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Title: Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles

Editor: Paul A. Bennett

Release date: November 12, 2020 [eBook #63730]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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FORUM BOOKS

This ebook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders
20th Anniversary.

BOOKS
AND PRINTING
A TREASURY FOR TYPOPHILES

edited by Paul A. Bennett

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

Page
Y WAY OF INTRODUCTION
ix
OTTO F. EGE. The Story of the Alphabet 3
ANCELOT HOGBEN. Printing, Paper and Playing Cards 15
RUTH S. GRANNISS. Colophons 31
DWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY. Printers' Marks 45
A. F. JOHNSON. Title Pages: Their Forms and Development 52
AWRENCE C. WROTH. The First Work with American Types 65
RONALD B. MCKERROW. Typographic Debut 78
DWARD ROWE MORES. Metal-Flowers 83
AMES WATSON. The History of the Invention and
Progress of the Mysterious Art of Printing &c. 85
VELYN HARTER. Printers As Men of the World 88
ANNE LYON HAIGHT. Are Women the Natural Enemies of Books? 103
EATRICE WARDE. Printing Should Be Invisible 109
ORTER 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
169
Dimensions
WILL RANSOM. What Is a Private Press? 175
ALFRED W. POLLARD. The Trained Printer and the
182
Amateur: and the Pleasure of Small Books
S C ll R d 191

IR FRANCIS MEYNELL. Some Collectors Read 191
HRISTOPHER SANDFORD. Printing for Love 212
ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE. The Fun and Fury of a Private
Press: Some Voyages of The Golden Hind 220
DWIN GRABHORN. The Fine Art of Printing 226
HOLBROOK JACKSON. The Typography of William Morris 233
TANLEY MORISON. First Principles of Typography 239
ARL PURINGTON ROLLINS. American Type Designers and Their Work 252
RIC GILL. Typography 257
REDERIC W. GOUDY. Types and Type Design 267
HEODORE LOW DE VINNE. The Old and the New:
A Friendly Dispute between Juvenis & Senex 274
RUCE ROGERS. Paragraphs on Printing 281
AUL A. BENNETT. B.R.—Adventurer with Type Ornament 290
DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE. Some Tendencies in Modern Typography 306
ETER BEILENSON. The Amateur Printer: His Pleasures and His Duties 313
. 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
OHN T. WINTERICH. Benjamin Franklin: Printer and Publisher 352
ARNEST ELMO CALKINS. The Book & Job Print 368
AMES SHAND. Author and Printer: G.B.S. and R.&R.C.: 1898-1948 381
AUL A. BENNETT. On Type Faces for Books 402
AUL A. BENNETT. Notes on the Type Faces Used in This Book 411
Index 421

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
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).

BOOKS AND PRINTING

OTTO F. EGE
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.

(*) 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.

LANCELOT HOGBEN
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....

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.'"

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.

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.

EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY
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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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....

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.

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.

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 Pennsylva Mercury, whose first No 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.

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 15s., a
quantity of worn type at 8d. a pound and antimony worth £8 18s. 3d. 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 (in black-letter), for the letters now
represented by I and J; and only one capital letter V (in Roman) or (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 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 , ꝏ, &c., of which 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 ,
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 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

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.

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

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.

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.

ANNE LYON HAIGHT
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.

BEATRICE WARDE
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

PORTER GARNETT
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.

W. A. DWIGGINS
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.

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.

W. A. DWIGGINS
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

DESMOND FLOWER
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.

WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT
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."

ROBERT JOSEPHY
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.

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

ALFRED W. POLLARD
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.

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.

FRANCIS MEYNELL
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD
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.

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
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.

"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

EDWIN GRABHORN
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.

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.

HOLBROOK JACKSON
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.

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.

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.