consider them
-architecturally for a few minutes. The subject
-is vast: I must try to epitomise it....</p>
-
-<hr class="tb"/>
-
-<p class="p2 center small1">COCKEREL DEVICES BY MARK SEVERIN</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[Pg 220]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE<br />
-<em><small>THE FUN AND FURY OF A PRIVATE PRESS.<br />
-Some Voyages of The Golden Hind</small></em></h2>
-
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Bookmaking and Kindred Amenities</cite> edited by Earl Schenck Miers and
-Richard Ellis. Copyright 1942 by Rutgers University Press. Reprinted by permission
-of the publisher.</p>
-
-
-<div class="figleft illowp81" id="i220-2" style="max-width: 4.6875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_220-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>  <p>"It's fun, isn't it?" said my wife. "I've gotten so that
-I can recall whole sonnets just by reading these first lines." We were
-sitting in a patch of warm September sunshine under the walnut,
-trimmed high like a giant umbrella, over the terrace back of the
-press. Proof and copy of the long Contents of Edna Millay's new
-volume of collected sonnets lay on the table between us as we idled,
-savoring the first signs of Fall in the yellow leaves that the breeze
-scattered about the gray flagstones. The air was spicy and the
-ageratum and marigolds in the border matched the autumn colors
-of the goldenrod and wild asters by the roadside. "I love gardening,
-too," she said loyally. "I must pot those double begonias before the
-frost gets them." I lit my pipe again and we went on with the proofs.
-One hundred ninety-two pages set in Bruce Rogers' beautiful Centaur,
-corrected, tied and wrapped, lay in neat piles waiting to be
-taken to Camden for printing. We had worked at it off and on all
-summer&mdash;painstaking work, but as rewarding, in our eyes at least,
-as any labor we could think of&mdash;interesting copy, lots of problems to
-argue over, the excitement of watching the author's mind at work
-as proofs came back with alterations, changes that in some miraculous
-way always added clarity or cadence to the lines; reading and re-reading
-proof until the sonnets became part of us. Now it was finished,
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[Pg 221]</span>and we had added one more book to the world's store and to our
-little shelf of Golden Hind Press imprints. This book will be published
-by Harper &amp; Brothers in an edition which would take us the
-rest of our lives to print by hand. The design, the whole format and
-all the composition is ours. The printing and binding will be done
-elsewhere. Thousands of people will share our pleasure (or brand
-us failures). We feel that books of this type offer golden opportunities
-for the private press. We are not selling them, we are making
-them our way for someone else to sell. However, most of our books
-are printed on an old hand press, and given to our friends. So far
-we still have our friends.</p>
-
-<p>As a hobby, a private press may be as extravagant, or as inexpensive,
-as one chooses to make it. It's fun and hard work and a challenge
-to all the intelligence one possesses.</p>
-
-<p>We started our press in 1927, named it The Golden Hind after
-Drake's flagship that went on adventures no more hazardous than
-ours. Elmer Adler called it "A Busman's Holiday" for a publisher's
-production man. Perhaps he was right. At that time we knew little
-about the problems&mdash;about as much as parents do about the first
-baby. We don't know much yet, but we've had a swell time and
-through it have made a jolly lot of friends which in itself is reward
-enough.</p>
-
-<p>We started with an ancient hand press of unknown vintage that
-had been in use in the cut-room at the old Harper plant in Pearl
-Street since before the knowledge of any man now living. I've an
-idea that it may have come from England when Harpers started in
-1817. Until the 1830's all their books were printed on hand presses&mdash;so
-close are we to the beginnings of the art of printing.</p>
-
-<p>Later, in Philadelphia, we found a big Washington hand press
-in perfect condition that was going out as old metal. The bed was
-smooth though the edges showed the nicks of hard wear from the
-endless up-ending of the forms of some country newspaper. With
-decent treatment it will be just as good a hundred years from now.</p>
-
-<p>We made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. It's
-not always wise to know too much&mdash;it's a great damper on ambition.
-Shortly after we started, a chance came to do a proposed definitive
-edition of a well-known poet's works. It was to be in seven folio
-volumes on handmade paper and no effort was to be spared to make
-it right. Six hundred pounds of 18 point Lutetia and weight fonts
-of the smaller sizes were ordered cast at the Enschedé Foundry in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[Pg 222]</span>
-Haarlem, Holland, for the job. The type duly came, pages were set,
-and sample forms printed and bound&mdash;and then the project was
-withdrawn! In the light of accumulated experience I still break out
-in a cold sweat at the thought of our colossal nerve to have taken on
-such a task. Anyhow we had the type, and have used it many times.
-With it we have set the limited editions of each new book of Edna
-St. Vincent Millay's poems as they have come along, since 1928.</p>
-
-<p>The status of a private press is difficult to define. As far as we are
-concerned it is to make as well as we can only those books that we
-want to do and to turn down all else; to have no "help," no payroll,
-keep no books; to care not a hoot about a balance sheet which has no
-column for satisfaction; and to take all the time we want to do the
-job the way we want it. From the standpoint of factory speed we are
-nothing to write home about&mdash;but we are not a factory and have no
-ambitions in that direction. Ours is a private press and we work as
-we please: that is where the fun comes in. We can work hard if
-need arises; then hours have no meaning, and we work till we get
-exhausted, fed up, and solemnly vow that we'll never do another
-book. But we have been at it nearly fifteen years and we still think,
-even though composition is exacting work, that such congenial labor
-is the best fun in the world. Sometimes we have furious arguments
-over punctuation, as though life depended on it. It is surprising how
-much warmth can be generated over the position of a comma. When
-we set <cite>Shakespeare's Sonnets</cite> we had at least six different sources to
-work from, including a facsimile of the first edition. A single punctuation
-mark will completely change the meaning of a sonnet, so
-condensed is the wording to fit the mould. No two sources agreed
-throughout&mdash;who were we to put in Shakespeare's points for him&mdash;so
-the smoke got pretty thick sometimes, and the result was still
-another reading of the sonnets embodying those details we preferred
-from each: that's the fury of it.</p>
-
-<p>The dream of every private press is to own its own private face.
-We had our chance but didn't know what to use for money so we
-let it go. One of the best presses in the United States now owns that
-type&mdash;alas! We have many, too many, faces and borders and florets
-collected from Europe when the world was sane, yet every new
-volume seems to need something we do not have. Fred Goudy cast
-for us at his shop at Marlboro two sizes of Mediaeval. We did Mrs.
-Browning's <cite>Sonnets from the Portuguese</cite> in it. That type is precious
-now since the matrices were lost in the fire that destroyed all his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[Pg 223]</span>
-equipment at Deepdene. Long before the Monotype cut the Deepdene
-face, Fred cast it for us. We used it for Dr. North's <cite>Hymns</cite>.
-Then along came a book my wife wanted to do. Two hundred and
-eighty-eight pages of 14 pt. A.T.F. Garamond all standing in galleys
-made a lot of type for us to store. We used it again for Frederic
-Prokosch's <cite>The Assassins</cite> and later for <cite>The Carnival</cite>. Gradually the
-metal has crept into the house until scarcely a room is spared. We
-sleep with 60 cases of type in stands on our sleeping porch. We
-should be safe in a tornado&mdash;we have plenty of ballast.</p>
-
-<p>A couple of years ago we did a group of Edmund Spenser's
-<cite>Amoretti</cite> for Christmas. The lines breathe the spirit of another day
-and we wanted to preserve, if we could, the romantic atmosphere.
-I remembered that for the titles of the poems in <cite>The Queen's Garland</cite>,
-printed for R. H. Russell in 1898, D. B. Updike had used an
-odd Italic which he told me was Original Old Style cast by the old
-Farmer foundry in 1854. Some one had had fun with the 18 point
-size&mdash;it had a swell set of oversized vowels and all the long &#383;&#383; ligatures.
-The resulting effect looked much like very early printing. The
-mats were in the possession of the A.T.F. though they seemed never
-to have heard of them and were a bit annoyed by my insisting on
-seeing their file copy of the Farmer type book. There it was, and
-eventually they dug them out and cast them for us. We printed the
-book on our old Hoe hand press on Arak Ash white paper. For a
-frontispiece we used Virtue's beautiful engraving of Spenser. It was
-bound in tan boards with dusty rose cloth spine and a bright yellow
-label. In many ways it is our favorite book.</p>
-
-<p>Last year we had fun (perhaps I should say I did as my wife did
-not give her fullest sympathy). 1940 was celebrated, and how! as
-the 500th Anniversary of the Invention of Printing. The whole
-country broke out in a rash of exhibitions, lectures, special articles
-and such like, on poor old Gutenberg about whom practically nothing
-is known to begin with, not even that he invented movable
-type. If he did, he was only trying to fake manuscript writing and
-should have been hung as a forger. I got pretty fed up on the tosh
-that was being handed out. So, to even the score, I "discovered" in
-a garret in Mainz, Germany, the private diary of Gutenberg's wife
-(no one but I knew he had one). By quoting from her diary I
-showed conclusively that all the credit was really hers. I had cuts
-made of the old leather-bound volumes of the diary (four old volumes
-from the Harper Medical Library) and a page of the manu<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[Pg 224]</span>script
-(translated <em>into</em> German and written in the lovely hand of
-Dr. Otto Fuhrmann). Dr. Herman Püterschein, that infallible authority
-on things typographic, wrote a Foreword. It was titled <cite>The
-Mainz Diary: New Light on the Invention of Printing</cite> and 200
-copies went out for Christmas. Then the unexpected happened.
-Letters began pouring in showing it was being taken as gospel.
-Pundits, librarians, experts in the graphic arts, fell for it hard. My
-wife threatened to disown me. Of course the tale hadn't a word of
-truth in it. I had been in Mainz and Frankfort a few years before
-so that the thing started off with some element of reality. A friend
-in London gobbled it whole&mdash;I had to send a letter by Clipper to
-keep him from showing it proudly to his friends. After all, my yarn
-had about as much truth in it as most of the hash that I'd been forced
-to listen to during the year and I'd gotten quite fond of Frau Gutenberg.
-I felt, too, that I'd done my bit for the cause. Many of the
-biggest libraries, including the Library of Congress, had requested
-and received copies. Ten years from now it will pop up in some
-bibliography of a Ph.D. thesis.</p>
-
-<p>I had my fun all right.</p>
-
-<p>But the boys got even with me. A year later, the editor of a well-known
-art magazine and his wife, with careful deliberation and
-much ingenuity, sold me down the river with a hoax that I gobbled
-whole. So we are even and everybody is happy.</p>
-
-<p>Why are we so cracked about a private press? I often wonder
-myself. The house smells of printer's ink and type wash. Right now
-there are eleven metal-strapped type boxes on the sunporch where
-the expressman left them a week ago; and my wife is to have a
-luncheon tomorrow. Fine looking mess. I'll get around to them soon.
-There are piles of printed signatures of our Christmas book all over
-the place. The composing room is crawling with undistributed type.
-Can hardly work without spilling it. My pet Vandercook brayer has
-fallen arches&mdash;it was left in the sun yesterday and its insides turned
-to soup.</p>
-
-<p>Next morning on my desk I found the proof of our new broadside
-<cite>Emmer Jane</cite> with the drawing at the top beautifully colored by the
-artist. It's swell. Presently the messenger brought in the advance
-copies of the new <cite>Sonnets</cite> bound in blue natural-finished cloth
-stamped in gold, just as I wanted it. I can hardly wait to get home
-to show them to my wife. We must get that new type to use for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[Pg 225]</span>
-<cite>The Ghost Ship</cite>. We'll start it this week-end. How slow the days go.
-Isn't a private press fun!</p>
-
-
-<p class="p01"><em>Postscript</em> 1951:</p>
-
-<p>Still hard at it. We are older but no wiser. Nowadays the grand-children
-come in the back door and call up the composing-room
-stairs, "Arthur, may we play type and picture cuts?" They spend
-hours at it and I spend hours putting things to rights.</p>
-
-<p>The check-list has grown to 186 books and pamphlets. The work
-is still as exciting as ever, though we try to check the fury a bit. The
-skipper of the <cite>Golden Hind</cite> retired in January 1950, which released
-more time for the press; being in business always was a nuisance.</p>
-
-<p>We spent the summer doing a first edition of a Mark Twain book
-for Harpers&mdash;mixed with a lot of farming. For a retirement occupation
-we can commend a private press. It keeps up the interest in life.</p>
-
-<p>Offers of work flow in, much more than we care to accept. We
-are not in business and we have more projects of our own than we
-shall ever complete.</p>
-
-<p>It's fun to get up with the chickens and work together all morning,
-spend the afternoon puttering about outdoors, and retire at
-night dog tired&mdash;what my wife calls "nice tired," no nervous tension.</p>
-
-<p>The <cite>Golden Hind</cite> is twenty-four years old but her seams are
-tight and she manages nicely&mdash;who knows, maybe the voyage is only
-nicely begun.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN FAIRFIELD TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[Pg 226]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />EDWIN GRABHORN<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite><small>The Fine Art of Printing</small></cite></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">An address before the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco at its meeting in the
-Allied Arts Guild, Menlo Park, California, May 15, 1933. Fifty copies printed
-by Edwin and Robert Grabhorn for members of the Roxburghe Club, May 15,
-1933. Reprinted by permission of the author.</p>
-
-<div class="figleft illowp17" id="i226" style="max-width: 1.5625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_226.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div> <p>I know of no better way of beginning this talk to
-you tonight on P<small>APER</small>, I<small>NK</small> and T<small>YPE</small> than by first
-sketching a brief outline of the Art of Printing.</p>
-
-<p>Printing in its childhood was an art. The highest
-period of any art is its childhood, because childhood
-moves by spontaneous inner urge, not by rules and intellectual
-bondage that runs all into fixed moulds. It is
-an accepted truth that as skill and elaboration creep into
-development of an art, simplicity, feeling and beauty
-decline. The early printers were not weighed down
-with rules, formulas and theories which have smothered
-us today. With but one font of type, a wooden frame
-with a screw attachment and a crude inking device,
-they have given us books of strength and beauty that
-we have never equalled.</p>
-
-<p>We all like to think of the invention of printing as springing
-Minerva-like from the brain of man. Printing is, of course, the
-combination of paper, type, ink and the press; and these various
-elements were some three hundred years in the process of springing.
-Paper was the cheap substitute for vellum, and type the substitute
-for hand-writing.</p>
-
-<p>All of us are more or less familiar with the invention of printing
-and with its God-like first-born, the Gutenberg Bible. Those
-who have had the thrill of examining the great 42-line Bible have
-told us that it is the most beautiful book ever printed. This is a
-magnificent tribute&mdash;one that I have never heard contradicted.
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[Pg 227]</span>
-Just how much of the beauty of this Bible is due to the art of the
-illuminator and how much to the skill of the printer has never
-been told by those who represent it to be the most perfect
-specimen of printing.</p>
-
-<p>A few years ago a book speculator dissected an incomplete
-copy, selling the leaves with beautifully hand-illumined initials at
-twice the price of those pages without decoration. I hope this
-speculator lost his ill-gotten gains in the stock market.</p>
-
-<p>A thing of beauty stands alone, and I know of no fixed law by
-which we can judge beauty except through the emotions; and
-emotions are rather difficult to tabulate. I, myself, can only contemplate
-the childhood of printing with amazement and admiration.
-In its youth it exhausted every possibility of type
-arrangement.</p>
-
-<p>An estimate of the activity of those first wooden frames can
-only be guessed at. In Venice alone, as early as 1472, over two
-million separate volumes were printed. By the opening of the
-sixteenth century the art of printing had spread to every civilized
-country and the supply of its raw materials became so great that
-the process of cheapening set in.</p>
-
-<p>The first printers had selected as models for their types the
-beautiful hand-written books of their day. The second generation
-of printers modelled their types from those of the first printers.
-The illuminator gave way to the wood-cutter and the fine art of
-printing became a science, then a craft, and when William Morris
-tried to stop its downward slide, in 1891, it was a trade.</p>
-
-<p>During this downward trip through four centuries, weak attempts
-to restore the art of printing to its first high place in the
-life of man were made. Benjamin Franklin wrote on the "Improvement
-of Printing Backwards," protesting the discontinuance
-of the tall "f." But man was not interested in the intangible influence
-of art as much as he was in the perfection of the machine.</p>
-
-<p>The ink was hardly dry on the effusions of our modern printing
-critics, when the collapse of over-production set in and silenced
-them, I hope, permanently.</p>
-
-<p>Writing about modern books in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia
-Britannica, Francis Meynell of the Nonesuch Press
-says: "The type-setting machines used with as much skill as hand-set
-type will give a better result, and in alliance with fast but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[Pg 228]</span>
-very perfect cylinder printing presses, will give this result not to
-a few, but to a multitude. It has taken us from the day of 'the
-book beautiful,' and given us the day of the beautiful book."</p>
-
-<p>The fast moving cylinder presses of the Nonesuch Press have
-slowed up since this was written. And we can thank God that we
-have some opportunity for reflection.</p>
-
-<p>One of the modern criticisms of William Morris and the private
-presses that he inspired is that too much stress was placed
-on method. Method means how a thing is done and how a thing
-is done is of very vital importance if we want to give our work
-durability.</p>
-
-<p>I have said before that it was William Morris who attempted to
-stop the downward slide of printing. He was the leader in the
-revival of what is known as "modern fine printing." It has been
-said that Morris was inspired by a lecture of Emery Walker's on
-the Golden Age of Printing. While not denying Walker's position
-in this revival, we must admit that there is a vast gulf between
-talking and doing. Morris's was a very simple yet positive personality.
-There were no tints in his make-up. When asked if he liked
-colors, his answer: "blue and red," tells us whole volumes in folio.
-He had no tolerance for the effeminate printing of his day. He
-even scorned the sunny pages of the Italian Renaissance printers.
-It is no wonder that his Gothic books, in violent contrast to the
-weak old styles and modern type faces of his time&mdash;and our time,
-too&mdash;were startling. I have no doubt that some antiquarian hundreds
-of years hence, delving among musty tomes, will find
-Morris's books still giants in a land of dwarfs.</p>
-
-<p>Whether you like or dislike Morris's books is of little concern
-to me. But what is of vital importance to me as a printer, and
-should be to all printers who are endeavoring to print books that
-will last, is the honesty of William Morris. Morris knew, because
-he was a collector of the earliest printed books, that those early
-printed books could not have descended to him, looking as sparkling
-and vital as the day they left their makers' hands, without
-honesty of craftsmanship. It was this craftsmanship that Morris
-revived, and that we today will have to revive again before our
-books can have any claims to a long life.</p>
-
-<p>Let me briefly describe to you the various processes used in
-the making of books, beginning with the paper on which the
-book is printed. Morris found no paper being manufactured that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[Pg 229]</span>
-was suitable for his use. It was only after months of experiment
-and failure, during which he worked at the paper mill himself,
-that a satisfactory sheet was made for him. With the closing of
-the Kelmscott Press after Morris's death, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson
-and Emery Walker used his specifications for this paper at their
-Doves Press. This mill still manufactures this paper, and it can
-be obtained easily enough. But it is not popular with the printers
-of today because its texture is so tough, its resistance to type so
-great, that we rather choose the short cut to the Royal Road to
-Fine Bookmaking, using the many counterfeits with their imitation
-deckle edges and their artificial ageing at the mill. We also
-like opaqueness in our paper, although transparency is usually
-a guarantee of its quality. All-linen-rag quality paper can easily
-enough be printed on if dampened first. By lessening the resistance
-of the paper through dampening, the type can penetrate its tough
-fiber, and the ink thus becomes a part of the paper itself. But by
-taking the short cut and not dampening the paper, at least four
-times the quantity of pressure and ink must be used. This over-abundance
-of pressure and ink still does not penetrate the paper
-but leaves the ink upon the paper's surface so that it looks to me
-as if printed from an etcher's plate. The excessive amount of ink,
-because of the heavy varnish used in its manufacture, has a tendency
-to shine when dry, producing a luster that is hard on the
-eyes. In time a film of oil will encircle each individual letter, discoloring
-the paper, and the page will look like those cheaply
-printed eighteenth-century books do to us today.</p>
-
-<p>I know of no process in the making of a fine book more difficult
-of perfecting than getting the right amount of pressure and ink
-into the paper. In hand-made paper there is only an approximate
-uniformity in the thickness of the sheets, and these variations can
-be overcome by using a hand-press. The sense of touch must be
-developed until you can feel the right amount of pressure through
-the lever. The mechanical press is so regulated that it cannot control
-the variations of the paper's thickness. The right pressure
-can, of course, be applied to the average sheet&mdash;the heavier and
-lighter sheets can be sorted out before printing. However, this
-is seldom done. The paper is usually sorted when the finished
-book is being collated.</p>
-
-<p>I can speak with some authority on the importance of dampening
-a sheet of fine paper. Such a process takes lots of time, but if<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[Pg 230]</span>
-you think the time not well spent compare a book from the
-Kelmscott Press with any of the books of our best machine
-printers of today. You will see that decay is already beginning to
-set in in the machine book. The edges of the paper will soon turn
-yellow and the ink begin to spread.</p>
-
-<p>I hesitate to turn from the processes of making a fine book
-endure without impressing upon you the importance of using
-the finest quality of paper. The paper, and the ink that becomes
-a part of that paper, determines the life of the book, just as stones
-and mortar do in architecture. No matter how fine the type or
-how beautiful the decorations, the book must die if quality be
-lacking in both paper and ink.</p>
-
-<p>And now just a few remarks about the binding of a book.
-Bindings are the protection for the body of a book. Here permanency
-decreases as use increases. Only those books that have
-escaped usage have come down to us with their original bindings,
-except those bound in limp vellum. Heavy boards encased in
-leather were the protection of many early books. The swinging
-of the heavy covers breaks the hinges of the book, and this leads
-to destruction. William Morris revived the use of limp vellum as
-a book covering.</p>
-
-<p>Of far more importance than the cover in the making of a
-fine book is the gathering and sewing. When the printed sheets
-are folded a trained eye should put them together so that pages
-either under- or over-inked may be taken out. If there are no
-extras, then all the light pages can be put into one book, and the
-dark in another. If this is done, the critic will say that the press
-work is even.</p>
-
-<p>After the book is assembled the sheets are sewn together by
-hand, using a strong linen thread. Of course, they can be sewn on
-a machine, but you might just as well save that expense by gluing
-the sheets together. If you don't believe me, take a machine-sewn
-book, before it is glued, pull off the first section, hold it up by the
-last page and watch the book fall to pieces. Hand-sewn books are
-sewn on either cords or tapes. Of course, you can have cords and
-tapes on a machine-sewn book, but they will be false ones, pasted
-on after the book has been stabbed to death.</p>
-
-<p>I do not want to give you the impression that I am some sort
-of John the Baptist crying in a wilderness of machines. Machines
-are designed for special purposes and when we try to use them for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[Pg 231]</span>
-a different purpose from that for which they were intended we
-fail. You would think a carpenter who used a machine that was
-made to drive nails in an orange box unbalanced if he tried to
-adjust that machine to build a house. The delicately adjusted
-printing press that Francis Meynell idealizes was designed for
-producing our ephemeral printing.</p>
-
-<p>A machine cannot create&mdash;it can only assist, directed by the
-mind and imagination. The more that is left to the machine, the
-worse the work. The machine can arrive at perfection, perfection
-that is cold and dead and mechanical. And it is this cold and dead
-perfection that brings me to the beauty of the book of today.</p>
-
-<p>I would say that "Post-Modern" Fine Printing began in America
-with Bruce Rogers, at the plant of William Rudge. It was Bruce
-Rogers' books that have influenced American and English printers
-more than any other recent single force. It was the "charm" and
-finish of this man's work that none of us escaped. During the
-years that Bruce Rogers was designing special editions at the
-Riverside Press there were few collectors of his books. As late as
-1920, I bought some of these books from the publishers. They
-had been in stock nearly twenty years! Among them was "The
-Song of Roland" at the publisher's price. When I first started
-printing I was already an admirer and collector of these Riverside
-Press limited editions.</p>
-
-<p>Now William Rudge was a better business man than a printer.
-He recognized the ability of Rogers and engaged him. Then things
-began to happen to our Fine Art of Printing. The typographical
-designer came into fashion, the machine was glorified and we all
-became theorists. Printing was aimed at suitability. The scholar
-and critic displaced the master craftsman and the advertising
-artist was added by way of variety.</p>
-
-<p>Each new type face, faithfully re-cut by the aid of the pantograph
-and resurrected from our admittedly worst periods of
-printing, was eagerly bought by our typographical experts. The
-printers who had been quietly producing books, trying to make
-them a little better than necessary, fell into the hands of the
-publisher and the publicity agent. And the publisher announced
-that the next limited edition of 1600 copies was completely over-subscribed&mdash;the
-poor printer got one-third of what you had to
-pay. It was a Wonderland, indeed, until Alice woke up, and the
-printer was left with all the cards, and they were all blank.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[Pg 232]</span></p>
-
-<p>I am very glad it all happened. I would go through any form
-of hysteria again, if we could produce another <cite>Leaves of Grass</cite>.
-Since I am going to talk about type, I know of nothing better
-than to relate our experience in printing Walt Whitman's masterpiece,
-for it has shown me the folly of theory and intellect in art.</p>
-
-<p>We accepted this undertaking with enthusiasm. Here was an
-opportunity to prove that we could print a book. The first deposit
-had no more than been spent when the publishers announced it as
-the finest book to be printed in America, and off we started on the
-wrong track.</p>
-
-<p>Well, the finest book had to have the finest type and the finest
-type was the latest type. And it had to be a folio in size, because
-for One Hundred Dollars you had to get a folio. We bought one
-thousand pounds of the finest type; 18 point Lutetia, fresh from
-a new designer in Holland. And we hired two printers to set this
-bright new type and when it was all set, we pulled a proof and
-started to put grass into it&mdash;pale green grass, and it looked like
-grass and we pulled it out and tried again. Well, every time we
-tried that bright new type it didn't look right. So we dug up some
-of the latest theories about suitability, tried again, but it was no
-use. The brain told us one thing and our eyes another.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile, one thousand pounds of bright new type and
-months of labor were tied up with strings and the Master Craftsman
-was getting worried. He went to specialists for advice. They
-said: "Try this new initial or this new picture," and the Master
-Craftsman went back to his shop and bowed his head.</p>
-
-<p>Then his tired eyes lighted on a dusty case of type, designed by
-the artist Goudy but the critics had condemned it to the graveyard.
-Wearily the Craftsman dug it up and set a page of Whitman
-in it. Then he pulled a proof and Lo! He saw something that the
-machine had discarded; he saw strength: he saw the strong,
-vigorous lines of Whitman, born of the soil, without grass. He
-saw what he had heard whispered before. He saw strong, vigorous,
-simple printing&mdash;printing like mountains, rocks and trees,
-but not like pansies, lilacs and valentines; printing that came from
-the soil and was not refined in the class-room.</p>
-
-<p>And the printer knew that the limited edition was not a racket
-as long as he had honesty and sincerity, and reverence for the
-best traditions of his craft.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[Pg 233]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />HOLBROOK JACKSON<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<small>THE TYPOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM MORRIS</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>The Printing of Books</cite> by Holbrook Jackson. Copyright 1938 by Cassell &amp; Company,
-Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. First read as a paper, at the William Morris
-Centenary Dinner of the Double Crown Club, London, May 2, 1934.</p>
-
-<p>William Morris is an ironic figure. His achievements not
-only missed their mark, but hit marks he was not aiming at. His
-printing is no exception. The masterpieces of the Kelmscott Press
-which he aimed at making "useful pieces of goods" were typographical
-curiosities from birth, and so far removed from the common
-way of readers that they have become models of what a book should
-not be.</p>
-
-<p>He was a Bibliophile, or more exactly, a typophile whose affections
-became unruly in the presence of decorated incunabula, and,
-although he was outwardly correct towards pure printing, his heart
-was not there. According to Sir Sydney Cockerell he flirted with the
-idea of a folio edition of <cite>The Earthly Paradise</cite>, "profusely illustrated
-by Sir Edward Burne-Jones," a quarter of a century before the inception
-of the Kelmscott Press. His personal taste was much the same
-then as later, although he continued to pay homage to good as distinct
-from fine printing. It was the "essence of my undertaking," he
-said, "to produce books which it would be a pleasure to look upon
-as pieces of printing and arrangement of type." Thus inspired by
-the example of "the calligraphy of the Middle Ages, and the earlier
-printing which took its place," and in spite of his passion for decorated
-books he observed that the early printed books "were always
-beautiful by force of the mere typography, even without the added
-ornament with which many of them are so lavishly supplied."</p>
-
-<p>Much has been made of the emphasis he laid upon the book as an
-organic assembly of paper, type, and binding. But although few
-printers or publishers in the nineteenth century had insisted upon
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[Pg 234]</span>the excellence of these ingredients, as he did, the architectonic principle
-had never been wholly ignored. But in the main it was unconsciously
-observed. Deliberation is evident in the construction of the
-Pickering books, in the Keepsakes and Table Books of the thirties
-and forties, in the illustrated books of the sixties, and the later productions
-of the Daniel Press; and, if we may leave England for a
-moment, in such convenient publications as those of Bernhard
-Tauchnitz, where there is rectitude to satisfy the demands of the
-most austere of functionalists.</p>
-
-<p>It was not, then, the architectonics of the Kelmscott books which
-evoked a typographical revolution. Nor was it the pursuit of beauty
-which always haunted Morris's intentions. "I began printing books,"
-he said, "in the hope of producing some which would have a definite
-claim to beauty." Many printers and publishers of the time would
-have claimed as much. Bad taste in the arts and crafts is invariably
-the result of beauty-mongering, and the more costly books of the
-nineteenth century are littered with beauty from cover to cover.</p>
-
-<p>Neither was it originality. Morris never sought to be original. He
-was a revivalist, and all his work is derivative. There is nothing new
-even in that, for all the arts and crafts are derivative, and originality
-is apt to be a myth and often a nuisance. Morris was even less original
-than many other earnest innovators, and the Kelmscott books
-are derivatives twice removed. They are modern variations of the
-early printed books of northern Europe, as they in turn were but
-mechanical imitations of the manuscripts which preceded the invention
-of movable types.</p>
-
-<p>Nor again was there anything peculiar even in that, for all mechanical
-evolution seems to proceed in the same manner. The earliest
-railway carriages followed the lines of the stage-coach; the earliest
-steamships were schooners and brigantines with funnels and paddle-boxes;
-and the earliest motor-car was a horseless-carriage complete
-with tail-board. It is not surprising to learn that the earliest printed
-books were imitations of manuscripts, but it is surprising to find a
-nineteenth-century printer of genius imitating the imitations.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[Pg 235]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp51" id="i235" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_235.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">A page from <cite>Poems By The Way</cite>, written by Morris and set in the Kelmscott
-Golden type. This small quarto was the first book printed at the Press in
-two colors, black and red. Issued in October, 1891, in an edition of 300
-copies on paper and 13 on vellum.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[Pg 236]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>There is, however, more than one difference between these mechanical
-devices and the Kelmscott books. The engineers copied
-because they could not think of anything better. Now and then they
-even made concessions to beauty, in the form of superadded decorations,
-much as Morris did. But there was a marked difference between
-them, for Morris knew better. Although to him beauty meant
-decoration or ornament, yet in the first edition of <cite>The Roots of the
-Mountains</cite> he actually produced an undecorated book of great distinction.
-The book is not only admirable in itself, but it has had a
-better influence on recent typography than all the Kelmscott books
-together. Morris himself was delighted with the book. He declared
-it to be "the best-looking book issued since the seventeenth century,"
-and added: "I am so pleased with my book, typography,
-binding, and must I say it, literary matter, that I am any day to be
-seen huggling it up, and am become a spectacle to Gods and men
-because of it." His enthusiasm rings true, but this was a passing
-fancy, for even then he was in hot pursuit of more opulent beauties.</p>
-
-<p>It was the magnificence of the Kelmscott adventure which impressed
-and influenced printers, professional and amateur, and
-resuscitated the curious vogue for so-called "Private Press" books
-artificially rarefied and deliberately beautified. But, in spite of many
-extravagances and some few absurdities, the Kelmscott influence
-has been beneficial. Morris reasserted sound principles, and the
-richness of his books helped to secure their acceptance. "The road
-of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." The style of the books
-themselves, because of their massive individuality, must always
-provoke differences of opinion, but in the house of books there are
-many mansions, and room for all tastes, whims, and even fads.</p>
-
-<p>I prefer my books pocketable, flexible, and legible. In the Kelmscott
-books these qualities are not sufficiently balanced. Each is
-there in some measure, but something is invariably added to weaken
-proportion. William Morris (or worse, Burne-Jones) is always
-getting between reader and author. I like my Chaucer neat. Morris
-produced Chaucer as Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree produced
-Shakespeare. I suspect that enthusiasts for such productions are not
-readers. The idea is supported by the fact that the majority of Kelmscotts
-are still in mint state; it is not easy to meet a copy bearing the
-honourable and endearing scars of use.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[Pg 237]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp56" id="i237" style="max-width: 30em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_237.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">A page from the first book printed in the Kelmscott Troy type, <cite>The Recuyell
-of the Histories of Troye</cite>, a large quarto printed in black and red and published
-by Bernard Quaritch in 1892. The edition: Two volumes, 300 copies
-on paper and 5 on vellum. "As to the matter of the book," wrote Morris,
-"it makes a thoroughly amusing story, instinct with medieval thought and
-manners."</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[Pg 238]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Legibility is relative, as I am reminded by my own experience, for
-myself when young did eagerly frequent Pickering's <cite>Diamond Classics</cite>&mdash;a
-practice I should probably have defended with conviction
-based upon sight rather than insight. I take a different view today,
-not only of miniature types, but of rules and spacings generally.
-Morris granted the necessity of legibility. In this he differed from
-another poet and amateur of printing, Robert Bridges, who used
-Gothic characters for the Daniel Press edition of his poems to induce
-slow ingestion. Morris believed that solidity of type and setting
-made for easy reading. By solid type he meant "without needless
-excrescences" or "the thickening or thinning of the line," which,
-with reservations, can be defended. Density of type area is a different
-matter and, if I admit charm, I reserve the right to question even
-aesthetical propriety in favour of legibility. The solid page is impressive:
-solidity inspires confidence, but confidence, as we know,
-is often illusion and not always guiltless of trickery. The first edition
-of <cite>The Roots of the Mountains</cite> would probably have been more
-readable with than without rules.</p>
-
-<p>But although legibility must always be the first rule of printing,
-there are other important principles. Morris summed them up in
-the word "beauty" with impressive but dubious results, because of
-his predilection for ornamentation. Any plain space for him was an
-opportunity for decoration, or, in Ruskin's words, for "the expression
-of man's joy in his work." He would go out of his way to make
-books bigger than they need be so that he might have more space
-to fill with his and Burne-Jones's illustrations. His type-faces became
-picturesque, his margins inclined to pomposity, and his paper was
-pretentious. The Kelmscott books are overdressed. They ask you to
-look at them rather than to read them. You can't get away from
-their overwhelming typography, and, even if you could, you might
-still be cheated of your author by their high-minded purpose, for in
-addition to being the creations of an impressive genius the Kelmscott
-books were protests against the logical conclusions of mechanical
-book-production.</p>
-
-<p>All these things are hindrances to reading, and I still believe that
-to be read is the destiny of a book, and that reading is best when you
-are least conscious of print or paper or binding. Since the Kelmscott
-books are not likely to induce that condition they must remain museum
-pieces, typographical monuments&mdash;beautiful and ineffectual
-angels beating in the void their luminous wings in vain.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-<p class="center p2">COMPOSED IN EMERSON TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[Pg 239]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><em>Stanley Morison</em><br />
-<small>FIRST PRINCIPLES OF TYPOGRAPHY</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">Published 1951 by the syndics of the Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by
-permission of the publisher.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>N<small>OTE</small>: This essay towards a rationale of book-typography was first
-attempted as an article, s.v. "Typography," in the twelfth edition of the
-<cite>Encyclopedia Britannica</cite> (Chicago and London, 1929). It was reconsidered
-and entirely rewritten for No. 7 of <cite>The Fleuron</cite> (Cambridge, 1930)
-when it also went out of print.... Although several reprints have been
-brought out and extracts have been made, demands continue for the
-whole text from printers as well as from those outside the trade for whom
-the article was originally written.... As the brevity of the essay seems
-to be one of its most approved qualities, no expansion, and only slight
-revision, was made.... The present reprint is that of the Amsterdam
-edition published in 1947, in which the first paragraph was interpolated.... It
-may be added that while the principles here set forth apply to the
-typography of books, the sections dealing with composition may be
-adapted to the design of newspapers and publicity....</p>
-
-<p class="right" style="padding-right: 2em; ">S.M.</p>
-</div>
-
-<h3>I</h3>
-
-<p>Letters of the alphabet that are cast or founded for the purpose
-of impressing upon paper are known as "types" and the impression
-thus made as a "print." But every impression, from any raised
-surface, is a "print." Hence the impression from the particular
-raised surfaces known as "types" is called a "typographical"
-impression; or, to use a more old-fashioned term, "letter-press."
-The precise form of the "types" and the exact position they need
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[Pg 240]</span>to occupy upon the selected paper involve skill in the art that is
-called "typography."</p>
-
-<p>Typography may be defined as the art of rightly disposing printing
-material in accordance with specific purpose; of so arranging
-the letters, distributing the space and controlling the type as to aid
-to the maximum the reader's comprehension of the text. Typography
-is the efficient means to an essentially utilitarian and only
-accidentally aesthetic end, for enjoyment of patterns is rarely the
-reader's chief aim. Therefore, any disposition of printing material
-which, whatever the intention, has the effect of coming between
-author and reader is wrong. It follows that in the printing of books
-meant to be read there is little room for "bright" typography. Even
-dullness and monotony in the type-setting are far less vicious to a
-reader than typographical eccentricity or pleasantry. Cunning of
-this sort is desirable, even essential in the typography of propaganda,
-whether for commerce, politics, or religion, because in such
-printing only the freshest survives inattention. But the typography
-of books, apart from the category of narrowly limited editions,
-requires an obedience to convention which is almost absolute&mdash;and
-with reason.</p>
-
-<p>Since printing is essentially a means of multiplying, it must not
-only be good in itself&mdash;but be good for a common purpose. The
-wider that purpose, the stricter are the limitations imposed upon
-the printer. He may try an experiment in a tract printed in an
-edition of 50 copies, but he shows little common sense if he experiments
-to the same degree in the tract having a run of 50,000. Again,
-a novelty, fitly introduced into a 16-page pamphlet, will be highly
-undesirable in a 160-page book. It is of the essence of typography
-and of the nature of the printed book <em>qua</em> book, that it perform a
-public service. For single or individual purpose there remains the
-manuscript, the codex; so there is something ridiculous in the
-unique copy of a printed book, though the number of copies
-printed may justifiably be limited when a book is the medium of
-typographical experiment. It is always desirable that experiments
-be made, and it is a pity that such "laboratory" pieces are so
-limited in number and in courage. Typography today does not so
-much need Inspiration or Revival as Investigation. It is proposed
-here to formulate some of the principles already known to book-printers,
-which investigation confirms and which non-printers may
-like to consider for themselves.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[Pg 241]</span></p>
-
-
-<h3>II</h3>
-
-<p>The laws governing the typography of books intended for general
-circulation are based first upon the essential nature of alphabetical
-writing, and secondly upon the traditions, explicit or implicit, prevailing
-in the society for which the printer is working. While a
-universal character or typography applicable to all books produced
-in a given national area is practicable, to impose a universal detailed
-formula upon all books printed in Roman types is not. National
-tradition expresses itself in the varying separation of the book into
-prelims, chapters, etc., no less than in the design of the type. But at
-least there are physical rules of linear composition which are
-obeyed by all printers who know their job.</p>
-
-<p>The normal Roman type (in simple form without special sorts,
-etc.) consists of an upright design, and a sloping form of it:</p>
-
-
-<p class="center p01">ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&amp;</p>
-
-<p class="center">ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ</p>
-
-<p class="center">abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz</p>
-
-<p class="center"><em>ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&amp;</em></p>
-
-<p class="center p0"><em>abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz</em></p>
-
-<p>The printer needs to be very careful in choosing his type, realizing
-that the more often he is going to use it, the more closely its
-design must approximate to the general idea held in the mind's eye
-of readers perforce ruled by the familiar magazine, newspaper and
-book. It does no harm to print a Christmas card in <img src="images/i_241.jpg"  alt="" />
-but who nowadays would read a book in that type? I may believe,
-as I do, that black-letter is in design more homogeneous, more lively
-and more economic a type than the grey round Roman we use, but
-I do not now expect people to read a book in it. Aldus' and Caslon's
-are both relatively feeble types, but they represent the forms
-accepted by the community; and the printer, as a servant of the
-community, must use them, or one of their variants. No printer
-should say, "I am an artist, therefore I am not to be dictated to. I
-will create my own letter forms," for, in this humble job, no printer
-is an artist in this sense. Nor is it possible today, as it just was in
-the infancy of the craft, to persuade society into the acceptance of
-strongly marked and highly individualistic types&mdash;because literate
-society is so much greater in mass and correspondingly slower in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[Pg 242]</span>
-movement. Type design moves at the pace of the most conservative
-reader. The good type-designer therefore realizes that, for a new
-fount to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few
-recognize its novelty. If readers do not notice the consummate
-reticence and rare discipline of a new type, it is probably a good
-letter. But if my friends think that the tail of my lower-case r or the
-lip of my lower-case e is rather jolly, you may know that the fount
-would have been better had neither been made. A type which is to
-have anything like a present, let alone a future, will neither be very
-"different" nor very "jolly."</p>
-
-<p>So much for Type. The printer possesses also Spaces and Leads
-as a normal part of his typographical material, straight lines of
-metal known as rules, braces, and finally a more or less indiscriminate
-collection of ornaments&mdash;head and tailpieces, flowers, decorated
-initial letters, vignettes and flourishes. Another decorative
-medium at his option lies in his command of colour; red is, with
-sound instinct, the most frequently used. For emphasis, heavy faces
-are used. White space is an important item of composing-room
-equipment&mdash;margins, blanks, etc., being filled in with what are
-known as "quotations." The selecting and arranging of these
-elements is known as Composition. Imposition is the placing of the
-composed matter upon the sheet. Printing includes impressing in
-due order, perfecting the sheet in due register (backing up), regulating
-the inking, and achieving a crisp type-page. Finally the tone,
-weight and texture of the paper are important factors entering
-into the completed result.</p>
-
-<p>Typography, therefore, controls the composition, imposition,
-impression and paper. Of paper, it is at least necessary to demand
-that it be capable of expressing the value of the composition; of
-imposition, that the margins be proportionate to the area of the
-text, affording decent space for thumbs and fingers at the side and
-bottom of the page. The old-style margins are handsome in themselves
-and agreeable to the purpose of a certain kind of book, but
-are obviously not convenient in books where the page dimension
-is unavoidably small or narrow, or the purpose of the book is to be
-carried in the pocket. For these and other kinds of book, the type
-may be centred on the measure of the page, and slightly raised
-above ocular centre.</p>
-
-<p>Imposition is the most important element in typography&mdash;for no
-page, however well composed in detail, can be admired if the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mise-en-page</i>
-is careless or ill-considered. In practical printing today,
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[Pg 243]</span>
-these details of imposition are on the whole adequately cared for;
-so that it is possible to report that the mass of books presents a
-tolerable appearance. Even a badly composed work may give a
-good appearance if it is well imposed&mdash;good imposition redeeming
-bad composition, while a good composition would be effectively
-ruined by bad imposition.</p>
-
-
-<h3>III</h3>
-
-<p>The designer of the book, therefore, first determines his imposition
-and then tackles the details of composition. The first principles
-of composition do not require much discussion since they necessarily
-follow from the conventions of alphabetical printing in the
-Roman letter accepted by those for whom we are printing. The
-matter is relatively simple. First, it is certain that the eye cannot
-read with ease any considerable number of words composed of
-letters embodying sharply contrasted thicks and thins; secondly,
-it is none the less certain that the eye cannot agreeably read a mass
-of words composed even in a rightly constructed letter, if the lines
-are beyond a certain length. The most expert reader's eye cannot
-seize more than a certain number of words in a given size except
-in a proportionate length of line. Thirdly, practice proves that the
-size of the letter must be related to the length of line. Respect for
-these principles will generally protect the reader from the risk of
-"doubling" (reading the same line twice). The average line of
-words which the reader's eye can conveniently seize is between ten
-and twelve. Nevertheless, the typographer, while exerting himself
-to the utmost to respect this ocular truth, is daily confronted with
-the fact that unavoidable conditions make it impossible for him to
-secure a type of the duly related size, and that he is driven to use a
-relatively small type. To obviate here the risk of "doubling," he
-consistently inserts proportionate leads through the matter, so
-opening the lines that the eye comfortably travels and returns from
-beginning to end and from end to beginning.</p>
-
-<p>The practice of leading, denounced in certain quarters as essentially
-evil, is an inevitable necessity to a large proportion of printing;
-and the skilled typographer, making the best use of his material,
-makes in turn, wise use of leads. The orthodox high-brow view
-that leads produce in every instance an unhappy weak-looking
-effect will not survive a wide experience. On the contrary, it will be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[Pg 244]</span>
-found that their absence may effectively ruin even a composition
-in large type, so that it is true to say that the intelligent use of
-leading distinguishes the expert from the inexpert printer. A slight
-differentiation of type-face may make the practice advisable. Clearly,
-while a letter of the size now under the reader's eye, with fairly
-long ascenders and descenders, would not require leading unless
-set to a measure of more than 3-1/2 in., there exist letters with short
-descenders designed rather to sustain leading by rule than by
-exception. Baskerville's is a type to which leading is invariably an
-advantage. The problem of determining the amount to be given is
-not to be settled by considering only the ascenders or the body of
-the type, because breadth of letter is also a factor to be reckoned
-with&mdash;some letters are narrow in respect to their height, while
-others are wide. A composition in a round, open, wide letter,
-chosen because it is rather loose (that is to say, the space between
-the letters is greater, or appears greater, by reason of the curves of
-the c, o, e, g), gains in consistency when there is a satisfactory lead
-between the lines. It is often argued that loose setting is not admirable
-in itself; to which it might be replied that the printer is
-generally bound to carry out the instructions of his customer; often
-to respect the wishes of an artist who may be illustrating the work;
-and, not seldom, committed by the publisher to a paper-size dictated
-by irrelevant considerations.</p>
-
-<p>Further, it is obvious that the space between words composed
-in a condensed letter may be less than that between words in a
-round, wide form of letter. Where there is no leading between the
-lines, and the composition is, for extrinsic reasons, necessarily
-tight, it may be an advantage to set leads between the paragraphs,
-even though this result in pages with uneven tails. In paragraphing,
-it is important to realize that the opening sentence of a work should
-automatically manifest itself as such. This may be secured by the
-use of the large initial letter; the printing of the first word in
-CAPITALS, or <small>SMALL CAPITALS</small>; C<small>APITALS</small> <em>and</em> S<small>MALL</small> C<small>APITALS</small>;
-or by setting the first word into the margin. On no account
-should the opening of a chapter be indented, since indention should
-mark (and always mark) the subsequent sections, i.e., the paragraphs,
-of the text. The abolition of paragraph-indentions is plainly
-an undesirable practice; nor is setting the first word in capitals or
-small capitals an agreeable substitute for the indention. The space
-of the indention should be sufficient to be noticeable.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[Pg 245]</span></p>
-
-<p>As both measures must be related, displaying a proportion
-pleasing to the eye, the depth of the page follows from its width.
-It seems that the proportions of the oblong are more pleasing than
-those of the square; and as a horizontal oblong drives out the line
-to an impossible length, and a two-column arrangement is tedious,
-the vertical oblong has become the normal page.</p>
-
-<p>Such are the elements of typography; and a volume built up of
-type-pages composed in accordance with them will be generally
-satisfactory. There remain only the page headings and the folio.
-By ranging the headings inside towards the gutter, to the left and
-right respectively, two pages are fixed as a unity; but they can also
-be ranged outside to the right and left, or they may be centered. The
-folio may be centered at the foot, or range either way at the top or
-bottom (preferably, for quicker reference, on the outside), but it
-cannot be centered at the top without cancelling the running page
-headline&mdash;only to be done by exception. The running headlines
-may be set in capitals of the text, in upper and lower-case of the
-text, or in a combination of capitals. Full-sized capitals overemphasize
-what is, after all, a repetitive page-feature inserted
-chiefly for the convenience of librarians and readers interested in
-the identification of leaves which have worked loose. If set in upper
-and lower-case, the headline loses in levelness, so that it seems well
-to employ <em class="gesperrt"><small>SMALL CAPITALS</small></em>; these are best separated by hair
-spaces, since the unrelieved rectangular structure and perpendicularity
-of capitals tend to defeat instantaneous recognition. Full-sized
-capitals may well be used for chapter headings, with the number
-of the chapter in smalls; both indications being hair-spaced.</p>
-
-<p>The reader, travelling from the generally invariable blank at the
-end of a chapter to the beginning of the next, finds a dropped
-chapter head an agreeably consistent feature, which saves him
-from feeling suffocated or overpowered by the text.</p>
-
-
-<h3>IV</h3>
-
-<p>The foregoing elementary directions affect the main part of the
-book, its body. There remains a section which goes before the text,
-known as the "preliminaries," often complicated both in respect
-to arrangement and draftsmanship. Before considering these, it
-may be well to summarize our present findings&mdash;to concentrate
-them into a formula. According to our doctrine, a well-built book
-is made up from vertical oblong pages arranged in paragraphs<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[Pg 246]</span>
-having an average line of ten to twelve consistently spaced words,
-set in a fount of comfortable size and familiar design; the lines
-sufficiently separated to prevent doubling and the composition
-being headed by a running title. This rectangle is so imposed upon
-the page as to provide centre, head, fore-edge and tail margins of
-dimensions suitably related not only to the length of line but to the
-disposition of space at those points where the text is cut into chapters,
-and where the body joins the prefatory and other pages known
-as "preliminaries."</p>
-
-<p>Now these first pages, being intended rather for reference than
-for reading and re-reading, are less strictly governed by convention
-than the text-pages. They consequently offer the maximum opportunity
-for typographic design. The history of printing is in large
-measure the history of the title-page. When fully developed, the
-title occupied a recto page, either partially or wholly; and the
-title-phrase, or the principal words of it, has generally been set in
-a conspicuous size of type. Sixteenth-century Italian printers generally
-used large capitals copied from inscriptions, or by exception,
-from medieval manuscripts; while English use emulated the French
-in employing a canon line of upper and lower-case, followed by a
-few lines of pica capitals. Next came the printer's device, and at the
-foot of the page, his name and address. These large sizes of upper
-and lower-case, an inheritance from printers who were accustomed
-to black-letter (which cannot be set in solid capitals), have gone.
-The device has also vanished (it has been revived by a few publishers),
-and thus the contemporary title page is generally a bleak
-affair, exhibiting in nine out of ten cases a space between the title
-and the imprint of the printer-publisher, so that this blank tends
-to be the strongest feature on the page. When the device was first
-abandoned, the author, printer or publisher took advantage of the
-leisure of the reader and the blank at their disposal, to draft a
-tediously long title, subtitle and list of the author's qualifications,
-designed to fill the entire page. The present-day publisher goes to
-the other extreme, reducing the title to as few short words as
-possible, followed with "by" and the author's name. A professional
-writer may insert, e.g., "Author of <cite>The Deluge</cite>" under his name or
-there may be incorporated a motto; but apart from such exceptions,
-three and sometimes four inches of space separate the author's
-name from the first line of the imprint.</p>
-
-<p>The result is that unless the title is set in a size of type out of all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[Pg 247]</span>
-relation to that of the remainder of the book, this space is more
-conspicuous than the chief line. It is more reasonable to lessen this
-space by shortening the depth of the whole piece from title to
-imprint. It is clear that a volume in 12-point does not require a
-30-point title unless it be a folio in double-column; and it is of no
-consequence if the title page is a little shorter than the text pages.
-There is no reason, other than a desire to be "different," for a
-title page to bear any line of type larger than twice the size of the
-text letter. If the book be set in 12-point, the title need be no larger
-than 24-point&mdash;and may decently enough be smaller. As lower-case
-is a necessary evil, which we should do well to subordinate since
-we cannot suppress, it should be avoided when it is at its least
-rational and least attractive&mdash;in large sizes. The main line of a
-title should be set in capitals; and, like all titling capitals, they
-should be spaced. Whatever may happen to the rest of the composition,
-the author's name, like all displayed proper names, should
-be in capitals.</p>
-
-
-<h3>V</h3>
-
-<p>Here we may pause to counter an objection. It will be contended
-that whatever the value of our preceding conclusions, their adoption
-must mean an increase in standardization&mdash;all very well for
-those who have an economic objective but very monotonous and
-dull for those whose aim is that books shall possess more "life."
-This means that the objectors want more variety, more "differentness,"
-more decoration. The craving to decorate is natural, and
-only if it is allowed the freedom of the text pages shall we look
-upon it as a passion to be resisted. The decoration of title pages is
-one thing&mdash;that of a fount to be employed in books is another.
-Our contention, in this respect, is that the necessities of a mass-production
-book and the limited edition differ neither in kind nor
-in degree, since all printing is essentially a means of the multiplication
-of a text set in an alphabetical code of conventional symbols.
-To disallow "variety" in the vital details of the composition is not
-to insist upon uniformity in display. As already pointed out, the
-preliminary pages offer scope for the utmost typographical ingenuity.
-Yet even here, a word of caution may be in place, so soon do
-we forget, in arranging any piece of display (above all, a title page),
-the supreme importance of sense. Every character, every word,
-every line should be seen with maximum clearness. Words should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[Pg 248]</span>
-not be broken except unavoidably, and in title pages and other
-compositions of centred matter, lines should hardly begin with
-such feeble parts of speech as prepositions and conjunctions. It is
-more reasonable, as assisting the reader's immediacy of comprehension,
-to keep these to the ends of lines or to centre them in
-smaller type and so bring out the salient lines in a relatively
-conspicuous size.</p>
-
-<p>No printer, in safeguarding himself from the charge of monotony
-in his composition, should admit, against his better judgment, any
-typographical distraction doing violence to logic and lucidity in
-the supposed interests of decoration. To twist his text into a triangle,
-squeeze it into a box, torture it into the shape of an hour-glass
-or a diamond is an offence requiring greater justification than
-the existence either of Italian and French precedents of the fifteenth
-and sixteenth centuries, or of an ambition to do something new in
-the twentieth. In truth, these are the easiest tricks of all, and we
-have seen so much of them during the late "revival of printing"
-that we now need rather a revival of restraint. In all permanent
-forms of typography, whether publicly or privately printed, the
-typographer's only purpose is to express, not himself, but his
-author. There are, admittedly, other purposes which enter into the
-composition of advertisement, publicity and sales matter; and
-there is, of course, a very great deal common to both book and
-advertisement composition. But it is not allowable to the printer
-to relax his zeal for the reader's comfort in order to satisfy an
-ambition to decorate or to illustrate. Rather than run this risk the
-printer should strive to express himself by the use of this or that
-small decorative unit, either of common design supplied by the
-type founders or drawn for his office by an artist. It is quite true
-that to an inventive printer decoration is not often necessary. In
-commercial printing, however, it seems to be a necessity, because
-the complexity of our civilization demands an infinite number of
-styles and characters. Publishers and other buyers of printing, by
-insisting upon a setting which shall express <em>their</em> business, <em>their</em>
-goods, <em>their</em> books and nobody else's business or goods or books,
-demand an individuality which pure typography can never hope
-to supply. But book-printers, concerned with the permanently
-convenient rather than with the transiently sensational or the merely
-fashionable, should be on their guard against title-page borders,
-vignettes and devices invented to ease their difficulties. There is no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[Pg 249]</span>
-easy way with most title pages; and the printer's task is rendered
-more difficult by the average publisher's and author's incompetence
-to draft a title or to organize the preliminaries in reasonable
-sequence.</p>
-
-
-<h3>VI</h3>
-
-<p>Those who would like to lessen or vary the tendency towards
-standardization in day-today book production have a field for
-their activity in the last-mentioned pages. The position on the page
-of the half-title, title, dedication, etc., and their relation to each
-other, are not essentially invariable. Nevertheless, as it is well for
-printers and publishers to have rules, and the same rules, it may be
-suggested that the headings to Preface, Table of Contents, Introduction,
-etc., should be in the same size and fount as the chapter
-heads; and should be dropped if they are dropped. The order of
-the preliminaries remains to be settled. With the exception of the
-copyright notice, which may be set on the verso of the title page,
-all should begin on a recto. The logical order of the preliminary
-pages is Half-title or Dedication (I see no reason for including
-both), Title, Contents, Preface, Introduction. The certificate of
-"limitation," in the case of books of that class, may face the title
-where there is no frontispiece, be incorporated with the half-title,
-or be taken to the end of the volume. This order is applicable to
-most categories of books. Novels need neither Table of Contents
-nor List of Chapters, though one or the other is too often printed.
-If it is decided to retain either, it would be reasonable to print it
-on the back of the half-title and facing the title page, so that the
-structure, scope and nature of the book will be almost completely
-indicated to the reader at a single opening. Where the volume is
-made up of a few short stories, their titles can be listed in the
-otherwise blank centre of the title page.</p>
-
-
-<h3>VII</h3>
-
-<p>Fiction, Belles-Lettres and Educational books are habitually first
-published in portable, but not pocketable formats; crown octavo
-(5 by 7-1/2 in.) being the invariable rule for novels published as such.
-The novel in the form of Biography will be published as a Biography,
-demy octavo (5-5/8 by 8-3/4 in.), the size also for History,
-Political Study, Archaeology, Science, Art and almost everything
-but Fiction. Novels are only promoted to this format when they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[Pg 250]</span>
-have become famous and "standard"; when they are popular
-rather than famous they are composed in pocket (4-1/2 by 6-3/4 in.)
-editions. <em>Size</em>, therefore, is the most manifest difference between
-the categories of books.</p>
-
-<p>Another obvious difference is <em>bulk</em>, calculated in accordance
-with the publisher's notion, first, of the general sense of trade
-expectation and, secondly, of the purchasing psychology of a public
-habituated to certain selling prices vaguely related to number of
-pages and thickness of volume (inconsistently enough, weight does
-not enter into these expectations). These habits of mind have consequences
-in the typography; they affect the choice of fount and
-size of type, and may necessitate the adoption of devices for
-"driving out," i.e., making the setting take up as much room as
-possible. By putting the running headline between rules or rows of
-ornaments; introducing unnecessary blanks between chapters;
-contracting the measure; exaggerating the spaces between the
-words and the lines; excessively indenting paragraphs; isolating
-quoted matter with areas of white space: inserting wholly unnecessary
-sectional titles in the text and surrounding them with space;
-contriving to drive a chapter ending to the top of a recto page so
-that the rest of it and its verso may be blank; using thick paper;
-increasing the depth of chapter beginnings and inserting very large
-versals thereto; and so on, the volume can be inflated to an extra
-sixteen pages and sometimes more&mdash;which is a feat the able typographer
-is expected to accomplish without showing his hand.</p>
-
-<p>Limited editions of standard authors, or of authors whose publishers
-desire them to rank as such, are commonly given a rubricated
-title or some other feature not strictly necessary. A dreadful example
-of overdone rubrication is to be found in an edition of Thomas
-Hardy's verse, in which the running heads throughout the book are
-in red&mdash;the production of a firm which desired to make an impression
-on the purchaser in view of the price asked for the edition.
-This could have been better done by reserving colour for the initial
-letters. Handmade paper is generally used for <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">éditions de luxe</i>, and
-none but the brave among publishers will disregard the superstitious
-love of the book-buying classes for its untrimmed, ugly and
-dirt-gathering edges. That most of the public prefer to have it so is
-because a trimmed book looks "ordinary" to them. Any book
-which is "different" from the "ordinary" in one superficial way or
-another is apt to impress those lacking trade experience. And there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[Pg 251]</span>
-has been a notable increase during recent years in the category of
-books, generally illustrated, known to the trade as <em>fine printing</em>,
-<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">éditions de luxe</i>, <em>press-books</em>, <em>limited editions</em>, <em>collectors' books</em>, etc.
-Hence, it is hoped that the above setting out of the first principles
-of typography may give the discriminating reader some sort of
-yardstick which he can apply not only to the entries catalogued by
-the book-sellers as limited editions, but to the output of publishers
-responsible for printing the literary and scientific books which are
-more necessary to society, and are often designed with greater
-intelligence.</p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN NEW TIMES ROMAN TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[Pg 252]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>American Type Designers and Their Work</small></em></h2>
-
-
-<p class="center p22 small1">Published by The Lakeside Press 1947-1948. Reprinted by permission of the
-publisher.</p>
-
-<p>A piece of paper about two inches square, originally pinned
-to the manuscript of the Rev. Ezra Stiles's diary in the Yale
-University Library is all that remains of the first original American
-type design. It is a proof of letters made by Abel Buell, a
-Connecticut Yankee, in 1769.<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> Buell was his own designer, punch
-cutter, and caster, since in his day, as for many years after, the
-making of type was entirely a hand operation. Not the least exacting
-part of the work was the cutting of the punch on the
-end of a short bar of softened steel. It was not until the invention
-of the Benton pantograph punch-cutting machine in
-1885 that any other method was known. All type made before
-1885 was therefore dependent on hand punch cutting, and
-the designer of the type was almost always the same man who cut
-the punches.</p>
-
-
-<p>Who these type designers were after Buell is a matter of uncertainty
-and obscurity. The first type specimen book in America
-was that of Binny &amp; Ronaldson of Philadelphia, issued in
-1812; and from then almost to our own day the type foundries
-have taken the credit for the type designs which they have offered
-for sale. Type designers, like architects, got no credit; possibly
-Modesty, with a backward glance at old specimen books, raised
-a warning finger, and the designers were willing to let the foundries
-have whatever glory there was.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp49" id="i253" style="max-width: 15.625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_253.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">The Punch Cutting Machine. <em>Courtesy George Macy Publications.</em></p>
-
-<p>Abel Buell and his contemporaries and successors followed the
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[Pg 253]</span>general trends in design in the arts as a whole. The Greek Revival
-and the Victorian Age, marked by the two great expositions at
-London and Philadelphia with their crudities and extravagancies
-in design, found echoes in our imitative craft of printing. So it is
-not surprising that type design began to improve, along with the
-other arts, with the advent of the '90's. We have always followed
-European and especially English models, and it is natural that
-the upheaval in type design in England under Morris's influence
-had immediate repercussions here. But while imitations of Kelmscott
-types were soon on the market, two surprisingly original
-American designs appeared at the same time as the imitations.
-About 1894 or 1895 the Central Type Foundry of St. Louis
-introduced a face which became widely used, called (for no
-better reason than attends the christening of most type faces)
-"De Vinne." It is of unknown parentage, though there is some
-reason to suppose that it descended from the Elzevirs; but it was
-a face of character and distinction. At the same time the same
-foundry brought out another design which had an acknowledged
-father&mdash;Will Bradley. Of this face it has been said that it has
-"remarkably bold letters, with peculiarities of form never before
-attempted." Thus we have in the De Vinne and the Bradley faces<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[Pg 254]</span>
-two fresh and distinctively American types, destined to be the
-forerunners of many others. And in one case the name of the
-designer was definitely attached.</p>
-
-<p>With the invention of the pantograph punch cutter, type design
-became an "art" rather than a craft, and as might be expected
-the personality of the designer became for various reasons more
-important. It is not without interest that the chief designer of
-the American Type Founders Company&mdash;a man responsible for
-almost the whole type output of that foundry for many years&mdash;Morris
-Fuller Benton, was the son of the man whose machines
-were responsible for this revolution in type design. For it was
-the two basic machines invented and developed by Linn Boyd
-Benton which made it possible for those unskilled in the intricacies
-of type making to provide the basic designs for type. The
-machines were very ingenious, and the designs partook of the
-"faultily faultless, icily regular" perfection of the mechanical
-device. This method of making type faces involved the drawing
-of the design and the making of two or three patterns in thin
-brass of the outline of the letter&mdash;each pattern good for several
-sizes of type, and slightly modified for another group of sizes.
-This is the way in which modern type is designed. It is the reason
-why such a type series as "Cheltenham," designed by the architect
-Bertram G. Goodhue in 1900 for the Mergenthaler Linotype
-Company, while very expertly handled in the details, seems monotonous
-in mass; whereas the Caslon type of the original cutting
-shows all the inevitable variations of hand work.</p>
-
-<p>A survey of the types of the first quarter of the present century,
-made by the Editor of the <cite>Inland Printer</cite> in 1927, displays
-161 type faces brought out by seven or eight of the leading foundries
-between 1900 and 1925. Of these, it was possible to name
-the designers of 72, almost all from the Barnhart Brothers &amp;
-Spindler foundry of Chicago, whose records seem to have been
-in better shape, or whose generosity was more spontaneous.
-Oswald Cooper, Sydney Gaunt, Will Ransom, Robert Wiebking,
-and George Trenholm were the chief names. It is unfortunate
-that the names of the designers of the types put out by the
-American Type Founders Company have not been preserved except
-in rare instances. Of course, Benton was responsible for the
-greater portion, and on the aesthetic side they occasionally scored
-a triumph as in the case of the "Cloister" face.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[Pg 255]</span></p>
-
-<p>The list included in the <cite>Inland Printer's</cite> survey fails to include
-some of the outstanding designs of the period. Goodhue's
-"Merrymount" was done in 1894, but after 1900 we have Mr.
-Rogers's "Centaur," Mr. Hunter's odd but forceful types (properly
-cut on punches by the designer), the output of the rapidly
-growing composing-machine industry, and Frederic W. Goudy's
-fifty designs completed in that quarter century. Goudy's output
-of six score type designs in fifty years is an amazing record, one
-probably never equalled. Such designs as those for "Goudy Modern,"
-"Goudy Text," and "Hadrian" would establish his reputation.
-He had his limitations as a designer&mdash;most of his designs lack
-a certain crispness&mdash;but his versatility was extraordinary.</p>
-
-<p>In the years since 1925 new designers have come to the fore:
-Blumenthal with his "Emerson," Dwiggins with his "Electra"
-and "Caledonia," Ruzicka with his "Fairfield," and Chappell with
-his "Lydian." This brief survey cannot hope to mention all
-types or designs which American designers have contributed,
-but it is well to see if any tendencies can be detected.</p>
-
-<p>The type which Buell made in 1759, as well as the type of his
-immediate successors into the first decades of the nineteenth
-century, were mainly variations on the so-called "modern romans"
-of Didot, Bodoni, Austen, and Thorowgood. As the artistic
-styles in design in general, not alone in type, gradually lost the
-evolutionary force which has developed letter forms through the
-centuries, eccentricity and anarchy came into play. The nineteenth-century
-types as shown in the specimen books of Bruce,
-Connor, Farmer, etc., and exhibited in all their grotesque horror
-in Fred Phillips' "Old-fashioned Type Book," had no legitimate
-parentage, and they are as well relegated to the bizarre and
-pseudo-nostalgic advertisement. The result of the Kelmscott
-"revival" was to turn attention to type forms of the past which
-could be revived for modern use, and the type designers after
-1900 did a remarkable piece of work in introducing good type
-faces. The advertisers have been eager to use new and novel faces,
-and have greatly stimulated this activity, even in many cases over-exciting
-it. The most interesting result has been the renewed interest
-in calligraphy. First directed toward new forms of script,
-the truer form of broad pen lettering is now beginning to influence
-type design, to free it from too slavish a devotion on the one
-hand to the serif, and on the other to a too-free rejection of the
-serif altogether. Such a face as Mr. Chappell's "Lydian" is an
-example of real advance in design, and if one could adduce European
-examples, more could be cited.</p>
-
-<p>American designers have not developed many new or good
-book faces; such types as Oxford, Centaur, Emerson, Fairfield,
-Electra, are the exception. Their efforts have been given to the
-drawing of display and advertising types&mdash;too often not to the
-enrichment of the printer's repertory. It is quite as true now as
-in the past that distortions of the normal Roman letter form in the
-direction of extra condensed or extra heavy or very light mono-line
-letters result in eccentricities which have no permanent value.
-On the other hand such novel type designs as Garamond Bold
-Italic, Hadriano, the newspaper Ionics, and Lydian are meritorious
-additions to the printer's fonts. When it is realized that eccentricity
-and originality are not the same thing, we may expect
-from our increasingly intelligent designers indigenous types of
-usefulness and charm.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[Pg 256]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> Reprinted in Lawrence C. Wroth's "The First Work with American
-Types," page 65.</p></div></div>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[Pg 257]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="perpetua">
-<h2 class="nobreak">TYPOGRAPHY&mdash;ERIC GILL</h2>
-
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Printing &amp; Piety</cite>, An Essay on Typography by Eric Gill. Copyright 1931 by
-J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.</p>
-
-
-<p>One of the most alluring enthusiasms
-that can occupy the mind of the
-letterer is that of inventing a really
-logical and consistent alphabet
-having a distinct sign for every distinct
-sound. This is especially the
-case for English speaking people:
-for the letters we use only inadequately
-symbolize the sounds of
-our language. We need many new
-letters and a revaluation of existing
-ones. But this enthusiasm has no practical value for the typographer;
-we must take the alphabets we have got, and we must take these alphabets
-in all essentials as we have inherited them.</p>
-
-<p>First of all, then, we have the ROMAN ALPHABET of CAPITAL
-letters (Upper-case), and second the alphabet which printers call
-ROMAN LOWER-CASE. The latter, tho' derived from the Capitals,
-is a distinct alphabet. Third we have the alphabet called <em>ITALIC</em>,
-also derived from the Capitals but through different channels. These
-are the three alphabets in common use for English people.</p>
-
-<p>Are there no others? It might be held that there are several; there
-are, for example, the alphabet called Black Letter, and that called
-Lombardic. But these are only partial survivals, and very few people
-could, without reference to ancient books, write down even a complete
-alphabet of either. As far as we are concerned in modern England,
-Roman Capitals, Lower-case and Italics are three different
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[Pg 258]</span>alphabets, and all are current "coin." But however familiar we are
-with them, their essential differences are not always easily discovered.
-It is not a matter of slope or of serifs or of thickness or thinness.
-These qualities, though one or other of them may be commonly
-associated with one alphabet more than another, are not essential
-marks of difference. A Roman Capital A does not cease to be a
-Roman Capital A because it is sloped backwards or forwards, because
-it is made thicker or thinner, or because serifs are added or
-omitted; and the same applies to Lower-case and Italics (see Fig. 1).</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[Pg 259]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp75" id="i258-1" style="max-width: 6.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_258-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-  </div>
- <p class="pc1 center small1">Figure 1 illustrates the contention that slope in either direction does
-not deprive Capitals, Lower-case or Italics of their essential differences.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp78" id="i258-2" style="max-width: 6.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_258-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">Figure 2 in which the upper line of letters is essentially "Roman Lower-case";
-the lower essentially "Italic."</p>
-
-<p>The essential differences are obviously between the forms of the
-letters. The following letters, abdefghklmnqrtu and y, are not
-Roman Capitals, and that is all about it. The letters shown in the
-lower line of Fig. 2 are neither Capitals nor Lower-case. The conclusion
-is obvious: there is a complete alphabet of Capital letters,
-but the Lower-case takes ten letters from the Capital alphabet, and
-the Italic takes ten from the Capitals and twelve from the Lower-case.
-Figure 3 shows the three alphabets completed, and it will be
-seen that CIJOPSVWX and Z are common to all three, that
-bdhklmnqrtu and y are common to Lower-case and Italics; that
-ABDEFGHKLMNQRTU and Y are always Capitals; and that
-aef and g are always Lower-case.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp69" id="i259" style="max-width: 9.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_259.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">Figure 3 shows the differences and similarities between the three "current"
-alphabets. Note: the curve of the Italic y's tail is due to exuberance,
-and not to necessity.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[Pg 260]</span></p>
-
-<p>But tho' this is a true account of the essential differences between
-the three alphabets, there are customary differences which seem
-almost as important. It is customary to make Roman Capitals upright.
-It is customary to make Lower-case smaller than Capitals when
-the two are used together; and it is customary to make Italics narrower
-than Lower-case, sloping towards the right and with certain
-details reminiscent of the cursive hand-writing from which they are
-derived. Fig. 4 shows the three alphabets with their customary as
-well as their essential differences.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp85" id="i260" style="max-width: 9.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_260.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">Figure 4 shows the Capitals, Roman Lower-case and Italics with their
-customary as well as their essential differences.</p>
-
-<p>Properly speaking there is no such thing as an alphabet of Italic
-Capitals, and where upright or nearly upright Italics are used ordinary
-upright Roman Capitals go perfectly well with them. But as
-Italics are commonly made with a considerable slope and cursive
-freedom, various sorts of sloping and quasi-cursive Roman Capitals
-have been designed to match. This practice has, however, been
-carried to excess; the slope of Italics and their cursiveness have been<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[Pg 261]</span>
-much overdone. In the absence of punch cutters with any personal
-sensibility as letter designers, with punch cutting almost entirely
-done by machine, the obvious remedy is a much more nearly upright
-and non-cursive Italic, and for Capitals the ordinary upright Roman.
-Even with a nearly upright Italic, the mere presence of the Italic aef
-and g alters the whole character of a page, and with a slight narrowness
-as well as a slight slope, the effect is quite different from that of
-a page of Lower-case.</p>
-
-<p>The common practice of using Italics to emphasize single words
-should be abandoned in favour of the use of the ordinary Lower-case
-with spaces between the letters (<em class="gesperrt">letter-spaced</em>). The proper
-use of Italics is for quotations and footnotes, and for books in
-which it is or seems desirable to use a lighter and less formal style of
-letter. In a book printed in Italics upright Capitals may well be used,
-but if sloping Capitals be used they should only be used as initials&mdash;they
-go well enough with Italic Lower-case, but they do not go with
-one another.</p>
-
-<p>We have, then, the three alphabets, and these are the printer's
-main outfit; all other sorts of letters are in the nature of fancy letters,
-useful in inverse proportion to the importance and quantity of his
-output. The more serious the class of book he prints, the wider the
-public to whom he appeals, so much the more solemn and impersonal
-and normal will be and should be his typography. But he will
-not call that book serious which is merely widely bought, and he
-will not call that a wide appeal which is made simply to a mob of
-forcibly educated proletarians. A serious book is one which is good
-in itself according to standards of goodness set by infallible authority,
-and a wide appeal is one made to intelligent people of all times and
-nations.</p>
-
-<p>The invention of printing and the breakdown of the medieval
-world happened at the same time; and that breakdown, tho' hastened
-by corruption in the Church, was chiefly caused by the recrudescence
-of a commercialism which had not had a proper chance since the
-time of the Romans. The invention of double-entry book-keeping
-also happened about the same time, and though, as with modern
-mechanical invention, the work was done by men of brains rather<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[Pg 262]</span>
-than men of business, it was the latter who gained the chief advantage.</p>
-
-<p>Printing, a cheaper method of reproducing books than hand-writing,
-came therefore just at the right moment. Since its first fine
-careless rapture, and in spite of the genuinely disinterested efforts of
-ecclesiastical presses, University presses and the work of many
-notable individual printers and type-founders, the history of printing
-has been the history of its commercial exploitation. As is natural
-with men of business, the worse appears the better reason. Financial
-success is, rightly, their only aim, and technical perfection the only
-criterion they know how to apply to their works.</p>
-
-<p>TYPOGRAPHY (the reproduction of lettering by means of movable
-letter types) was originally done by pressing the inked surface
-or "face" of a letter made of wood or metal against a surface of
-paper or vellum. The unevenness and hardness of paper, the irregularities
-of types (both in respect of their printing faces and the dimensions
-of their "bodies") and the mechanical imperfections of
-presses and printing methods made the work of early printers notable
-for corresponding unevennesses, irregularities and mechanical
-imperfections. To ensure that every letter left its mark more or less
-completely and evenly, considerable and noticeable impression was
-made in the paper. The printed letter was a coloured letter at the
-bottom of a ditch.</p>
-
-<p>The subsequent development of typography was chiefly die development
-of technical improvements, more accurately cast types,
-smoother paper, mechanically perfect presses. Apart from the history
-of its commercial exploitation, the history of printing has been
-the history of the abolition of the impression. A print is properly a
-dent made by pressing; the history of letter-press printing has been
-the history of the abolition of that dent.</p>
-
-<p>But the very smooth paper and the mechanically very perfect
-presses required for printing which shall show no "impression" can
-only be produced in a world which cares for such things, and such
-a world is of its nature inhuman. The industrial world of today is
-such, and it has the printing it desires and deserves. In the industrial
-world Typography, like house building and sanitary engineering, is
-one of the necessary arts&mdash;a thing to be done in working hours,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[Pg 263]</span>
-those during which one is buoyed up by the knowledge that one is
-serving one's fellow men and neither enjoying oneself like an artist
-nor praising God like a man of prudence. In such a world the only
-excuse for anything is that it is of service.</p>
-
-<p>Printing which makes any claim on its own account, printers who
-give themselves the status of poets or painters, are to be condemned;
-they are not serving; they are shirking. Such is the tone of the more
-romantic among men of commerce; and the consequence is a pseudo-asceticism
-and a bastard aesthetics. The asceticism is only a sham
-because the test of service is the profits shown in the accounts; and
-the aesthetics is bastard because it is not founded upon the reasonable
-pleasure of the mind of the workman and of his customer, but
-upon the snobbery of museum students employed by men of commerce
-to give a saleable appearance to articles too dull otherwise to
-please even the readers of <cite>The Daily Mail</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, as we have already shown, commercial printing,
-machine printing, industrial printing would have its own proper
-goodness if it were studiously plain and starkly efficient. Our quarrel
-is not with such a thing but only with the thing that is neither one
-nor the other&mdash;neither really mechanically perfect and physically
-serviceable nor really a work of art, i.e., a thing made by a man
-who, however laughable it may seem to men of business, loves God
-and does what he likes, who serves his fellow men because he is
-wrapped up in serving God&mdash;to whom the service of God is so
-commonplace that it is as much bad form to mention it as among
-men of business it is bad form to mention profits.</p>
-
-<p>There are, then, two typographies, as there are two worlds; and,
-apart from God or profits, the test of one is mechanical perfection,
-and of the other sanctity&mdash;the commercial article at its best is
-simply physically serviceable and, per accidens, beautiful in its
-efficiency; the work of art at its best is beautiful in its very substance
-and, per accidens, as serviceable as an article of commerce.</p>
-
-<p>The typography of Industrialism, when it is not deliberately diabolical
-and designed to deceive, will be plain; and in spite of the
-wealth of its resources&mdash;a thousand varieties of inks, papers, presses
-and mechanical processes for the reproduction of the designs of
-tame designers&mdash;it will be entirely free from exuberance and fancy.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[Pg 264]</span>
-Every sort of ornament will be omitted; for printers' flowers will
-not spring in such a soil, and fancy lettering is nauseating when it is
-not the fancy of type-founders and printers but simply of those who
-desire to make something appear better than it is. Paradoxical
-though it be, the greater the wealth of appliances, the less is the
-power of using it. All the while that the technical and mechanical
-good quality is increasing, the de-humanizing of the workmen is also
-increasing. As we become more and more able to print finer and
-more elaborate and delicate types of letter it becomes more and
-more intellectually imperative to standardize all forms and obliterate
-all elaborations and fancifulness. It becomes easier and easier to
-print any kind of thing, but more and more imperative to print
-only one kind.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, those who use humane methods can never
-achieve mechanical perfection, because the slaveries and standardizations
-of Industrialism are incompatible with the nature of men.
-Humane Typography will often be comparatively rough and even
-uncouth; but while a certain uncouthness does not seriously matter
-in humane works, lack of uncouthness is the only possible excuse for
-the productions of the machine. So while in an industrialist society
-it is technically easy to print any kind of thing, in a humane society
-only one kind of thing is easy to print, but there is every scope for
-variety and experiment in the work itself. The more elaborate and
-fanciful the industrial article becomes, the more nauseating it becomes&mdash;elaboration
-and fancifulness in such things are inexcusable.
-But there is every excuse for elaboration and fancy in the works
-of human beings, provided that they work and live according to
-reason; and it is instructive to note that in the early days of printing,
-when human exuberance had full scope, printing was characterized
-by simplicity and decency; but that now, when such exuberance no
-longer exists in the workman (except when he is not at work),
-printing is characterized by every kind of vulgarity of display and
-complicated indecency.</p>
-
-<p>But, alas for humanity, there is the thing called compromise; and
-the man of business who is also the man of taste, and he of taste also
-who is also man of business will, in their blameless efforts to earn a
-living (for using one's wits is blameless, and earning a living is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[Pg 265]</span>
-necessary), find many ways of giving a humane look to machine-made
-things or of using machinery and the factory to turn out, more
-quickly and cheaply, things whose proper nature is derived from
-human labor. Thus we have imitation "period" furniture in Wardour
-Street, and we have imitation "arts and crafts" in Tottenham
-Court Road. The-man-of-business-who-is-also-man-of-taste will tend
-to the "period" work, the-man-of-taste-who-is-also-man-of-business
-will tend to the imitation handicrafts. And, in the printing
-world, there are business houses whose reputation is founded on
-their resuscitations of the eighteenth century, and private presses
-whose speed of output is increased by machine-setting and gas engines.
-These things are more deplorable than blameworthy. Their
-chief objectionableness lies in the fact that they confuse the issue
-for the ordinary uncritical person, and they turn out work which is
-neither very good nor very bad. "Period" printing looks better
-than the usual vulgar products of unrestrained commercialism, and
-there is no visible difference, except to the expert, between machine-setting
-and hand-setting, or between sheets worked on a hand-press
-and those turned out on a power-driven Platen.</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, even if these things be difficult to decide in individual
-instances, there can be no sort of doubt but that as industrialism
-requires a different sort of workman so it also turns out a
-different kind of work&mdash;a workman sub-human in his irresponsibility,
-and work inhuman in its mechanical perfection. The imitation
-of the work of pre-industrial periods cannot make any important
-ultimate difference; the introduction of industrial methods and
-appliances into small workshops cannot make such workshops capable
-of competition with "big business." But while false standards of
-good taste may be set up by "period" work, this "good taste" is
-entirely that of the man of business and his customers; it is not at all
-that of the hands&mdash;they are in no way responsible for it or affected
-by it; on the other hand, the introduction of mechanical methods
-into small workshops has an immediate effect on the workmen.
-Inevitably they tend to take more interest in the machine and less in
-the work, to become machine-minders and to regard wages as the
-only reward. And good taste ceases to be the result of the restraint
-put upon his conscience by the workman himself; it becomes a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[Pg 266]</span>
-thing imposed upon him by his employer. You cannot see the
-difference between a machine-set page and one set by hand. No, but
-you can see the difference between Cornwall before and after it
-became "the English Riviera"; you can see the difference between
-riding in a hansom and in a motor-cab&mdash;between a "cabby" and a
-"taxi-man"; you can see the difference between the ordinary issue
-of <cite>The Times</cite> today and its ordinary issue a hundred years ago; you
-can see the difference between an ordinary modern book and an
-ordinary book of the sixteenth century. And it is not a question of
-better or worse; it is a question of difference simply. Our argument
-here is not that Industrialism has made things worse, but that it has
-inevitably made them different; and that whereas before Industrialism
-there was one world, now there are two. The nineteenth
-century attempt to combine Industrialism with the Humane was necessarily
-doomed, and the failure is now evident. To get the best out of
-the situation we must admit the impossibility of compromise; we
-must, in as much as we are industrialists, glory in Industrialism and
-its powers of mass-production, seeing that good taste in its products
-depends upon their absolute plainness and serviceableness; and in so
-much as we remain outside Industrialism, as doctors, lawyers,
-priests and poets of all kinds must necessarily be, we may glory in
-the fact that we are responsible workmen and can produce only one
-thing at a time.</p>
-
-<p>That if you look after goodness and truth beauty will take care of
-itself, is true in both worlds. The beauty that Industrialism properly
-produces is the beauty of bones; the beauty that radiates from the
-work of men is the beauty of the living face.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 center perpetua">COMPOSED IN PERPETUA TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[Pg 267]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp52" id="i267-1" style="max-width: 5em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_267-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">FREDERIC W. GOUDY<br />
-<img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" /><small>TYPES AND TYPE DESIGN</small><img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">The Syracuse University School of Journalism awarded its first medal of honor
-to F. W. G. in 1936, "for distinctive achievement in typographic design." His
-address then, reflecting the typographic philosophy and practice of two-score
-years, is reprinted as published by the University in 1936.</p>
-
-<p>It would be mere affectation on my part were I to pretend not to
-be touched by the signal honor you extend to me this evening,
-and I would be ungrateful indeed if I neglected to voice my very
-great appreciation of your kindness. I wish that I might express that
-appreciation in words that would leave no shadow of doubt in your
-minds as to the depth and sincerity of my feeling.</p>
-
-<p>I am not conscious of any outstanding reasons for the kind words
-spoken here tonight of my work. At the same time I am under no
-illusions as to the ultimate value of the work I have <em>attempted</em> to do,
-although it is, after all, merely the every-day work of an earnest
-craftsman who endeavors to perform each task well and the next one,
-if possible, even better; and withal no thought or expectation of
-acclaim.</p>
-
-<p>My craft is a simple one. For nearly two score years it has been
-my constant aim and endeavor to create a greater and more general
-esteem for printing and type design; to give to printers and readers
-of print more legible and more beautiful types than those in current
-use. This has involved some little sacrifice; the missionary seldom
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[Pg 268]</span>acquires much more than the satisfaction of work well done, and yet,
-on the whole, I haven't done badly, since my work has brought me
-a wealth of friendship beyond measure.</p>
-
-<p>And now to the subject which has been assigned to me for this
-occasion&mdash;something about types of the past, type revivals, and a
-bit about type design, as I see it. I trust you will not find that my
-brief postprandial attempt bears out Gay's lines too literally:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container pw25">
-<div class="poetry">
-<p><em>So comes the reckoning when the banquet's o'er,<br />
-A dreadful reckoning, when men smile no more.</em></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>One hundred and twelve years ago type design was generally imagined
-to be a matter that concerned only the letter cutter. J. Johnson,
-author of <cite>Typographia</cite> (published in 1824), wrote of a type face
-that the printer needed only to "observe that its shape be perfectly
-true, and that it lines or ranges with accuracy, and that by noting
-certain mathematical rules the letter cutter may produce Roman characters
-of such harmony, grace and symmetry as will please the eye
-in reading; and by having their fine strokes and swells blended together
-in due proportion, will excite admiration." He says further
-that "if the letter stands even and in line, which <em>is the chief good quality
-in letter</em>, it makes the face thereof sometimes to pass, though otherwise
-ill-shaped." Type design as a profession evidently did not exist
-in 1824. And even today many printers are uninformed as to the
-various steps that must be taken between the inception of a type
-face in the designer's mind and its eventual appearance on the
-printed page.</p>
-
-<p>Today the designing of type is practiced by few artists as a separate
-craft; it is an humble art at best&mdash;and a minor one. Yet every
-user of types demands in them certain artistic qualities, i. e., invention,
-novelty, style, beauty, distinction (a few insist on legibility);
-most of those users forget or do not realize that these are qualities an
-artist only may secure, and even the artist cannot always insure that
-his design will present all of them.</p>
-
-<p>First: Invention requires that we soar above mere caprices of fashion
-or the demands of passing fancy. Our letter forms have become
-fixed in their essentials by long use and tradition, yet a study of all
-that has gone before will enable the designer seeking new expres<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[Pg 269]</span>sions
-to infuse new life and character into traditional shapes and
-inspire him to create new designs based on the broad impressions
-stored in the granary of his mind.</p>
-
-<p>Second: Novelty gives us some new impression suited to and
-brought about by new conditions of life and environment&mdash;by the
-changes that time has wrought. By novelty I do not mean, however,
-the imitation novelty so frequently met with and presented as something
-new; too often it means simply some older thing newly described.
-Achieving the fantastic quality reminiscent of the "slimy
-trail" of <cite>Art Nouveau</cite>, which you older ones will recall as rampant in
-the 1890's, produces freaks of fashion in an attempt to be novel, but
-may not, necessarily, always secure the novelty desired. Traditions
-of the past need not be disregarded nor overlooked in order to meet
-the prejudices of the present.</p>
-
-<p>Just now a seemingly insatiable demand for novelty is giving us
-a senseless and ridiculous riot of "beautiful atrocities." The inundation
-of freak types is largely due to a revival of some former
-products of ignorance bringing in their train new designs even more
-bizarre in the attempt to secure "novelty"&mdash;a detestable word used
-frequently, I fear, like charity, to cover a multitude of sins. It has no
-place in artistic considerations, as a thing that really is good should
-be good for all time. Sporadic outbreaks in the name of novelty inevitably
-occur from time to time and fortunately have usually only
-their little day in the sun before vanishing forever into the limbo of
-the forgotten.</p>
-
-<p>I do not wish to imply that novelty itself is undesirable&mdash;by no
-means; striving for newness keeps things fresh and alive. It is the
-re-presentation of the extraordinarily ugly and bizarre types of the
-middle of the last century with no exceptional artistic warrant for
-their revival, in an attempt to do something different, that I deprecate.
-Newness for its own sake only may not always be worth while.</p>
-
-<p>I find it difficult to speak dispassionately of some of the types advertisers
-are using nowadays, because I am too deeply steeped in the
-traditions of the past to accept them. I cannot be accused of intolerance,
-however. The best art of the designer, the highest skill of the
-printer, and the clear, lucid argument of the advertisement writer
-must be requisitioned. Yet in much of the typography of today many<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[Pg 270]</span>
-of the new types display a marked avoidance of everything that is
-plain, simple and legible. Why are simplicity and easy readability
-no longer esteemed as desirable qualities in print? Why are these
-outlandish characters selected? For four hundred years the Roman
-types of the early Italian printers have furnished models to suit all
-tastes and serve every purpose.</p>
-
-<p>For several years past advertisers and even our magazine and book
-printers have somewhat strayed from a definite standard of dignity
-and beauty in the quest for novelty. Foreign types, imported to add
-a touch of novelty to our advertising (types which, no doubt, are
-good enough for the conditions in the bailiwicks that gave them
-birth), too frequently impart to print a fantastic or a too fanciful
-effect when used under the entirely different conditions found here.
-These types are likely to impart to our printing an air of incongruity
-displeasing to the trained taste. <cite>En passant</cite>, I am reminded of a suggestion
-offered by Reinhardt, the scenic designer: "Do not try to
-inspire from foreign ideas. Be interested in them, of course, and they
-will help to fertilize your own."</p>
-
-<p>Third: Style is a subtle quality that comes from an intelligent use
-of a good tradition renewed and advanced into our own times; it is
-a quality inseparable from the tools and materials employed, and is
-not to be acquired simply by taking thought or by a determination
-to attain it. Style is the living expression controlling both the form
-and the vital structure of the vehicle which presents thought in tangible
-form&mdash;an intimate and inseparable something in the work of a
-craftsman wholly unconscious of style or of any definite aim towards
-beauty for itself.</p>
-
-<p>Fourth: Distinction is more difficult to secure, yet, when a type
-presents an unassuming simplicity; when it expresses thought in
-every detail; when it is clear, elegant, strong; nothing in it that is
-loose and vague, no finesse of design, but showing clearly in every
-line the spirit the designer has put into the body of his work, that
-type can hardly fail of real distinction. To meet the demands of utility
-and to preserve also an esthetic standard is the problem the type
-designer must attempt to solve. Obviously a large order for a mere
-amateur (or even for a professional designer).</p>
-
-<p>As to legibility, I shall not here comment. Everyone knows (or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[Pg 271]</span>
-thinks he knows) just what constitutes it; I fear I do not, or I would
-never permit myself consciously to make a type that was not the
-quintessence of legibility.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>I am frequently asked how I design a type face. There are so many
-things that lead up to one that it is difficult to give a specific reply.
-I once told a student that "I think of a letter and then mark around
-the thought." That is hardly real designing. It may be easy to think
-of one letter, but to think also of its twenty-five relations which
-with it form the alphabet and so to mark around them that they will
-combine in complete harmony and rhythm with each other and with
-all&mdash;that is the difficult thing, the successful doing of which constitutes
-design. What is the inspiration for a new face? That also is
-difficult to answer. In the first place, it is hardly possible to create
-an absolutely new type or one that will not be reminiscent of the
-past.</p>
-
-<p>It is quite within the province of the letter artist to take his inspiration
-for a new face from any source&mdash;the lapidary inscriptions
-of the first centuries of the Imperial age of Rome; a mediaeval brass
-that marks the last resting place of a departed ruler; a manuscript
-letter by some unsung scribe of the Renaissance, or an early type of
-the golden age of typography. Or maybe he may even strive to put
-into tangible form on his drawing board some vision from out of
-nowhere&mdash;the realization of a chance thought straying through an
-idle reverie which he will whip into a satisfactory medium of intellectual
-exchange. On the other hand, he may prefer to attempt the
-re-creation of new letter from the bones of a more ancient form, endeavoring
-to secure in it a new expression of life and vigor, with
-new graces suited to our times and our use.</p>
-
-<p>If the designer chooses to disregard old types and go direct to their
-source, the manuscript hands of the scribes, well, why not? By revising
-their forms, refining them, eliminating their whimsicalities and
-vagaries and formalizing their irregularities, he may meet, too, the
-mechanical requirements and technical limitations of type founding.
-This, probably, is the more legitimate method, since in this way he
-will inspire from the real beginnings of our lower case forms. For
-myself I am inclined to agree with a writer who maintains that "it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[Pg 272]</span>
-is doubtful whether the type designer benefits from a close study of
-hand lettering," meaning of course the manuscript hands of the past.
-Interesting as old manuscripts are, I find them of little practical use
-as offering models for new types. Speaking for myself only I find it
-more feasible to get my inspirations from a study of the earlier types
-that appeal to me. They frequently offer opportunity for new expression.
-With no attempt to copy their particular forms, or to make
-changes merely in weight or serif, I endeavor rather to tear from
-them the qualities and the spirit that makes them good, for incorporation
-in my own letter shapes.</p>
-
-<p>I realize, of course, that the letters I may select as my models were,
-without doubt, inspired by some manuscript hand that personally
-I may find offers little for use in my own work. With complete independence
-of calligraphy I attempt, instead, to secure the negative
-quality of unpretentiousness; I strive for the pure contour and monumental
-character of the classic lapidary forms of the first centuries
-of the Christian era; I endeavor in my work to avoid any bizarre
-quality or exhibition of conscious preciosity. (It has been said that
-in this latter aim I sometimes fail.)</p>
-
-<p>Once in a while a type face by some other designer seems to present
-an interesting movement or quality that I like. I take early opportunity
-to make it mine, frankly and openly, in the same way that
-a writer might use exactly the same words as another, but by a new
-arrangement of them present a new thought, a new idea, or a new
-subtlety of expression. Or as two painters using identical tools and
-colors, each might produce a masterpiece, yet the work of one probably
-would not resemble that of the other in any detail. By copying
-carefully a few characters of the type that appeals to me drawn by
-another hand, I try to secure in my own drawings some certain
-movement or rhythm his may present. I soon discard my model and
-proceed from there, as it were, under my own steam, and sometimes
-produce a face which my good friend Kent Currie says "has an acid,
-typy quality" and (in substance) that it is regular and well-ordered,
-that it has interest, color, movement, and sometimes quaintness.</p>
-
-<p>Several years ago I accepted a commission to make a type for a
-magazine of large circulation. At that time it was my practice to
-make drawings from which matrices were engraved for me by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[Pg 273]</span>
-late Robert Wiebking of Chicago. His death occurred just about the
-time I was to send him my originals for translation into "mats" from
-which to cast the type. In order to carry out my arrangement with
-the magazine, and finding difficulty in procuring the work elsewhere,
-I determined to try doing also the mechanical work of matrix
-engraving myself. Like Moxon, I "learnt it of my own genuine inclination,"
-with no previous instruction in the craft. With no engraving
-or casting plant ready to my hand I began the getting together
-of the various paraphernalia of a type foundry. Procuring machines
-for a type foundry was comparatively simple; the operation of
-them, making patterns for use in the engraving machines, the lining
-and fitting of the cast types, etc., all after I had reached my sixtieth
-birthday, was something else. Looking back, I am amazed at my
-temerity. It was literally a case of rushing in where angels might
-well fear to tread. Yet, since that time I have engraved many hundreds
-of matrices.</p>
-
-<p>And now, one other personal note. It is my credo. For nearly two
-score years I have made use and beauty the great <em>desiderata</em>. I have
-never permitted myself intentionally to utilize the message I was
-attempting to present, to serve as a mere framework or scaffolding
-upon which to exploit my own skill, nor ever to allow my craft to
-became an end in itself instead of a means only to a desirable and
-useful end.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN DEEPDENE TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>[Pg 274]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />THEODORE LOW DE VINNE<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>The Old and the New</small></em><br />
-<small>A FRIENDLY DISPUTE BETWEEN JUVENIS AND SENEX</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p1 center big1">with a note by FREDERIC W. GOUDY</p>
-
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">Published by The Village Press, Marlboro, New York, 1933.</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: What is it that you admire in the types of old books?
-Don't you love them more for their quaintness than for their
-beauty? I have seen originals or accredited facsimiles of the
-best books of Gutenberg, Jenson, Aldus, Kerver, Caxton, and
-other notable printers, but I prefer modern types.</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: Then you have seen the pointed black-letter, the round
-gothic, the aldine Italic, the flemish black, and the early Roman.
-Did not any of these styles please you?</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: Not one. To try to read the pointed black of Gutenberg
-and Kerver is as repelling as a walk through the crypts of an
-old church; the round gothics are as scraggy as a heap of oyster
-shells; the Aldine italics are squeezed as to width, elongated as
-to height, and incongruously mated with absurdly small capitals;
-the flemish black-letter is the 'tour de force' of a literary acrobat.
-In all these characters I see bad drawing and disregard of proportion.
-The founding is as bad as the design; some characters are
-fitted too near, others too wide, and many letters are out of
-line.</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: You surely cannot censure Jenson's Roman for bad fitting?</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: I do except that, for Jenson was a good mechanic, and
-so was Kerver. Their types are well fitted and neatly lined. But
-I have small praise to give Jenson for his much admired Roman
-letter. Better, no doubt, than any other Roman of the period, but
-was it perfection? Bibliophiles forget that this Jenson Roman
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[Pg 275]</span>was out of fashion fifty years after his death, and that his models
-have been altered by every succeeding punch-cutter.</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: How, then, can you explain the favor shown to the
-recent types of William Morris? His 'Golden' type is based on
-the Jenson model; his 'Troy' and 'Chaucer' types are modeled
-after the round gothic of the fifteenth century.</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: I do not pretend to explain freaks of fashion in typography
-any more than in religion or art or music. The Athenians
-who worshiped an unknown or forgotten god have successors
-in every generation. There are Englishmen, nursed in the Catechism,
-who try to be devout Buddhists; there are Impressionists,
-Pre-Raphaelites, and Wagnerians.</p>
-
-<p>The lover of singularity who can invent nothing that is new
-must hunt up something that is old, or at least odd, to keep up
-his reputation for discernment. It is enough for me to know
-that the literary world, outside of Germany, moved by common
-impulse, discarded all the early types. The sacred black-letter
-of Gutenberg, and other forms, went to oblivion for good reason.
-All were of bad form and hard to read&mdash;obscured by abbreviations,
-misuse of capital letters, absurd divisions, and inconsistent
-orthography. Much as a student of our time may profess admiration
-for early typography, he will not consult the 'Bible of
-Forty-two Lines' for a disputed text, when a more readable edition
-is accessible.</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: You confound two features of typography that should
-be kept separate. The shapes of early types should be considered
-apart from the skill, or want of skill, in their compositors. The
-black-letter types of the fifteenth century are often fair copies
-of the admirable manuscripts of the period.</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: The black-letter of every early printer was but a servile
-copy of the manuscript most attainable. Malformations were
-copied, but the flowing graces of penmanship could not be reproduced
-in mechanically square types. No punch-cutter of the
-period improved on the manuscript copy. All the early books
-abound in infelicities of design and cutting, indicating that the
-work was not as thoughtfully done as similar work is done now.
-It is a begging of the question to assume that the early punch-cutters
-were demigods in art. To say that they were right is to
-say that Albrecht Dürer and Geoffroy Tory, who wrote books on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>[Pg 276]</span>
-the true proportions of letters, and Granjon and Garamond, who
-gave a lifetime to type-making, were wrong. I prefer to accept
-the teachings of known artists as of higher authority.</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: Is not the difficulty of reading old black-letter due to its
-unfamiliar abbreviations and to mannerisms in type-setting now
-out of fashion? Would not modern types be obscure if similarly
-treated?</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: They would; but the fault begins with the shapes of
-the printed letters. You note it in the modern German fraktur,
-always a perplexity to every English-born student. The Germans
-themselves practically admit its inferiority. Their scientific
-books are usually in Roman. Their preference for Roman is a confession
-that Roman types are better, and that the printers of the
-seventeenth century did wisely in their general abandonment of
-pointed letters. The reading world had outgrown them. Why
-should we revive them?</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: Let us not trouble ourselves about pointed letters. There
-is no probability that they will ever be accepted by Americans
-for the texts of ordinary books. Let us consider the Roman types
-that have been in use by the Latin races and by English-speaking
-people for three centuries. Are modern types as readable as those
-of Jenson? Here is his Pliny of 1472, and here is the 'soprasilvio'
-of Bodoni, as exhibited in his <cite>Manuale Tipografico</cite> of 1818.
-Which is better?</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: I am surprised at the question. Every character in the
-Bodoni type is correctly drawn; every system of uniform thickness,
-every hair-line and serif sharp as a knife-edge. Curves are
-true and graceful, angles exact; fitting and lining beyond criticism.
-In the Jenson type there is not one perfect letter. The
-hair-lines are scant and of unequal thickness, the serifs are stubby,
-the stems of uneven width, the characters out of proportion.
-Raggedness of drawing and roughness of cutting are not concealed
-by its fairly good fitting and lining. No publisher of the
-last two centuries would dare to print, and no reader consent
-to buy, a contemporary book in this type.</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: Can you not see something more in this Jenson type? Is
-it not more readable? I put them side by side at a distance of ten
-feet, where you can read the Jenson and cannot read the Bodoni.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[Pg 277]</span></p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: True: but types in great primer are not made to be read
-at ten feet distance.</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: True again; but the mannerisms that obscure the Bodoni
-type at ten feet are more distressing in his small types, usually
-read at the distance of fifteen inches. The over-sharp hair-line,
-the dazzling serif, and the vanishing curve are more irritating in
-the smaller than in the larger sizes. Ordinary eyesight does not
-seize at a glance the entire face of modern type; it dimly sees
-hair-lines or serifs; it deciphers the stems only; it sees but half
-of the letter, and guesses at the invisible. The type of Bodoni is
-a wearying strain on the eye.</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: Your remarks do not fairly apply to readers of good
-sight.</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: They do apply to the majority of readers. It is a mistake
-to make for ordinary texts types with lines that cannot be easily
-seen by all.</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: If you think boldness of most importance in a type, why
-make Jenson's type your model? Why not go back still farther?
-Why not take up the lapidary letters of old Rome, Greece, or
-Etruria?</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: They are uncouth and wasteful of space. Designed to
-be chiseled on stone, they are unfit for types. The 'Caroline
-minuscule,' which is the basis of our Roman text letter, is more
-compact, quite as irregular, and much more readable.</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: If you believe that there was a gradual improvement
-in the shapes of letters between the first and fifteenth centuries,
-why stop at the fifteenth? Why not admit that this improvement
-continues?</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: Because the changes that followed were not always improvements.
-The faultless curves, sharp lines, and exact angles
-of Bodoni were disfigurements made at the expense of readability.
-Types are made to be easily read, not to show the skill of the
-designer. When they fail in readability the fault is fatal. The
-proper development of typography was checked by the invention
-of copper-plate that trod on its heels. Its delicacy of line,
-its perfect graduation of shadows, its vigorous blacks, and its
-facile rendering of a receding perspective put out of fashion all
-strong and manly work on wood. Dürer's 'Little Passion,' Hol<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[Pg 278]</span>bein's
-'Dance of Death,' and Vostre's <cite>Book of Hours</cite> were put
-aside, and the insipid effeminacies of overworked line-engraving
-took their place. Punch-cutters of the sixteenth century thought
-that printing would be improved if they imitated the methods
-of line-engravers, and so they cut their types sharper and thinner.
-They would not see that relief engraving and incised engraving
-are diametrically opposed in theory and practice, and that the
-imitation of one process by the other is impossible. Repeated
-failures did not check this desire to imitate. Increasing refinements
-in types produced a corresponding degradation in printing.
-The inferiority of the average book of the eighteenth century
-is largely due to the so-called 'improved' faces of type. The most
-irrepressible imitator of copper-plate effects was Bodoni of
-Parma. William Morris is right in saying that his imitations of
-copper-plate delicacy indicate a real abasement of the typographic
-art.</p>
-
-<p><em>Juvenis</em>: If correct drawing, exact proportion, and high finish
-are merits in other arts, why should they be faults in type-making?</p>
-
-<p><em>Senex</em>: 'Finish' is a merit only when it improves; when it over-elaborates,
-when it leads the reader to think more of the means
-employed than of the object sought, it is a fault. Bodoni's careful
-drawing and finical cutting defeat the purpose for which types
-were made. They do not fully show the letter; they do show
-Bodoni; and it is a fair supposition that he was more intent on
-showing his skill than he was on aiding the reader. Your ideal
-of merit in types is that of mechanical precision. You forget that
-letters are of irregular shapes, with intent to make them distinct.
-The more you prune away the irregularities, the more indistinct
-they become. Readers do not isolate and critically examine each
-letter; they read words at a glance. They prefer characters with
-enough of irregularity to arrest the eye and fix the thought of
-the writer. It is with types as with penmanship. Has it been your
-misfortune to revise a long manuscript written in feminine style
-with a crow-quill pen, and with admirable precision, but with
-almost invisible hair strokes? Recollect your exasperation at its
-mechanical precision and wearisome monotony. How gratefully
-you turned to a jagged and masculine but readable style of penmanship,
-in which you were content to have all the rules of
-writing-masters violated! Recall these experiences, and then un<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[Pg 279]</span>derstand
-why I prefer old types. Not because they are old, or
-of faultless form, but because the letters are more distinct. They
-were made, not to show the skill of the punch-cutter, but to
-help the reader; and they deserve the credit due to straightforward
-workmanship.</p>
-
-
-<p class="p1 center">A NOTE BY FREDERIC W. GOUDY</p>
-
-<p><em>In 1898 the name "De Vinne" meant little more to me than the
-name of a then popular display printing type, until the day, in a
-book-shop in Detroit, I chanced on a copy of</em> The Book-lover's
-Almanac <em>for 1896. Of the eight or ten articles listed in the table of
-contents one was by Theo. Low De Vinne. The article was written
-in the form of a discussion between "Senex" and "Juvenis"
-on the comparative merits of the early type faces and those of
-Bodoni and his successors. This was, I believe, my first realization
-that "De Vinne" was the name of a living personality.</em></p>
-
-<p><em>I was just becoming interested in the history of the typography
-of books and was making also a closer study of type design, but
-it did not occur to me that such study would ever lead to the
-actual practise of the art I have since made peculiarly my own....</em></p>
-
-<p><em>When I first read Mr. De Vinne's article it seemed to me that
-"Senex" had rather the better of the argument, indeed, I have not
-found, during the nearly two score years that have elapsed, any
-statements elsewhere that have changed materially the opinions
-then formed as to the soundness of his asseverations....</em></p>
-
-<p><em>If I were asked to say what I think has been the greatest single
-influence in my work as a type designer I would be hard put to
-find a satisfactory reply; but there is no doubt in my mind that
-the principles set forth in this article and in his book</em> Notable
-Printers of Italy During the 15th Century <em>have certainly loomed
-large in crystallizing the character of my types. The consistency
-of thought he displayed, his sound knowledge of old types, his
-fairness in the consideration of each moot point, the simple yet
-lucid presentation of his ideas and opinions interested me; they
-influenced my own thought, and in turn are reflected in my work.</em></p>
-
-<p><em>If, to my more mature consideration of this discussion there is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[Pg 280]</span>
-any lapse of the author's pen, it seems to me it is, that "Senex"
-failed to stress more strongly a demand for greater grace and
-beauty in types in closer combination with legibility. I feel that
-the proper standard of beauty in types basically resides in their
-utility, but there are, nevertheless, secondary esthetic attributes
-which may be included without any sacrifice of life and vigor
-and legibility. A certain rugged beauty is perceived without
-difficulty, and irregularities which in isolated or individual characters,
-might seem objectionable from the standpoint of grace
-alone, may prove highly desirable in the composed line. Readability
-is of course to be considered above every other quality,
-because, failing this it fails utterly, regardless of every other
-excellence; yet, while striving for legibility, beauty of form
-should also be given almost equal consideration.... I venture to
-disagree with Senex's statement that "the lapidary letters of old
-Rome are uncouth and ... unfit for types"....</em></p>
-
-
-<p class="p1"><em>Marlboro, N. Y., May</em>, 1933</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[Pg 281]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp48" id="i281" style="max-width: 5.625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_281.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="centaur">
-<h2 class="nobreak">PARAGRAPHS ON PRINTING</h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Paragraphs on Printing</cite>. Copyright 1943 by William E. Rudge's Sons. Reprinted by
-permission of author and publisher</p>
-
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-<p><em>NOTE: The text for this book on the functions of the book designer was
-elicited from B.R. in talks with James Hendrickson. These informal observations
-on typographical problems were accompanied by numerous reproductions
-of pages of Mr. Rogers' design, by way of illustration and example.</em></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>You think of the <em>book</em>, the size and shape of the book,
-before you consider type or anything else. What kind of a
-volume should it be? In what particular form and in what face
-of type would <em>you</em> like to read it? The type and format should
-be governed by your conception of the character of the subject
-matter. As an instance take Conrad's tale, <cite>The Tremolino</cite>,
-recently printed. It is a slight but vivid story, to be read almost
-at a glance, so it would have been a misfit to make it
-larger, say in octavo size. The vividness is indicated by the
-dramatic little cuts in color, the slightness by the dimensions
-and open character of the pages.</p>
-
-<p>After the size is determined the selection of a suitable type
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[Pg 282]</span>comes next. And that depends usually on what types are
-available in the office in which the book is to be made. Even
-this is not always necessary, as many offices have composition
-done outside by type-composition firms, so that an almost
-unlimited choice may be yours. There are so many varieties of
-type now, that for almost any size or kind of book you plan
-you will readily find an appropriate face. At any rate it isn't
-so vitally important as other things.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>It is a great advantage in laying out a page, especially a title
-or display page, if the designer can handle pen or pencil; and
-the more definitely he can represent the type he proposes to
-use, the greater saving of time and expense there will be when
-it comes to the setting of it. It is true that some masters of
-printing do not resort to sketching&mdash;at least not more than
-mere lines on the paper, labeled with the kinds and sizes of
-type they represent. But to visualize the completed page in
-such slight indications is an unusual gift, and if one does not
-possess this gift there is the probability that the first setting
-of the page will have to be torn apart several times before a
-satisfactory one is produced. It is sometimes well worth while
-to work a page out very carefully, even in pen-and-ink, so that
-it will be a pretty close approximation to the finished thing;
-especially if you have to submit the scheme to a customer for
-his approval, or if he asks to see alternative treatments.</p>
-
-<p>Of course, after many years of familiarity with type faces,
-it isn't necessary to draw them accurately for your own guidance,
-even though you should possess that ability; but some
-nevertheless find it a pleasant thing to see the page take form
-under their pencil or pen before it goes into actual type.
-Frequently, however, there is a sense of disappointment in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[Pg 283]</span>
-seeing the first type proof, for the freedom and swing of your
-sketch has usually vanished in its translation into type; and
-the more formal the style of type the less it will retain the
-quality of your sketch.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Making an "allusive" format for a book&mdash;that is, casting
-it in the style of the period of the original text&mdash;is in a small
-way something like planning the stage setting for a play. An
-up-to-date style for an ancient text would compare with staging
-<cite>Hamlet</cite> in modern dress. However novel and effective in
-its own way, you feel it to be strange, and this sense of strangeness
-is an annoying distraction; you are forced to think of the
-setting and the designer rather than of the text.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The character of the text to be printed is of course the first
-thing to consider in selecting the kind of type; and the number
-of pages to which the book will probably run is the determining
-factor as to what size of type is possible. The width
-and length of the type page are then to be proportioned to the
-paper page, which in turn also helps to determine the size of
-the type. All these considerations are interlocking.</p>
-
-<p>There have been several rules formulated for page proportions.
-One is that the width of the page should approximate
-one-half of the diagonal. Another is that the length of line
-should be one-half more than the length of a line of the
-twenty-six lower-case letters of the type used. But all such
-rules are only guides, to be discarded when the effect you are
-after seems to require something else; this something else to
-be determined only by the judgment of the designer and his
-feeling for the appearance of the page. In the reproduction of
-the styles of early typography the designer should avoid setting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[Pg 284]</span>
-small type in too wide a measure. The old printers in their
-folio volumes did not seem to mind very long lines of comparatively
-small type. But most of these ancient books in
-Roman type were never intended for rapid reading. They were
-generally Latin texts where the eye follows the line better
-than in English or French composition. Latin composition
-naturally makes more beautiful pages on account of the preponderance
-of short letters&mdash;m, n, u, etc., with comparatively
-few ascenders and descenders. The evenness of spacing that
-the early printers got came from their abundant use of Latin
-abbreviations and their indifference as to how many consecutive
-word divisions occurred at the ends of lines, but it was
-never a conscious effort to obtain what is called "texture" in
-the page. There should be no laboring to produce a perfectly
-spaced page but rather an endeavor to avoid a badly spaced one.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The amount of leading that a page requires depends on so
-many factors that it is difficult to give any fixed method of
-procedure. The kind of type, the size of type, the length of
-line and the general character of the text all bear on this point.
-Generally speaking, most types should be at least slightly
-leaded, especially if the lines are fairly long. This helps the
-eye to catch the following line in rapid reading more easily
-than when the type is set solidly. The solid pages were usually
-adopted when old-style types were used exclusively; but when
-modern type came in, beginning with Bodoni, the custom of
-leading, sometimes double-leading, arose. The effect of these
-new types was helped by a generous amount of white paper
-between the lines. This applies to Bodoni, Bulmer, and the
-Scotch face and their derivatives. Antique types were, however,
-occasionally very freely leaded, especially in Spanish
-books of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[Pg 285]</span></p>
-
-<p>The conventional use of quotation marks is to place a
-double mark at the beginning and end of the passage quoted,
-with single marks for any quotations within it. In books with
-much conversation the use of double quotes frequently results
-in very mottled typography, and for many years some English
-printers have adopted the single mark for the major quotations,
-using double marks only if an inner quote occurs. This
-violates, a little, one's sense of relative importance, but in a
-book where there are only simple quotations there is no reason
-why the single mark should not suffice, much to the visual
-improvement of the typography. There is some possibility of
-confusion if the last word of the extract should chance to be a
-possessive plural, with an apostrophe, as the two marks are
-identical; but this occurs so infrequently as to be negligible.</p>
-
-<p>Inverted commas were used for opening quotes in most
-founts until comparatively recent years, but now a separate
-pattern is provided for most founts. Reversed, instead of
-inverted commas now accompany many founts, particularly
-the reproductions of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
-types, at which time they were first introduced.</p>
-
-<p>French, Spanish and other continental founders furnish a
-special design of marks, « »; but these look rather strange to
-Anglo-Saxon eyes.</p>
-
-<p>In Elizabethan printing the quotation marks sometimes ran
-entirely down the margins of the extracts, and if, as was frequently
-the case, the page was enclosed with rules, they were
-often placed outside the rules. This treatment occurs in one
-of the handsomest books of that period, <cite>Nobilitas Politica vel
-Civilis</cite>, printed in 1608 by William Jaggard, the printer of the
-First Folio fifteen years later. The <cite>Nobilitas</cite> is generally accounted
-the masterpiece of his press, and in itself comprises
-nearly all of the various typographical features of books of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[Pg 286]</span>
-that time. Large and small types, Roman, Italic, black-letter
-and Anglo-Saxon, both solid and leaded pages, tabular work
-with handsome braces, side notes, woodcut initials, head-pieces
-and tailpieces, and a series of costume plates engraved
-on copper and printed within the rules on folioed blank pages
-left for them in the form&mdash;all go toward making a book that
-is a compendious example for students of Elizabethan
-typography.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Red is the most satisfactory secondary color with black,
-and you will often find that it is better to use just one spot
-of color on the page. In using red for an occasional display
-line, blue-red or purple-red or orange-red should be avoided.
-A red such as the early printers had, a full-bodied, rather dull
-vermilion, which will hold up well with the black, is the most
-successful. If it is desirable to employ the blue for a border or
-an initial it shows up much more brilliantly when the design
-is in white on a solid or stippled ground of the blue. An outline
-design in blue is too light in mass to accompany the
-black of the type. But black and blue alone are never so pleasing
-a combination as when red is introduced as the second
-color, with blue as the third.</p>
-
-<p>The black for the text or reading types should be intense
-without being glossy, because the gloss causes a reflection of
-light and interferes with legibility. The same objection does
-not apply to colors, for a moderate gloss enriches them and
-overcomes a sort of dustiness that their surfaces take on.</p>
-
-<p>The text pages of most books should be printed in black
-ink.<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> The tendency of a young printer is often to try for
-novelty by printing with color rather than with black, not
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[Pg 287]</span>realizing that most types were not designed for anything but
-black on white. If, however, the job is somewhat aside from
-the usual run of books, and is not of too great extent, a
-brown or green ink may be substituted for black if the tint
-be dark enough to afford perfect legibility. But the result then
-acquires something of the character of an object of art rather
-than a book.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Letter-spacing is often misused. It is safe to say that lower-case
-type should practically <em>never</em> be letter-spaced, for the individual
-letters were designed for close combination with other
-letters of the alphabet. If it becomes necessary to fill out a line it
-is preferable to put all the extra space between the words even
-though the resultant "holes" are distressing to the eye. Sometimes
-with very large types it is permissible to letter-space in
-a minor degree, as the spaces between the letters naturally are
-larger and letter-spacing does not detract too much from the
-appearance of the line, especially if it is distributed according
-to the irregular space between the different letters as normally
-set.</p>
-
-<p>With capitals or upper-case letters the conditions are different.
-Then it is frequently a great advantage to use letter-spaces,
-even considerably; but this depends upon the general
-style of the typography adopted for the book. In the hands of
-some contemporary printers the Aldine practice of wide letter-spacing
-of small capitals has been followed quite skilfully
-in title- or subtitle lines, chapter headings, and other display
-work. This is of particular advantage with the rather heavy-faced
-modern types, i.e., Scotch, Bodoni, etc.</p>
-
-<p>It is well to avoid too many, and too open letter-spaced
-lines in any kind of display composition, for the effect is
-sometimes disastrous. Baskerville was very fond of letter-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[Pg 288]</span>spacing
-and most of his work is, in that respect, extremely
-ugly.<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> He sometimes pushed spacing to the point of absurdity;
-notably in his great Bible, where in the heading of the
-Book of Job he set the letters J O B in capitals of about
-48-point size with three inches of space between them. It
-could hardly be called a word, but rather just a bad job of
-type-setting.</p>
-
-<p>The practice of letter-spacing to produce blocked-out lines
-of capitals must be done with great caution and skill or else a
-very uneven texture will be produced. Frequently it is better
-to abandon the idea of a block of type if the spacing cannot
-be done with a fairly uniform effect. It is a mistake to start
-with a determination to produce a block of type and then to
-persist in it at any cost of legibility or appearance. When lines
-of capitals are set without leading, letter-spacing should never
-be used. The leading should be in proportion to the spacing
-in order to keep the continuity of the lines of type, otherwise
-you will produce columns of letters instead of lines. It is
-hardly necessary to say that the best letter-spacing is not done
-with uniform spaces between the letters. The spacing on
-either side of a letter should be determined by the shape of
-the adjacent letters. Most compositors have now learned to
-use spaces according to the shape of the letters, but the cutting
-of such letters as V, W, to make them set closer than their
-natural width is usually very much overdone. The new logotypes
-cut for this purpose are equally faulty in this respect.
-The resulting effect is more noticeable and more objectionable
-than the natural setting of the type would be. Anything
-that strikes the eye as strange or unusual in a line of type is
-to be avoided.</p>
-
-<p>Periods and commas of letter-spaced capitals should not be
-set off from the last letter of the word, regardless of the
-amount of spacing used elsewhere in the line.</p>
-
-<p>Colons and semicolons have traditionally been set apart
-from the word they follow, whether in capitals or lower case.
-In old books they are frequently centered in the space between
-the words where they occur. Exclamation and interrogation
-points should if possible be set off with thin spaces because
-they often form disagreeable and confusing combinations
-with the last letter of the word, such as ff!, ll!, f?, etc.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb"/>
-
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN CENTAUR AND ARRIGHI TYPES</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[Pg 289]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> Of the more than half-thousand books that Mr. Rogers has designed, only four come to
-mind as having the text matter printed in anything other than black; and these four were all
-slight volumes, more or less in the gift-book classification.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> "When we look at his books we think of Baskerville; while to look at the work of Jenson
-is to think but of its beauty, and almost to forget that it was made with hands!" U<small>PDIKE</small>,
-<cite>Printing Types</cite>, <small>II</small>, p. 116.</p></div></div>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[Pg 290]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<h2 class="nobreak centaur">ADVENTURER WITH TYPE ORNAMENT</h2>
-<div class="figcenter illowp38" id="i290" style="max-width: 3.5625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_290.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="center p1 big1 centaur">B.R.</p>
-<p class="p1 center big2"><em>Paul A. Bennett</em></p>
-
-<p class="p22 center centaur small1">Revised and amended from P.M., Vol. II, No. 5, New York, January 1936.</p></div>
-
-<p class="centaur">To anyone who has set or handled type, the achievements of
-Bruce Rogers in combining decorative type units to form a
-design are extraordinary. This may seem undiluted enthusiasm;
-actually and sincerely it is but simple fact.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">How? Why? Only a detailed examination of a particular
-B.R. design with type ornaments will reveal. An examination,
-that is, accompanied by simultaneous scanning of a proof of
-the individual elements comprising the design. When one
-sees the units alone&mdash;some of them so seemingly useless that
-one wonders that anything, even second-rate stuff, could
-possibly be done with such drab material&mdash;then one appreciates
-the typographic magic B.R. has accomplished.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur"><em>How</em> he sees anything in some of the units he uses so
-dexterously, I don't know. When and how he first became
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[Pg 291]</span>interested in doing designs with type ornaments is worth
-considering.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">His experiments date back to Riverside Press days, though
-in that period no attempts were made to use type ornament
-except by conventional combinations into borders or head-pieces.
-But even at that time he had several seventeenth-century
-flowers recut for the decoration of a collection of early
-American documents, titled <cite>Sailors Narratives of Voyages Along
-the New England Coast, 1524-1624</cite>, edited by George Parker
-Winship.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">Interest in combining type ornaments was shown again
-while at the University Press in Cambridge, England, during
-1918-19, but he developed it there into nothing more than
-the revival of two or three other earlier ornaments which were
-used, as at Riverside, in conventional ways. A page of his
-scrapbook shows also a number of trials with Egyptian hieroglyphs,
-but apparently nothing came of these.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[Pg 292]</span></p>
-
-<p class="centaur">The germ of his allusive use of ornaments is probably to
-be found in the "Goosefest" menu which he concocted at
-Carl Rollins' Montague Press; when at the bottom of an
-elaborate bill of fare three of Will Bradley's strutting little
-figures are set (or laid) flat on their backs in a row, with the
-legend, "Turn over (not us but the leaf)."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp83" id="i292-1" style="max-width: 17.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_292-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">The earliest traceable use of ornaments and punctuation
-marks that in combination bear directly upon the text thus
-decorated was in the heading for the first page of <cite>The Symbol
-and the Saint</cite>, where a line of parentheses, a cross and three
-dolphins symbolize the overseas quest of the hero of the
-tale. This same motif was developed and elaborated later in
-<cite>Joseph Conrad the Man</cite>, <cite>The Ancient Mariner</cite>, and other pieces. His
-scrapbook shows many unused variations on this theme. The
-sea and leaping dolphins and palms seem to be his favorite
-preoccupation.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp99" id="i292-2" style="max-width: 17.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_292-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">Probably the most difficult compositions of this kind he
-has produced are to be found in Conrad's unfinished novel,
-<cite>The Sisters</cite>; where in a space the width of the page and one-quarter
-to one-half inch in depth may be found suggestions
-of illimitable Russian wheat fields, Paris with its mansard
-roofs and French roads leading into it, a farewell scene at
-sunset on a winding Spanish road, etc., each based upon some
-phrase or paragraph in the story itself.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[Pg 293]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp48" id="i293" style="max-width: 27.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_293.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[Pg 294]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp52" id="i294" style="max-width: 28.1875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_294.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[Pg 295]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">Most certainly B.R.'s accomplishments surpass those
-decorative combinations of type ornaments shown in early
-printers' and type-founders' specimens&mdash;yes, even including
-the foremost achievements of the hallowed rule benders.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i295" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_295.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">Little research is necessary to support these rather inclusive
-statements. An excellent example is the <cite>Utopia</cite> title page, done
-for the Limited Editions Club. Here is swirling movement
-in a border, if ever you saw it. And accomplished, mainly,
-with two traits of ornament and their reverses. The entire
-border took but several more.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">Setting them out individually, doesn't give a hint of their
-possibilities. Yet look at the result of their use by B.R.,
-scan the design closely to discover just where and how each
-element is placed with such telling effect&mdash;and you begin to
-appreciate the man's ability.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">Another example&mdash;old stuff B.R. will call it&mdash;is the title
-page of a little Christmas book issued a dozen years ago by
-Rudge. Could one reasonably expect anything remotely approaching
-typographic whimsy from a few typographic toy
-soldiers, a dog, an elephant, a few Christmas trees, a half
-moon and some stars? Just glance at <cite>The Symbol and the Saint</cite> title
-page though, and see how B.R.'s subtle skill utilized material
-teetering toward the junk pile.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[Pg 296]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp47" id="i296" style="max-width: 28.3125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_296.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[Pg 297]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">"Never," your perceptive collector will say, "has anything
-more masterful been done with type ornaments than in the
-Grolier Club <cite>Pierrot of the Minute</cite>." Few would disagree, for if
-ever there was a typographic jewel, the <cite>Pierrot</cite> is it. Yet B.R.,
-in discussing it critically, termed it "French millinery. Probably
-all right for its purpose. Rather over-decorated, but then
-the poem itself seems over-decorative."</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">There are dozens of other examples of B.R.'s mastery of
-typographic decoration. But space is not limitless, and I want
-particularly to say something about some designs with Linotype
-ornaments (drawn by T. M. Cleland) that Mr. Rogers
-devised a few years ago for the Linotype Company. These
-were used for the first time in the insert discussing the auction
-prices of twenty B.R. books, which appeared in <cite>Barnacles From
-Many Bottoms</cite>, several of which are shown on pages 290, 299
-and 300.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">That "something" may best be told, I believe, by excerpts
-from letters written to a Company executive, in April and
-May 1931, by B.R., who then was in London:</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">"... In an odd hour I got to playing about with some of
-the Cleland ornaments, cutting them out of a specimen and
-pasting them into a design which finally evolved itself into
-several amusing compositions. Later on it occurred to me
-that you might be able to use them in some piece....</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">"Having only a limited number of proofs, and no slugs
-whatever, I was able to work out the idea in only the roughest
-fashion&mdash;not fit to show anyone&mdash;but the principal one of
-the designs is for a page heading ... or the elements composing
-it could be used singly&mdash;as tail pieces, initial letters, etc.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">"This probably is an impractical idea [a suggestion by Mr.
-Rogers on how the material might be used], but I only make
-it to put into action more or less work that I have already
-done to save it from the scrap basket&mdash;work that might be
-useful to your firm as a demonstration of what can be done
-with some of your product. I really don't think anyone has
-yet worked out the possibilities of your ornamental material,
-much of which is the best on the market."</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[Pg 298]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp44" id="i298" style="max-width: 25.9375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_298.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[Pg 299]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp50" id="i299" style="max-width: 29.1875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_299.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[Pg 300]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">Additional proofs of the Cleland ornaments were sent
-immediately to Mr. Rogers in London. With them he made
-eight designs, cutting the proofs and pasting the ornaments
-to show the desired effect. This tree, for instance, was used
-on the title page of the <cite>Barnacles</cite> insert:</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp74" id="i300" style="max-width: 12.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_300.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">This was printed from a line engraving made direct from Mr.
-Rogers' paste-up, and used "as is" to show how accurately
-his layouts for this type of work reach the composing-room.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">A month later, in May 1931, Mr. Rogers returned his
-layouts with this note: "... I have only just been able to
-complete the designs I had begun.... One or two other combinations
-occurred to me, which I have also put in&mdash;but we
-could go on endlessly, almost, when once started on this kind
-of thing.... I would have built up the designs with impressions
-from sections of a slug, had you sent an inch or two of each
-unit; but it is perhaps better, though slower, to cut and paste
-proofs, as each cutting is a guide to the compositor as to how
-and where trimming or beveling the ornaments are necessary.
-But only a few such trimmings are required, and all the bevelings
-are at 45 degrees&mdash;as is the diagonal composition of the
-oak tree heads.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[Pg 301]</span></p>
-
-<p class="centaur">"If at all possible I would like to have a chance to revise
-proofs of these, before they are actually printed&mdash;but if that
-isn't feasible, then I must rely on the compositors getting the
-closest possible approximation to my pasted-up designs. As
-close setting as possible is the secret of most work of this
-kind. The various parts must hang together well&mdash;though I
-do not mind a slight indication at the joints that they are
-made of individual pieces of type. I once had an over-zealous
-electrotyper fill up all the joints with solder&mdash;and ruined the
-appearance of the design&mdash;it looked like a drawn one."</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">It wasn't possible to show Mr. Rogers what had been done
-with his layouts for the insert in <cite>Barnacles</cite>, which was essentially
-a surprise book distributed as a keepsake at a dinner in
-his honor.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">The "fighting cocks," to cite one instance, were originally
-suggested by B.R. to be used to dress a page folio at the bottom
-of the page; in the insert they were raised to the top of
-the page and printed with his initials. Other slight adaptations
-of similar character were taken in that piece of printing.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i301" style="max-width: 34.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_301.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">"Typographic whimsy," wrote Carl Purington Rollins in
-<cite>B.R.&mdash;America's Typographic Playboy</cite>, in 1927, "is a pretty difficult
-achievement. The compositor at the case is too much
-concerned with the practical minutiæ of his craft to have
-much time for such trivialities, and the man who designs
-printing at a draughting board is apt to find his humor, if he
-attempts it in type, limping like a thrice-told jest. Mr. Rogers
-has had the advantage of enough familiarity with type to know
-what can be done, and he has been able at times to work with
-compositors who take a large and robust view of their calling."</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[Pg 302]</span></p>
-
-<p class="centaur">That "whimsy" Mr. Rollins had reference to lies in many
-of B.R.'s more ephemeral efforts, frequently reproduced. It
-is reflected to a measure, by <cite>The Symbol and the Saint</cite> page. But
-there is considerably more than whimsy in the type ornament
-designs by B.R. These have graced dozens of books of varying
-subjects ... and the marvel of it all is, to me, that the man
-never repeats himself&mdash;he swings off on a new tack ... adventurous,
-exploring, mastering new trails, scattering typographic
-inspiration for dozens of others, pointing up paths
-they previously never even suspected.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="centaur p01"><em>Postscript</em>, 1951: It is fitting to add a note concerning one of
-B.R.'s more distinguished recent projects, the great folio
-Bible designed for The World Publishing Company, which
-was four years in the making.</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">The design of the World Bible employed decorative treatment
-for the bordered title page, the sixty-six book openings,
-initial letters and numerous tailpieces. "These, together with
-the type selected [a revised, special cutting of Goudy New-style],
-are intended to give a slightly oriental flavor to the
-volume," B.R. pointed out, "indicative of the Syriac and
-Hebrew sources of the text on which the King James translators
-based their classic version."</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">In discussing the matter of ornaments in the Bible with the
-publishers, B.R. revealed his thinking concerning their use:
-"... Most of the Books will probably not begin at the top
-of the page and the use of ornaments are to me necessary to
-separate the end of the preceding book from the title of the
-following one.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[Pg 303]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp48" id="i303" style="max-width: 28em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_303.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[Pg 304]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="centaur">"The Bible has always been a book on which much decoration
-and illustrations have been lavished, and there is no
-reason in tradition why it should be treated solemnly in that
-respect. The very first edition (of which I have specimen
-sheets and a whole Bible printed from the same type and with
-the same decorations by the same printer, twenty-five years
-later, 1635) is just peppered with woodcut decorations and
-type ornaments. So we have a good precedent for a decorated
-treatment&mdash;if any were needed. You know the Bible is on the
-whole one of the most exciting texts in existence, and the
-modern 'practical' treatment of it as mainly a book of devotion
-is ignoble, to say the least...."</p>
-
-<p class="centaur">Some of the typographic decoration and initials used in the
-Bible are included here. William Targ's detailed account, <cite>The
-Making of the Bruce Rogers World Bible</cite>, contains most of the decorative
-elements&mdash;initials, tailpieces and chapter initials&mdash;and
-reveals the intimate story of the progress of the book's production
-through the four years. It was published by World in
-1949, in a limited edition of 1875 copies, 500 of which were
-for sale.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 centaur center">COMPOSED IN CENTAUR AND ARRIGHI TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[Pg 305]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp55" id="i305" style="max-width: 32.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_305.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"> Book labels devised with typographic ornament by B. R. In the originals, a second color
-was used for each excepting the Reydel.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[Pg 306]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="bell">
-<h2 class="nobreak">SOME TENDENCIES IN MODERN TYPOGRAPHY</h2>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp72" id="i306" style="max-width: 4.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_306.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="center p1 big1"><em>Daniel Berkeley Updike</em></p>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Some Aspects of Printing Old and New</cite> by D. B. Updike. Copyright 1941 by
-the author. Reprinted by permission of the Providence Public Library, Providence,
-Rhode Island.</p>
-
-
-<p>Not very long since I was asked by a printer to what extent
-he should accept or avoid modern trends in the design of
-types and books. I attempt here to answer that question.</p>
-
-<p>I have a friend, connected with one of the great companies
-supplying machines for type composition. Not long since he
-spoke to me in unflattering terms of the examples of typography
-shown at an exhibition of the products of the Bauhaus
-School, originally of Weimar and later of Munich. He protested
-against a practice there manifested of discarding capital
-letters and depending solely on those in the lower-case. I consoled
-him by showing him a French book, printed entirely in
-this style. This volume, entitled <cite>Typographie Économique</cite>, was
-published in Paris in 1837 and so far as it had any influence on
-printing, then or later, is as dead as Queen Anne. The author,
-the Count de Lasteyrie, who promoted this scheme, was one
-of a race of French scientists, of some intellectual and social
-importance&mdash;one of the daughters of Lafayette married into
-that family. In the eighteenth century no less a person than
-the German writer Grimm tried a similar typographical
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[Pg 307]</span>plan. In the Fairy Tales containing "Snow White and the
-Seven Dwarfs," later compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,
-the practice was not continued. This supports the contention
-that many new and disturbing experiments, under the patronage
-of distinguished names, are merely survivals or revivals
-of ancient failures. Thus in the light of experience, there is in
-Bauhaus typography nothing for my acquaintance&mdash;or anybody
-else&mdash;to be excited about.</p>
-
-<p>Now Bauhaus typography is of the essence of modernism.
-That its position may be fairly stated I quote the following from
-a <cite>Bauhaus Year Book</cite>:&mdash;<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">verbatim</i> and (I may add) <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">literatim</i>:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>["] why should we write and print with two alphabets? both
-a large and a small sign are not necessary to indicate one
-single sound.</p>
-
-<p><em>A</em> = <em>a</em></p>
-
-<p>we do not speak a capital A and a small a.</p>
-
-<p>we need only a single alphabet. it gives us practically the
-same result as the mixture of upper and lower-case letters,
-and at the same time is less of a burden on all who write&mdash;on
-school children, students, stenographers, professional and
-business men. it could be written much more quickly, especially
-on the type-writer, since the shift key would then become
-unnecessary, typewriting could therefore be more quickly
-mastered and typewriters would be cheaper because of
-simpler construction, printing would be cheaper, for fonts
-and type cases would be smaller, so that printing establishments
-would save space and their clients money. with these
-common sense economies in mind ... the bauhaus made a
-thorough alphabetical house-cleaning in all its printing,
-eliminating capitals from books, posters, catalogs, magazines,
-stationery and even calling cards.</p>
-
-<p>dropping capitals would be a less radical reform in english.
-indeed the use of capital letters occurs so infrequently in
-english in comparison with german that it is difficult to
-understand why such a superfluous alphabet should still be
-considered necessary.["]</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[Pg 308]</span></p></div>
-
-<p>Now in German printing all nouns have capital letters. In
-the sentence "A Dog chases a Cat into a Barn," dog, cat,
-barn are all capitalized. No one can be blamed for wanting to
-be rid of so much capitalization. But when Germans purge
-anything the innocent invariably suffer with the guilty. Thus
-all capitals must go. While it may have overcome a difficulty
-felt in Germany, this imported missionary zeal corrects no
-difficulty in the printing of English prose or poetry. In some
-instances such a custom brings about surprising results.
-Suppose, for example, a newspaper says "the white house
-favors black and prefers even green to a dyed-in-the-wool
-red." To make the sentence intelligible would need the addition
-of a number of words&mdash;which would not be <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">typographie
-économique</i>! We need labour this point no further but leave
-these experiments to the advertising of Coty and Elizabeth
-Arden. Such effects have what is called attention value&mdash;like
-Neon signs&mdash;but I am not considering that kind of typography.
-I have, however, here traced the source of a current
-fashion of printing signs and advertisements without capital
-letters.</p>
-
-<p>I have been classed by my work as a conservative, but I am
-a liberal conservative or a conservative liberal&mdash;whichever
-you like or dislike. All I wish to conserve, either in traditionalism
-or modernism, is common sense. What little I have
-was gained by experience. I regard many typographic experiments
-with good will and many traditional viewpoints
-with tolerance. I agree wholeheartedly with neither. I remember&mdash;or
-try to do so&mdash;that every generation has in turn
-to be told that there was once a man named Caesar, who wrote
-a very dull book called the <cite>Commentaries</cite>, of which the first
-sentence is all that most people remember; that the makers
-of Baker's Chocolate did not invent the familiar picture of a
-chocolate girl, which was an eighteenth-century painting by
-Jean Etienne Liotard now in a Dresden picture gallery, and
-that William Blake did not write, but only illustrated, the
-Book of Job. We who have long known these things forget
-that people are born not knowing them. We should therefore<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[Pg 309]</span>
-look tenderly on many typographic experiments. To us
-elders they may seem akin to lighting a fire with kerosene or
-applying one's tongue to metal in zero temperatures, but it is
-by such unwise ventures that we outgrow them. And as I
-have spent a long life learning, and to most questions do not
-yet know the answers, I have no right to frown on more youthful
-and enterprising enquirers.</p>
-
-<p>Obviously some of the eccentricities of present-day typography
-are a natural reflection of that rather tortured world in
-which we find ourselves. If art, the drama, literature, and
-music reflect current trends of life it is natural that printing
-should in a measure do so. If we throw overboard old standards
-of conduct, we may far more readily throw over old
-standards of taste. When one casts a convention away as
-useless and outmoded, we often learn for the first time why
-it was there! It is urged that fuller expression of individuality,
-unhampered by rules, is development. It seems to me more
-accurate to say that through the experience of trying these
-experiments development comes&mdash;though not always of a
-kind expected. Such development ought never to stop until
-in the exact sense of the word we are "accomplished"&mdash;finished&mdash;which
-few live to be.</p>
-
-<p>The <em>problem</em> is to distinguish between a true development,
-and a false one. In judging either modernistic or retrospective
-typography, that is what must be decided. Do these developments&mdash;wise
-or otherwise, produce a well-made and readable
-book&mdash;in short a good book? "In the printing of books
-meant to be read," says an authority, "there is little room for
-'bright' typography. Even dullness and monotony in the
-type-setting are far less vicious to a reader than typographical
-eccentricity or pleasantry. Cunning of this sort is desirable,
-even essential in the typography of propaganda, whether for
-commerce, politics, or religion because in such printing only
-the freshest survives inattention. But the typography of books,
-apart from the category of narrowly limited editions, requires
-an obedience to convention which is almost absolute&mdash;and
-with reason."</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[Pg 310]</span></p>
-
-<p>It is the fashion, just now, to decry typographic conventions.
-Some conventions and traditions deserve to be decried
-and some have already been laughed out of existence. There
-are, however, good and bad conventions and traditions in
-printing, just as there are true and false developments, and
-the trick is to know which is which! Convention and particularly
-tradition are, generally, the crystallized result of
-past experiments, which experience has taught us are valuable.
-In some of the extreme modernistic typography a little
-more tradition might come in handy. The trouble with the
-modernist is that he seems afraid not to throw everything
-overboard and mistakes eccentricity for emancipation. Thus
-some books of today seem to be the arrangement of a perverse
-and self-conscious eccentricity. Such printing is often
-the work of eager, ambitious, and inexperienced men, and
-because they are young and God is good, one can afford to be
-patient; sure that they will, in the long run, outgrow the
-teething, mumps, and measles of typography. Their convalescence
-will possibly be hastened by meditating on the
-saying of Lord Falkland that "when it is not necessary to
-change, it is necessary not to change."</p>
-
-<p>No movement ever accomplishes all that its first promoters
-intended or hoped for; almost all movements make some lasting
-contributions to our common stock. Every new idea,
-every new invention brings along with its expected benefits
-unforeseen evils. Modernistic architecture is at present exciting
-because new and unusual; when more common it
-will become commonplace. When it becomes difficult to
-differentiate the exterior of a modernistic church from a
-warehouse, we may get very, very tired of it. Then a compensating
-reaction will set in and balance will be restored.
-The same thing is true of modernistic typography. At present,
-it shocks us into attention, but we get tired of being shocked,
-for we do not want printing to surprise but to soothe us.
-The modernist must remember, too, that "such a thing as an
-underivative work of art does not and cannot exist, and no
-great master in the arts has thought or asserted otherwise."<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[Pg 311]</span>
-We gladly admit that some modernistic formulas have had
-good results. In architecture, perhaps to some degree in
-typography, they have taught us to get rid of clutter and
-useless ornamentation. But neither the one nor the other
-leads anywhere&mdash;except to a dead end.</p>
-
-<p>The conservative, however, need not think that all truth
-is on his side. However much he tries to practise retrospective
-or "period" typography, consciously or unconsciously his
-work will show the influence of his time. Just as there is a
-popular idiom in speech which varies in each decade, so there
-is a current idiom in printing. All these idioms, literary and
-typographic, have not come to stay, but some become accepted
-terms. Under Theodore Roosevelt we suffered from
-the word "strenuous." President Harding inflicted the word
-"normalcy" on American speech. We now have "reactions,"
-and "contacts." Clergymen "challenge" things, have "spiritual
-adventures," talk of "strategic positions" for their
-parish houses and aid parochial charities by "clarion calls,"
-though if confronted with a "clarion" (if this instrument
-exists outside of sermons) they would be quite unable to
-blow it. All these catch-words and stock phrases are in the
-air. We suffer much the same thing in typography, about
-which there is also a new jargon which replaces the old
-<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">clichés</i> of my youth about rhythm, balance, and colour. Neither
-in speech nor printing can one make a clean sweep of the past
-nor help being of the present, no matter how hard one tries.
-I deplore violent attempts to make current printing accord with
-the spirit of the age. It always has, always will, and does now.</p>
-
-<p>Nor need the conservative sniff at typographic experimentation.
-To turn to another department of daily life, what
-would happen if no one had ever tried experiments with food?
-In the distant past there was the first human being who&mdash;as
-an experiment&mdash;ate an oyster, though perhaps first trying
-jelly-fish with less comfortable results. Others died of eating
-toadstools before people learned that they could survive on
-mushrooms. Almost all our vegetable food we owe to gastronomic
-adventurers. Thus the hide-bound conservative<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[Pg 312]</span>
-owes sustenance to the fruits, and vegetables, of experiment.</p>
-
-<p>To speak more seriously, both modernist and conservative
-should lay to heart what Benedetto Croce says in his <cite>Autobiography</cite>
-about "the impossibility of resting on the results of
-past thought" and the necessity of modesty in stating one's
-present position. "I see," he writes, "a new crop of problems
-springing up in a field from which I have but now reaped a
-harvest of solutions; I find myself calling in question the
-conclusions to which I have previously come; and these
-facts ... force me to recognize that truth will not let itself
-be tied fast.... They teach me modesty towards my present
-thoughts, which tomorrow will appear deficient and in need
-of correction, and indulgence towards myself of yesterday or
-the past, whose thoughts, however inadequate in the eyes of
-my present self, yet contained some real element of truth;
-and this modesty and indulgence pass into a sense of piety
-towards thinkers of the past, whom now I am careful not to
-blame, as once I blamed them, for their inability to do what
-no man, however great, can do ... to fix into eternity the
-fleeting moment."</p>
-
-<p>There is, to the reasonable mind, no real quarrel between
-modernism and traditionalism in printing, <em>except in degree</em>.
-Modernism must and does influence the conservative in spite
-of himself&mdash;if by modernism we mean a healthy awareness of
-the needs of the time in which we are living. Tradition must
-and does influence the modernist, if by tradition we mean
-patient and respectful appraisal of what that accumulation of
-yesterdays, which we call the past, has to teach. It is only by
-experience that we can effect a wise blend of the two. Then
-we produce books which, while representing the best practice
-of our time, will outlast it. The appraisal of their ultimate
-values we must leave to the future.</p>
-
-<p>"There is no past that we need long to return to," said
-Goethe, "there is only the eternally new which is formed out
-of enlarged elements of the past; and our real endeavor must
-always be towards new and better creation."</p>
-
-</div>
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 center bell">COMPOSED IN BELL TYPES</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[Pg 313]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />PETER BEILENSON<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>The Amateur Printer</small></em>:<br />
-<small>HIS PLEASURES AND HIS DUTIES</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Graphic Forms: The Arts As Related to the Book</cite>. Copyright 1949 by
-Harvard University Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.</p>
-
-<p>Although the title of this piece is sufficiently long to be
-impressive and important-sounding, all I really want to write
-about is printing as fun. I am going to write about the amateur
-printer, and the amateur is the fellow who has fun.</p>
-
-<p>I do not wish to belittle the affection a professional printer may
-have for his work. He should love his work. But he can love it
-only in a different way: for after all he is essentially a businessman
-about it. His work, like that of any other businessman, is
-something he has to sit down to by nine in the morning and something
-he can't leave until five at night. It is something that involves
-landlords and labor unions, payrolls and tax inspectors,
-truckmen, office-boys, salesmen, compositors, pressman, bindery
-workers&mdash;and customers. He has to worry about payments, and
-depreciation, and publicity, and time sheets.</p>
-
-<p>The professional has to concern himself with all these things
-which are not printing at all, because he is in business and has to
-make money. His primary yardstick of success as a professional
-is: <em>How much money did we make last year?</em> Of course he has
-other minor yardsticks of success too: he may be successful because
-his presses turn out useful things like timetables, or gratifying
-things like corporation reports for the year, or beautiful
-things like four-color reproductions of Varga girls. To make
-these things well is a kind of fun; and insofar as the fun comes
-from the satisfaction in the thing itself rather than in the profit
-that derives from it, I'd like to call it amateur satisfaction.</p>
-
-<p>But essentially our professional printer&mdash;and permit me to limit
-myself to the professional book printer&mdash;is supposed to make
-money, not to have fun. And he makes money best, nowadays,
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[Pg 314]</span>if his plant is equipped with the efficient modern machinery
-which is designed for maximum production. Such machinery is
-a wonderful creation of man; it is thrilling to watch in action;
-and it gets results. But it has its disadvantages. Now that mechanization
-is becoming more and more complete in more and more
-places, we can begin to see clearly the greatest disadvantage of
-all: under such mechanization individual workers have lost pride
-and satisfaction in their work, because they have become mere
-replaceable units of less and less importance; whereas the machines
-they operate are more and more important, and have become
-the essential units.</p>
-
-<p>A generation ago the professional printer might have boasted
-of his skilled compositors, who could set type more expertly, or
-his skilled pressmen, who could make more careful overlays or
-match ink better than someone else's craftsmen. Today he boasts
-of his remote-control composing machines, his presses which
-come close to eliminating make-ready altogether, and his ink supplier's
-new gadget which matches colors scientifically. Today the
-most successful printer is the one who with the least possible
-dependence on man-power, can keep the most presses running
-fastest for the greatest number of hours per day and days per year.
-He is not the one with the most skilled craftsmen.</p>
-
-<p>In such a world, where the executive's function is to feed the
-machine and the workman's is to tend it, the human spirit begins
-to cry out for the fun in work which I have called the amateur
-satisfaction. It is true that today's shorter working hours&mdash;which
-the machine makes possible&mdash;permit people to have more outside
-fun; permit the manager to play more golf, and the workman to
-play more softball (or more pinball) in the late afternoon; it is
-true that more people now see more beer advertised on more television
-programs, and may even drink more of it, in the evenings.
-But managers and workmen alike turn so avidly to such kinds of
-fun because they no longer get fun out of their daily work. It is
-becoming harder and harder for people to equate work and happiness.</p>
-
-<p>Now I do not set myself up as a social reformer dedicated to
-the dream that all people should be happy in their work. Nor do
-I propose as a step to this end that we revert, smash the wonderful
-machines, and go back to the good old days when everyone
-really <em>did</em> work with his hands&mdash;usually from dawn to dark, six<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[Pg 315]</span>
-days a week. There was no pinball or television then, but <em>still</em>
-I do not wish to go back! Nor do I suggest that the solution is
-the promised thirty-hour week, with all the workmen driving
-their own Buicks home at two each afternoon, and taking out
-the wife and kiddies to Braves Field or the Gardner Museum.</p>
-
-<p>But I do suggest that some of you people who really love printing,
-but are too involved with the nine-to-five daily business of it
-to enjoy it much, should enrich your lives by becoming amateur
-printers in your spare time. You will have fun.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>I yield to no man in my boredom with vegetables and salads.
-I see green at every meal save breakfast. I have eaten enough
-stringbeans to stretch&mdash;if they were straightened out and laid end
-to end&mdash;from Fordhook Nurseries in Delaware to the city of Burbank,
-California. If you could see all the lettuce leaves I have consumed
-in my lifetime, piled leaf on leaf and dripping in their oils,
-their vinegar, their mayonnaise, and their roquefort dressings,
-you would be absolutely appalled. But, bored as I am with green
-things on the table&mdash;bored because despite their goodness they
-have been too plentiful and too easily come by&mdash;I am not bored
-on those occasions when, like Candide, I cultivate my garden, get
-my hands into the dirt, and smell God's good fragrance in the
-loam. To watch the power of living things like salad greens and
-stringbeans pushing their way out of the seed, up through the
-earth, reaching down for water and up for sunlight with an irresistible
-drive, is to realize afresh the power of life on this planet.
-It is a reinvigorating and religious experience. It is impossible to
-watch seeds grow into plants and flowers and fruit and still to
-believe cynically in a mere mechanistic explanation for such a life
-drive. To get back to the seed, the earth, and the root is to re-experience
-the fun and meaning of life.</p>
-
-<p>In the same way that I have become bored with salad, we have
-all become bored with words, printed words. We have seen too
-many of them, we have read too many of them, we have measured,
-or proofread, or edited, or sold, too many of them. We have
-forgotten their primal power, their irresistible living urge. We
-have forgotten that sincere authors have not put them down on
-paper because of two cents a word or 10 per cent of the retail
-gross&mdash;that they have been written (in the best cases) out of
-human necessity, human ebullience, human passion, human sym<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[Pg 316]</span>pathy,
-or human understanding. The industrial book-printing
-world cannot ever think of words in that way. It must always
-think of them as areas of type 22 by 28 picas, as numbers of
-pages which do or do not make up a multiple of thirty-two, as
-units of sale at $3.00 less 40 per cent.</p>
-
-<p>To go back to nature and become an amateur printer in such
-an industrialized book world is like working in the garden when
-you are bored with salad. You really get back to the roots of
-words. If you are a genuine amateur printer, and set the type and
-print the pages yourself, you actually can share in the creative
-agonies and satisfactions of the author. For you put down his
-words, letter for letter in your type-stick, just as he did with his
-quill or his battered Remington. The best way on earth to appreciate
-an author and his creative spirit (or for that matter to realize
-more quickly the faults in him) is to pick him up letter by
-letter from a California case. An even more acid test is to distribute
-the type after printing him. In such a case you pick up half a
-dozen lines of type at once and work backwards, distributing the
-last word of the last line first. It is a revelation how the hollowness
-of an author can show up under this treatment. It is especially
-cruel to poets, for every word which is not really necessary,
-which is there just for padding or for a rhythm or a rhyme, becomes
-as noticeable as the well-known sore thumb. But the genuine,
-sincere author with a pure style stands up beautifully under
-such treatment, and has his reward in your pleasure at this discovery.</p>
-
-<p>After you have set your author's type you must make up his
-pages, choose his decorations or illustrations, and set his headings.
-You must decide whether to stretch him to twenty-four pages or
-condense him to sixteen. You must buy his paper, lock up his
-pages in your chase, make him ready, curse your press which is
-printing him, apply your ink to his words, and impress him for
-posterity. Perhaps you will thereafter fold him, sew him, and encase
-him in boards.</p>
-
-<p>In so doing, you become, to the extent of sixteen or twenty-four
-pages, in an edition of one hundred or three hundred copies,
-God. You have created something which did not exist before, and
-which would not have existed save for your thinking brain and
-tired back and dirty hands. True, you have not created Heaven
-and Earth, and you have undoubtedly worked at your creation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[Pg 317]</span>
-for more than the original quota of six days. But anyway you
-have given the world something which was at first only words
-you loved, and is now a whole, real book, which you love all the
-more because it is your book, your child, your embodiment of
-those words. That is the fun and satisfaction of being an amateur.
-In our printing world there is no other satisfaction equal to it.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Good old Ralph Waldo Emerson was mortally right when he
-wrote down his doctrine of Compensation. His doctrine of Compensation
-says that every pleasure carries some penalty, every
-gain some kind of loss. Every duty accepted gives you a satisfaction,
-and every satisfaction received involves you in a duty.
-Thus far I have written of the satisfaction of your being an
-amateur printer. Now I wish to write of your duty and obligation.</p>
-
-<p>The amateur book printer has a duty which, if he will accept
-it, will in the long run return to him the greatest satisfaction. This
-duty is to teach the professional, by example, about the outer
-cultural world, and to experiment for him in matters of printing
-style. Now this is directly contrary to what ninety out of one
-hundred current amateurs would seem to think, and I must therefore
-beg their ninety pardons if I disturb their habits of mind.</p>
-
-<p>Most amateurs either don't trouble their minds about problems
-of printing style at all, or else they fall too easily into the habit
-of working in the Colonial style, or Venetian style, or some other
-historical style, rather than in a contemporary one. Maybe they
-do so for psychological reasons. And maybe not. I am too set in
-my diction to learn the trick of talking in psychological terms.
-I would express their case like this: Amateurs who work in historical
-styles do so because they are romantics, romantics who turn
-away from the impersonal machine world of the present for a
-breath of the more human and glamorous-seeming past. I sympathize
-with such an instinct, and hold myself ready to defend any
-man who seeks to re-inject a human element into the printing
-craft.</p>
-
-<p>The trouble is, such amateurs think that because printing in the
-past was done by hand, and because there is something more satisfying
-and human about printing by hand, they must therefore
-work in an antique printing style and make Colonial and Venetian
-books in order to enjoy themselves. This is a false syllogism. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[Pg 318]</span>
-strongly recommend printing by hand to amateurs because it will
-give them greater satisfaction, not because it will make their
-books look like antiques. It is too easy to fabricate such antiques,
-and to do so will in the long run give you less enjoyment than
-making something which in style is original and new.</p>
-
-<p>As a matter of fact it is already too late to think in terms of
-revivals and reproductions. In printing, the revival habit started
-over a hundred years ago with Whittingham and Pickering, when
-they dusted off the forgotten Caslon types and the eighteenth-century
-style. It has been going on ever since, and reached a climax
-of understanding and skill in our century at the hands of
-Updike, Rogers, Rollins, Goudy, and others. This revivalism was
-a kind of search for humanism, and a kind of rebellion against
-commercialism. These men were not unique. In every generation
-since 1800, in every art and craft, every field of thought, the Industrial
-Revolution has prompted men to make the same search
-backward for satisfactions which the modern world did not seem
-to offer.</p>
-
-<p>Too many of our amateurs are still making the same search,
-although the Industrial Revolution is well over one hundred years
-old, all the necessary backward searching has been done, and all
-the historical styles have been reworked. Our predecessors have
-made it unnecessary for us to go through the process once again.
-We can see now that their work was an escape perhaps for them,
-but that it can never be a durable way of creative realization for
-us. From now on, we must join up with the forward-looking
-crowd who think they can build a new world.</p>
-
-<p>The book-printing industry has not been very forward-looking
-in matters of style. With the exception of a few printers and
-designers, book printers have been unhealthily backward. Therefore
-the time is ripe for amateur book-experimentalists to prod
-and teach them. The amateur can do it.</p>
-
-<p>He is, or should be, a man with interests in other fields of culture
-than his own. He is aware already of what has been done in
-painting and music, in fabrics and furniture design, in architecture
-too&mdash;most important of all. He must now help printing to
-develop its own new styles, equivalent to those in other fields.
-That he can do so is evidenced by the fact that in recent years
-the greatest strides forward have been taken not by the profes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[Pg 319]</span>sionals
-but by people who in a sense are amateurs, but who have
-known how to apply modern ideas from other fields.</p>
-
-<p>The Bauhaus group first became notable, between the wars, by
-applying the functional theories of modern architecture to the
-printed page. The Black Sun Press and Harrison of Paris applied
-the ideas of Monroe Wheeler and others who were stimulated by
-modern painting. There may be similar publishing projects in this
-country today, but they are not yet influential. The most effective,
-most vocal, most lovable of contemporary American influences
-is that rugged individual Merle Armitage, whose ideas have
-been influential in shaping my own attitude. Such people all know
-that the world has changed; that it will never turn back again;
-and that it is up to us to catch on to the flying coattails of Today.
-I urge other amateurs to join the ranks of these apostles of change.
-It will be a great day for all of us when ninety out of one hundred
-are experimentalists, and not the other way around.</p>
-
-<p>Of course in urging amateurs to develop new styles, I am not
-recommending any easy hobby. It is simple, but dull, to copy an
-old style. It is hard, but exciting, to work out a new one. And
-while you are working at it, you must expect cynical observers
-to give your experiments the adjective "wacky"; you must expect
-certain curious kinds of people to praise your work for the
-wrong reasons; and you must expect alternating moods of conceit
-and frustration. The proofs you gloat over at night will
-become commonplace by dawn. Your wife may go back to her
-mother in rage and despair. You may need sleeping pills.</p>
-
-<p>You will make misjudgments about the intelligence of ordinary
-readers. You will make mistakes of taste. You will find it too easy
-to get an effect by means of shock, and you will forget that any
-book, even a twenty-first-century book, must be a coherent unit.
-And you will often, since there are no highway markers for the
-explorer, feel lonely and discouraged, and want to go back to the
-old familiar well-traveled roads again.</p>
-
-<p>But if you go through with it, or even if you just play with it
-sometimes as a hobby, you can have great fun. For it will put you
-out in the open, free to please yourself, with the boss and the
-customer left far behind. You can be subtle or bold, as you feel
-the urge, for you do not have to please the great common denominator,
-the common man. You can advance your own work<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[Pg 320]</span>
-by looking to other fields of creation, enjoying and profiting by
-the experiments going on in them. You can feel yourself a part of
-the whole forward-looking culture of your day, and not someone
-off in a little forgotten corner.</p>
-
-<p>And, if you do strike a vein with the glitter of real gold in it,
-you will become rich indeed. For you will have become a creator
-in a new sense; your duty done as an amateur will be compensated
-with a twenty-four-carat satisfaction. At such a moment of realization
-you will have earned the privilege to rest and feel content.
-As on a seventh day after six of creation, standing late at night
-with bloodshot eyes and inky fingers and aching back in a paper-littered
-room, you have become a creator. You have not merely
-escaped from the flattened monotony of the machine age&mdash;you
-have become one of the shapers of its future. More power to you
-in that work!</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[Pg 321]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="bodoni">
-<h2 class="nobreak">T. M. CLELAND<br />
-<em><small>Harsh Words</small></em></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">An address delivered at a meeting of The American Institute of Graphic Arts,
-in New York City, February 5th, 1940, on the occasion of the opening of the
-eighteenth annual exhibition of the Fifty Books of the Year. Copyright 1940 by
-T. M. Cleland. Reprinted by permission.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Chairman and Members of The American Institute of Graphic
-Arts:</p>
-
-<p>The generosity of your invitation to me to speak on this important
-occasion leaves me a trifle bewildered. I am so accustomed
-to being told to keep my opinions to myself that being thus
-unexpectedly encouraged to express them gives me some cause to
-wonder if I have, or ever had, any opinions upon the graphic arts
-worth expressing. But since it is the theory of your Committee that
-I have, and it may never be anybody's theory again, and they have
-gone so far as to give me no instructions or suggestions as to the
-scope or the limitations of what I might say, it would seem as ungracious
-to decline such an exceptional offer as it would be to
-abuse it. So if I accept it as wholeheartedly as I believe it was
-given&mdash;if I take you at your word and say things that I have long
-wanted to hear somebody say&mdash;I hope it will not be thought an
-abuse of this kindly tendered privilege.</p>
-
-<p>I realize that, nominally at least, my subject must be that of
-printing and typography as exemplified by the selection of the
-fifty best books of the year which we are here to celebrate; and I
-suppose, by comparison to deplore the fifty thousand worst books
-which may be seen elsewhere. But by what may seem a very odd
-paradox, I don't quite know how to stick to this subject without
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[Pg 322]</span>wandering a good way off it. Or, perhaps I should say that I cannot
-approach it directly except by a very roundabout way.</p>
-
-<p>If I have a thesis for these remarks, I can only develop it in
-terms of a tree. This is because I do not believe that invention in
-the arts can be picked from empty space like objects in a prestidigitator's
-act. Fruits really grow on trees and trees have roots in
-the earth. The tree I have in mind is cultural civilization: one of
-its limbs is art and a branch of this we call the graphic arts, and a
-twig on this branch is printing and typography. I promise not to
-dig into the roots of this tree, but I may be found, monkey-wise,
-climbing all over it before I am through.</p>
-
-<p>I am at some disadvantage in that I do not belong to any organizations
-for the advancement of typography and the graphic arts&mdash;not
-even to this one&mdash;and I am ill-informed and out of touch
-with what is going on in these fields except by casual observation.
-But as members of this very useful organization, you are not engaged
-in printing or other graphic arts, I take it, solely for each
-other, but for the enjoyment and delectation of the world at large.
-So there is a partially compensating advantage in my being "at
-large" myself, and thus able to speak of present trends in the
-graphic arts as they appear from the outside, looking in. But this
-advantage may in turn be offset by the fact that I cannot honestly
-speak of what I see with much enthusiasm. I can bring you no
-message of hope or light of inspiration. Much as I am filled with
-admiration and respect for many individual talents and accomplishments
-that still contrive to exist, they seem to me to stand
-unhappily isolated in what I can't help viewing as artistic bankruptcy
-and cultural chaos. Among them are printers making
-beautiful books and other things about as well as these things
-have ever been made. But as to the general volume of printing,
-no one has asked me, to be sure, what I thought was the lowest
-point of artistic taste in the five hundred years of its existence
-which we are celebrating this year, but if anyone <em>should</em> ask me,
-I would be bound to say that we have reached that point just about
-now. Things may get worse, but it's hard to see how they can. To
-paraphrase a remark in the concluding chapter of Updike's classic
-work on printing types, it has taken printers and publishers<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[Pg 323]</span>
-five hundred years to find out how wretchedly books and other
-things can be made and still sell.</p>
-
-<p>I am not forgetting that there were some very benighted periods
-of taste in other centuries that would seem to refute this sweeping
-assertion. Perhaps it is worth noting here&mdash;and the fact is
-peculiarly ironical&mdash;that the design and style of official and
-governmental things&mdash;money, postage stamps, bonds and stock
-certificates&mdash;was created and solidified into a seemingly unalterable
-convention at that hitherto all time low point of the
-decorative arts in the mid-nineteenth century. So powerful is this
-convention that we would be suspicious of a ten dollar bill that
-was not visually saturated with ugliness. A counterfeiter with
-aesthetic sensibilities must not only sweat blood but weep tears
-over the job of imitating one. But in the sadly perverted taste
-of that epoch there was a kind of innocence: standards were still
-respected, and proficiency, though overworked and misdirected,
-was recognized and not condemned.</p>
-
-<p>Today when I look about in the bookstore, and more especially
-on the newsstands, or open the pages of most of the magazines
-with the biggest circulations, I want to do what the little boy
-did in the story which was a favorite of my friend, the late Hal
-Marchbanks. The little boy had been to his first party, and when
-he arrived home, his mother said: "Did mama's little boy have
-a nice time at the party?" "Yep," he replied. "What did mama's
-little boy do at the party?" "I thow'd up."</p>
-
-<p>Against this steady decline in both taste and workmanship,
-your fifty books selection and exhibit each year has been a noble
-effort, and in this country, almost the only concerted one of
-consequence to uphold some standards. You have inspired both
-publishers and printers to earnest endeavor to improve their
-products with frequently admirable results. But these are only
-fifty books out of how many other books and other printed things.
-Without this good work of yours, one wonders if any standards
-at all would survive the flood of cheap and easy mechanization,
-careless workmanship and bad taste. Not that there is anything
-wrong with machines. The first hand press, it should be remembered
-by its sentimental admirers, was also a machine. We have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324"></a>[Pg 324]</span>
-not learned to use the machines at their best, but accepted them
-like fruits in the Garden of Eden, and thought of nothing but how
-much we could get out of them in speed and quantity and profit.
-Because we can do with them easily what formerly demanded
-time and pains to do at all, we have too easily assumed that they
-delivered us from the need of any time or pains.</p>
-
-<p>Before I go any farther on or off the track with these random
-remarks, I should like it to be understood that I am addressing
-them particularly to any students and beginners in the graphic
-arts that may be present, rather than to those who are arrived.
-I am a student and still a beginner myself, and so my interest
-and my heart are naturally with my own kindred. I speak as an
-old beginner to younger ones. I am at a great disadvantage with
-regard to the number of years I have left in which to get started,
-and if I have any advantage at all, it is only in experience with
-the bewilderments and illusions that clutter our common way
-in learning and trying to practice one or more of the graphic
-arts. The confusions and distraction of this day make the path
-of the student and beginner rough and tortuous. Having travelled
-it for more years than I like to admit, when I look backward, I
-am astonished to discover the number of twists and turns and
-pitfalls I might just as well have spared myself.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps the most foolish of these was the fear of not being
-original&mdash;what Romain Rolland calls "the fear of the already
-said." The notion that I must do something new every day, or I
-would not be creative&mdash;forgetting that God made the planets all
-the same shape as far as we can see, and that the oak tree does not
-alter the form of its leaves from year to year. There is no supposition
-so pathetically misleading as that creative originality is
-within your own volition&mdash;the notion that it can be acquired
-leads to deplorable results. It distracts the mind and energies of
-the young student from gaining needful technical competence&mdash;from
-learning his trade, and in more mature stages tempts the
-would-be artist into vulgar mannerisms and formulas which he
-will call his "style."</p>
-
-<p>The idea that originality is essential to the successful practice
-of the graphic arts is more prevalent today than it ever was in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325"></a>[Pg 325]</span>
-days when the graphic arts were practiced at their best. The current
-belief that everyone must now be an inventor is too often
-interpreted to mean that no one need any longer be a workman.
-Hand in hand with this premeditated individualism goes, more
-often than not, a curious irritation with standards of any kind.
-The conscious cultivator of his own individuality will go to extravagant
-lengths to escape the pains imposed by a standard.</p>
-
-<p>But of all the perils that lie in wait for adolescent artists there
-is none more seductive than the bewildering array of ologies
-and isms that leer and beckon to him at every crossroad of his
-journey. Just as isms and ologies have taken the place, in social
-and political life, of right and wrong; so have they become the
-accepted terms of the arts. In fact, nonsense is now so universally
-the language of art that it is nearly hopeless to try to make oneself
-understood in any other.</p>
-
-<p>Brood mare to all of these extravagancies&mdash;and I have lived to
-see many of them come and go&mdash;is that one which achieves the
-super absurdity of calling itself "modernism"; and none has
-been expounded and exploited in more contradictory and antic
-ways. To deliberately call oneself "modern" is no less ludicrous
-than something an old Danish friend told me years ago about a
-line in one of the books of a very prolific writer of historical
-romances in his country. In a tale with a medieval setting this
-writer had one of his knights in armour cry out to another: "We
-men of the middle ages never take insults, etc."</p>
-
-<p>Embraced with fanatic enthusiasm by many architects and
-designers is the current quackery called "Functionalism." It, in
-common with its many predecessors, offers a new gospel for the
-regeneration of our aesthetic world by restricting all design to
-the function of its object or its materials. Like the new religions
-and philosophies that have paraded in and out of our social history
-for countless generations, it purports to be an original concept.
-It has brought to us such gladsome gifts as concrete boxes
-with holes in them for buildings, chairs of bent pipe with no
-hind legs, glass fireplaces, beds of cement blocks joined by structural
-steel, the queer agglomeration of unsightly edifices we call
-the World's Fair and many other specimens of stark and for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326"></a>[Pg 326]</span>bidding
-claptrap. Unless all signs are misleading me, it is another
-mass vulgarity like the age of golden oak and mission furniture,
-even now on its way to the junk pile or the attic, perhaps to be
-someday rediscovered there and dragged out by future generations
-in search of quaintness.</p>
-
-<p>It seems to me, ladies and gentlemen, that <em>all</em> art was <em>modern</em>
-when it was made, and still is if it is suitable to life as we now
-live it; and I look in vain for any applied art worthy the name
-that was not also, in some sense functional. From the buttresses of
-a gothic cathedral to the gayest Chippendale chair one finds,
-upon analysis, a perfect work of engineering perfectly adapted
-to its purpose. If this were not so, these things would hardly have
-endured for so long a time. So that common regard for function
-which has always been the basic principle of first-rate design,
-assumes the impressive aspect of a religion, with high priests
-and ritual, by the simple addition of an "ism." As students and
-beginners in search of truth, we are today being pushed and pulled
-about by no end of such bogus preachments&mdash;familiar faces with
-false whiskers&mdash;old and common principles dolled up with new
-names and often used to account for incompetence and laziness.</p>
-
-<p>And what is the meaning of this term "functionalism"? Must a
-design be related to no functions except mechanical and material
-ones? Might not the most fantastic and elaborate works of the
-geniuses of the baroque and rococo styles have also been functional
-in that they expressed the spirit and fitted perfectly the
-life they were intended to serve?</p>
-
-<p>We hear much holy talk of "simplicity" in this day and the idea
-of simplicity expressed by a total absence of everything not
-essential to mechanical function has been elevated to a fetich.
-We have divorced simplicity from its old mate charm as we might
-break up the happy relationship of ham and eggs or pork and
-beans. But in this reverent renunciation of all adornment not
-strictly functional in this limited sense, have we paused to ask
-whether we are in fact following a basic human instinct, or merely
-attempting to make a virtue out of poverty of invention? There
-is no evidence that man is imbued with an instinctive love of
-simplicity in the objects with which he finds it useful to surround<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327"></a>[Pg 327]</span>
-himself. Indeed, our museums are bulging with evidence to the
-contrary. From the Cro-Magnon cave to gothic cathedrals, from
-the temples of India to the palace of Versailles, the earth has been
-made to flower with man's inherent love of ornament. It would
-seem then that ornamentation is deeply rooted in the human instinct
-since no tribe, however primitive in other respects, is without
-it. The restraints of this instinct and the tempering of it with
-what we call taste is a cultivated faculty like the restraint of our
-other appetites; but to be a teetotaler in ornament or in anything
-else, is to confess to either weakness of control or incapacity for
-enjoyment. "A teetotaler," said Whitman, "is just another kind
-of toper."</p>
-
-<p>This instinctive yearning for ornamentation is well demonstrated
-in the case of our own Rockefeller Center; where it has
-been catered to with peculiar ineptitude. Here all the important
-structures have been piously stripped of everything non-essential
-to mechanical function. Pillars, pilasters, cornices and mouldings&mdash;ornaments
-that at least have their genesis in structural
-functions&mdash;have all been piously renounced. And then because
-it was found that the human spirit could not tolerate such barren
-starkness, and business might suffer from it, ornaments have
-been pasted around its doorways and approaches like gold paper
-lace on a pasteboard box&mdash;ornaments completely unrelated to
-any structural function of any kind. Sculptures, fountains, trees,
-flowers and awnings have all been pressed into service to compensate
-for this spurious simplicity. Many of these things are
-beautiful in their own right like Mr. Manship's golden figure of
-Prometheus. One of the little office girls that further decorate
-the scene at the noon hour, was overheard the other day explaining
-to another that this was a statue of "Primiscuous escaping
-from Responsibility."</p>
-
-<p>So under this wildly flapping banner of "Modernism" marches
-a quaint array of worn and shabby syntheses for art, each day
-parading a new dress and a new alias. The common urge for self-expression
-can always find one or another of them at its service.
-For those who are particularly deficient in the talent, energy and
-patience demanded for the mastery of an art, something called<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328"></a>[Pg 328]</span>
-"non-objective" art has been invented. For this the only things
-required are a box of paints, brushes and a surface to exercise
-them on. With these simple and easily procurable tools you
-express your own inner emotions and need not trouble yourself
-with anyone else's or with what anyone else sees. If you watch the
-others you will see that it is mostly being done with triangles, circles
-or vortexes of paint just as it comes from the tube. If you have
-no paint, toothpaste will do as well. If, after a few minutes of
-this, you are tired, stop&mdash;you will have added spontaneity to its
-other attractions. The fact that it deals only with your own emotions
-will not prevent you putting it on exhibition for other people
-to enjoy. If anyone balks at enjoying it, you smile wanly and
-shrug your shoulders and pity them for their dumb enslavement to
-outworn tradition. It works like a charm&mdash;no one will dare attack
-you&mdash;they will all be afraid that you've got something there.
-People have a terror of making mistakes&mdash;as if they had not
-been made by the best people in all ages. It is the most perfect
-device yet invented for attracting attention to yourself with the
-least trouble. A generation ago we heard a great deal about "art
-for art's sake": now it is art for the artist's sake, like bread for
-the baker's sake or medicine for the doctor's sake. And I say,
-for God's sake, tell me what art made through the vision of a
-human eye with a brain behind it is <em>not</em> "non-objective"? No two
-men will ever draw or paint the same picture of the same object.
-Only the lens of a camera will render it quite objectively, and
-even the camera in the hands of an artist is capable of some degree
-of subjectivity.</p>
-
-<p>And since I have inadvertently mentioned the camera, I ought
-to say a good word for it too. It is just now in its hey-day and
-people are taking greater pains with it than they are willing to
-take with any other medium of artistic expression. I see a great
-many very fine pictures made with it, in spite of its obvious limitations.
-But it has also been tortured into serving as a medium for
-self-conscious originality until its "new ideas" have come to be,
-in their way, in their monotony and staleness, an intolerable bore.</p>
-
-<p>The marvels of color photography have revealed to us hitherto
-unsuspected depths of aesthetic sordidness. This factual repro<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_329"></a>[Pg 329]</span>duction
-of what we are told are "Nature's colors," I am given to
-understand, is not yet wholly perfected. Only when it is will we
-know the worst&mdash;only then will we know what the things that
-through our eyes have stirred us by their beauty, really are!
-Perhaps another super instrument of disillusionment will be invented
-to reveal us, not in form and color alone, but in spirit, to
-each other as we really are. Good-by then to human love, respect
-and friendship!</p>
-
-<p>I have strayed a good way from my subject, as I warned you
-that I might; and these remarks must appear by now to be
-not only ramblings but the ravings of an old reactionary who is
-blind to anything that is new. That deduction will be almost literally
-correct, ladies and gentlemen. There is no denying that I
-am old, and toward much that I see around me, I am reactionary;
-and I have learned nothing in all my years of striving for knowledge,
-more convincing than that statement in the Book of Ecclesiastes
-to the effect that there is nothing new under the sun. I plead
-guilty to this hideous indictment and throw myself on the mercy
-of this court. I am even happy to have learned that much, and
-wish, in the manner of the camp meeting revivalist, that I might
-pass on something of this blessed revelation to the "brethern
-and sistern" present.</p>
-
-<p>While I thus brazenly deny the existence of anything really
-new, and fail to recognize what is called "progress" and deplore
-the waste of talent and energy that is dissipated in striving for
-these things, I am far from blind to the value of revolt. Our creative
-sense is all too prone to doze off into dreams of past glories.
-From these, and the sterile copying of them, we may be awakened
-and rescued by even the crudest of revolutions. We may benefit
-from them provided we do not let them tear up our roots&mdash;provided
-we still can recognize an illusion when we meet it. The
-squirrel in his revolving cage must have some illusion of progress,
-else he would not take any exercise, and without exercise he
-would fatten and sicken and die.</p>
-
-<p>And, remember, there is always progress to be made within
-yourselves, no matter if it is the same progress in the same direction
-that has been made by countless other souls. And there will,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_330"></a>[Pg 330]</span>
-I hope, always be things new to you, as there are every day
-things new to me, even if the sun has seen them all before. I don't
-want to live a day longer than I can learn.</p>
-
-<p>There is no reason to suppose that there is not today as much
-latent talent for the arts in existence, as at any time in their history.
-But talent for art is not talent for being an artist&mdash;one may
-have much of the one, without much of the other. It seems to me
-that there are more temptations and distractions working against
-the talent to be an artist today than ever before. More alluring
-short cuts and seductive philosophies&mdash;a disturbing babel of undigested
-ideas and indigestible objectives. If in this riot you can
-keep your heads and not lose sight of the important difference
-between "a grain of truth" and the whole truth, if you can grow
-in understanding of what it is you want to do, you may, even
-now, have a good chance of doing it.</p>
-
-<p>But what has all this to do with printing and typography and
-their related graphic arts? I seem by now to be so far off the
-track that it will take a derrick and wrecking crew to get me back
-on again. As a matter of fact I have not forgotten the subject
-altogether and have, in my lumbering way, been working toward
-it. But because I can't think of typography as an art in itself,
-unrelated to all the other arts, I could not approach it except by
-the way I have.</p>
-
-<p>All of these things that I have been complaining about in the
-other arts, have their counterparts in present-day typography
-and printing. The same restless craving for something "new,"
-the same preoccupation with isms, the same monotonous sameness.
-But this poison is aggravated in the case of printing and
-typography, by the fact that of all the arts, it is, by its very nature
-and purpose, the most conventional. If it is an art at all, it is an
-art to serve another art. It is good only in so far as it serves well
-and not on any account good for any other reason. It is not the
-business of type and printing to show off, and when, as it now
-so frequently does, it engages in exhibitionistic antics of its own,
-it is just a bad servant.</p>
-
-<p>For this reason the embarrassing ineptitude of the current
-efforts toward a "new typography" are even more distressing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_331"></a>[Pg 331]</span>
-than similar contortions in other fields. Typography, I repeat, is
-a servant&mdash;the servant of thought and language to which it gives
-visible existence. When there are new ways of thinking and a
-new language, it will be time enough for a new typography. When
-we have altered all of our manners and social customs, only then
-will it be time to radically alter the well grounded conventions
-of this very minor art. Within them there is now ample room, as
-there always has been, for the exercise of ingenuity, skill and
-individual taste. I suggest that those who cannot abide the conventions
-of typography are mostly those who have never tried
-them.</p>
-
-<p>In what does the newness of this new typography consist? It
-seems to be new as the neu in neurosis from which it largely derives.
-It is new as it would be new for a man to enter the dining
-room on his hands instead of his feet, and instead of eating his
-soup, to pour it into his hostess's lap. It is as new and agreeable
-and pleasing to look at as delirium tremens which it closely resembles.
-The new typography engages in such side-splitting
-pranks as putting the margins of a book page in just the opposite
-arrangement to that which practical utility and well founded tradition
-have always placed them. It might with equal reason and
-originality, turn the type page upside down. In advertising display
-it makes use of that highly original and refreshing device
-of printing what is to be read at a cockeyed angle. The make-up
-expert indulges that other fresh and original dodge of bleeding
-pictures off the edge of the page so that a flat two dimensional
-photograph is viewed without a frame on two of its sides and
-must compete with a background of all the three dimensional
-things in the room.</p>
-
-<p>I refuse to bore you or myself by enumerating all the tiresome
-stock-in-trade eccentricities of the typographic expert in
-search of something new&mdash;the epileptic fits he throws to attract
-attention to himself at the expense of the words he is printing.
-You see enough of them every day to know what I mean. Nearly
-every magazine and newspaper page, not to mention a good many
-books, present the same revolting spectacle&mdash;the order of the day,
-it seems, is disorder.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_332"></a>[Pg 332]</span></p>
-
-<p>And speaking of magazines, it has fallen to my lot from time
-to time in the past thirty-five years to design and redesign a
-number of periodicals of one kind and another. Such jobs require
-really very little actual work&mdash;it's by endless argument and conference
-that they can wear you to the bone. My simple purpose
-with these things has always been to bring any measure of order
-the case will permit out of the disorder in which I generally find
-it. My mission, if I have any, is to suppress typography, not to
-encourage it&mdash;to put it in its place and make it behave like a
-decently trained servant. I find magazines rolling in the gutter
-covered with the accumulated mud of years of dissipation. I
-pick them up and brush them off, give them a cup of black coffee
-and a new suit of clothes and start them off on respectable typographic
-careers. But like other missionaries, more often than
-not, I find them a year or so later, back in the same gutter, drunk
-and disorderly and remorselessly happy about it.</p>
-
-<p>If the philosophy of functionalism has hit the new typography
-as it has the other applied arts, I see no evidence of it. On the
-contrary, in this field, anything goes, so long as it is eccentric,
-free from the restraints of reason, and can successfully discourage
-the reader from reading. All the distortions of the Roman
-alphabet that were discarded a half century ago&mdash;in fact any
-types which are as nearly unreadable as types can be made&mdash;have
-been dragged out again and called "modern." These range from
-the elaborately ornamental letters of the most depraved periods
-of design to the stark diagrams of letters that were called by
-type-founders in my youth: "Printer's lining gothic"&mdash;as absurd
-a misnomer as could be imagined, since they have nothing whatsoever
-to do with gothic letters or any other letter forms known
-to history. Laymen called them, more accurately, "block letters";
-but in the new typography they are elegantly referred to as "sans
-serifs" because, among other features of the Roman alphabet
-which they lack, is a total absence of serifs. They bear the same
-relation to Roman letters as would an engineer's drawings for a
-trolley track. At the moment they are very much in vogue and are
-widely believed to be modern and to be a simplification in harmony
-with the new architecture, furniture and other things. They<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_333"></a>[Pg 333]</span>
-are supposed to represent the spirit of our day like the noise of
-rivetting hammers in a modern musical composition. They simplify
-the traditional forms of type as you might simplify a man
-by cutting his hands and feet off. You can no more dispense with
-the essential features of the written or printed Roman alphabet,
-ladies and gentlemen, than you can dispense with the accents and
-intonations of human speech. This is simplification for simpletons,
-and these are block letters for blockheads.</p>
-
-<p>The users of typography and printing, the publishers and
-advertisers, are also confused by illusions of their own. Foremost
-among these is the notion that they require every week new
-types to give freshness and effectiveness to what they print and
-publish. This wholly unwarranted assumption is undoubtedly a
-godsend to the type-founders, however disastrous it is to the
-development of a sane and ordered typography. It has peopled
-the earth with typographic experts who know "the latest thing"
-and not much else, and it has relieved the designers of printing
-from the burden of knowing anything about design. It is so much
-easier to buy new types than to learn how to use effectively the
-types we already have. And if, instead of flooding our composing
-rooms with new types, which are seldom more than variations
-upon old themes of distortion, our type-founders would give us
-at least twice as many sizes as they now make, of a few good types,
-we should have a really flexible medium to work in. We would
-have to make fewer compromises with good design, and they
-might profit commercially, as typography surely would profit
-artistically.</p>
-
-<p>And this constructive suggestion reminds me that I ought perhaps
-to temper this hurricane of destructive criticism with some
-further helpful hints. At the moment I can only think of two that
-might relieve the dreadful situation that I have pictured. One
-is that we organize a pogrom of all type designers&mdash;a little hard
-on them perhaps, but they would gain martyrdom to a cause&mdash;and
-the other is that we establish a concentration camp in which to
-intern all those who think up or think they think up new ideas in
-typography for such time as it will take them to recover from
-their delusion. There they might while away pleasant hours in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_334"></a>[Pg 334]</span>
-the distinguished company of the inventors of paper-towels,
-pasteboard milk bottles and beer in cans.</p>
-
-<p>With my younger colleagues still in mind, I ought to say something
-of the practical problems that we encounter in professing
-and practicing one or other of the graphic arts. We are, or should
-be, if we are really artists, more concerned with what we give to
-our art than with what we get out of it. But we have to live&mdash;or
-think we do&mdash;and to do that by the practice of art is certainly no
-easier now than it ever was. If anything, it's a little harder.
-Beyond that inner satisfaction with what we can give&mdash;and there
-is only a little of that and at rare intervals&mdash;the only two things
-to be got <em>out</em> of art are money and fame; and I daresay there are
-few of us who would not welcome a little of both. But we must
-compete today with a great many of those who work for nothing
-else; and who, under the banner of one or another of these isms
-of which I've been prating, can concentrate upon that unique
-objective unhampered by any serious interest in art itself. They
-are devotees of success, like their commercial brethren, and by
-means of the same promotional paraphernalia they succeed so
-well that one is tempted at times to believe that the only living
-art is the art of self promotion.</p>
-
-<p>Another curious development of these times is the classification
-of artists according to political ideology. We hear now of "left
-wing" artists. As nearly as I can discover, these are to be recognized
-by their contempt for any sort of craftsmanship and a
-peculiar inability to keep their drawings clean. They make
-penury&mdash;the unhappy lot of nearly all artists&mdash;a pious virtue,
-and they are not infrequently big with pretension to being the
-only serious interpreters of life and truth. These are balanced
-on the other end of the political see-saw by a school of "economic
-royalists" who have made of art a commercial opportunity. As
-Industrial Designers with large staffs and control boards and
-troops of indefatigable press agents, they have welded art and
-commerce so successfully that it is nearly impossible to tell them
-apart. Somewhere between the two is the artist; and he is as often
-as not a forgotten man. Not quite poor enough to be picturesque
-or heartrending, just well enough off to keep his collar and his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_335"></a>[Pg 335]</span>
-drawings clean, he must nevertheless spend an exorbitant part
-of his life and energies in worrying about bills.</p>
-
-<p>And now to stop the clamor of the butcher, the baker <em>et al.</em>,
-to whom must we sell our graphic arts? For the most part, I
-suppose, it will be to publishers, industrialists and advertising
-agents. The publisher is a pretty decent sort, on the whole, but if
-he is a book publisher, he can generally be recognized as such
-by the fact of having very little money to spend on art. In my own
-experience, the most generous and appreciative customer for our
-wares has been the industrialist. What you do for him can often
-increase his profit very materially, and he is not slow to recognize
-that fact.</p>
-
-<p>The advertising agent, speaking very generally and with the
-particular exception of one very dear friend in mind, deals
-largely in what might be called scientifically organized fraud. I
-am aware that to say this now is to risk being called a "communist
-transmission belt"&mdash;whatever that may be. It has even been
-suggested that by these animadversions upon advertising, I am
-biting the hand that fed me; but I suggest that I am biting the
-hand that I have fed until I am fed up on feeding it. It may be
-that you will find, as I sometimes have, in the ranks of these
-shock troops of deception, sympathetic and amiable clients for
-your work who can deal differently with artists than they deal
-with the public&mdash;but not very often. Each of them employs what
-is called an Art Director whose importance is derived, not so
-much from art as from the financial size and number of advertising
-accounts toward which he directs it. It is his duty to furnish
-you with what he calls "ideas," upon the theory that an artist is
-not mentally up to having any of his own. Ten to one he will end
-by altering your drawing to give it the "wallop" thought to be
-essential to all advertising. A public, already groggy and half
-blind from the incessant battering of advertisements with a punch,
-will hardly notice the difference.</p>
-
-<p>"To think at all," says the Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset,
-"is to exaggerate." A careful measurement of anatomical detail
-in the drawings and sculptures of Michelangelo will reveal
-startling exaggerations of fact, but these enlargements upon fact<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_336"></a>[Pg 336]</span>
-are but his medium for truthful expression. He gives us the figure
-of a man or woman more essentially true than could be made by
-any anatomist with micrometer calipers. So, I humbly pray,
-ladies and gentlemen, that you will apply no instruments of precision
-to my words&mdash;they are the best I could find in this emergency
-for saying what I believe to be true. If you think me guilty
-of exaggeration, the foregoing remarks are my only defense. But
-if you accuse me of being facetious, I will tell you that I have
-never been more serious in my life.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN BODONI BOOK TYPES</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_337"></a>[Pg 337]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />OSCAR OGG<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>A Comparison of Calligraphy &amp; Lettering</small></em></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">Copyright 1947 by the <cite>American Artist</cite>. Reprinted by permission of the publisher
-and author.</p>
-
-<p>Superior writing and able lettering have never made inconsequential
-literature valuable, nor have poorly conceived,
-incompetent calligraphy and lettering ever invalidated good literature.
-Letters which are well considered, expertly executed, conscientiously
-fitted to their purpose, however, can create visually
-a spiritual state in a reader which will influence him to be receptive
-to the message he reads. It may even be possible that beautiful
-writing, aside from the intense pleasure it gives us as graphic art,
-helps to make uninspired authors seem more profound.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps it is this realization that has made graphic artists in
-recent years exhibit a notable increase in interest in American
-"calligraphy." The quotes are intentional. So much which is not
-calligraphy has had the term applied to it and so much which
-is calligraphy has been considered something else, that some sort
-of evaluation and comparative definition now appears to be wise.</p>
-
-<p>The aura of romance which has surrounded the tools, the methods,
-and the products of the scribe has tended, we believe, to
-place them in the eyes of practicing letter artists somewhat higher
-in the scale of the arts than those of the letterer. Hence the "lettering
-man" likes to call himself a "calligrapher." This same snobbishness
-is often evident between easel painters and illustrators,
-between book illustrators and magazine illustrators, between book
-designers and advertising typographers. And all of it is false. By
-simple definition lettering and writing are related but certainly
-not competitive arts.</p>
-
-<p><em>Calligraphy</em> is "beautiful writing."</p>
-
-<p><em>Lettering</em>, in modern usage, refers to built-up, designed forms.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_338"></a>[Pg 338]</span></p>
-<p>Stanley Morison, in the <cite>Encyclopaedia Britannica</cite>, says: "Calligraphy
-is the art of fine writing. Writing is a means of communication
-by agreed signs; if these signs or symbols are painted
-or engraved on stone or wood [or paper] we have that extension
-and application of writing known as <em>lettering</em>, <em>i.e.</em> a script generally
-formed with mechanical aids such as the rule, compass, and
-square. But it is the essence of hand-writing that it be free from
-such, though not from all, government.... Calligraphy may be
-defined as freehand in which freedom is so nicely reconciled with
-order that the understanding eye is pleased to contemplate it."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i338" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_338.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">The same nib was used for built-up and written forms in this freely
-rendered fragment of a ninth-century manuscript.</p>
-
-<p>Built-up and written forms each have their place. One of the
-tenets of fine letter art is that the forms be in perfect taste; that is,
-that the letter and its method of production be in harmony with
-its use. A delicately drawn cursive is as out of place on a subway
-card advertising a cough remedy as is a poster <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">egyptienne</i> on the
-title page of a small volume of romantic poetry. To assume, however,
-that either the written or the drawn form is the more aristocratic
-is unsound. To attempt a representation of either by the
-other is likewise illogical. Written letters, based on traditional
-manuscript usage, are more serious in concept than their less
-restrained contemporary built-up characters and do not permit
-of the same unconcern with anatomical discrimination. Both,
-properly executed, can be superb examples of letter art&mdash;and both
-can be terrible.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_339"></a>[Pg 339]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp76" id="i339-1" style="max-width: 15.625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_339-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">A simple Roman, executed entirely with a broad nib.<br />
- Characteristic strokes employed in writing the above.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp72" id="i3392" style="max-width: 15.625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_339_2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">A similar letter designed and built up using a brush.<br />
- Characteristic outlines to be filled in for above.</p>
-
-<p>The growing practice of calling all script-like letters "calligraphy"
-is unjust to writing and lettering alike. Particularly the
-practice of producing with a pointed pen or brush the built-up,
-tricked-out impersonations of broad nib writing must be abandoned
-if the art of making letters is to remain honorable.</p>
-
-<p>Having defined, then, the general limitation of the terms, let
-us look at some of the principal differences in character between
-the two. Historically, we find them side by side. Since they were
-both produced by scribes and illuminators working in like tradition,
-there was no question of fitness one with the other. Both
-stemmed from the same source and were produced with the same
-type of tool. They were necessarily in harmony.</p>
-
-<p>Contemporarily, however, much lettering is executed by
-craftsmen who neither know or care about the historical background
-of the alphabet. The responsibility for this lies, we believe,
-as much with the purchaser as with the producer of letters. The
-art director, working in a viciously competitive field, demands of
-the letterer something "different." The result is usually a built-up
-form which has little in common with its ancestors, either in shape
-or method of production. But, if it is handsome in itself, it may
-have a real affinity for a text of type. A written element may
-also serve beautifully as a foil for the rigidity of a type page.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_340"></a>[Pg 340]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp61" id="i340" style="max-width: 30.6875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_340.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1">These two treatments of a title are by no means the only likely ones by either
-method. The lower form was actually used. The letter was designed in the
-spirit of the type which was used in conjunction with it. Perhaps if a written
-title had been chosen, one based on an Italian rather than an English hand
-would have been more suitable. The great difference in these two treatments
-is that the written serves as a contrast, while the built-up harmonizes with the
-type on the page.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_341"></a>[Pg 341]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>To establish further the variance between calligraphy and lettering,
-a brief inspection of the methods of production may be
-advantageous. The designed form is conceived as a drawing&mdash;it
-is a device which may be finished up with any instrument at hand.
-The only limitation which the designer must not exceed is the
-recognizability of the particular letter.</p>
-
-<p>The written form depends upon tradition for letter shape and
-upon tool for letter character. Distortion is possible and poor
-form not unusual, but since the pen is essentially <em>the</em> letter-making
-tool, the natural action of a properly cut pen eliminates at least
-some of the opportunities for improbable forms.</p>
-
-<div class="figleft illowp100" id="i341" style="max-width: 9.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_341.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="caption"><p class="p1 small1">These two letters, enlarged from the two renderings of "Wartime
-Correspondence," illustrate the control which is exerted by the cut
-and size and handling of a square nib upon the calligraphic form as
-opposed to the freedom from constraint in the built-up treatment. The
-tool decided the shape of the first. A careful patterning of curves and
-weights to conform to the type of the book page (Poliphilus) determined
-the second. A Soennecken steel pen was used for the written, and a
-pointed brush for the built-up.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The calligraphic and the built-up approach to the execution
-of a book title may indicate how each may be employed frankly
-and honestly without recourse to camouflage to procure particular
-effects. The size, general weight, and disposition of the letters
-are indicated in the rough layout. The artist who executes the
-built-up rendering will keep the weight of letters <em>even</em> by constant
-checking of one against the other. The calligrapher will
-cut a reed or pen to this weight and thus maintain even color.</p>
-
-<p>It will be noted that the designed form is completely and finally
-established in the penciled form. The laying-out for the written
-form is less accurate and is the product of a double pointed tool,
-set to the width of the nib to be used. In any but a very tight design
-such as this, the pen-executed letter requires rather less preliminary
-penciling than is here indicated. A line for the bottom
-of the letters is usually sufficient.</p>
-
-<p>It has been impossible to crowd all one should like to write on
-this subject into these few words. If, however, this first voicing
-of a need for a sane concept of the relations between lettering and
-calligraphy has even the smallest influence, the author will bear
-with pleasure the rightful criticism of incompleteness.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_342"></a>[Pg 342]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i342-1" style="max-width: 26.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_342-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">The width of the nib is that of the widest part of the down-stroke.<br />
- Strokes 5 and 6 fill the openings thus left.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp67" id="i342-2" style="max-width: 19.8125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_342-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">Layout and demonstration of the written form (calligraphic).</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_343"></a>[Pg 343]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i343-1" style="max-width: 26.75em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_343-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">The center line is drawn by compass. Width of the swell is arrived at by moving the point 1/2 this width
-to right and left.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp67" id="i343-2" style="max-width: 19.8125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_343-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">Layout and demonstration of the designed form (lettered).</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_344"></a>[Pg 344]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />ALDOUS HUXLEY<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite><small>Typography for the Twentieth-Century Reader</small></cite></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">The introduction from <cite>Printing of Today</cite>, an illustrated survey of post-war
-typography in Europe and the United States, by Oliver Simon and Julius
-Rodenberg. Copyright 1928 by Peter Davies, Ltd., London, and Harper and
-Brothers. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.</p>
-
-<p>In our enthusiasm for the spirit we are often unjust to the
-letter. Inward and outward, substance and form are not easily
-separated. In many circumstances of life and for the vast majority
-of human beings they constitute an indissoluble unity. Substance
-conditions form; but form no less fatally conditions substance.
-Indeed, the outward may actually create the inward, as when the
-practice of religious rites creates religious faith, or the commemoration
-of the dead revives, or even calls into existence, the
-emotions to which the ceremonial gives symbolical expression.</p>
-
-<p>There are other cases, however, in which spirit seems not to
-be so closely dependent on letter, in which the quality of the
-form does not directly affect the quality of the substance. The
-sonnets of Shakespeare remain the sonnets of Shakespeare even in
-the most abominable edition. Nor can the finest printing improve
-their quality. The poetical substance exists independently of the
-visible form in which it is presented to the world. But though, in
-this case, the letter is powerless to make or mar the spirit which
-it symbolizes, it is not for that reason to be despised as mere letter,
-mere form, mere negligible outside. Every outside has a corresponding
-inwardness. The inwardness of letters does not happen
-to be literature; but that is not to say that they have no inwardness
-at all. Good printing cannot make a bad book good, nor bad
-printing ruin a good book. But good printing can create a valuable
-spiritual state in the reader, bad printing a certain spiritual discomfort.
-The inwardness of letters is the inwardness of any piece
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_345"></a>[Pg 345]</span>of visual art regarded simply as a thing of beauty. A volume of
-the Penny Classics may give us the sonnets of Shakespeare in their
-entirety; and for that we may be duly grateful. But it cannot at
-the same time give us a work of visual art. In a finely printed edition
-we have Shakespeare's sonnets <em>plus</em> the lovely equivalent of,
-say a Persian rug or a piece of Chinese porcelain. The pleasure we
-should derive from bowl or carpet is added to that which the
-poetry gives us. At the same time our minds are sensitized by
-the contemplation of the simple visual beauty of the letters:
-they are made more susceptible of receiving the other and more
-complex beauties, all the intellectual and spiritual content, of the
-verse. For our sensations, our feelings and ideas do not exist independently
-of one another, but form, as it were, the constituent
-notes of what is either a discord or a harmony. The state of mind
-produced by the sight of beautiful letters is in harmony with that
-created by the reading of good literature. Their beauty can
-even compensate us, in some degree, for what we suffer from bad
-literature. They can give us intense pleasure, as I discovered in
-China, even when we do not understand what they signify. For
-what astounding elegances and subtleties of form stare out in
-gold or lampblack from the shop-fronts and the hanging scarlet
-signs of a Chinese street! What does it matter if the literary spirit
-expressed by these strange symbols is only "Fried Fish and Chips,"
-or "A Five Guinea Suit for Thirty Shillings"? The letters have a
-value of their own apart from what they signify, a private inwardness
-of graphic beauty. The Chinese themselves, for whom
-the Fish-and-Chips significance is no secret, are the most ardent
-admirers of this graphic beauty. Fine writing is valued by them as
-highly as fine painting. The writer is an artist as much respected
-as the sculptor or the potter.</p>
-
-<p>Writing is dead in Europe; and even when it flourished, it was
-never such a finely subtle art as among the Chinese. Our alphabet
-has only six and twenty letters, and when we write, the same
-forms must constantly be repeated. The result is, inevitably, a
-certain monotonousness in the aspect of the page&mdash;a monotonousness
-enhanced by the fact that the forms themselves are, fundamentally,
-extremely simple. In Chinese writing, on the other
-hand, the ideographs are numbered by thousands and have none
-of the rigid, geometrical simplicity that characterizes European
-letters. The rich flowing brushwork is built up into elaborate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_346"></a>[Pg 346]</span>
-forms, each form the symbol of a word, distinct and different.
-Chinese writing is almost the artistic image of thought itself, free,
-various, unmonotonous. Even in the age of hand-writing, the
-European could never hope to create, by means of his few and
-simple signs, an art of calligraphy comparable to the Chinese.
-Printing has rendered the Chinese beauty yet more unrealizable.
-Where the Chinese freely painted we must be content with reproducing
-geometrical patterns. Pattern making is a poorer, less
-subtle art than painting. But it is still an art. By some one who
-understands his business the printed page can be composed into
-patterns almost as satisfyingly beautiful as those of the carpet
-or the brocade.</p>
-
-<p>The problem which confronts the contemporary printer may
-be briefly stated as follows: to produce beautiful and modern
-print-patterns by means of labour-saving machinery. There have
-been numerous attempts in recent years to improve the quality of
-printing. But of these attempts too many have been made in the
-wrong spirit. Instead of trying to exploit modern machinery,
-many artistic printers have rejected it altogether and reverted to
-the primitive methods of an earlier age. Instead of trying to create
-new forms of type and decoration, they have imitated the styles
-of the past. This prejudice in favour of hand-work and ancient
-decorative forms was the result of an inevitable reaction against
-the soulless ugliness of nineteenth-century industrialism. Machines
-were producing beastliness. It was only natural that sensitive
-men should have wished to abandon the use of machines and
-to return to the artistic conventions in vogue before the development
-of machinery. It has become obvious that the machine is
-here to stay. Whole armies of William Morrises and Tolstoys
-could not now expel it. Even in primitive India it has proved itself
-too strong for those who would, with Gandhi, resist its encroachments.
-The sensible thing to do is not to revolt against the
-inevitable, but to use and modify it, to make it serve your purposes.
-Machines exist; let us then exploit them to create beauty&mdash;a
-modern beauty, while we are about it. For we live in the twentieth
-century; let us frankly admit it and not pretend that we live
-in the fifteenth. The work of the backward-looking hand-printers
-may be excellent in its way; but its way is not the contemporary
-way. Their books are often beautiful, but with a borrowed beauty
-expressive of nothing in the world in which we happen to live.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_347"></a>[Pg 347]</span>
-They are also, as it happens, so expensive, that only the very rich
-can afford to buy them. The printer who makes a fetish of hand-work
-and medieval craftsmanship, who refuses to tolerate the machine
-or to make any effort to improve the quality of its output,
-thereby condemns the ordinary reader to a perpetuity of ugly
-printing. As an ordinary reader, who cannot afford to buy handmade
-books, I object to the archaizing printer. It is only from the
-man with the machine that I can hope for any amelioration of my
-lot as a reader.</p>
-
-<p>To his credit be it spoken, the man with the machine has done
-his duty. He has set himself to improve the sordid typographical
-surroundings in which the impecunious reader was so long condemned
-to pass his life. He has shown that cheap books need not
-necessarily be ugly, and that machinery directed by a judicious
-mind can do as well as, or much better than, the hand of an uninspired
-craftsman. There are publishers in business today whose
-seven-and-sixpennies, regarded as typography, are worth a guinea
-apiece. (What they are worth as literature is another question.)
-There are a dozen Presses producing fine work at moderate prices.
-The men behind the machines have used their brains.</p>
-
-<p>Some of our excellent machine-printers are still, it is true, too
-fond of using decorations borrowed from the past, and types that
-savour of another age than ours. So long as our sense of period
-remains as strong as it is, so long as we retain our love of the
-quaint and its more modern equivalent, the "amusing," this tendency
-to substitute pastiche for original creation is bound to
-persist. There is an incessant demand for the antique: we should
-not be too hard on the printers who supply it. If they are sinning,
-they are at least sinning in company. Let the architects and painters,
-the interior decorators, and the theatrical producers throw
-the first stone. There are pastichers among the printers, just as
-there are pastichers among the professors of every art. But there
-are also more original men, who are prepared to encourage modern
-decorators and to use types that are elegant and striking without
-being affectedly archaic.</p>
-
-<p>With this last phrase I may seem to be damning the moderns
-with the faintest of praise. But the truth is that Typography is an
-art in which violent revolutions can scarcely, in the nature of
-things, hope to be successful. A type of revolutionary novelty
-may be extremely beautiful in itself; but, for the creatures of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_348"></a>[Pg 348]</span>
-habit that we are, its very novelty tends to make it illegible, at
-any rate to begin with. I know a rather eccentric German typographical
-reformer, for whom legibility is the greatest enemy, the
-infamous thing that must at all costs be crushed. We read, he
-argues, too easily. Our eyes slide over the words, and the words,
-in consequence, mean nothing to us. An illegible type makes us
-take trouble. It compels us to dwell on each separate word:
-we have time, while we are deciphering it, to suck out its whole
-significance. Putting his theory into practice, this reformer had
-designed a set of letters so strangely unlike those with which the
-typographical practice of generations has made us familiar, that
-I had to pore over a simple English sentence as though it were
-Russian or Arabic. My friend was perhaps justified in thinking
-that we read too much and too easily. But his remedy, it seems
-to me, was the wrong one. It is the author's business to make reading
-less facile, not the printer's. If the author concentrated more
-matter into the same number of sentences, his readers would have
-to read more carefully than they do at present. An illegible type
-cannot permanently achieve the same result, for the simple reason
-that it does not permanently remain illegible. If we are prepared
-to make the effort to read until the novel forms have become familiar,
-the illegible type will come to be perfectly legible. In practice,
-however, we are reluctant to make this effort. We demand
-that typographical beauty shall be combined with immediate
-legibility. Now, in order that it may be immediately legible, a
-type must be similar to the types with which we are familiar.
-Hence, the practical printer, who has to live by selling his wares
-to a large public, is debarred from making revolutionary innovations
-in the designs of his type. He must content himself with
-refining on the ordinary, accepted types of commerce. If he has
-great typographical reforms in view, he must proceed towards
-them by degrees, modifying the currently accepted designs gradually,
-so as not to repel the ordinary lazy reader, who is frightened
-by the idea of making any unnecessary effort. In other arts,
-where form and substance are directly associated, revolution is
-possible, may even be necessary. But the outward form of literature
-is not typography. The association, in a book, of literature
-with one of the graphic arts is in the nature of an accident. The
-printer who would at one stroke revolutionize his art frightens
-away readers, for whom the idea of revolution in literature, or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_349"></a>[Pg 349]</span>
-in any one of the graphic arts that is independent of literature,
-has no terrors. The reason for this is obvious. People buy books
-for the sake of the literature contained in them and not, primarily,
-as specimens of graphic art. They demand of the typography
-that it shall be beautiful, yes; but also that it shall give them immediate
-and unhampered access to the literature with which it is
-associated. Printers may desire to be revolutionary; but unless
-they can afford to sell no books, they are compelled by the force
-of circumstances to adopt a cautious policy of gradual reform.
-The Communist must either turn Liberal or retire from business.</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_350"></a>[Pg 350]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="gill">
-<h2 class="nobreak">MERLE ARMITAGE<br />
-<small>NOTES ON MODERN PRINTING</small></h2>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From Notes on Modern Printing by Merle Armitage. Copyright 1945 by William E.
-Rudge's Sons. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher.</p>
-
-<p>HOW DOES ONE DESIGN A BOOK? I CONCLUDE AS I BEGAN
-WITH A FEW GENERAL IDEAS AND SUGGESTIONS:</p>
-
-
-<p>1. Allow the subject of a book to determine its design and format.</p>
-
-<p>2. Design a book for effortless reading, utilizing the format to enhance
-or interpret the text.</p>
-
-<p>3. Use the prime materials&mdash;type, paper and space&mdash;to achieve your
-results. Meaningless decorations disclose the designer's poverty of
-invention.</p>
-
-<p>4. Simplicity is the best policy.</p>
-
-<p>5. Make no attempt to design every page ... let type and space have
-their natural rhythm.</p>
-
-<p>6. Understand the text ... know your primary aims ... let form follow
-function.</p>
-
-<p>7. Type ornaments have their place ... but an ornament designed for
-general use has no particular significance.</p>
-
-<p>8. A brilliantly designed book can't save a dull or mediocre text.</p>
-
-<p>9. A page of type can be a thing of unique, arresting beauty.</p>
-
-<p>10. Mere type legibility is to a book as mere shelter is to architecture.</p>
-
-<p>11. Book design should be a synonym for the arrangement and integration
-of materials&mdash;paper, binding, illustration, type and space.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_351"></a>[Pg 351]</span></p>
-
-<p>My friends of the musical world believe that music is the most important
-thing in life. Painters are absolutely certain that the reformation will
-come only through an understanding of art. Acquaintances among the
-engineers are sure that by technological development alone can emancipation
-come to man, while scientists rightfully take the credit for
-progress in the contemporary world. Friends in industry insist that mass
-production is the great panacea. The photographers can prove that
-photography makes the pictorial painters unnecessary, and the writers
-I have encountered are convinced that the written word is the one route
-to world unity.</p>
-
-<p>However, the painter ... the musician ... the engineer ... the
-photographer ... the industrialist ... the scientist ... and the writer
-have a rendezvous with the book. Here, the knowledge, the romance,
-the fiction, the facts, the speculations, the opinions, and the accomplishments
-of the world are made permanently articulate.</p>
-
-<p>This is our day, our time, our environment. We can make a statement,
-through the employment of design, that is valid and true ... not divorced
-from tradition, but using the great works of the past as a springboard
-toward new horizons!</p>
-
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN GILL SANS TYPES</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_352"></a>[Pg 352]</span></p>
-</div>
-<div class="baskerville">
-<h2 class="nobreak">Benjamin Franklin:<br />
-PRINTER and PUBLISHER</h2>
-
-<p class="p1 center big1">JOHN T. WINTERICH</p>
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Early American Books and Printing</cite> by John T. Winterich. Copyright
-1935 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Reprinted by permission of
-Curtis Brown, Ltd., agent.</p>
-
-
-<p>Josiah Franklin was reared a dyer in the village of
-Ecton in Northamptonshire, but soon after his arrival in
-America, about 1682, he foresaw a greater future in the
-trade of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. It was a calling
-which seems humble enough in a day that has evolved such
-mouth-filling occupational designations as sales engineer, merchandising
-counsel, and mortician. Josiah Franklin, had the locution
-been available in his era, might have asserted with all
-accuracy that he was an important factor in public utilities&mdash;even
-our own catch-phrase epoch has not been quite equal to the
-coinage of the label "public utilitarian." For when the Boston
-town watch wanted fresh candles they bought them from Josiah
-Franklin&mdash;from other tallow-chandlers too, perhaps, but at least
-some, by documentary evidence, from Josiah Franklin.</p>
-
-<p>The close relationship between progress in the science of artificial
-illumination and progress in the dissemination of the
-printed word could be charted with almost mathematical accuracy....
-Most of the books of colonial days were designed for
-the use of those whose professions exacted some considerable
-amount of "required reading"&mdash;ministers, physicians, lawyers,
-public officials, schoolmen. The man who toiled with his hands
-(and hands are eminently useful in the building-up of a new
-country) labored while the light of heaven would let him and
-then returned to a home wherein the conveniences were hardly
-such as to make reading a pleasure. Lincoln studied by the glare
-of blazing pine-knots, but the middle-class Bostonian and New
-Yorker and Philadelphian of the generations immediately pre<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_353"></a>[Pg 353]</span>ceding
-Lincoln (to say nothing of their country cousins) had to
-depend on illuminants that offered no greater inducements to
-either the solace or the benefits of type.</p>
-
-<p>Josiah Franklin's wife and their three children accompanied
-him to America. Before her death she bore him three more children.
-Josiah remarried, and of the second union ten children
-were born. Of this multitudinous offspring thirteen grew to
-maturity&mdash;a remarkable proportion for the time and region.
-The eighth child and last son of the second marriage, christened
-Benjamin after a paternal uncle, was at first intended for the
-Church, but Josiah could not afford to give him the education
-which this most learned of the professions demanded, and at the
-age of ten, after receiving as thorough an intellectual rearing as
-could be expected in so short a space, Benjamin Franklin quit
-school to assist his father in the fabrication of candles and soap.
-An elder brother, John, had already become proficient in the
-twin arts of illumination and sanitation and had gone to the
-bustling colony of Rhode Island to practice them. Another
-brother (and another Josiah) had also investigated them, found
-them not to his liking, and run away to sea.</p>
-
-<p>Benjamin, also, made it clear that the parental pursuits were
-not to taste, and a wise father, fearing another abrupt departure,
-took Benjamin walking about Boston, that he might "see joiners,
-bricklayers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work" and thereby,
-boywise, make known to his elder which way his inclinations
-lay. A patent leaning toward books at length persuaded the
-father to make him a printer, despite the fact that another
-brother, James, Benjamin's elder by nine years ... had adopted
-the craft. Benjamin conceded a preference to the claims of printing
-over those of tallow-chandlery, but he still sniffed, with the
-true landsman's appetite, the tang of the salt breeze that blew in
-from the east. Josiah, however, was insistent, and the parental
-insistence of 1718 was no toy scepter to swing above the head of
-a sub-adolescent boy. Accordingly, Benjamin was duly indentured
-to James "to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one
-years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during
-the last year."</p>
-
-<p>Before long, Benjamin was writing odds and ends of verse,
-and James, with the inbred Franklin sagacity, encouraged him
-in his endeavors and let him put some of his compositions in
-type.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_354"></a>[Pg 354]</span></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>One (declared Benjamin) was called <cite>The Lighthouse Tragedy</cite>, and
-contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with
-his two daughters: the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of
-Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the
-Grub-street-ballad style; and when they were printed he sent me
-about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event
-being recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity;
-but my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and
-telling me verse-makers were generally beggars.</p></div>
-
-<p>The importance of these two pieces consists in the fact that
-they were "the first with which Franklin's name can be identified
-as either author or printer," according to Dr. William J.
-Campbell, who adds that "no copy is known to exist, nor is the
-exact title of either of them known." This was true in 1918,
-when Dr. Campbell's admirable catalogue of <cite>The Collection
-of Franklin Imprints in the Museum of the Curtis Publishing
-Company</cite> was issued, and it is unfortunately still true today
-[1935]. If they were at all like similar productions of both earlier
-and later date, they were broadsides&mdash;single sheets that were
-distributed like handbills, the main difference being that they
-commanded a price. They would command a fantastic price
-today, together or singly, and their eventual discovery is by no
-means beyond the bounds of possibility. A copy of one&mdash;or copies
-of both&mdash;may be tucked away in some forgotten contemporary
-theological compendium which has not been opened for a century.</p>
-
-<p>The disappearance of these broadsides is regrettable on many
-counts, not least of which is the fact that even if Benjamin had
-never accomplished anything else, he could at least claim credit
-for sponsoring perhaps the most textually interesting productions
-of his brother's press. James Franklin was a skilled printer&mdash;London
-trained, and "no slovenly self-taught colonial," in
-Paul Leicester Ford's phrase&mdash;and James was not, of course, in
-any degree responsible for the dullness of the copy that was
-brought to his shop. A brief glance at a few of his imprints of
-this period is of interest mainly because of the certainty that
-Benjamin worked on many of them.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The product of James Franklin's press (says Ford in <cite>The Many-Sided
-Franklin</cite>, New York, 1899) is a dreary lot of "gone-nothing-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_355"></a>[Pg 355]</span>ness."
-A few of the New England sermons of the day; Stoddard's
-<cite>Treatise on Conversion</cite>; Stone's <cite>Short Catechism</cite>; <cite>A Prefatory
-Letter about Psalmody</cite>, in defense of church singing, which many
-Puritans still held to be unholy; an allegory styled <cite>The Isle of Man,
-or, Legal Proceedings in Manshire Against Sin</cite>; Care's <cite>English Liberties</cite>;
-sundry pamphlets on the local politics of the moment, such as
-<cite>A Letter from One in the Country to his Friend in Boston</cite>, <cite>News from
-the Moon</cite>, <cite>A Friendly Check from a Kind Relation to the Chief Cannonneer</cite>,
-and <cite>A Word of Comfort to a Melancholy Country</cite>; two or
-three tractates on inoculation, and one aimed half at the Boston
-clergy and half at the fair sex, entitled <cite>Hooped Petticoats Arraigned
-by the Light of Nature and the Law of God</cite>, were the chief output of
-the new printer during the years his brother served him.</p></div>
-
-<p>In the summer of 1721, James Franklin established a newspaper,
-<cite>The New England Courant</cite>. Two years earlier he had
-been engaged to print the <cite>Boston Gazette</cite>, but with the transfer
-of its management a few months later the contract had gone
-elsewhere. The <cite>Courant</cite> was a new departure even for the novelty
-that was American journalism&mdash;so extensive and violent a
-departure, indeed, that in the following year the authorities
-sentenced the printer-proprietor to a month's imprisonment for
-his insolence. The punishment did not improve him; free again,
-he pressed the thorn of the <cite>Courant</cite> deeper into the flesh of his
-persecutors, with the consequence that he was soon forbidden
-"to print or publish" either the <cite>Courant</cite> "or any other pamphlet
-or paper of the like nature" unless it were first submitted to the
-secretary of the province.</p>
-
-<p>There were two apparent ways out of the dilemma, and one
-was as eminently unsatisfactory as the other. The first was to
-quit printing and publishing. The second was to submit to the
-censorship. James hit upon a more ingenious solution. He
-turned the <cite>Courant</cite> over to sixteen-year-old Benjamin. Benjamin's
-indentures as apprentice to James had five years to run,
-and in order to forestall any objection on the part of the authorities
-that an apprentice was not competent to manage the paper,
-the indentures were ostentatiously canceled and a new document
-drawn up as a private and confidential (but none the less
-binding) memorandum which in theory was no one's affair save
-James's and Benjamin's. The half-sheet issue of the <cite>Courant</cite><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_356"></a>[Pg 356]</span>
-for February 4-11, 1723, identified it as "printed and sold by
-Benjamin Franklin in Queen Street, where Advertisements are
-taken in." Benjamin Franklin's name thus first appeared in an
-imprint. It remained on the tail-board of the <cite>Courant</cite> until the
-paper's discontinuance in 1726, long after Benjamin had left
-Boston.</p>
-
-<p>The gratifying tableau of two stalwart brothers battling loyally
-side by side for freedom of the press, however, was not the
-whole picture. James and Benjamin had differences, and Benjamin
-later admitted that he himself was "perhaps ... too saucy
-and provoking," and that James, despite "the blows his passion
-too often urged him to bestow upon me," was "otherwise not
-an ill-natur'd man." Benjamin, at all events, decided to take advantage
-of the freedom accorded him by the cancellation of his
-indentures, which act he later conceded to have been "not fair"
-and "one of the first errata of my life." James spread the tidings
-of this perfidy throughout Boston, and every local printing
-establishment thereupon became a closed shop to Benjamin
-Franklin.</p>
-
-<p>If James assumed that Benjamin would thus be forced to
-return to his own shop, he reckoned without his Benjamin. For
-not long thereafter, with the connivance of a friend, John Collins,
-Benjamin was smuggled aboard a New York-bound sloop,
-and three days later, thanks to a fair wind, he was in a city which
-was not yet a metropolis judged even by easy colonial standards.
-He called on "old Mr. William Bradford" (aged sixty), who had
-nothing to offer, but who suggested that his son Andrew, then
-flourishing (after a fashion) in Philadelphia, might have a position
-for him, since Andrew's "principal hand," Aquila Rose,
-had just died.</p>
-
-<p>Franklin set out by water by way of Perth Amboy. It is interesting
-to note, in view of the dispute regarding the earliest
-New Jersey imprint ... that the trip from New York to the New
-Jersey port took thirty hours. All in good time he reached
-Philadelphia.</p>
-
-<p>Washington did not cut down a cherry tree and then inform
-his father that he could not tell a lie; Wellington did not say
-"Up, Guards, and at 'em!" or Pershing, "Lafayette, we are here."
-The dear old legends explode all about us; it is gratifying to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_357"></a>[Pg 357]</span>
-recall that there is one at least the accuracy of which is unimpeachable.
-Walking up Market Street, Philadelphia, Benjamin
-Franklin did pass the home of his wife-to-be with a roll under
-each arm and munching a third, and his wife-to-be did see him
-and note that he made "a most awkward, ridiculous appearance."</p>
-
-<p>Andrew Bradford had nothing to offer&mdash;the vacancy left by
-the death of Aquila Rose had already been filled. But Franklin
-was not yet done with the ghostly trail of Aquila. At Andrew
-Bradford's suggestion he waited on Samuel Keimer, who had
-recently set up as a printer despite a meager endowment of
-equipment, native ability, or acquired skill. He found Keimer
-"composing an Elegy on Aquila Rose" directly from the type.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>So there being no copy (recorded Franklin), but one pair of
-cases, and the Elegy likely to require all the letters, no one could
-help him. I endeavor'd to put his press (which he had not yet us'd,
-and of which he understood nothing) into order fit to be work'd with;
-and, promising to come and print off his Elegy as soon as he should
-have got it ready, I return'd to Bradford's, who gave me a little job
-to do for the present, and there I lodged and dieted. A few days after,
-Keimer sent for me to print off the Elegy. And now he had got another
-pair of cases, and a pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work.</p></div>
-
-<p>This broadside poem, therefore, was the first piece of Philadelphia
-printing with which Franklin's name is clearly identified.
-The "pamphlet to reprint" may have been <cite>A Letter to a
-Friend in Ireland</cite>, <cite>The Doctrine of Absolute Reprobation Refuted</cite>,
-<cite>A Letter from One in the Country to His Friend in the
-City</cite>, <cite>A Parable</cite>, or (and this would certainly have been Franklin's
-choice) <cite>The Curiosities of Common Water</cite>, all of which
-Keimer imprints of 1723 are listed in the short-title check list
-which follows the Curtis catalogue. No more specifically is it
-possible to identify the "little job" which Andrew Bradford
-gave him.</p>
-
-<p>It is not likely that Franklin would have long continued with
-Keimer (who was "an odd fish; ignorant of common life, fond
-of rudely opposing receiv'd opinions, slovenly to extream dirtiness,
-enthusiastic in some points of religion, and a little knavish
-withal") even if a roundabout coincidence had not brought him<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_358"></a>[Pg 358]</span>
-to the attention o£ the governor of the province, Sir William
-Keith, whose quarrel with William Bradford had been one of
-the impulses that had established the latter as New York's first
-printer. Keimer "star'd like a pig poison'd" one day when no
-less a worthy than Sir William entered the shop in search of the
-new assistant from Boston. Governor and assistant adjourned to
-a tavern, where the former disclosed a grandiose idea for setting
-the newcomer up in a shop of his own. He must first, of course,
-go to London to buy equipment, and to this end the governor
-loaded him down with enthusiasm and letters of credit. After a
-short visit to Boston, where all "made me welcome, except my
-brother," who "receiv'd me not very frankly, look'd me all over,
-and turn'd to his work again", Franklin sailed for London,
-which he reached the day before Christmas, 1724&mdash;to learn, to
-his intense mortification, that Sir William's letters of credit
-were worthless, since that gentleman's prowess as a promiser and
-his shortcomings as a performer were rather more familiar in the
-old country than in the new.</p>
-
-<p>Franklin, however, had little difficulty in extricating himself
-from the crisis into which he was precipitated on his arrival in
-London by the non-negotiability of Sir William Keith's commercial
-paper. "I immediately got into work at Palmer's," he
-says, "then a famous printing house in Bartholomew Close, and
-here I continu'd near a year." Samuel Palmer, declares John
-Clyde Oswald in <cite>Benjamin Franklin, Printer</cite> (New York, 1917),
-"was more than an ordinary printer. He had visited America,
-was letter-founder as well as printer, and was engaged in the
-writing of 'A History of Printing,' only a third of which he had
-completed when he died in 1732."</p>
-
-<p>Franklin identifies only one of the jobs on which he worked
-at Palmer's. "I was employed," continues the <cite>Autobiography</cite>,
-"in composing for the second edition of Wollaston's <cite>Religion
-of Nature</cite>." The name of William Wollaston (1659-1724) now
-survives mainly by virtue of this adventitious association with a
-nineteen-year-old immigrant compositor. <cite>The Religion of Nature
-Delineated</cite> first appeared in 1722 in a small privately
-printed edition. Presumably this first edition is now rare, but
-no collector is impressed thereby, preferring above it that on
-which Franklin worked (the third in strict sequence, but the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_359"></a>[Pg 359]</span>
-second published edition), which, happily, is relatively common.
-It bears the imprint: "London: Printed by S. Palmer, and sold
-by B. Lintott, W. and J. Innys, J. Osborn, J. Batley, and T. Longman.
-1725." The printer from America pondered over the copy
-as he set it, and out of his ruminations came a pamphlet reply
-to the recently deceased author: <cite>A Dissertation on Liberty And
-Necessity, Pleasure and Pain</cite> (London, 1725). Franklin printed
-one hundred copies, gave a few to friends, and then, repenting
-of his materialistic agnosticism, "burnt the rest except one copy";
-pride of authorship would not wholly down. That copy may be
-one of the four known to survive today, all in institutional collections.</p>
-
-<p>Receiving a better offer from John Watts, who conducted a
-larger printing establishment, Franklin went thither, remaining
-six months, when he accepted the proposal of a Philadelphia
-merchant then in London that he return and act "as his clerk,
-keep his books, in which he would instruct me, copy his letters,
-and attend the store." In leaving London, therefore, Franklin
-supposed that he thereby "took leave of printing forever."</p>
-
-<p>Man proposes. Franklin and his new employer reached Philadelphia;
-the store was duly opened and its new clerk installed;
-four months later the employer died. The establishment was
-taken over by the executors and Franklin was out of work.
-Keimer wanted him back as foreman of his new and larger shop,
-but Franklin, who knew well his Keimer, first sought a place at
-his new trade of clerk and salesman. Nothing offered, so he reluctantly
-accepted Keimer's bid. The affiliation did not last long.
-Franklin and Keimer quarreled over "a trifle" that represented
-the culmination of a long series of abuses:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>A great noise happening near the courthouse, I put my head out
-of the window to see what was the matter. Keimer, being in the
-street, look'd up and saw me, call'd out to me in a loud voice and
-angry tone to mind my business, adding some reproachful words,
-that nettled me the more for their publicity, all the neighbors who
-were looking out on the same occasion, being witness how I was
-treated. He came up immediately into the printing-house, continu'd
-the quarrel, high words pass'd on both sides, he gave me
-the quarter's warning we had stipulated, expressing a wish that he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_360"></a>[Pg 360]</span>
-had not been oblig'd to so long a warning. I told him that his
-wish was unnecessary, for I would leave him that instant; and so,
-taking my hat, walk'd out of doors.</p></div>
-
-<p>Had affairs not fallen out thus ludicrously, then some other
-incident would have "snapt our connections." If no "great noise"
-had occurred near the courthouse (what, one wonders, was the
-cause of the disturbance?), there would still have been a subsequent
-great noise in Keimer's shop, and the hireling would have
-spoken his piece to the overlord and walked out of the identical
-door to the fulfillment of his high destiny.</p>
-
-<p>Franklin was of more than half a mind to return to Boston, in
-which event Philadelphia would one day have been compelled
-to seek another patron saint. Fortunately for Philadelphia,
-while working at Keimer's, Franklin had struck up a friendship
-with Hugh Meredith, a fellow craftsman, who suggested a partnership.
-A secret agreement was drawn up, and pending the
-completion of arrangements for launching the venture, Franklin
-sought temporary work at Bradford's. Keimer meanwhile
-was negotiating with the provincial government of New Jersey
-for the printing of an issue of paper money at Burlington, and
-urged Franklin to accompany him if he was awarded the job.
-The plan went through, and the pair were in Burlington three
-months. "There is not a single piece of this paper money known
-to exist today," says Dr. Campbell, "and of the New Jersey Laws
-that they printed at the same time there are only two known
-copies...."</p>
-
-<p>In the summer of 1728 the new firm of B. Franklin and H.
-Meredith came into existence. They had scarce "opened our
-letters" (their cases, that is, not the morning mail) when a friend
-"brought a countryman to us, whom he had met in the street
-inquiring for a printer." The identity of this bucolic, casual,
-but superlatively important patron of the typographic arts is
-unknown and probably forever unknowable, for he could hardly
-have been aware that he was the instrument of Providence
-chosen to motivate the first imprint issued by Franklin as a
-master printer. Dr. Campbell surmised the job was "probably
-stationery or a small handbill." Whatever it was, it has probably
-vanished beyond hope of recall, or at least beyond hope of
-positive identification.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_361"></a>[Pg 361]</span></p>
-
-<p>Almost on the heels of this first customer came another&mdash;none
-other than Samuel Keimer, whose general ineffectualness and
-chronic state of panic provide much of the comic relief in the
-history of early American printing. Keimer had been working
-off and on for three years on William Sewell's <cite>History of the
-Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called
-Quakers: The Third Edition, Corrected</cite>. The end was not in
-sight, and Keimer, evidently in a condition of acute mental
-distress, rushed to the new shop for assistance. Franklin and
-Meredith composed and printed "forty sheets," totaling nearly
-a third of the seven hundred pages&mdash;the first known job to issue
-from their shop, even though it did not bear their imprint.
-Sewell's <cite>History</cite> is doubly a Franklin item, as Franklin must
-have worked on the book while he was still in Keimer's employ.</p>
-
-<p>Thanks to the diligence of its proprietors&mdash;or of one of them,
-for Meredith "was often seen drunk in the streets, and playing
-at low games in alehouses"&mdash;the new shop prospered. But about
-the middle of 1730 it encountered a hazard which its sponsors
-had not foreseen. Meredith's father had advanced one hundred
-pounds to put the enterprise on its feet and had promised another
-hundred. When the time came for him to meet his obligation,
-he could not, and "the New Printing-Office near the Market"
-was faced with a creditor's suit. This crisis confirmed young
-Meredith's conviction that he was not cut out for the printing
-business; moreover, he was anxious to join a company of fellow
-Welshmen who were planning a settlement in North Carolina.
-Two of Franklin's friends offered to come to the aid of the
-senior partner, and the difficulty was amicably adjusted. Thus
-was the "B. Franklin" imprint born. It appeared for the first
-time not on anything in English, but at the bottom of the title-page
-of <cite>Mystische und Sehr Geheyme Sprueche</cite>, by Conrad
-Beissel, whose religio-communistic Ephrata colony, itself to become
-one day an important printing center, had been organized
-only a few years before.</p>
-
-<p>Shortly before the dissolution of the firm of Franklin and
-Meredith there had been another odd run-in with Keimer.
-Franklin was already planning a newspaper, and "foolishly"
-imparted the secret to a friend who forthwith made it known
-to Keimer. Toward the end of 1728 the not-to-be-anticipated<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_362"></a>[Pg 362]</span>
-Keimer issued the first number of <cite>The Universal Instructor in
-all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette</cite>. It was Keimer's
-inescapable genius to start what he could not finish, and he was
-soon glad to dispose of the paper to Franklin and Meredith,
-whose control dates from October 2, 1729. One of Franklin's
-first acts as a newspaper publisher&mdash;his memory must have harked
-back to the old Boston days&mdash;was to shorten the too comprehensive
-title to <cite>The Pennsylvania Gazette</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>Probably some three months after the departure of Meredith,
-Franklin initiated a new partnership. He married. "Partnership"
-is no romantic figure of speech. The name of Deborah Read has
-an honored place on the roster of women who helped to make
-American printing. By her husband's own testimony, her share
-in the work of the establishment included, in some measure,
-the "folding and stitching" of pamphlets, and it is not unlikely
-that her hands had a busy share in the preparation of some of
-the series of pamphlets with which, more than with any other,
-Franklin's name is most clearly associated as author-printer-publisher&mdash;the
-<cite>Poor Richard</cite> almanacs.</p>
-
-<p>The importance of the almanac in the colonial scheme has
-already been stressed. Franklin was naturally alert to this importance;
-in fact, as soon as the house of Franklin and Meredith
-was in existence he had commissioned Thomas Godfrey to compile
-an almanac. Godfrey was "a self-taught mathematician,
-great in his way," but "he knew little out of his way," and there
-was considerable of the prima donna in his make-up. He prepared
-almanacs for 1730, 1731, and 1732, and then, in an outburst
-of temperament, transferred his skill to the shelter of
-Andrew Bradford. The fortunate result, certainly not anticipated
-by Thomas Godfrey in his dudgeon, was, as Paul Leicester
-Ford defines it, the birth of American humor. Franklin initiated
-the <cite>Poor Richard</cite> series, compiling the bulk of the contents himself,
-but attributing their authorship to Richard Saunder or
-Saunders, whose almanacs had enjoyed enormous popularity in
-England and were still enjoying it, though Saunders had been
-gone this many a year. A <cite>Poor Robin</cite> series of almanacs was also
-popular in England, and James Franklin a few years earlier had
-begun a series of Rhode Island almanacs under this title. <cite>Poor
-Richard</cite> was an immediate success, and though the first number
-was not advertised in <cite>The Pennsylvania Gazette</cite> until December<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_363"></a>[Pg 363]</span>
-19, 1732, which was rather late in the year for a new almanac,
-three printings were necessary to supply the demand. <cite>Poor
-Richard</cite> thereafter issued regularly every December under
-Franklin's own editorship until 1757 (for 1758).</p>
-
-<p><cite>Poor Richard's</cite> rich wisdom has become part of common
-speech wherever English or any other language is spoken. Everyone
-from China to Peru knows that God helps those that help
-themselves, that three removes are as bad as a fire, that</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container pw20">
-<div class="poetry">
-<p class="p1"> <em>Vessels large may venture more,<br />
-But little boats should keep near shore.</em></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>A recent commentator&mdash;Carl L. Becker in the <cite>Dictionary of
-American Biography</cite>&mdash;says of the <cite>Poor Richard</cite> almanacs:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Nothing better exhibits the man, or better illustrates his ingenuity
-as an advertiser.... "Richard Saunders," the Philomath
-of the <cite>Almanack</cite>, was the Sir Roger de Coverley of the masses,
-pilfering the world's store of aphorisms, and adapting them to the
-circumstances and the understanding of the poor. "Necessity never
-made a good bargain." "It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright."
-"Many dishes make diseases." "The used key is always
-bright." The <cite>Almanack</cite> was immediately successful and commonly
-sold about ten thousand copies. "As Poor Richard says" became
-a current phrase, used to give weight to any counsel of thrift. The
-work made Franklin's name a household word throughout the
-colonies.... The introduction to the last <cite>Almanack</cite> (Father
-Abraham's speech at the auction) spread the fame of Poor Richard
-in Europe. It was printed in broadsides and posted on walls in
-England, and, in translation, distributed by the French clergy
-among their parishioners. It has been translated into fifteen languages,
-and reprinted at least four hundred times.</p></div>
-
-<p>Franklin's rise to the position of the most important printer
-in the colonies after the well-entrenched Bradfords was now
-rapid. Before long he was official printer to Pennsylvania, New
-Jersey, and Delaware. Of the bulk of his non-governmental productions,
-Ford writes that while generally "of little moment,"
-still "there can be no doubt that as a whole they contain more of
-genuine merit than those of any other printer of the same or
-previous periods in the colonies, the amount of doctrinal and
-polemical theology being a minimum, and bearing a less pro<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_364"></a>[Pg 364]</span>portion
-to the whole mass than can be found in the books of
-contemporary American printers." In 1735 appeared over Franklin's
-imprint James Logan's <cite>Cato's Moral Distichs Englished in
-Couplets</cite>. Nine years later Franklin sponsored Samuel Richardson's
-<cite>Pamela</cite>&mdash;not only the first American edition, but the first
-novel to be printed in America, "Price 6 s." In the same year,
-1744, he issued what is generally regarded as the typographical
-masterpiece of his press, <cite>M. T. Cicero's Cato Major, or His Discourse
-of Old-Age: With Explanatory Notes</cite> (also Englished by
-James Logan), referring to it in a four-page foreword of his own
-composition as "this first Translation of a Classic in this Western
-World." This was a wide error, for George Sandys had translated
-Ovid on the banks of the James River a life-span earlier, and
-the translation had been printed in London in 1626; moreover,
-Franklin forgot those <cite>Moral Distichs</cite> of Cato and James Logan
-which he himself had issued in 1735.</p>
-
-<p>In 1748, Franklin formed a partnership with an alert young
-Scotchman whom he had engaged five years before, and the
-"Franklin and Hall" imprint thereupon replaced (with a few
-exceptions) the familiar "B. Franklin." A few earlier connections
-must be mentioned. Franklin's name is found on several
-German titles in combination with that of Gotthard Armbruester
-and with that of Johannes Böhm, and, apparently once
-only, with that of Johannes Wüster, but these seem to have been
-purely partnerships of convenience, and suggest no such dual
-affiliations as those with Meredith and Hall. The Hall partnership
-lasted eighteen years, and during that period Franklin's
-connection with printing and publishing became less and less
-important as the crisis in international affairs that was bringing
-on the American Revolution grew more and more acute. But
-the printer in him could not wholly be suppressed. When he
-went to Paris in 1776 as representative of the colonies, he established
-a little press for his own amusement at his home in Passy,
-then a suburb, now as much a part of the metropolis as Greenwich
-Village is of New York. It was not quite such a toy as
-Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne were
-one day to set up in Switzerland, the main difference being that
-the Stevenson-Osbourne combination knew nothing about printing
-and was joyously aware of it, whereas Franklin, with just as
-joyous awareness, knew as much about it as any man of his time.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_365"></a>[Pg 365]</span>
-One factor the two private presses of Passy and Davos-Platz have
-in common&mdash;their productions are excessively rare and costly
-collector's playthings. The story of the French venture is authoritatively
-set forth in Luther S. Livingston's <cite>Franklin and His
-Press at Passy</cite>, issued by the Grolier Club of New York in 1914.
-Livingston listed thirty-two entries, and since his monograph
-was published six others have come to light, according to Will
-Ransom's <cite>Private Presses and Their Books</cite> (New York, 1929).</p>
-
-<p>The output of Franklin's press from 1729 to the termination
-of the Hall partnership (1766) is statistically impressive. The
-following summary is tabulated from the short-title check list
-of all Franklin imprints known in 1918 which Dr. Campbell
-appended to the Curtis catalogue (excluding <cite>The Pennsylvania
-Gazette</cite> and the numerous issues of paper currency printed by
-Franklin from 1731 to 1764):</p>
-
-
-<div class="toc-container pw35">
-<div class="toc">
-<table class="toc"  border="0"  summary="bfd">
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1729 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;8</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1748 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;30</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1730 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;15</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1749 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;33</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1731 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;8</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1750 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;19</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1732 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;15</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1751 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;24</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1733 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;14</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1752 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;18</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1734 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;15</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1753 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;16</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1735 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;20</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1754 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;15</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1736 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;8</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1755 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;27</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1737 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;13</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1756 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;26</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1738 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;9</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1757 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;31</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1739 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;12</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1758 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;13</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1740 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;46</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1759 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;16</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">1741 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;45</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1760 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;10</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1742 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;31</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1761 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;12</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1743 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;25</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1762 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;8</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1744 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;25</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1763 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;15</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1745 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;15</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1764 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;18</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1746 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;23</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1765 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;19</td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr1">1747 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;27</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdr1">1766 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4</td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>Any book, pamphlet, broadside, or periodical that bears a
-Franklin imprint, alone or in combination, is worth treasuring
-on that account alone. In general, the scale of desirability is set
-by scarcity, this scale one might suppose, should follow the line
-of chronology with reasonable accuracy, but it happens that it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_366"></a>[Pg 366]</span>
-does not. The Sewell <cite>History</cite>, for instance, ought by chronological
-measurement to be an excessively rare book as the first
-book on which Franklin worked as an independent printer, and
-rare it assuredly is, but by no means to the point of utter
-elusiveness.</p>
-
-<p>Twelve years later the total of Franklin imprints was moving
-toward two hundred&mdash;and in that twelfth year, 1740, there issued
-from his press the second edition of David Evan's <cite>A Short,
-Plain Help for Parents and Heads of Families, to Feed Their
-Babes with the Sincere Milk of God's Word. Being a Short,
-Plain Catechism, Grounded Upon God's Word, and Agreeable
-to the Westminster Assembly's Excellent Catechism.</cite> No copy of
-the first edition is known to be extant&mdash;Dr. Campbell quoted
-the title imperfectly from a contemporary advertisement&mdash;and
-neither Hildeburn nor Campbell knew that a second edition
-had ever been issued. Neither did anyone else until 1929, when
-a copy came to light and won its way to a New York book-seller's
-catalogue. The book is mentioned here, not because it possesses
-great intrinsic importance (it would be of trivial note if a hundred
-or two copies of it survived), but as an indication of the
-fact that unrecorded Franklin imprints are likely to appear at
-any time, and as indication, further, that the scarcity of Franklin
-imprints does not altogether parallel the dates of his activity as
-printer and publisher.</p>
-
-<p>In these notes it has been necessary to neglect Franklin, the
-author (save as Poor Richard), in favor of Franklin, the printer
-and publisher. But it would be an effrontery to allude even
-briefly to Franklin without mention of the <cite>Autobiography</cite>. Begun
-in 1771 in the quiet charm of an English country-seat, the
-first great American classic never was completed. The manuscript
-first appeared in print, by an odd series of accidents, in
-French in 1791. Subsequently Franklin's grandson, William
-Temple Franklin, issued it in a Bowdlerized English version
-that would have afforded the old man quiet and somewhat indignant
-laughter. The text was not definitely published until
-1868, soon after John Bigelow had come into possession of the
-original manuscript.</p>
-
-<p>Franklin's epitaph is easily the most familiar in American history,
-and almost as well-known a document, perhaps, as Lincoln's
-Gettysburg Address. It is not generally known, however, that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_367"></a>[Pg 367]</span>
-the original version of it was composed in 1728, the very year in
-which its author, a youth of twenty-two, entered into partnership
-with Meredith. The version written in that year, which
-differs in minor details from the final draft, was this:</p>
-
-<p class="p1 center small1">
-THE BODY OF<br />
-B FRANKLIN PRINTER,<br />
-(LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK<br />
-ITS CONTENTS TORN OUT<br />
-AND STRIPT OF ITS LETTERING &amp; GILDING)<br />
-LIES HERE, FOOD FOR WORMS.<br />
-BUT THE WORK SHALL NOT BE LOST;<br />
-FOR IT WILL, (AS HE BELIEV'D) APPEAR ONCE MORE,<br />
-IN A NEW AND MORE ELEGANT EDITION<br />
-REVISED AND CORRECTED,<br />
-BY THE AUTHOR.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p><em>Note</em>: A documented account of the various transcripts of Franklin's celebrated
-epitaph appeared in <cite>The New Colophon</cite>, Volume 3, New York, 1950. It discusses
-the date of its composition, place of first publication and the differing texts, and
-was written by Lyman H. Butterfield, associate editor of the Jefferson papers.</p></div>
-
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-<p class="p2 center">COMPOSED IN BASKERVILLE TYPES</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_368"></a>[Pg 368]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />EARNEST ELMO CALKINS<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<em><small>The Book &amp; Job Print</small></em></h2>
-
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>The Colophon</cite>, New Graphic Series No. 1. Copyright 1939 by the publisher.<br />
-Reprinted by permission of the author and Mr. Elmer Adler.</p>
-
-<h3>I</h3>
-
-<p>The printing office was a long narrow room over a store. One
-front window was appropriated to a cubicle known as "the
-office"&mdash;seldom used, its desk piled high with galley proofs and
-dusty government reports. Frames for type cases occupied the
-two remaining front windows and the three at the back. In between
-were the hand-power cylinder press, the two Gordon
-jobbers, an imposing stone for the newspaper and one for job
-work. Along the walls ran the dump&mdash;sloping shelves divided
-longitudinally by strips of wood, holding galleys and standing
-jobs tied up with white packthread. The prevalent odor was a
-mixture of benzine and warm roller composition familiar to old-time
-printers, but sweeter than the scents of Araby to the young
-apprentice about to be initiated into the craft and mystery of
-printing.</p>
-
-<p>They seated him on a high stool before a case in the darker part
-of the room, with a composing stick, a setting rule, and a piece of
-patent medicine reprint. A slug on a string hung on his upper case
-to hold the copy in place, for the oldest rule of the printing trade
-is "follow copy though it goes out the window." In each corner
-of the lower case boxes Big Sweeny, the foreman, had stuck letters
-from a job font to guide the youngster in learning the case.</p>
-
-<p>For days the tyro was absorbed in the seemingly impossible
-task of setting a stick full of type and "dumping" it on the galley.
-The first lot exploded in the air; it took hours to distribute the
-"pi."</p>
-
-<p>In a few weeks he had learned his case, except the small boxes
-around the edge, double ffls and ffis and little-used punctuation
-points. He could distinguish a 3-em space from a 5-em, and justify
-a line by distributing them judiciously, remembering, as was often
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_369"></a>[Pg 369]</span>impressed on him, to put more space between words ending in
-tall letters. He began to look about him and take stock of the curious
-world in which he found himself.</p>
-
-<p>For years he had dreamed of printing, his appetite whetted by
-the life of Franklin in the Harper Story Books, and a manual of
-instructions for young printers in the same volume. He pored
-over type specimen books obtained from Barnhart Brothers &amp;
-Spindler, and reveled in the amazing faces shown. Other boys had
-their ambitions&mdash;firemen, policemen, railroad engineer&mdash;but his
-hero was the journeyman printer, a green shade over his eyes,
-sleeves rolled to display a bright red undershirt, spitting tobacco
-with an accuracy that missed nothing but the spittoon. Tales told
-by typographical tourists, the tramp printers, were his folklore,
-and for some years after he learned his trade his chance to work
-came mostly in "subbing" for printers frankly laying off to get
-drunk.</p>
-
-<p>Type had two names. He was setting brevier Roman; the
-smaller size used for quotations and for county correspondence
-was nonpareil. Other sizes with equally picturesque names piqued
-his curiosity. In the early eighties the point system had not reached
-the prairies. Later he became familiar with it. The old names of
-the types with approximate sizes in points that prevailed in the
-days of our young apprentice were as follows:</p>
-
-<p>Diamond, 4-1/2-point; Pearl, 5-point; Agate, 5-1/2-point; Nonpareil,
-6-point; Minion, 7-point; Brevier, 8-point; Bourgeois, 9-point;
-Long Primer, 10-point; Small Pica, 11-point; Pica, 12-point;
-English, 14-point; Columbian, 16-point; Great Primer,
-18-point; Paragon, 20-point; Double Pica (strictly this should
-be Double Small Pica), 22-point; Two-line Pica, 24-point; Two-line
-English, 28-point; Two-line Great Primer, 36-point; Two-line
-Double Pica, 44-point; Canon, 48-point.</p>
-
-<p>It must not be supposed that all these sizes were found in the
-office of the Book &amp; Job Print, nor for that matter probably anywhere
-but in the warehouses of Barnhart Bros. &amp; Spindler,
-Marder, Luse &amp; Co., MacKellar, Smiths &amp; Jordan Co., Bruce, or
-other type-founders.</p>
-
-<p>Our apprentice was afflicted with one of those curious prying
-minds that sought to know the reason for all things. Much typographical
-history lurked behind the names given to type sizes.
-<em>Diamond</em>, <em>agate</em> and <em>nonpareil</em>, it seemed, were merely fancy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_370"></a>[Pg 370]</span>
-names, but <em>brevier</em> was so-called because it had been used to print
-breviaries; <em>canon</em>, from the first lines of the canonical mass, and
-<em>primer</em> for primaries or elementary prayer books. <em>Bourgeois</em> has
-been attributed to the city of Bourges, to a printer named Bourgeois,
-and to having been used in cheap books for the middle
-classes, the bourgeoisie. <em>Minion</em> was said to be the French word
-<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mignon</i>, darling. But the origin of <em>pica</em>, so constantly used as a
-yardstick for measuring leads, slugs, reglets, and the width of
-columns and pages, is as fascinating as it is baffling.</p>
-
-<p><em>Pica</em> is Latin for magpie, and it has been ingeniously supposed
-that some work now lost, an account of that thievish and mischievous
-bird, was printed in type now bearing that name. De Vinne<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>
-cites a far more amusing derivation: "Like great primer, pica takes
-its name from its early use as a text letter. 'The Pie,' writes
-Mores, 'was a table showing the course of the service of the
-church in the time of darkness. It was called the Pie because it
-was written in letters of black and red, as the Friars de Pica were
-so named from their party-colored raiment black and white, the
-plumage of the magpie.'" And is it not at least probable that "pi,"
-a jumble of unsorted type, is also derived from the same source,
-either because of the pied feathers of the bird, or from its habit
-of assembling a miscellaneous collection of objects in some hiding
-place?</p>
-
-<p>As he explored his upper case, our apprentice discovered that
-while the capitals and small capitals were ranged in alphabetical
-order, <em>J</em> and <em>U</em> were left to the end like substitute ball players on
-the bench. By studying an unabridged dictionary he learned that
-those letters were late comers into the alphabet; the old scribes,
-finding that <em>I</em> tended to become confused with the last stroke
-of the previous letter, gave it a tail to distinguish it. The two forms
-were used indiscriminately for the consonant and vowel sounds
-of <em>I</em> until in due course they were separated. In the same way <em>V</em>
-was half of <em>W</em>, distinguished as singleyou and doubleyou. <em>V</em> was
-carelessly written as <em>U</em> and even as <em>Y</em>, and had all the sounds, but
-was at length assigned one job, and the <em>U</em> added to the alphabet.
-How long ago that happened! So conservative was the printing
-art that even after two hundred years the case had not been
-shifted to accommodate them, and dictionaries as late as 1800
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_371"></a>[Pg 371]</span>still used both forms in the same classification. Our apprentice
-felt that the office where he was learning his trade had not
-changed greatly, typographically at least, since Plantin.</p>
-
-
-<h3>II</h3>
-
-<p>The number and variety of faces at the disposal of the master
-printer equalled their ugliness, though this apprentice considered
-them all beautiful. There were of course the Roman faces, some
-of which were good, and still are, but these were strangely distorted
-as condensed, extra-condensed, extended, expanded, as
-well as shaded, open, skeleton, contour, sloped (both ways),
-ornamented, and hair-line letters.</p>
-
-<p>One would think these were enough for all the printing anyone
-would want to do, but there was also a bewildering multitude of
-so-called job types of fancy and fantastic design. Each foundry
-put out a book as big as a dictionary, filled with bizarre creations
-in which the innocent alphabet was twisted and tormented and
-decorated until some of its masterpieces were illegible.</p>
-
-<p>Among them were a number informally standardized and cast
-by all foundries. Such were Antique, Boldface, Gothic, Lightface,
-Clarendon, Caledonian, Ionic, Doric, Egyptian, Runic, Celtic,
-Rustic, Script, Grecian, Monastic, Norman, Title, and these too
-were also condensed, extended and otherwise squeezed, stretched
-and pulled about. When the type-writer came there was added
-that monstrosity, type-writer type. But the pride of each foundry
-was its own exclusive creations, to which were given names as
-fantastic as the designs, putting Pullman nomenclature to shame,
-such as Pansy, Olive, Asteroid, Van Dyke, Vulcan, Schwabacher,
-Florist, Teuton, Text, Eastlake.</p>
-
-<p>From such an array the country printer was expected to choose
-the types to equip his shop. His outfit consisted of fair quantities
-of Roman, nonpareil, brevier and long primer for straight matter&mdash;the
-weekly newspaper, booklets and pamphlets, with larger sizes
-for job work, too many faces with few fonts large enough to
-set more than a line or two. This did not matter since it seemed
-obligatory to set in a different letter each line of display, advertisements,
-title pages, as well as dodgers and handbills, the greater
-the contrast and variety the better, with "ands" and "thes" in
-lines by themselves, centered and flanked by flourishes on each<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_372"></a>[Pg 372]</span>
-side. Type larger than two-line canon was made of wood, and was
-called "stud-horse type" because used for the big bills tacked up
-on barns and trees to advertise the services of a stallion.</p>
-
-<p>Small fonts of job type were listed in foundry catalogues "5A
-13a," to indicate quantity, other letters being in proportion. There
-was seldom more than one of little used letters, necessitating a shift
-to another font when a line turned up with two Xs or two Zs.
-Job types were laid in cases like the uppers of Roman, the boxes
-all of a size, capitals on one side, lower case on the other.</p>
-
-<p>New type was an abomination. The compositor's fingers, already
-tender from the lye used to wash forms, were cut by the
-sharp edges, and his eyes blinded by the glare from sorts, and the
-printers were forever prowling the shining metal. There was
-chronic clack of up and down the live bank with tweezers, pulling
-out the needed letters, and inserting an equal-sized type upside
-down to mark the place. Another source of trouble was the font
-from a different foundry, supposedly the same body, but with
-a slight variation, that was forever getting into the wrong case
-and being set up, dropping out when the form was lifted.</p>
-
-
-<h3>III</h3>
-
-<p>The apprentice was kept too busy to have much time for the
-acquisition of abstract knowledge. In return for instruction in the
-art and mystery of printing he was expected to perform the duties
-of a "devil." He arrived at half-past six, started the fire in the pot-bellied
-stove, swept up (no light job, for the continuous barrage
-of fine-cut and plug formed a coping around the feet of every
-frame, and the trimmings from the big knife lay in windrows).
-All day he ran errands with proofs, handbills, billheads, advertisements,
-to submit to customers; wet down paper for the weekly
-run of the newspaper, and pasted the subscribers' names on them
-for the mail; distributed "pi," and rushed the growler for thirsty
-journeymen.</p>
-
-<p>But he learned that the printers in one shop were a "chapel," the
-head was the "father," who was not the foreman. It thrilled him
-that such expressions went back to the time when Caxton had
-his press in Westminster Abbey. A small group of men working
-on the same job was a companionship, and had strict rules as to
-who was to do what. Points of procedure, such as the first or a
-"fat take," or the selection of a victim to set up the beer, was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_373"></a>[Pg 373]</span>
-determined by a curious custom. The men gathered around the
-imposing stone, and each in turn shook out a few em-quads, five
-or seven, throwing them on the stone like dice. The one with the
-most nicks uppermost was the winner.</p>
-
-<p>These were time-honored practices, but each shop had customs
-peculiar to itself. He learned not to whistle at his case, for a sponge
-of dirty water was apt to take him squarely in the mouth. When
-late he found lines set up in his composing stick, which he had
-to distribute before he began work, at his own expense&mdash;when he
-was finally promoted to piece work,&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<div class="poetry-container pw20">
-<div class="poetry">
-<p class="p1"> <em>A diller, a dollar, a ten-o'clock scholar,<br />
-<span style="padding-left: 1em; ">What makes you come so soon?</span><br />
-You used to come at ten o'clock,<br />
-<span style="padding-left: 1em; ">But now you come at noon.</span></em></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>For some time his tormentors had alluded mysteriously to the
-"type louse" that haunted the forms, and promised to show him
-one when found. A journeyman working at the stone over a newspaper
-form wet down for distribution called him over, and pointing
-excitedly, cried,</p>
-
-<p>"Now, there, look!"</p>
-
-<p>He looked.</p>
-
-<p>Handfuls of type had been removed, and the water gathered
-in small pools between the columns. The apprentice bent over
-eagerly to behold the strange insect, whereupon the journeyman
-shoved up a column of type, forcing the water to rise like a
-fountain into the apprentice's innocent face, while the force
-roared with laughter and pounded with their composing sticks on
-the frames.</p>
-
-
-<h3>IV</h3>
-
-<p>In a small office in pre-union days, every printer was or became
-an "all-round" man. Not only could he stick type (and some old-time
-printers had a wonderful instinct for spacing), but he could
-"kick" a jobber, impose, make ready, and feed a cylinder press.
-Some of the vagabond printers who drifted back and forth across
-the West, working a few days at each halt, were not only craftsmen
-but characters. It was amazing how promptly they became
-at home in a strange shop, in a few moments working as if they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_374"></a>[Pg 374]</span>
-had been there for years. The saga of the typographic tourist has
-yet to be told.</p>
-
-<p>It was not long before he found himself standing on one leg
-like a stork, working the treadle of the Gordon jobber with the
-other, feeding some small job, milk tickets or dodgers or billheads,
-against three 3-em quads pasted to the tympan in lieu of gaugepins.
-As the press had no grippers the feeder must grab the printed
-sheet before the ink pulled it off and insert the next, regulating
-the speed according to his need. Pasting scraps of cardboard on
-the quads to project a bit helped hold the printed card or paper.
-The regular gaugepins sold never seemed to work as well as
-quads, and anyway, old-time printers were self-helpful and
-never bought what they could make.</p>
-
-<p>From feeding press he graduated to making ready and locking
-up forms. There were always enough odds and ends of furniture
-for small jobs without cutting new, but for big work, particularly
-a book or pamphlet, the furniture was cut to fit the job. The form
-was "locked" by driving quoins, wedge-shaped bits of hard wood,
-along the tapering side sticks with an implement known as a
-shooting stick, notched at one end. The form was planed with a
-block of wood beaten over the form to drive down type that
-might stick above the printing surface. Something like this still
-prevails, no doubt, but not with such primitive tools, and very
-little printing is now done from the type. I am sure the shooting
-stick and wooden quoins must be as obsolete as ink balls.</p>
-
-<p>The night before the newspaper was run off, the paper was
-laid down on a broad platform, a quire at a time, drenched with
-water, covered with a wide board, and a heavy stone placed on
-top to squeeze the water out. Dampening was necessary to make
-the ink stick. Subscribers received their papers so wet they had to
-dry them before reading. The press was a cylinder with a large
-flywheel having a handle attached. It was run by human power&mdash;a
-husky Negro, who also furnished the muscle for the big knife,
-or guillotine, with which books were trimmed. In the words of
-the proprietor he "always gives a scent back no matter what we
-pay him." The apprentice and devil doubled for the porter when
-he was otherwise engaged, but shortly steam was installed, adding
-greatly to the excitement on press day.</p>
-
-<p>Feeding the dampened sheets against the gripper was not easy,
-and often he missed. To stop the press he grasped the long switch<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_375"></a>[Pg 375]</span>
-lever and threw the overhead belt on to the idle pulley. If it failed,
-as it sometimes did, the tympan was inked, and several sheets must
-be run through before it ceased to offset on the wrong side of the
-paper, a waste of which his employer made him emphatically
-aware. It had been easier to stop the press when it was turned by
-hand.</p>
-
-<p>A daily chore which fell to his lot cruelly sharpened the appetite
-of a hungry boy toward the noon hour. This was the menu card
-from the local hotel with corrections for the day's dinner (square
-meal, 25 cents). He picked up the standing type, slid it on a
-galley, and proceeded to pull out yesterday's banana fritter and
-stewed corn and insert today's pear fritter and stewed tomatoes.
-He then ran off thirty copies, taking extra care as the stock was
-special and had the word <em>Menu</em> embossed in gold and other decorations.
-It was a sort of Barmecide's feast for him, whetting an
-appetite that needed no whetting.</p>
-
-<p>Every printing office boasted one of those geniuses expert at
-rule twisting, who with shears, file and pliers bent brass rule into
-patterns that would print scrolls and flourishes around headlines
-and on title pages, ornaments for the corners of boxes, and when
-needed extra long braces. Some could create intricate designs,
-birds with streamers in their beaks in which type could be set,
-like those that were the pride of the writing masters. Like leads,
-brass rule was bought in lengths of a foot or so, and cut as needed.
-Much ingenuity was required to make the corners meet, until
-the arrival of "labor-saving," with corners mitered or beveled.</p>
-
-
-<h3>V</h3>
-
-<p>When work in the printing office became slack he was moved
-to the bindery, where the files of Godey's, Peterson's and Ballou's
-Magazines were put in dull black covers with names lettered on
-the spine. Its principal work, however, was the manufacture of
-account books, made to order to fit the individual book-keeping
-methods of bank or merchant. The ancient ruling machine of
-mahogany looked something like a loom for weaving cloth. Until
-the advent of loose-leaf books and adding machines, business men
-kept their accounts in three enormous tomes labeled respectively
-Day Book, Journal, and Ledger. Every transaction was entered
-in the Day Book chronologically. It was reëntered in the Journal
-to separate outgo from income. Finally, each item appeared in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_376"></a>[Pg 376]</span>
-the Ledger under the name of the customer, or creditor, to show
-the status of individual accounts.</p>
-
-<p>Sheets of paper, bearing picturesque old names&mdash;Royal, Crown,
-Demy, or Foolscap&mdash;were fed to the ruling machine, and came
-into contact with a battery of pens, each with its own little fountain
-of ink, red or blue, as the line demanded&mdash;both colors ruled
-at once. The sheets were then printed at the top of each page with
-the name of the firm, numbered by hand, and bound in the familiar
-heavy books, with covers half an inch thick, hinges of
-rawhide, red leather backs and corners, and sides decorated with
-marbled paper.</p>
-
-<p>The marbled paper was made in the shop. A square tray or
-pan of slate was filled with a thin sizing of water and gum tragacanth.
-On its surface were gently shaken little blobs of color
-that spread slowly on the surface of the pool. The fashion in blank
-books seemed to run to red, blue and white. The spots of color
-were combed into the wavy patterns peculiar to such books. A
-sheet of paper laid on the surface of the water took off a fine
-impression of the pattern. These sheets were used for end-papers
-as well as covers. The edges of the book were also marbled. All
-this was once done in a small printing office in a prairie town of
-about 12,000 inhabitants. The books were sturdy and durable. I
-have seen many of them preserved in vaults beneath banks, filled
-with the neat Spencerian hand of the bookkeepers of that era, the
-pupils of the writing masters who drew without taking pen from
-paper the flowing florid birds trailing messages from their bills.</p>
-
-<p>He was for some years a "two-thirder." A two-thirder received
-two-thirds the wages of a journeyman printer, which were fifteen
-dollars a week. They did not have piece work at the Book &amp; Job
-Print, but later he entered another world, worked on the evening
-newspaper of the town and tasted the excitement of a race against
-bogie, the average day's work of ten thousand ems, the printer's
-measure familiar to all crossword puzzle fans. The piece rate was
-twenty-five cents a thousand, whether leaded brevier or solid
-nonpareil. A rapid compositor could set ten or more thousand a
-day, according to luck with "takes." One learned the fine art of
-jockeying for position, slowing up when the next take on the
-hook, was an undesirable one, or speeding in the race for a fat one.
-Fat takes were pickups&mdash;railroad time table, baseball score, market
-report, taken from the live bank, corrected and added to one's<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_377"></a>[Pg 377]</span>
-string to be paid for as if set. Each compositor had a numbered
-slug that he dumped on the galley with his stickful of set matter.
-When the galley was proved he kept a copy, and at the end of
-the day pasted up his work, being careful to join the takes closely,
-signed his name and turned it in. As soon as the paper was up
-there was a let-down, the tension relaxed, pipes were lit, conversation
-was possible, and the men picked up incredibly long handfuls
-of type from the forms returned from the pressroom, and proceeded
-to throw in a thumping big case against next day's work.</p>
-
-<p>Cuts, if any, were of wood. There was an engraver in the town
-who supplied illustrations when badly enough needed and plenty
-of time was available. He made both the drawing and the block,
-and was a better engraver than artist. His pictures were what is
-now modernist and even surrealist. An ingenious method of making
-cuts in an emergency was nipped in the bud by the progress
-of zinc etching. That was the chalk plate. A metal plate coated
-with a film of chalk could be drawn on with a sharp instrument,
-cutting through the chalk to the plate. The plate was then used
-as a matrix to make a casting that would print the lines drawn,
-something after the manner of a stereotype.</p>
-
-<p>But the pride of the country press was its stock of ready-made
-cuts&mdash;Lodge emblems: Masonic, Odd Fellows, I.O.G.T.; patriotic:
-eagle, star, flag, Liberty Bell; trade symbols: mortar and
-pestle, false teeth, piano, anvil, watch, domestic animals, together
-with the inevitable pointing finger (fist) and clasped hands. There
-were houses, ships, buggies, and, even still on hand in some offices,
-runaway slaves. These were used to embellish circulars, invitations,
-or programs, and were also used in small ads in the newspaper.</p>
-
-<p>There were molds for casting rollers that looked much like
-huge candle molds. The roller composition was a mixture of glue
-and molasses, consistency varying according to the season of the
-year. It was more practicable to buy rollers by this time, but
-homemade rollers were still cast occasionally. In a near-by village
-as late as 1889 a four-column folio weekly newspaper was run off&mdash;pulled,
-I should say&mdash;on a hand-lever press, one page at a time,
-the same method and almost the same press as that which printed
-the <cite>Virginia Gazette</cite>, or the earlier <cite>Saturday Evening Post</cite>, or
-for that matter all incunabula.</p>
-
-<p>It is quite likely that all the old-time editors of country news<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_378"></a>[Pg 378]</span>papers
-were printers. The tradition no longer holds, but one apprentice
-printer in my old shop whose destiny was no doubt
-influenced by this early contact with type was John Finley, who
-became editor of the country's greatest newspaper. There are
-still men, though not so many as there were once, playing important
-roles in world affairs who at some time in their lives experienced
-the thrill of handling the twenty-four (now twenty-six)
-potent little lead soldiers that change the history of the world.
-No man ever loses that sense of the importance of printing, or can
-look upon a printed thing with indifference, who has once felt
-it. Nor for that matter does he ever forget the lay of the case. It
-is a craft that gets into the blood.</p>
-
-<p>In 1889 or thereabouts I witnessed a scene which foretold the
-great change that was coming to the art I had learned with such
-patience and diligence, as revolutionary as the change of shipping
-from sail to steam. There arrived and was set up a machine intended
-to set type. Its name was Thorne, and its principle was to
-release the letter called for when the key was pressed by means
-of nicks in the body of the type, like the tumblers of a Yale lock.
-The type travelled in the channels to a galley, and was justified
-by hand, if I remember rightly. Obviously the device depended
-upon a hair-trigger nicety of adjustment. Even the mechanics
-who came with it had difficulty in making it work. It jammed
-repeatedly, and before many hours the floor was covered with
-broken sorts. After a few months it was packed up and sent back,
-and the old-fashioned method of setting by hand was reinstated,
-until that day when that office, like every one of its class, was
-equipped with a battery of linotypes. Thus vanished a craft that
-had been four hundred years in the making, that uncanny skill
-with which a good printer manipulated type.</p>
-
-<p>The tramp printer, with his thirst, his steel setting rule, his
-budget of gossip of all the printing offices in a wide territory, has
-become extinct. The callous forefinger of the printer is as much a
-legend as the miller's sensitive thumb.</p>
-
-
-<h3>VI</h3>
-
-<p>Did they print books in those far-away prairie printing offices?
-They certainly did. One of the rarest items of Western Americana
-bears a Galesburg imprint. A pioneer of that town, a genius who
-played the flute and made many inventions, one of them the rotary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_379"></a>[Pg 379]</span>
-plow still used to clear snow from the tracks of western railroads,
-was Riley Root. In 1849 he caught the gold fever and made the
-trip to Oregon and California over-land in a covered wagon. He
-had many adventures, and on his return wrote a book that was
-printed in Galesburg and is now a collector's item. A famous Boston
-book-seller became excited when he discovered a copy. "Unknown,"
-he wrote in 1932, "to Wagner, Smith, Cowan, or as far
-as we know to any other bibliographer of the West, and unrecorded
-in the entire run of American Book Prices Current."</p>
-
-<p>The front wrapper reads:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Journal of Travels / from / St. Josephs to Oregon / with /
-observations of that country / together with / a Description
-of California, / its agricultural interests, / and / a full description
-/ of / its Gold Mines. / By Riley Root / Galesburg, Ill.
-/ Intelligencer Print / 1850.</p></div>
-
-<p>The matter on the wrapper is repeated on the title page with
-some minor variations. The book is a substantial pamphlet, size
-9-1/2 by 6 inches, 144 pages, uncut. The Boston bookman continues:</p>
-
-<p>"Riley Root's Journal has everything that a rare piece of Western
-Americana should have. In the first place, it <em>looks</em> rare. Like
-several rare Western items of which only a few copies exist, it was
-printed in a small mid-Western town. 'Galesburg, Illinois, 1850'
-is an imprint that has charm for the collector."</p>
-
-<p>It must be excessively rare. The only other copy of which I
-know, besides the one described, is now appropriately in the
-Seymour Library of Knox College. Of this copy the librarian
-said (when he acknowledged the gift to the Library in 1931):</p>
-
-<p>"This little unbound pamphlet was written by Riley Root who
-came with his family to this prairie country in 1836, when he was
-37 years old, and helped to build the houses of Log City, the forerunner
-of Galesburg.... It was printed in Galesburg in 1850 by
-the 'Intelligencer Print' and bears in the border of the cover the
-name of the compositor, Southwick Davis, who graduated from
-Knox in the first class&mdash;that of 1846. This creditable piece of printing
-was done only about fourteen years after Galesburg was
-staked out and when Knox College was graduating its fifth class.</p>
-
-<p>"In April 1848 Riley Root left Galesburg to make this over-land
-journey, crossing the continent by way of the Oregon Trail
-to Oregon City, a distance of 1846 miles from St. Josephs on the
-Missouri River, which was regarded as the starting point for the
-long journey through the Indian Country. Although gold had
-been discovered at Sutter's sawmill in California on February
-10th, 1848, nearly two months before Mr. Root left Galesburg,
-it is not probable that he learned of that famous event until he
-reached Oregon in mid-September. The news spread slowly even
-on the Pacific coast, credible reports reaching San Francisco only
-in May. Mr. Root says that the excitement ('yellow fever,' he calls
-it) began in Oregon about the middle of August, and that within
-one month nearly 2,000 persons left Oregon for the gold fields.
-The purpose of Mr. Root's over-land journey to Oregon is not
-stated, but it would seem from an entry in his diary seven months
-after reaching Oregon City, to the effect that he had been 'roaming
-up and down the valley, in pursuit of information,' that he was
-scouting for new lands on a new frontier. Finding himself in the
-midst of all the gold rush 'commotion' he may very well have been
-attacked by the 'yellow fever' bug himself. At any rate he left
-Oregon in April, 1849, just a year after leaving Galesburg, and
-going to San Francisco and the California gold fields, spent five
-months, returning to Illinois by way of Panama and New Orleans.
-He arrived in Galesburg, January 8, 1850.</p>
-
-<p>"This little pamphlet records the details of this epic journey,
-and if Riley Root's reputation rested on this alone he would take
-high rank as a historian. It is extremely well done and is a faithful
-journal of not only the day to day happenings, but of the country
-and its climate, the wild animals, the Indians, the geology and
-botany, the mountains, the forests and streams, and many other
-features that give evidence of the observant eye of the author.
-One interesting and important chapter relates the harrowing details
-of the Indian massacre of November, 1847, in which Dr.
-Marcus Whitman and his wife lost their lives. This story was supplied
-to Mr. Root by eye-witnesses and is said to be its earliest
-publication in book or pamphlet form."</p>
-
-<p>Among the many changes of ownership of presses in Galesburg,
-it would be difficult to decide whether the shop in which I
-learned my trade was a descendant of the Intelligencer Print or
-not, but it was produced in just such a primitive and resourceful
-plant.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_380"></a>[Pg 380]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> <cite>Plain Printing Types</cite>, Theodore L. De Vinne, New York, 1902.</p></div></div>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_381"></a>[Pg 381]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><em>James Shand</em><br />
-<em><small>AUTHOR AND PRINTER: G.B.S. AND R. &amp; R. C.: 1898-1948</small></em></h2>
-
-
-<p class="p22 center small1">From <cite>Alphabet and Image</cite>: 8, Winter, 1948. Copyright by Art and Technics,
-Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.</p>
-
-<div class="figleft illowp40" id="i381" style="max-width: 6.6875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_381.jpg"  alt="" />
-
-  <div class="pc1 small1"><p>Topolski's drawing from<br />
-the illustrated Penguin <cite>Pygmalion</cite>.</p></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Author and printer, publisher and
-book-seller; these conjunctions flow
-too easily from the pen. They cover an
-immeasurable sum of human experience,
-both melancholy and magnificent,
-in the long history of the book
-trade; they should be used with more
-reserve.</p>
-
-<p>Fortunately for the reader, the
-writer is no doctor in bibliography
-expounding the perils and diseases of
-textual transmission, but a typographical
-reporter, with an interim case-history
-of a particular author, a particular
-printer and a healthy body of
-work in progress.</p>
-
-
-<p>Our author is George Bernard Shaw,
-sometime of Dublin: our printer, R. &amp;
-R. Clark, now, as always, of Edinburgh.
-The association is unique in more than a geographical
-sense; in time it covers fifty years; in space it defies quantitative
-analysis. Bernard Shaw's quota, if consigned to the Society of
-Authors, would probably make that body independent of the
-publishing trade for years to come.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_382"></a>[Pg 382]</span></p>
-<p>Miss Marjorie Plant has pointed out, in her always readable
-economic history, <cite>The English Book Trade</cite>, that there was once
-a time when "the person who was of no account whatever in the
-early years of the book industry was the author." At a later period
-when the printer was dominated by book-seller and publisher,
-Dr. Johnson wrote in <cite>The Gentleman's Magazine</cite> in 1739, "We
-can produce some who threatened printers with their highest
-displeasure for having dared to print books for those who wrote
-them!"</p>
-
-<p>In the history of English literature the relations of author,
-printer and publisher have often been bitter and obscure, posing
-many problems in bibliography and textual criticism. Dr.
-McKerrow, introducing the literary student to bibliography, suggests
-that "the best way of obtaining a clear and lively comprehension
-of the processes by which the books of Shakespeare's
-time were produced" would be by actually composing a sheet
-or two in exact facsimile of an Elizabethan quarto and printing
-it on a hand-press. "Once he does this," he adds, "he will find
-that the material book, apart altogether from its literary content,
-can be a thing of surprising interest."</p>
-
-<p>The surprise of Dr. McKerrow's student trying to disentangle
-the impositions by which the Penguin edition of more than a
-million copies of Shaw's plays were produced on modern perfector
-printing presses and automatic folding machines would
-indeed be considerable. Nevertheless it is to be doubted whether
-there are as many bibliographical vagaries and obscurities in
-Shaw as in the folios and quartos of Shakespeare. Certainly
-there is something of the same fascination in the printing and
-production of the "material" books of the later playwright; apart
-from the literary antics of an ebullient Irish author with that
-most emotional of all romantic characters: seemingly hard-headed
-Scots printers.</p>
-
-<p>Since we are presenting the romance of playwright and
-printer, without benefit of publisher, let us set our characters in
-their dramatic place and scene. The place is Edinburgh; the
-scene R. &amp; R. Clark; the principal characters, Edward Clark,
-Bernard Shaw and William Maxwell; with a faint echo off-stage
-from that habitual bankrupt, Grant Richards, later deserted for
-the more solid attractions of a "commissioned" Constable.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_383"></a>[Pg 383]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp57" id="i383" style="max-width: 28.5em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_383.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">Shaw's original shorthand draft of his letter to Maxwell on the centenary of
-R. &amp; R. Clark in 1946.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_384"></a>[Pg 384]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Professor G. M. Trevelyan, in one of those two brilliant chapters
-on Scotland in his <cite>English Social History</cite>, points out that
-rapidly developing eighteenth-century Edinburgh "was hardly
-less important than London in the British field of letters."</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Stanley Morison, speaking in Edinburgh in 1944 on the
-subject of <cite>The Typographic Arts</cite>, pointed out that the first history
-of typography ever written for the instruction of the trade
-was James Watson's <cite>The Art of Printing</cite>, published in Edinburgh
-in 1713.<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> A few years later the Edinburgh book-seller, Alexander
-Donaldson, who set up shop in the Strand and put Edinburgh
-printed classics on sale at 30 per cent to 50 per cent below the
-usual prices, was largely responsible for the creation of a "permanent
-and enlarged printing and type-founding industry in Edinburgh."
-Mr. Morison also asserts that in the last quarter of the
-eighteenth century Scotland led the interest in technicalities
-of printing.</p>
-
-<p>The first edition of the <cite>Encyclopaedia Britannica</cite>, printed in
-Edinburgh in 1771, was brought out by "a Society of Gentlemen
-of Scotland." John Bell's <cite>British Poets</cite> and <cite>British Theatre</cite> were
-printed at the Apollo Press by Gilbert Martin, an Edinburgh
-printer of whom Mr. Morison would gladly know more.</p>
-
-<p>"The social, imaginative and intellectual life" of Scotland in
-the early nineteenth century centred largely in Edinburgh on
-Burns and Scott, Adam Smith and <cite>The Edinburgh Review</cite>. The
-familiar publisher names, Ballantyne, Blackwood, Chambers,
-Constable, Nelson, were also printers. In type-founding, Miller
-&amp; Richards' Scotch Roman cut in 1803, and the later Old Style,
-were widely used throughout the trade, at home and abroad,
-right up to the present day.</p>
-
-<p>It was in 1846, six years before Alexander Phemister cut the
-now famous Old Style, that Robert Clark, with a loan of £200,
-laid the modest foundations of R. &amp; R. Clark. After serving his
-apprenticeship in Montrose as compositor and pressman (what
-is called in the Edinburgh trade a "twicer") he sought experi<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_385"></a>[Pg 385]</span>ence
-in London as a journeyman, before returning to Edinburgh
-to start his own business. His London experience must have been
-of some value to him because it was not long before he and his
-partner, James Kirkwood, had developed an active business with
-London publishers: Macmillans, Bentley, John Murray, Smith
-Elder, A. &amp; C. Black, amongst others.</p>
-
-
-<p>Robert Clark's policy of providing fine quality, with conscientious
-service at the highest possible price, no doubt contributed
-to the financial success of a rapidly developing business which
-moved to the present printing works at Brandon Street in 1883.
-Robert Clark's only surviving son, Edward, took over sole control
-after his father's death in 1894. William Maxwell first
-appears on the scene at this time, entering R. &amp; R. Clark as a
-shorthand writer in 1892.</p>
-
-<p>It was in 1892 that Shaw's first play, <cite>Widowers' Houses</cite>, was
-produced; 1898 when <cite>Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant</cite>, published
-by Grant Richards, were printed by R. &amp; R. Clark.</p>
-
-<p>Few living authors nowadays can claim continuous direct relations
-with one printer over a period of fifty years. Books are now
-the product of mechanical composing machines, automatic printing
-presses, and mechanized binderies. They require expert
-control by experienced production staffs dealing with many different
-paper-makers, printers and binders. For this reason alone
-the printed works of such a productive author as Bernard Shaw
-are a remarkable exception to the general rule in the highly-organized
-printing and publishing trades.</p>
-
-<p>Commission publishing is the resort of authors whose reputation
-guarantees a lucrative circulation and who can afford the
-necessary capital. Shaw now deals directly with his printer and
-binder, buying and paying for his own composition, machining,
-paper and binding.</p>
-
-<p>Shaw had always very definite ideas about the format of his
-books and, with the complete and friendly co-operation of his
-present publisher, has dealt continuously with R. &amp; R. Clark
-since 1898. Clarks are now 102, Shaw 92, Maxwell 75; this unique
-association of author and printer is also a competition in longevity.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_386"></a>[Pg 386]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp50" id="i386" style="max-width: 28.875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_386.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">Page from the Standard Edition, which began publication in 1931, in
-Fournier small pica, 1-1/2 points leaded, large crown octavo, 5x8 inches.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_387"></a>[Pg 387]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>The influence of Bernard Shaw on our time has been profound;
-in the theatre, in films and in broadcasting. The circulation of his
-printed works has been immense. His direct collaboration with
-his printer over a long period is of more than professional interest
-to publishers, printers and bibliographers. This unique
-author-printer relationship provides an unusual aspect for us of
-the wit, vigour and working methods of one of the most successful
-authors and playwrights of our time; demonstrating also in
-no uncertain terms the integrity, craftsmanship and mechanical
-resource of the printing house of R. &amp; R. Clark, so soundly based
-and flexibly developed over the last hundred years in the solid
-traditions of the Edinburgh book-printing trade.</p>
-
-<p>In 1946, on the occasion of the centenary of R. &amp; R. Clark,
-Shaw wrote of that renowned Edinburgh printing firm, "Ever
-since it printed my first plays, <cite>Pleasant and Unpleasant</cite>, in 1898,
-it has been as natural a part of my workshop as the pen in my
-hand." Few printers can ever have received so eloquent a tribute
-from so eminent an author.</p>
-
-<p>As a young author, Shaw's experiences with publishers had
-not been exactly encouraging. Between 1879 and 1883, as regularly
-as clockwork, at the rate of one a year, they rejected all his
-novels. The climate in publishing at that time is best described
-by Shaw himself writing to Daniel Macmillan in 1943. The letter
-is quoted in full in Charles Morgan's <cite>The House of Macmillan</cite>;
-a small portion bears reprinting here. After describing how
-Meredith turned him down for Chatto's without extenuating
-circumstances; how Blackwood accepted his first novel but reneged;
-how Smith Elder were polite and asked to see future
-efforts, Shaw goes on to write: "I am now one of the few who
-personally remember the Grand Old Men of the publishing
-world of that day: Alexander Macmillan, Longmans and Bentley.
-They were so powerful that they held the book-sellers in
-abject subjection, and were denounced by Walter Besant and
-his newly-organized Society of Authors as remorseless sharks.
-When they died and were succeeded by their sons, the hereditary
-system did not always work as well as it did in Bedford
-Street; and the book-sellers got the upper hand. John Murray's<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_388"></a>[Pg 388]</span>
-Byronic prestige was so select that I did not dream of trying him
-until years later, when I was an author of some note and had
-already helped to bankrupt three publishers. I offered him <cite>Man
-and Superman</cite>. He refused in a letter which really touched me.
-He said he was old-fashioned and perhaps a bit behind the
-times; but he could not see any intention in my book but to
-wound, irritate and upset all established constitutional opinion,
-and therefore could not take the responsibility of publishing it.
-By that time I could command sufficient capital to finance my
-books and enter into direct friendly relations with the printers
-(this began my very pleasant relations with Clarks of Edinburgh).
-I took matters into my own hands and, like Herbert
-Spencer and Ruskin, manufactured my books myself, and induced
-Constables to take me "on commission."</p>
-
-<p>Sidney and Beatrice Webb sent Shaw to their Edinburgh
-printer. An informative and amusing correspondence reprinted
-at length by Grant Richards in <cite>Author Hunting</cite> reveals how he
-was ruled and educated by Shaw in the choice of type, "Morris"
-margins, specimen pages, paper and other details of production.
-Holbrook Jackson has pointed out in an article in number four
-of <cite>The Fleuron</cite> that Shaw's books followed the model of William
-Morris's <cite>Roots of the Mountains</cite>, printed in Caslon Old Face at
-the Chiswick Press in 1892. Shaw, Socialist intimate and admirer
-of Morris, was also in close touch with Emery Walker, and familiar
-no doubt with the typographical ideas of Morris, Walker
-and Cobden-Sanderson, first elaborated in Edinburgh in 1889
-at a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of
-Art, and later published in <cite>Arts and Crafts Essays</cite> printed in
-Edinburgh in 1893.</p>
-
-<p>In preliminary discussions of the production of <cite>Plays Pleasant
-and Unpleasant</cite>, Shaw insisted on a trade union printer. Grant
-Richards doubted whether a union house could do justice to his
-ideal of the book beautiful. "I had few notions of what makes
-a union house," wrote Grant Richards. "I do not think I had a
-union house on my list. The problem shifted to the question of
-fair wages, and R. &amp; R. Clark were approved." Shaw, in a letter
-to Grant Richards in 1897, observed, "Clark is all right; a first-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_389"></a>[Pg 389]</span>rate
-house. I enclose a letter which you can hold as a certificate
-of compliance with my fair wages clause."...</p>
-
-<p>Edward Clark doubtless also got much entertainment from
-his dealings with a teetotal, non-smoking, vegetarian, Socialist
-of an author. There is a story that, on one specimen, Shaw's instructions
-for close and mechanically-equal spacing between
-words were so precisely followed by the pragmatical Scots, that
-at the end of some closely spaced lines the definite article "the"
-was divided "t-" and "he" turned over, and the indefinite article
-"a-" with "n" turned over. Shaw's comment when returning the
-specimen, as Maxwell tells the story, was, "Excellent; but please
-do not go so far as to prove the author is really a damn fool."
-Shaw denies the story; nevertheless, true or untrue, it has a
-Shavian flavour.</p>
-
-<p>Shaw's choice of Caslon for his original edition was inevitable.
-We know that he picked up the pre-Kelmscott formula ready-made
-from William Morris; but, unlike the founding fathers of
-the private press movement, he lacked the unearned income to
-indulge in a privately-cut type-face. In 1897 we must remember
-that there were only two text-types available in most book-houses:
-Old Style or Modern. More often than not, before mechanical
-type-setting, there was not even any choice. Publisher
-and author often had to accept the type of which there happened
-to be, at any given moment, the greatest amount of "dis."</p>
-
-<p>Shaw's original hand-set page in type-founder's Caslon, long
-primer solid, stood up to thirty years' constant use. To our post-war
-eyes, conditioned by authorized economy standards, the
-precise and consistent setting of the plays, with their even Roman
-small caps, lower-case italics in square brackets, with occasional
-lower-case Roman words letter-spaced, has considerable
-nostalgic typographical charm. Here is sense and sensibility in
-book-making, well ahead of its typographical time. Of course,
-there are many people, William Maxwell and Bernard Newdigate
-amongst them, who protested that long primer Caslon set
-solid was too small and too difficult to read. But Shaw proved
-faithful to his original style and to his original setting until the
-plates wore out. He liked a colourful block of letter-press with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_390"></a>[Pg 390]</span>out
-white "rivers." He complains that modern printing ink is
-not black enough.</p>
-
-<p>In the middle twenties when the project of a Limited Collected
-Edition was discussed, Shaw still preferred Caslon, but
-agreed to a larger size, pica solid, on a larger page, medium
-octavo. But, and to William Maxwell it was a considerable but,
-Shaw specified hand-setting. As a disciple of William Morris,
-Shaw objected to setting his books by machine. Our William
-from Edinburgh thereafter called on Shaw with two different
-specimen pages, one hand-set in original Caslon and one "machine-justified"
-in Monotype Caslon. Both were submitted to
-Shaw without saying which was which. The suspected Monotype
-"justification" was preferred. Maxwell triumphed. Emery
-Walker, consulted by letter, also approved the machine-set page.</p>
-
-<p>What a victory for the machine! Or rather, what a subtle example
-of Maxwell's typographical tact and persuasiveness! The
-re-setting of the whole of Shaw by hand would have been an
-inexcusable and expensive drudgery. Maxwell convinced Shaw
-that the mechanical composing machine could equal hand-setting
-in typographical quality and close spacing between words
-and sentences.</p>
-
-<p>The devotion to Monotype Caslon in the middle twenties
-seems strange to us now, looking back from a wealth of typographical
-equipment, including Bembo, Bell and Times. But if
-we look round the literature of the trade at that time, particularly
-at <cite>The Fleuron</cite>, we note that Caslon in its Monotype version
-had a vogue, almost a kind of typographical Indian summer.
-<cite>The Fleuron</cite> number one was set in the "then fashionable" design
-known as Garamond; number two in Baskerville; numbers
-three and four reverted to Caslon. When Mr. Stanley Morison
-took over the editing of numbers five, six and seven, and the
-printing moved from Curwen to Cambridge, the final volumes
-were all set in Fournier.</p>
-
-<p>It was about this same time that William Maxwell told Shaw
-that his old Caslon plates were worn out and suggested complete
-resettings in a new Standard Edition in large crown octavo in
-small-pica Fournier 1-1/2-points leaded. In the final choice of type<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_391"></a>[Pg 391]</span>
-for the Standard Edition, we detect again how Shaw trusted
-William Maxwell's judgment and accepted his advice. No doubt
-there was an improvement in readability over the original edition,
-but my own feeling is that the Standard Edition, as at
-present printed, has none of the evocative charm of the original
-edition. It may be that the Sundour binding seems prosaic. But
-Shaw, disgusted by the fading of his green covers, was converted
-to Sundour by a Winterbottom director emphasizing that not
-even the Indian sun could change it.</p>
-
-<p>When Shaw first saw Maxwell's specimens for the new Standard
-Edition in various type-faces, Caslon, Baskerville, Scotch
-Roman, Old Style and Fournier amongst others, he replied, "I
-like them all but I'll stick to Caslon until I die: and after I am
-dead you can do what you like." Fortunately, Shaw is still alive
-and the Standard Edition is in Fournier.<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
-
-<p>I cross-examined William Maxwell closely and at some length
-on this switch from Caslon to Fournier. His persuasive and
-peculiar ability to get his own way, even in face of such a do-or-die
-statement of Shaw's, must be remarked here. I am afraid,
-however, the only light I can throw on this, the greatest typographical
-conversion of all time, is that Maxwell himself is very
-fond of Fournier italics. Maxwell is no hard-headed Scot. He
-comes from the soft Hyperborean north, where the Gulf Stream
-makes the fuchsias grow six feet high. When he confesses to an
-affair with an elegant French type there isn't much chance for
-even an Irish author, much less the English public, to break up
-the "auld alliance." Thus Shaw's Standard Edition, now running
-into some thirty-five volumes, began publication in Fournier in
-1931 and has steadily reprinted in this type and format at intervals
-ever since.</p>
-
-<p>In an article on "Author and Printer" in the eleventh impression
-of the ninth edition of Collins's <cite>Authors' and Printers' Dictionary</cite>
-Dr. R. W. Chapman observes: "The prolixity of modern
-writing, fostered by cheap paper and print, by the habit of making
-books out of articles and lectures, by the use of typewriters
-and stenographers, is a positive evil."</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_392"></a>[Pg 392]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp43" id="i392" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_392.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">Shaw's meticulous proofreading is indicated by this
-heavily-corrected proof of <cite>On the Rocks</cite>, with a complete retyping of
-the passage below. </p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_393"></a>[Pg 393]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Shaw's method, probably verging on the diabolical to Dr.
-Chapman, is to write everything first in shorthand. A double-spaced
-typescript then becomes his working copy, to be sent to
-the printer only after careful emendation and revision, in Shaw's
-always clear hand.</p>
-
-<p>The manuscripts, typescripts, galley, page and final press
-proofs, indeed the whole apparatus of the Shavian "workshop"
-in William Maxwell's collection, show the great pains Shaw takes
-in writing and revising before setting. His meticulous proof
-reading is as characteristic as the clarity of his proof correction.
-William Maxwell tells me that Shaw's first-proof corrections are
-often heavy, sometimes involving considerable re-setting and
-re-make-up. But wherever lengthy excisions or additions are
-made in final proofs, Shaw is always careful to supply the exact
-number of words; sometimes in shorter corrections counting individual
-letters in substituted words in order to avoid over-running
-and re-justification.</p>
-
-<p>By all the standards of Horace Hart and Howard Collins, Shaw
-would qualify as an admirable and expert author in the technical
-aspect of his relations with his printer&mdash;except, perhaps, for Dr.
-Chapman's scholarly strictures on prefatorial prolixity and diabolonian
-authorship.</p>
-
-<p>Shaw's plays are drafted in what he calls Author's Shorthand
-(simplified Pitman); typed by his secretary; revised; printed;
-and passed for press after two more revisions. For rehearsal, fifty
-copies are struck off as "By a Fellow of the Royal Society of
-Literature." If more are required they are "By Bernard Shaw."
-These sets are "privately printed." Alterations and additions in
-rehearsal and during the run of the play are incorporated as
-final corrections before publication.</p>
-
-<p>One of the most interesting Shaw exhibits in William Maxwell's
-possession is the original of the filmscript of <cite>Pygmalion</cite>.
-Shaw allowed no hand but his own on the scripts of his films.
-The corrected copy of the play, with alterations in dialogue and
-time scheme for the screen and the additional scenes and
-sequences, is in itself remarkable visual evidence of Shaw's
-nimble-witted inventiveness. Few playwrights at the age of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_394"></a>[Pg 394]</span>
-eighty-five have tackled so successfully the transition into
-another medium, cooperating with director and producer to
-present in all its freshness and verve the authentic Shavian touch
-on both sound-track and screen.</p>
-
-<p>The original edition, the Limited Collected edition, the Standard
-edition, form the bulk of Shaw's printed works; his printed
-ephemera are not my concern here. There are, however, various
-editions of what we might call out-of-the-run-plays-and-prefaces
-books: <cite>The Intelligent Woman's Guide</cite>, <cite>Everybody's Political
-What's What</cite>, the two-column quarto editions of the <cite>Prefaces</cite>
-and <cite>The Complete Plays</cite>, the illustrated <cite>Black Girl</cite>, the illustrated
-<cite>Good King Charles's Golden Days</cite> (there was also an
-illustrated edition of <cite>Geneva</cite> printed by the Chiswick Press)
-and the illustrated Penguin edition of <cite>Pygmalion</cite>. "Omnibus"
-editions of the <cite>Plays and Prefaces</cite> have been published by Odhams,
-cheap editions by Penguin; and <cite>Back to Methuselah</cite> by
-the Oxford University Press in World's Classics. The Odhams
-omnibus was reprinted from Shaw's plates; the Penguin editions
-were re-set in Times.</p>
-
-<p><cite>The Intelligent Woman</cite> was instructed in Caslon on a page
-dimension decided by William Maxwell; a binding design by
-Douglas Cockerell; and a four-colour half-tone jacket from an
-original drawing by Eric Kennington of a nude female Intelligencer
-looking down a well. She, needless to add, had a much
-less shapely figure than the Black Girl.</p>
-
-<p>The typography of <cite>The Intelligent Woman's Guide</cite> (1928)
-is in the Caslon formula. We need only note in passing that the
-drop initials at the beginning of chapters are tightly fitted and
-spill over into the margins. The binding suggests that too much
-Cockerell can spoil a trade binding. The jacket was regrettable:
-the externals of this book seem out of character with the rest of
-Shaw's production. A more acceptable popular edition, printed
-from the same plates, with reduced margins in small demy
-octavo, was published a year later in 1929.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_395"></a>[Pg 395]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp52" id="i395" style="max-width: 30.5em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_395.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 center small1">Shaw's note on the corrected <cite>Pygmalion</cite> filmscript in which he altered
-the dialogue and time scheme, providing additional scenes and sequences
-for the film as shown in the two pages following.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_396"></a>[Pg 396]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp49" id="i396" style="max-width: 29.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_396.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_397"></a>[Pg 397]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp48" id="i397" style="max-width: 28.1875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_397.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_398"></a>[Pg 398]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The two-column edition of the <cite>Complete Plays</cite>, set in Scotch
-Roman in quarto, is a skillful piece of book-making; a pleasant,
-readable page, which William Maxwell can appropriate entirely
-to his own credit. For size, weight and general colour the Scotch
-Roman was eminently successful for all the plays in one volume,
-not too heavy in the hand, in a format which makes for easy
-reference and re-reading.</p>
-
-<p>The contrast of the two-column Fournier setting of the <cite>Prefaces</cite>
-with the two-column setting of the <cite>Complete Plays</cite> in
-Scotch Roman is to the advantage of the Scotch Roman. The
-small pica Fournier is too large in relation to the width of the
-column and, to my eye, does not look at all happy in this two-column
-setting.</p>
-
-<p><cite>Everybody's Political What's What</cite> provides us with an interesting
-example of the close collaboration in proof-reading between
-William Maxwell, his press-readers and Shaw. Shaw, to
-illustrate some argument, asserted erroneously that so many
-codfish were being caught at one period that great quantities
-were being thrown back into the sea. Maxwell pointed out that
-codfish were never thrown back into the sea; they are salted,
-dried, preserved and disposed of in many other ways. Shaw, hazy
-about varieties, intended fish in general and not codfish in particular.</p>
-
-<p>Also in this book, Shaw mentioned that when an outsider wins
-a race, book-makers lose. William Maxwell, no mean expert in the
-making of these other kinds of "books" and having absorbed, no
-doubt, from Edward Clark some knowledge and appreciation
-of "the sporting spirits," questioned this; and innumerable letters
-from punters and bookies overloaded Shaw's letterbox. He
-re-worded the passage to silence the rule-of-thumb practitioners.</p>
-
-<p>We have all been afflicted from time to time in prefaces and
-authors' notes with the names of odd people who have also "read
-the proofs." There can be few authors who get the benefit of
-skilled press-reading and skilled scrutiny from a managing director
-so knowledgeable about fish and about "bookies." The codfish
-and "bookie" stories are an interesting indication of how
-every page of Shaw's goes through a double sieve at Brandon
-Street, such is the passion of Scots for accuracy in type-setting.
-The Scots' passion for perfection in press-work comes to light in
-this association with the production of <cite>The Black Girl</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>Some time prior to 1932, Shaw asked Maxwell to suggest an
-engraver-illustrator for this Voltairean tale; Maxwell suggested
-John Farleigh. With that thorough attention to detail characteristic
-of the Scot, he not only ensured that Shaw should have
-an illustrator capable of interpreting his ideas, he also took care
-that the engravings, paper and ink should all be happily matched
-and tested. By accepting full responsibility for the typography
-of the illustrated page, he undoubtedly produced an illustrated
-Shaw of a quality and at a price which was a credit to author
-and printer.</p>
-
-<p>My typographical feelings about <cite>The Black Girl</cite> are mixed.
-The engravings seem rather too heavy for the Fournier setting;
-it may be an odd observation to make about a Shaw book, but
-the illustrations overload the text of this slim book; the binding
-is too much and too black. Shaw's own wash drawings of the
-Black Girl are much more subtle in suggestion than John Farleigh's
-white line. But there was little doubt about the success
-of <cite>The Black Girl</cite> with a large public. It is an interesting and
-successful example of a short book with text and illustrations
-printed at one impression, and without any complications in
-binding.</p>
-
-<p>The contrast between Farleigh's sharp white line and Topolski's
-loose black squiggle in the illustrated edition of <cite>Good King
-Charles's Golden Days</cite> demonstrates what I mean by the rigidity
-of <cite>The Black Girl</cite> page. Shaw as an author is impossible to illustrate;
-he can only be annotated and decorated. There is an engaging
-light-hearted quality about Topolski's cosmopolitan
-draughtsmanship which seems to suit Shaw better than Farleigh's
-engravings.</p>
-
-<p>Maxwell's earliest recollection of meeting Shaw is of going
-to see Mrs. Shaw at the Adelphi about the printing of her translations
-of some plays by Brieux, the author of <cite>Damaged Goods</cite>.
-Shaw had written an introduction to them.</p>
-
-<p>In the centenary letter to William Maxwell in November 1946,
-Shaw wrote: "I remember Edward Clark very kindly and very
-well; but it was with you that our business relations developed
-into a cordial personal relationship which has been of inestimable
-value to me as an author...."</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_399"></a>[Pg 399]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp52" id="i400" style="max-width: 29.5em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_400.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center">Correction in popular edition of <cite>The Intelligent Woman's Guide</cite> showing
-careful count of words and letters for exact fit of substituted passage.</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_400"></a>[Pg 400]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>William Maxwell at an early stage in his career became aware
-of the printer's responsibility to the author. Clark's work for
-Robert Louis Stevenson must often have been recollected and
-discussed. Many other authors have passed through Brandon
-Street on their way. It is one of the doubtful pleasures of a book-printing
-establishment to deal direct with authors. Maxwell has
-had his full share of that kind of mixed pleasure and responsibility
-with Hardy, Kipling, the Webbs, Sir James Frazer, Hugh
-Walpole, Virginia Woolf, Charles Morgan, Osbert and Edith
-Sitwell.</p>
-
-<p>I began with an Edinburgh book-printer; I conclude with an
-honorary LL.D. of Edinburgh University. In 1947 that ancient
-University conferred on William Maxwell that honour which
-he values above any personal recognition. It was a deserved
-compliment to R. &amp; R. Clark and to Scottish printing as a whole.</p>
-
-<p>No man is self-made; but so far as any one individual can by
-his own efforts raise the standard of his trade, the renown of his
-firm and add to the lustre of his native city, Dr. William Maxwell
-has done so by his devoted and sedulous years in the service of
-many authors and many publishers....</p>
-
-<p>This inadequate typographical report is in no sense intended
-to be either accurate or inclusive. Nor do I make any claim for
-startling innovations in graphic design or any particularly noteworthy
-contributions to typography. This productive association
-has covered fifty of the most inventive years in the mechanical
-development of book-printing; Bernard Shaw himself wrote,
-"I have not had to think about my printing. I have left it to do
-itself, which means that R. &amp; R. Clark had to do it." All the same
-he thought a lot about it.</p>
-
-<p>I may well conclude with the final paragraph of Shaw's letter
-to William Maxwell of November 1946. "Long may you and
-R. &amp; R. Clark Ltd. flourish after we have said our last farewell
-which we shall both, I hope, be still too busy to attend to."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb"/>
-
-<p class="center p2">COMPOSED IN CALEDONIA TYPES</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_401"></a>[Pg 401]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-<p class="p22 center big1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a> Two excerpts are included in this book, see pages 86 and 87.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a> A specimen page from <cite>The Devil's Disciple</cite> is shown on page 386.</p></div></div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_402"></a>[Pg 402]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak"><img src="images/flow1.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow1" />PAUL A. BENNETT<img src="images/flow2.jpg" style="vertical-align:middle" alt="flow2" /><br />
-<cite><small>On Type Faces For Books</small></cite></h2>
-
-
-<p>It is simple enough to understand that type, paper and ink are
-components of book printing. But not so easy to comprehend the
-reasons for the variety of papers available, nor the many dozens of
-type faces offered for book composition.</p>
-
-<p>The reasons for this great variety are partly functional, partly
-aesthetic, and competitive. Papers differ in many ways&mdash;color, finish,
-opacity, strength and bulk are some of them.</p>
-
-<p>Type faces differ, too, and for equally valid reasons. There are
-the important design and style differences that comprise the old
-style, transitional and modern faces suitable for books. And distinctions
-in weight or "color"; distinctions in roundness, in degree of
-compactness, and distinctions in legibility, and in size.</p>
-
-<p>To the designer of books, type face selection is important in relation
-to the character of the text to be printed. The size of type selected,
-and the amount of "leading," or space between its lines, has
-a bearing upon the number of pages the manuscript will make.</p>
-
-<p>Some shorter manuscripts, for instance, need to be "driven out"
-or padded, to make the book appear greater in content than it actually
-is, to justify its price. Others need every possible degree of compression
-to get the manuscript into a lesser number of pages, which,
-in turn, means fewer "forms" to print, fewer "signatures" to bind,
-and less paper to use.</p>
-
-<p>To turn from the functional use of type to the aesthetic, and also
-make a rather loose analogy, one may think of the type face as a
-garment with which the designer dresses the author's words.</p>
-
-<p>In this instance the designer selects a type face to develop an
-"allusive" format&mdash;to reflect something of the style of the period of
-the manuscript. Bruce Rogers, the greatest master of allusive book-making,
-in his "Paragraphs on Printing" points out that in a small way
-this is "like planning the stage setting for a play.</p>
-
-<p>"An up-to-date style for an ancient text would compare with
-staging <cite>Hamlet</cite> in modern dress. However novel and effective in its
-own way, you feel it to be strange, and this sense of strangeness is
-an annoying distraction; you are forced to think of the setting and
-the designer rather than the text."</p>
-
-<p>It is easier to suggest a feminine appeal with types like Estienne
-or Fairfield or Garamond, than with less decorative faces such as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_403"></a>[Pg 403]</span>
-Baskerville, Bodoni or Janson. Yet it is foolish to go too far in this
-direction. Strictly speaking, there are no definitely feminine or masculine
-types&mdash;the way type is handled has much to do with the mood
-it evokes. And it is dangerous to pin labels on types without knowing
-a great deal of their background and derivation.</p>
-
-<p>The idea of using many distinguished types for the composition
-of this book was deliberate: The intent was to demonstrate, on a uniform
-paper surface and under identical printing conditions, the
-"behavior" of twenty of the finest types of our time.</p>
-
-<p>And to afford a basis for comparison that might not only illumine
-some of the points mentioned, but also provide reference specimens
-of these notable book faces. To that end, a complete alphabet showing
-in caps and lower-case of each face is included, with a brief
-account of its background and development.</p>
-
-<p>Not every essay will be equally appealing, typographically. Yet
-the variety of faces used in setting them seems more successful than
-would be the less sensitive treatment of uniform typography. Reading
-the articles and studying the performance of the individual types
-should provide an increased appreciation of the part typography
-plays in developing the book's format.</p>
-
-<p>In this present instance, the designer has chosen one basic "background"
-face, Janson, for the majority of the essays. And has "interleaved,"
-so to speak, many of the essays set in different types. This
-treatment lessens any tendency toward uneven color and spottiness,
-and minimizes some of the potential "scrap book" feel of many differing
-type specimens.</p>
-
-<p>The problem of coupling face with essay was carefully considered.
-There could be none but the obvious selection of the author's
-own design in connection with five of the essays: Electra for W. A.
-Dwiggins' "Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books";
-Perpetua for Eric Gill's "Typography"; Times Roman for Stanley
-Morison's "First Principles of Typography"; Deepdene for Frederic
-Goudy's "Types and Type Design"; and Centaur for the extracts
-from Bruce Rogers' <cite>Paragraphs on Printing</cite>.</p>
-
-<p>Some background on the type selections for other essays may be
-of interest: Monticello, a recutting of one of the earliest American
-types, was a natural and excellent choice for Lawrence Wroth's
-"First Work with American Types," as was Bembo, one of Beatrice
-Warde's favorite faces for her "Printing Should Be Invisible." Bell,
-which Mr. Updike was one of the first to use with distinction&mdash;he
-called it Mountjoye when he acquired it in 1903&mdash;was the choice for
-his "Some Tendencies in Modern Typography."</p>
-
-<p>The selection of Poliphilus for Sir Francis Meynell's "Some Collectors
-Read" seemed appropriate in recognition of the many fine<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_404"></a>[Pg 404]</span>
-Nonesuch books he had set in English Monotype faces; while that
-of Baskerville for John Winterich's essay on Franklin as printer and
-publisher was because Baskerville was a type Franklin greatly admired.
-Caledonia, an original Dwiggins face influenced by Scotch
-Roman, was the more subtle choice for Scot printer James Shand's
-revealing account of George Bernard Shaw's relations with his
-printer&mdash;more appropriate to Shand's preference and background,
-than would have been the choice of Caslon or Fournier, in which
-Shaw's books have been set.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The brief mention of old style, transitional and modern faces may
-need amplification. And also the descriptive terms Linotype and
-Monotype, which are trade-marked words that indicate <em>methods</em> of
-composition.</p>
-
-<p>In <cite>Linotype</cite>, the product is an actual line of type, called "slug" in
-printer's parlance. This is produced by one machine, from matrices
-assembled through finger action on a keyboard. In operation, the
-assembled line moves to the mold for casting and the matrices are then
-returned (distributed) to their channels in the magazine for use in
-other lines.</p>
-
-<p>In <em>Monotype</em>, the product is individual pieces of type&mdash;letters and
-spaces assembled into a line of many elements, as in hand type. The
-Monotype machine consists of two units: the keyboard (which resembles
-a type-writer) punches holes in a roll of paper, not unlike
-that in a player piano. This roll is then fed into the casting unit, where
-it functions by controlling levers which bring the matrix of each
-character into position for casting letters and spaces in sequence in
-the lines.</p>
-
-<p>The distinctions between type faces called old style, transitional <em>or</em> modern,</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i404" style="max-width: 18.75em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_404.jpg"  alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>are apparent at a glance to the technician. Just as, for instance, you
-distinguish instantly between a Scandinavian, a Latin-American, or
-a Mongolian. Analysis may indicate that the chief factor in your
-instant recognition of these types is memory of features.</p>
-
-<p>So too in type faces. Here the differences are more minute, and
-essentially a matter of design distinctions: the weight and relation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_405"></a>[Pg 405]</span>
-of thick and thin strokes, the treatment and stress of curves, and
-the handling of "serifs." There is little difference in the actual shapes
-of letters, which is as it should be.</p>
-
-<p>One of the more lucid accounts of the development of letter
-forms is W. A. Dwiggins' "The Shapes of Roman Letters," included
-in his <cite>Mss. by WAD</cite>. Illustrations from this minor classic are used
-here by permission.</p>
-
-<p>Remember that most of the letter forms we meet are modifications
-of written letters, shaped by pen action. Some differences in the
-details of serif treatment are indicated by these Dwiggins drawings:</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i405" style="max-width: 21.875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_405.jpg"  alt="" />
-<p><span style="padding-left: 1em"><em><strong>a</strong></em></span>  <span style="padding-left: 2em"><em><strong>b</strong></em></span>   <span style="padding-left: 8.5em"><em><strong>c</strong></em></span>  <span style="padding-left: 5.3em"><em><strong>d</strong></em></span></p>
-</div>
-
-
-
-<p><em>a</em> shows a commonly designed serif detail, much better handled by
-natural pen action in <em>b</em>. The arch of a letter, frequently handled in
-type as <em>c</em>, is more crisp and attractive in <em>d</em>, the natural pen form.</p>
-
-<p>In type, serifs help carry the eye in a horizontal direction, a designer
-friend points out, setting up a "flow" from letter to letter
-within the word, and from word to word across the line.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i405-3" style="max-width: 10.0625em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_405-3.jpg"  alt="" />
-  <div class="caption"><p><span style="padding-left: 2em"><em>e</em></span> <span style="padding-left: 5.5em"><em>f</em></span></p></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Contrast the "degenerate, commonly used" form of o shown in <em>e</em>,
-with the more attractive pen form in <em>f</em>. Here is graphic distinction
-in the treatment and stress of curves.</p>
-
-<p>The two most common classes of type faces are "old style" and
-"modern." The "transitional," a merging of the old style form into
-the modern&mdash;is typified by the illustration of Bulmer, between the
-Janson and Bodoni specimens used for the visual presentation on
-page 404.</p>
-
-<p>Our old style faces descend from the early Italian Roman types
-and differ in minor details and "national" characteristics. Among the
-old style faces used in this book are Bembo and Centaur, which reflect
-the Italian form; Estienne, Granjon and Garamond, which reflect
-the French form; Caslon and Janson, typical of the English-Dutch
-form; and Fairfield and Times Roman, as differing expressions of
-contemporary old style types.</p>
-
-<p>Modern faces, the result of a swing of taste in the opposite direction,
-stemmed from an effort to copy in type the letters of eighteenth-century
-copper-plate engravers. Bodoni, the classic form of the
-modern, is included in its lighter rendering, named Bodoni Book.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_406"></a>[Pg 406]</span>
-The first English modern, named Bell, is also included; together with
-two contemporary moderns, the Dwiggins-designed Electra and
-Caledonia faces, cut by Linotype. All three are less severe than
-Bodoni and retain elements of the transitional form in some letters.</p>
-
-<p>The two really transitional faces included are the classic Baskerville,
-and Monticello, which verges somewhat more to the old style
-character.</p>
-
-<p>"Letters," as Mr. Dwiggins illustrates graphically, "are made out
-of thick 'stems,' thin 'hair-lines,' loops and 'serifs,' or finishing
-strokes."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i406-1" style="max-width: 25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_406-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p>How the variations that produce the different styles of Roman
-types actually came about is easily understood by seeing how the
-nib of the pen is slanted to write an old style letter like Caslon (<em>g</em>),
-as against holding it at right angles to the written line for the modern
-letter, such as Scotch (<em>h</em>):</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i406-2" style="max-width: 16.5em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_406-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-  <div class="caption"><p><span style="padding-left: 3em"><em>g</em></span> <span style="padding-left: 9em"><em>h</em></span></p></div>
-</div>
-
-
-
-<p>Differences in curve and finish are a natural result of these two pen
-positions.</p>
-
-<p>As Mr. Dwiggins explains: "In writing lower-case 'a,' for example,
-the stroke begins at the little bulb at the upper left-hand
-corner, passes over the arch at the top, descends to form the straight
-stem, and finishes with an upward flick; a second motion forms the
-loop. As the line moves, it swells and thins in accordance with the
-shape of the pen and the direction of the movement.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_407"></a>[Pg 407]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i407-1" style="max-width: 6.3125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_407-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-  <div class="caption"><p><span style="padding-left: 2em"><em>i</em></span>  <span style="padding-left: 2em"><em>j</em></span></p></div>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>"In the Caslon letter (<em>i</em>), the swelling at the top begins at the
-bulb or dot; the arch expands throughout its whole curve; the loop
-has a decided tilt, as has the finishing stroke.</p>
-
-<p>"In the Scotch letter (<em>j</em>), the arch is a thin line; the expansion does
-not begin until the downward stroke of the stem; the swelling of the
-loop is at right angles to the line of writing, and the letter ends with
-a perpendicular flick.</p>
-
-<p>"In the 'b,' one notices the difference in the loops and in the serifs
-at the tops of the letters.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp83" id="i407-2" style="max-width: 4.875em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_407-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-  <div class="caption"><p><span style="padding-left: 1.5em"><em>k</em></span>  <span style="padding-left: 1.6em"><em>l</em></span></p></div>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>"The typical 'old style' serif at the top (<em>k</em>) tilts as the pen is tilted;
-the loop is a tilted sweep of the slanted pen; while the serif and loop
-of the 'modern' letter (<em>l</em>) partake of the perpendicular position of
-the pen. These characteristics of tilt or perpendicularity appear in all
-the lower-case letters and to a limited extent in the capitals."</p>
-
-<p>To check the distinctions in different characters in the following
-twenty types, a magnifying glass will be helpful.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_408"></a>[Pg 408]</span></p>
-<p>"The artistic quality of a type letter," Mr. Dwiggins concludes,
-"is determined by its degree of grace of line and proportion. The
-standards of grace and proportion are to be looked for in the natural
-motions of the pen. But the quality called art is dependent, too, upon
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_409"></a>[Pg 409]</span>
-the artist's appreciation of the material in which he works&mdash;namely
-metal. The draughtsman does not attempt to copy <em>exactly</em> the form
-of his pen-written model, but modifies the pen form to a shape suitable
-to its final state&mdash;that of a metal punch."</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_410"></a>[Pg 410]</span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_411"></a>[Pg 411]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2>NOTES ON THE TYPE FACES<br />
-USED IN THIS BOOK</h2>
-
-<p class="center big1"><em>By Paul A. Bennett</em></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_412"></a>[Pg 412]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>N<small>OTE</small>: The following specimens are set in a 10 point type size, except
-Centaur, in 14 point, and Eldorado, in 11 point, which were the only
-sizes available for this book.</p></div>
-
-
-<p>BASKERVILLE, the fine transitional face named for the eighteenth-century
-English printer, is available in several contemporary
-versions. The Linotype cutting used here, most faithful to the original
-Roman, was produced from a complete font cast from the original
-matrices, exhumed at Paris in 1929. For twenty years Baskerville has
-been a favored type with American book-makers.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i411-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_411-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>BASKERVILLE</small> was used for setting <em>Benjamin Franklin: Printer
-and Publisher</em>, pp. 352-367.</p>
-
-<p>BELL, the fine English transitional-modern, was cut by Richard Austin
-about 1788 for John Bell, a leading English book and newspaper publisher.
-The English Monotype version used here was reproduced in 1931 from
-the original punches, then in possession of the Stephenson-Blake foundry
-in Sheffield. Bruce Rogers used the type (calling it Brimmer) for many
-fine Riverside Press books.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i411-2" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_411-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>BELL</small> was used for setting <em>Some Tendencies in Modern Typography</em>, pp. 306-312.</p>
-
-
-<p>BEMBO, the fine Venetian old face, is a revival by English Monotype of one of
-the earliest Aldine romans. That was cut before 1500 by Francesco Griffo of
-Bologna, the designer responsible for the first Italic type a half-dozen years later,
-and named for Pietro Bembo, the humanist scholar (later Cardinal and secretary
-to Pope Leo X), whose <cite>De Aetna</cite> was printed by Aldus in 1495.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i412-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_412-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>BEMBO</small> was used for setting <cite>Printing Should Be Invisible</cite>, pp. 109-114.</p>
-
-<p>BODONI BOOK, a light weight rendering of the popular A.T.F.
-Bodoni, is widely used in the United States for book and periodical
-composition. Introduced in 1910, it is not a copy of the types of the
-great Italian, Giambattista Bodoni, but rather a version retaining his
-principle of modern letter design. The lessened degree of contrast between
-its thick and thin lines make it gain in reading ease.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i412-2" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_412-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>BODONI BOOK</small> was used for setting <cite>Harsh Words</cite>, pp. 321-336.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_413"></a>[Pg 413]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>CALEDONIA, a contemporary Linotype face designed by W. A.
-Dwiggins, was inspired by the work of Scotch type-founders, in
-particular by a lighter weight, more slender transitional face cut by
-William Martin for Bulmer around 1790. Christened for its forebears,
-Caledonia resembles neither&mdash;though it has touches of both Bulmer's
-Martin and Wilson's Scotch, and also "something of the simple, hard-working,
-feet-on-the-ground quality of Scotch Modern."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i413-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_413-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>CALEDONIA</small> was used for setting <cite>Author and Printer: G.B.S. and
-R. &amp; R.C.</cite>, pp. 381-401.</p>
-
-<p>CASLON, the great eighteenth-century English old style, has suffered
-more from "improvement and refinement" by succeeding generations
-of type founders than most celebrated types. A development
-based on Dutch models rather than an original creation, Caslon has
-been eloquently termed "the finest vehicle for the printed conveyance
-of English speech that the art of the punch-cutter has yet devised."
-Monotype's excellent rendering used here (No. 337) reflects the essential
-qualities of the original.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i413-2" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_413-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>CASLON</small> was used for setting <cite>Typographic Debut</cite>, pp. 78-82 and
-<cite>Metal-Flowers</cite>, pp. 83-84.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_414"></a>[Pg 414]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>CENTAUR, a distinguished Italian Renaissance face designed
-by Bruce Rogers, was cut by Robert Wiebking of
-Chicago in 1914, in the 14 point size. Its first use by BR
-was in a limited edition of De Guerin's <cite>The Centaur</cite>, printed
-at Carl Rollins' Montague Press. The face, recut by English
-Monotype in 1929, seemed to D. B. Updike to be "one of
-the best Roman founts yet designed in America." The Italic
-is Arrighi, designed by Frederic Warde, used since there is
-no Centaur Italic.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i414-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_414-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>CENTAUR</small> was used for setting <cite>Paragraphs On Printing</cite>, pp. 281-289, and
-<cite>B.R.: Adventurer With Type Ornament</cite>, pp. 290-305.</p>
-
-<p>DEEPDENE, designed and cut by Frederic W. Goudy in 1927, was named for
-his estate at Marlboro-on-Hudson. In his <cite>A Half Century of Type Design</cite>, Mr. Goudy
-mentions the face was "suggested by a Dutch type (the Lutetia of Van Krimpen)
-which had just been introduced ... but as with some of my previous designs, I soon
-got away from my exemplar to follow a line of my own." The Monotype recutting,
-done later, is used here.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i414-2" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_414-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>DEEPDENE</small> was used for setting <cite>Types and Type Design</cite>, pp. 267-273.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_415"></a>[Pg 415]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>ELDORADO, the latest Linotype face designed by W. A. Dwiggins,
-was developed through the war years and completed in 1951. It
-was suggested by an uncommonly compact and distinctive eighteenth-century
-face used in Madrid by the Spanish printer, DeSancha. In no
-sense a copy, Eldorado retains in its letter anatomy something of the
-treatment of curves, arches and junctions that brought distinction to
-its antecedent, as well as flavor of Spanish typographic tradition.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i415-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_415-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>ELDORADO</small> was used for setting <cite>What is a Private Press</cite>, pp. 175-181.</p>
-
-<p>ELECTRA, an original modern, designed for Linotype by W. A.
-Dwiggins, reflects the warmth and distinction of his personal lettering.
-The effort was to work into Electra letter shapes, where possible,
-some of the twentieth-century spirit: electricity, high-speed steel,
-streamlined curves, the readers' familiarity with newspaper and type-writer
-faces ... to develop letters filled with energy, human warmth
-and personality. Electra is available with either an oblique Roman
-lower-case companion form, or the more familiar cursive.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i415-2" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_415-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>ELECTRA</small> was used for setting the <cite>Investigation Into the Physical Properties
-of Books</cite>, pp. 129-144 and <cite>Twenty Years After</cite>, pp. 145-152.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_416"></a>[Pg 416]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>EMERSON was designed by Joseph Blumenthal and cut by Monotype in
-England in 1934. The face is a duplicate of his Spiral Press type, designed
-several years earlier and cut for him by Louis Hoell in Frankfort, Germany, in
-1931. This face was initially used for a limited edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson's
-essay on <cite>Nature</cite>, printed on a hand press at Croton Falls in 1932, and
-privately published. The accompanying Emerson Italic was designed in 1936.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i416-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_416-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>EMERSON</small> was used for setting <cite>Typography of William Morris</cite>, pp. 233-238.</p>
-
-<p>FAIRFIELD, a slightly decorative, original and contemporary old style,
-was designed for Linotype by Rudolph Ruzicka, the distinguished American
-wood engraver. Sharply cut, as though the letters came from the
-artist's graver rather than pen, Fairfield was designed for reading by "one
-of the most knowledgeable men in the country about letter forms and
-their style." To invite continuous reading, the designer feels, "type must
-have a subtle degree of interest and variety of design."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i416-2" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_416-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>FAIRFIELD</small> was used for setting <cite>The Fun and Fury of a Private Press</cite>, pp. 220-225.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_417"></a>[Pg 417]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>GARAMOND was introduced in America by ATF in 1919, when their
-cutting, based on the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">caractères de l'Université</i> of the Imprimerie Nationale,
-appeared. Since, at least eight other versions have been made: by the English
-and American Linotype and Monotype, by Intertype, Ludlow, and the
-Stempel foundry. A documented article considering the XVI and XVII
-sources of the Garamond types, by Paul Beaujon, appeared in <cite>The Fleuron</cite>,
-V. This version is the American Monotype.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i417-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_417-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>GARAMOND</small> was used for setting <cite>Colophons</cite>, pp. 31-44.</p>
-
-<p>GILL SANS, designed by Eric Gill in 1928, was patterned after lettering
-done for the Douglas Cleverdon book-shop in Bristol. First offered by
-English Monotype as a titling font (caps, figures and points only), the
-lower-case was added as the face grew in favor. Today, Gill is the most
-popular sans serif in England. It ranges through a variety of weights,
-including light, normal, heavy, extra heavy, and shadow and outline
-display and condensed versions.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i417-2" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_417-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>GILL SANS</small> was used for setting <cite>Notes on Modern Printing</cite>, pp. 350-351.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_418"></a>[Pg 418]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>GRANJON was designed for Linotype by the late George W. Jones, one
-of England's greatest printers. It is neither a copy of a classic face nor an
-original creation, but rather something between the two, with its basic design
-stemming from classic Garamond sources. An exceedingly compact and
-useful old style, Granjon is exceptionally clear in small sizes. Its space-saving
-virtues are important in the book and periodical field.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i418-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_418-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>GRANJON</small> was used for setting <cite>Printers as Men of the World</cite>, pp. 88-102.</p>
-
-<p>JANSON, the distinguished seventeenth-century old style face, is
-presumed Dutch in origin. It was issued by Anton Janson, a Leipsic
-punch-cutter and type-founder, between 1660 and 1687. Little is
-known of Janson to supplement his first type specimen issued in
-1675. The original matrices, bought in Holland from the heirs of
-Edling, Janson's successor, are possessed by the Stempel foundry in
-Frankfort, Germany. The Linotype recutting of Janson was made
-from type cast from the original matrices.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i418-2" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_418-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>JANSON</small> was used for setting all the essays in this book excepting
-those indicated in other faces.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_419"></a>[Pg 419]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>MONTICELLO is a recutting of the famous Binny &amp; Ronaldson
-Roman No. 1, a distinguished early American face cut in 1796 in
-Philadelphia. Type cast from the original matrices by A. T. F. has
-been favored for years by such discriminating printers as D. B.
-Updike, Fred Anthoensen and the Grabhorns. Linotype's remodeling
-of the type for modern use was named for the <cite>Papers of Thomas
-Jefferson</cite>, a fifty-volume publishing project by Princeton, for which
-the face was adopted.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i419-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_419-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>MONTICELLO</small> was used for setting the <cite>First Work With
-American Types</cite>, pp. 65-77.</p>
-
-<p>PERPETUA was designed by Eric Gill, the eminent English sculptor and maker of
-letters with pen, chisel and graver. Mr. Gill's account of his type (cut in England):
-"from drawings made by me. Those drawings were not made with special reference
-to typography&mdash;they were simply drawn with brush and ink. For the typographical
-quality of the fount, as also for the remarkably fine and precise cutting of the
-punches, the Monotype Corporation is to be praised."</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i419-2" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_419-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>PERPETUA</small> was used for setting <cite>Typography</cite>, pp. 257-266.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_420"></a>[Pg 420]</span></p>
-
-
-<p>POLIPHILUS is a literal reproduction of the Aldine Roman used in the <cite>Hypnerotomachia
-Poliphili</cite> in 1499, cut by Francesco Griffo. The recutting, by the English Monotype
-organization in 1923 (from sheets of the book) was attempted with the thought of
-providing a type to convey an old-world atmosphere appropriate for reprinting fifteenth-century
-classics. The accompanying Italic, named <em>Blado</em>, was the first of a number of
-Chancery italics to come from European type-founders.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i420-1" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_420-1.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>POLIPHILUS</small> was used for setting <cite>Some Collectors Read</cite>, pp. 191-211.</p>
-
-<p>TIMES ROMAN was designed by Stanley Morison for the London
-<cite>Times</cite>, and first used in that great newspaper. Its masculine simplicity,
-directness of design and excellent color makes it exceptionally useful for
-periodicals and general commercial work. The basic design objective of
-maximum legibility in minimum space has resulted in the larger letter-structure
-that makes each point size seem the equivalent of a size larger
-in most other types.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp100" id="i420-2" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/i_420-2.jpg"  alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="pc1 small1 center"><small>TIMES ROMAN</small> was used for setting <cite>The First Principles of
-Typography</cite>, pp. 239-251.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_421"></a>[Pg 421]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">INDEX</h2>
-
-
-
-<div>
-Adler, Elmer, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br />
-<br />
-advertising card, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Aesop</em> (Parma, 1483), <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
-<br />
-Aldine Poets series, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br />
-<br />
-Aldine type face, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Italic, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Aldus; <em>see</em> Manutius, Aldus<br />
-<br />
-alphabet<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Greek, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hebrew, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letters of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>-<a href="#Page_13">13</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Phoenician, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Roman, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sources of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br />
-<br />
-American Institute of Graphic Arts, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Fifty Books of the Year," <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Trade Book Clinic, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br />
-<br />
-American Type Founders Co., <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Ames, Joseph, <em>Typographical Antiquities</em>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br />
-<br />
-Anabat, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
-<br />
-Anne of Austria, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-Anthoensen, Fred, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br />
-<br />
-Antigone Greek type, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
-<br />
-Apollo Press, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
-<br />
-appendix, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
-<br />
-Applegarth, Augustus, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
-<br />
-Armitage, Merle, <a href="#Page_xiv">xii</a>-<a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Notes on Modern Printing</em>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Arnoullet, Balthazar, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
-<br />
-Arrighi type face, <a href="#Page_414">414</a><br />
-<br />
-Arrivabene, Georgius, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Ashbee, C. R., <em>The Private Press</em>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
-<br />
-Ashendene Press, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Bibliography</em>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Virgil</em>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Austin, Richard, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-back matter, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a><br />
-<br />
-Bagford, John, <a href="#Page_64">64</a><br />
-<br />
-Bailey, Francis, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
-<br />
-Baldwin, Stanley, <a href="#Page_197">197</a> n.<br />
-<br />
-Barker-Mill, Peter, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Barnacles from Many Bottoms</em>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a><br />
-<br />
-Barnhart Brothers &amp; Spindler (Chicago), <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
-<br />
-Bartlett, Edward E., <a href="#Page_164">164</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_422"></a>[Pg 422]</span><br />
-<br />
-Baskerville, John, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letter-spacing of, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Baskerville type face, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_411">411</a></span><br />
-<br />
-bastard title, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
-<br />
-Bauhaus School, typography of, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
-<br />
-Bay, Jacob, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
-<br />
-Bayer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
-<br />
-Beaujon, Paul, <a href="#Page_417">417</a><br />
-<br />
-Becker, Carl L., <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
-<br />
-Begg, John, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
-<br />
-Beilenson, Peter, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Graphic Forms</em>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bell, John, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>British Poets</em>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>British Theatre</em>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">career of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bell type face, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_411">411</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Belloc, Hilaire, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
-<br />
-Bembo, Pietro, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a><br />
-<br />
-Bembo type face, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Beneti, Cyprian, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Bennett, Arnold, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
-<br />
-Bennett, Paul A., <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br />
-<br />
-Bensley, Thomas, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-Benton, Linn Boyd, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Benton, Morris Fuller, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Berghen, Adrien van, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
-<br />
-Bernard, St., <em>Sermones</em> (1481), <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
-<br />
-Berners, Juliana, comp., <em>Book of St. Albans</em>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Berthelet, Thomas, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
-<br />
-Besant, Walter, <a href="#Page_387">387</a><br />
-<br />
-Bible<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Estienne, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">first printed, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>-<a href="#Page_84">84</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">German (1478), <a href="#Page_18">18</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gutenberg, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_27">27</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Latin (1456), <a href="#Page_18">18</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Plantin polyglot, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">printing monopoly in England, <a href="#Page_184">184</a> n.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rogers <em>World</em>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_4">4</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sower's German, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vulgate (Venice, 1487), <a href="#Page_53">53</a></span><br />
-<br />
-bibliography, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
-<br />
-binding, <a href="#Page_119">119</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_423"></a>[Pg 423]</span><br />
-<br />
-binding, limp vellum, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
-<br />
-Binny, Archibald, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
-<br />
-Binny &amp; Ronaldson (Philadelphia), <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br />
-<br />
-Birrell, Francis, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
-<br />
-black-letter<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gutenberg, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">modern, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Black Sun Press, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
-<br />
-Blado, Antonio, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
-<br />
-Blado Italic type face, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a><br />
-<br />
-Blaeu, Willem J., <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
-<br />
-Blumenthal, Joseph, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Emerson, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Blunt, Wilfrid, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
-<br />
-Bocard, Andrieu, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Bodoni, Giambattista, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Manuale Tipografico</em> (1818), <a href="#Page_276">276</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bodoni Book type face<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bodoni's 'soprasilvio,' <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br />
-<br />
-Bologna, Francesco da, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-book, anatomy of; <em>see under individual headings</em><br />
-<br />
-book design, principles of, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>-<a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>-<a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Book of St. Albans</em>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Bourdillon, F. W., <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br />
-<br />
-Boydell, John, <em>Shakespeare</em>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br />
-<br />
-Braby, Dorothea, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Bradbury &amp; Evans, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-Bradford, Andrew, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a><br />
-<br />
-Bradford, William, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
-<br />
-Bradley, J. W., <em>Dictionary of Miniaturists</em>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
-<br />
-Bradley, Will, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a><br />
-<br />
-Bradley type face, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
-<br />
-Bridges, Robert, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
-<br />
-Brimmer type face, <a href="#Page_411">411</a><br />
-<br />
-Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
-<br />
-Buckland-Wright, John, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Buell, Abel, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
-<br />
-Bull of Pius IX (Mainz, 1463), <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Bulmer, William, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a><br />
-<br />
-Burn &amp; Oates, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
-<br />
-Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Caledonia type face, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_413">413</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Calkins, Earnest Elmo, <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
-<br />
-calligraphy, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_424"></a>[Pg 424]</span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">defined, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Cambridge University Press, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a> n., <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a><br />
-<br />
-Campbell, Dr. William J., <em>Collection of Franklin Imprints</em>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
-<br />
-Canstein, Baron von, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
-<br />
-Capell, Edward, <em>Prolusions</em>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br />
-<br />
-capital letters, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
-<br />
-Cary, Mary, <em>Diary</em>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
-<br />
-Caslon, William, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-Caslon type face, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rediscovery of, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shaw's preference for, <a href="#Page_390">390</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_413">413</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Catherine de Médici, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
-<br />
-Catherine the Great, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
-<br />
-Caxton, William, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_85">85</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Dictes or Sayengis</em>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Caxton Club, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
-<br />
-Centaur type face, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Central Type Foundry (St. Louis), <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Century Dictionary</em>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
-<br />
-Champollion, J. F., <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
-<br />
-Chapman, Dr. R. W., <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a><br />
-<br />
-Chappe, Paulinus, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
-<br />
-Charlemagne, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br />
-<br />
-Charles, Thomas, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
-<br />
-Cheltenham type face, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Chesterfield, Earl of (Philip Stanhope), <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
-<br />
-Chiswick Press, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br />
-<br />
-Christie, E. D., <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Chronicles of the londe of England</em>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
-<br />
-Cicero, <em>Epistolae</em> (Venice, 1469), <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
-<br />
-Clark, Edward, relations with Shaw, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a><br />
-<br />
-Clark, Robert, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>-<a href="#Page_85">85</a><br />
-<br />
-Clark, R. &amp; R., Shaw's printer, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a><br />
-<br />
-Claudin, Anatole, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
-<br />
-Cleland, T. M., <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>-<a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Harsh Words</em>, <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">type ornaments, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Cleve, Johann von, <em>Cantiones</em>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
-<br />
-Cloister type face, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Cobbett, William, <em>Rural Rides</em>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
-<br />
-Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
-<br />
-Cockerell, Douglas, <a href="#Page_395">395</a><br />
-<br />
-Cockerell, Sir Sydney, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
-<br />
-Coleridge, S. T., <em>Table Talk</em>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_425"></a>[Pg 425]</span><br />
-<br />
-Colines, Simon, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
-<br />
-Collins, F. H., <em>Authors' and Printers' Dictionary</em>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a><br />
-<br />
-Collins, Howard, <a href="#Page_394">394</a><br />
-<br />
-Colman, Morris, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
-<br />
-colophon, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>-<a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">defined, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">examples of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-<a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></span><br />
-<br />
-composition, defined, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br />
-<br />
-Conkwright, P. J., <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
-<br />
-Conrad, Joseph, <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br />
-<br />
-Cooper, Oswald, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Copland, Robert, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
-<br />
-copyright, notice of, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
-<br />
-Coward, Noel, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
-<br />
-Cowper, Edward, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
-<br />
-Croce, Benedetto, <em>Autobiography</em>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a><br />
-<br />
-Crompton, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
-<br />
-Currer, Mrs. Richardson, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Currie, Kent, <a href="#Page_272">272</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Daniel, Rev. C. H. O., <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
-<br />
-Daniel Press, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
-<br />
-Darton, F. J. H.; <em>see</em> Sawyer, C. J.<br />
-<br />
-Davies, Peter, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
-<br />
-Davis, Southwick, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br />
-<br />
-Dawson, Thomas, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
-<br />
-Day, John, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
-<br />
-Daye, Matthew, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
-<br />
-Daye, Stephen, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Deceyte of Women, The</em>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
-<br />
-Decretals of Gregory IX (Rome, 1474), <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-dedication, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
-<br />
-Deepdene type face, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></span><br />
-<br />
-de La Haye, Corneille, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
-<br />
-Dent, J. M., <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-DeSancha, Antonio, <a href="#Page_415">415</a><br />
-<br />
-De Vinne, Theodore Low, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Notable Printers of Italy</em>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Plain Printing Types</em>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Treatise on Title-pages</em>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br />
-<br />
-De Vinne type face, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
-<br />
-Diamond Classics, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
-<br />
-Diane de Poitiers, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
-<br />
-Dibdin, T. F., <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Dictionary of American Biography</em>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
-<br />
-Didot, Firmin, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">career, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Didot, François Ambroise, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_426"></a>[Pg 426]</span><br />
-<br />
-Didot family, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Diui Athanasii</em> (Paris, 1500), <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Dolet, Etienne, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>-<a href="#Page_96">96</a><br />
-<br />
-Donaldson, Alexander, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
-<br />
-Dorici brothers, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-double-page spread, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
-<br />
-Doves Press, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
-<br />
-Du Barry, Countesse, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-du Bois, Simon, <em>Hours</em> (1527), <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
-<br />
-Dunlap, John, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
-<br />
-Dunster, Henry, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
-<br />
-Dunster, Mrs. Henry, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
-<br />
-Dürer, Albrecht, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
-<br />
-Dwiggins, W. A., <a href="#Page_x">x</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Caledonia, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Eldorado, <a href="#Page_415">415</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Electra, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>MSS by WAD</em>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Shapes of Roman Letters," <a href="#Page_405">405</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Dyck, Christoffel van, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Edinburgh, publishing history of, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>-<a href="#Page_85">85</a><br />
-<br />
-Ege, Otto, <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
-<br />
-Eldorado type face, specimen, <a href="#Page_415">415</a><br />
-<br />
-Electra type face, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_415">415</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
-<br />
-Elzevir family, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
-<br />
-Emerson type face, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_416">416</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<em>Encyclopaedia Britannica</em>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">first edition, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></span><br />
-<br />
-engraving<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">for illustration, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">invention of, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Enschedé Foundry, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
-<br />
-Erasmus, Desiderius, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Adagia</em>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Colloquia Familiaria</em>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Essex House Press, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
-<br />
-Estienne, Robert, <a href="#Page_94">94</a> n.<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">career, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-<a href="#Page_97">97</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Estienne family, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a> n., <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
-<br />
-Eugene, Prince of Savoy, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
-<br />
-Evans, Sir Arthur, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
-<br />
-Eve, Clovis, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-Eve, Nicolas, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Exercitium super Pater Noster</em>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Fairfield type face, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_427"></a>[Pg 427]</span><br />
-<br />
-Fairfield type faces, specimen, <a href="#Page_416">416</a><br />
-<br />
-Faques, William, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
-<br />
-Farjeon, Herbert, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
-<br />
-Farleigh, John, <a href="#Page_399">399</a><br />
-<br />
-Fell types, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
-<br />
-Fichet, Guillaume, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>-<a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
-<br />
-Field and Tuer, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-Figgins, Vincent, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-Fine, Oronce, <em>Quadrans Astrolabicus</em>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
-<br />
-Finley, John, <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Fleuron, The</em>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a><br />
-<br />
-Flower, Desmond, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
-<br />
-Ford, Paul Leicester, <em>Many-Sided Franklin</em>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>-<a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a><br />
-<br />
-foreword; <em>see</em> preface<br />
-<br />
-format; <em>see</em> book design<br />
-<br />
-Foulis, Andrew, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
-<br />
-Foulis, Robert, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
-<br />
-Fournier, P. S., <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a><br />
-<br />
-Fournier family, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-Fournier type face, Shaw's choice of, <a href="#Page_392">392</a><br />
-<br />
-Fox, Emmanuel, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
-<br />
-Fox, Justus, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Fragment of World Judgment</em>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
-<br />
-François I, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
-<br />
-Franklin, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Autobiography</em>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">career, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>-<a href="#Page_2">2</a>; as printer, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>-<a href="#Page_67">67</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity</em>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">epitaph, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>-<a href="#Page_67">67</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Hall, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">imprints, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Improvement of Printing Backwards," <a href="#Page_227">227</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>New England Courant</em>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Pennsylvania Gazette</em>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Poor Richard</em> almanacs, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Franklin, Deborah Read, <a href="#Page_362">362</a><br />
-<br />
-Franklin, James, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">imprints, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>-<a href="#Page_55">55</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Franklin, Josiah, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>-<a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Freeman's Oath, The</em>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>-<a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
-<br />
-Froben, Johann, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
-<br />
-front matter<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">elements of, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">typography of, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Fuhrmann, Dr. Otto, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
-<br />
-Funk &amp; Wagnalls' <em>Standard Dictionary</em>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_428"></a>[Pg 428]</span><br />
-<br />
-Fust, Johann, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Galesburg imprint, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
-<br />
-Galloway, Joseph, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br />
-<br />
-Garamond, Claude, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
-<br />
-Garamond type face, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Gardiner, Thomas, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
-<br />
-Garnett, David, and Nonesuch Press, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
-<br />
-Garnett, Porter, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
-<br />
-Garnett, Richard, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
-<br />
-Garvin, J. L., <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
-<br />
-Gaunt, Sydney, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Geistliches Magazien, Ein</em>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
-<br />
-Geminus, Thomas, <em>Anatomy</em>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
-<br />
-Gentry, Helen, <em>Chronology</em>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
-<br />
-Gering, Ulrich, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke</em>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
-<br />
-Gibbings, Robert, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Gilgamesh, epic of, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br />
-<br />
-Gill, Eric, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perpetua, <a href="#Page_419">419</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Gill Sans type face, specimen, <a href="#Page_417">417</a><br />
-<br />
-Glick, Milton, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
-<br />
-Glogoviensis, Johannes, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-glossary, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
-<br />
-Godfrey, Thomas, <a href="#Page_362">362</a><br />
-<br />
-Golden Cockerel Press, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>-<a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">imprints, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Golden Hind Press, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">imprints, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Goltzius, Hubert, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
-<br />
-Gooden, Stephen, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
-<br />
-Goodhue, Bertram G., <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Gordon, Watson, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
-<br />
-Goudy, Frederic W., <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Deepdene, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Half Century of Type Design</em>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">type designs, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Grabhorn, Edwin, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
-<br />
-Grabhorn Press, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whitman, <em>Leaves of Grass</em>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Graf, Urs, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
-<br />
-Granjon, Robert, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
-<br />
-Granjon type face, specimen, <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br />
-<br />
-Granniss, Ruth Sheppard, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Greene, Belle Da Costa, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Greenhood, David; <em>see</em> Gentry, Helen<br />
-<br />
-Grevill, Sir Foulk, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_429"></a>[Pg 429]</span><br />
-<br />
-Grien, Hans Baldung, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
-<br />
-Griffo, Francesco, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a><br />
-<br />
-Grimm, Baron Melchior von, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
-<br />
-Grimm, Jacob, <a href="#Page_307">307</a><br />
-<br />
-Grimm, Wilhelm, <a href="#Page_307">307</a><br />
-<br />
-Grolier, Jean, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
-<br />
-Grolier Club, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a> n., <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dowson's <em>Pierrot of the Minute</em>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>-<a href="#Page_98">98</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Grotefend, G. F., <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
-<br />
-Gryphius, Sebastian, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br />
-<br />
-Gutenberg, Johann, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-<a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bible, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_27">27</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rushmore hoax, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">types of, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Guthrie, James, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Hadrian type face, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
-<br />
-Haebler, Dr. Konrad, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Haight, Anne Lyon, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
-<br />
-half title, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
-<br />
-Hall, D., <a href="#Page_364">364</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
-<br />
-Han, Ulrich, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Hardouyn brothers, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Book of Hours</em> (1500), <a href="#Page_154">154</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Harmsworth, Cecil, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
-<br />
-Harmsworth, Desmond, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
-<br />
-Harmsworth, Eric, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
-<br />
-Harper &amp; Brothers, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br />
-<br />
-Harrison, Henry, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
-<br />
-Hart, Horace, <a href="#Page_394">394</a><br />
-<br />
-Harter, Evelyn, <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>-<a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
-<br />
-Hayward, John, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
-<br />
-Heber, Richard, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Hector, Benedictus, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Heiligen</em>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
-<br />
-Hendrickson, James, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
-<br />
-Henry II of France, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
-<br />
-Hind, Arthur M., <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
-<br />
-Hodgson, Ralph, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
-<br />
-Hoell, Louis, <a href="#Page_416">416</a><br />
-<br />
-Hogben, Lancelot, <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
-<br />
-Holbein, Hans, the Elder, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
-<br />
-Holbein, Hans, the Younger, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Dance of Death," <a href="#Page_277">277</a>-<a href="#Page_78">78</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Hopfer, Daniel, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
-<br />
-Hornby, St. John, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a><br />
-<br />
-Hroswitha, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
-<br />
-Hughes-Stanton, Blair, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Huxley, Aldous, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Hypnerotomachia Poliphili</em>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_430"></a>[Pg 430]</span><br />
-<br />
-imposition, defined, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a><br />
-<br />
-impression, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
-<br />
-index, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a><br />
-<br />
-ink<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">colors used, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_87">87</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">varnish in, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<em>Inland Printer</em>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Intelligencer Print (Galesburg), <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
-<br />
-introduction, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
-<br />
-Italic type, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">first used, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proper use of, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Jackson, Holbrook, <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Anatomy of Bibliomania</em>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Fear of Books</em>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Printing of Books</em>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>-<a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Jacobs, S. A., <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
-<br />
-Jaggard, William, <em>Nobilitas Politica</em> (1608), <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_86">86</a><br />
-<br />
-Janson, Anton, <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br />
-<br />
-Janson type face, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_418">418</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Jenson, Nicolas, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a> n.<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Pliny</em> (1472), <a href="#Page_276">276</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Jenson's Roman type face, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
-<br />
-John of Speier (Spire), <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
-<br />
-Johnson, A. F., <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
-<br />
-Johnson, J., <em>Typographia</em>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a> n., <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
-<br />
-Johnson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
-<br />
-Jones, David, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Jones, George W., <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br />
-<br />
-Josephy, Robert, <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
-<br />
-Judith, Countess of Flanders, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Kauffer, E. McKnight, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
-<br />
-Keimer, Samuel, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>-<a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">imprints, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Universal Instructor</em>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Keith, Sir William, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
-<br />
-Kelmscott Press, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">binding, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Chaucer</em>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">paper, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>-<a href="#Page_29">29</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Recuyell of the Histories of Troye</em>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">types, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>see also</em> Morris, William</span><br />
-<br />
-Kennington, Eric, <a href="#Page_395">395</a><br />
-<br />
-Kent, Henry Watson, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_431"></a>[Pg 431]</span>
-<br />
-Kerver, Thielman, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
-<br />
-Keynes, Geoffrey, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
-<br />
-Kipling, Rudyard, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
-<br />
-Kirkwood, James, <a href="#Page_385">385</a><br />
-<br />
-Koberger, Anton, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-Koch, Rudolph, design, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
-<br />
-König, Friedrich, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
-<br />
-Krantz, Martin, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
-<br />
-Kromberger, Johann, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Laboratory Press, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
-<br />
-Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br />
-<br />
-Lane, John, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
-<br />
-Lang, Andrew, <em>The Library</em>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>-<a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
-<br />
-Lansbury, George, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>-<a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
-<br />
-Lasteyrie, Count de, <em>Typographie Economique</em> (1837), <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
-<br />
-Lawrence, T. E., <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-leading; <em>see</em> letter-spacing<br />
-<br />
-Lee, Marshall, ed., <em>Books for Our Time</em>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
-<br />
-Lee Priory Press, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
-<br />
-Leeu, Gerard, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
-<br />
-LeRouge, Pierre, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
-<br />
-lettering, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">defined, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></span><br />
-<br />
-letter-spacing, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">leading, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>-<a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"driving out," <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Lewis, W. S., <a href="#Page_98">98</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a><br />
-<br />
-ligature, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
-<br />
-Linotype, defined, <a href="#Page_404">404</a><br />
-<br />
-list of illustrations, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
-<br />
-Livingston, Luther S., <em>Franklin and His Press at Passy</em>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
-<br />
-Longlond, J., <em>A Sermon</em> (1536), <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
-<br />
-Lowell, Amy, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-lower-case letters, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
-<br />
-Lowinsky, Thomas, drawing, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
-<br />
-Lutetia type face, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a><br />
-<br />
-Luther, Martin<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>To the Christian Nobility</em>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tracts, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Lydgate, John, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Lydian type face, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-McCulloch, William, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
-<br />
-MacDonald, James Ramsay, <a href="#Page_197">197</a> n.<br />
-<br />
-Machiavelli, Nicolò, <em>Discorsi</em> (1531), <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
-<br />
-Mackall, Leonard L., "Notes for Bibliophiles," <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_432"></a>[Pg 432]</span>
-<br />
-McKerrow, Ronald B., <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Introduction to Bibliography</em>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>-<a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Macmillan, Daniel, <a href="#Page_387">387</a><br />
-<br />
-McMurtrie, D. C., <em>The Book</em>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>-<a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
-<br />
-Madan, Falconer, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
-<br />
-Maillet, Jacques, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Mainz Diary: New Light on the Invention of Printing</em>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
-<br />
-Malory, Sir Thomas, <em>Morte d'Arthur</em>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Mansion, Colard, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
-<br />
-Manutius, Aldus, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bembo's <em>De Aetna</em>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">career, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-<a href="#Page_94">94</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Marchant, Guy, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
-<br />
-Marguerite of Navarre, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-Marie Antoinette, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-Martin, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
-<br />
-Martin, John, <em>Bibliographical Catalogue of Books Privately Printed</em>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
-<br />
-Martin, William, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a><br />
-<br />
-Mary Stuart, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter</em>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
-<br />
-Mathews, Elkin, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-Maxwell, William, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">relations with Shaw, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Mazarin, Jules, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-Mendel, Vera; <em>see</em> Meynell, Vera<br />
-<br />
-Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a><br />
-<br />
-Meredith, Hugh, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
-<br />
-Mergenthaler, Ottmar, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Merry England</em>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
-<br />
-Merrymount Press, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
-<br />
-Merrymount type face, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-metal flower; <em>see</em> printer's flower<br />
-<br />
-Meynell, Alice, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>-<a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Ten Poems</em>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Meynell, Everard, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
-<br />
-Meynell, Sir Francis, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nonesuch Press, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>-<a href="#Page_211">211</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Printer's Flowers and Arabesques," <a href="#Page_x">x</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on type-setting machines, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>-<a href="#Page_28">28</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Meynell, Vera<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Nonesuch Press, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Meynell, Wilfrid, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>-<a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_433"></a>[Pg 433]</span><br />
-<br />
-Middle Hill Press, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
-<br />
-Middleton, Henry, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
-<br />
-Miller &amp; Richards, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
-<br />
-Miller-Parker, Agnes, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-missals, first printed, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
-<br />
-Mitchelson, David, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-<a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
-<br />
-Monotype, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">defined, <a href="#Page_404">404</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
-<br />
-Montague Press, <a href="#Page_291">291</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">De Guerin's <em>The Centaur</em>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Monticello type face, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_419">419</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Moore, George, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Ulick and Soracha</em>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Mores, Edward Rowe, <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a><br />
-<br />
-Morgan, Charles, <em>House of Macmillan</em>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a><br />
-<br />
-Morgan, Gwenda, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Morison, Stanley, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on calligraphy, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"First Principles of Typography," <a href="#Page_239">239</a></span>
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Times Roman, <a href="#Page_420">420</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Morris, William, xi, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">achievement and influence, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>-<a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">career, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-<a href="#Page_1">1</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Note on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press</em>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Roots of the Mountains</em>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">typography of, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>see also</em> Kelmscott Press</span><br />
-<br />
-Mountjoye type face, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<br />
-Moxon, Edward, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-Moxon, Joseph, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
-<br />
-Murray, John, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a><br />
-<br />
-Musurus, Marcus, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Nash, John, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-National Association for the Advancement of Art, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
-<br />
-Nelson, George, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>New Colophon, The</em>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>New England Courant, The</em>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
-<br />
-New York <em>Herald Tribune</em>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
-<br />
-Newdigate, Bernard H., <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a><br />
-<br />
-Niccolo, Simon di, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Nichols, Dr. Charles L., <em>Justus Fox</em>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
-<br />
-Nonesuch Press, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_434"></a>[Pg 434]</span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">history of, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>-<a href="#Page_211">211</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Nonesuch Press, imprints, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>-<a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>-<a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">press mark, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Random House, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Shakespeare</em>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<em>Nuremberg Chronicle, The</em>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-O'Connor, John, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Ogg, Oscar, ix, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
-<br />
-Olpe, J. von, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
-<br />
-Orcutt, William Dana, <em>Manual of Linotype Typography</em>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
-<br />
-Original Old Style type face (Italic), <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
-<br />
-ornament; <em>see</em> type ornament<br />
-<br />
-Oswald, John Clyde, <em>Benjamin Franklin, Printer</em>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Oxford English Dictionary</em>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>-<a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
-<br />
-Oxford type face, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
-<br />
-Oxford University Press, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a> n., <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Palmer, Samuel, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>-<a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
-<br />
-Pannartz, Arnold, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
-<br />
-paper, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chinese invention of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dampening of, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">esparto grass, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mills, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_27">27</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">papyrus, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rag, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">texture of, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">wood pulp, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Patmore, Coventry, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
-<br />
-Pelican Press, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
-<br />
-Pelliot, Paul, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
-<br />
-Pembroke, Countess of (Mary Herbert), <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
-<br />
-Penguin Books, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">editions of Shaw, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<em>Pennsylvania Gazette, The</em>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Pennsylvania Mercury, The</em>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_74">74</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">types for, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Perpetua type face, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-specimen, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br />
-<br />
-Peter Pauper Press, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
-<br />
-Petit, Jean, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Phillips, Fred, <em>Old-Fashioned Type Book</em>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
-<br />
-pi, derivation of name, <a href="#Page_370">370</a><br />
-<br />
-pica, derivation of name, <a href="#Page_370">370</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_435"></a>[Pg 435]</span><br />
-<br />
-Pickering, William, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
-<br />
-Pigouchet, Phillipe, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
-<br />
-Pio family, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
-<br />
-Plant, Marjorie, <em>English Book Trade</em>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
-<br />
-Plantin, Christopher, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br />
-<br />
-playing cards, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
-<br />
-Pleydenworff, Wilhelm, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Poe, E. A., "The Gold Bug," <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
-<br />
-point system, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
-<br />
-Poliphilus type face, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_420">420</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Pollard, Alfred W., <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>-<a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Essay on Colophons</em>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Pollard, Graham, <a href="#Page_78">78</a> n.<br />
-<br />
-Pompadour, Mme. de, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-Poulton, T. L., <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
-<br />
-preface, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
-<br />
-printer, amateur, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>see also</em> private press</span><br />
-<br />
-printer's flower, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>-<a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-<a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>see also</em> type ornament</span><br />
-<br />
-printer's mark, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
-<br />
-printing<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">development of, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">importance of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>-<a href="#Page_87">87</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">principles of, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">restricted in England, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>-<a href="#Page_86">86</a></span><br />
-<br />
-private press<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">defined, and aims of, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">principles and pleasures of, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">types of, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_79">79</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>see also</em> printer, amateur</span><br />
-<br />
-Proctor, Robert, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br />
-<br />
-Proctor's Greek type face, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br />
-<br />
-Psalter (Mainz, 1457), <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br />
-<br />
-punch-cutting machine, Benton pantograph, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>-<a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
-<br />
-punctuation marks, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a><br />
-<br />
-Püterschein, Dr. Herman, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
-<br />
-Pynson, Richard, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Pythagoras, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Rabelais, François, <em>Pantagruel</em>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br />
-<br />
-Radin, Simon, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Random House, and Nonesuch Press, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
-<br />
-Ransom, Will, <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Private Presses</em>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Ratdolt, Erhard, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_436"></a>[Pg 436]</span><br />
-<br />
-Ravilious, Eric, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Rawlinson, Sir Henry C., <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
-<br />
-Read, Herbert, <em>Grass Roots of Art</em>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Recuyell of the Histories of Troye</em>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br />
-<br />
-Regiomontanus (Müller, J.), <em>Calendar</em>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Reichl, Ernst, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
-<br />
-Reinheckel, Andreas, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
-<br />
-Reuchlin, Johann, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
-<br />
-Richards, Grant, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Author Hunting</em>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Ricketts and Shannon, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br />
-<br />
-Riverside Press, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a><br />
-<br />
-Rochester Press, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
-<br />
-Rodenberg, Julius; <em>see</em> Simon, Oliver<br />
-<br />
-Roeder, Ralph, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
-<br />
-Roffe, Edwin, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
-<br />
-Rogers, Bruce, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Centaur, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">designs, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Paragraphs on Printing</em>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>World</em> Bible, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_4">4</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Rollins, Carl Purington, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>B. R.&mdash;America's Typographic Playboy</em>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>-<a href="#Page_1">1</a></span><br />
-<br />
-"Romney Street Press," <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
-<br />
-Root, Riley, <em>Journal of Travels</em> (Galesburg, 1850), <a href="#Page_379">379</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
-<br />
-Rose, Aquila, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
-<br />
-Routledge, George, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
-<br />
-Rudge, William, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
-<br />
-Rudge Press, <a href="#Page_295">295</a><br />
-<br />
-running head, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
-<br />
-Rushmore, Arthur W., <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
-<br />
-Russell, Bertrand, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Unpopular Essays</em>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xii</a>-<a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Ruzicka, Rudolph<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">design, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fairfield, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Sandford, Christopher, <em>Cockalorum</em>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a><br />
-<br />
-sans serif type face, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Sassoon, Siegfried, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_437"></a>[Pg 437]</span><br />
-<br />
-Savonarola, Girolamo, tracts, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Sawyer, C. J., and Darton, F. J. H.,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>English Books 1475-1500</em>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Schöffer, Peter, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-<a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br />
-<br />
-School Press, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
-<br />
-Scotch Modern type face, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a><br />
-<br />
-Schwartz, Joseph, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
-<br />
-Schwartz, Miriam, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
-<br />
-serifs, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
-<br />
-Shand, James, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
-<br />
-Shaw, G. B., <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">editions, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>-<a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">filmscripts, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letters quoted, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proof correction, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>-<a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>-<a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">relations with R. &amp; R. Clark, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">shorthand, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">type preferences, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>-<a href="#Page_92">92</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Shaw, Mrs. G. B., <a href="#Page_399">399</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Ship of Fools, The</em> (1494), <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
-<br />
-Sidney, Sir Philip, <em>Arcadia</em>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
-<br />
-Simon, Oliver, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Rodenberg, Julius, <em>Printing of Today</em>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a> n.</span><br />
-<br />
-Sitwell, Sir Osbert, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br />
-<br />
-Smithers, Leonard, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-Sower, Christopher, Jr., <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
-<br />
-Sower, Samuel, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
-<br />
-Sparrow, John, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
-<br />
-Spiral Press, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a><br />
-<br />
-Squire, Sir John C., <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
-<br />
-Steele, Robert, <em>Revival of Printing</em>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
-<br />
-Stevenson, R. L., <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
-<br />
-Stiles, Rev. Ezra, <em>Literary Diary</em>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
-<br />
-Stöckel, Wolfgang, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Stone, Reynolds, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">design, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Strawberry Hill Press, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
-<br />
-Strozzi, Piero, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
-<br />
-Sutton, Hannah, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Sweynheim, Conrad, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-table of contents, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
-<br />
-Targ, William, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Making of the Bruce Rogers World Bible</em>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Tatham, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Tauchnitz, Bernhard, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_438"></a>[Pg 438]</span><br />
-<br />
-Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, <em>In Memoriam</em> (1850), <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-Thomas, Isaiah<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Additions to Thomas's History of Printing</em>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>-<a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Specimen of Printing Types</em>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Thompson, Francis, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>-<a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
-<br />
-Times Roman type face, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">specimen, <a href="#Page_420">420</a></span><br />
-<br />
-title page<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bagford collection, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">development of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">engraved, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>-<a href="#Page_60">60</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">type ornaments, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>-<a href="#Page_60">60</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">typographic, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">typography of, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>-<a href="#Page_47">47</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">woodcut, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Tomkinson, G. S., <em>Select Bibliography of Modern Presses</em>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
-<br />
-Topolski, Feliks, <a href="#Page_399">399</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">drawing, <a href="#Page_381">381</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Tory, Geoffroy, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
-<br />
-Tournes, Jean de, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br />
-<br />
-Trautwein, Joseph, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
-<br />
-Trenholm, George, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Trevelyan, G. M., <em>English Social History</em>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
-<br />
-Tschichold, Jan, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br />
-<br />
-type faces<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">modern, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">old style, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>-<a href="#Page_5">5</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">principles of design, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-<a href="#Page_73">73</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">transitional, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">used by job printers in 1880's, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>-<a href="#Page_72">72</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>see also</em> typography, <em>and under individual names</em></span><br />
-<br />
-type founding, early history of, in U. S., <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
-<br />
-type ornament, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>-<a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cleland's designs, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rogers's designs, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>see also</em> printer's flower</span><br />
-<br />
-typographer, and publisher, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>-<a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Typographie Economique</em>; <em>see</em> Lasteyrie, Count de<br />
-<br />
-typography<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bauhaus, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">characters in early English, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">defined, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_40">40</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in modern trade books, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>-<a href="#Page_74">74</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of William Morris, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a></span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_439"></a>[Pg 439]</span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">old vs. modern, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a></span><br />
-<br />
-typography, principles of, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>-<a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">problems in modern, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tendencies in modern, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_36">36</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>see also</em> type faces</span><br />
-<br />
-Typophiles, The, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Ulhard, Philip, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
-<br />
-Updike, Daniel Berkeley, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>-<a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a> n., <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>In the Day's Work</em>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Notes on the Merrymount Press</em>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Printing Types</em>,  <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Some Aspects of Printing</em>,  <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Vale Press, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br />
-<br />
-Valéry, Paul, <em>Les deux vertus d'un livre</em>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a><br />
-<br />
-Van Doren, Carl, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br />
-<br />
-Van Hoesen, H. B., <em>Bibliography</em>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
-<br />
-Vascosan, Michel de, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
-<br />
-Vele, Abraham, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
-<br />
-Verrue, Countesse de, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-Vico, Enea, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
-<br />
-Vincentino, Lodovico, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
-<br />
-Vorsterman, Willem, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
-<br />
-Vostre, Simon le, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Book of Hours</em>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Waflard, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
-<br />
-Walker, Emery, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
-<br />
-Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
-<br />
-Walter, F. K., <em>Bibliography</em>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
-<br />
-Wang Cheng, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
-<br />
-Warde, Beatrice, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
-<br />
-Warde, Frederic, <a href="#Page_414">414</a><br />
-<br />
-Warton, Thomas, <em>History of English Poetry</em>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a><br />
-<br />
-Watson, James,  <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Art of Printing</em>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Watts, John, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
-<br />
-Waugh, Evelyn, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_440"></a>[Pg 440]</span><br />
-<br />
-Way &amp; Williams, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
-<br />
-Webb, Beatrice, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
-<br />
-Webb, Clifford, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Webb, Sidney, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
-<br />
-Webster's <em>Dictionary</em>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Week-End Book, The</em>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
-<br />
-<em>Weekly Register, The</em>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
-<br />
-Weiditz, Hans, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
-<br />
-Westcott and Thomson (Philadelphia),  <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
-<br />
-Westminster Press, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
-<br />
-Wheeler, Monroe, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
-<br />
-Whitnash Press, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
-<br />
-Whittingham, Charles, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
-<br />
-Wiebking, Robert, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a><br />
-<br />
-Wight, John, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
-<br />
-Williams, Iolo, <em>Elements of Book-Collecting</em>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
-<br />
-Willoughby, Edwin Eliott, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
-<br />
-Wilson, Alexander, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
-<br />
-Winship, George Parker, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Sailor Narratives</em>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Winterich, John T., <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Early American Books and Printing</em>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Wolff, H., Co., <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
-<br />
-Wolgemut, Michael, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
-<br />
-Wollaston, William, <em>Religion of Nature Delineated</em>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>-<a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
-<br />
-women, as bibliophiles, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>-<a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
-<br />
-wood-block printing<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chinese origins, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>Heiligen</em>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">playing cards, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Worde, Wynkyn de, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
-<br />
-Wordsworth, William, <em>Prelude</em> (1850), <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
-<br />
-World Publishing Co.,  <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><em>World</em> Bible, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_4">4</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Wroth, Lawrence C., <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Yeats, W. B., <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
-<br />
-Young, Thomas, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_441"></a>[Pg 441]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p6 center">
-<em>This book was composed in twenty-two different type faces<br />
-by Westcott &amp; Thomson, Inc., Philadelphia.<br />
-Typography and design by Jos. Trautwein.</em></p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Books and Printing; a Treasury for
-Typophiles, by Various
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