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                   *       *       *       *       *

                      FORUM [Illustration] BOOKS


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




                                 BOOKS
                             AND PRINTING

                       A TREASURY FOR TYPOPHILES

                      _edited by Paul A. Bennett_

                            [Illustration]

                             _Forum Books_

                     THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
                        CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK

                             A FORUM BOOK

               Published by The World Publishing Company
               2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio

                            Revised Edition

                  First Forum printing February 1963

            Copyright 1951 by The World Publishing Company.

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief
  passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper or magazine.

            Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 52-612
            Printed in the United States of America. WP263




                            ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply grateful to many friends who have helped in the preparation
of material for this book, and have freely granted permission to
reprint their brain children.

To the Typophiles of New York, and to the individual authors in their
series of Chap Books, I am indebted for including: T. M. Cleland's
_Harsh Words_; W. A. Dwiggins' celebrated "Investigation Into the
Physical Properties of Books," first published for the Society of
Calligraphers and included in _Mss. by WAD_; Evelyn Harter's _Printers
As Men of the World_; and Lawrence C. Wroth's "First Work With American
Types," from _Typographic Heritage_.

To the editors of _The Colophon_, and the three authors, I am indebted
for reprinting the essays of Earnest Elmo Calkins on "The Book and Job
Print," Ruth S. Granniss on "Colophons" and Sir Francis Meynell's "Some
Collectors Read."

To the individual authors, the editors of _The Publishers' Weekly_
and its publisher, R. R. Bowker Company, I am indebted for permission
to include W. A. Dwiggins' "Twenty Years After," the sequel to his
"Investigation"; excerpts from two articles by Robert Josephy; and Will
Ransom's introduction from his _Private Presses and Their Books_.

To Beatrice Warde, who has graciously permitted reprinting her classic
"Printing Should Be Invisible."

I appreciate greatly the counsel of the good friends who made possible
the symposium on "The Anatomy of the Book": Peter Beilenson, Joseph
Blumenthal, P. J. Conkwright, Morris Colman, Milton Glick and Evelyn
Harter, William Dana Orcutt, Ernst Reichl, Carl Purington Rollins,
Bruce Rogers and Arthur W. Rushmore. To Mergenthaler Linotype Company
I am indebted for reprinting the text of the "Anatomy," now slightly
revised, from _The Manual of Linotype Typography_.

To both authors and their publisher, William E. Rudge's Sons, I am
indebted for including the extracts from Bruce Rogers' _Paragraphs on
Printing_ and Merle Armitage's _Notes on Modern Printing_.

To George Macy, and the directors of the Limited Editions Club, I am
indebted for reprinting Porter Garnett's prize-winning essay, "The
Ideal Book." And also for the illustration of the punch-cutting machine
(from _The Dolphin_, No. 2) to accompany Carl Purington Rollins' essay,
"American Type Designers and Their Work," for which permission to
reprint was granted by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Chicago.

To my good friend, James Shand, publisher of _Alphabet and Image_ in
London, I am indebted for including his account of George Bernard
Shaw's relations with his printer (first published in _A & I_ No. 8),
and for assistance in securing electrotypes of the illustrations.

To Oscar Ogg and the editors of _The American Artist_ I owe thanks for
reprinting his "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its illustrations.

To Edwin Grabhorn I am indebted for including "The Fine Art of
Printing," his address to the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco.

I particularly appreciate the assistance of the late Otto Ege, Mrs.
Anne Lyon Haight and Lawrence C. Wroth in revising their essays for
publication here, and the thoughtfulness of Robert Josephy, Will Ransom
and Arthur W. Rushmore in writing postscripts to enhance their essays.

I am thankful to Mrs. Caroline Anderson of Los Angeles; my colleague
Jackson Burke at Linotype; to Christopher Morley of Roslyn, L. I., and
Arthur W. Rushmore of Madison, N. J., for valuable suggestions and help
in research.

For assistance in securing illustrative material I am indebted to my
Typophile friends: John Archer, A. Burton Carnes, Lester Douglas,
George L. McKay and William Reydel. To Fred Anthoensen of Portland,
Maine, I am thankful for help in securing electrotypes to illustrate
two articles.

The publisher, and I as editor, acknowledge our appreciation to
the authors of the other essays included, and to their editors and
publishers, for permission to reprint this valuable material, for which
detailed mention of copyright and publication date is printed elsewhere.

And I hope my apologies may be accepted, should there be inadvertent
omission of appreciation to the numerous other individuals who have so
generously assisted me in preparing this book for the printer.

                                                             P. A. B.




                               CONTENTS


    BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION                                      _Page ix_

    OTTO F. EGE.  The Story of the Alphabet                          3

    LANCELOT HOGBEN.  Printing, Paper and Playing Cards             15

    RUTH S. GRANNISS.  Colophons                                    31

    EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY.  Printers' Marks                       45

    A. F. JOHNSON.  Title Pages: Their Forms and
       Development                                                  52

    LAWRENCE C. WROTH.  The First Work with
       American Types                                               65

    RONALD B. MCKERROW.  Typographic Debut                          78

    EDWARD ROWE MORES.  Metal-Flowers                               83

    JAMES WATSON.  The History of the Invention and
       Progress of the Mysterious Art of Printing &c.               85

    EVELYN HARTER.  Printers As Men of the World                    88

    ANNE LYON HAIGHT.  Are Women the Natural
       Enemies of Books?                                           103

    BEATRICE WARDE.  Printing Should Be Invisible                  109

    PORTER GARNETT.  The Ideal Book                                115

    W. A. DWIGGINS.   Extracts from an Investigation
       into the Physical Properties of Books                       129

    W. A. DWIGGINS.  Twenty Years After                            145

    DESMOND FLOWER.  The Publisher and the Typographer             153

    WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT, BRUCE ROGERS, CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS,
       JOSEPH BLUMENTHAL, P. J. CONKWRIGHT,
       ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE, MILTON GLICK, MORRIS COLMAN,
       EVELYN HARTER, PETER BEILENSON, and ERNST REICHL.
       The Anatomy of the Book: A Symposium                        160

    ROBERT JOSEPHY.  Trade Bookmaking: Complaint
       in Three Dimensions      169

    WILL RANSOM.  What Is a Private Press?                         175

    ALFRED W. POLLARD.   The Trained Printer and the
       Amateur: and the Pleasure of Small Books                    182

    SIR FRANCIS MEYNELL.  Some Collectors Read                     191

    CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD.  Printing for Love                       212

    ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE.   The Fun and Fury of a Private
       Press: Some Voyages of The Golden Hind                      220

    EDWIN GRABHORN.  The Fine Art of Printing                      226

    HOLBROOK JACKSON.  The Typography of William Morris            233

    STANLEY MORISON.  First Principles of Typography               239

    CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS.  American Type Designers
       and Their Work                                              252

    ERIC GILL.  Typography                                         257

    FREDERIC W. GOUDY.  Types and Type Design                      267

    THEODORE LOW DE VINNE.  The Old and the New:
       A Friendly Dispute between Juvenis & Senex                  274

    BRUCE ROGERS.  Paragraphs on Printing                          281

    PAUL A. BENNETT.  B.R.--Adventurer with Type Ornament          290

    DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE.  Some Tendencies in Modern
       Typography                                                  306

    PETER BEILENSON.  The Amateur Printer: His Pleasures
       and His Duties                                              313

    T. M. CLELAND.  Harsh Words                                    321

    OSCAR OGG.  A Comparison of Calligraphy & Lettering            337

    ALDOUS HUXLEY.  Typography for the Twentieth-Century
       Reader                                                      344

    MERLE ARMITAGE.  Notes on Modern Printing                      350

    JOHN T. WINTERICH.  Benjamin Franklin: Printer
       and Publisher                                               352

    EARNEST ELMO CALKINS.  The Book & Job Print                    368

    JAMES SHAND.  Author and Printer: G.B.S. and R.& R. C.:
       1898-1948                                                   381

    PAUL A. BENNETT.  On Type Faces for Books                      402

    PAUL A. BENNETT.  Notes on the Type Faces Used in This Book    411

    _Index_      421




          [Illustration]BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION[Illustration]


Labeling these observations "introductory" isn't to confuse the purist.
He knows that the terms preface, foreword and introduction become mixed
frequently, he doesn't like it and he much prefers retaining the proper
distinctions.

"An introduction," he will insist, "should be solely concerned with
the subject of the book, and introduce or supplement its text. And the
preface or foreword should properly deal with the book's purpose, and
define its limitation and scope. Let's keep things that way."

Unfortunately, there isn't one term that covers comment which flows
from one division to the other in a miscellany like this. At times--and
at the risk of editorial modesty--I may seem something of a typographic
barker, singing the praises of certain essays and pointing up
different attractions. At others, the text will be supplemented with
an explanatory note, or amplified to bring it up to date, as in the
Josephy, Ransom and Rushmore articles.

It amounts to an assist in getting back to purpose: that of informing
on matters typographic, and on books, their printing and some of the
fascinating steps along the way. In selecting material of appeal to the
collector, printer, typographer and student, I have not overlooked the
professional curiosity of editors and technicians. That's the thinking
behind the inclusion of extracts from McKerrow and Mores and Watson,
among other scholarly contributions.

Where there was a choice, the preference was for the author with
a point of view and the ability to express it interestingly. Four
articles indicate this approach. "Printing, Paper and Playing Cards,"
the brilliant survey of Lancelot Hogben, illumines the birth and
spread of writing and printing as nothing else I know. Otto Ege's
brief account of the development of our alphabet, with its memorable
letter-diagrams, has a different, not less valuable appeal, as does
Oscar Ogg's comparison of "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its
specimens of his own distinguished hand. And in "Printers As Men of the
World," Evelyn Harter writes of a number of great printers as men of
intellect, at home in the world of ideas. Her stimulating text suggests
the compensation of looking at the background of printing in relation
to world events.

There was no preconceived attitude to consider in evaluating the essays
included: no restriction by country of origin; no fixation about the
traditional or modern in typographic approach; no desire to slant, or
plant, ideas; no intent other than to select much of the best writing
in English by authors of substance. That the gathering may provide
riches to be added to "the savings account of your memory" is my hope.

In a quite real sense, the experience has been something like spending
many long weekends with friends in good, solid talk--some of it
controversial, much of it illuminating and informing. The re-reading
has not only opened "doors and windows for a welcome flood" of ideas,
it has suggested new trails and made for valuable comparisons of
favorites first met with years ago.

It has been difficult to resist the temptation to include more essays
of historic and technical appeal to typographers and printers.
Many of the present generation, I presume, may not know De Vinne's
authoritative account of the development of the American Point System,
which occurred in the late eighties and is detailed at length in his
_Plain Printing Types_; or the invaluable Meynell and Morison essay on
"Printer's Flowers and Arabesques," with its fascinating reproductions,
from _The Fleuron_. I have omitted these two with reluctance, and have
used the space they would occupy for a half-dozen shorter essays not
less worthy in themselves, but on different topics.

Since space was limited, I needed to be. I would have welcomed the
opportunity to include additional essays by D. B. Updike, whose
incomparable _Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use_; _In the
Day's Work_, and _Some Aspects of Printing: Old and New_, and other
writings on typography should not be missed; by W. A. Dwiggins, the
distinguished American letter artist and designer, who writes as
well as he draws; and by Holbrook Jackson, the great English critic,
literary historian and essayist, whose _Anatomy of Bibliomania_, _Fear
of Books_ and _Printing of Books_ are required reading.

There are other favorites omitted too, for unlike Jackson's remark
about the house of books, "There are many mansions and room for all
trades, whims, and even fads"--this book could comfortably hold no more.

It has not seemed desirable, as it would be possible, to eliminate a
degree of duplication in part among some of the essays. That would have
required an amount of editorial surgery and revision unfair to the
authors concerned. More importantly, it would have assumed that every
reader would read every essay--hardly an attainable ideal.

Nor has any documentation been attempted to reconcile opposing
viewpoints--that of A. W. Pollard and Holbrook Jackson, for instance,
in respect to William Morris as printer and typographer. Happy will
that reader be who finds this and other instances sufficiently
provocative to embark upon further research of his own.

And while it is easier to come upon material in a collection such as
this than to track down each item individually, much of the fun of the
search is missing, along with the memorable thrills of discoveries in
scattered places. There's much gold yet to be found by even moderate
digging.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The greatest area for argument is that within the opposing views of
the modern and traditional approach to book design. It is unrealistic
to oppose the concept that contemporary typography should reflect some
of the differences that mark our time from other epochs. Defining
distinctions and relating them precisely to the arts of the book is
something else again.

In his eloquent _Harsh Words_, T. M. Cleland decries the restless
craving for something new. "This poison is aggravated in printing and
typography," he insists, "by the fact that of all the arts it is, by
its very nature and purpose, the most conventional. If it is an art at
all, it is an art to serve another art. It is good only so far as it
serves well and not on any account good for any other reason.

"It is not the business of type and printing to show off, and when, as
it so frequently does, it engages in exhibitionistic antics of its own,
it is just a bad servant.... Typography, I repeat, is a servant--the
servant of thought and language to which it gives visible existence.
When there are new ways of thinking and a new language, it will be time
enough for a new typography."

The modern designer disagrees. He believes books can be freshened,
made more appealing to eye and hand, and more inviting to read, just
as product-packaging has benefited by the imaginative conceptions of
skilled industrial designers. He concedes that books remain unsurpassed
as a medium for transmitting thought to the reader's mind--and admits
they do it best with a minimum of visual distraction. But, he asks, "is
it not reasonable to remain open-minded and appraise the modern artist
for what he may contribute?

"Books, to be sure, are much more than packages to be styled for
shelf attention and sparkle. Yet it seems reasonable to believe they
also may benefit by traveling the road of visual appeal and design
attractiveness, and that they may be assisted in typographic handling
to convey the author's words with a minimum of reading effort."

It isn't difficult to dismiss the modern approach and call it
uninformed nonsense, but that doesn't lift the curtain and illumine the
problem--or settle the continuing debate.

I recall discussing modern typography some years ago with the late D.
B. Updike, in his library at the Merrymount Press in Boston. A catalog
from the Museum of Modern Art was at hand, designed by Herbert Bayer of
Bauhaus fame.

It looked strange in its all-lower-case typography, and seemed to slow
reading because of that strangeness. To many it was the newest of the
new ... perhaps it would institute a trend? Mr. Updike smiled, reached
to a shelf for a book. It was printed more than a hundred years earlier
in Paris and set throughout in lower-case. "So far as this had any
influence, then or later," he remarked, "the experiment of _Typographie
Economique_ is as dead as Queen Anne."

All of which points up Bertrand Russell's remarks, "On Being Modern
Minded," in his recent _Unpopular Essays_[1]: "The desire to be
contemporary is new only in degree," he declares, "it has existed to
some extent in all previous periods that believed themselves to be
progressive.

"The Renaissance had a contempt for the Gothic centuries that had
preceded it; the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered priceless
mosaics with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised the age of the
heroic couplet.... But in none of these former times was the contempt
for the past nearly as complete as it is now.

"From the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century men admired
Roman antiquity; the Romantic movement revived the Middle Ages.... It
is only since the 1914-18 war that it has become fashionable to ignore
the past _en bloc_.

"The belief that fashion alone should dominate opinion has great
advantages. It makes thought unnecessary, and puts the highest
intelligence within reach of everyone."

Really thinking through the design potential not only seems the nub
of the matter, but is basically sound typographically. Read Peter
Beilenson attentively as he discusses the amateur printer and the
development of a new style (page 313). "It is simple, but dull, to copy
an old style," he points out. "It is hard, but exciting, to work out
a new one. And while you are working at it, you must expect cynical
observers to give your experiments the adjective 'wacky'; you must
expect certain curious kinds of people to praise your work for the
wrong reasons; and you must expect alternating moods of conceit and
confusion. The proofs you gloat over at night will become commonplace
by dawn....

"You will make misjudgments about the intelligence of ordinary readers.
You will make mistakes of taste. You will find it too easy to get an
effect by means of shock, and you will forget that any book, even a
twenty-first-century book, must be a coherent unit. And you will often,
since there are no highway markers for the explorer, feel lonely and
discouraged and want to go back to the old familiar, well-traveled
roads again....

"You can be subtle or bold, as you feel the urge ... you can advance
your own work by looking to other fields of creation, enjoying and
profiting by the experiments going on in them. You can feel yourself
part of the whole forward-looking culture of today ... and if you
do strike a vein with the least glitter of real gold in it, you
will become rich indeed. For you will have become a creator in a
new sense; your duty done as an amateur will be compensated with a
twenty-four-carat satisfaction...."

There's sense in that essay, as there is in the views of Merle
Armitage, T. M. Cleland, Porter Garnett, Eric Gill, Frederic W. Goudy,
Edwin Grabhorn, Robert Josephy, Aldous Huxley, Stanley Morison, Bruce
Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins, D. B. Updike and Beatrice Warde on
related topics. Admittedly, some are in opposition--yet that very
quality of provocativeness may help in dispelling the fog.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Whether we like it or not, the factor of competition affects the
sale of books and their reading. Because so many elements compete for
reading time, we frequently forget that they comprise the obvious:
sports and the allure of the outdoors, newspapers and magazines, the
theater and movies, radio and television, as well as social and family
distractions.

These elements are real, measurable to a degree, and materially
affect the reading of books and consequently their sales. To the
trade publisher and printer they affect the business future and may
be considered opponents. To them, the question of whether the modern
approach is more effective than the traditional is no academic matter.

We have indicated the problem at length, though only in part, because
of its consuming interest. For a comprehensive and sympathetic account
of the modern view, see _Books for Our Time_. That illustrated record
of the exhibition sponsored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts
(recently published by Oxford University Press), was designed and
edited by Marshall Lee, and has essays by Merle Armitage, Herbert
Bayer, John Begg, S. A. Jacobs, George Nelson and Ernst Reichl.

It was Henry Watson Kent who sagely pointed out that the collector who
has affection for the book's format is not necessarily indifferent to
its soul--"the thought enshrined in it." And so, as the one may proudly
discuss his Kelmscott, Doves or Ashendene items and their literary
background, so the other--more knowledgeable in graphic arts lore--may
find equal pleasure in his discoveries: John Winterich on Franklin as
printer and publisher, possibly, or Sir Francis Meynell on collectors
who also read, or James Shand's revealing account of G.B.S., his
interest in typography and his relations with his printers.

Instead of asking the fine press enthusiast to show his Doves Bible,
his B. R. _Pierrot_, Nonesuch Dickens, or Grabhorn _Leaves of Grass_,
the collector who reads about the making of books may get even more
satisfaction in discussing his favorite essays or his most recent
"find."

That the one can be as satisfying as the other is quite definite in my
mind. In fact, I am certain that the collector who learns to appreciate
book-making details will find the greater pleasure: his knowledge
becomes a part of him as prized items on his shelves never can; he will
enjoy looking _in_ books even more than looking _at_ them.

                   *       *       *       *       *

A concluding typographic note: Excepting for strictly type specimen
material, and the degree of typographic expression attempted in Parts
six and seven of _The New Colophon_ for a different reason, I don't
recall any other book set in such a variety of distinguished body
types. Yet that seemed so natural and sensible an idea for this that it
has been stimulating to work it out.

Much of the detail and burden has fallen to the willing hands of
Joseph Trautwein, the able designer responsible for this format, and
the continuing interest of Joseph and Miriam Schwartz of Westcott
and Thomson, the superior Philadelphia typesetters, whose wealth of
typographic resources is evidenced in these pages.

Some of the reasons for coupling specific essays and types are detailed
in the final chapter, which includes also a brief specimen of each face
with a note on its attribution.

And finally, I want to salute William Targ, World's editor, for
inviting me to put this miscellany together, and for his patience
in watching the book develop. That hasn't proved anything like the
challenging experience I envisioned, but instead became a spare-time,
weekend pleasure I've enjoyed for months. Indirectly, of course, this
is related to the great fraternity of book-makers and typophiles,
rich in its friendships and international in scope, that I have been
privileged to enjoy through the years. As I scan the contents again,
I see not only the names of many good friends and the rewarding
associations they bring to mind, but also some of their best writing.
My chief regret is that there just wasn't room for more of it in this
collection. But that's a different adventure--and possibly another book.

                                                     PAUL A. BENNETT


                              FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bertrand Russell, _Unpopular Essays_ (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1950).




            [Illustration]BOOKS AND PRINTING[Illustration]




                [Illustration]OTTO F. EGE[Illustration]

                      _The Story of the Alphabet_

                     ITS EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT

     Copyright 1921 by Norman T. A. Munder & Company. Reprinted by
                       permission of the author.


_Do you know your A B C's? Each Letter Character Has a History and a
Reason for Its Present Form. Have you Ever Questioned the Origin and
Significance of the Alphabet?_

Our transition from barbarism to civilization can be attributed to the
alphabet. Those great prehistoric discoveries and inventions such as
the making of a fire, the use of tools, the wheel and the axle, and
even our modern marvelous applications of steam and electricity pale
into insignificance when compared with the power of the alphabet.
Simple as it now appears after the accustomed use of ages, it can be
accounted not only the most difficult, but also the most fruitful of
all the achievements of the human intellect.

Man lived by "bread alone" and without the alphabet untold ages,
and with a practical alphabetic system not more than 3,000 years.
So important and wonderful was this step deemed by those who lived
nearer the time of its inception--in the time before the wonder of its
extraordinary powers had been blunted by long possession and common
use--that its invention, as well as that of writing, was invariably
attributed to divine origin.

Modern investigation always seeks sources other than mythological
ones, and thus the science of ancient hand-writing, paleography, came
into existence. In the last hundred and twenty-five years the writing
of the ancient Egyptians, which was a "sealed book" for nearly twenty
centuries, has been deciphered through the efforts of Champollion
and Young; the mysterious cuneiform characters of ancient Assyria
and Babylon have been interpreted by Grotofend and Rawlinson, and
the "missing link" to connect our present alphabetic system to these
ancient ones is being partly completed by Sir Arthur Evans, who is
compiling and analyzing Cretan characters and pre-Phoenician writing.
The story, however, will probably never be told in its entirety.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The forms of our letters, with the exception of G, J, U, W, reached
their full development two thousand years ago. The Roman letter was
the parent of all the styles notwithstanding the diversity that has
appeared in Europe since the beginning of the Christian era. With a
little imagination it is not difficult to note the resemblance between
similar letters of the old Roman capitals and those following that
have been designated as script, Italic, Old English or black-letter,
versal, uncial and an endless list of alphabet families. The desire for
speed, and the influence of the tool, pen, reed, chisel, brush, were
the determining factors in the change of form. Curiously enough instead
of being archaic, the Roman alphabet, which is now 2,000 years old,
is still the most useful because of its legibility, and also the most
beautiful.

We derived twenty-three of our letters from the Romans. They had taken
probably eighteen of these from the Greeks about the fourth century
B.C. and afterwards borrowed elsewhere or invented seven more. Instead
of giving them names as the Greeks did, they simply called them by
the sounds for which they stood: A (ah), B (bay). They introduced the
curve wherever possible, whereas the early Greek letters were all
angular--what an interesting analogy is evident in the architecture of
those two peoples, the temple pediment and angularity of the Greeks as
contrasted with the dome and arch of the Romans.

The Greeks, in their contact with those great traders and "Yankees
of ancient time," the Phoenicians, saw the value of their alphabetic
writing and inaugurated its use about the time of the first Olympiad,
776 B.C. Three or four centuries before they gave it to the Romans the
ancient Greeks found use for fifteen of the Phoenician letters and then
conceived enough to round out an alphabet of twenty-four characters.
The changes that took place in the shape of their letters can be
attributed to their sense of order; the letters are balanced better and
the parts better related.

The Greeks were interested in the sound value only, not in the picture
value of the symbol, and, therefore, they probably did not notice that
A, for instance, had ever been a picture of the head of an ox and that
it was now drawn upside down; and that the Phoenician name "Aleph"
meant ox and that they mispronounced the sound in calling it "Alpha."

The Romans borrowed from the Greeks and the Greeks had borrowed from
the Phoenicians, but where did the Phoenicians obtain their letters?
Did they invent them? To what extent were these letters influenced by
earlier systems of writings as those employed by the Cretan, Assyrian
and Egyptian civilizations? These are questions that probably will
never be answered satisfactorily. Many arguments and theories are
advanced. We can, however, trace back with certainty a number of our
letters to the Phoenician alphabet of 1000 B.C. Beyond this all is, at
present, a matter of conjecture.

The Phoenician alphabet consisted of twenty-two pictures of familiar
objects. These pictures were rudely and simply made, for writers
and readers soon recognized the fundamental characteristics and all
unnecessary details were eliminated. The great advance that can
be credited to them is that they realized that a small number of
sound-expressing characters, if well selected, are sufficient to
express any word. Other races at this period had phonetic systems
but they consisted of numerous symbols and cumbersome appendages of
non-alphabetic characters--"eye pictures" side by side with "ear
pictures." No doubt earlier Phoenician writing passed through the
stages of development traceable in so many countries:

 1. The pictures or characters suggesting the thing or incident
 (picture writing).

 2. The pictures or characters symbolizing the thing or idea
 (ideographic or symbolic writing).

 3. The pictures or characters representing the sound of the thing or
 idea (phonograms).

 4. The sign suggesting the various sounds of the language (alphabetic
 system).

To free this last stage from the others was the great Phoenician
contribution.


                                   A

Why is A the first letter? It represents one of the commonest vowel
sounds in ancient languages. Naturally the Phoenician alphabet makers
selected a familiar object in the name of which this particular vowel
sound was emphasized. Since food is of primal importance, it is not
surprising to find that he chose the ox--"Alef" (ah´lef), or rather the
head of the ox, for the characteristics of animals are chiefly embodied
in the head. Not only was the ox important as food but also as a beast
of burden, for the ox had been harnessed to the plow centuries before
the horse was domesticated. Thus one of the earliest and most important
of man's friends among the brute creatures was honored.

In making this letter repeatedly and rapidly they became careless
and instead of crossing the letter V they tried to make it with one
continuous scratching, hence when the Greeks became acquainted with
it three to five centuries after its invention, the picture had
deteriorated almost beyond recognition. They introduced balance and
the V was inverted, and the cross-bar was retained between the lines.
Unknowingly they were drawing the ox head upside down; and it remains
so with us to this day. The Greeks called the first letter alpha,
the Romans called it A (ah) and we call it A (ay), a sound it never
possessed in Latin.


                                   B

The second letter of the alphabet represents a crude house, roughly
outlined. After food, shelter is an important consideration and this
fact was expressed by the early alphabet maker. The Greeks again were
ignorant of the picture and careless or indifferent as to the exact
name of the character, and thus two triangles instead of the square
supporting a triangle were made and the name changed from "beth" to
"beta" (ba´ta). Combine the Greek names for the first two letters and
we have (alphabeta) "alphabet." The Romans shortened the name "beta,"
calling it B (bay) and introduced the curved loops. The original name
is familiar to us through names found in the Scriptures: Bethel (house
of God) and Bethlehem (house of bread).


                                  C-G

The "ship of the desert," the camel, gave its name to the third letter.
Our name for this animal is traceable back to the Phoenician "gimel"
(ghe´mel) or "gamel" (gah´mel). The long neck and the peculiar angle
of the neck in relation to the head could easily be represented. The
Greeks made changes similar to those in other letters--they improved
the shape and changed the name to "gamma." The Romans did not forget
the curve and gave it both the hard and soft sounds (kay and gay).
Later on, about the third century A.D. to distinguish the "g" sound
from the "k" sound they added a little bar below the opening. Thus we
get both C and G from the picture of the camel.

Stevenson said that when he was a child the capital G always impressed
him as a genii swooping down to drink out of a handsome cup. Kipling's
story of the invention of the alphabet is filled with similar
delightful stories of the picture origin of letter forms.


                                   D

The next letter, D, came from a representation of a door--"daleth"
(dah´leth). It probably pictures the door of a tent. A custom that
prevails among the Arabs and in a number of countries gave particular
importance to the door of a tent--a stranger, or even an enemy, if
he entered through the door of a tent must receive food, drink and
shelter. "Daleth" became "delta" with the Greeks and D (day) with the
Romans, who, of course, rounded the angle.


                                   E

The house picture gave us B, the door, D, and the window, E. "He" (hay)
meant to look, to see, or window, and one writer asserts our familiar
street cry "hey, there" can be traced to these ancient times. One side
bar of the window was lost early.

The Greeks at first used this sound for the long "e" (epsilon) but
afterwards employed the character H or "eta" for the long sound. The
Romans at first made no change except to call it "eh."

This is the letter that occurs so frequently in English words, and
many no doubt recall the interesting use that Poe makes of this fact in
his story "The Gold Bug."


                                   F

Our letter order does not agree with that of the Phoenicians or the
early Greeks. Our sixth letter, F, is missing in classical Greek,
but it is found in earlier writings. It comes from a Phoenician
representation of a hook or nail (?) "vau." The Hebrew form resembles
the latter object. The nail was important in shipbuilding, a common
industry of the early traders. When the Greeks used this letter they
called it "digamma" (double gamma) and its form represented one "gamma"
(Greek c) superimposed over the other. The Romans called it F (ef) and
during the reign of Emperor Claudius the consonant V was represented by
the F inverted. This was done because the Latin alphabet had but one
character to represent U and V and OCTAVIA became OCTAℲIA.


                                   H

Two fence posts and three horizontal boards gave us our eighth letter,
H. The fence was called "cheth" (haith). The Greeks omitted the upper
and lower boards thus making it like our H, and called it "eta" (ata).
The Romans gave it a soft sound H (hah) just as we do today.


                                  I-J

The parts of the human body also played an important part in giving
form to the letters of the alphabet. The early peoples recognized the
value of the hand and the head and these members gave rise to the
letters I and K, and Q and R respectively. The hand in profile bent at
the knuckles and wrist gives us the character "yod" (the hand) as used
by the Phoenicians. The Greeks, who always liked to have their words
end in vowels, added "a" and called it "Iota" (e-o´ta). When the Romans
received it, it was simply a vertical stroke, I (ee) which represented
the same long "e" sound as it did with the Greeks, but later they used
it both as a consonant and vowel, differentiating the consonant by
making the letter I longer, J; but they did not give a distinct letter
form for the capital J until the sixteenth century.

The small j came into being nearly a century later. The dot over the i
was first introduced in a thirteenth century manuscript.

[Illustration: Genealogy of Our Letters from the Phoenician Alphabet
1300 B.C.

Until the 3rd Century B.C. the character _c_ represented
the sounds of both _g_ and _k_ when a slight modification of the
character _c_ was made for the _g_ sound.

In a table of this sort, dates, forms, and even meanings must be
arbitrary. For instance, _Koph_ can be spelled _Goph_ or _Qoph_; He may
have no meaning; _Lamed_ (_Lamedh_) may mean _teacher's rod_; _Samech_
(_Samekh_) may mean _fish_ or _fulcrum_; _Zayin_ may mean _olive_ or
_balance_.]


                                   K

The silhouette of the open hand, with its radiating lines, discloses
the origin of the letter K, "kaph," which signified hollow or palm. We
know that palmistry was practiced by the ancients, and probably the
association of reading the hand and writing influenced the inclusion of
this character. The Greeks added their favorite vowel sound, "a," again
and thus obtained their "Kappa." The Romans had no need for this letter
at first, as C furnished the same sound. When they did accept it, they
made no change.


                                   L

The ox goad or whip lash, "lamed" (lah´med) gave rise to the next
letter. Herding oxen and sheep was the important occupation of the
slaves of the Phoenicians and hence the last, an object so unfamiliar
to us, was easily recognized by them. The Greeks again added an "a"
and called it "lambda" and made it in the form of an inverted V. The
Romans, strangely, adhered more closely to the original form than did
the Greeks.


                                  M-N

The Phoenicians were lovers of the sea, and from this source two
letters were derived, M and N. They explored not only all of the
Mediterranean shore at an early date, but they also sailed boldly
through the gates of Gibraltar, and "beyond the world" where they found
Britain. They were the first navigators that sailed by night and it is
said they discovered the north star. Therefore it is not surprising
that water "mem" (maim) is the source of M and that fish, "nun" (noon)
the source of N. The letter M has changed but little in form, it is
the Greek letter "Mu" and the Roman M (em). The head of the fish, from
which the letter N is pictured, was simplified even more than the head
of the ox, in A. It no doubt represents the fisherman's viewpoint--not
a swimming fish but a suspended one. The Greeks reversed the stroke and
called it "Nu" and the Romans did not change its form but called it N
(en).


                                   O

In Phoenicia, as in Egypt, China and Mexico, the eye is one of the
commonest elements found in the writing. It was called "Ayin" (ah-yin).
The Greeks used it for two sounds now designated by "Omicron," little
"o," and "omega," great "o," the letter which, strangely, was placed at
the end of the Greek alphabet. We find in the Bible: "I am the Alpha
and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." How
many today would think of using the alphabet for such an important
illustration? It is easy to trace the Roman O (oh) from its Greek
parent, "omicron."


                                   P

Many letter pictures run in pairs--finger and hand, water and fish--and
now after eye we find mouth "pi" (pe) which represents the lower lip.
The Greeks made little change in the name or shape at first, but later
they introduced the angles and made the downward strokes equal. The
Romans formed the letter by continuing the curve farther than the
Phoenicians and called it "pe" (pay).


                                  Q-R

Now we come to Q and R, the letters which were mentioned above as those
probably coming from the head. Whether Q (koph) was derived from the
picture of the back view of the head and neck, or whether it represents
a knot, which, no doubt, was as important to navigators then as it is
now, is a mooted question. The Q sound is guttural and the tail of
the letter is supposed to indicate the throat sound. The Greeks soon
discarded "koppa," as it was called, and the Romans went back to the
original source for their Q (koo).

The back view of the head is the unusual one, for as we look at the
drawing of the early races, or memory pictures, or the delineations of
a child of seven or eight we find they are almost without exception
profile pictures. The Phoenician "resh" represents the profile and
shows very little resemblance to a human being, although at first the
features may have been more clearly indicated. The Greeks, as was to be
expected, turned the letter around, and later, oddly enough, introduced
a curve making it exactly like the Roman letter P. The extra stroke
which we find in the Roman letter was no doubt due to the carelessness
in copying. They pronounced it R (air).


                                   S

There is a common legend explaining S, the letter with the hissing
sound. Because of its curved shape and its hissing sound many people
believe it to be derived from a snake. Its real history is easily
followed from Phoenician "shin" or "sin" (teeth) to the present day.
Its form closely resembled our W. The Greeks made it perpendicular for
their "sigma" and the Romans simplified and curved it giving S (ess).


                                   T

Our twentieth letter, T, is particularly interesting because it is
derived from "tahv" a mark or cross made by people who could not
write, and no doubt their signature frequently resembled it. We must
not forget that even Charlemagne and other kings of the middle ages
had to make their mark or trace their initials through stencil plates.
The only change of "tahv" to Greek "tau," and to Roman T (tay) was the
raising of the cross-bar.


                                 U-V-Y

The letters U, V and Y were all taken from the letter "Upsilon," and
it may have been derived from the queer Hebrew form of "Ayin" which
closely resembles Y. The letters U and V were interchangeable. Upsilon,
known as the "Samian letter," was used by Pythagoras as an emblem to
represent the parting of the ways--the young man making a choice in
life.


                                   W

Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers contributed two letters, W (wen) and
another often confused with Y, called "thorn." These were introduced
during the thirteenth century. The French always called the former
letter double vay, and in English it may be said to represent double U,
as its name indicates. The letter "thorn" had the value of the digraph
"th," and "ye" in old English should be pronounced "the" like the
definite article.


                                  X-Z

Although we have no direct need for the letter X, for Z can be
substituted for it when it is used as an initial letter, and "ks" when
used elsewhere, it has remained in the alphabet since its frequent
use by the Greeks. It came from the Roman X (eex) which may have been
derived from the Greek "ksi." The latter resembles the Phoenician
character "samech," meaning a post or support.

The dagger "zayin" from which we obtain our Z must have been
important in the daily lives of the Greeks, Hebrews and Phoenicians
for it occupies the sixth place (Zeta) and the seventh in the latter
alphabets. The Romans did not change its name or shape, but although
there has been little change in 2,000 years we see little resemblance
to the short sword in the letter the Romans gave to us.

                     *       *       *       *       *

Many slight changes that have occurred in the formation of the letters
of the alphabet may be accounted for. At first the Greeks wrote from
left to right in one line and from right to left on the next line--a
mode of writing which has been termed "boustrophedon" because it runs
as an ox plow does in a field, up one furrow and down another. It is
due to this fact that many letters were reversed from their original
prototypes. It is interesting to note that recently books for the blind
have been embossed in this manner.

The small letters of the alphabet, sometimes called "lower case"
letters because printers keep them in a case below the capitals, or
"minuscule letters" in contrast with "majuscule," or capital letters,
illustrate further changes due to rapid writing of capitals in a
cursive or running hand.

The few characters selected by the Phoenicians, the great traders,
artificers and farmers of the ancient world, not only influenced Greek
literature and life, Roman and modern nations in Europe, but also
spread eastward to the very walls of China. The Hebrews copied them as
a whole and retained the original names with only slight variations.
They did change the shapes because a different writing instrument was
employed.

According to a legend, Jehovah gave the letters to Moses, hence all the
left curves in Hebrew letter form turn upward--as symbols of a finger
pointing heavenward.

The Phoenician alphabet is also the parent of the Arabic, Indian,
Javanese, Corean, Tibetan, Coptic syllabaries and alphabets. No small
country ever gave such a great gift to humanity; no large country could
have given a greater gift.

          THIS ARTICLE COMPOSED IN JANSON TYPES, AS ARE THOSE
                 ARTICLES FOLLOWING FOR WHICH NO OTHER
                        TYPE FACE IS INDICATED.




              [Illustration]LANCELOT HOGBEN[Illustration]

                  _Printing, Paper and Playing Cards_

_From Cave Painting to Comic Strip_ by Lancelot Hogben. Copyright 1949
 by The Chanticleer Press. Reprinted in abridged form by permission of
                         author and publisher.


Twenty thousand years or more separate the way of life of the
Aurignacian hunters, who contributed the first pictures to the modern
symposium of human communications, from the beginnings of settled
community life and the beginnings of a priestly script. Fully three
thousand years separate the way of life of the first Semitic trading
folk who had an alphabet from the vast expansion of knowledge which
occurred in Northern Europe after the spread of printing from movable
type during the half century before the voyages of Columbus. Civilised
mankind had to surmount many hurdles before it was possible to exploit
to the fullest extent the considerable economy signalised by the
introduction of alphabetic writing.

At first, there were few people who had any use for the art of writing
except as a convenience of commercial intercourse. There was in fact
no incentive to adapt the art of writing with letters to the flexible
uses of daily speech.... An age-long popular tradition of community
singing and community dancing lies back of Aeschylus, Euripides and
Aristophanes; but it was one which could assume so novel an aspect only
in the trading communities of the islands in the Mediterranean, where
constant interchange of personnel promoted conditions less propitious
to the dominance of a priestly class of avaricious landed proprietors
than under the earlier dynasties of Egypt and the near East. Thus and
there, at an early date, a segment of tribal ritual crystallises as a
secular pursuit; and where there is a flourishing drama there is also a
motive for writing, equally aloof from association with the repetition
of sacred texts or from the limited requirements of the counting-house.
There is, in fact, an incentive to write down what is more than a
ceremonial password, an epitaph or a bill of goods, an incentive to
record in writing what living people actually speak.

It is indeed a far cry from the Greek drama to the free-and-easy
visual speech of a modern novel or of a modern newspaper in the
Western world; but we unduly belittle our too often overrated debt to
Greek civilisation, if we fail to pay tribute to an innovation which
entitles Greek literature to rank as a cardinal contribution to the
self-education of the human species. To a far greater extent than the
Romans, the Greeks wrote about the life of their times with an intimacy
and liveliness which foreshadows the adaptation of writing to all the
familiar uses of speech. For the Latin which generations of schoolboys
reluctantly construed in the grammar schools, Latin in the Gladstone
tradition, was actually dead when committed to writing, a language as
remote from the common speech of the Italian peninsula as the idiom of
Gertrude Stein from that of the contemporary American household.

Within the framework of Greco-Latin society, the written word became
available to the more prosperous citizens on a scale unprecedented in
the civilisations which had preceded them; but there were still very
few who read much or read often. The spoken word was still the main
instrument of instruction and of political persuasion. Even among those
who could read, there were still few who could also write. There were
in fact two formidable impediments alike to the use of the written word
as a medium of instruction or of propaganda and to the availability of
any considerable body of written matter for those with inclination and
training in the art of reading. Needless to say, one was the laborious
nature of the only available means of multiplying the products of the
pen, when it was necessary to copy every script individually by hand;
and since this was a labour commonly entrusted to slaves, deficiency
in penmanship gave little affront to self-esteem among the still
privileged few who could read with ease. The other handicap was the
writing surface itself, often of its very nature inadaptable to free
circulation and at best costly.

PAPER is so much a part of every-day life that we too easily overlook
the significance of writing material as a circumstance limiting the
advancement of literacy. It is on that account worthy of more than a
single sentence. The clay tablets of Babylon and Crete might serve the
purpose of stocking a temple or a palace library; but no household of
modest size could have accommodated the contents of several issues of
the _New Yorker_, if transcribed in the cuneiform tradition. Much the
same may be said about the wax tablets in common use among the Roman
contemporaries of Cicero. Indeed the advantage Egyptian civilisation,
and thereafter the mainland Greek, Alexandrian, and late Latin, enjoyed
from the use of _papyrus_ is difficult to exaggerate. Papyrus consists
of longitudinal ribbons of reed laid on a wet surface, stuck with gum
to an overlaying layer of similar strips at right angles, dried in the
sun and subsequently polished. It has a double advantage over clay and
wax. It is not bulky, and its smooth surface permits an easy cursive
style of writing. On the other hand, its manufacture is tedious; and it
does not stand up to a moist climate.

Long before printing began in Europe--during the Han dynasty in the
first century A.D.--the Chinese had taken a lesson from the wasp,
which makes its nest by chewing vegetable fibre and pressing the moist
suspension into a film of even thickness. As a source of vegetable
fibre, the Chinese used anything which came to hand: old fishing nets,
worn-out rope and hemp, macerating it in tubs before removing with a
sieve the artificial detritus. It is then possible to compress the
latter to required thickness, and the triturated fibres adhere when
dry. The Mandarin had now material far superior to papyrus, alike for
copying or for storing the written word; but he lacked the incentive
to share the advantage of this invention with his underprivileged
compatriots. Chinese literature received a new impetus; but there were
still few who could enjoy its benefits....

The capture of Samarkand by the Arabs in A.D. 750 marks the date when
paper starts on its trek to the as yet non-existent printing presses
of Europe. The Moslem invaders of Spain and Sicily brought it with
them into the territories they conquered, and with it a recipe for
deriving the fibre basis from old rags. For three centuries after
its introduction to Christendom, somewhere about A.D. 1200, it had
to compete with parchment or vellum made from stretched, pressed and
dried animal membranes. What was probably decisive in establishing its
supremacy was the spread of water mills in the two centuries before
Caxton. Power was necessary to speed up maceration of the raw material;
and we have record of paper mills in Germany by A.D. 1336. Had it not
been for this new tempo and economy of production of thin, smooth and
flexible material for the impress of the written word, the vastly
increased volume of written matter put into circulation by the printing
press could not have come about.

As we all know, printing from movable type began in Europe about
fifty-years before Columbus set out on his first voyage; but few of us
reflect upon the dramatic speed with which the new trade spread from
one city or one country to another. A single leaf of a sibylline poem
called the _Fragment of World Judgment_ is supposedly the earliest
extant product of the new technique, probably issued about the year
1445 from the press of Gutenberg, a master printer, then resident in
Strasbourg. From law-suit records we know that Fust, a goldsmith of
Mainz who financed Gutenberg's earliest trials, was printing there
during the fifties; and McMurtrie, author of _The Book_, states that

 the first _dated_ piece of printing preserved to us appeared in
 1454, which is thus the earliest date that can be set beyond any
 speculation or controversy. In that year four different issues
 of a papal indulgence appeared in printed form. The occasion was
 historic. Constantinople had fallen to the Turks the year before.
 At the solicitation of the king of Cyprus, Pope Nicholas V granted
 indulgences to those of the faithful who should aid with gifts
 of money the campaign against the Turks. Paulinus Chappe, as
 representative of the king of Cyprus, went to Mainz to raise money
 of this cause. Ordinarily, these indulgences would have been written
 out by hand, but in this case, as there were a considerable number to
 be distributed, the aid of the new art of printing was enlisted, and
 forms were printed with blank spaces left for filling the dates, the
 names of the donors to whom they were issued, and other details.

The new art turned out to be a double-edged weapon in the hands of
papal authority. A Latin Bible in two columns of forty-two lines to the
page came out in 1456, most probably, according to McMurtrie, from the
press of Fust, now in competition with Gutenberg. As early as 1478, a
Cologne master printer issued a Bible in two different German dialects
with well over a hundred illustrations. There were 133 editions of it
during the next fifty years. To be sure, a century was to elapse before
printed Bibles were available in the home tongue throughout Germany,
Britain, Scandinavia and the Low Countries; but it was a disastrous
step to make the poorer clergy Bible-conscious.

Within ten years of the issue of the Indulgence mentioned above,
printing by movable type was going on in several German cities other
than Mainz and Strasbourg. German printers brought the art to Rome
in 1467, and two years later John of Spire, like Fust a goldsmith,
had started work in Venice. In Switzerland, says McMurtrie, it seems
likely that "the first printing office in Basle began work about
1467." Printing in Paris starts about a year later. In 1469, Caxton, a
Kentishman, who had occupied consular status to the English Merchant
Adventurers at Bruges, began translating into his own tongue for the
press the _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, printed there in 1475.
A year later, he returned to England, set up business with Colard
Mansion in the Almonry near Westminster Abbey, and from that office
produced _The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers_. This, states
McMurtrie,

 was the first dated book printed in England, the Epilogue being dated
 1477 and in one copy November 18. Though this was the first _dated_
 book, it was not certainly the first issue of the press, Caxton's
 translation of Jason and a few other publications of slight extent
 having probably preceded it.

Within twenty years from the start, on the threshold of the
discovery of the New World, printing from movable type is thus in
full swing throughout Europe. The speedy and consequent intellectual
ferment is an oft-told tale, scarcely worth further comment, if it
were not too customary to dwell on the alleged impact on natural
knowledge, as on biblical criticism and political theory, of Greek
scholarship imported into Europe by Byzantine immigrants in flight
from the victorious Turks. The fact is that the positive outcome of
Alexandrian mathematics, astronomy, medicine and mechanics had long
ago penetrated north-western Europe through visits of students to the
Moorish universities in Spain, where positive knowledge had attained
a higher level than ever before through the marriage of Alexandrian
science to Hindu number-lore. Equally indisputable is the fact that
the universities of Toledo, Cordova and Seville were midwives of
the cartography which Jewish pilots put at the service of Henry the
Navigator. That the new technique of printing made available for the
great explorations of the fifteenth century a new scientific amenity
for which there was a pre-existing and insistent demand is evident from
the mounting number of nautical almanacks published between Gutenberg's
first productions and the project of Columbus. Soon there were to
follow manuals of military science propounding problems of ballistics
created by the introduction of gunpowder into warfare--like paper, from
Chinese sources by way of the Moslem world.

Why monks, such as Adelard of Bath, should disguise themselves as
Moslems to study in the Moorish universities during the twelfth century
is easy to understand. The Church had assumed the responsibilities
of the ancient priesthoods as custodians of the calendar, and hence
of astronomical lore, when Christianity became the official religion
of the Roman Empire. As founders of hospitals in conformity with
the beatitude of the sick visitor, they were prohibited from active
participation in the advancement of medicine as a science by Papal
bulls against dissection of the human body, but on that account the
more well-disposed to Jewish missionaries of the Moorish culture, when
the latter set up schools of medicine on the campuses of the mediaeval
universities....

That Ionian scientific speculations exerted a salutary influence on
Newtonian science, when the atomic concept invaded modern European
thought after the seventeenth-century translations of Gassendi and
others, is not open to dispute. Nor need we rob the fugitive scholars
of Constantinople of the credit for playing a minor part in this
climax off-stage; but the efflorescence of science in the seventeenth
century was the immediate consequence of technological advances made in
the preceding century, and put into circulation through a commercial
undertaking which had to sell science to a reading public of master
pilots, mining engineers, artillery commanders and spectacle-makers
before naturalistic science had paid its way into university cloisters
under a more accommodating sobriquet as natural philosophy.

With this overdue obituary on the immigrants from the fall of
Constantinople in the year preceding the first dated product of the
new printing technique let us leave them; and again get into focus
the astonishing speed of its spread in an age when the craft guilds
jealously guarded their secrets. Here is a technical revolution of the
first magnitude at a time when technical innovations diffused leisurely
against menacing obstacles of custom thought and of legal sanctions. As
such, its tempo is a challenge to curiosity; and part of the answer to
the enigma is that there was already a flourishing craft of printing to
take advantage of the economy of movable type, when Gutenberg and Fust
began their partnership.

Again, we must pause to pay a debt of gratitude to China, and to
civilisations far older than the Chinese. We have seen that the seal is
the oldest form of signature; and that all our knowledge of one of the
earliest literatures of the world comes from clay tablets on which the
Sumerian priesthoods engraved their sign-language with a punch to which
it owes the characteristic style called cuneiform. The same impulse to
impose the signature of a sky-sign on the clay tablet had led men to
impress symbols of ownership or good omen on the soft clay products
of the potter's wheel before the baking began. A stamp is, after all,
a seal to carry a pigment; and the practice of stamping pottery with
coloured patterns is of great antiquity. The next step is intelligible
in its own territory. In China, whence the silkworm made its lethargic
way across the great trade routes of Asia, stamping patterns on silk
was probably a practice before the Christian era began; and it was
China which produced the first paper. Probably about A.D. 700, though
it may well be earlier, the practice of stamping charms by wood blocks
on paper began there. In A.D. 767 the Empress Shotoku of Japan ordered
a million Buddhist charms to be printed from wood blocks on paper for
placing in miniature pagodas.

The Chinese predilection for games such as _Mah Jongg_ is an ancient
tradition; and an early use of block printing--long before it came
into Europe--is the production of _sheet dice_ or, as we should say,
playing cards. As charms--pictures of saints--and as playing cards,
wood-block printing established a market in Europe at least a century
before Gutenberg's Bible. Fortunately, we know some facts about this,
as often by a happy dispensation. For the age-long obstruction of the
legal mind to progress conspires with its obsessional drive to record
its own ineptitudes and us to perpetuate milestones of progress by
the resistance it offers to innovation. Thus we have the record of
a prohibition issued by the Provost of Paris in A.D. 1397 against
working men playing cards on working days; and there were many such
prohibitions in German towns about this time. We have also originals of
contemporaneous wood-block prints portraying saints for sale at shrines
by travelling pedlars and palmers, encouraged to foregather by papal
indulgences for the pilgrims.

Like _Snap_ and other children's card games of today, the first playing
cards were wholly pictorial, in suits exhibiting the feudal hierarchy,
starting with the king and queen. The joker is a relic. Sometimes, the
wood block of the picture card accommodated a title or epithet, and
often the _Heiligen_, or shrine charms promoted by the clergy as an
antidote to the carnal indulgence of card-playing, would carry the name
of the saint. Either way, the next step was inevitable. We are now in
sight of printing as a medium for the rapid circulation of knowledge;
but we have to take stock of several features of the folk ways of
Europe in the Middle Ages before we take the next hurdle.

When we reach the threshold of the fifteenth century, writing is
no longer the prerogative of a priestly caste. There are merchants
with big balances in the wool trade, the herring trade and the spice
trade. There are pilots who have to rely on their _rutter_ books to
navigate cargoes of the spice trade over long ocean routes. There is
a mounting volume of manorial accountancy and litigation connected
with the exchange of produce between the countryside and the boroughs
where master-craftsmen and merchants are now aspiring to domestic
conveniences heretofore inaccessible to the landed gentry. All this
signifies the pre-existence of considerable semi-literate personnel to
provide a market for the products of Gutenberg's trade. It is necessary
to say this, because school history too often exhibits the Church and
the Law as the custodians of literacy.

What is true is that the monks, and to a less extent the lawyers,
were the only people who had time to write _at length_ during the
century we have now reached. The lawyers we may leave to their own
sadistic pursuits.... The Church deserves kinder consideration, even
if the Church had outstayed its welcome. For Catholicism kept alive
the lucidity of picture-language in an age when a new technique of
illustration offered the only means of grace to the few men who saw the
light of science through a miasma of verbal puns.

In short, we are here talking of the _Missals_, a form of sacred art
with a charm to which even a hard-boiled technician such as the writer
is not entirely indifferent. There is a pathetic earnestness about the
tender care with which the monks illuminated their copies of devotional
texts, and one which established what we may fairly call the first
experiment in visual education for the people. The monks who made the
missals offered a helping hand to the new industry. To be sure, we
read a lot of rubbish written about what we owe to them; but they did
one thing of enduring value besides starting hospitals and nursing
the spectacle trade for the benefit of "poor blind men." They made
_block-books_ possible. In the admirable book already cited, this is
what McMurtrie has to say about their contribution:

 There is ... one exceedingly primitive block book, the _Exercitium
 super Pater Noster_, in which the illustrations are printed from
 woodcuts and the text added in manuscript.... The costume is that of
 the Burgundian court of the second quarter of the century, and this
 feature, in conjunction with the technique of design and cutting led
 Hind to date the book about 1430 and hardly later than 1440.

There is still argument about whether devotional block-books with
both illustrations and text produced from fixed blocks antedated or
synchronised with printing from movable type; but it seems fairly
certain that block-books were in circulation before the wastefulness
of cutting the same letter over and over again on the same block
occurred to Gutenberg, and likely enough to many others. The issue
is of academic interest only. What we can say certainly is that the
printers of playing cards and of _Heiligen_ were already involved in
the book industry before it occurred to anyone to make punches and dies
for letters of the alphabet in order to dispense with the necessity of
repeatedly carving the same sign on a composite block. Metal-founders
of the thirteenth century already knew the art of using stamps with
single letters in relief to make an impress on fine sand for molten
metal when making inscriptions, themselves to appear in relief on the
finished casting. In bell foundries, among craftsmen who made pewter
vessels with inscriptions, in the minting of coin and the casting
of medals, the use of metal single-letter punches and dies was also
commonplace.

In short, there is already in existence an industry of master printers
when the record of Gutenberg's law-suit bequeaths the first documentary
evidence of printing as we use the term today--moreover an industry
working in close contact with ancillary crafts which had already solved
the technical problems on whose solution printing on a larger scale
at less cost was attendant. There is a market for books, with richer
profits if the printer can solve the technical problem of outsmarting
the monks in the art of making the first copy, as he can already
outsmart them by reproducing the first copy without limit. In one
sense, we now have a press.

Still, we have not explained the phenomenal rapidity with which the
new technique of cutting stamps to make up a frame of continuous
type spread throughout Europe, unless we look at our period in its
social entirety; and if we are to do so we must take stock of many
things which were not happening in China, the parent civilisation of
the printing art. One of them is sufficiently obvious to be easily
overlooked in an age of central heating. Europe, as post-war American
tourists will agree, is rather cold and rather cloudy. That is why it
is important to bring glass into the picture. GLASS is an invention
of great antiquity, being in fact an early Egyptian amenity; but the
very qualities we admire in the iridescent glass of Etruscan or Roman
vessels make it equally unsuitable to the uses of domestic life or to
the science of gas or temperature measurement. Before you have leisure
to read, in the chilly north of the Hanseatic League or the Flemish
wool trade, you must have a technique of house design utterly different
from what meets your requirements in the sunny south of Greece and
Italy, Crete or Egypt. It is therefore relevant that there is now, in
the fifteenth century, a prosperous burgher class with houses equipped
with windows made of glass, glass of poor quality by our standards but
vastly better fitted to its principal use than the glass of antiquity.
Nor is it irrelevant that spectacles are now coming into use for the
old folk who have time on their hands.

The very fact that we now have windows brings into focus that we have
an emergent class of semi-literate and relatively prosperous merchants
and craftsmen, a class which is beginning to send its sons to grammar
schools to get a smattering of reading and of the art of cyphers. This
consideration prompts reflection upon the almost ubiquitous association
of the goldsmith as the patron, partner or financier of the earliest
master printers of books. There is now a wealthy craft of jewellers and
armourers skilled in the art of using punches and dies to make patterns
in relief on a metal surface, with a secure trade among the nobles and
the wealthier merchants; and there are already the beginnings of a new
trade in pictorial reproduction fostered by artists seeking patrons
among them. Before printing by movable type begins, the wood-block
illustration is competing with a better technique. Instead of smearing
a sticky ink on a raised surface, it is now possible to achieve the
same end by filling the crevices in a metal plate wiped clean; and
who should be more concerned with promoting the use of pictorial
reproduction by engraving than goldsmith and jeweller well versed in
the uses of impressing a pattern in relief or intaglio?

What is happening in the fifteenth century is not the outcropping of
inborn genius. Contrariwise, we should regard it as the confluence
of a large number of new techniques, individually of little import
to human advancement, collectively with a new momentum. Nor need we
pride ourselves on the fact that European civilisation proved equal to
exploiting to greater advantage what it had thanklessly received from
the Eastern world. Paul Pelliot has discovered wooden types attributed
to Wang Cheng in the beginning of the fourteenth century, well over
a hundred years before the first dated printing from movable type in
Germany; and if this invention came to nothing, have we far to seek
the explanation? With twenty-six pigeonholes for a box of letter type
at his elbow, the European compositor of the fifteenth century enjoys
an immeasurable advantage over his fourteenth-century fellow craftsman
who has to manipulate several thousand Chinese characters. Korea took
up movable type, probably through Chinese influence, about fifty years
before Europe.

No intelligent Anglo-American needs to be told at length how printing
contributed to the diffusion of knowledge previously transmitted by
oral tradition, how much more the master printers and book-makers
from Gutenberg to Benjamin Franklin contributed to the making of our
language habits than all the professors of their time, how much the
trade in reading matter contributed to the great enlightenment of
the four centuries which followed, how it also contributed to the
liberation of Christendom from papal authority, what it bestowed on
the age of Galileo and Newton, how it catalysed man's thought about
human dignity and fundamental human rights. What we are prone to forget
is how much water had to pass under the bridges before the homeland
of Caxton or that of Franklin could assert the ability to read and to
transcribe the written word as the birthright of every citizen.

In North America and in Northwestern Europe, literacy is today a
medical diagnosis. That a person cannot read or write is now a
sufficient criterion of mental defect; and this is so in a sense which
would have been utterly false of Britain or the United States alike
when Charles Dickens wrote an uncharitable record of his transatlantic
itinerary. Until the middle of the nineteenth century there was
everywhere a large underprivileged class cut off from the possession of
books and without the incentive to purchase reading matter....

By attaching a cast of the hand-set type to cylinders it was possible
to take advantage of the introduction of steam power with considerable
economy of time entailed in running off the printed sheet; but it was
impossible to reap the harvest of this economy while it was still
necessary to set type by manual extraction from a box of each die for
a letter, cypher or punctuation mark. Also, the manufacturer of paper
from rag was a relatively costly process by modern standards; and
the discovery of a cheaper source of raw material was a precondition
of expanding trade in the printed word. Rag, be it said, is simply
woven fibre of cotton or flax; and any vegetable fibre is good enough
for the work of the wasp. It was therefore a great advance, when it
was possible to use the by-products of the lumber camps for paper
manufacture. Wood pulp as a source of paper came into its own in the
eighties, though its use goes back to a German patent about 1840.
In 1857 Routledge had introduced, as an alternative source of raw
material, esparto grass from Spain and North Africa; and there had
been notable advances in the mechanics of paper production during the
preceding fifty years.

In 1803 the French printer Didot brought into England a device which
took advantage of steam power by running wet pulp on to a moving,
endless belt of wire mesh through which the water drained off. It could
run off in a day six miles of paper of uniform width. In 1821 Crompton
invented the process of drying by steam-heated rollers. Between
1803 and 1815 König in Germany and Cowper in Britain had perfected
power-driven machinery for printing off a continuous roll of paper from
cylinders carrying the type cast. The four-cylinder machine patented
by Cowper and Applegarth in 1827 ran off 5,000 sheets per hour of the
London _Times_ simultaneously printed on both sides. The Walter Rotary
of 1866 appears to have been the first cylinder machine to print on
both sides of an unwinding roll of paper with a power-driven mechanism
to cut the sheets, previously fed to the machine by hand. By that time
a cheaper source of paper was available.

The advent of cheap paper accommodated the purchase of reading matter
to the purse of the poorer classes in the community; but it did not
bring into their lives a daily stimulus to read. While type-setting
remained a manual operation, the maintenance of a daily press was beset
by many difficulties and possible only because it did not as yet aspire
to the topical immediacy which could coax a large semi-literate section
of the population into the habit of daily reading. What made possible a
truly popular press was an invention thus described by McMurtrie:

 Setting extensive manuscripts by hand is, of course, a very slow and
 laborious process, and as the printing industry grew in extent and
 importance it was only natural that efforts should be made to devise a
 means of setting type mechanically at greater speed and less cost....
 The failures were myriad. All efforts to take the foundry type used
 by the compositor and set it up mechanically came to naught. Finally,
 however, Ottmar Mergenthaler invented a machine which, by the action
 of a keyboard somewhat resembling that of a type-writer, assembled
 not type but matrices and, when a whole line was set and spaced, cast
 this line in one piece, or "slug," of type metal. This machine, which
 was first put into practical use in 1886, and appropriately christened
 a "linotype," gave a revolutionary impetus to the printing industry
 ... as with all new inventions of importance it was expected that
 thousands of compositors would be thrown out of work. But, again as
 usual, the industry grew so fast that more men were employed than
 before.

This device is not the only machine which sets type. On its heels came
the monotype which employs the pianola principle for power transmission
and is for some purposes preferable. The technical advantages of one or
the other are irrelevant to our theme. What makes printing by linotype
an outstanding achievement of nineteenth-century technology is that it
permits type-setting to keep pace with the tempo of topical affairs at
a time when a railroad schedule co-ordinated by telegraphy has made man
minute-conscious for the first time in history. It is at once a new
goad to the new social discipline of punctuality and a new means of
satisfying an appetite for sensation among a section of the population
not as yet attuned to habitual reading....

That the Moslem world of Omar Khayyam and Alkarismi transmitted so
many of the benefits of Chinese civilisation to the West, reaping
themselves no advantage from the invention of printing, illustrates
a truth which Marxist dogma ignores. Fruitful innovation is, as the
Marxist rightly asserts, the result of interplay between human needs
and natural resources; but the triple formula of means, motive and
opportunity suffices to account for the vagaries of man's history only
if we recognise the inherent inertia of human motivation. Beliefs do
not come from heaven; but they have a remarkable tenacity in the teeth
of worldly profit, a tenacity forcefully illustrated by two facets of
the Moslem creed. In the racy, though none the less scholarly, account
of the history of printing already cited several times in this chapter,
McMurtrie states:

 The Koran forbade games of chance.... The Koran had been given to the
 Moslems in written form, and writing, therefore, was the only means
 by which it might ever be transmitted. To this day the Koran has
 never been printed from type in any Mohammedan country; it is always
 reproduced by lithography.

One consequence of this is that Moslem countries, and African
communities which have received their script from Moslem missionaries,
suffer from the educational disability of a cursive style which is
ill-suited to easy reading. If we are tempted to ascribe this to
defective hereditary equipment of peoples whose culture was the
inspiration of Europe in the Middle Ages, we may well reflect with
moral and intellectual benefit to ourselves on the complacency
with which western scholars disown the constructive tasks of
language-planning at a time when scientific journals embodying new
discoveries are appearing in twenty or more languages.

Statistics which convey a clear picture of the mounting volume of
printed matter issued annually during the four centuries of European
printing are hard to come by. The number of editions printed in England
increased from 13 in 1510 to 219 in 1580, to about 600 a year in
the first two decades of the nineteenth century and 12,379 in 1913.
Unhappily, an edition is a grossly misleading index of production,
even of new books. What we call a modern best seller signifies a first
edition of over 25,000 copies. In the fifteenth century, the average
edition was about 300 copies. Till the middle of the eighteenth, an
edition rarely exceeded 600; but there were notable exceptions. There
were 34 editions of the _Adagia_ of Erasmus, each of a thousand copies,
in the first few decades of the sixteenth century, and 24,000 copies
of his _Colloquia Familiaria_ came out in the same author's lifetime.
Of Luther's tract _To the Christian Nobility_ 4,000 copies were sold
within five days. The Bible Society, founded in 1711 by Baron von
Canstein in Halle, printed within a short space of time 340,000 copies
of the New Testament and 480,000 copies of the Scriptures as a whole.
The British and Foreign Bible Society, founded in 1804 by Thomas
Charles of Bala as an incident in his crusade against Welsh illiteracy,
was responsible for the issue of 237 million copies in the three
decades 1900-1930....

                   *       *       *       *       *

So far, we have taken no cognisance of the formative role of the master
printer _vis-à-vis_ the culture of contemporary western civilisation.
We shall now try to get into focus the consequences of something quite
new in the history of our species, the emergence of a social personnel
with a vested interest in the enlightenment of mankind. Of such was the
inventor of the first saleable electrical device, the originator of the
very names positive and negative in their now most common technical
context, a man who rendered signal service for his country at the court
of France and put his signature to the Declaration of Independence,
the man whose last will and testament begins "I, Benjamin Franklin,
Printer...."

At first, the master printer was also a publisher, till the
trade began to expand a book-seller as well, and sometimes, like
Caxton, translator or author. Nor is it surprising that printing and
bookselling still preserve the professional outlook of the mediaeval
craftsman far more than any other contemporary commercial undertaking,
with _mores_ peculiar to themselves. Today, as throughout the past four
centuries, there is still a place for the small-scale high-quality
firm in printing, publishing or bookselling alike. Throughout the five
centuries of printing from movable type the small proprietor has ever
been the ally of novel thought; and the book trade still thrives on
the free expression of views which are anathema to big business, oil
politicians and Wall Street tycoons. To say this is not to say that
every publisher, every partner in a printing firm or every back-street
book-seller is in the vanguard of liberal sentiment and fertile
cerebration; but to be blind to their contribution to our common
culture is to be blind to one of the burning issues of our age. Even
to say that the publisher, the printer or the book-seller is always
ahead of his business colleagues in joining the bandwagon of progress
is to dispel a miasma of moral indignation which distorts our view of a
decision contemporary man has to make wisely or incur the prospect of a
dark age of superstition and authority....




              [Illustration: Colophons. Ruth S. Granniss]

Copyright 1930 by _The Colophon_. Reprinted by permission of the author.


The late printer-scholar, Theodore Low De Vinne, was wont to exclaim
with regret over a puzzling bookish question, "Alas, bibliography
is not an exact science!" Since his day, what with the learned
publications of bibliographical societies (first and foremost--that
of England), with such scholarly independent productions as Ronald B.
McKerrow's _Introduction to Bibliography_ and some of its followers,
and with such undertakings as the _Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke_--not
to speak of the many masterly library catalogues and bibliographies
which these late years have brought us--we are almost tempted to
reverse his dictum. We have all these, added to the wealth of pioneer
writings of book-lovers like Richard de Bury, Gabriel Naude, Guillaume
François De Bure, Gabriel Peignot, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, and the more
scientific but no more (nor less) book-loving Panzer, Hain, Brunet,
Renouard, Bradshaw, Haebler, Proctor, Claudin, and our own Wilberforce
Eames. We pause for breath, but have only picked a few random names
from the long roll of those who have loved and worked for the arts that
go into the making, and the science that goes into the understanding
of a printed book--the vehicle which must continue to preserve and
to carry down through the ages the results of men's thoughts and the
records of their deeds.

All this is as it should be, but of late, and especially in connection
with the present vogue for collecting the works of living authors, a
certain quality (shall we call it self-consciousness) has crept in,
an undue stressing of small technicalities, and we blush to confess
a confused feeling of sympathy for the modern book-hunter, who is
having so much of his fun taken away from him by neat little textbooks
and articles, bristling with allusions to "points," "right copies,"
"firsts" and the like (with the inevitable quotation marks) and
filled with weighty questions of dollars and pounds--the seemingly
all-important matter of the investment value of our treasures. This
surely is not the fine frenzy which possessed Charles Lamb when
he wrote: "Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang
upon you, till all your friends cried 'Shame upon you!' It grew so
threadbare--and all because of that folio 'Beaumont and Fletcher,'
which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden. Do
you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds
to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near
ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington,
fearing you should be too late. And when the old book-seller with some
grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was
setting bedwards), lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures, and
when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome, and when
you presented it to me, and when we were exploring the perfectness of
it (_collating_ you called it), and while I was repairing some of the
loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be
left till daybreak--was there no pleasure in being a poor man!"

Where there is much smoke, however, there is fire, and it is assuredly
good that this interest in bibliographical things should have swept the
country, and incidentally that the joys of the bibliomaniac and the
bibliophile are being experienced today by many more than the elect few
of the past, on whom we love to dwell. But if we moderns are doomed to
buy our first editions ready labelled and to have our equations worked
out in advance, if a fine copy must be termed immaculate and the back
of a book must be its spine, etc., etc., ad infinitum, let us start
with the right premises, and hold on to the terms which were proverbial
before we were born. Which brings us to our point--What is a Colophon?

The question would seem a reflection upon the intelligence of the
average book-lover, at this late day, were it not that there seems to
be a growing tendency, shared (even instigated) by lexicographers, to
mis-define the word, or to use it out of its truly bibliographical
and philological meaning. To book-lovers and collectors of even the
preceding generation, acquainted as they were with the niceties
of their vocation, or avocation, the suggestion of more than one
signification would have seemed well-nigh an insult. Perhaps it is
even because we are living in this late day that heresies have crept
in. After all, it is nearly a quarter of a century since the Caxton
Club of Chicago brought out _An Essay on Colophons_, by Dr. Alfred W.
Pollard, later Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, whose
word on all bibliographical matters carries the highest authority--the
Club thereby performing one of those great services to students of
bibliography for which it and similar institutions are acclaimed by an
appreciative, if limited, circle. Perhaps the very limits of the circle
are accountable for lack of knowledge, and it may be that a book,
printed nearly twenty-five years ago in an edition of some two hundred
and fifty copies, may never have come within the ken of a writer on
bookish things today--even of an earnest one. But that is just where
our quarrel begins--ought anyone to write on colophons, or on anything
else, without some knowledge of at least the chief literature of the
subject, and should the next man, and the next, be allowed to hand on
an error, or perhaps a misconception, without a thought of the original
sources of information? For that is just what has been happening in
America in this matter, and what it seems must also be occurring in
greater ones. There is plenty of thorough scholarship here, scholarship
that shrinks from no drudgery--then why is it that so much hasty,
slipshod work is allowed to pass?

But we were speaking of colophons--a word which, to many people who
trouble with it at all, seems to mean almost anything,--for instance
the mark or device of a printer or publishing firm, placed anywhere
at random in a book, possibly bearing a motto or a name. Indeed, this
is the signification which has frequently been given to it of late in
print and in common speech by people who should have known better,
and whom a little thought or a little more research would have taught
better. For instance, a publisher's assistant suggested that a given
place upon the title page is the proper location for the colophon; a
librarian wrote to request a copy of the "colophon of the Grolier Club"
to add to a collection; a book-trade magazine issued an article on
devices or trade-marks of publishers of today, appearing on the title
pages of their publications, and dubbed them all colophons; a college
professor used the term in like manner; and all this occurred within a
period of a few months.

The only protest to be raised in print seems to be that of Leonard L.
Mackall, in his dependable "Notes for Bibliophiles," a department of
the _Herald Tribune's_ Sunday magazine, _Books_. In the issue of March
17, 1929, he wrote: "Right here we must call special attention to the
fact that, some modern ignorant or careless misuse to the contrary,
notwithstanding, a colophon is not really a colophon at all unless
it appears at the end of the book. Most certainly the word does not
properly mean merely a publisher's device wherever used, as stated in a
[recent] anonymous illustrated article."

No one has heeded him, however, and my own like-minded objections were
met with the advice to look in the dictionary, and then the blow fell!
It is true that some dictionaries, but by no means all, countenance
this usage of colophon as a device upon a title page. Before quoting
their definitions, let us look at the Oxford English Dictionary, where
we find:

 1. "Finishing stroke"; "crowning touch," _obs._

 2. The inscription or device, sometimes pictorial or emblematic,
 formerly placed at the end of a book or manuscript, and containing the
 title, the scribe's or printer's name, date and place of printing,
 etc. Hence, _from title page to colophon_.

It may be noted that, of the various examples (1774-1874) quoted by the
Oxford English Dictionary, not one refers to the colophon as placed
elsewhere than at the end of the book.

Our Century Dictionary is sound on the subject, but we have in Funk &
Wagnalls' Standard Dictionary:

 1. An inscription or other device formerly placed at the end of books
 and writings, often showing the title, writer's or printer's name and
 date and place of printing.

 2. An emblematic device adopted by a publisher and impressed on his
 books, usually on the title page of each volume (accompanied by an
 illustration of the printer's mark of Nicolas Jenson, inscribed:
 "Colophon of Nicolas Jenson" [1481]).

The phrase "usually on the title page" (not in the Oxford English
Dictionary) seems to us absolutely wrong, and not to be countenanced
for a moment by bookmen who have proper regard for the correct usage of
words.

The corresponding definition in late editions of Webster's Dictionary
is:

 An emblem, usually a device assumed by the publishing-house, placed
 either on the title page, or at the end of a book.

In what subtle way this secondary and inadequate definition has crept
into American usage we do not know, and we plead earnestly for its
abandonment.

In the encyclopedias consulted, there is nothing disturbing, the
definition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, written by Dr. Pollard,
being especially clear and concise. It runs in part as follows:

 ... a final paragraph in some manuscripts and many early printed
 books, giving particulars as to authorship, date and place of
 production, and sometimes expressing the thankfulness of the author,
 scribe or printer on the completion of his task ... the importance of
 these final paragraphs slowly diminished, and the information they
 gave was gradually transferred to the title page. Complete title pages
 bearing the date and name of the publishers are found in most books
 printed after 1520, and the final paragraph, if retained at all, was
 gradually reduced to information as to the printer and date. From
 the use of the word in the sense of a "finishing stroke" (from the
 story that the final charge of the cavalry of Colophon was always
 decisive) such a final paragraph as has been described is called by
 bibliographers a "colophon," but this name for it is quite possibly
 not earlier than the eighteenth century.

Let us turn from general works to those specifically bibliographical.
In his _Introduction to Bibliography_,[2] Dr. McKerrow writes: "In the
early days of printing, the end of the book was the normal place for
the printer's name and the place and date of printing to appear. The
history of the colophon is merely that of the gradual transference of
this information to the title page. When this was complete the colophon
was as a rule of no use and it was abandoned."

Later, among his cataloguing instructions we find: "A colophon should
always be noticed, if there is one. It is also, I think, desirable to
record the occurrence of a printer's device (even without a verbal
imprint) at the end of a book, as this often appears to take the place
of a colophon."

Iolo Williams' _Elements of Book-Collecting_[3] contains this
paragraph: "In the earliest printed books the title page's functions
were performed by the colophon, a word which is a transliteration of
the Greek, a summit or finishing stroke. The colophon is put, not near
the beginning of the book, like the title page, but at the end, and
it usually takes the form of a statement that here ends such-and-such
a book, written by so-and-so, printed by so-and-so at such-and-such a
place and date. The use of the colophon has been revived in certain
finely-printed modern books, but such modern volumes usually contain
both a title page and a colophon."

Though not quite as satisfying, the following allusion in Van Hoesen
and Walter's _Bibliography_[4] should be quoted, as occurring in a
modern American treatise on the subject: "The early printers used
the colophon at the end of the book instead of a title page, and the
colophon is still used to indicate the printing firm in cases where it
is not part of the publishing firm given on the title page."

These are the latest printed words that we have noticed. Suffice it to
say that we have nowhere found in earlier important manuals anything
but the (to us) proper explanation of the term. In other words, we
gather from important sources that, while a colophon may include or
even take the form of a printer's mark or device, such a mark, placed
upon a title page, is not a colophon.

Aroused by the dictionary findings, and discovering those American
students of bibliography whom I consulted to be in agreement with me,
I wrote to Dr. Pollard, as to a court of final appeal, to inquire
if he considered it meticulous to object to the intrusion of this
illogical trade definition which some dictionaries and many people are
giving us. His answer, which I am allowed to quote, seems definite and
wise enough to carry conviction, coming as it does from the admitted
authority on the subject: "If a sufficient number of people misuse a
word, Dictionaries have to record the wrong use as well as the right,
as in the case of _hectic_ and crowds of other words. But the misuse
of the word _colophon_ as a synonym for the printer's mark or device,
without regard to position, has not yet gone as far as this and should
be strenuously resisted. By standard use as well as by etymology, the
word means the crowning stroke, or finishing touch, to a book or part
of a book, and it must come at the end of the book, or part of a book,
rightly to be given this title.

"In cataloguing early books it would not in my judgment be incorrect
to enter the printer's device at the end of a book, under the heading
colophon."

And now, the unpleasantly controversial side of the matter having
been disposed of (if so large an adjective as controversial may be
applied to so small a paper), let us devote our little remaining
space to the colophons themselves, first turning our attention to Dr.
Pollard's book,[5] with his own rendering into English of the unwieldy
fifteenth-century Latin.

In the introduction, Dr. Richard Garnett gives a brief sketch of
the derivation and earliest uses of the term. He quotes the Greek
word _colophon_, the head or summit of anything, usually used in a
figurative sense, the position on a crest of the City of Colophon
(whence its name), the first appearance of the word in the seventeenth
century, with its secondary classical sense of a "finishing stroke"
or a "crowning touch," and goes on to say: "Of the use of the word
_colophon_ in the particular significance elucidated in this essay--the
end or ultimate paragraph of a book or manuscript--the earliest example
quoted in the New English Dictionary is from Warton's _History of
English Poetry_ published in 1774. A quarter of a century before this
it is found as a term needing no explanation in the first edition of
the _Typographical Antiquities_ of Joseph Ames, published in 1749.
How much older it is than this cannot lightly be determined. The
bibliographical use appears to be unknown to the Greek and Latin
lexicographers, medieval as well as classical. Pending further
investigation, it seems not unlikely that it may have been developed
out of the secondary classical sense already mentioned sometime during
the seventeenth century, when the interest in bibliography which was
then beginning to be felt would naturally call into existence new terms
of art."

While acknowledging the great interest that many authors have found
in individual colophons, Dr. Pollard states that his task is the more
ambitious, if less entertaining one of making a special study of this
feature in fifteenth century books with the object of ascertaining
what light it throws on the history of printing, and on the habits of
the early printers and publishers. His first conclusion being that
colophons are the sign and evidence of the printer's pride in his
work, he draws attention to the utter lack of such information as
they give in the very earliest books of all, as contrasted with the
self-glorification of Fust and Schöffer when, printing independently,
they affixed the first known printed colophon to their Psalter of 1457
(in at least one copy accompanied by their device):

 The present copy of the Psalms, adorned with beauty of capital
 letters, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus
 fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing, and stamping without
 any driving of the pen. And to the worship of God has been diligently
 brought to completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of Mainz, and Peter
 Schöffer of Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord 1457, on the vigil of
 the Feast of the Assumption.

Of Peter Schöffer's later allusion to the shields of his device Dr.
Pollard writes: "Needless discussions have been raised as to what was
the use and import of printers' devices, and it has even been attempted
to connect them with literary copyright, with which they had nothing
whatever to do, literary copyright in this decade depending solely
on the precarious courtesy of rival firms, or possibly on the rules
of their trade-guilds. But here, on the authority of the printer who
first used one, we have a clear indication of the reason which made
him put his mark on a book--the simple reason that he was proud of
his craftsmanship and wished it to be recognized as his. 'By signing
it with his shields Peter Schöffer has brought the book to a happy
completion.'"

[Illustration: _Psalter. Mainz, Fust and Schöffer_, 1457. THE FIRST
                          PRINTED COLOPHON.]

Again he calls attention to the boast of John of Speier at Venice,
"primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis," by which he asserts his
individual priority over any other firm in that city. And here is the
rhyming colophon used by the same John, in which he boasts with some
ambiguity of the number of copies of Cicero which he has printed in his
two editions:

  From Italy once each German brought a book.
  A German now will give more than they took.
  For John, a man whom few in skill surpass,
  Has shown that books may best be writ with brass.
  Speier befriends Venice; twice in four months has he
  Printed this Cicero, in hundreds three.[6]

In wording their colophons, the early printers were only following
the constant practice of medieval scribes, of whose many colophons
a selection of examples is given in Bradley's _Dictionary of
Miniaturists_.

The moving of printers from one town to another, transference of their
stocks, their quarrels, their boastings and pleas for favor with those
in high places, all are followed, and much information gathered in the
_Essay_. There is simple pathos in the colophon of the _Chronicles of
the londe of England_ printed at Antwerp in 1493, which records the
death of its famous printer, Gerard Leeu,

 a man of grete wysedom in all manner of kunnyng; whych nowe is come
 from lyfe unto the deth, which is grete harme for many of poure man.
 On whos sowle God almyghty for hys hygh grace haue mercy. Amen.

"A man whose death is great harm for many a poor man must needs have
been a good master, and a king need want no finer epitaph," writes Dr.
Pollard.

The days when we find the book trade highly organized and the functions
of printers and publishers clearly separated, are pictured in the
following colophon:

 Here you have, most honest reader, six works, etc. It remains,
 therefore, for you to make grateful acknowledgement to those who have
 produced them: in the first place to that eminent man Master Simon
 Radin, who saw to their being brought to light from the obscurity in
 which they were buried; next to F. Cyprian Beneti for his editorial
 care; then to Jean Petit, best of book-sellers, who caused them to
 be printed at his expense; nor less than these to Andrieu Bocard,
 the skilful chalcographer, who printed them so elegantly and with
 scrupulous correctness, June 28, 1500. Praise and glory to God.[7]

Here are men making aspersions on the editions of rival publishers,
with warnings against them:

 Here end the Decretals, most correctly printed in the bounteous city
 of Rome, queen of the whole world, by those excellent men Master
 Ulrich Han, a German, and Simon di Niccolo of Lucca: with the ordinary
 glosses of Bernard of Parma and his additions, which are found in
 few copies; both printed and corrected with the greatest diligence.
 Purchase these, book-buyer, with a light heart, for you will find such
 excellence in this volume that you will be right in easily reckoning
 other editions as worth no more than a straw.[8]

We find that the Nuremberg Chronicle is the only book which Dr.
Pollard can call to mind that gives explicit information as to its
illustrators, Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenworff; and finally
we come to books where the author takes a hand, and we sometimes have
a double colophon, as in the case of the _Morte d'Arthur_. Here we
have Sir Thomas Malory's colophon, requesting the reader's prayer for
his deliverance, and for the repose of his soul, and William Caxton's
business-like statement as editor, printer and publisher.

The author's struggle with the printer, to obtain his own way, is no
new thing, as proved by this late colophon of the musician, Johann von
Cleve, affixed to his _Cantiones_, 1580:

 As I come to the end of my task it seems worth while to inform
 students and amateurs of music that this collection of Motets was in
 the first place entrusted to Philip Ulhard, citizen and printer of
 Augsburg, to be printed, and that he (as often happens), being made
 unreasonably capricious by bodily ill-health, often did not carry
 out our intention, and compelled me, by leaving out some motets
 (which however, if life bears me company and God helps, will shortly
 be published), to abridge the work, and more especially as the same
 printer, when the work was not yet finished, came to an end of his
 days, and there upon the work was entrusted to Andreas Reinheckel to
 be completed, if anything, therefore, is found which might disturb
 a connoisseur, I pray musicians to bear with it with equanimity.
 Farewell. In the year of the Lord 1580, in the month of January.

We have noted one rhyming colophon, a mannerism much affected
by Italian printers. Another fanciful custom by which the early
printers called attention to their colophons was the use of eccentric
arrangements of types, by which these final paragraphs appeared in the
shape of wedges, funnels, diamonds, drinking glasses and the like.

The earliest known title page is in a Bull of Pius IX, printed in
Mainz by Fust and Schöffer in 1463, but it was some twenty years before
the custom became common. At first the title only, taking the form of
a single sentence, appeared at the top of a title page, but it was not
long before, either in the interests of decoration or of advertising, a
simple woodcut or the device of the printer appeared below the title.
In his _A Treatise on Title-pages_, 1902, Mr. De Vinne proposes the
following ingenious explanation of the evolution of the printer's mark:
"It was hoped that the distinctiveness of a peculiar device would
be remembered by the book-buyer who had forgotten the name of his
preferred printer.

"In the beginning the device was put at the end of the book, above
or below the colophon. It was at first a small and simple design ...
but the eagerness to have a device that should be striking led to its
enlargement and afterward to an entire change of position. When the
greater part of the last page was preoccupied by the last paragraph
of the text, the device required a separate page. This led to making
full-page devices and afterward to the putting of the device on the
first page."

As time went on it was only natural that the remaining space at
the foot of the title pages should be utilized for brief details
of printing and publishing, but the transition was gradual and
unsystematic. Indeed, some printers continued to use colophons alone
well into the sixteenth century, and there are frequent instances
during that century of books containing both title pages and colophons,
the latter being a repetition, at the end of the book, of the imprint,
as the few business-like lines at the foot of the title page had come
to be named.

By the time that title pages were firmly established, publishing
had become a separate business, and the publisher was not long in
assuming the ascendency, often pushing the printer altogether into the
background and appearing alone in the imprint. For a long time the
printer modestly tucked in his name wherever he could, sometimes on the
verso of the title page, and sometimes at the bottom of the last page,
but in a formal manner, without the naive and often delightful and
useful details which make the early colophons so interesting.

With the nineteenth-century revival of interest in typography, the
printer came to the fore again and we see his name appearing in a new
place, the certificate, preceding the title page--an entire leaf,
moreover, on which are set forth the details in which he is interested,
the paper, number of copies, and so on. This use seems to have been
introduced by the finely printed volumes of the French book clubs, with
their "Justification du tirage," and it was followed through the later
decades of the nineteenth century, in the publications of book clubs
and many other privately and finely printed volumes. Simultaneously
with these came the publications of the Kelmscott and other private
presses, which revived the use of colophons in the early manner. The
separate page, placed at the end of the finely printed book of today,
giving details of the making of the volume, is the result of this
modern impetus in book-making[9]--the interest in fine production of
the person for whom the book is made, added to the desire of the modern
printer for recognition of himself as the producer.

  [Illustration: _St. Bernard._ _Sermones._ _Rostock_, _Fratres Domus
          Horti Viridis_, 1481. COLOPHON WITH PRINTER'S MARK.]

This is but the very logical expression in the books themselves of the
modern trend, so assiduously cultivated, toward the making of good
books, and the return to prominence of the printer after the long
period of his subservience to the publisher. In the present-day notice
of its makers, on the final page of a book, the colophon is revived,
and once more the printer has the last word!

                      COMPOSED IN GARAMOND TYPES


                              FOOTNOTES:

[2] Ronald B. McKerrow, _An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary
Students_ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1927).

[3] Iolo Williams, _The Elements of Book-Collecting_ (London: Elkin
Mathews, 1927).

[4] H. B. van Hoesen [and] F. K. Walter, _Bibliography, Practical,
Enumerative, Historical_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928).

[5] Alfred W. Pollard, _An Essay on Colophons, with Specimens and
Translations_; with an Introduction by Richard Garnett (Chicago: The
Caxton Club, 1905).

[6] Cicero, _Epistolae ad Familiares_, Second edition (Venice, 1469).

[7] Diui Athanasii, contra Arium, etc. (Paris, 1500).

[8] Decretals of Gregory IX (Rome, 1474).

[9] We may note that the French technical term for the modern colophon,
"achevé d'imprimer," emphasizes this importance of the printer.




          [Illustration]EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY[Illustration]

                           _Printers' Marks_

  From _Fifty Printers' Marks_ by Edwin E. Willoughby. Copyright 1947
    by the author and reprinted by his permission. Published by the
                    University of California Press.


A printer's mark is a trade-mark. Printers used them in the fifteenth,
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the same purpose that printers
employ them today--to ornament their books and to make each volume
readily recognizable as the product of the printing establishment which
produced it.

The printer's mark was but one of the many types of marks which,
largely because of the widespread illiteracy of the people, were used
throughout all phases of medieval life. The ownership of objects,
for example, was often shown by means of a regularly used mark. Two
examples of this type of mark, the seal and the cattle brand, go back
to the dawn of history and have continued in use to the present time.
Merchants in the Middle Ages often identified their property by placing
on it their merchants' marks.

The mark of a merchant was legally recognized as his by his guild or by
the town government. Often it was a representation of the tools of the
man's trade or a replica of his house sign. Sometimes it was an animal
or object which formed a pun on the merchant's name. Frequently, simple
geometric designs were used. Toward the latter part of the Middle Ages,
as merchants grew richer and more powerful, they aped the upper class
by making their marks resemble, as closely as they dared, the heraldic
devices of the knights and nobles. These marks enabled employees or
hired porters to recognize at a glance a merchant's property.

Places, as well as objects, were identified by means of marks. Inns,
shops and similar public places in those days before houses were
numbered were designated by house signs. The Tabard, the inn from which
Chaucer's pilgrims started for Canterbury under the leadership of its
host, Harry Baillie, took its name from its sign--a representation
of a short outer jacket. An equally famous tavern, patronized by
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other "sirenical gentlemen," bore the "Sign
of the Mermaid." And over the door of the Globe, Shakespeare's theater,
hung a picture of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders.

Printing houses, like other business establishments, were known by
house signs. The printer's mark of Adrien van Berghen supplies an
illustration. [Page 48.]

Not only were objects and places designated by marks in the Middle
Ages, but under certain conditions people were recognized by them also.
A knight, his face obscured by his helmet, made his identity known by
wearing on his helmet, shield and tabard simple pictures or symbols
by which he could be recognized. As it was usual for members of the
same family to wear the same emblems, these simple pictures, many of
which became conventionalized, descended from father to son, indicated
relationships, and finally developed under the control of officers of
the king into the elaborate system of heraldry.

Marks, then, were widely used in the Middle Ages. It was inevitable
that they should be used to identify the makers of manufactured
goods. Craftsmen with pride in their work naturally desired others to
recognize their products. As a result, the use of trade-marks became
common. Craftsmen of every trade were frequently compelled either by
law or by guild regulations, to affix a mark to their products as
a guarantee of their honesty and good workmanship. Such marks were
required especially of goldsmiths, silversmiths and other artisans who
were under unusual temptation to misrepresent the quality of their
goods. In England, to take another example, arrowheads, the quality of
which might determine the issue of a battle, were ordered, by a statute
of Henry IV, to be "marked with the mark of him who made the same."

These trade-marks performed much the same function as the house mark
or the merchant's mark; indeed, the three were often the same. They
enabled a purchaser, literate or illiterate, to identify the maker of
a product and to buy thereafter according as he had been satisfied or
displeased with the first article purchased.

 [Illustration: GUY MARCHANT printed his first book at Paris in 1483.
 His motto, _Sola fides sufficit_ (Faith alone suffices) appears above
   the clasped hands, with the first word represented by the musical
                      notation, _sol_ and _la_.]

 [Illustration: JACQUES MAILLET began publishing at Lyons in 1482, and
probably began printing at the same time. His mark represents a shield,
supported by two dogs, which bears his initials and a mallet (_maillet_
                   in French), hanging from a tree.]

The printer, to be sure, was under few of the compulsions to use a
trade-mark that beset his fellow craftsmen. His patrons were literate;
they could read his name and address--when he chose to set them
down--either in the colophon at the end of the book or on the title
page. But the example of other craftsmen was not to be resisted.
Besides, a well-made printer's mark, or a publisher's device, could be
both useful and ornamental. Put at the end of the book, it could give
it a fitting close. Used in the middle of a book, it could set off
chapters and parts. Above all, especially when it was printed in red,
it could give life and balance to a title page.

  [Illustration: ADRIEN VAN BERGHEN in his mark pictures his printing
 house "at the Sign of the Great Golden Mortar in the market place" at
                  Antwerp, where he started in 1500.]

By the printer's mark, also, a prospective purchaser could recognize
at a glance the product of a press. It could prevent a careful
purchaser from being deceived by a false imprint. "Look at my sign,"
warns Benedictus Hector of Bologna, "which is represented on the title
page and you can never be mistaken." It was harder to counterfeit a
printer's mark than to filch his name.

Even a mark, however, was not infallible protection. The "prince of
printers," Aldus Manutius, complains that his Florentine competitors
"have affixed our well known sign of the dolphin wound around an
anchor. But," he adds, "they have so managed that any person who is in
the least acquainted with the books of our production cannot fail to
observe that this is an impudent fraud; for the head of the dolphin is
turned to the left, whereas that of ours is well known to be turned
toward the right."

 [Illustration: WILLIAM CAXTON, the first English printer, printed his
  own translation of a French romance, _Recuyell of the Histories of
Troy_, in 1474. At his press at Westminster he completed nearly eighty
books between 1477 and 1491, many of which he also translated from the
                               French.]

In one country only, and there for but a brief period, was the use
of a mark made compulsory. In 1539, François I, in an act intended
to suppress both the piracy of copyrighted works and the printing of
heretical books, ordered every printer and book-seller in France to
have his own device so that purchasers might easily ascertain where
books were printed and sold.

Although (with this exception) the use of marks was voluntary with
printers, they were early adopted. In 1457 Fust and Schöffer, the
successors of Gutenberg, first employed one in the Mainz Psalter, the
first book to contain the name of the printer and the place and date
of printing. [Page 39.] The device consisted of two shields resembling
coats of arms. Other printers quickly followed their example. As the
fifteenth century saw the rise of the mercantile class, it is not
surprising that printers used in their marks heraldic devices, if they
had the right to bear arms, or shields displaying their merchant's
marks in a manner often resembling armorial bearings.

Frequently, printers used as the central part of their marks the signs
which served to designate their places of business. Pierre LeRouge, for
example, used a red rosebush for his sign and in his device. The London
printer, Berthelet, used in like manner the figure of Lucrece.

[Illustration: WILLIAM FAQUES began printing in London about 1503. His
 mark represents a hexagram of interlocking triangles bearing biblical
    quotations, which enclose his monogram pierced by an arrow. The
       initials "GF" are those of the French form of his name.]

If the printer's name could be punned on, it was common to use for
a mark an object the name of which sounded like the printer's own.
Jacques Maillet's surname means mallet. He made it easy to remember by
displaying a mallet in his device. [Page 47.] A few printers, among
them Aldus Manutius, John Day, John Wight and Willem Vorsterman, even
used their own portraits in their marks.

Many other signs and emblems were employed. In an age fond of
symbolism it is not surprising to find that many marks had symbolic and
mystical meanings--not only in the earlier period, when ecclesiastical
symbols were often used, but in the later period also, when devices
were frequently copied from emblem books. Sometimes a printer would use
a woodcut to illustrate a book and then, because it struck his fancy,
adopt it as his mark. Thomas Gardiner and Thomas Dawson, partners, on
the other hand, had a block which contained, around a central open
square, figures forming a rebus of their names: a gardener, a daw and
the sun. With their initials in the open square, it served as a mark;
with the appropriate display letter, it was a factotum bearing the
initial letter of the first word of a chapter.

Printers' marks, in fact, took a multitude of forms during the
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the late
seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they became
conventionalized and were used infrequently; but they did not die out
altogether. The Oxford and Cambridge University presses, for example,
continued to put them on the title pages of their books.

The revival of printing late in the nineteenth century saw an increased
use of the printer's mark. This was almost inevitable, for when the
craftsmen strove to do fine printing, they desired, just as did
the craftsmen of the fifteenth century, to have their work easily
recognized. Today, private presses which specialize in fine printing,
some university presses, and many publishing firms, frequently use
marks which both ornament their title pages and identify for the reader
the creator of the volume.

  [Illustration: THE GROLIER CLUB. A rendering of the Club's familiar
                       mark by Rudolph Ruzicka.]




                             A. F. JOHNSON

                            _Title Pages:_

                      THEIR FORMS AND DEVELOPMENT

 From _One Hundred Title Pages_: 1500-1800, selected and arranged with
  an Introduction and Notes by A. F. Johnson. Copyright 1928 by John
 Lane, The Bodley Head, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


It is a curious fact that the title page was evolved at a comparatively
late date in the history of the book, and is indeed almost unknown
before the printed book. There are a few examples among early surviving
manuscripts of a separate leaf being used for the title, but they
are quite exceptional, and even these give the title on the back of
this leaf. The usual practice of the calligrapher was to give any
information considered desirable as to the author and the date and
place of the making of the manuscript in the colophon. This practice
was taken over by the printers, although in the first years of the new
art they frequently said nothing as to place of printing, probably
with the deliberate intention of concealing the fact that the book was
produced by mechanical means. The title page as we know it, giving
the title, author's name and an imprint, being, in fact, a kind of
advertisement of the book, was not well established until some years
after 1500....

The title page owes its origin, according to one theory, to the fact
that printers found it necessary to protect the first leaf of the
text. Whereas a manuscript would be bound as soon as the calligrapher
had finished the text, most of the copies of a printed edition were
delivered to a book-seller in sheets, and many might remain unbound for
years. Hence arose the practice of beginning the book on the second
leaf or on the back of the first leaf. The first page could then be
used for the purpose of advertising the book, for the fully-developed
title page arose out of a commercial need. A few early examples of the
addition of a brief title on the first page are known, the first being
that of a Bull of Pope Pius II, printed by Fust and Schöffer at Mainz
in 1463. But the blank title leaf is found for many years after that
date, and to the end of the fifteenth century a title leaf containing
a brief description in a few words is common. As late as 1548 we find
the brothers Dorici at Rome printing several volumes of the works of
Cardinal Bembo with the title on the back of the first leaf. An edition
of the Vulgate printed at Venice in 1487 by Georgius Arrivabene offers
an example of the most rudimentary form of a title page, with the
single word _Biblia_ on the first leaf.

The example of Ratdolt at Venice, who in 1476 printed a Calendar of
Regiomontanus with woodcut borders and an imprint on the first leaf,
was not followed by contemporary printers. Even this solitary case
hardly presents a title page in the form in which we know it, since the
leaf, in place of a title, has a poem in praise of the book. Of the
fully developed title page, giving title, author and full imprint, Dr.
Haebler, the German authority on incunabula, knows of only one instance
in the fifteenth century, a book by Johannes Glogoviensis printed by
Wolfgang Stöckel at Leipzig in 1500; the title itself, however, is cut
on wood.

The lettering of the simple fifteenth-century title page was often
that of the text of the book, or sometimes a larger, heading type was
used. Very frequently the words were cut on wood, and since for the
printer it was as easy to print from a block containing a design in
addition to a brief title, the woodcut illustration on the first leaf
soon followed. The examples of the John Lydgate, printed by Pynson,
_c._ 1515, and of the _Deceyte of Women_, printed by Abraham Vele about
1550, are typical title pages of popular books of the earlier printers.
In Spain especially this combination of title and illustration, in that
country often an heraldic cut, both cut on wood, became the fashion
and persisted for many years in the next century. Scenes from school
life often illustrated educational texts, while a school of woodcutters
at Florence designed a famous series of illustrations which decorated
the title pages of devotional tracts by Savonarola and other works.
The first printers' devices, the two shields of Fust and Schöffer and
the double cross rising out of a circle at Venice, were added to the
colophons, and it was only when the French printers began to use large
devices surrounded by borders, for which there was no room on the last
leaf, that the printer's name, or at least mark, began to appear on the
title page. Thus one further step was taken towards the title page as
we know it.

[Illustration: MACHIAVELLI, SOPRA LA PRIMA DECA DI TITO LIVIO, ANTONIO
   BLADO, ROME, 1531. The formal Italic below the device, designed by
  Lodovico Vincentino, the calligrapher, was used in many of Blado's
    books. It has been revived and is known as Blado Italic. (Size,
                         5-1/2x8-1/4 inches.)]

The sixteenth century is especially the age of the woodcut title-border
(or metal-cut, for the material used for blocks was frequently
metal). The practice of decorating the first leaf of the text with a
woodcut border had been started by Ratdolt at Venice, and after 1490
was common among the printers of that city. In fact, several of the
borders originally used for an opening were actually converted into
title-borders after 1500. During the following century the variety
of borders used in all the countries where printing was practised is
remarkable. In Germany especially, during the years of the Reformation,
when the printing press was unusually active, a very large number of
decorative borders were cut, many of them by artists of the first rank,
including even Dürer and Holbein. The work of the Holbeins and Urs
Graf at Basle is well known to English book collectors. Perhaps less
familiar is the work of Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Weiditz and Daniel
Hopfer at Strasbourg and Augsburg, and that extraordinary series of
designs which appear on the Luther tracts printed at Wittenberg and
on similar works produced in Saxony. Many of these borders are highly
successful as decorative pieces. The fact that they are less familiar
to us may be accounted for by two circumstances. In the first place the
earlier book collectors were almost all collectors of the classics,
and the first writers on the history of printing, except in the matter
of the invention of printing, approached the subject from the point
of view of the student of the Greek and Roman classical writers. In
the second place the German printers cut themselves off from Western
Europe by clinging to the gothic letter after Italy, France and
finally England had adopted Roman and Italic, even for books in the
vernacular....

There is one point about the early woodcut borders which must seem
strange to the printer of today, and that is the suitability of the
decoration to the subject matter of the book. The sixteenth-century
printer naturally found it economical to ignore the fact that a border
originally intended for a Bible was not suitable for a medical work.
He did not regard it as incongruous to use a border depicting scenes
from Greek mythology on a French medieval romance. Even a printer of
the class of Jean de Tournes uses the same piece on the title page of a
_Xenophon_ and of a book of French verse. Nor was the average printer
very particular about the state of a block. Especially in England,
where the general standard was lower than on the Continent, a damaged
block would be used as long as it held together.

 [Illustration: O. FINE, QUADRANS ASTROLABICUS, S. DE COLINES, PARIS,
 1534. The border was probably designed by the author. His mathematical
diagrams are generally decorated with leaf forms like the "petits fers"
             of this title. (Size, 7-5/8x11-5/8 inches.)]

In the second half of the century two rival fashions of decoration were
developed which finally banished the woodcut border, first the method
of decoration by type ornaments or printers' flowers, and secondly
the engraved title page. There is one example of type ornament known
even in the fifteenth century, in an _Aesop_ printed at Parma in 1483.
After 1500, examples of borders made up of separate cast pieces are
fairly frequent and are especially common in England in the books of
Wynkyn de Worde and his contemporaries. But it is not until about
1560 that we find borders built up of type ornaments worked into
arabesque patterns. It seems to have been Robert Granjon, the engraver
of types at Paris and Lyons, who cut arabesque fleurons, divided them
up and built up fresh patterns out of their component parts. The use
of printers' flowers in borders is found at most centers of printing
towards the end of the century and obtained its greatest popularity in
the Netherlands and in England. Many fine examples are found in English
books from about 1570 for the next fifty years. Joseph Moxon, who wrote
on English letter-founding in 1683, tells us that they were considered
old-fashioned in his day. They were revived again in the eighteenth
century by P. S. Fournier at Paris, who cut many new designs which were
copied all over Europe. Fournier's flowers could be built up to form
all manner of ornaments and were more adaptable than the arabesques
of the sixteenth century, when the original unit always resulted in
the same pattern. Just as Granjon had devised a method of decorating
without the use of the woodcut block, so Fournier designed his new
flowers in order that printers might dispense with engraved vignettes.
However, the vogue of the Fournier designs had a shorter life, and may
be said to have been killed by the classical school of printing of the
end of the century.

[Illustration: J. LONGLOND, A SERMON, LONDON, 1536. Wynkyn de Worde and
 his contemporaries used cast pieces as ornaments, at least from 1504.
Although their use was frequent, the arrangement of this title page is
                 uncommon. (Size 5-1/4x7-1/4 inches.)]

Engraving on copper was practised in the fifteenth century, but
the engraved title page originates about 1550. Curiously enough, the
earliest known engraved border occurs in an English book, the Anatomy
of Thomas Geminus, printed in London in 1545. In the following year
we find a second example, cut by Corneille de La Haye for Balthazar
Arnoullet at Lyons, where there was a remarkable group of engravers
at work about this time. From 1548 the books of Enea Vico printed at
Venice begin the fashion in Italy, where, after 1550, examples are
fairly numerous. In the Netherlands also, beginning with the work of
Hubert Goltzius at Bruges, they are met with almost as frequently as in
Italy. It was, perhaps, Christopher Plantin at Antwerp who, more than
any other printer, made the engraved title-border the fashion for all
larger and more important publications. But it is with the seventeenth
century especially that engraved borders are associated. The Elzevirs
used them even on their pocket editions, while at the other extreme
the massive volumes issued at Amsterdam and at Paris in the reign of
Louis XIV are almost invariably introduced by an elaborate engraved
frontispiece....

   [Illustration: DUGUÉ, ARIETTE, FOURNIER, PARIS, 1765. This rather
    ornate border shows what could be done with Fournier's new type
               ornaments. (Size, 7-1/4x10-1/4 inches).]

Perhaps the worst examples of these overloaded frontispieces are to be
found in German books of the period. Often, also, the engraved border
is only a bastard title, the proper title page being set up in type.
The earlier examples, dating from the sixteenth century, are in general
the best, being simpler and not yet overburdened with a mass of detail.
The good taste of the eighteenth century brought about a reform. But
at Paris most books of this period had a typographic title page and
the work of the famous school of French engravers was lavished on the
illustrations. However, the engraved vignettes of that age were often
very effectively used. Even Baskerville did not always disdain the
vignette, and it was the last form of decoration abandoned by Bodoni.

One other form of decoration may be mentioned, that of metal rules.
Rules have been used occasionally at almost all periods, by Geofroy
Tory, for example, among others. But as far as title pages are
concerned they are found most often in the seventeenth century.

   [Illustration: THE DECEYTE OF WOMEN, A. VELE, LONDON, C. 1550. The
 combination of black-letter and a woodcut is a usual title page in an
 early English book. This undated example is probably mid-century, as
 the printer, Vele, is not heard of before 1548. The cut seems to date
              much earlier. (Size, 5-1/4x7-1/2 inches.)]

The purely typographic title page is naturally of greater interest
to the modern producer of books. At all periods the title page which
was effective mainly by the arrangement of type has been common, and
at most periods there have been printers who preferred to dispense
with ornament of any kind. In the sixteenth century the books of the
Paris printer, Michel de Vascosan, illustrate this severer manner,
and the classical style of the great printers at the close of the
eighteenth century was likewise independent of decoration. Some sort of
arrangement of the letters displayed on the title page suggested itself
from the first, and very soon various shapes were tried. Perhaps the
commonest arrangement was the conical one, or the so-called hour-glass
shape, in which the lines of type begin by being long, to become short
at the center, lengthening again in the imprint at the foot. Others
have preferred a natural arrangement, printing the matter exactly as
if on a page of the text. Geofroy Tory, a book producer whose work was
of great importance in the history of the book, seems to have been
against the fashion of his day in his choice of the natural layout. It
has certainly been the usual custom to aim at some sort of pattern in
the division of the lines of type. In this respect the earlier printers
had one advantage which was not enjoyed by their successors. They felt
no difficulty about dividing a word in a title, even when the second
part of the word was to be set in a different size or even a different
kind of type. Frequently we find examples of such breaks in words as
custom has made impossible for the modern printer. The simplification
of the task for whoever was responsible for the layout is obvious. One
rule which seems to have been almost universally observed is that the
mass of the type must be in the top half of the page and not evenly
distributed. [Page 69.]

Equally important with the distribution of the matter is the
question of the kind of type to be used, the sizes of type, upper- or
lower-case, and the number of different fonts. The simplest manner of
using the letter employed in the text met with little favour and was
soon displaced by the use of larger types and especially by the use of
capitals. The heavy, square Roman capitals, like those of Froben at
Basle, for the first line, with smaller capitals for succeeding lines,
were more or less customary in Northern Europe in the first quarter
of the sixteenth century. In some countries a mixture of a "lettre de
forme" and Roman capitals was not unusual at the same period. With the
introduction of the new Garamond romans at Paris about 1530 began the
fashion of using the Canon and Double Canon sizes of the lower-case
letters for titles. In the seventeenth century we find large and heavy
Roman capitals again in favour, often balanced by a woodcut ornament
or a basket of flowers. This century, undoubtedly the worst in the
history of typography, notwithstanding the Elzevirs, is especially
remarkable for its crowded title pages. It had become the custom to
give as much information as possible about the contents of the book and
the qualifications of author, editor, etc., and the printer took the
opportunity of displaying as large a variety of his types as possible.
No doubt the use of title pages as posters for advertising is partly
responsible for the custom. It has been established by documentary
evidence that such methods of advertising books were usual in England
and in Germany, and probably this was so in other countries also.
Incidentally it may be pointed out that the posting up of title pages
accounts for some of the early collections, such as that of Bagford,
now in the British Museum. Bagford has been attacked for his vandalism
in mutilating books for the sake of his hobby, but it now appears
that he may have been quite innocent of the charge. In any case the
result on the title page as a specimen of typographical arrangement was
deplorable....

[Illustration: ISAIAH THOMAS, A SPECIMEN OF PRINTING TYPES, WORCESTER,
   1785. As with most type specimens, this early American title page
displays many different types and flowers. (Size, 5-3/8x7-5/8 inches.)]

With the eighteenth century title pages became simpler and letters
became lighter, and the result is again work as good in its different
style as that of the sixteenth century. The eighteenth century is
certainly a great period in the history of book production, with its
center in Paris. In England the influence of Caslon and Baskerville at
length raised our typography to a level with Continental work. For one
innovation P. S. Fournier is mainly responsible, the introduction of
outline and other decorative capitals which were so successfully used
at Paris. At the end of the century we have the work of the Didots and
Bodoni, the classical school, whose technical achievement has hardly
been surpassed at any period. One may cavil at their conception of the
ideal shape of letters, one may dislike their excessive use of hair
lines and their flat serifs, but it must be admitted that as practical
printers and type-cutters their work was of first rate quality. These
classical printers were proud of their types and wished them to stand
alone. Bodoni, who at the beginning of his career used ornaments copied
from Fournier and engraved vignettes, in his later years more and more
abandoned decoration and outline letters. The classical title page is
composed in Roman capitals of varying size, but without the admixture
of lower-case letters or italics and without the aid of decoration.
Like Baskerville, these printers considered that type is itself
sufficiently interesting to stand alone.




                           Lawrence C. Wroth

                  THE FIRST WORK WITH AMERICAN TYPES

    From _Typographic Heritage_. Copyright 1949 by The Typophiles.
                Reprinted by permission of the author.


On 7 April 1775 there appeared in Philadelphia the initial issue of
Story & Humphrey's _Pennsylvania Mercury_. This newspaper was referred
to by a contemporary diarist as "The first Work with Amer. Types" and
with certain qualifications, later to be made, it seems to be entitled
to the distinction of priority implied in this descriptive phrase.
Type founding in the colonies went through those phases of tentative
effort, complete failure, and partial achievement which are normal to
the beginnings of great industries, and before going on with the story
of the font of type from which the _Pennsylvania Mercury_ was printed,
it is proposed to give briefly an account of earlier attempts at the
establishment of letter founding in English America. By doing this it
will be possible to secure correctness of sequence and of relationship
among the several elements of this study in origins.

The first font of types cast in English America was that which
resulted from the painful efforts of Abel Buell, a silversmith and
lapidary of Killingworth, Connecticut. Shortly before 1 April 1769
Buell cast a small font of letters, crude in design and in execution,
from which proofs were taken for the examination and the criticism of
his friends. In October of the same year, using a different and much
better type of his own making, he presented to the Connecticut Assembly
a printed petition in which he asked that body for financial assistance
in his proposed establishment of a letter foundry. In reply to this
memorial he received a loan from the colony for the purposes of his
venture, and soon afterwards he removed to New Haven and prepared to
manufacture type for the printers of a continent. The story of his
failure at this time, and of his success on a much smaller scale twelve
years later, is a part of the present study only in the sense which has
been indicated in the introductory sentences.

  [Illustration: _Abel Buell's First Font. From a proof of May 1769.
               Courtesy of the Yale University Library._]

Buell was not without a rival in his ambitious plans. David Mitchelson
of Boston, possibly acting under the direction of John Mein, a printer
of that city, is reported by a contemporary newspaper writer to have
attained as great a degree of success as the Connecticut silversmith
in the difficult art of letter casting. In the _Massachusetts Gazette
and Boston Weekly News-Letter_ for 7 September 1769 there appeared
among the local news items a report on recent developments in
American manufacturing activities in which are certain sentences of
interest in the story of colonial type founding. "We are assured by a
Gentleman from the Westward," said the writer, "that Mr. Abel Buell,
of Killingworth in Connecticut, Jeweller and Lapidary, has lately,
his own Genius, made himself Master of the Art of Founding Types for
Printing. Printing Types are also made by Mr. Mitchelson of this Town
[Boston] equal to any imported from Great-Britain; and might, by proper
Encouragement soon be able to furnish all the Printers in America
at the same price they are sold in England." The absence of a known
specimen of Mitchelson's letters or of any specific information as to
his operations is enough, however, to require a verdict of "not proven"
on any claim to priority in American type casting that has yet been
made on his behalf.

Because of the unfruitful nature of the enterprises which have been
spoken of, the year 1770 found the American printer still dependent
upon European importation for his printing type, and at the moment
there existed little prospect of relief from a situation which in the
years of the Revolution was to become a hardship rather than the simple
inconvenience of the earlier period. The policy of non-importation,
however, was stirring the colonies to the establishment of local
manufactures, and under the whip of necessity, type founding, among
other essential industries, was to take its rise in the United States.
The carrying to success of this manufacture in Pennsylvania in the year
1775 was undoubtedly assured by the political and economic situation of
the country, but its beginning, which must first be described, had its
cause in a set of circumstances of a more general character.

"The secular history of the Holy Scriptures," wrote Henry Stevens,
"is the sacred history of printing." In these words the Vermonter
gave sententious expression to the truth that the printing of the
Bible has been in all ages an appreciable factor in the development
of typography. The successful beginnings of type founding in English
America, it is believed, may be traced to the desire of Christopher
Sower Jr. of Germantown, Pennsylvania, to issue a third edition of
that German Bible which first had made its appearance at the pains and
expense of his father in the year 1743. It is said that the younger
Sower's dissatisfaction with the conditions of type importation from
Germany led him to conceive the idea of importing thence matrices and
moulds instead of finished type, and with these placed in the cunning
hands of Justus Fox, his journeyman, of casting his own letters for use
in the proposed edition of _Die Heilige Schrift_. An enterprising man,
a religious zealot, and the proprietor of one of the most extensive
printing offices in America, he was able, partly at least, to carry out
his intention.

 [Illustration: _Abel Buell's Second Font, October 1769. Courtesy of
                   the Connecticut State Archives._]

The exact date of the first use by Sower of locally cast German
letters evades determination. Sometime in the year 1770, he began
the publication of the "second part" of a periodical known as _Ein
Geistliches Magazien_. The title page of No. I, Part II, of this
early religious magazine tells us that it was printed by Christopher
Sower at Germantown in the year 1770, and the undated colophon of No.
XII of the series contains information of singular interest in the
words, "Gedruckt mit der ersten Schrift die jemals in America gegossen
worden." The probability is that this issue of _Ein Geistliches
Magazien_ was published late in 1771 or early in the ensuing year.
Upon the basis of this quoted statement and in view of the knowledge
that when his estate was sold in 1778 there were disposed of to Jacob
Bay and others certain lots of letter moulds, crucibles and a large
quantity of antimony[10] it becomes clear that Sower's interest in type
making developed well beyond the stage of thinking it would be a nice
thing to do.

The initiatory efforts of Sower have a particular significance in
the story of American type founding; for the tradition is that while
engaged in the casting process of type making in the Germantown
foundry, Justus Fox and Jacob Bay learned the more difficult mysteries
of an art in which later they attained proficiency. Because of the link
of continuous effort thus formed between Sower's initiation of the
business in 1770 and the later cutting and casting of Roman letter by
these artisans, there must be conceded to him the distinction of having
begun in English America the industry of type manufacturing, regardless
of whether or not his casting of German letter from imported matrices
was as extensive as has been supposed.

Our knowledge of Fox and of Bay is derived largely from the _Additions
to Thomas's History of Printing_, a body of tradition of uneven
reliability transmitted to Isaiah Thomas by William McCulloch, a
Philadelphia printer active in the early years of the century.
Selections from the six communications of the period 1812-1814 in which
this information was transmitted were incorporated by Thomas in the
revision of his book upon which was based the second edition brought
out by the American Antiquarian Society in 1874. Long afterward the
series of letters was published as a whole in the _Proceedings_ of the
Society for April 1921 under the title, _William McCulloch's Additions
to Thomas's History of Printing_.

In these letters to Isaiah Thomas, McCulloch was recording his own
memories and the accepted Philadelphia tradition. Because he was well
advanced in years at the time of writing, one is not surprised to find
that now and then he trips over the barrier that separates documented
fact from hearsay and personal recollection. It is much to our comfort
in the present instance, however, to learn that he possessed and made
use of unusual opportunities to obtain correct information as to the
craftsmen who are the subject of our interest. These facts which he
records of Justus Fox, for example, he obtained from Emmanuel, the
son and partner in type founding of that artisan, and in _Justus Fox,
a German Printer of the Eighteenth Century_, Dr. Charles L. Nichols
accepts his testimony as of general reliability. He was indebted to
various relatives of Bay, among them a sister, "a plump lady of 68,"
for the account of him which is found in the pages of the _Additions_.
It is possible to compare various items in McCulloch's sketches of
these men with records unknown to him, but available to us, with
results so little at variance that one is inclined to accord a high
degree of credence to all that he wrote concerning their activities.

At the time of Sower's importation of German equipment, McCulloch
informed Isaiah Thomas, he had among his journeymen an ingenious
general mechanic, Justus Fox, whom he charged with the responsibility
for casting the letters to be used in the great Bible. In April 1772 he
employed a newly arrived Swiss silk weaver, Jacob Bay,[11] to assist
Fox. Two years later Bay left Sower's service and set up a foundry
on his own account in a near-by house in Germantown. Fox remained in
Sower's establishment, presumably engaged in casting the large quantity
of type required to keep standing an edition of the Bible. In addition
to this routine work he is said to have cut and cast an unspecified
amount of Roman letter before 1774, the year of Bay's separation
from the Sower establishment. Working in his separate foundry, it is
recorded by our volunteer historian, Bay "cast a number of fonts,
cutting all the punches, and making all the apparatus pertaining
thereto, himself, for Roman Bourgeois, Long Primer, etc."

That this reported activity in type casting in Germantown about
the year 1774 was not a play of the imagination on the part of its
historian is made certain by the definite statement that occurs in one
of the non-importation resolutions of the Pennsylvania Convention.
On 23 January 1775 the Convention "Resolved unanimously, That as
printing types are now made to a considerable degree of perfection
by an ingenious artist in Germantown; it is recommended to the
printers to use such types in preference to any which may be hereafter
imported."[12] Referring somewhat vaguely to this resolution, both as
to content and as to origin, McCulloch tells us that even at the time
of its passage Fox and Bay each claimed the honor implied in its terms.
To this day the identity of the "ingenious artist" remains uncertain.

It is not clear by what evidence it was known to the Convention that
"a considerable degree of perfection" had been attained in the making
of type in Germantown. The only known specimen of printing type cast
at that place before the meeting of the Convention in January 1775 is
the German letter employed in Sower's periodical, _Ein Geistliches
Magazien_, and it is not likely that this or any other specimen of
German type would have led the Convention to a recommendation as
sweeping as that which has been quoted from its journal. It could only
have been a Roman letter that the delegates had in mind for a usage so
general as was indicated in their resolution, and we must remain in
doubt as to what specimen or specimens they had seen of locally cast
type in this character. It is certain, however, that at the time of
their action a font of Roman letter had been completed, or at any rate,
that it was then in the process of casting. It is quite possible that
a trial specimen of this font had been submitted to the Convention for
its examination and approval.

It is a satisfaction to be able to introduce the new font through the
medium of a contemporary reference to its use. We are indebted to the
correspondence and to the diary of the Rev. Ezra Stiles of Newport,
later President of Yale College, for some important information on
early American type founding. Excited by Buell's efforts to make
type in the year 1769, his interest in the manufacture seems to have
remained in being, for on 9 May 1775 he appended the following comment
to an entry in his Diary: "Extracted from the Pennsylv^a Mercury,
whose first N^o was pub. the 7th of April last: printed with types
of American Manufacture. The first Work with Amer. Types: tho' Types
were made at N. Haven years ago."[13] The fact that Ezra Stiles was
one of the earliest patrons of Abel Buell's venture in letter casting,
supported as this fact is by his interest in American manufactures
generally, lends a certain amount of weight to any observation that he
might make on the subject of American type founding, although it is
probable that he was ignorant of Sower's partial achievement of the
art, just as Sower some years earlier in his claim to priority had
seemed to be unaware of Buell's technically successful effort. If we
may interpret Dr. Stiles's words as meaning that Story & Humphreys's
_Pennsylvania Mercury_[14] of 7 April 1775, Vol. I, No. I, was the
first published work printed in Roman letter which had been cut and
cast in English America, we may unhesitatingly repeat his description
of it as "The first Work with Amer. Types."

The Philadelphia newspaper which has been referred to is one of the
rarest of American journals of the period. Complete files, comprising
issues from 7 April to 27 December 1775, are found only in the Library
of Congress and in the Harvard College Library. From the first page of
its first issue, the publisher's announcement is here reproduced.

A glance at the pages of the newspaper in which the new Roman letter
was first used makes us feel that in his commendable willingness to
admit imperfection the publisher paid small tribute to the skill of
his "ingenious artist." The letters of "rustic manufacture" were far
from perfect, it is true, and in later issues of the newspaper it is
observable that they had not worn especially well, but nonetheless
they composed agreeably and they were sufficiently well executed to
entitle them to something more than the half apology with which they
were offered to the public. Their interest, however, as the first
American-made Roman type to be used in a publication intended for
circulation transcends considerations of worth and appearance.

[Illustration: _Extract from The Pennsylvania Mercury of 7 April 1775.
               Courtesy of the Harvard College Library._]

Rejoicing in their encouragement of native manufactures, the
practical support they were giving to the Pennsylvania non-importation
resolutions of six months earlier, the publishers of the _Mercury_
advertised on 23 June 1775 _The Impenetrable Secret_ as a work "Just
Published and Printed with Types, Paper and Ink, Manufactured in
this Province." If they had added, as possibly they might have done
with truth, "on a press of Philadelphia make," we could regard this
statement as the declaration of independence of the American printer
from the English manufacturer.[15]

Isaiah Thomas says that the _Pennsylvania Mercury_ was established with
the backing of Joseph Galloway as a substitute for the _Pennsylvania
Chronicle_, that disastrous earlier venture in journalism in which
the Quaker politician had engaged with William Goddard. If this was
the case, certain features of the new publication must have been
displeasing to the silent partner, for Galloway the Tory could hardly
have rejoiced with the publishers in their virtuous encouragement of
native type founding, with all its patriotic implications. Furthermore,
from an advertisement of John Willis and Henry Vogt in the first
issue of the paper one learns that the publishers were making use of
other articles of printing equipment made by these general craftsmen,
who here announced their ability to make presses and any and all
of the mechanical appurtenances required in a printing shop. This
well-advertised Americanism of the publishers, however, seems not
to have availed them in the attainment of success, and after their
establishment had been destroyed by fire in the closing days of the
year the business was never resumed.

It is not certainly known who was the maker of the significant
_Mercury_ types. Assuming that Sower's foundry was in full operation
in the early months of 1775, we must assume also, in the absence of
knowledge to the contrary, that its principal activity was in the
manufacture of German letters for the great Bible, first published in
1776, and that Sower would not have been likely to engage in the making
of Roman type on a large scale until this work had been completed.
Because of our ignorance of other possibilities there remain to be
considered only the two craftsmen, Fox and Bay, as the probable makers
of this first successful American letter. According to McCulloch, Fox
had cut and cast Roman letter at some period before the year 1774 while
still working for Sower. This statement contains all that is known of
his efforts at making Roman type during the years that he remained
with Sower, but there is the chance to be taken into account that the
_Mercury_ font was the result of his experimentation during this period
in an art which later he pursued with no small degree of local success.
On the same authority it is said, it will be remembered, that Jacob Bay
had left Sower in 1774, and in a near-by house in Germantown had set
up a type foundry on his own account. In this separate establishment,
it is likely that he was able to devote to the business such time
and energy as would be required in making a font of sufficient size
to accommodate the needs of such a newspaper as the _Pennsylvania
Mercury_. The fact of his separate foundry having been established
sometime in 1774, the reference in the Convention resolution of January
1775 to the "ingenious artist" at Germantown and the appearance in
April 1775 of the new font of type acclaimed by the publishers as
"an attempt to introduce so valuable an art into these colonies" are
considerations which, taken in their order, seem to give ground for an
assumption that it was Jacob Bay who cut and cast the letters for "The
first Work with Amer. Types." Until proof is forthcoming, however, this
must remain an assumption and nothing more.

It is certain that both Fox and Bay maintained their interest in
letter casting for many years. At the sale of Sower's confiscated
property in the year 1778 both of these artisans were present as
purchasers of type-making tools and material.[16] Bay especially
seems to have taken advantage of the opportunity to secure equipment
at this dispersal of his old master's goods. Among other purchases
which he made at the sale of what was probably at the time the largest
typographical establishment in the country were "a lot of letter moles"
at three pounds, "a Box with 9 Crusibles" at £5 15_s._, a quantity of
worn type at 8_d._ a pound and antimony worth £8 18_s._ 3_d._ He was
living at the time in a house rented from Sower,[17] and at the sale
of the printer's real property in September 1779 he purchased another
house belonging to the estate for £4200, a sum which he paid in two
installments before 28 October 1779.[18] In recording from tradition
the fact that Bay secured at this time one of the Sower houses,
McCulloch asserts that he purchased it from John Dunlap, the printer,
whom he paid in type of his own making. It is possible that he borrowed
the purchase price from Dunlap on this or a similar basis of repayment,
a transaction that would explain McCulloch's version of the story. It
is said that he conducted his foundry until the year 1789, and that
between this year and 1792 he sold the business to Francis Bailey. Fox
continued the making of type until his death in the year 1805, when
his son and partner Emmanuel Fox sold the equipment to Samuel Sower of
Baltimore, the son of Christopher Sower, the Second, of Germantown,
whose enterprise had been the determining cause of its existence.

McCulloch was emphatic in his praise of the sturdiness of Fox's types,
but when he remarked to Archibald Binny upon the excellent wearing
quality of a set of figures and capitals cast by the Germantown
founder, which he and his father before him had been using for many
years, that gentleman replied with scorn that they were "at first so
devilish ugly ... the longest using cannot mar their deformity."

The type-founding operations of Fox and of Bay have greater importance
in the history of the art in America than is usually conceded them.
When they are referred to at all by general writers, their activities
are mentioned briefly or in such a manner as to give one the impression
that their efforts were sporadic or tentative. It is with the work of
the Scotch founder Baine, using imported equipment, that the story
of American type founding is usually begun, but with the _Mercury_
font before us, cut and cast thirteen years before Baine's first
operations, and with assurances by McCulloch that Fox cut and cast the
letters used in the McKean edition of the _Acts of the Pennsylvania
Assembly_, printed by Francis Bailey in 1782,[19] and with references
by McCulloch to fonts produced by Bay, it seems certain that there
exists material which will require a revision of the story of American
type-founding origins. Beginning with the incontestable fact of the
successful _Mercury_ font of 1775 and accepting McCulloch's relation of
later events as a working hypothesis, there is seen to exist a field
for research which should prove productive of discoveries, inasmuch
as the fact and the tradition indicate a continuous activity on the
part of one or the other of these early Pennsylvania founders, Fox and
Bay, from 1775 to 1805. In the course of these years other founders,
better known to us, began their work, and between the years 1796 and
1801, more than one hundred American printers, from Massachusetts
to Georgia, purchased type from the foundry of Binny & Ronaldson of
Philadelphia.[20]

The identification of the various fonts of locally made type used in
Pennsylvania in the quarter century following "The first Work with
Amer. Types" would form an interesting chapter in the story of early
American type founding.

                     COMPOSED IN MONTICELLO TYPES


                              FOOTNOTES:

[10] Editor's Note: _Pennsylvania Archives_, 6th Series, 12:887-919. In
_Typographic Heritage_, the second printing of this essay, Sower's type
founding venture is more extensively treated, and the rare existing
issues of Part II of _Ein Geistliches Magazien_ are located (pp.
143-144).

[11] McCulloch, p. 181, gives the middle of December 1771 as the date
of Bay's arrival in Philadelphia. In Rupp's _Collection of Thirty
Thousand Names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French, and other Immigrants
in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1776_, p. 398, Jacob Bay is among the
arrivals on the Brig _Betsey_ on 1 December 1771. The name is spelled
Bey by McCulloch, Bäy by Rupp, Bay in various lists and documents
in the Pennsylvania Archives. The last-named spelling is used in the
present study on this authority.

[12] Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania ... (1776-1781), Volume the First (Philadelphia, 1782), p.
33.

[13] Ezra Stiles, _Literary Diary_. Ed. by F. B. Dexter. 3 vols. (New
York, 1901), I:549.

[14] Story & Humphreys's _Pennsylvania Mercury, and Universal
Advertiser_. Evans 14477. No copy seen by Hildeburn.

[15] It well may be that this production was not a book or pamphlet
but a popular card game of the educational sort. See A. T. Hazen,
_A Bibliography of Horace Walpole_, p. 173, and the same author's
bibliography of the Strawberry Hill Press, pp. 145-148.

[16] Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:887-919.

[17] McCulloch's statement is borne out by the inventory of Sower's
real estate in Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:872-873.

[18] Pennsylvania Archives, 6th Series, 12:918-919.

[19] McCulloch gives the date indefinitely as about the year 1784. His
father, John McCulloch, from whom he received much information embodied
in the "Additions," was at one time foreman in Bailey's shop.

[20] _One Hundred Years_, MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan Foundry,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1896), p. 12, where is given a list of
printers found in Binny & Ronaldson's ledgers from 1796 to 1801.
The original books are in the Typographic Library and Museum of the
American Type Founders Company, now a part of the Columbia University
Library.




                          RONALD B. McKERROW

                          _Typographic Debut_
 Notes on the Long ſ and other Characters in Early English Printing.

From _An Introduction to Bibliography_ by Ronald B. McKerrow. Copyright 1927
   by the Clarendon Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


                        _The letters ſ and s_

From the beginning of printing until towards the end of the eighteenth
century ſ was used initially and medially and s finally, following
of course the practice of the MSS. There were certain exceptions:
Sweynheim and Pannartz, setting up the first press in Italy at Subiaco
in 1465, used a type transitional in character though with marked
gothic features, which used the long ſ in all positions, a practice
which may have been imitated from Neapolitan MSS. of the period. Other
printers sometimes followed the same usage in Roman type.

The first book to discard ſ is said to have been Joseph Ames's
_Typographical Antiquities_ of 1749, but this was regarded as an
eccentricity, and the normal ſ is used in Herkert's edition of
1785-90. The effective introduction of the reform has been credited to
John Bell who in his _British Theatre_ of 1791 used s throughout, the
same practice being followed in the Boydell _Shakespeare_, of which
vol. I appeared in 1792.[21]

It is worth noting that Capell in his _Prolusions_, 1760, had
attempted a modification of the usual practice. He there uses s
medially for a z-sound, retaining ſ for an s-sound, thus: easily,
visible, rais'd, &c., but verſes, purſuit, ſatiſfy.

In London printing the reform was adopted very rapidly and, save in
work of an intentionally antiquarian character, we do not find much
use of ſ in the better kind of printing after 1800. The provincial
presses seem, however, to have retained it somewhat longer and it is
said to have been used at Oxford until 1824.


                      _The letters i, j, u and v_

As a general rule, until early in the seventeenth century there was
only one capital letter, I (in Roman) or [Illustration: J] in black-letter),
for the letters now represented by I and J; and only one capital letter
V (in Roman) or [Illustration: U, V]] (in black-letter) for the
letters U and V. As was pointed out by F. W. Bourdillon, this has in
early French books the odd result that a _libraire juré_ is liable to
appear in capitals as "I V R E." When reprinting a black-letter text
in Roman it seems logical to represent these by I and V in all cases,
though some editors have preferred to use J and U, perhaps because the
black-letter forms approximate more closely to these letters in shape.

In lower-case most founts had i, j, u and v, but j was only used in
the combination ij (often a ligature) or in numerals, as xiij, while
v and u were differentiated according to position, not according to
pronunciation; v being always used at the beginning of a word and u
always medially.

Thus the following are the normal spellings: iudge, inijcere or
iniicere (= _lat._ injicere), vse, euent, vua (= _lat._ uva). Certain
printers varied the practice in a few books, but the rule followed
by most was absolutely rigid. It is quite incorrect to say that the
letters were used indifferently, or that the sixteenth-century usage
was the converse of the modern.... Rimes and puns show that the
Elizabethans _called_ V by the name we now give to U (hence W is called
double-u). I have failed to discover the originator of the modern name
"ve...."

In England no example of the distinction [between i and j, u and v]
seems to have been found earlier than J. Banister's _History of Man_,
printed by John Day in 1578. The new method is followed in a few other
books of Day, and in 1579-80 we find it followed by Henry Middleton
in reprinting a Latin Bible from a Frankfurt edition in which the
distinction had been made. From that time onwards to the end of the
century we find a certain number of books following the new system
either completely or with certain modifications, and thereafter the
number gradually increased until between 1620 and 1630 it became the
general rule.

The majuscule U at first employed was of the general design of the
lower-case u with a small tail or serif at the foot (which has been
revived in some modern fonts). The modern U begins to come into use in
English printing about the middle of the seventeenth century.


                            _The letter w_

In early fonts this is often represented by vv. In later times the same
is often found in fonts of extra large size (presumably of foreign
origin), and in ordinary fonts when there happened to be a run on the w
and the compositor had not enough.


                              _Ligatures_

Two or more letters joined together, or differing in design from the
separate letters, and cast on one type-body, such as [ct] or [ffi],
are called a ligature. There were two reasons for their being so
cast, custom and convenience.

In the early fonts the great majority of the ligatures were due to
custom alone and represented a following of scribal practice which
commonly joined together certain pairs of letters. Thus in the fount
used by Caxton in the _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_ we find
such ligatures as ad, be, ce, ch, co, de, en, in, ll, pa, pe, po, pp,
re, ro, te, &c., all of which owe their existence solely to imitation
of MSS. of the time. Many of these customary ligatures persisted
throughout the sixteenth century, and even later in black-letter founts
... while a few have combinations with certain capitals such as Ch, Sh,
Th, Wh.... Even in Roman founts we find [ct], [oo], &c., of
which [ct] has persisted until modern times. In Italic fonts we also
find _es_, _us_, _[st]_, and others. (The original Aldine Italic had
many more.)

When a letter part of which overhangs the body of the type, such as f
or ſ, happens to be followed by such an upright letter as l or h, or
by an i, the overhanging part or "kern" of the first letter comes in
contact with the top of the second, and either the two types do not fit
together properly or the kern of the first letter gets broken off. To
avoid this, most fonts even at present have ligatures of f with l, i
and another f (the end of the curve of the first letter or the dot of
the i being suppressed), and of [ff] with l and i. In early times
these ligatures for convenience included also a set with ſ. The f
and ſ ligatures are also presumably copied from the MSS., where they
frequently occur, though not in all hands....


                          _Punctuation marks_

/ In quite early fonts this sign is used for the comma, or perhaps we
should rather say to indicate any short pause in reading.... The modern
comma seems to have been introduced into England about 1521 (in Roman
type) and 1535 (in black-letter). It occurs in Venetian printing before
1500.

? The query mark seems to have been used in England from about 1521.

; The semicolon seems to have been first used in England about 1569,
but was not common until 1580 or thereabouts.

. The full stop was commonly used _before_ as well as _after_ Roman,
and sometimes also arabic, numerals until about 1580. Thus ".xii."
It was also used before and after i (.i. = id est) and ſ (.ſ. =
scilicet), and I have found it once with q = cue: "as though his .q.
was then to speake."

‘ and ’ were used indifferently in such abbreviations as th’ or th‘ for
‘the.’ It may be noted that ‘t’is’ or ‘t‘is’ (instead of ‘ ’tis’) was
so common in the Elizabethan period that it should perhaps be regarded
as normal.

" Inverted commas were, until late in the seventeenth century,
frequently used at the beginnings of lines to call attention to
sententious remarks. Modern editors have occasionally regarded such
passages as _quotations_ and completed the quotes, which is generally
wrong. So far as I have observed they were not especially associated
with quotations until the eighteenth century, although, owing to their
use for calling especial attention to a passage, they often appear in
passages which are actually quoted.

Even after they become clearly used to mark quotations they generally
appear at the beginning of the passage and at the beginning of every
line, but not always at the _end_. The practice of closing the
quotation with two apostrophes seems to be comparatively modern. (I
have found it in the middle of the eighteenth century, but it does not
seem to have been regularly observed until much later.)

Inverted commas, as well as many other signs, Greek letters (sometimes
inverted) &c., were used in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printing
as reference marks directing to side- or footnotes.

( ) were often used in the sixteenth century where we now use quotation
marks, and were indeed the general way of indicating a _short_
quotation, e.g.:

 "she was neuer heard to giue any the lie, nor so much as to (thou) any
 in anger."--STUBBES, _Christal Glasse_, 1591.

They also seem sometimes to be used merely for emphasis, e.g.:

 "What yesterday was (_Greene_) now's seare and dry"--COOKE, _Greene's
 Tu Quoque_, 1614.

[ ] Square brackets are common in some Elizabethan fonts, being used as
we now use round ones. They were also sometimes used instead of round
ones for the purposes mentioned above; e.g.:

 "which is as much as [of olde] or [in times past]."--PLUTARCH,
 _Morals_, 1603.

                     COMPOSED IN CASLON 337 TYPES


                              FOOTNOTES:

[21] NOTE: In the Birrell & Garnett catalog, _Typefounders' Specimens_,
London 1928, pp. 39-40, it is pointed out that the short s was
effectively introduced by the Martins "who worked the Apollo Press at
Edinburgh, and their London publisher, John Bell. The first book of
theirs that I have seen is the series of Poets, for example the Dryden
of 1777...." Graham Pollard relates there the instructive and amusing
history of the error, for which Hansard was responsible: J. Johnson in
_Typographia_, London 1824, wrote "... for which we are indebted to
the ingenious Mr. John Bell, who introduced them in his edition of the
British Classics." In copying this, Hansard (1825) made the error in
transcribing "British _Theatre_." He was followed by C. H. Timperley in
1842, who added the qualifying phrase "about 1795," by J. B. Nichols in
his _Illustrations of Literature_, 1858, and by R. B. McKerrow in 1927,
"where it has been given a new lease of life by correcting the obvious
mistake in date to 1791."




                           EDWARD ROWE MORES

                    [Illustration: _Metal-Flowers_]

 From a Dissertation upon English Typographical Founders and Foundries
by Edward Rowe Mores. London 1778. Reprinted by The Grolier Club, 1924.


Metal-flowers were the firſt ornaments uſed in printed books, to
be ſet at the head of the firſt page and the tail of the laſt
page, as well as at the head and tail of any ſeparate part of the
whole work, and they were ſometimes uſed as an edging to the matter
according to the taſte of the author or the printer, they were uſed
ſparingly and with ſmall variety, but in time they became more
numerouſ, and were cut in ſeveral ſhapes, forms and devices, and
continued in reputation till _Cutters in Wood_ ſupplanted them, when
_Mr. Moxon_ wrote they were accounted old-fashioned. but the uſe of
them was revived by the _French_ and _Germans_ and the variety of them
conſiderably encreased by the Two _Mr. James's_ in _England_.

The _flower_-matrices in their foundery have been divided into _old_
and _new_, which to be ſure is a diviſion, but ſuch as conveys
nothing or a falſe idea to the underſtanding.

We are to obſerve then that the latter, though moſtly now in vogue,
are mere figures of fancy, made up of circular oval and angular turns,
contrived to look light, airy and unmeaning, and to try the genius or
patience of a compoſitor.

But the former expreſſed ſome meaning and were adapted to other
purpoſes than barely to dress and decorate a page. they were formed
from real objects natural and artificial, civil and military, as from
weeds and flowers of the field and garden, leaves, branches, fruits,
flower-baſkets, flower-pots, urns, croſſes, banners, launces,
ſwords, and tilting ſpears, and other ſamples culled from the
fields of nature and of heraldry; yet germane to the ſubject matter
of the work.

They were frequently emblematical and monitory; as cherubs' faces for
the hymns of charity girls, hour-glaſſes for lugubrious orators,
and _mort_-heads for the pariſh-clerks. they were ſymbolical
of nations; as the crown and roſe, the crown and lyz, the crown
and harp;--of dignities and orders; as diadems, crowns, mitres and
coronets; the red hat called at _Camb._ the _Cardinal's cap_, where too
the mitre is called the _golden night-cap_; the courtelass; the arms of
_Ulſter_, and the anchor of hope; the _Scotch_-thiſtle and ſprigs
of _rue_; both _ſub_-ſymbolical; the former rendered more ſo by
the _cry de guerre_ "_Noli me Tangere_";--of ſtates and conditions;
as the myrtle, the weeping willow, and the bugle-horn. with many others
which to enumerate would be tedious here.

                            [Illustration]

                     COMPOSED IN CASLON 337 TYPES




                             JAMES WATSON

_The_ HISTORY _of the Invention and Progress of the Mysterious Art of_
                         PRINTING _& c._

From _The History of the Art of Printing_ ... printed by James Watson,
                           Edinburgh, 1713.


If the Ignorant look upon PRINTING without admiring It; it is, because
they do not understand the same: The Learned have always judged far
otherways; and have, with Reason, thought, That, for almost the Three
Ages wherein this Wonder hath been seen in Europe, the Wit of Man did
never invent any Thing that was either more lucky, or more useful for
Instruction.

This Truth is so universally acknowledged, that it needs no Proof:
Every one knows, that, without this marvellous Art, the Studies,
Labours, and Works of great Men, would have been of no Use to
Posterity. We are then obliged to this Art, for the Knowledge of the
Works of the old Philosophers, Physicians, Astronomers, Historians,
Orators, Poets, Lawyers, Theologues; and, in a Word, of all that hath
been writ upon any Art, and Science whatsoever. It is by the Means
of PRINTING that Theologues do attain to the sacred Mysteries of our
Religion; That the Doctors of Law, do teach those admirable Laws, which
do regulate the Society of Men; That Historiographers do furnish us
with Examples, which we are either to follow or shun; That Astronomers
do make every Day such fine Discoveries in the Heavens. It is this very
Art which furnisheth Physicians with Means to preserve and recover
the Health of Man's Body; Which discovereth to Philosophers the more
hid Secrets of Nature; Which furnisheth Geometricians with Ability to
measure the Earth; And to Arithmeticians, to give every Man his Due.
In fine, what would the Moderns know in any one Science, and Art, if
PRINTING did not furnish them with All that the Ancients found out? All
the Elogiums which we make of PRINTING, and the Honours which we pay to
It, come far short of It's Merit: And we cannot but easily consent to
this, if we consider the vast Expences which the Ancients were obliged
to be at, in procuring Manuscripts....


         _THE PUBLISHER'S PREFACE TO THE PRINTERS IN SCOTLAND_

  _Gentlemen_,

  _That Men are not born for themselves, but for the Republick, is an
  ancient and universally applauded Maxim. And it is so agreeable to
  right Reason, that the wisest and best Part of Mankind, in every
  Age since the Creation, have endeavour'd to lay the Foundation of a
  lasting good Name, by every Action of their Life; whereby they might
  improve the Body or Society of which they were Members. To this
  Principle it is, that we owe the Invention or Improvement of all the
  Arts and Sciences that are instructive or beneficial to Man. 'Mongst
  which the Invention, and vast Improvement, of the no less honourable,
  than useful and admirable Art of PRINTING, which we profess, deserves
  a very eminent Place: Since by It, all Sorts of Learning, Sacred
  or Profane, and every Kind of profitable Instruction and Invention
  are both publish'd and preserv'd; as my Author, I here give you the
  Translation of, shews clearly and copiously enough._

  _This Book, being the History of the Beginning and Advancement of
  our Art, shews the Character of the Men who first profess'd It, the
  Marks of Honour paid them, wilst alive; nay, and the Monuments rais'd
  to preserve their Memories after Death. By all which 'tis plain, That
  those illustrious Persons were honour'd, and ranked among the best of
  their fellow Citizens, in those Times: Whereas now we are scarcely
  class'd or esteem'd above the lower Forms of Mechanicks. How we came
  to lose that Honour and Respect due to our Profession, (since the
  present Age is much more learned, and I believe, as just too, and
  discerning of Merit as their Ancestors) shall be a little inquir'd
  into. But first let me give some general Account of this Work._

  _It bears the Title of_, The History, _&c._ of our Mysterious Art; _and
  the Author, with great Exactness and Candor, fairly shews the Claims,
  Reasons and Authority supporting them, on both Sides, in the lasting
  Contest betwixt the Towns of_ Mentz _and_ Harlem; _for the Glory of the
  Invention. A clear Mark, what a solid Honour 'tis esteem'd for a Town
  to have been the noble Theatre, where so wonderful an Art was first
  brought to Light._

  _He next gives the Names of the first learned Printers, together with
  a Catalogue of the Works printed by them, and the Marks of Honour paid
  to them by their Fellow-Citizens and Country-Men; which will more than
  enough justify what I have affirm'd above._

  _The Author wrote in_ French, _and I have caus'd translate it for my
  own, and the common Benefit of these practising the Art in this Part
  of_ Britain; _without proposing any other Advantage or Gain by it,
  but the Improvement of the Art, or at least raising It to the Pitch
  of Perfection It was at here in former Times. And since we are, I
  trust, all of us honest Men, and of better Spirits than to propose the
  Earning our Bread as the chief and only End of our Labour; I entertain
  a settled well grounded Hope, that the Perusal of this, will inspire us
  all with a noble and generous Emulation of equalling, nay, exceeding,
  if we can, the best Performances of our laudable Ancestors in the
  Employment. That since our Native Country has at present as many good
  Spirits, and Abundance of more Authors than in any former Age; we may
  make it our Ambition, as well as it is our Interest and Honour, to
  furnish them with Printers that can serve them so well, that they need
  not, as many of our former Authors have been forc'd to do, go to other
  Countries to publish their Writings, lest a learn'd Book should be
  spoil'd by an ignorant or careless Printer._

  _Thus, Gentlemen, we shall have this Honour, which is truly more
  valuable than immense Sums of Money or opulent Estates, that, for
  the Glory of our Country, we have retrieved the Art of PRINTING,
  and brought It to as great Perfection as ever It was here in former
  Times...._

  EDINBURGH, MAY 29TH, 1713




                     Printers as Men of the World
                     [Illustration: EVELYN HARTER]

Copyright 1947 by The Typophiles. Reprinted by permission of the author.


Printers are usually judged as printers, and there are those who hold
that this is as it should be, that the printer should stick to his pica
rule and follow copy out the window. But in their spare time printers
also eat, vote, marry and go to war. It would therefore be possible to
look at them from various points of view, as, for instance, how many
were vegetarians, anarchists, bigamists and top sergeants. This could
be so of any group of craftsmen. If we look at printers from another
viewpoint, as to whether they were men of the world, it is because of
the nature of the stuff with which they work.

I should like to begin obliquely by speaking first of an approach
to the history of printing. Probably the history of printing is more
limited, definite and easy to encompass than that of almost any
subject. That is not to say that anyone can ever learn all of it, or
that we cannot go on learning something new about it all our lives.
But printing started fairly recently in time; it is its own record.
Excluding the science of bibliography, the literature is not large
compared, for example, with that of art or philosophy or geology. Yet
few people know as much of it as they might know with pleasure, and
perhaps the reason for that might be a faulty approach. It is customary
to send beginners to study Updike, but it is easy for beginners to get
bogged down in _Printing Types_, particularly if they start to read
it from the beginning. Updike's magnificent work is, in its writing
and its outline, gratifying to the student whose basic knowledge has
been fixed and matured. Beginners move more freely in the pages of
George Parker Winship, possibly because he related printing events to
world events to a greater extent than does Updike. Usually the person
who wishes to learn more about printing has already at hand a lot of
names and dates and places vaguely relating to world events of the
past. To such a person printing history lends itself readily to the
method of study by association. It can be a good game to find out what
was happening in printing when Napoleon was looking at the Pyramids,
or when Charles I was beheaded. If one is interested in art, he can
correlate artists and printers, and find that Leonardo was born about
the same time that printing was born in Europe, or he can correlate
printing with advances in the knowledge of medicine or agriculture.
There are small but interesting links between the history of printing
and that of music. For instance William Caslon the elder loved music,
and it is possible that the composer Handel sometimes played his new
pieces at the concerts held in Caslon's organ room, since the two men
had mutual friends in the musical world of London.

There have been printers who were interested in other worlds. The Dutch
printer Blaeu studied astronomy under Tycho Brahe, and himself produced
in 1600 a celestial globe. The Scottish type-founder Alexander Wilson,
although educated as a doctor, became interested in type and left a
considerable foundry to his sons before he himself moved on to become
professor of astronomy at the University of Glasgow.

If you wish to make the most of this method, you must do it yourself.
Then it is you who will have the fun, and then what you learn will
stick. What follows illustrates the method briefly by looking at a
number of printers in the past five hundred years from one angle,
judging them not simply as printers but as men of the world.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It would be nice if we could start with a definition of "man of
the world" and a definition of "printer" but actually this small
investigation is an attempt at definition. We cannot mean "man of the
world" in the Chesterfieldian sense, although there have been many
printers who knew how to dress and carry themselves in court and salon,
notably Aldus, Caxton and members of the Didot family. Chesterfield
would be obliged to allow some of our printers in his company, but I
doubt if we could allow him in ours, for in one of his letters to his
son he says, "Due attention to the inside of books and due contempt
for the outside is the proper relation between a man of sense and his
books." Perhaps he was thinking of the vanity of fancy bindings, though
it is more likely that he was beguiling himself into one of those
untruths common to aphorizers. However that may be, our man of the
world does not mean gentleman of the world as Chesterfield thought of
gentleman, although there are printers who are both--not all dead.

If we were to speak of the printer as a citizen of the world, we would
be coming a little closer to it, but citizen implies being at home in
the geographical world, whereas we are thinking of him being at home in
the world of ideas. When we say "of" the world, we mean that he knows
that he belongs to his contemporary world, that the people and events
are of interest to him, the politics, art, science and poetry--not only
some particular dexterity, professional specialization or money-making
device of his own.

It might be argued that the bulk of printing has not now, and never has
had, much relation to ideas, that in the early days its chief business
was dubious theological disputes and that its chief business now is
advertising soap flakes and the like. But printing, in its entirety, is
a description of the world, and if a great deal of print is devoted to
murder cases, toothpaste ads and income tax blanks--well, that must be
the kind of world we have. However, when new ideas have been advanced,
they have been advanced in print, so that the printer has never been
safe from them. Even now, in the event that they be promulgated by
radio, they must be fixed in print in order to stick and sink in. Let
us only say then that with regard to gaining knowledge of the world in
which we live, the printer is in an exposed position--nothing more.

Although we do not know much about Gutenberg,[22] the first
printer, we doubt that he was a man of the world in our sense. How
could he have been? For the preceding four or five hundred years to be
a man of the world was to be unworldly; people had been concerned with
building cathedrals, making religious paintings, going on crusades.
Printing was the chief factor in making the man of the world in our
modern sense. Printing enabled him to know what was going on so that he
might take part in it, although printers did not realize this during
the cradle days of printing. Great events were occurring then; the
Turks captured Constantinople; the Hundred Years' War came to an end
with the English driven off the continent of Europe; the Portuguese
sailed to the Canaries and the Azores; but these events found little
mention in early printing. _The Nuremberg Chronicle_, as Helen Gentry
and David Greenhood point out in their _Chronology_, made no mention
of Columbus' discovery of America in the previous year. First came
religious books, then school books, law books and classics. It is true
that Fust and Schöffer printed proclamations and information for the
archbishop, but it was not until Von Olpe at Basle printed _The Ship of
Fools_ in 1494 that we have "a book dealing with contemporary people
and their exploits instead of with historical accounts of the past."

Although Gutenberg had been involved in the politics of Mainz in his
youth, probably he thought of nothing but printing after he began work
on his invention. We have an old book of stories for children which
describes Gutenberg in a dream: "He thought of the great harm which
might be done through the printing of bad books--how they would corrupt
the minds of the innocent, how they would stir up the passions of
the wicked. Suddenly he seized a heavy hammer and began to break his
press in pieces. But then a voice seemed to come from the press itself
saying, 'Hold your hand, John Gutenberg. The art of printing will
enlighten the world.'" I have no idea where the author could have found
source material for this little fantasy, for we can feel quite sure
that Gutenberg had little conception of the influence of his invention.
He was all craftsman and inventor and carried his world in his head.
His financial reverses alone would indicate that.

The word "printer" has been an elastic word from the very beginning,
including scholars and artists, businessmen and craftsmen. If we were
to consider the term "printer" narrowly in the sense of a typesetter or
a pressman or a man who supervises these operations, we should still
have to make room in our history for men like Jean Grolier, the patron,
and Geoffroy Tory, the artist. We know of many printers who were first
and last businessmen. Johann Fust was a banker until he put money in
Gutenberg's project. The first English printer, Caxton, was a retired
wool merchant who liked to translate French romances for his friends
and became tired of writing them out in longhand. Anton Koberger, who
was Dürer's godfather, the publisher of _The Nuremberg Chronicle_ and
a great entrepreneur in his day, began as a printer; he printed books
in various languages, did sub-contracting and printed advertising
circulars. Probably if the plain motives of most printers could be
discovered, making a living would loom large.

                   *       *       *       *       *

There have been many printers who were also scholars, beginning with
Aldus and including the Estiennes and the Didots. And there are the
typecutter-printers who combined letter-founding and printing--Nicolas
Jenson, Giambattista Bodoni, John Baskerville, as well as the
names equally brilliant in printing history of those who devoted
themselves to founding--Claude Garamond, William Caslon and the
Fourniers. A general haze surrounds the subject of the contribution
of less well-known type-cutters to printing. Although the use of a
distinguished type may be one of the chief reasons for the printer's
success, compare the fame of the printer Aldus with that of his type
designer, Francesco da Bologna, of John Bell with that of Richard
Austin, of Thomas Bensley with that of Vincent Figgins, of Bulmer with
William Martin, of Elzevir with Christoffel van Dyck, of François
Ambroise Didot with that of Waflard. On the subject of the share which
these printers had in suggesting the nature of the type to the men
who cut it, typographical writers are almost consistently inexplicit,
although we do know that William Martin brought his types with him
when he started work for Bulmer. Even Updike, who gives credit to
the type designer and cutter wherever he is known, says, "At first
the best printers were often type-founders too, although Garamond
merely (_sic!_) cut and cast type for the use of others." Binders and
papermen, ink-makers and machinery manufacturers have always had an
affectionate and proprietary air about printing. Rather than try to
define "printer" strictly, it may be truer to say that printers are an
adjectival lot, and that printing can honorably be a very inclusive
term, but that we might have a new printing terminology which would
better define the various contributions.

                   *       *       *       *       *

What was happening in the world about the year 1500 when Aldus
Manutius[23] had his great printing shop in Venice working at its peak?
Columbus had made several voyages, and the Portuguese had been around
the tip of Africa although Magellan had not yet sailed around the
world. Leonardo da Vinci had left Milan for political reasons, and was
working in Venice, as was Giovanni Bellini and his pupils Titian and
Giorgione. Northern Italy was the scene of much brawling between rival
princes, with Emperor Maximilian I stepping in now and then to make
things worse. The battles were nuisances to Aldus, for they interfered
with the production and distribution of his books. I do not know how
much he knew about the geographical discoveries of his time, but we can
be sure that a man of his cultivation knew about the great painting and
sculpture being done. Ralph Roeder says of this time that its "triumphs
are preserved in art, its reverses in its spiritual story, and both are
the result of the same cause--its supreme vitality."

It is one more indication of that vitality that Aldus at the age of
forty embarked on a project which was to bring about a tremendous
enlargement of the conception of the purpose of books. Many printers
in history have drifted into printing or its allied trades by chance,
but there seems to be no doubt that Aldus knew exactly what he was
doing all the time. He was a man who knew what he wanted. He had been
a scholar and tutor to Alberto and Lionello Pio, princes of Carpi,
when he first saw printed books and realized what could be done to
make classical manuscripts generally available. With the aid of the
Pio family he went to Venice, which, since the fall of Constantinople,
had been the richest repository of manuscripts and a residence of
Greek scholars. In order to have reference books available for his
proof-readers and editors, he first printed a Greek dictionary and a
Greek grammar and himself prepared a Greek-Latin dictionary. He gave
Venice a university when he started the New Academy of Venice. For his
press he hired the finest scholars of the day--Bembo and Reuchlin,
Musurus and Erasmus. We, in the twentieth century, have a tendency to
think of scholars as removed from the affairs of life. Aldus was a
scholar who was also in the midst of life, because scholarship was an
important affair in the world of Renaissance man. He must have been a
true cosmopolitan as well, commanding, as he did, the friendship of men
as different as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Jean Grolier of France, from
whom he had a commission to print special copies of his books on vellum.

The 1500's were a time of religious bickerings and of religious wars,
of Henry the VIII's break with Rome, of the German wars following the
death of Martin Luther, and the Inquisition in Spain. In the early part
of the century there was working at Lyons, which was then second only
to Paris as a printing center in France, a young scholar and printer
named Etienne Dolet.[24] There is a story that he was the illegitimate
son of Francis I, but at any rate he came of a wealthy family, having
been to Venice as secretary to the French Ambassador and to Toulouse
to study law. By the time he was twenty-seven he had published a
Latin Dictionary which was "one of the most important contributions
to classical scholarship in the century" and was given a license by
Francis I providing that Dolet might print for ten years any books
written or supervised by him. His great range of taste and interests
may be judged by the fact that he printed the New Testament in Latin
and Rabelais in French.

He had met Rabelais when he first went to Lyons to work under
Sebastian Gryphius as proof-reader, and there gained his practical
knowledge of printing under the foreman, Jean de Tournes. E. D.
Christie, Dolet's biographer, says that Dolet, arriving in Lyons
with a fever, may have been taken directly to Rabelais, who was at
that time practising medicine, with the position of Physician to the
Great Hospital. Christie also thinks it possible that Dolet may have
seen Rabelais perform a dissection on a man's body ten years before
Vesalius. Everything Dolet did shows him to have been a man with
lively fearless intellect and no talent for playing safe and keeping
out of trouble. He spent several terms in jail for lack of orthodoxy
on religious questions, was pardoned by Francis I for killing a man,
and was denounced by Rabelais for printing an unexpurgated edition of
_Pantagruel_ after Rabelais had fixed it up to suit the Sorbonne.

At Lyons in the months of April and May, 1539, there occurred the first
large organized printers' strike. It was no wonder, for Updike says
that it was not unusual for the printers' day to begin at two in the
morning and last until eight or nine at night. The workmen said that the
masters did not supply sufficient food, that wages had been reduced,
that there were too many compulsory holidays. The Seneschal of Lyons
was empowered to meet a committee of journeymen and one of masters; at
this conference rules were drawn up. But the trouble spread to Paris,
and as a result of arbitration there, the working day was set from five
in the morning till eight at night. Then there was a flare-up at Lyons
again because the master printers threatened to move away; this was
some years in settlement.

Of all the master printers of Lyons, the only one who sided with
the strikers was Dolet. This was held against him later when he was
imprisoned on a charge of atheism, tortured, hanged and finally
burned on his thirty-seventh birthday. (See _Chronology of Books and
Printing_.) On his way to his death he made a Latin pun on his name. If
we speak of him as a man of the world, the accent is on man.

It is said that it was this event--the burning of Dolet--which
decided Christopher Plantin[25] to leave France in 1548 for Antwerp,
though Plantin never exhibited the uncompromising attitude of Dolet;
rather he showed a business toughness and adaptability which enabled
him to survive and stay in this world, which was no small feat for
a printer in the sixteenth century. It was a time when empires and
ideologies were in tremendous conflict; the period of the German
religious wars following the death of Martin Luther; of Spain and
England in unrelenting struggle for control of the sea, culminating
in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Antwerp itself was
a focal point of disorder after Philip II sent the Duke of Alba to
subdue the Netherlanders. Plantin had built up a good printing and
publishing business when, in 1562, it was liquidated because of his
alleged unorthodoxy. Within a few years he had recovered to the extent
that he was made Printer to the King of Spain, from whom he received
assurances of help on his Polyglot Bible. Again, in the sack of Antwerp
by Spanish soldiers in 1576 his business was all but ruined; he went
to Leyden for a few years, but returned to finish his days at Antwerp.
To a man living in those times, the issues must have seemed even more
confused and difficult than ours do now. Recent investigations indicate
that Plantin belonged to a sect of heretics for which he printed books
secretly, while also doing books for the church.

Another sixteenth-century printer who could hardly be oblivious to
the events of his time--he was so knocked about by them--was Robert
Estienne.[26] Even though he was at one time Royal Printer, liked and
respected by Francis I, he sometimes had to seek the sanctuary of the
King's court to escape the King's censors. Robert must have been a man
of stature, for he published his _New Testament_ in defiance of the
Sorbonne, and only after Francis I died did he leave Paris for Geneva.
He was a believer in one of the springs of Renaissance thought--that
through scholarship it is possible to come to the truth, and through
printing all men may recognize and know the truth.

It would be possible for a man of the world to be so without ever
stirring from the town of his birth, yet oftener than not the man
with breadth of interest is a cosmopolitan and a traveller. Such
cosmopolitans were fourteen members of the Elzevir[27] family, who,
over a period of one hundred and thirty years, engaged in printing and
selling small books chiefly intended for poor scholars. This Dutch
family of practical internationalists established their bookshops and
printing offices in nearly every large city on the continent, from
Denmark to Italy, printing their books in Latin and Greek, French and
Arabic, on subjects ranging from medicine to political science. All
this in spite of the Thirty Years' War, which was to bring about the
decline of the artificial internationalism of the Hapsburgs and the
Holy Roman Empire, and in spite of similar disturbances before and
after.

                   *       *       *       *       *

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the geographical
boundaries of printing were extended vastly outside of Europe. The
colonization of North and South America was going forward. The first
press in America had been established at Mexico City in 1539 by agents
of Kromberger of Seville. European printing was carried to India in
1561, to China in 1589, and to Japan in 1591. The first printing was
done in Russia in 1563.

Credit for doing the first printing in the American colonies,
_The Freeman's Oath_, was once given to Stephen Daye, is sometimes
latterly given to his young son, Matthew Daye. Were they more than
mechanic, compositor and pressman? Who chose the copy, proofread it,
set policies, pushed the work along? Possibly some of the founders of
the new Harvard College, or possibly Mrs. Glover, the widow of the
man who originated the idea of the press. She was probably a woman of
education, since she settled in Cambridge to be near the new college
and later married the President, Henry Dunster. She undoubtedly shared
her first husband's independent views--he had been suspended from
his parsonage in Surrey because of his nonconformity; she might have
picked _The Freeman's Oath_ for the first copy. She may have been
more of a printer and more of a woman of the world than the fragments
of knowledge which we have about her disclose.... Whoever guided the
destiny of the first press, it was a person not completely confined by
dogma, for the books included almanacs, law books and college thesis
lists, as is pointed out by Carl Purington Rollins, himself perhaps our
best example of a modern fine printer conscious of what is going on
around him.

                   *       *       *       *       *

During the late 1700's the Industrial Revolution began, but its
implications were not guessed by artisan or statesman, and the
best printers were still in the age of elegance. Baskerville was
businessman, eccentric, free-thinker, but his printing, as much as that
of Bodoni who was employed by the Duke of Parma, was regal.

Probably Horace Walpole,[28] more than any other printer, felt that
the world was his house, in which he could move about freely from
room to room, always at ease. He had the wit and manners to be an
ornament to French salons, the originality to introduce a new brand of
literature in his _Castle of Otranto_--the forerunner of our mystery
novel of today, the personal force to influence the trend of English
architecture with his "little Gothic castle" at Strawberry Hill in
Twickenham. In one of his letters to the artist Richard Bentley he
says that he can't resist going to fires, and there is something of
this spirit in his activities. The collector W. S. Lewis says, "He was
not only, in his own word, a 'gazetteer' but the historian of English
painting and gardening, an essayist, poet, novelist, pamphleteer,
dramatist, printer, antiquarian, and _arbiter elegantiarum_ and in the
modern sense and phrase a 'debunker' of historical figures.... It was
his main purpose in life to be the official historian of his time."

Although he had a seat in Parliament, he paid little attention to the
nation's business. He represented those parts of life in the eighteenth
century which had natured and were drawing to a close, as Fielding
and Goldsmith, the American Revolution and the French Revolution
represented things to come. Printing being one of his minor activities,
he is of more interest as a human being than as a craftsman.

If Walpole was a man of the world and man of letters, John Bell[29]
was man of the world and man of business. During a lifetime of
eighty-six years he was, as Stanley Morison pictures him, book-seller,
printer, publisher, type-founder and journalist. Like a lesser
Franklin--he had not Franklin's scientific interest, integrity, or
vision--he was endowed with the ability to grasp the salient facts of a
trade or profession, and a wealth of exuberant interest in life around
him. At the beginning of his career as a book-seller, he published a
sort of early version of Wilson's _Cumulative Book Index_, a list of
current books for the use of the trade. As type-founder (and introducer
of the short "s") he employed the talent of the punch cutter Richard
Austin to produce the first English "modern" type. In addition to a
successful fashion magazine, he published at different times four
newspapers. At one time he even made himself a war correspondent, when
he visited the British Army then fighting the French Revolutionaries in
Flanders. He reported the action at Ypres, made a march with the troops
from Courtrai to Tournai and pursued his object of finding "active and
well-informed persons in different parts of the continent" who would
act as regular correspondents for his paper, _The Oracle_. The books
he published included law books, Shakespeare, a series of the poets of
Great Britain; he engaged members of the Royal Academy to illustrate
the plays of a series called _The British Theatre_ and hired the best
engravers of the day to copy the paintings. He knew the literary men of
the day--Sheridan wrote for his _World_--and even had a balloonist for
a friend--Lunardi, who made the first ascent in London. Compared to his
contemporary Bulmer, who could be called a printer's printer, Bell was
a promoter whose medium was printing.

Of all the Didots, and they seem to have been able men, Firmin
Didot[30] is of most interest to us. He taught many of the printers
of Greece out of sympathy for the cause of Greek independence, the
same for which Byron died. He wrote plays, translated classics, and
after he retired from business he entered the Chamber of Deputies;
he learned Spanish at the age of sixty-three. Desmond Flower says,
in writing of him, "Printing is a curious and perhaps unsatisfactory
hybrid between a profession and an art; the men who have caught the
sense of it most successfully have been intelligent people who could
see it whole--scholar-printer-publishers--for whom some other rivers
flowed beyond the simple floods of printing ink." Perhaps when Mr.
Flower wrote this he had forgotten how "tacky" printing ink is, but his
meaning is a large part of what I am trying to say.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The question of what world one chooses to recognize--that of courts
and salons or of slums--arises in connection with the great printer of
the nineteenth century, William Morris.[31] He saw what was happening
as a result of machinery and large industry, and he did not like it.
He must have seen it very plainly in order to revolt against it so
strongly. His printing period was the last in his life, following
the chintzes, stained glass windows, tapestries, rugs and furniture.
He felt that people would be better people if they made and owned
beautiful things, and he also saw, like his contemporary, Karl Marx,
that the economic structure would have to be changed before the best
qualities in people could operate, though he was not willing to follow
Marx in his methods. When we think of the William Morris who printed
the Kelmscott _Chaucer_, we do not always remember the William Morris
who stood in Hyde Park near the Marble Arch talking to the street
crowds about socialism, wondering if the police were coming; who for
years travelled about speaking in a thousand stuffy halls in England,
Ireland and Scotland. When he was old, tears would come to his eyes
when the misery of the poor was mentioned. It is easy to say that his
socialism was vague and his desire to return to the methods of the
thirteenth century unrealistic, but considering the sincerity of his
motives and the breadth of his interests, I think that we must say that
he was not so much a man of this world as a man of a better world.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps we must return to America to find the printer who has made
the greatest contribution to political history. We can hardly detail
here the cosmopolitan accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin. We might
rather examine what right we have to call him a printer, in view of the
magnitude of his other accomplishments. He liked to think of himself as
a printer, and started his will with the words, "I, Benjamin Franklin,
printer." Once when he visited the establishment of the Didots in
France he stopped at a hand press and pulled a few proofs. When the
workman exclaimed at his dexterity he said, "Do not be surprised.
Printing is my real trade." Wherever he went in England or France he
corresponded with printers and visited their establishments. We know
about his private press at Passy and about his wholesome influence on
American printing. Carl Van Doren, in his biography of Franklin, says
that when he died the printers of Philadelphia walked in his funeral
procession and that the printers of Paris gathered to honor him,
listened to a eulogy by one of them while others set it in type as fast
as it was delivered and distributed printed copies as souvenirs. If
then we can claim him as a printer, we can feel sure that the man who
helped draft the Declaration of Independence, who was sent to negotiate
the peace and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention was, more
than any other printer, a man of the world.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It could hardly be maintained that being connected with printing makes
one a man of the world. It might even be argued and proved by examples
past and present that preoccupation with the problems of the craft is
a narrowing influence. Since most of the circumstances of our lives
are arranged for us when we are born, it is possible to travel through
life as on a conveyor belt, having things done to us along the way, and
this can be as true of a fine printer as of a bank president. Each can
go through life utterly ignorant of the economic and mental processes
that bring food to his table and send his son to the wars. It was
always a question, now more than ever critical, what part of a man's
life must be given to being a citizen against the claims of livelihood,
philosophy, family and amusement. The events of the past few years have
dramatized the dilemma. Printing has helped bring us to this place in
history. And so, although we cannot condemn a good craftsman because he
is interested in nothing except shop talk, we might say that printers
who are also men of the world realize that they are working in a bigger
shop.

   [Illustration: WOOD ENGRAVING BY REYNOLDS STONE, 1937.]

                       COMPOSED IN GRANJON TYPES


                              FOOTNOTES:

[22] Johann Gutenberg (c. 1397-1468). Gutenberg is considered the
effective inventor of printing, but his biography is written darkly
only in the records of the law courts to which he was constantly
summoned on money matters. His was a complex of inventions: he not
only cast type in single pieces, but devised a chase to hold it,
mixed suitable ink and perfected a technique for register and good
impression, with the result that the first printing remains among the
best.

[23] Aldus Manutius (1450-1515). Aldus' contributions to
printing--small capitals, the first Italic, the popularization of the
small type page--centered about his wish to help scholars. He wrote
to a friend: "We send these Satires to you, my dear Scipio, that they
may through their brevity become once more your intimate friends, as
they were formerly during your stay at Rome as a young man, when you
possessed them as thoroughly in your memory as your own fingers and
fingernails."

[24] Etienne Dolet (1509-1546). Dolet belongs with the great
scholar-printers Aldus Manutius and Robert Estienne, although he did
not live long enough to compare with them in volume of work. His career
of collision with the authority of the church, the state and other
printers terminated when he was tortured, hanged and burned on his
thirty-seventh birthday.

[25] Christopher Plantin (1514-1589). Plantin, a Frenchman who migrated
to Belgium, printed in many languages, using fonts by the best
contemporary type-cutters; he undertook work for the King of Spain and
the City of Antwerp, which honored him in death by burying him in its
cathedral, with the inscription "... king of typography."

[26] Robert Estienne (c. 1503-1559). In Robert Estienne, as in Aldus
and Dolet, the scholar and printer combined to produce tools for
humanism: dictionaries, lexicons, grammars, editions of the classics.
On his death his son Henri Estienne, grandson of the first Henri,
augmented the family tradition of scholarly publishing, though he never
surpassed the books of his father and grandfather in typographical
brilliance.

[27] Louis Elzevir (1540-1617). About one hundred and thirty years
after the invention of printing, Louis Elzevir became the first
publisher in the modern sense; not primarily a scholar or craftsman,
but a businessman who undertook the risk of production and distribution
of quantities of books for a variety of readers throughout Europe.

[28] Horace Walpole (1717-1797). Walpole is the great example of
the gentleman-amateur in printing. His fame as a printer has been
bolstered by his renown in other fields, especially in literature and
architecture.

[29] John Bell (1749-1831). Bell was a journalist and impresario in
printing whose enterprises ranged from publishing fashion magazines
to sets of Shakespeare. If he did not entirely realize the ambition
announced when he started his foundry--"... I am not without hopes of
raising my fame in this pursuit beyond the reach of competition in any
country whatever"--the type which bears his name remains today his best
memorial.

[30] Firmin Didot (1764-1836). The Didot family illustrates again that
printing ink seems to linger in the blood longer in France than in
other countries; of the Didots, Firmin stands out as a man who loved
his profession and constantly looked beyond it.

[31] William Morris (1834-1896). William Morris was a man who looked
backward in the crafts and forward in human relations, yet had a full
life in the world of his own time. As a printer he had great influence,
not all good.




              [Illustration]ANNE LYON HAIGHT[Illustration]

               _Are Women the Natural Enemies of Books?_

 From _Bookmaking on the Distaff Side_ by Anne Lyon Haight. Copyright
          1937 by the author and reprinted by her permission.


In my search for knowledge about lady bibliophiles I climbed the
library ladder and among the books on collecting saw _The Library_, by
Andrew Lang, London, 1881. Confident that I would find some charming
and sympathetic essay on the subject, I took it down and turned to the
index, but evidently I had forgotten Lang's prejudice, for to my horror
the startling lines "Women the natural foes of books" met my eye.
They were classed with the other enemies of books: damp, dust, dirt,
book-worms, careless readers, borrowers, book stealers, book-ghouls,
etc., so I hastily turned to the page and read: "Almost all women are
the inveterate foes, not of novels, of course, nor peerages and popular
volumes of history, but of books worthy of the name. It is true that
Isabelle d'Este and Madame de Pompadour and Madame de Maintenon were
collectors; and, doubtless, there are many other brilliant exceptions
to a general rule. But broadly speaking, women detest the books which
the collector desires and admires. First, they don't understand them;
second, they are jealous of their mysterious charms; third, books cost
money, and it really is a hard thing for a lady to see money expended
on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper scored with crabbed
characters. Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war against book-sellers'
catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have had to practise the
guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase across their own
frontier. Thus many married men are reduced to collecting Elzivers,
which go readily into the pocket, for you cannot smuggle a folio volume
easily."

Poor man, his experience with the fair sex must have been a very
unfortunate one. Perhaps he had been disillusioned by reading of the
sixteenth-century abbess of the convent of Rumsey in Hampshire, whom
Dibdin tells about. She was bibulously rather than bibliographically
inclined and bartered the books of the abbey for strong liquors and
consequently was accused of immoderate drinking, especially in the
nighttime when she invited the nuns to her chamber to participate in
these excesses. But fortunately the women whom Lang describes in his
diatribe are really the rare exception to the rule and only lack of
space prevents my writing a folio volume about the many famous women
collectors who have been friends not foes to books throughout the ages.

It is true though that the female of our species has never been as
susceptible to the malady of book madness as the male, possibly because
she has not had the same opportunity. Unless a woman is economically
independent there are many demands upon her allowance and consequently
she must really want a book very much to buy it instead of a new hat or
something else that is dear to her heart. She is not as apt to buy for
speculation or because a book is one of the conventional collector's
items, but is more independent and adventurous in following her
personal taste, although the spirit of a true collector of books is the
same whether it be possessed by man or woman.

Strange to say, the first bibliophile on record is a woman. She was
a Benedictine abbess named Hroswitha. She lived in the Nunnery of
Gandersheim in Saxony in the tenth century. She not only read all
the parchment rolls and great codices which came into her hands, but
caused books to be written for her Convent, wrote plays in Latin and
translated Terence. Hroswitha probably knew but little Greek, as
certain monks of the period considered the language an invention of the
devil. Her example was followed in the next century by the lovely and
intelligent Countess Judith of Flanders, who, wherever she followed
her warring English husband, caused the most exquisite illuminated
manuscripts to be made. She continued her interests on the continent
when she later married the Duke of Bavaria. Four of her manuscripts,
magnificently bound, are now safely housed in the Pierpont Morgan
Library where "though they are books worthy of the name" their beauty
may be appreciated by women who are not even "the brilliant exception
to the general rule" of collectors.

The Golden Age of women bibliophiles in France from the fifteenth
through the eighteenth centuries must have been a glorious time to have
lived. The Queens, the Princesses, the Mistresses of the Kings and all
the great ladies had their libraries. They were composed of beautifully
illuminated breviaries, missals and manuscripts, and from the presses
of the great printers of the day came romances, histories, plays and
religious books, veritable works of art. These books and manuscripts
were bound in gold and silver and jewels, embroidered velvet, and in
some of the most beautiful leather bindings the world has ever seen.
Briefly: Marguerite of Navarre was one of the famous scholars of her
day and the author of a collection of love stories, _The Heptameron_.
It is said of her "L'amour du livre, chez la fille de Catherine fut
une véritable passion." Her books were bound by the famous Clovis and
Nicolas Eve and were decorated with daisies. Madame de Pompadour was
for many years an inspiring influence in art and letters, although she
owned more plays, novels and other "productions légères" than serious
works. She had a printing press at Versailles and also etched plates
for illustrations and as gifts for her friends. La Countesse de Verrue
was a discriminating collector, a patroness of all the arts and a
fascinating woman. The Du Barry acquired 1,068 volumes. When she began
to form her library she could scarcely read or write. However, with
practise, she soon learned to read well, but like many of us never to
spell. Anne of Austria was fortunate in having her friend Mazarin, a
kindred spirit in bibliomania, to advise her. Marie Antoinette had two
libraries. She kept her particular books in her boudoir in the Trianon
and the titles in the catalogue are very entertaining. Mary Stuart had
a catholic taste in literature and her books were exceptionally well
chosen. In deference to the loss of her first husband some were bound
in black with black edges. It is comforting to know that when she left
France as a young widow to return to her native Scotland where so much
tragedy awaited her "qu'elle avait pour les livres un goût profond, et
ils etaient pour ainsi dire sa seule consolation loin de ce beau Pays
de France." In England, one of the most fortunate of the many ladies
who appreciated literature was Queen Elizabeth, for she lived in an age
when masterpieces were being written, many of them dedicated to her and
many inspired by her. When she was young she embroidered velvets in
gold and silver threads to bind her treasures. Among the manuscripts
in the Bodleian Library are the _Epistles of St. Paul_, etc., which
was Elizabeth's own book. She has written at the beginning "I walke
many times into the pleasant fields of the Holy Scriptures, where I
plucke up the goodlie-some herbes of sentences by pruning: chaw them
by musing: and laie them up at length in the hie seate of memorie by
gathering them together: that so having tasted their sweetness I may
the less perceave the bitterness of this miserable life."

One of the most touching and beautiful tributes ever written to a
woman is Sir Philip Sidney's dedication of his _Arcadia_ to his "deare
ladie and sister," the Countess of Pembroke, to whom he wrote in part:
"you desired me to do it, and your desire, to my hart is an absolute
commandment. Now it is done onely for you, onely to you." She was his
great inspiration and helped him in the editing of the book.

Where there's a will there's a way and women seem able to smuggle
folios as well as duodecimos into the library. Catherine de Médici, for
instance, had such a passion for books that she got them by fair means
or foul. She longed for the library of her cousin Marshal Strozzi and
as soon as he died appropriated it for her own. Catherine neglected to
pay for it and owed the book-sellers as well, so after her death when
her books were about to be seized by her creditors, De Thou raised
the money to pay for them and they were saved for the state. The
fascinating and glamorous Diane de Poitiers was a practical business
executive as well as a bibliophile, for it was she who supposedly
advised Henry II to pass an ordinance requiring publishers to present
a copy of each book they published to the royal libraries at Blois and
Fontainebleau, thereby increasing these collections by more than seven
hundred volumes. Thus the present-day copyright law was initiated by
a woman. Catherine of Russia was also courageous in her methods of
gratifying her literary tastes. She partitioned Poland in 1772 and
seized enough books to form the foundation of the Imperial Library
at the Hermitage. She used to ask the Ambassadors, particularly the
Ambassador from England, to get foreign books for her and if she did
not have the money to pay for them at the time she conveniently forgot
about it.

In later days there were women in the young colony in America who
enjoyed their books in the midst of their primitive surroundings. In
1643 in Emans, New York, the inventory of the Widow Bronck included
Danish books. Mrs. Willoughby of Virginia left over one hundred volumes
at her death in 1673, and in 1700 Elizabeth Tatham of New Jersey
left five hundred and fifty-two volumes, while their New England
contemporary, Hannah Sutton, acquired a library of about seventeen
hundred volumes.

In the early nineteenth century Miss Richardson Currer of Eshton Hall,
Craven, Yorkshire, amassed a large and scholarly collection of books on
many subjects. It was housed in a great room with a gallery which must
have been the envy of all book-lovers. She was the fond possessor of
the rare _Book of St. Albans_, written and compiled by Juliana Berners,
prioress of the nunnery of Sopwith in Hertfordshire. It is said that
the ardent book collector Richard Heber, being unable to secure the
book in any other way, ardently proposed marriage to Miss Currer. She
was firm in her refusal however, preferring to keep this first book
about sport to be written by a woman to herself.

One of the most learned lady bibliophiles of this century in America
was Miss Amy Lowell of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her books and
manuscripts, including her collection of Keats, are being preserved for
posterity in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial at Harvard. She always
enjoyed smoking a good cigar while writing or carrying on her sparkling
conversations, as she thought it made her thoughts flow more easily.

One could not write of women in connection with books without speaking
of two distinguished custodians of famous libraries, scholars, who are
as well known abroad as in America: [the late] Miss Belle Da Costa
Greene, the brilliant Director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and
Miss Ruth Sheppard Granniss, former Librarian of the Grolier Club
and sympathetic friend of all bibliophiles, male or female. They, of
course, come under Lang's category of exceptional examples.

But what of the many other exceptions? Would Lang have thought that
Miss Lowell could not understand books? Or that Diane de Poitiers could
be jealous of their mysterious charms? Or that Catherine of Russia
would hesitate to spend what money she could procure to satisfy her
passion for them? What could his lady friends have been like to be
classed with the enemies of books--and such enemies at that?

It would appear that book collecting is a truly feminine pastime,
containing many elements which appeal to their sex; romance,
intellectual curiosity, love of the beautiful and the quest of
something difficult to obtain. But feminine collectors should beware
of pitfalls, for sometimes this mania arouses the baser instincts such
as envy, extravagance and self-indulgence. Wives have even been known
to spend their marketing money on books instead of daily bread, and
to waste hours reading book catalogues instead of attending to their
housewifely duties. Book collecting, however, is a common denominator
of all ages and a medium through which the minds of both sexes may meet
with pleasure, and therefore greatly to be recommended as a delightful
occupation.




              [Illustration]BEATRICE WARDE[Illustration]

                     PRINTING SHOULD BE INVISIBLE

Copyright 1932 by The Marchbanks Press. Reprinted by permission of the
                                author.


Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your
own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a
deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One
is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is
of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and
drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or
not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about
wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking
the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost ten thousand dollars;
but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine
vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is
calculated to _reveal_ rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it
was meant to _contain_.

Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will
find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wineglass are parallel
in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates finger-prints
on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and
the fiery heart of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages
similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-page?
Again: the glass is colorless or at the most only faintly tinged in the
bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its color and is
impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms
in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in
tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too
small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted;
you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting
lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader
subconsciously worried by the fear of "doubling" lines, reading three
words as one, and so forth.

Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold his
wine was a "modernist" in the sense in which I am going to use that
term. That is, the first thing he asked of this particular object was
not "_How should it look?_" but "_What must it do?_" and to that extent
all good typography is modernist.

Wine is so strange and potent a thing that it has been used in the
central ritual of religion in one place and time, and attacked by a
virago with a hatchet in another. There is only one other thing in the
world that is capable of stirring and altering men's minds to the same
extent, and that is the coherent expression of thought. That is man's
chief miracle, unique to man. There is no "explanation" whatever of the
fact that I can make arbitrary sounds which will lead a total stranger
to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be able to
hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on paper with
an unknown person half-way across the world. Talking, broadcasting,
writing and printing are all quite literally forms of _thought
transference_, and it is this ability and eagerness to transfer and
receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for
human civilization.

If you agree with this, you will agree with my one main idea, _i.e._,
that the most important thing about printing is that it conveys
thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds. This statement is
what you might call the front door of the science of typography. Within
lie hundreds of rooms; but unless you start by assuming that _printing
is meant to convey specific and coherent ideas_, it is very easy to
find yourself in the wrong house altogether.

Before asking what this statement leads to, let us see what it does
not necessarily lead to. If books are printed in order to be read,
we must distinguish readability from what the optician would call
legibility. A page set in 14-point Bold Sans is, according to the
laboratory tests, more "legible" than one set in 11-point Baskerville.
A public speaker is more "audible" in that sense when he bellows.
But a good speaking voice is one which is inaudible _as_ a voice.
It is the transparent goblet again! I need not warn you that if you
begin listening to the inflections and speaking rhythms of a voice
from a platform, you are falling asleep. When you listen to a song
in a language you do not understand, part of your mind actually does
fall asleep, leaving your quite separate aesthetic sensibilities to
enjoy themselves unimpeded by your reasoning faculties. The fine arts
do that; but that is not the purpose of printing. Type well used is
invisible _as_ type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed
vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.

We may say, therefore, that printing may be delightful for many
reasons, but that it is important, first and foremost, as a means of
doing something. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed
piece a work of art, especially fine art: because that would imply
that its first purpose was to exist as an expression of beauty for its
own sake and for the delectation of the senses. Calligraphy can almost
be considered a fine art nowadays, because its primary economic and
educational purpose has been taken away; but printing in English will
not qualify as an art until the present English language no longer
conveys ideas to future generations, and until printing itself hands
its usefulness to some yet unimagined successor.

There is no end to the maze of practices in typography, and this
idea of printing as a conveyor is, at least in the minds of all the
great typographers with whom I have had the privilege of talking,
the one clue that can guide you through the maze. Without this
essential humility of mind, I have seen ardent designers go more
hopelessly wrong, make more ludicrous mistakes out of an excessive
enthusiasm, than I could have thought possible. And with this clue,
this purposiveness in the back of your mind, it is possible to do the
most unheard-of things, and find that they justify you triumphantly.
It is not a waste of time to go to the simple fundamentals and reason
from them. In the flurry of your individual problems, I think you will
not mind spending half an hour on one broad and simple set of ideas
involving abstract principles.

I once was talking to a man who designed a very pleasing advertising
type which undoubtedly all of you have used. I said something
about what artists think about a certain problem, and he replied
with a beautiful gesture: "Ah, madame, we artists do not think--we
_feel_!" That same day I quoted that remark to another designer of my
acquaintance, and he, being less poetically inclined, murmured: "I'm
not _feeling_ very well today, I _think_!" He was right, he did think;
he was the thinking sort; and that is why he is not so good a painter,
and to my mind ten times better as a typographer and type designer than
the man who instinctively avoided anything as coherent as a reason.

I always suspect the typographic enthusiast who takes a printed page
from a book and frames it to hang on the wall, for I believe that
in order to gratify a sensory delight, he has mutilated something
infinitely more important. I remember that T. M. Cleland, the famous
American typographer, once showed me a very beautiful layout for a
Cadillac booklet involving decorations in color. He did not have the
actual text to work with in drawing up his specimen pages, so he had
set the lines in Latin. This was not only for the reason that you will
all think of, if you have seen the old typefoundries' famous _Quousque
Tandem_ copy [_i. e._, that Latin has few descenders and thus gives a
remarkably even line]. No, he told me that originally he had set up
the dullest "wording" that he could find [I dare say it was from the
_Congressional Record_], and yet he discovered that the man to whom
he submitted it would start reading and making comments on the text.
I made some remark on the mentality of Boards of Directors, but Mr.
Cleland said "No: you're wrong; if the reader had not been practically
forced to read--if he had not seen those words suddenly imbued with
glamor and significance--then the layout would have been a failure.
Setting it in Italian or Latin is only an easy way of saying 'This is
not the text as it will appear.'"

Let me start my specific conclusions with book typography, because that
contains all the fundamentals, and then go on to a few points about
advertising.

The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between the
reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author's words.
He may put up a stained glass window of marvellous beauty, but a
failure as a window; that is, he may use some rich superb type like
text gothic that is something to be looked at, not _through_. Or he
may work in what I call transparent or invisible typography. I have a
book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever as far
as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three
Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of
Paris. The third type of window is one in which the glass is broken
into relatively small leaded panes; and this corresponds to what is
called "fine printing" today, in that you are at least conscious that
there is a window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it. That
is not objectionable, because of a very important fact which has to do
with the psychology of the subconscious mind. This is the fact that the
mental eye focusses _through_ type and not _upon_ it. The type which,
through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of "color," gets
in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is a bad type. Our
subconsciousness is always afraid of blunders [which illogical setting,
tight spacing and too-wide unleaded lines can trick us into], of
boredom, and of officiousness. The running headline that keeps shouting
at us, the line that looks like one long word, the capitals jammed
together without hairspaces--these mean subconscious squinting and loss
of mental focus.

And if what I have said is true of book printing, even of the
most exquisite limited editions, it is fifty times more obvious in
advertising, where the one and only justification for the purchase of
space is that you are conveying a message--that you are implanting a
desire, straight into the mind of the reader. It is tragically easy to
throw away half the reader-interest of an advertisement by setting the
simple and compelling argument in a face which is uncomfortably alien
to the classic reasonableness of the book-face. Get attention as you
will by your headline, and make any pretty type pictures you like if
you are sure that the copy is useless as a means of selling goods; but
if you are happy enough to have really good copy to work with, I beg
you to remember that thousands of people pay down hard-earned money for
the privilege of reading quietly-set book-pages, and that only your
wildest ingenuity can stop people from reading a really interesting
text.

Of course every one of you realizes that whatever interesting effects
you can produce with displayed advertising, Direct Mail is your
paradise. It is here that you approach the august precincts of the
designer of books; here you can deal in the fascinating questions
of paper, ink, presswork, and all those minute and thrilling
technicalities by which the craftsman proves his worth. You also have
the satisfaction of knowing that the better and more mannerly Direct
Mail advertising looks, the more solid returns it will bring in.

To sum up: printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which
many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and
maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the
transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline.
When you realize that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be
able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at
something else. The "stunt typographer" learns the fickleness of rich
men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and
kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair spaces. Nobody
[save the other craftsmen] will appreciate half your skill. But you may
spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline
goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.


                        COMPOSED IN BEMBO TYPES




              [Illustration]PORTER GARNETT[Illustration]

                           _The Ideal Book_

 Copyright 1931 by The Limited Editions Club. Reprinted by permission
                           of the publisher.


In adopting a prescribed title for this paper, I must begin by
registering my dissent to its validity. There is no such thing nor
can there be such a thing as "the ideal book." No single book, no
particular style of book can be said to represent in itself an ideal
below which all other books and other styles which differ from it fall.
A certain book may be ideal for its purpose, but books can no more
conform to a fixed ideal than can churches, cocktail-shakers, or hats.
The best that one can do is to attempt to enumerate and codify those
elements of good book-making that enter into what may be called the
"fine" book.

It is difficult to declare oneself an advocate or exponent of fine
printing or fine book-design without being misunderstood. Such a
declaration, however, is not to arrogate superiority. It merely means
that one believes in certain principles of craftsmanship and in
upholding certain standards based upon a scrupulous and uncompromising
observance of refinements and minutiæ. It is a mistake to assume that
the word "fine," as applied to printing and to books, is a comparative
term meaning a grade or measure of merit. Consider for a moment its
true meaning: delicate, studied, subtly calculated. It represents not
a grade of excellence, but a _quality_, a quality distinguishing those
books and pieces of printing which the term properly describes from
other books or pieces of printing. It may be allowed, however, that
fineness is itself a comparable term; that there are, in other words,
degrees of fineness. Thus a book may be fine without being of the first
order of fineness. But if we are to seek for a standard of excellence
equivalent to what is implied by the word "ideal," it should be obvious
that only fineness of the first order can be considered. A fine book
of the first order is the end-result of a sedulous effort on the part
of designer, printer, and binder to bring to their artifact every care
for physical and technical details, every revision in the interest of
betterment, of which they are capable, to the end that the finished
product shall represent the capacity of each for the fulfilment of his
artistic wish, his desire for perfection. To slacken this effort, to
compromise wittingly (or wilfully), to surrender to expediency, is to
repudiate fineness of the first order.

It is this concern for perfection that Mr. Stanley Morison means when
he says "The fine printer begins where the careful printer has left
off." It is this concern with perfection that Conrad celebrated when he
wrote:

"Now the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive, the
redeeming and ideal aspect of this bread-winning, is the attainment
of the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsman. Such
skill, the skill of technique, is more than honesty; it is something
wider, embracing honesty and grace and rule in an elevated and clear
sentiment, not altogether utilitarian, which may be called the honor of
labor. It is made up of accumulated tradition, kept alive by individual
pride, rendered exact by professional opinion, and, like the higher
arts, it is spurred on and sustained by discriminating praise. This
is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with
attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of
vital concern. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached
naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond--a
higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond
mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish
which is almost art, which _is_ art."

In dealing with the constituents of the fine book I intend no
disparagement of seemly, modest, and honestly-made books to which the
term "fine" is not strictly applicable. Even the humblest volume,
_ad pauperum commoditatum_, may be, by virtue of its suitability to
purpose and its seemliness, wholly admirable. As for the better class
of trade books, the productions of university and great commercial
presses, they often display qualities of design and workmanship of a
high order. Though not of the first order of fineness, they represent,
with gratifying frequency, what Conrad called "efficiency of a
practically flawless kind." That the best of them belong, however, to
a lower stratum than the truly fine book may be, I think, quite easily
demonstrated. One does not have to consider the work of the Doves Press
or the Bremer Presse or the finer examples of French printing of the
sixteenth or eighteenth century the _ne plus ultra_ of book-making
in order to recognize in them a quality (mark the word) which the
trade edition, however charming, never does and never can attain. By
reason of this quality--the quality of fineness--they are _different_
from trade books, whether or not they are _superior_ must remain for
each of us a question of personal values. Since that is true, let us
now--having cleared the ground and removed perhaps the possibility of
a misapprehension with regard to the title of this paper--consider the
values and the physical constituents of the fine book.

These constituents fall into three divisions: first, _Dimensional_
(size and proportions); second, _Tectonic_ (plan and construction); and
third, _Visual_ (appearance).

It would be absurd to contend that, ideally, a book should be of a
certain size. Very large books are, of course, awkward to handle and
are unsuitable, let us say, for reading in bed or in a railway train.
But it does not follow that, because our habits of life differ so
radically from those of the more leisurely and contemplative past, the
tall volume is no longer justified. The large book is not an impediment
to meditative reading and, although the "handy volume" will, in most
circumstances, serve every purpose, there are those who, undeluded
by pragmatism and undebased by false ideas of efficiency, may still,
in the seclusion of study or library, find pleasure in the leisurely
perusal of, let us say, _The Golden Legend_, in folio, nobly enthroned
upon its lectern. Again, there is nothing incongruous or unpractical
about the scholar (perhaps I should say, "research-worker") making use
of a huge volume, spread before him on a library table. Large volumes
are, moreover, frequently justified by the fact that illustrative
plates of a large size are often desirable or essential. Who will deny
that reproductions of Egyptian papyri, of eighteenth century engraved
portraits, of Oriental carpets, in fact, of almost all works of art
other than such small objects as miniatures or jewelry, would be better
in folio than in octavo or duodecimo? It can be said, I think, that
the very large book should be unconditionally condemned only when its
size defeats the purpose to which, by reason of its content, it would
normally be put. Stateliness of form imparts dignity. It may be argued,
therefore, that a great work on engraved gems, imposing in size, with
plates, each showing many specimens, comports better with the character
of its subject matter quite aside from any advantage it offers for
comparative study, than would the same work printed as a book one
might slip in one's pocket. Stateliness of form implies stateliness of
content, and vice versa. Let a book be, for a generation, of such good
report that it may be said to have become a classic, and a large-paper
edition is justified. Let those who must cavil do so. If they cannot
rise above the utilitarian ideal, they can easily obtain the work in a
small format and be happy.

It may not be out of order to say at this point that, while a
considerable range in the size of books is not only permissible
but desirable, there are limits at both ends of the scale where
practicability ceases to exist and we pass into the realm of
curiosities and _tours de force_. Thus the miniature book, for all
its charm, lies outside the confines of normal book-design. As to the
maximum size that may be legitimately allowed for a book, it should
never, I think, exceed the normal folio height (defined approximately
by the larger moulds employed for manufacturing hand-made paper) while
its bulk and weight should not preclude the possibility of holding it
by the spine with one hand while turning the leaves with the other,
when such a method of referring to its contents may be necessary. And
now a final word as to dimensions. Large or small, the most perfect
book will always be one of which the thickness bears a just and
agreeable relation to its height and width. Small and slender books are
delightful objects which no one could wish to abolish (one cannot say
as much for the lamelliform folio, a veritable atrocity), but their
inferiority to books of a meet thickness becomes apparent when, with
(or, worse yet, without) their vertical, neck-twisting titles they are
placed on a shelf.

We must next turn our attention to those aspects of a book which
have to do with its plan and construction and which we have called
_tectonic_.

In its physical character a book addresses itself to two of our
senses, the sense of sight and the sense of touch. Because the tactile
qualities of a book are relatively of less importance than its visual
aspects, let us first deal with those elements which are, in part at
least, evaluated through the sense of touch.

Our first impression of a book is received from its exterior, its
binding. Now the qualities to be looked for in the binding of a book
are: (1) the character and quality of the material, (2) suitability,
(3) soundness and charm of design, (4) agreeable color (a relative
term), (5) workmanship, (6) pleasantness to the touch. Granting
adequacy in all of these (and no book can pretend to fineness without
such adequacy), there is still another _desideratum_ less easy to
specify. It might be called (7) "the evidence of durability." A book
when taken in the hand should have a feeling of compactness, almost of
solidity. I do not mean by this that it should feel like a block of
wood, but it should, when picked up, when opened, or when its hinges
are tested, give the impression that leaves and cover are so firmly
(and honestly) knit together that they constitute a unit, having in its
"feel" the evidence (or the assurance) of durability.

The next characteristic of a book to be noted through the sense of
touch is the _texture_ of the paper. By "texture" several things are
meant: a surface agreeable to the hand, the degree of crispness, an
impression of toughness (again the evidence of durability), and the
degree of flexibility. Ideally, the paper in a book should satisfy all
these requirements and should possess as well certain qualities of
character, style, and color, pleasing to the informed eye. These will
be dealt with in their proper place. The paper should be flexible,
without the flimsiness characteristic of papers weak in substance. It
should bend readily when the leaves are turned and should flow smoothly
through the hand when all the leaves are bent at once. Stiffness in
the leaves of a book (an all too common defect) is not, it should be
observed, always the fault of the paper. It is often due to the choice
of a paper too heavy for the size of the leaf. The same paper in a
larger leaf might have the desired flexibility.

The final tactile test of a fine book (applicable, alas, to very few
books indeed) resides in the character of the impression of the type
on the paper. In the best printing, the surface of the page, if rubbed
with the palm of the hand, shows a slight and pleasant roughness due to
the sinking of the type into the paper. Such printing is rare in modern
books because it is difficult of attainment with machines designed for
quantity production. To attain the effect described the paper should be
dampened before printing, and an ink employed that is adaptable only
to the hand press. Dry paper, particularly when heavily sized, resists
a deep impression. It can be _heavily_ impressed, but there is not the
same difference between the impressed and unimpressed portions, due
to the impaction of the substance caused by the pressure of the type,
which results when dampened paper is used. In the latter instance, the
depth of impression is _within_ the sheet, not an embossment on the
reverse side. This incisiveness, without a corresponding relief on the
back of the sheet, is shown when an impression without ink is made on a
hand press with dampened paper and a hard packing.

In printing on dry paper it is necessary, if adequate color is to be
obtained, to use such a quantity of ink, of a consistency suitable
to machine-press printing, that a really deep (not merely heavy)
impression cannot be imparted to paper without "spreading," which
slightly modifies the sharpness of the type. The machine printer must
choose therefore between a surfacy quality with sharpness and a heavy
(not necessarily deep) impression with a loss of sharpness, neither
of which is ideal. There are some that will question the truth of
this statement, calling attention to specimens of machine printing
on dry paper in which the ink has been driven into the sheet and
perfect sharpness maintained. It may be said, however, in support of
our contention, that, under the test of hand and eye, this perfectly
printed dry sheet will be found, in the last analysis, to lack, in
comparison with a sheet perfectly printed by hand on dampened paper, a
certain almost-indefinable something that can perhaps be best described
as a _living_ quality. This ultimate grace arises, I think, from the
fact that in competent hand-press printing the third dimension is
not merely suggested but actual; we have, in other words, not merely
sharpness but crispness; the effect attained is sculptural. No printing
that is lifeless, or to which such terms as "slick" and "dry" may be
appropriately applied can be called fine printing.

Turning now from the tactile to the visual elements of the fine book,
we shall consider, first of all, that fundamental factor of all books,
the text-page, upon the form or "layout" of which all other typographic
elements must, to a large extent, depend. The text-page is of primary
importance because by its rightness or wrongness a book must stand or
fall.

The elements of the text-page that call for consideration may be
grouped under three heads: first, _Form_ (the proportions--width to
height--of the type-page and the balance of the rectangle of type with
the rectangle of paper); second, _Space_ (the ratio between the areas
of the type-page and the paper-page); third, _Tone_ (the tonal value
of the type mass and the relation between its tone and the white area
of the margins). In the perfect text-page all these elements may be
observed in nice adjustment, severally and mutually.

There are those who contend that a proper relation of margins to
type-page may be arrived at by employing ratios identical with those
to be found in the well-proportioned pages of the early printers.
Others declare that correct margins can be created by the application
of an arithmetical or a geometrical formula. It can be admitted that
such procedures are, at least, _safe_; that is to say, the danger of
malproportioned margins will be avoided. But neither the method nor the
result can be ideal for the simple reason that, while providing for the
factors of form and space, they fail to provide for the factor of tone.
It should be obvious that a rectangle of black type, with no space
(leading) between lines, and a rectangle of the same shape and size
printed from light-face type and generously leaded call for different
margining.

All of this may seem to be supervacaneous, but the stubborn fact
remains that no one of the factors set forth above can be ignored. It
is perfectly true that the accomplished book designer will compass the
desired end through a sagacious application of his knowledge and taste,
but we are concerned here with presenting the elements of the ideal
book and it is therefore essential that _all_ the elements, no matter
how much the initiated may take some of them for granted, should be,
for the benefit of the layman, categorically enumerated.

It is necessary at this point to allude to the dictum--voiced in high
places as well as in low--that a book is primarily something to be
read; that every factor which does not contribute to that end is an
impertinence. The worthy champions of this faith would be on firmer
ground if they heaped their condemnation upon such adjuncts of a book
as actually _lessen_ its readability. M. Paul Valéry has disposed of
the matter so effectively from the aesthetic point of view in his
essay, _Les deux vertus d'un livre_, that nothing remains to be said
on that side of the question. But there are other objections to be
raised to this _ipse dixit_ of the mechanists. Their contention that
what we all grant is at once the basic and paramount function of a
book, its readability, is its only function would, if carried to its
logical conclusion, lead to a doctrine in book design equivalent to
what is known in present-day architecture as "functionalism." Since
functionalism or, as it is sometimes called, the "machine and function"
principle, demands that the design of a building must grow out of and
be restricted by its predetermined use or purpose, it should follow
that, if the sole purpose of a book is that it be something to read,
there is no reason, based upon utility, for not using the whole area of
the paper-page, with margins of no more, let us say, than a quarter of
an inch or so. The uncomely, marginless illustrations of certain recent
books represent an application of this principle. If the protagonists
of the utilitarian ideal admit that margins are other than a waste
of usable space, they make a concession to the aesthetic conception
of a book, for the determination of margins, the _mise en page_,
is primarily an element of design. It will be argued no doubt, in
contravention of this statement, that margins make for ease of reading
(utility), but that this is an untenable defensive assumption should be
proved by the perfect readability of newspaper columns separated only
by a light rule, or by the two-column book or magazine page with only a
pica of white between the columns. Since it cannot be denied that the
margins of a book, if well proportioned, promote pleasure, an aesthetic
function, the true functionalist should, to be consistent, insist upon
doing away with them.

We may turn now from that major fundamental of the fine book--a
text-page of perfect seemliness--to a consideration of other elements.
But before doing so, it may be proper to explain what some of my
readers may deem an omission. I have said nothing about the choice
of type. It is axiomatic that good letter is a prime essential of
the good book. There are only two kinds of type, good and bad. Good
types, whether based upon classical models or the quasi-original forms
of contemporary type-designers, are sufficiently numerous to make
a suitable selection, provided the printer knows anything whatever
about the subject, quite simple. It should be pointed out, however,
that, other things being equal, type cast from matrices struck from
hand-cut punches is superior to machine-cut type. This superiority is
a matter of real importance, chiefly in printing by means of the hand
press. Only in such printing is the difference between the hand-cut and
machine-cut letter fully apparent.

No type is good if some of the characters are marked by eccentricity.
Unorthodox peculiarities in the forms of certain letters sometimes lend
charm to a type-face, but there is a difference between a peculiarity
of shape thoughtfully and discreetly arrived at and freakish variations
which do not justify themselves and bespeak only a stupid desire for
novelty at any cost.

Given the seemly text-page as the prime requisite of the fine book, our
next consideration should be what may be called _integration of the
parts_. Here we must again think in terms of architecture, with which
art book-design has so much in common. Let the parts of a book be few
or many, simple or complex, it is of the first importance that they be,
one to the other and each to all, harmoniously correlated.

In the simple undecorated and unillustrated book it is not only
desirable that sunken pages, if any (the first pages of chapters or
sections, for example), should show an equal sinkage. But all isolated
typographic elements, such as half-titles, elements of the title page,
copyright notice, dedication, headings of preliminary and supplementary
matter, etc., should fall on levels which, though not necessarily
identical, bear a mensural, not an arbitrary, relation one to the other
and to the structure of the book as a whole. This requires, perhaps,
some elucidation. Suppose we give the first pages of our chapters a
uniform sinkage. These pages, let us say, establish three levels for
us--(1) the chapter heading, (2) chapter title, and (3) the first line
of text. If we adopt the same sinkage for Contents, Illustrations,
Appendices, and Index, putting the headings of this group on the same
level as the chapter headings (LEVEL 1), the first text lines of this
group should be on the same level as the chapter titles (LEVEL 2), or
on the level of the first text lines of the chapters (LEVEL 3). If, on
the other hand, we adopt a different sinkage (smaller) for the second
group, we may still relate it mensurally to the first group by placing
the first text lines of Group 2 on the same level as the chapter
headings of Group 1. Suppose further that we place our half-titles
on one of the three or four levels that have been established. We
still have to deal with a copyright notice, perhaps a limit notice, a
bibliographical note, and a dedication. It is not essential that all of
these should fall on the same level, but it _is_ essential that each
be _related to some one of the established levels_. Finally, it is
desirable that such major elements of the title page as a subtitle or
the author's name should be placed on one of the established levels.

An observance of this principle makes for homogeneity of design. In
reading a book so put together we are spared (without knowing that we
are spared) the disturbance of our sense of balance which results,
almost without our knowing it, when our eyes fall upon a page some
part of which is not "tied in" architecturally with the rest of the
book. The effect is similar to that of a many-paneled room with an
impost cornice at a certain height in all the panels except two or
three where it is either higher or lower. We have, in one case, faulty
architecture; in the other, faulty book-making. In judging a book or a
building, it should be borne in mind that, however charming its parts,
it must be regarded as a whole. If our contemplation of it is to be
attended with pleasure and comfort, its parts must be so disposed, so
correlated, that they will not produce a "jumpy" effect.

It is not contended that every book in which this refinement of
perfectly integrated parts has been ignored should be considered a
failure because it is less than perfect. If that were true, few books
would pass the test. It would indeed be hypercritical to insist that
a failure to observe this principle actually spoils an otherwise
well-made book. It is desirable, however, that the principle should be
observed _as far as the material will permit_. It must be recognized,
also, that sometimes the elements are so diverse--chapter headings or
the internal titles of essays, short stories or poems--that a strict
adherence to the principle becomes impossible. In such instances, the
designer's task is still to strive for order and integration. Perfect
order, symmetry, and balance may be unattainable, but this does not
justify him in being haphazard. When order is observed we may not be
conscious of it; when it is not observed we are aware of its absence.
Movement is of the highest importance as a factor of design--such
movement, for example, as is imparted to a book by this very diversity
of its elements--but good design demands movement that is ordered,
not arbitrary. If liberties are taken (and it is desirable, in the
interest of vitality and charm, that they should be taken) they must
justify themselves aesthetically; they should not only please us in
themselves but as evidence of the designer's intelligence, his insight,
subtlety, sensitiveness, discrimination, and tact. However diverse
the elements or parts of a book may be, however they may, by reason
of such diversity, render perfect order and balance impossible, their
arrangement should at least possess a _rationale_.

This need of a fundamental balance has its basis in its pleasure-giving
value. I have adverted to the analogy between book-design and
architecture, let me point now to an equally pertinent analogy with
the structure of poetry. "Verse," says Poe, "originates in the human
enjoyment of equality, fitness. To this enjoyment, also, all the moods
of verse--rhythm, meter, stanza, rhyme, alliteration, the refrain, and
other analogous effects--are to be referred." Specifically, the parts
of a book--half-titles, headings, etc., etc.--should be, severally _and
collectively_, related as are such structural elements in verse as
recurrent rhythms, rhymes, and refrains.

We must now consider the decorated or illustrated book. In the
first place, it should be understood that no form of decoration or
illustration is legitimate in the strictly fine book except such as
are printed from wood or metal engraved by hand, preferably in relief
which comports with type both in physical character and in the means
by which the image is imparted to the paper. Process-engravings are
disqualified not only because of the preponderant mechanical factor,
but because mechanical engraving in relief cannot produce a line of the
delicacy and purity obtained with the engraving tool. As a corollary to
the principle of integration set forth above let us take first the type
of decorated book to which most obviously it applies. A book carrying
on various pages head-bands of varying depth and varying tone--deep,
shallow, black and heavy, light and delicate--will produce a disturbing
effect. Less obvious but hardly less disturbing is a succession of
initial letters differing in size, in tone, or in position on the
page. The book with initial letters strewn through the text, sometimes
several on a single page, is a challenge to the designer. When thus
arbitrarily employed it is important, in order that the initials shall
not be obtrusive, that they be so selected as to size (in proportion
to the page) and so integrated with the book as a whole that their
"accidental" character is either disguised or lost and their recurrence
actually contributes to the unity of the volume by virtue of their
consistent accentual value.

An arbitrary arrangement of tailpieces is likely to produce a "jumpy"
effect. Since the spaces (at the ends of chapters or sections) within
which tailpieces may be placed differ in area, such decorative elements
cannot always fall on the same level. This irregularity can be
compensated for in a measure by adjusting the size of the decoration to
the area of the space it occupies. By what may seem to be a negation
of the law of balance here insisted upon, such a variation is more
productive of architectural harmony than tailpieces of uniform size
would be if disposed in spaces of varying area.

Returning for a moment to the undecorated book, it may be remarked in
passing that verse, particularly a collection of short lyrics, does
not lend itself to good book-design. It should be enough to point out
that the disproportion between type mass and white paper caused by
short measure and the frequently meager letter-press deprive books of
verse of the book's basic structural factor, the rectangle of type. How
decoration can be employed to overcome this deficiency is perfectly
exemplified in the original edition of Dorat's _Les Baisers_.

With the principles of balance and unity still in mind, it will hardly,
I think, admit of contradiction that the scattering of odd-sized
illustrations through the text is incompatible with both of these
principles. Such illustrations, particularly those of irregular shape
bounded on two or three sides by type, are as destructive of balance
and unity as is poor fenestration in a building. It is not enough that
something like a balance is effected on facing pages (an elementary
principle in layout); the lack of a complete integration of the
pictures with the book and the disturbance created by distorting the
letter-press into odd shapes preclude the possibility of such a book
being regarded as well-planned, much less ideal, however charming it
may be in detail.

We have seen, while considering the major aspects of book-design, in
what wise paper must be judged with regard to those first or immediate
impressions gained from seeing and feeling it. I must now carry the
consideration of paper a little farther. Since style and character
are essential qualities of the fine book, we must insist upon these
qualities in every element of its substance. Now style and character at
their utmost are peculiar (for reasons that have to do with the methods
of manufacture) to hand-made paper only, laid or wove, and, it may be
further insisted, to only the best hand-made paper. Desirable as wove
paper is for certain purposes, it cannot be denied that it has less
character than the laid sheet. It is also true that no feature of fine
laid paper gives more character to a sheet than the so-called "antique"
factor, a slight thickening of the pulp and greater opacity along the
chain-lines. By an "improved" method of mould-making, introduced by
Baskerville, this thickening was eliminated, but, whatever mechanical
superiority its absence may represent, there can be no question but
that it represents a loss of character. All book papers produced by
machinery (particularly the laids in which the effect of laid lines
is mechanically faked) are as much imitations of and substitutes for
hand-made paper as machine-made lace is a substitute for hand-made
lace, and the disparity in quality is as great. We speak of "imitation
lace" and "real lace," meaning machine-made and hand-made; we might,
with equal propriety, speak of "imitation paper" and "real paper."
Ideally, then, the fine book, in the fullest and strictest sense of the
term, can be printed on no other than paper that is hand-made and of
the best quality.

As to the color of paper for fine books, the whole question may be
considerably clarified at once by the statement that everything
suggestive of artificiality should be avoided. A paper that is chalky
white or bluish white tells us at once that the rags which went
into its manufacture were chemically (that is to say, artificially)
bleached. A great many toned papers, described as "cream" or "india,"
are artificially colored and show it. The most desirable tone for fine
book paper is the "natural" tone of unbleached (and sorted as such)
linen rags. Its slight creamish color is at once pleasant to the eye
and holds the promise of that agreeable mellowness which comes, very
slowly, with age. A number of very pleasant books have been printed
in recent years on gray, blue, green, and brownish papers (the last
usually a deliberate simulation of ancient paper), but, despite their
charm, they are, I think, open to the charge of affectation, against
which, if true, there is of course no defense. If not actually "arty,"
they come perilously near to it.

It has not been my purpose in this paper to lay down the rules for
making a fine book, for, after all, rules are of no use whatever (in
an art or in a craft) except to be broken--wisely. Neither has any
attempt been made, since this is not a technical treatise, to outline
the methods by which the results described may be produced. I have
tried merely to set forth the various criteria by which fine books
should be judged and the principles (quite different from rules) that
underlie them. If the "specifications" seem over-exacting, if they
are to be dismissed as _trop raffinés_, I must ask the caviler if
that which purports to be "fine" can be "too refined"? Let those who
wish to compromise (with popular taste, with outlay and returns, with
honesty, with self-respect, or with machinery) do so, but unless the
thing they produce represents, with eloquence and beauty, the full
and unconditional employment of _every realizable aid to betterment,
physical and technical_, it is something other than a fine book of
the first order. We must discourage ourselves in order that we may be
strong.




              [Illustration]W. A. DWIGGINS[Illustration]

   EXTRACTS FROM _AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF
BOOKS_ AS THEY ARE AT PRESENT PUBLISHED UNDERTAKEN BY THE SOCIETY OF
                         CALLIGRAPHERS, 1919

   Copyright 1919 by L. B. Siegfried. Reprinted by permission of the
                                author.


 NOTE: _The accompanying extracts from the Transactions of the Society
 of Calligraphers are published with the approval of the Society.
 They form a part of the exhaustive and unbiased Report returned by
 the Committee in charge of the Investigation, which Report will be
 presented in its entirety in the Annual Bulletin. The report is of so
 surprising a nature that it was deemed unwise to withhold all notice
 of the findings until the annual publication. The Society, therefore,
 has the honour to present certain portions of the Inquiry together
 with an abstract of the Committee's recommendations._

                                     W. A. DWIGGINS, _Secretary_

384A _Boylston Street, Boston_

_December 1, 1919_

 _Editor's Note_: In commenting on the reception of the now famous
 _Investigation_, Watson Gordon pointed out (in _Mss. by WAD_, a
 collection of the writings of Dwiggins on various subjects, published
 by The Typophiles, New York, 1947) that it "received wide attention
 in publishing circles where some exceptions were taken to the
 findings. Certain publishers felt sure that some of those replying
 to the pertinent and impertinent questions of the investigator were
 members of their organizations who preferred to remain anonymous." The
 complete report, with its original note and illustration, as well as
 the sequel of twenty years later, follow.

It may be said in introduction that the Society's Investigation into
the Physical Properties of Books was undertaken by a special committee
whose personnel insured that its consideration would be thorough and
unbiased.

The Committee began its labour by an examination of all books published
in America since the year 1910. This examination forced upon the
investigators the conclusion that "All Books of the present day are
Badly Made." The conclusion was unanimous.

Working out from this basic fact in an effort to arrive at the
reasons underlying the evil, the Committee held numerous sittings in
consultation with men concerned with various branches of printing and
publishing. From these sittings there developed a mass of information
of an unusual and stimulating character.

The publishers have chosen from the Record of the examination a few
examples, not because they are extraordinary but because they present
typical points of view. They are transcribed verbatim. It will be
obvious that in certain cases it has been no more than courteous to
suppress the names of the persons assisting the investigation. For the
sake of uniformity it has been deemed wise to follow this practice
throughout.


                               I. MR. B.

Q: Mr. B----, will you please tell the committee why you printed this
book on card-board?

A: To make it the right thickness. It had to be one inch thick.

--Why that thick, particularly?

--Because otherwise it would not sell. If a book isn't one inch thick
it won't sell.

--Do you mean to say that people who buy books select them with the
help of a foot rule?

--They have to have some standard of selection.

--So that it is your practice to stretch out the text if it is too
short by printing it on egg-box stock?

--Not my practice, particularly. All publishers do it. We are obliged
to use this and other means to bring the book up to a proper thickness.
You must remember that our prices are not based on the contents of a
book but on its size.

  [Illustration: A chart showing the percentage of excellence in the
          physical properties of books published since 1910.]

--You mention other methods. Would you mind telling us what other
method you use?

--We can expand the letter-press judiciously. We limit the matter to
seven words on a page, say, and so get a greater number of pages. We
can use large type and can lead considerably.

--But does not that practice hurt the appearance of the page? Make a
poor-looking page?

--I am afraid I do not get your meaning.

--I mean to say, is not the page ugly and illegible when you expand
the matter to that extent?

--You don't consider the look of a page in making a book. That is a
thing that doesn't enter into the production of a book. If I understand
you correctly, do you mean to say that it matters how a book looks?

--That was the thought in my mind.

--That's a new idea in book publishing!

                   *       *       *       *       *

--You were speaking of the pressure of industrial conditions since the
war. Under these conditions what percentage of the traditions of the
craft can you preserve, would you say?

--The traditions of what craft?

--The craft of printing, obviously. What I am trying to get at is
this:--There are certain precise and matured standards of workmanship
in the printing craft; these standards are the results of experiment
through nearly five hundred years. How far are these standards
effective under your present-day conditions?

--Those standards, so far as I know anything about them, are what you
would call academic. In the first place, book-manufacturing is not
a craft, it is a business. As for standards of workmanship--I can
understand the term in connection with cabinet-making, for example, or
tailoring, but I should not apply the expression to books. You do not
talk about the "standards of workmanship" in making soap, do you?

--Then in your mind there does not linger any atmosphere of an art
about the making of books?

--When you talk about "atmosphere" you have me out of my depth. There
isn't any atmosphere of art lingering about making soap, is there?

--You would class soap-making with book-making?

--I can see no reason why not.

--May I ask you why you were selected by ---- Company to manage their
manufacturing department?

--Really, I must say that you overstep the borders--

--Please do not misinterpret my question. It is really pertinent to the
inquiry.

--It should certainly be obvious why a man is chosen for a given
position. I am employed to earn a satisfactory return on the
shareholders' investment. Is that the information you want?

--I think that is what we want. Would you then consider yourself as
happily employed in making soap as in making books?

--Quite as well employed, if making soap paid the dividend.

                   *       *       *       *       *

--While we are on this subject, may I ask you how you choose the
artists who make your illustrations?

--My practice is to select an illustrator whose name is well known.

--Is that the only point you consider?

--I should say, yes. I am not aware of any other reason for spending
money on this feature. It is always an uncertain detail and this way of
making a choice puts the matter on a safe basis.

--It is sometimes assumed that the illustrations should have a
sympathetic bearing on the story. Does not that consideration have some
weight with you in choosing your artist?

--None, I should say. You see, the pictures are not really a necessary
part of the book. They are a kind of frill that the public has got in
the way of expecting, and we have to put them in. Illustrations as
a rule stand us as a dead loss unless they are made by a well-known
artist. Then, of course, they help sell the book.


                             II. MR. McG.

A: The gentlemen of the committee must remember that the
book-publishing business is a gamble. Each new issue, particularly in
the department of fiction, is a highly adventurous risk. Our percentage
of blanks would astonish you if we dared to state it. But any book may
turn out a best-seller. This hope keeps us going. It is absolutely a
gamble, as I say. You can see that under these conditions we cannot
spend very much money on non-essentials. We have to strip the books
down to the barest necessities.

Personally I should like to see the firm put out nothing that is not
well designed and well printed. But as an agent of the firm I have to
set aside my personal preferences. The directors are very much down on
what they call art.

--Has the firm ever looked into the question of good workmanship as a
possible aid to sales?

--Not under the present management. The founder looked at good work as
more or less a marketing advantage.

--What do you think caused the present management to change from that
opinion?

--They haven't changed. They never had it. They get at the matter from
another angle altogether. Their policy is to reduce the production cost
to the minimum. The minimum in theory would be reached when the public
complained. The public hasn't complained, so you can't tell when to
stop cheapening.

You see the directors don't look at a book as a fabricated thing
at all. Books are merely something to sell--merchandise. Our
management--and all the rest of them, for that matter--come from the
selling side of the business and do not have any pride in the product.
Old Mr. ---- was a publisher because he liked books. That made an
entirely different policy in the old firm, of course.

--To get back to the question of good workmanship helping sales:--Here
are two books published abroad to be sold at 50 cents and 80 cents.
They can very well be called works of art. Do you not think that these
well designed paper covers would stand out among other books and invite
customers to themselves?

--Undoubtedly they would.

--Have you ever tried the experiment of putting out editions in paper
covers of attractive design?

--Never. It couldn't be done. People wouldn't buy them.

--But you said a moment ago--

--Moreover the difference of cost between cheap cloth sides and paper
covers of the kind you have there is so slight that it wouldn't pay to
try the experiment. People want stiff board covers. It doesn't much
matter what is inside, but they insist on board covers.

--How do you arrive at that fact?

--Through our salesmen.

--And you say that paper covers have never been tried?

--Never. None of our travellers would go out on the road with a sample
in paper covers.

                   *       *       *       *       *

--A little while ago you said something about your salesmen helping
you to an understanding of the public taste. I infer that you get
considerable help from this source?

--Most valuable help indeed. We depend entirely on the reports the
sales force turns in in these matters. The salesmen are in direct
contact with the retailers and are naturally in a position to feel
the public pulse, so to speak. Their help is invaluable. They can
anticipate the demand very often.

I had reference more particularly to the way books are made.

--Oh, on that point too. We never make a final decision on a cover
design, for instance, without showing it to the salesmen. They very
often make valuable suggestions as to changes of colour, etc. They run
largely to red.

--It would seem, then, that the designing of the books is very much in
the hands of the salesmen?

--Quite in their hands.

--Are the office-boys often called into consultation?

--Mr. ---- finds his stenographer a very great help in passing upon
certain points--illustrations, etc.

--Does it appear to you that the sales department would be the one best
qualified to pass on points of design?

--Well, there, you see--the books have to be sold--that is what we make
them for--and the sales department is the one in closest touch with the
people that buy the books--that knows just what they want.

--The standards of quality, then, are set by the people who buy the
books?

--Oh, absolutely so. How else would you move the books? It is a
merchandising proposition, you must remember.

--But do you not think that people would buy decently made books as
willingly as poorly made books?

At the same price, yes. No question about it. The book-buying public
doesn't worry its head about the way books are made. It doesn't
know anything about it. And well made books cost more. The trade is
committed to a dollar-and-a-half article and can't risk going above it.

--Your opinion is that the price of a well made book would be so high
as to prevent its sale?

--In the case of fiction, yes. The price has become almost a fixture.

--We shall have to go outside of fiction, then, to look for well made
books?

--It amounts to that.

--You have said that certain unproductive factors prevent you from
spending what you otherwise might on good workmanship. What specific
factors would you mention?

--Plates--electros. We plate everything on the chance of its running
into several printings. 80 per cent of the books are not reprinted. You
can see that the money tied up in plates is a very considerable sum,
and, as I say, 80 per cent of it is dead loss. We are obliged to take
the chance, however.

--Has any remedy occurred to you?

--If stereotyping could be revived as an accurate process it might help
us out. It would cost much less to make and to store paper matrices
than to make electrotypes. The difficulty here is that no one knows how
to make good stereotypes, and the stereotype plates at their best are
more trouble to make ready. Trouble with the press-room, you see.

--Is it possible under good conditions to get satisfactory results from
stereotype plates?

--Unquestionably. The books printed from this kind of plates in the
first days of the invention are entirely satisfactory.


                              III. MR. L.

Q. Can a trade-edition book be well made and sell for $1.50?

--That depends on how high you set your standard.

--Well, let us not be too rigorous. Can it be made better, say, than
this book?

--Beyond question. It will all depend upon whether or not the printer
has a few lingering memories of the standards of printing.

--But should not the setting of standards come from the publisher?

--Oh yes, under ideal conditions. Both printer and publisher should
have a hand in it.

--How would you make a book of fiction to be sold for $1.50?

--Well, such a book could have a good title-page as cheaply as a bad
one--and the whole typographic scheme would cost no more if it were
logically done instead of crudely strung together. By logically done I
mean with well proportioned, practicable margins and legible headings,
etc. The press-work on books is reasonably good but the "layout" or
design is entirely neglected. It calls for a little planning, of
course, but no more than should be available in any reputable plant. It
isn't so much that these books are badly planned as it is that they are
not planned at all.

--But most printing firms have a planning department, do they not?

--The planning in most presses is concerned with the handling of
material, not with the _designing_ of material. This is no doubt due
to the fact that the Taylor System has not yet got around to Aesthetic
Efficiency.

--Are not the typographical unions concerned to train their men on
these points of design that you mention?

--The unions have only one idea--and it is not concerned with the
improvement of printing.

--Are there any trade schools that teach these things? Are not the
employers' associations promoting schools to train men in the craft?

--The employers' associations have one idea--a little different from
the idea of the unions, perhaps, but not concerned with the improvement
of printing. There are trade schools but they teach only the mechanics
of the craft.

--Apparently, then, there is no place in this country where one can
learn how to design printing?

--You can safely say that there is no such place.


                              IV. MR. A.

Q: What is your own opinion on the subject of illustrations in books?

--In what particular do you mean?

--I mean, do you think that illustrations help or hinder the quality of
a book?

--The question is too general to be answered easily. May I ask you to
be more specific?

--For example, here is a "best-seller" with several--five or
six--half-tone illustrations. Do you consider that these pictures make
the book a more complete thing as a specimen of book-making?

--Most certainly not.

--Then would you say that illustrations in such books were a detraction?

--Illustrations such as these, yes. Though it would be hard to detract
from this particular book.

--It is a standard book--a standard type of book.

--I fear that it is.

--What kind of illustrations would you favour?

--For many books, none at all. In these books of current fiction the
pictures are either futile or else detrimental to the development of
the plot. They give the game away, so to speak, when the author may
wish to hold the story in suspense. The effort to avoid this disaster
accounts for the multitude of undramatic pictures you see in books.

--Your theory of no pictures should appeal to the publishers but I
doubt if the illustrators will stand with you.

--Illustration is a trade as well as an art.

--True. But we are trying to limit the inquiry to the artistic side at
present. When, then, according to your deductions, would illustrations
be called for?

--When they can make a stage-setting for the story. When they ornament
it or suggest it, perhaps, instead of reveal it. Impressions and
"atmosphere" instead of literal diagrams with a cross marking the spot
where, etc.

--But perhaps people like the cross marking the spot where.

--We are limiting the discussion to the artistic side, are we not?

--What about the half-tone process of engraving?

--The process is a way of doing a thing that cannot be done cheaply by
any other means.

--Do you consider it a process that adds to the artistic possibilities
of book printing?

--You mean according to the standards that prevailed in the earlier
days of the craft?

--I do. Yes.

--According to those standards it seems to me that half-tones
will always have to be considered as necessities forced upon the
book-printer. They demand a kind of paper that is never a satisfactory
book-paper. In the case of the kind of books we are talking about
the relief line methods have always given the most artistic results,
because they are so closely related to the character of type.

One regrets, however, to give up the chances for tonal designs that
the half-tone process provides. Probably the designers and printers
will work out a satisfactory relation between half-tones and type
when the craze for photographic detail passes a little. As things
stand, I should say that the best results are to be had with uncoated
book-papers and with line plates. It is true books are rarely
illustrated this way--current fiction, I mean--but the method might be
used to produce a very attractive and unusual result.

--Then you would condemn the use of half-tones in this kind of book?

--If you mean the usual kind of half-tones printed separately and
inserted, I do. But if you are making a book of travel, for example,
the half-tones from photographs explain and justify themselves.

But on this whole subject of book illustration it strikes me that if
you are to make the design from the start you might as well make it
in harmony with the kind of paper and printing you are planning to
use, and get all the artistic advantage of fitting your means to your
limitations.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Are you familiar with the Christy-Holbein Test?

--Yes. That is to say, I have heard of your applying it, and remember
that the percentages were very much against Holbein.

--Ninety-three to seven, on an average. How do you explain such a
crudity of taste in these groups of people otherwise well educated?

--By the deduction that they are not educated. That is to say that
these people, cultivated in other ways, react precisely like savages
when confronted with pictures or drawings. They "go for" the tinsel
and glitter and are opaque to the higher and more civilized values.
They get the most pleasure from drawings that they think they could
make themselves. This is the basis of the Eight-year-old Formula widely
applied in the department of newspaper comics: "Make your drawing so
that it can be understood by a child eight years old."

All of this is clearly lack of training, because their taste is good in
other matters--music, for example, and house furnishings.

--You would deduce, then, that the periodical and book-publishing
industry has failed to train the taste of its public in such matters?

--It has done worse: it has depraved that taste. Because there was,
not very long ago, a fine tradition in this country in the line of
illustration.

--Why should the publishers find any advantage in depraving the taste
of the public--as you say they have done?

--Because they turned their backs on the standards of the publishing
business and became merchandisers solely. They had to sell the goods
and they had to "sell" a big new public. The quickest way to this
public--through flash-and-crash tactics--they adopted. And naturally
ran themselves and the public down hill.

--May there not be other sides to it, too? May it not be that the art
schools are not now producing draughtsmen of a calibre to support the
fine tradition you mention?

--That may have something to do with it. But even that is mixed
up with the other. I think that the chief difficulty is with the
publishers.

--And the public?

--The public will follow if the publishers lead.


                               V. MR. S.

A. Are you not making the mistake of keeping too close to the
publishers? It seems to me that you will not get at all the facts
behind the situation until you get in touch with the people we sell the
books to. _They_ are the factors that bring about the conditions you
object to. The publisher is merely a machine for selling the public
what it wants.

--Then the publisher has no selective function?

--Absolutely none.

--How does the public bring about the condition we object to?

--Obviously by buying the books.

--I mean to say, how does the public prevail upon you to sell it trashy
books instead of well made books?

--The public is entirely uneducated on the subject of books, in your
sense. People know nothing at all about paper or printing or pictures
or things of that sort. One book is as good as another to any educated
man so long as he can read it. He doesn't know that there is any such
thing as good printing or bad printing or good or bad taste in making
books. Under these conditions we should be fools to spend money on
features that do not have any bearing on sales. It's a simple business
proposition.

--Would the public that you are discussing buy well made books as
willingly as trashy books?

--Oh, absolutely. It's the books they are interested in--what they
contain, not how they are made. They wouldn't know the difference.


                              VI. MR. G.

A: What's the use of talking about standards in connection with things
like these? These are not books. They aren't fit to wad a gun with. I
wouldn't have them in the house. Nobody pays any attention to stuff
like that.

There isn't what you would call a book on the table, except this one,
perhaps. That's printed in England and sent over in sheets and bound
on this side. But that one is set in a bastard Caslon. It isn't the
original Caslon but a revision with the descenders cut off. See how
he's got his O upside down!

Those others--what's the use of talking about them at all? It reminds
me of the story about the Chinaman--

--But, Mr. ----, do you not think it possible to get up this class of
books in a manner that would suit you better?

--You can't hope to get anything like a decent book until you do away
with the damnable cheap paper and the vile types. And then you will
have to start in and teach the printer how to print. There aren't more
than a half a dozen presses in the country that know how to print. Most
printing looks like it had been done with apple-butter on a hay-press--

--What you say is unhappily true. What we are trying to find out are
the causes of this state of things.

--The causes are everywhere--all through the rattletrap, cheap-jack,
shoddy work that is being done in every kind of trade. Nobody cares for
making decent things any more.

The only cure is to get back to decent standards of workmanship in
everything again. But the case seems to me to be hopeless. I try to do
printing up to a decent standard--and that is about all any of us can
do. I don't believe you can hope to do much good through your societies
and investigations. I believe in each one doing his own job in the best
way he knows how. That's the only way you can raise the standard. It's
the work you turn out that counts.


            AN ABSTRACT OF THE COMMITTEE'S RECOMMENDATIONS

Two main questions resulting from the Inquiry present themselves to
the Committee. The first question is: Is it within the power of the
Society of Calligraphers, of any society, or of Society itself, to
restore to the printing of books a standard of good work? The second
and major question: Are books necessary to the present social state?

I. When the Committee began its work it assumed as a matter of
course that the established standards of printing would serve it as
guide-posts and criteria. It expected to traverse a country where the
highways were in need of repair, perhaps, and the marks of direction
dim, but on the whole a negotiable country. It found a very different
state of things.

Instead of roads to be followed with some excusable discomfort it
found not even trails. Such highways as had once been charted were
obliterated. Not only hair-lines but the most elementary blazemarks
were overgrown and lost beyond any hope of recovery. Instead of
following the planned course of visit and consultation the Committee
was forced to reorganize itself into an expedition of discovery. It has
been fortunate to return at all.

The collected data of the exploration can lead to but one conclusion:
That the whole fabric of Standards of Workmanship will have to be
rebuilt from the beginning. Whether this can be done under the present
state of society is a matter to be discussed in connection with the
second question.

                   *       *       *       *       *

II. Are books necessary to the present social state? The Committee's
finding is, unanimously and conclusively, No.

During the past twenty years many influences have been at work to
wean mankind from the use of books. Automobiles, the motion-picture
drama, professional athletics, the _Saturday Evening Post_--these
operated even before the Great War to discourage the habit of reading.
Since the war the progress of society--culminating, in America, in
the dictatorship of the proletariat--has effectually completed the
process. Books as an element vital to the welfare of the race have been
eliminated.

The Society of Calligraphers is thus freed at one stroke from the
obligations implied in the first question. But there are still books in
existence, and for these the Committee feels a professional concern.
For the Investigation, if it has done nothing else, has disclosed
the most cogent and ineluctable fact: that wherever there is contact
between books and the public, the effect upon the books is deleterious.

So far as the immediate situation is concerned, the public, by
discontinuing the contact, has obviated the danger. But in a period of
revolution no condition can be taken for granted as fixed. It is quite
within the range of possibility that the public, under compulsion, may
turn again to books and reading; and this, the Committee believes, is a
contingency the Society should be prepared to meet.

Publishers as a group promise, for the immediate future, to be a
harassed and unimpressionable body. Influence upon them can be
brought to bear only through public demand. Should a public demand
for books revive, it will be imperative for the Society either to
quench it altogether--a project which the Committee has discarded
as visionary--or to take it in hand at its inception and give it
constructive shape by forcing upon public attention such knowledge of
the more elementary points of good taste as shall make impossible the
further prostitution of standards. As the most direct means to this end
it is urgently recommended by the Committee that the Society take up at
once the study of advertising.

[Illustration]




              [Illustration]W. A. DWIGGINS[Illustration]

  TWENTY YEARS AFTER: MR. McG., MR. A., MR. L. _and_ THE SOCIETY OF
                             CALLIGRAPHERS

   From _Publishers' Weekly_, Sept. 2, 1939. Copyright 1939 by R. R.
         Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


NOTE: _In 1919 the Society of Calligraphers published a pamphlet_:
Extracts From An Investigation Into the Physical Properties of Books.
_In the summer of 1939, three of the people who reported in the
investigation were visited again and their opinions solicited as
to what had happened in the interval of twenty years to change the
physical characteristics of books. Transcriptions of parts of the three
interviews follow._


                               MR. McG.

Q: Twenty years ago you were kind enough to discuss book-manufacturing
with us.

--Twenty years. Remarkable memory!

--It meant a great deal to us--your help. It was in 1919. We were
conducting an inquiry--perhaps you remember--into the physical
qualities of books.

--Oh, yes! How you could improve them, and so on. Yes.

--Now we are back again--to see what you think now.

--Good. Interesting idea. Ask me questions.

--For instance ... Does it strike you that trade books have improved in
the twenty years?--as physical objects,--packages?

--Packages. Very neat. Sums up the situation.

--We mean, both as implements, tools, for getting a job done; and as
pleasant things to look at, handle, use ... or the contrary.

--Well. Let's see. Yes. I think trade books have improved decidedly in
twenty years. Decided improvement.

--What points of improvement, would you say?

--Well. More care taken with the get-up, margins, format as you call
it, title pages. Real design coming into it. And much more careful
about the type--legibility and all that--paper, suitability for
reading, good surface for the eye, etc., etc.

--You said, twenty years ago, that your directors' lack of interest in
the product hampered you. Since you have been in charge here have you
been able to bring your books up to a level that suits you better?

--Yes ... and no.... Costs have climbed in twenty years, materials,
labor. We've pushed up retail prices, but the manufacturing costs eat
up all we gain. More than eat it up. Less margin now for design or
style or whatever than twenty years ago, I'd say.

--That looks like faulty adjustment somewhere, doesn't it?

--Situation needs adjusting, certainly!

--I mean, maybe you are paying out money for quite unnecessary features.

--Possibly.

--Not a strictly _factual_ meeting of the conditions, perhaps?--not
"realistic," as the dictators say. Have you ever thought how you might
study the market-product relations from an entirely new and fresh angle?

--Now there! ... that's interesting ... I have. I've thought a lot
about it. When I get off into the Maine woods and look back at it
there's one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb. We've got into
a rut. The whole trade has. Not a shadow of a doubt about it. We let
ourselves be ruled by a whole catalog of standards and values and
"musts" that are as dead as the dodo. Standards inherited from an
entirely different state of society. A thousand years different, you
might say. It is amazing how conservative a tribe we are, we book
people.... Take the cover of a book, for example. Take this cover
here, for instance. We spent a lot of trouble and money dickering
it up--worry about the colors and the design--cost of dies, cost of
stamping, cost of foil ... and not a soul will ever see it! It's all
hidden away under the jacket, and it'll _stay_ hidden under the jacket!
All this book-cover stuff is ... what's the word? ... vestigial--like
your appendix--something no longer used--something useless left over
from an earlier stage of evolution. Did you ever see anybody in a book
store turn the jacket back and look at the cover? Did you ever hear
of a cover that helped sell a book?--to the slightest extent? No. And
when they get 'em home and read 'em and lend them to their friends the
jacket stays on. Never comes off. Book-covers are just expense--useless
expense--the decoration and things, I mean.

--You would do away with covers, then?

--No. It's got to be in boards--people want them that way--it's one of
your "realistic" details.

--In your "new angle" volume would you have the insides as you do them
now?

--No. There again I'd let the demand shape the product. Your market
doesn't give a hang about the type and printing so long as they can
read it.

--That sounds like twenty years ago!

--I know. Very likely it does.

--Haven't things changed?

--Not much. It's as true now as it was then.

--But all this talking and writing and lecturing....

--Two or three thousand persons, perhaps--two or three thousand have
become "book conscious" as they say--the limited edition crowd. I'm
dealing with the ten million.... There's a lot of whoosh in all that
book beautiful stuff, you know.

--Mr. ---- thinks it helps to tell them about type and paper, etc.

--I know. It doesn't. They don't understand his little notices--it's
all shop talk. He likes 'em. He thinks they give the books tone, I
daresay. I think it doesn't matter a damn one way or the other. All
that shop detail is zero. They don't care to know and they don't _need_
to know. Just make your book so it will read handily and let it go at
that.

--Have you got this "new angle" idea to a point where you could
describe a book made that way?

--Well. I might. Take the cover--I'd have board covers and cloth. But
I wouldn't stamp them. Bright color. Gay. Patterned cloth sometimes.
I'd have the simplest kind of paper label on the backbone. Printed
from type--standard affair--library label that you could read. No
embroidery, just plain function. On the least expensive terms possible.
Make it a kind of house-trademark feature.... Inside I'd forget all
I knew about fine printing--the art--it's a great art--forget all I
knew--start fresh with the _use_.

--_You_ like fine printing.

--That's right. I do. In its place. The place isn't trade books. You
can't have fine printing in trade books. All you can have along _that_
line is cheap imitation--celluloid collar and no shirt. If you go out
with your imitation fine printing as a mark to shoot at you come back
with what we turn out now, all of us--shabby genteel, to the limit. My
book won't try to get by with a paper collar. My book won't have _any_
collar. It will get down to the basis of realism--a handy, efficient,
_cheap_ tool for temporary use. Read it--throw it away. Who saves a
book now? If you save it, where are you going to put it? In the car?

--That suggests question of size--what do you think about size?

--Oh, small, by all means. For the usual job not larger than the
5-1/2x7-3/4 range. Smaller than that when you can.

--You think people do not want a big package for their money?

--Not when they want a book to read. If we can get the price down
they'll flock to small size, I'm sure. When they pay two-fifty, three,
perhaps they want their poundage. Books for gifts too, possibly--want
'em impressive. But on my basis of a good workable tool they'll like
them small and handy.

--Your point in general, then, is that modern books should be looked at
as temporary affairs.

--Absolutely. Temporary affairs. Like magazines. And they ought to be
_produced_ as temporary affairs. Paper a little better than newsprint,
but not much better--better color, on the warmish side instead of
blue-grey. "Guaranteed by the Bureau of Standards to last three hundred
years." Bosh. Presswork: set your standard at the level of legibility.
That's low--look at the newspapers. Get it so you can read it easily
and let the fine points ride. Give up points of paper and make-ready
to get a cheaper package. You are making a tool, remember, not a
_bijou_--you're making a sound, efficient, easy-working tool--tools
don't need paper lace and fake-leather upholstery to make them
sound--when a tool is efficient it has a style of its own, inevitably.

--Your dictum is, "books as tools."

--Books as tools. Right. But here's a point. All this is on the
technical side. Treat a book as a temporary affair. But while it lasts
I'd take considerable pains to have it be a _lively_ affair. Not
freakish--you can't play tricks with the reading process--but lively,
like a good, interesting talker. Little fresh twists, but hardly
noticeable in detail. A lot of ways to do it in an inconspicuous way.
Mustn't be conspicuous--mustn't interfere with the reading job. Little
touches of ornament in the right places. Pictorial bits--pictures are
coming back into trade books again, in a new form--easy, swift, simple
illustrations that fit in with the "temporary affair" style. Some
of the money saved by a strategic retreat from impossible printing
standards I'd put into things like that--to keep the pages gay and
interesting.

--In this connection, do you think that modern books ought to be
"modernistic" in design?

--Absolutely _not_. As I said a minute ago, you can't play tricks with
the process of reading.... One of the necessities of the modernistic
stuff is the necessity to shock you--to make people jump. You can't set
off firecrackers on a book page every few paragraphs without taking the
reader's mind off the text. You simply can't read in the neighborhood
of modernistic design. It isn't because you are not used to it. It's in
the very nature of the style.... I'm talking about books, of course.
For advertising, it's prime. Have all the modernistic design you want
on your jacket. The more the better.

--And that brings us....

--Yes. I've been waiting for it. That brings us to book-jackets!

--Yes. What do you think....

--Now _there_ you are in another country entirely. Now's the time
to beat the drums and run up the flags and drape the bunting....
All the money you can't afford to spend on covers you _can_ afford
to spend on jackets. Because, first, the jacket _is_ the cover; and
second, the jacket helps directly in selling the book. Jackets are
advertising--posters--billboards--so make 'em shout.

--Attractive?

--If you mean _pretty_, not so important. If you mean oomph,
by all means. Feminine charm, in the prevailing mode.... But
sock-'em-in-the-eye. Make them strong. Make them so people can't miss
seeing them.

--What is your own formula?

--Formula? I haven't any formula.... If I had I think it would be
_contrast_. Contrast with all the other books on the table. Don't
follow anybody's style. Get away from the prevalent "successful" style
of the moment. Take a look at the tables--what would stick out now more
than plain white paper with plain black type? I'd probably varnish it.
Contrast.

--Do jackets sell books?

--Oh ... no. Jackets don't sell books. They _help_. What sells a book
is the stuff inside--story--text. But books need to be _seen_. Jackets
help make them visible.

                   *       *       *       *       *

--You save on covers and spend on jackets. You save on paper and
printing, and put some of the saving into pictorial and design
features. Would you come out with enough saving to get the retail price
down from two fifty?

--I think so. I think if the thing were studied out on our "new angle"
basis you'd find that you not only liked my books a lot better--as
"packages"--but that you'd be able to buy more of them.


                                MR. A.

Q: One thing I wanted to ask ... you have had a considerable part in
shaping your juvenile department.

--Yes. I have.

--My question may seem a little ... cool.... Do you prepare your
juvenile titles with the children themselves in view--the ultimate
consumers?

--The question's quite proper. I am glad you asked it--it goes
straight to the heart of a big trouble about children's books....
The children themselves in view, eh? The ultimate consumers.... No.
I am sorry to say, we do not. We can't. Because children do not buy
books.... You see, a juvenile, like any other book on our list, has
to please the person that's likely to buy it. And that means, a book
to please adults--a book that a grown-up will mark down as something
a child ought to like. _Ought_ to, you see--the adult's judgment, not
the child's. We can't get past it. We can't find out what the child
really _does_ like. When children rally to an author, or a style of
book, then we get a glimpse of the children's state of mind. But that
is our only contact.... All our _new_ ventures have to be baited and
primed to catch the fancy of the mothers and the cousins and the
aunts--_against_ the interests of the ultimate consumer, you might
say, when that is necessary. Sometimes a juvenile runs to large sales
purely on the strength of adult appreciation alone, like Ferdinand,
for instance.... If it were possible, there is nothing I should like
better than to deal with the children direct. I have children of my
own. I think I understand them ... to a certain extent. I think I could
please them. Once or twice--this is a confession--I did take a direct
hand--made a couple the way I thought they ought to be. _My_ judgment
against the child's, eh?... Complete failures--drugs.... I couldn't
move them--couldn't get past the censor--couldn't sell the grown-ups.

--Have you ever thought of ways for getting into direct touch with the
children?

--I can see no practicable way. As the case stands you can't penetrate
the Adult Front Line.


                                MR. L.

Q: This scheme of Mr. McG.'s for a different kind of book--what do you
think of it?

--If he can _control_ his "decline from a high estate" I am with
him, emphatically. Books need to be cheaper. Books _vis-à-vis_ market
certainly need to be studied all over again--from a new base line. I
agree with his findings about shabby-genteel. And I'm sure that I'd
like his "cheap" books much better than the kind I buy now, _if_ he
can liven them up as he suggests. The question is, can he stop his
"strategic retreat" at the right point? It's like inflation: easy to
start, but...! He drops the standard of material and process--will
his proofreading go down hill too?... Many French books in paper
wrappers--made at the lowest cost-level, badly printed on cheap
paper--have an air and a style that our own more expensive affairs
can't quite achieve. _Somebody_ laid a finger on them. Who, in Mr.
McG.'s scheme, is to be this somebody whose touch creates liveliness
and interest? A highly important factor in the product!... If we
_can_ get the liveliness and interest, we will be glad to trade more
expensive paper and printing to get it. Our books are pretty dull....
But, _just_ inferior printing on cheap paper, _without_ the lively
touch and style, is going to bore us worse yet!

--You mean dull in content?

--I mean dull optically, visually.... Like--to put it into terms
of sound--like a long, droning recital of a tedious story--no
inflection--no climax--no motion. ... I like Mr. McG.'s figure of a
"good, interesting talker."

--You'd spice it up with "modernist" feeling?

--No. He's right, there. No fireworks. Keep the explosions _outside_
the book.

--_You_ have used "contemporary" design.

--Yes, but you'll notice, not in places where _reading_ is going
on.... Another point: letting the market set the _tone_ is not good
merchandising. The market needs to be led, by a tone a little higher
than its average taste.... And Mr. McG.'s good tool isn't made by
majority vote in Congressional committee--it's made by somebody who
knows, expertly and practically, just what the tool is intended to do
and how it works.

--You are for "books as tools."

--I am for books as tools--and that means cheaper books.... I think,
too, that a lot of the things that make books expensive are false
value--brummagem.... But the trade is so firmly established in the
tradition of false-front and bustle-rear that I'm afraid it's going
to take an awful tussle to get it back to real values again--to
the tool basis--to the simplicity and directness and general
fitness-for-its-job, for example, that makes a carpenter's plane a
masterpiece of appropriate design.

                       COMPOSED IN ELECTRA TYPES




              [Illustration]DESMOND FLOWER[Illustration]

                  _The Publisher and the Typographer_

 From _The Penrose Annual_, Vol. 44. Copyright 1950 by Lund Humphries
   Ltd., London, and Pitman Publishing Corp., New York. Reprinted by
                     permission of the publishers.


We live in an unhappy age. I suppose that it must be the most wretched
known in history since the hordes of Genghis Khan swept across the face
of the eastern world. Yet it is not the physical losses--though these
are bad enough--which are responsible for the malaise, but a spiritual
shortcoming: a lack of direction and a lack of faith. Ours is an age in
which there is no single thing, not great or small, which can escape
our petty probing, our questioning and our doubts. Nothing is because
it is: a shadowy reason must be sought behind.

In the course of man's desire to examine and explain away everything,
one of the multitudinous minutiæ which have come in for worried
attention is the position of printers, particularly in relation to the
publishers they serve. The first four centuries of printing produced
ninety-nine per cent of all the books which are worth looking at: yet,
at what time during that period did anyone worry about the division
of responsibility in a book's production? Then, it was a matter which
somehow got done; now, unfortunately, it is a subject for discussion.

When Sweynheim and Pannertz started work at Subiaco in 1465 they were
at the same time both printers and publishers, and this represents
a dual personality. But when Fichet, the Rector of the Sorbonne,
decided to set up the first French press five years later within the
precincts of the University, he imported three printers from Germany,
and possibly the first printer-publisher relationship was born. That
this relationship was a living thing is shown by the fact that Fichet
had the books which the press produced printed in Roman type. Soon
after the great Rector had gone into voluntary exile for his political
opinions, the press moved out of the University precincts to become
a normal commercial printing shop, and Gering and Krantz reverted to
the use of gothic type! Since the use of Roman lay within the high
road of French classical development--France being the only country in
Europe which did not begin its printing history in gothic--this stands
as the first instance of the views of a publisher, as a man ordering
the print, being in advance of the more timorous craftsmen, who were
glad to revert to their old, safe and conventional ways as soon as the
refining influence was removed.

French printing as a whole in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries is full of printer-publisher problems for our questing minds.
Simon le Vostre, the great ecclesiastical publisher of his age, used
Pigouchet mostly for his printing; the Hardouyn brothers commissioned
several lovely books from Anabat: why, and who dictated the terms? The
balance of power may then well have lain with the printer, since in the
Hardouyn's 1500 _Book of Hours_ the first page is filled with Anabat's
superb device. But what shall we say of the _Hours_ printed in 1527 by
Simon du Bois, but which bears on every page the unmistakable stamp and
signature of its publisher, Geoffroy Tory? Now, they say, too, that
Tory was not a binder: yet from him we have two gilt panels done to his
order and to his design, matching exactly the work which he hired his
printers to do for him.

I feel we are too certain in our minds that in the past printers
were _ipso facto_ publishers, or that those "for" whom they printed
were merely agents. Like a fatal crack hidden for many years in the
foundations of an outwardly sound edifice, the split between printer
and publisher had occurred at the Sorbonne in 1470, but was patched,
mended and ignored from time to time for long thereafter. Yet like
that neglected flaw which, having widened until it defies repair,
will in the end bring the whole building down, the printer-publisher
relationship has now some time ago irrevocably divided.

Today the publisher and the printer are two separate men: there are
few exceptions to this rule. Mr. Oliver Simon recently began one of
his all too rare essays with the words "Printing is a way of life";
and later he remarked that "if he (the printer) is not something of an
artist, he cannot hope to evolve and maintain a typographic style."
But these words must be read in conjunction with one of Holbrook
Jackson's many wise remarks: "whether it (printing) is an art or not
is a secondary affair, so long as it is good printing. 'Art happens'
says Whistler, and the printer who sets out to be an artist is liable
to make a mess of both art and print." One further quotation will show
how readily Holbrook Jackson's wisdom can be thrown out of the window;
in these pages last year Mr. Herbert Read criticised the English
and American editions of his own book, _The Grass Roots of Art_. He
wrote "On balance, I do not find much to choose between these two
designs from a functional point of view, but discounting a poverty
due to material restrictions imposed on the English publisher, there
is a certain liveliness in the American production, which, were I a
purchaser faced with a choice, would induce me to buy the American
edition, even if it cost me rather more. But if the English edition
had been printed on better paper, it would have been the easier of the
two editions to read...." With the exception of the last sentence,
the whole of this passage seems misleading and irrelevant. The use of
the word "functional" is one of the crosses which we in the twentieth
century have to bear, but, since it has occurred, we must presume the
function of printing to be that of presenting the written word to the
reader in its most easily assimilated form; if the English edition
in question is, apart from its paper, more easily readable, how can
both editions be equally functional? The implication that a piece of
printing--particularly when the text is a work of serious criticism--is
to be purchased (even at a higher price) for its liveliness at the
expense of its readability is particularly unfortunate. If for
"liveliness" we read "speciousness" or "pretention" we have found a
ready definition of the one quality which should be excluded from
book printing at almost any cost. For this reason I am frightened of
Mr. Simon's statement that "printing is a way of life"; good printing
implies a philosophy, it is true, but I fear that printers who are
far from good may assume airs above their station and, when they
produce a perfect horror, state "that is my way of life--take it or
leave it." If they do, they may be astonished at how fast any decent
publisher will embrace the latter course. I disagree with a great deal
more which Mr. Read wrote in his article, but there is room here for
comment only upon his remarks about Baskerville type. Baskerville is
_not_ an easy type, nor a safe one (though printers may find that it
satisfies their customers). The "gentlemanly sort of type which passes
unnoticed, unquestioned" is undoubtedly Caslon and all its derivatives.
Baskerville with its broad face and flourishing Italic is hard to
handle, and in consequence is employed in a higher percentage of bad
printing than any other type face.

It is generally agreed that when an irresistible force meets an
immovable body, the result is a stalemate; equally obviously, whichever
power wanes first will suffer an immediate eclipse. From this we may
proceed by a process of elimination. A publisher who knows what he
wants employs a printer who is an artist, and the result should be a
masterpiece of give and take. A publisher who does not know what he
wants employs a printer who is an artist, and the result should be a
piece of fine printing. A publisher who knows what he wants employs a
printer who is not an artist, and the result will depend on the degree
of taste of the publisher. A publisher who either does not know what
he wants or does not care, and employs a printer who is not an artist,
will both get and deserve a shambles. From these simple equations one
constant factor emerges--the publisher; and this fact is not at all at
variance with the traditional saw that he who pays the piper calls the
tune.

There have been a number of eminent publisher-printer relationships in
the past. I have mentioned the French of 1500-1550, where there seems
already to be evidence of a publisher's taste exerting an influence.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries offer no examples which are
worthy of study: the works undertaken by one printer on behalf of a
syndicate of publishers produce no evidence of the book's appearance
being dictated by any taste other than that of the printer himself.

The nineteenth century saw the publisher come into his own. One of
the greatest publisher-printer partnerships in the history of British
book-production is that of Pickering and Whittingham. It would be
reasonable to suppose that Pickering was the moving force in this
partnership, since the ideas are publishing ideas mainly exemplified
by the Aldine poets and the Diamond classics, and their starting
point is Pickering's choice of the anchor and dolphin with the motto
grouped about it: _Aldi Discip. Anglus_. To the same taste of Pickering
and his delight in the printing of Aldus and his contemporaries may
be attributed the gracious and restrained use of sixteenth-century
fleurons which in the eighteen-thirties are not readily to be
found elsewhere, and the curiously appropriate renaissance borders
occasionally introduced. Another partnership in which I suspect that
the publisher had a considerable say was that of Edward Moxon and
Bradbury & Evans. In 1850 Moxon issued the first edition of two most
important works, Wordsworth's _Prelude_ and Tennyson's _In Memoriam_;
both were printed by the same printer. But eight years later we may
point to John Murray's edition of Coleridge's _Table Talk_; this,
too, was printed by Bradbury & Evans with more than a glance over the
shoulder at Pickering's publications, but without the guiding hand
of Moxon. It is an interesting book, for it just fails before every
problem which the text sets. Pickering would have set the solid prose
at least a point smaller and increased the margins; in the same way
he would have managed to get more space between each specimen of
_Table Talk_. Instead of a page of grace and readability, there is in
consequence a slightly crowded air and the eye skips disconcertingly
from line to line.

Little more than thirty years later British book production was
influenced by the most powerful small group of publishers which had
ever turned printing upside down: it was indeed a small group--it
consisted of three men: John Lane, Elkin Mathews and Leonard
Smithers. The splendid series of publications for which each of these
extraordinary individuals was responsible need no enumeration here
... but it is worth pointing out that they were the pioneers of the
asymmetry which Mr. Read praises as an unusual and notable feature in
the American edition of his book already mentioned. Holbrook Jackson
said the last word on the publisher-printer relationship: "it was
publishers like Pickering, Moxon, Field and Tuer, Elkin Mathews, John
Lane and J. M. Dent who by their example in the nineteenth century
helped to _defend_ [my italics] printing from printers who were
content to do as they were told, and, if no one told them, to follow
rule-of-thumb methods which tended always to become worse rather than
better."[32]

To quote again from Holbrook Jackson: "It was long before the average
printer took advantage of the awakening of typographical taste which
began in the eighteen-nineties. The men who extended and consolidated
that taste came from anywhere but the printing offices. The majority
of modern typographers are intellectuals or scholars who have forced
themselves on the trade, often through the publishing houses."
In almost every age there have been a few commercial printers of
first-class standing, but perhaps it is no coincidence that it would
be difficult to name one who was at work in the eighteen-nineties--the
most lively age of the publisher's influence. The situation has not
materially changed by the middle of the twentieth century, except that
in our own age we are fortunate in having among us a few printers who
bow to no man, and have left their mark upon this country's production.
First among them stands Mr. Oliver Simon, whose steady output of fine
printing must command unqualified admiration. Both the Cambridge and
the Oxford University Presses have evolved styles of their own, and
there are a few others who are fine printers in their own right. But on
the other side of the ledger there is Sir Francis Meynell, who, despite
the criticism that much of his work is pastiche, showed with exquisite
taste [in the first hundred Nonesuch Press books] what could be made of
the types and ornaments which Mr. Stanley Morison had made available
through the Monotype Corporation, and all this with a multitude of
printers who were set to work and produced but one result--pure
Meynell. There is also the more recent example of Mr. Jan Tschichold at
work in the Penguin pool.

This lamentable lack of taste among the generality of printers led
publishers to give instructions as to their wishes, and this in turn
has created a new position in publishing offices: the typographer. Once
this person made his appearance on the payroll, the initiative passed
from the printer for ever. In the first place, if the publisher employs
a typographer he is going to be sure he gets his money's worth; in the
second, human nature being what it is, most printers will willingly
accept a publisher's design because it is the line of least resistance,
and because, according to the best principles of business, the customer
is always right.

I cannot see why the initiative in design should ever pass back to
the printer. The problem was admirably expressed by D. B. Updike in his
little book of essays on the craft, _In the Day's Work_: "If printers
had more of a standard and a stiffer one, both about the types they
employ and the way in which they use them, printing would be better.
The printer, if he has no standard, _must_ allow the customer to
dictate his own wishes about types." I hope that there will always be
the handful of printers who are great enough to say "you will do it my
way--or else," but the rest will do as they are told by publishers'
typographers, which amounts to the substitution of house styles for
printers' styles. Printing, like so many arts, has fallen into the
hands of the middleman--for such indeed the publisher is. There I
am sure it will remain, and it is now for the middleman to justify
himself. If he will take his responsibilities seriously he can do
nothing but good. The good printer's compositor who is "something of an
artist" will go on setting the target; but the publisher's typographer
can, if he will, go far towards dragging the mediocre printers up
towards the same high standard. If this is done, design in British
printing will show a welcome overall improvement.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[32] _The Printing of Books._




            [Illustration]WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT[Illustration]

                       _The Anatomy of the Book_

From the Manual of Linotype Typography, Copyright 1923 by Mergenthaler
   Linotype Company, Brooklyn, N. Y. Reprinted by permission of the
           publishers. Corrected and amended by the Editor.


The experienced designer is familiar with the successive parts of
a complete book. All less formal embodiments of the book idea have
some of these parts, and their position in the whole scheme should be
governed by the traditions of the book proper.

In order to leave complete freedom as to number of pages, the favorite
custom is to number the text pages in arabic folio numbers, beginning
with 1. The front pages are then numbered with Roman folios, and thus
it makes no difference with the body how many or few front pages are
finally found necessary.

The typographical treatment of front matter and chapter pages
throughout the book should be in perfect harmony, whether the
treatment is simple typography or calls for elaborate embellishment.
The character of the book is largely decided by what is done in this
respect, and the intelligent designer fully realizes its importance and
the chance thus given him for distinguished work.

The following summary gives these parts in proper sequence, and the
nature of each.


              BASTARD TITLE (_always a right-hand page_)

Nowadays this page (often miscalled "Half Title") is used merely
because custom demands the familiar resting place for the eye in
advance of the Title Page. It should never be omitted in work of any
pretension to style and quality, and it should never be made unduly
prominent by decoration or other treatment. Conventional dignity is the
safe note for this page in the book.


             ADVERTISING CARD (_always a left-hand page_)

If an Advertising Card or other similar announcement is required,
it should be typographically a part of the book, no matter what the
client's style in his advertising typography may be. If a customer has
a special or unique form of advertising, and insists on its use, the
printer should inform him that it conflicts with the harmony of the
book to do so.


              THE TITLE PAGE (_always a right-hand page_)

The Title Page gives the reader his sense of the whole book's quality.
It should, therefore, be as nearly perfect as may be. Its first
essential is that the eye shall read instantly the three important
facts that it has to tell: the title of the book, the name of the
author, and the imprint. In the case of a business volume this means
the merchandise or business subject, the name of the business house,
and the address or addresses. The typography should make these three
divisions clear at a glance. There should be as little else on the
title page as possible. Everything that can be left out is an aid to
quality. The principle of the page is that it is an announcement of the
book's contents and that it should not go beyond a very few display
lines. It is the door to the house. White space is of the greatest
value in this part of the book. If decoration is used, it should never
be made more important than the type lines. The use of different faces
of type is almost always bad, and success is obtained only occasionally
by a genius. So important is harmony that it is not safe even to
combine lines of capitals and lower case letters, except after careful
planning and with assured understanding and talent.


                 COPYRIGHT (_always a left-hand page_)

The Copyright of the volume should be placed a little above the center
of the page. The best taste calls for caps and small caps, or small
caps alone. It is customary to use the bottom of this page for the
printer's imprint or the international requirement, "Printed in the
United States of America," or both, but the size of page should be
considered.


                DEDICATION (_always a right-hand page_)

The character and purpose of the Dedication dictate that its treatment
should always be formal. The "monumental" style is appropriate and
correct. Small caps are the best. The Dedication should always be a
right-hand page. Its reverse must be left blank.


          PREFACE [OR FOREWORD] (_always a right-hand page_)

A Preface that has simply the ordinary character usual to most prefaces
should be set in the same size of type as the body of the book, and
in the same face. For any preface of unusual importance, the page may
be double-leaded, or set in a type one size larger than the body. If
the book has both Preface and Introduction, the Preface may be set in
italics to mark the distinction. Italics may also be employed if the
Preface has been written by a person other than the author. In this
case, however, the Preface is preferably placed after the Contents and
the List of Illustrations.


                 CONTENTS (_always a right-hand page_)

The Contents or Table of Contents, filling as many pages as necessary,
follows the Preface. The quality of this part of the book-job
depends on the little niceties of spacing, margin, and proportion of
white space to type which are too often ignored, even in otherwise
pretentious books. The Contents pages are almost as important as the
Title Page in establishing a sense of quality.


        THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (_always a right-hand page_)

The List of Illustrations follows the Contents pages, but no matter
where the Contents finishes, the List of Illustrations should begin on
a right-hand page. Obviously its typographical style should be the same
as the Contents.


               INTRODUCTION (_always a right-hand page_)

The Introduction follows the List of Illustrations, and its
composition should be in the same size and face as the body of the
book. Any typographical distinction between Preface and Introduction
should be limited to the former, as stated under "Preface." Authors
are not always clear in their understanding of the difference between
a Preface and an Introduction. Their Introduction often is really a
Preface, and should be so entitled and placed in the book accordingly.
The Preface is the author's personal remarks to the reader, and these
may be of any character, treating of any subject. The Introduction, on
the other hand, should treat specifically of the subject of the book,
and should contain only statements of direct bearing and importance.


                HALF TITLE (_always a right-hand page_)

As the Bastard Title always precedes the Title Page, so the Half Title
always precedes the first page of the text--the page which carries the
title of the book at its top. The Half Title must always be on the
right-hand page immediately preceding this page, and it should consist
of not more than the title of the volume. Half Titles may run through a
book before various divisions.

Those sections of a book which follow the text must be treated with
the same typographic care as the pages which precede the text. These
sections are usually as follows:


                 APPENDIX (_always a right-hand page_)

This should be set in the same face as the text, but in one size
smaller type. If the text ends on the left-hand page, a Half Title may
be thrown between the text and the Appendix.


               GLOSSARY (_preferably a right-hand page_)

The size of type used for the Glossary depends wholly upon its nature,
but it usually is two full sizes smaller than that used in the text of
the volume. A Half Title may be thrown in before the Glossary, if the
text ends on the left-hand page.


             BIBLIOGRAPHY (_preferably a right-hand page_)

The comments made under "Glossary" apply equally to the Bibliography.
The combination of titles of books and the names of authors offers an
attractive opportunity for artistic treatment.


                  INDEX (_always a right-hand page_)

If the text ends on the left-hand page, a Half Title may be thrown in
before the Index. The type used for the Index is usually 8 point size
set in double column. There is so much difference in the way the index
entries read that great care should be exercised to select a model
which will fit the particular case in hand.

                   *       *       *       *       *

 A SYMPOSIUM: _By Bruce Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins, Joseph
 Blumenthal, P. J. Conkwright, Arthur W. Rushmore, Milton Glick, Morris
 Colman, Evelyn Harter, Peter Beilenson and Ernst Reichl._

Have there been any material changes in the anatomy of the book in the
past quarter century? Should there be, to have the contemporary book
reflect the times in which it is designed, set and printed?

As these and other questions occurred, we re-appraised the Anatomy of
the Book summation in _The Manual of Linotype Typography_, reprinted
in the foregoing pages. That text seemed to stand up pretty well.
It was written originally by William Dana Orcutt for the _Manual_,
whose typographical plan and critical comment was prepared with the
co-operation of the late Edward E. Bartlett, then Director of Linotype
Typography.

                   *       *       *       *       *

What revisions or additions would Mr. Orcutt suggest for a reprinting?
What would other prominent designers and book-makers suggest?

The idea of a symposium appealed. The counsel of Bruce Rogers, Carl
Purington Rollins and Joseph Blumenthal, in the field of fine and
privately printed books, was invited, with that of P. J. Conkwright in
the university press field.

Trade book-makers would also have opinions and suggestions, in all
probability. Counsel was sought from Milton Glick, who heads the Viking
Press design and production activity; Morris Colman, former chairman
of the A.I.G.A. Trade Book Clinic and one of Viking's top designers;
Arthur W. Rushmore, former Harper vice-president in charge of design
and production, now retired to the delights of his Golden Hind Press,
at Madison, N. J.; and Ernst Reichl, one of our ranking modern
designers, whose long association in book manufacturing with H. Wolff
and as a free-lance brought an unmatched experience in working with
many publishers. Mr. Reichl also has been prominent in A.I.G.A. Book
and Magazine Clinic activities.

The comment of an author and a publisher also seemed in order, and
happily one in each field with a considerable appreciation of the
graphic arts was obtained: Evelyn Harter, whose novel, _Dr. Katherine
Bell_, was recently published by Doubleday, and who formerly headed
design and production activity for Random House, Smith and Haas and
other firms before retiring to private life as Mrs. Milton Glick. As
publisher-designer-printer all in one, Peter Beilenson was invited to
comment. He, with Mrs. Edna Beilenson, directs the Peter Pauper Press
in Mt. Vernon, and is consistently represented in the A.I.G.A. "Fifty
Books of the Year" selections.

                   *       *       *       *       *

"So far as I know," Mr. Orcutt wrote, "the Anatomy remains the same
today and I can think of no changes I would want to make. I may be
wrong, but I am still hoping that it is one thing that doesn't change."

To Joseph Blumenthal, who directs the Spiral Press in New York, and
whose books are famed for their simplicity of design and excellence
of typography and presswork, the statements of the Anatomy are sane
and safe. "In the hands of a sufficiently experienced and versatile
designer," he added, "no rule is absolute to the point where it cannot
be broken, at least in part, where occasion requires."

To Bruce Rogers, most distinguished of designers of books, the Anatomy
"is an excellent short treatise that covers all the points of a
well-designed volume.... I recommend it for the perusal of anyone
engaged in book-making. Following it literally would result in a decided
advance in that art."

Several minor suggestions that B.R. made have been incorporated in the
text of the Anatomy as here reprinted. These concerned the substitution
of "should" for "must" in several instances, "in order not to be too
dogmatic." His other points were: 1, "that it is frequently preferable
to place the preface before the contents"; and 2, "that there seem to
be too many half-titles recommended for anything else than a de luxe
book--especially at the end, for the index and vocabulary."

To Carl Purington Rollins, Printer Emeritus to Yale University,
lecturer and writer on the graphic arts and one of the foremost
American masters of the book, the Anatomy "is a very sound and sensible
guide for young book makers--and, to judge from the queer books
coming out of New York, older ones could profit from it. I have no
disagreement with it in any particular," he continued, "and if it will
not make a genius, it will at least prevent a diligent reader from
going astray."

P. J. Conkwright found the text clear and concise. "Any extensive
elaboration would defeat its usefulness, I think, to those approaching
the subject for the first time.

"My only quarrel," he added, "is with the paragraph concerning
Copyright. If there is no Dedication I like the Copyright statement and
printer's imprint grouped together a little above the center of the
page. If there is a Dedication, I like the Copyright statement at the
top of the page lining with the top line of the title page, and the
printer's imprint at the bottom of the page, lining with the bottom
line of the title page.

"This is a good example, however, of how an elaboration of the text can
get too involved for a beginner."

                   *       *       *       *       *

To several experienced trade-book designers with considerable
production and manufacturing experience, the Anatomy text was less
satisfactory.

Both Evelyn Harter and Milton Glick found the text too dogmatic in
its dicta. They were bothered most by the first two sentences under
Copyright, the last sentence under title page and "references to
'genius.'" They both liked best the remarks regarding Contents, Preface
and Introduction.

"Ought not the topics of chapter openings be included," Mr. Glick
inquired, "also illustrations, captions, running page heads, folios and
such?"

As an ex-designer turned author, Miss Harter has "come to appreciate
more than ever the values of legibility and simplicity, with no
extraneous tricks."

Morris Colman concurred in feeling the Anatomy text is pretty arbitrary
for today, and that chapter openings, running page heads and all other
normal elements of a book should be included.

"In particular," he added, "I would like to see the various arguments
presented both in terms of tradition and also in terms of the
particular function which each element of a book performs.

"For example, the title page is not only the 'main entrance' but it
also is the source of the bibliographic information which appears
in hundreds of library cards, catalogs, etc., and its contents and
arrangement determines whether it will be listed in all these places in
such form that you or I could find it if we wanted it.

"There are certain legal requirements which influence the form and
content of copyright pages. Dedications, while formal in a technical
sense, may need to be treated quite informally to express the spirit of
the particular dedicator.

"And with many kinds of contemporary books," he continued, "the
contents page is made to precede any other preliminary matter, despite
tradition, for the greater convenience of the reader. I am sure that
this is always why the Index is invariably the last element in back
matter."

                   *       *       *       *       *

To Arthur Rushmore, the Anatomy "is darn good copy, clearly stated.
There are a couple of amplifications that might help give more clarity:

"_Advertising Card_ seems a little vague. This is more likely to be a
'List of Author's Books' or 'Series Title and Titles of Books already
issued' if the book is in a historical or other series.

"_Copyright_: Relatively few books carry the Printer's name on
copyright and the line 'Printed in the United States of America' looks
better and obviates a printing problem if run as a line directly under
the copyright notice. A single line at the foot of the page, after
the first 500 impressions of 1951 printing, is either bold face or
completely unreadable.

"_Dedication_: To me, 'small caps are the best' is doubtful. Small caps
are the worst printing of all characters in a font, and unless small
caps of a larger size than text will look too weak and small. I'd say
'should be planned with the utmost care for balance and position on
page.'

"_Half Title_: First paragraph too dogmatic. If book is a novel, or
book without 'Parts' then half title should be 'book title' backed
blank and folioed in Roman front matter. If book has 'Parts,' the half
title should not bear book title, but should carry the Part or Section
Title and folio arabic 1, backed blank 2 and first page of text folio
3. Similar half title for all other Parts or Sections folioed in."

Peter Beilenson, whose comment on the pleasures and duties of the
amateur printer is well worth reading (page 313), thinks the Anatomy
"perfectly all right, so far as it goes. If it wavers from the perfect,
it is in being too strict--_vide_ the remarks about the title page, the
"it should never" of the bastard title, etc.

"But," he asks in suggesting the text be extended, "what about
additions to the coverage? Footnotes, running heads, chapter titles,
initials, etc., are not the limbs of the anatomy, but they are organs.
What about the binding? The jacket? The direction of the stamping of
the title on the spine?"

To Ernst Reichl, the Anatomy comprises "what might be called the basic
minimum. Any designer worth his salt should not only start with this
standard but also allow his imagination to roam far beyond it.

"An 'anatomy,' however precise and objective, necessarily breaks down
a living entity into component parts. These parts in reality show much
more cohesion than is apparent in their piece-by-piece description.

"In the modern book, in particular, we tend to treat the volume as a
whole and to submerge the importance of the single page in it. The
bastard title, for instance, might be left entirely blank; the title
page may be spread over two pages and the advertising card incorporated
into it; the copyright page and the dedication page might be treated as
a double-page spread, etc.

"The tendency today," he summarized, "is altogether to handle the
double-page spread as the unit of the layout, rather than the single
page. This may help to break down in some degree the rigidity and
formality which awes ordinary human beings, and makes them as reluctant
to touch a book as to put on a dress suit. It may also help to make our
books a little more ordinary and lively."




              [Illustration]ROBERT JOSEPHY[Illustration]
                         _Trade Bookmaking_:

                  COMPLAINT IN THREE DIMENSIONS

   From _Publishers' Weekly_, Oct. 5, 1935. Copyright 1935 by R. R.
         Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


The development of trade book-making since 1920 has been an
extraordinary phenomenon in the conservative business of publishing. At
that time most publishers looked upon "manufacturing" as a necessary
but routine activity, ranking with accounting, shipping and such, and
on a far lower intellectual plane than the cultivation of authors and
reviewers, or the writing of good blurbs. The production of books was
usually entrusted to an uninspired saint who was expected to be hard
on his printer's back and soft under his boss's feet. The idea of the
publisher himself taking any interest in the _aesthetics_ of book-making
was thought to be a trifle queer.

There was, to be sure, a small traffic in books printed for collectors,
and the term "fine printing" had already come to mean "not printed
to be read." Typography, as usual, was less than twenty years behind
current architecture, and American type founders had already cleaned up
the Renaissance and were well on their way into the eighteenth century,
while American typographers, like interior decorators, were learning to
hop nimbly from period to period. Everyone was learning to blame the
machine for the things we were too greedy or too lazy to do properly;
fortunately small power presses could be made to imitate hand-press
printing, so it was not really necessary to do business at hand-press
rates.

In the field of general publishing, however, the hand-press page was
out of the question, period styles were incongruous, and the real
problem of designing the trade book had never been attempted, because
it had never been seen with any clarity. There were many experiments
with new binding materials and designs, and with printers' flowers
and other typographic embellishment, but these were all attempts to
"dress up" the old formats, and arose from no real understanding of the
problem.

Today [1935], thanks to the leadership of a very few publishers, the
educational work of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and perhaps
to the enthusiasm of the designers themselves, there is a steadily
widening appreciation of good trade book-making, and a better perception
of the problem among book-makers. We are learning to plan books in
_three_ dimensions, considering proportion and weight and the texture
of materials--designing for the hand as well as for the eyes. We are
getting free of "period" styles and "period" motifs, and developing a
new idiom to suit new methods of production. We are finally trying to
make the physical aspect of our books bear some relation to the culture
of our own time.

Everyone has come to recognize certain aesthetic values in cheap
machine-made glass and metal-ware, if it be designed for the machine
and does not attempt to imitate the hand-made, and we find in it a
quality different from, but not necessarily inferior to, that of
the more elegant article. Thus in printing we are coming to realize
that electrotyped plates, made from machine-set type and printed on
wood-pulp paper on a perfecting cylinder press can produce a page quite
as satisfactory, aesthetically, as the product of the hand-press. It
is this new sense of values, born of respect for the machine and for
what it can do if used with character, that must be the basis of the
designer's attitude. If he is working with his fingers crossed, his
work will show it.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The problem of suiting type to subject is the cause of much confusion.
We give too little study to the characteristics of type-faces, and the
announcements of the foundries and composing-machine people frequently
attribute the most fantastic qualities to their new types.

Furthermore, most of the faces available on the composing machines
have been cut to reproduce some earlier design, and few to meet
the contemporary technical or literary requirements, so that we
have several great gaps in the line of type resources that need to
be filled. Recent books examined, and a great part of all current
book-making, show that we have largely thrown off the reactionary
hand-press ideal, and that we are learning to construct instead of
decorate. We have finally obtained a supply of modern book cloth;
Europe has given us a supply of modern display types; and we are
anxiously awaiting the composing-machine companies' arrival in the
Twentieth Century.


_Two years later_:

   From _Publishers' Weekly_, April 3, 1937. Copyright 1937 by R. R.
         Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

The end of a three-hour period spent examining a month's output of
American trade books leaves one thinking much more about the book
making situation in general than about the four books one has chosen.
What impresses one is not that four books, or forty, are decently made,
but that all the rest are so badly made.

After my last experience in inspecting a collection of this kind, I
wrote, with some satisfaction and much optimism: "We are learning to
plan books in _three_ dimensions ... designing for the hand as well as
for the eye.... We are finally trying to make the physical aspect of
our books bear some relation to the culture of our own time." Well, I
still think we are only _trying_.

Designing a book is a problem in _three_ dimensions. The first
essential is good and suitable materials, the second good proportions,
the third a good type, and the last good typographic arrangement.
Good decoration (or any decoration) is not essential at all. If the
materials are poor in quality and unsuitable to the idea of a book; if
the proportions detract from the aesthetic effect, or from the book's
practical usefulness, typography can do very little to save it.

In the last two years the publishers have been increasing trim sizes
without increasing list prices, and at the same time increasing bulks,
instead of reducing them to compensate. What that means in simple
arithmetic is that when a novel is increased from a 7-1/2 inch 12mo to
an 8-1/8 inch large 12mo, and the bulk from 1 inch to 1-1/8 inches,
it requires a third more cubic inches of paper, a seventh more square
inches of cloth, a sixth more board, etc.--all for the same money. It
means even softer, less printable, less bindable paper; cheaper binding
materials throughout; sewing in 32's and other skimping in workmanship.
And it means clumsier, uglier, more perishable books.

While other industries are seeking to make the implements of
living more convenient and more durable and more beautiful, we are
deliberately making books less convenient and less durable and less
beautiful. While other industries are helping to develop popular taste
and anticipating changes in it, we are waiting for our customers to
get mad at us. While we see the masses getting wise to other frauds of
branding and packaging, we still hand our "intelligent minority" the
old fraud of inflated books.

The digest magazines can get millions of readers, though magazines
have always had _large_ pages, but "that's not the book business." A
few of the publishers can sell small books, but "that's all right for
_their_ lists." Booksellers can tell us the public is on to us, but
"_their_ customers aren't typical book buyers." Our friends can tell us
they like to carry books in their pockets, and that they have no more
room on their shelves, or under their beds, but they're only our crazy
friends. Our salesman can tell us he got a bad order because the book
was too thin--and ah! there we have the real and only truth.

Publishers of new books blame this practice on the reprints, but they
themselves control much of the offending reprint output. We allow the
cheapest and shoddiest goods to set our styles; as if Fourteenth Street
were to lead our dress industry, and jerry-built Queens our builders.
Publishing is indeed, as we are so often told, a "different" kind of
business!

Most of the books I examined suffered from this inflation. In most
cases the money spent on them would have produced a sound, handsome,
and durable book in a smaller size, and without small type or crowding.
Books printed on proper paper were so rare that I found myself
reluctant to discard the few I found, however undistinguished in other
respects some of them were. (I felt the same way about the few books
with trimmed edges--but that is a delicate subject better discussed
face to face, and with weapons, than in a family journal.)

Most of the books suffered also from too much typography. I think we
are all trying desperately to overcome typographically the handicap of
paper and materials. Some of us find that if we don't do stunts the
publisher will think we're not trying. Some of us are still suffering
a little from Rogers-complaint. And some of us are perhaps just too
anxious to express ourselves.

Whatever the reason, we seldom have the courage to let a simple book
stay simple. We are very particular about the type we select, and then
we are afraid to use it boldly, and to depend on the design of the
letter for our effects. Books with illustrations, diagrams, complicated
heads, or other special matter, we are apt to handle well; but when the
copy is simple we do insist on using rules and/or ornament. When we
use ornament we are inclined to have meaningless little units repeated
endlessly throughout the book, instead of a few positive, significant
elements, used with proper restraint.

In many of the books I saw, the design bore no relation to the subject
matter, either in materials, format, or typography, and these were by
no means all from the hands of inexperienced designers. Many suffered,
of course, because good types are not available for certain problems.
None of the composing machines has a really suitable type for books on
contemporary subjects: the natural and social sciences, architecture
and technology, etc. There should be several such types, comparable
to the old numbered "moderns" and "old styles" but better in design,
traditional in general form but impersonal and mechanized in drawing;
and cut in several weights for different papers. If I may conclude
by quoting again from my last effort in this medium, we are _still_
"anxiously awaiting the composing-machine companies' arrival in the
Twentieth Century."


_Postscript_, 1951:

Re-reading the above complaints, I am saddened to find how many of them
I would repeat today. Many of them, but not all. The inflated book is
becoming rare, but it took a world war to finish it off. With it we are
losing the sloppy rough-cut fore-edge. "Period" typography is quite
dead, but its belated and tortured passing is no credit to any of us.

We still have too much typography, however; too many self-conscious
tricks, too much un-discipline. And we still lack many of the types
we need. The war may fairly be blamed for disrupting the programs of
the machine people, for a book face takes years of labor and trial to
produce. But where are the new hand-types?

A healthy printing industry needs a prolific type design program.
Creative type-founding stimulates the typographer, and paves the way
for the machine cutting. We need ignore competition in the foundry
field, and all we have is one tired monopoly. Perhaps most of us are
too polite to point, but let us not think that we can ignore the
foundry situation, and supply the lack of types with calligraphy. Every
creative period in printing history has produced its own new types. The
present period can make no important contribution without doing the
same.




                              WILL RANSOM

                        WHAT IS A PRIVATE PRESS?

From _Private Presses and Their Books_, by Will Ransom. Copyright 1929
 by R. R. Bowker Co. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher.
                 Corrected and amended by the author.


Whenever private presses are mentioned, one of two questions is certain
to be heard. The layman asks, "What do you mean, a private press?"
while a collector smiles quizzically and inquires, with gentle malice,
"How do _you_ define a private press?" There have been many answers and
much discussion, but common agreement has not yet fixed upon a single
definite phrase. Perhaps one fascinating element of the subject is this
very uncertainty.

There is really little question about the meaning of "private" in
any connection, with its connotation of complete personal freedom
in thought and expression and exemption from exterior influence or
compulsion. So it is a simple matter to define a private press in
those terms. The usual argument, however, is less concerned with a
fundamental definition than with its interpretation. The uncertainty
is about which of the many presses of past and present shall be
considered, from the collector's viewpoint, private enterprises
as distinguished from commercial ventures. Actually the line of
demarcation is so broad and nebulous that decision must always remain
a matter of personal opinion. For a working basis, the following
statements provide the best available material.

John Martin, in his _Bibliographical Catalogue of Books Privately
Printed_ (1834), included certain presses whose productions "were not
intended by the writers for sale, and the circulation of which has
been confined entirely to their friends and connexions or to those
who took an interest in the matter contained in them." The intent is
apparent, but it applies equally to privately printed and private press
printing, which are different matters. The restriction to "writers" is
unfortunate, and Martin contradicts himself by including at least one
press, Strawberry Hill, many of whose books were offered for public
sale. On the other hand, he omitted many which were clearly within his
own terms.

M. Claudin, the French bibliographer, explains at greater length that
a private press is "one set up in a monastery, a palace, a residence,
or a private house, not the office of a printer. In fact it is a press
reserved for personal and not for public use, patronized, held, owned,
or hired for the occasion by a private person at his own house, or by
a congregation in, or close to, their buildings. Whether the copies
issued were merely intended for the use of an ecclesiastical order or
to be presented to high personages, whether they were exposed for sale
or reserved for exchange ... makes no essential difference." That seems
to cover the ground pretty thoroughly.

Alfred W. Pollard, one of the foremost English authorities, says: "For
a press to be private a double qualification seems to be necessary:
the books it prints must not be obtainable by any chance purchaser who
offers a price for them and the owner must print for his own pleasure
and not work for hire for other people." And Falconer Madan, another
noted English bibliographer, condenses his decision into "a press
carried on unofficially by a person or group of persons for his or
their private purposes."

The following paragraph, as originally written, erroneously ascribed
the quotation to John T. Winterich. It should have read: Still another
neatly phrased version occurs in _English Books 1475-1900_, by Sawyer
and Darton: "Perhaps, in the end, the best definition of a private
press is that it is an enterprise conceived, and masterfully and
thoroughly carried out, by a creative artist who (whether or not he
likes to cover some of his expenses by sales) does his work from a
sincere conviction that he is so expressing his own personality."

Except that any book offered for sale may easily come into the hands
of "any chance purchaser" who learns of it, and that "creative artist"
is a severe limitation, the common factor of independent expression is
apparent in all these.

Granting the connotation of "privacy" as an imperative factor, a
survey of impulses and characteristics provides a better understanding
of the matter. Actually, the principal differences of opinion and
the major argument derive from the question of whether or not the
productions of a press are sold or given away. But what difference
does that make if the fundamental impulse and continued purpose prove
monetary return to be a minor consideration, a casual effect rather
than a desired result? It is true that many private presses, even
some of the greater ones, continued for longer and more prolifically
than they would have without patronage, but that was because their
subscribers liked the result of what was done in free personal
expression. Even the Kelmscott Press produced an edition for Way and
Williams with a Chicago imprint, but it should be noted that the
publishers bought the book and the book-making of Morris' choice
instead of engaging him to carry out their wishes. So there seems to
be sufficient justification for disregarding the financial element, so
long as it is clearly secondary, except to note that a private press
must be free from the necessity of considering that phase of the matter.

As individual expression chooses many avenues, each with its particular
attraction, the reasons for establishing private presses are numerous
and varied. They have sprung from the dreams and desires of craftsmen,
authors and artists, prophets and dilettantes. Broadly, they divide
into two general classes, one being concerned with literary content
and the other with typographic form, with perhaps a third division
concerned only with enjoying something to play with. The typographic
viewpoint seems to attract popular interest to the greatest extent.

The simplest and perhaps the truest type of private press is that
maintained by one who is, at least by desire, a craftsman and finds a
peculiar joy in handling type, ink, and paper, with sufficient means
and leisure to warrant such an avocation. His literary selection may
leave something to be desired and art may be disregarded or amazingly
interpreted, but he has a good time. As a correspondent recently wrote:
"This small effort shows the difficulties of an amateur both with ink
and with type. But as it is a matter of the mere fun of the thing,
rather than business, I am in that singularly fortunate position of
being able to tell anyone who doesn't like it to go jump in the lake."
Another version of the same spirit was happily expressed by Edwin Roffe
(Rochester Press) in 1861:

                  _I must confess,
                  I love my Press;
                  For when I print,
                  I know no stint,
                        Of joy._

At the other extreme is the author who is entirely or largely
concerned with producing his own writings. He may turn printer by
choice or for economy, or may hire a workman, but he must, to qualify
as a private press, maintain the equipment in his own ownership or
control. In this group the personal element is usually the one point
of interest, as the typography is generally a mere means to an end.
Somewhere in this rating may be included the secret presses devoted
to political and religious propaganda in the days when free speech
was a hazardous adventure; also those which, like Middle Hill, were
established to preserve and distribute rare or unique items of
information and record.

Then there is the dilettante who dabbles a little in both phases but
performs few of the functions in his own person. His viewpoint is more
nearly that of a publisher, yet insofar as he maintains a press and
follows an individual program he is a member of this goodly company.
Horace Walpole was an excellent example. "Present amusement is all
my object," he said at the start, and no doubt he accomplished that
purpose not only for himself but for many of his friends.

Another distinct approach to private press activity, most familiar
because its results have been more significant and have affected
typography as a whole more emphatically, is from the standpoint of
aesthetic or artistic vision. Men with a fine feeling for beauty have
done marvels with available materials, but the impulse usually includes
type design. "Let's make a new fount of type" voiced the conception of
the Kelmscott Press and the next ten or twelve years saw almost as many
types designed, not all successful but certainly bearing the impress of
individual expression. Even Dr. Daniel, with no assumption of creative
ability, served the cause well by searching out and reviving the Fell
types.

Finally, there is a kind of press which may or may not be considered
private but is certainly not commercial, a press maintained by a school
for educational purposes of one form or another. Rarely do these reach
a collector's attention, since their products are distinctly localized,
but there are instances of significant accomplishment. The notable
example is the Laboratory Press where, under the direction of Porter
Garnett, students of printing learn something of typography in terms
of the ideal, not to mention other cultural by-products. Mr. Garnett's
statement may well be added to the definitions already quoted. "Issuing
publications (for such, in spite of their slenderness, our students'
specimens are), and having no commercial function, the Laboratory Press
is, in the purest sense of the term, a private press; and its purpose
being solely educational, it may be said to be the first private press
to be dedicated exclusively to educational ends." On the sole point of
priority the Whitnash and School Presses might be offered in evidence,
but no comparison of purpose can fairly be suggested.

Somewhat in the same spirit is the use of a private press for
experimental work, as proposed by James Guthrie, who has said: "The
artist at the press is, before everything, an explorer. His true
mission is to suggest and demonstrate, not ideas thirty years old,
but new ideas, which may take our friend the fine printer (by easy
methods) another thirty years to see the drift of!" That approach, as
well as another stated intention towards "a gesture of protest and
criticism," is of a part with the purpose animated by vision of new and
finer achievement. That there was feeling of experiment in the first
Kelmscott type and book is a matter of record, as is the fact that
subsequent experience and development have changed the result in some
important details.

While these groups serve to distinguish the main differences between
various kinds of private presses, very few individual instances lie
within one classification. Craftsmen have turned to writing, authors
to printing, and dilettantes to both. Some have achieved simultaneous
distinction in type design, writing, and book-making. Such versatility
is rare, yet it is illuminating to note that the outstanding figures,
those who have contributed most of permanent worth to subsequent
culture, of which William Morris is the chief example, are the ones who
have combined the greatest number of elements in their activities.

Out of all these has come something more than individual purpose and
personal endeavor. Though the poorest of them have earned nothing
more than pity or at best a genial tolerance, the significant presses
have contributed richly to the program of typography and to aesthetic
progress in general. Although the story of private presses is no
more than a tiny chapter in the annals of graphic art, although all
of them are but an infinitesimal part of the deluge of printers and
printing since the middle of the fifteenth century, their influence,
particularly upon book design, is strikingly impressive out of all
proportion to their size and number. Verily, they are "the little
leaven that leaveneth the whole lump."

After all is said, the distinguishing quality of a private press is no
less than a matter of spirit, indefinable except by inference. Whatever
decision is made concerning the status of a press, with regard to its
being private or not, must be based upon a recognition of the ideal
apparent in its works, with due consideration for the human elements
of its activities. Freed from the confining strictures of details,
a private press may be defined as the typographic expression of a
personal ideal, conceived in freedom and maintained in independence.

                   [Illustration: The Village Press.
             PRESS MARK, ITS SECOND, BY FREDERIC W. GOUDY.
 Mr. Ransom was associated with the Village Press during its beginning
          months at Park Ridge, Ill., in the Summer of 1903.]


POSTSCRIPT, 1951:

Twenty-four years later the question is still academic. Instead of
a few distinguished private presses there is now a spate of "press
books," some of which are produced in home privacy, others designed
or printed or published by an outstanding personality, and a few,
regrettably, on the border line of the commercial limited editions
racket. But the meaning of "privacy" remains unchanged and a private
press is what it has always been, a personal activity. I cannot improve
on my original statement.

To fill out the record with some definitions that were unknown or
omitted in the earlier chapter, and to get all of the statements into
one place, we may begin with William Morris's _Note on His Aims in
Founding the Kelmscott Press_ (1898): "I began printing books with the
hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty,
while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not
dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity
of form in the letters."

C. R. Ashbee, of the Essex House Press, stated in _The Private Press:
A Study in Idealism_ (1909): "A private press as we understand it at
the present day in England and America is a Press whose objective is
first of all an aesthetic one, a press that if it is to have real worth
challenges support on a basis of Standard, caters for a limited market
and is not concerned with the question of the Commercial development
of printing by machinery." In 1933 (also twenty-four years later) he
repeated that definition in _The Book-Collector's Quarterly_ (No. XI,
p. 72) and added: "That, I think, is as near as we shall get."

For the Doves Press, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson explained his purpose in
the three _Catalogues Raisonné_ of 1908, 1911, and 1916, shortened in
the last: "... to attack the problem of Typography as presented by
ordinary books in the various forms of Verse, Prose, and Dialogue and,
keeping always in mind the principles laid down in the Book Beautiful,
to attempt its solution by the simple arrangement of the whole Book,
as a whole, with due regard to its parts and to the emphasis of its
capital divisions rather than by the addition & splendour of applied
ornament."

Among the commentators and bibliographers, Robert Steele, in _The
Revival of Printing_ (1912) makes no attempt at definition, and G. S.
Tomkinson, in his _Select Bibliography of Modern Presses_ (1928) "still
seeks the right answers." In the latter book, Bernard H. Newdigate's
introduction contains two statements which indicate the spirit that
informs private presses and in recent years has expanded into more
public book-making: "... a zeal in the pursuit of their art which has
been inspired by something more than mere money-making, and in many
cases by the attainment of a degree of excellence which invests their
work with a peculiar interest for all those who study printing..."
and specifically about operators of private presses who "have printed
their books because they have judged the books worth printing for
their own sakes, or worth printing in some particular way; and it is
the particular way in which each of these printers has sought to give
expression to his conception of how his books should be printed and the
way in which he has overcome the limitations of his type and plant and
solved the several problems which beset the studious printer in every
detail of his work, that give them so much individual interest...."

In later years, we have had noble bibliographies of the Nonesuch,
Grabhorn, and Ashendene Presses, Bruce Rogers' _Paragraphs on
Printing_, and Daniel Berkeley Updike's _Notes on the Merrymount Press_
and _Some Aspects of Printing, Old and New_. All of these are required
reading for collectors of press books, and each represents a personal
viewpoint, but only one defines a private press.

That is the Ashendene _Bibliography_, but one who seeks for a formal
declaration will not find it. The few phrases that can be
isolated--"... the absorbing interest of an otherwise busy
life...."--"The Press was started solely for the sake of the interest
and amusement I expected to derive from it...."--"... the striving
after an ideal...."--these casual comments are slender evidence. If,
however, the entire Foreword is read, one discovers just why and how a
private press is operated--"the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh
alive."

                      COMPOSED IN ELDORADO TYPES




             [Illustration]ALFRED W. POLLARD[Illustration]

_The Trained Printer and the Amateur: and The Pleasure of Small Books_

 From the Centaur announcement booklet, Lanston Monotype Corporation,
                          Ltd., London, 1929.


Printers, as a class, like all other craftsmen, can only thrive by
supplying their customers with what they want at prices which they are
willing to pay. Here and there an exceptionally gifted and courageous
craftsman may rely on being able to obtain a better price for better
work, and be rewarded for his confidence, but success will always
depend not only on himself but also on two external factors over which
he has very little control; the existence of enough customers, or
potential customers, able to recognise better work than that which they
have been getting, and the ability and willingness of these customers
to pay a higher price for it as long as a higher price is necessary
for its production. But occasionally the discriminating customer (or
potential customer) may not find a master-craftsman able and willing
to do for him what he wants, and if so, if he cares enough about it to
be an enterprising amateur, he starts a press of his own to print the
books he wants as he thinks they ought to be printed. Very often he
fails; almost always he finds that he must engage at least one skilled
journeyman to help him through. But occasionally he succeeds, and when
he succeeds he brings new life into the craft of printing.

Definitions of what constitutes an "amateur" have always proved
difficult. The two characteristics of the class of which I am thinking
are that they have been readers and lovers of books before they have
become printers and that they will not knowingly print any book badly
for the sake of making a profit off it. As a rule they will only print
the books they like, and they will print them according to their own
standards. That some of them have made a good living by their work,
does not alter their status.

In the early days of printing amateurs abounded, but not at the very
first. When printing was invented it was applied first of all to
multiplying a few much-used Latin grammars and calendars for which
there was a large and steady sale, because the production of manuscript
copies had been too slow and too expensive. These early efforts, which
have come down to us mainly in fragments found in binding, are rude and
ugly enough. There is no evidence of any effort to make them beautiful
for the sake of making them beautiful, and there was no need to do so.
Fifteenth-century schoolmasters did not cosset their pupils with pretty
school-books; they beat them. Their standard in printing was strictly
utilitarian. But when the adventure was once undertaken, whether it
was by Gutenberg, or by Fust and Schöffer, of printing large Bibles
for use in church, there was at once admitted a standard of dignity,
and this the Church for centuries did more than any other body to
maintain. Furthermore when the goldsmith Fust and the scribe Peter
Schöffer, greatly daring, set themselves to produce psalters for use
in choir which, by red printing and by large and small capitals in red
and blue, should rival the beauty of the hand-written and hand-painted
psalters then in use, to the dignity of the first Bibles there was
added beauty and charm, and in a few years bookmen all over Europe were
eager to apply the new craft to multiplying the books in which they
were specially interested. A few secular highbrows stood aloof. As some
old ladies still drive out in their carriage and pair (a very pleasant
and dignified way of getting about) and abjure motor-cars, so there
were a few great bookmen who clung to manuscripts and would not have a
printed book in their libraries. In the same way for some twenty years
bishops looked askance at presses and types, and it was not until 1474
that a printed missal was placed upon an altar, and not until 1479 that
more than two editions were printed in any year, or anywhere outside
Italy. But when Milan and Rome had continued to set the example, German
bishops were content to follow it, and when they decided to print they
found a vigorous way of maintaining a high standard. They commissioned
the best printer they could get to do the work; they allowed him to
charge an agreed price for it, and they obliged every Church in their
province or diocese to provide itself with a copy before a specified
date.[33]

In France in several instances a Bishop, or the Canons of a Cathedral,
arranged with a printer to come to the Cathedral town and print a
missal or breviary under their supervision. These good men were perhaps
rather amateur publishers than amateur printers working private presses
with a hired man to do the heavy work. But if we choose to think of
them only as customers, they were customers who knew what they wanted
and brought the printer under their roof as the best means of seeing
that they got it.

As regards the printing of secular books in the fifteenth century,
since the craft was a new one, it was necessarily run in the first
instance by men who had been brought up in other occupations. In this
sense nearly every native printer outside Germany was an amateur.
At the outset the newcomers were largely clerks in minor orders and
professional scribes; but merchants, professors and men of letters
generally were attracted to the new craft, many of them doubtless only
to make money, others to print books in which they were specially
interested. Even more than in the case of the bishops or canons who
commissioned missals and breviaries, we must think of this motley crowd
of recruits rather as amateur publishers than amateur printers. It may
be doubted whether even Caxton (who was by trade a mercer) in all his
fifteen years in the business, set up the equivalent of one of his
small folios with his own hands. He started his press because he wanted
to get his books into print as the easiest way of circulating them; but
there are no signs that he took any special interest in fine printing
for its own sake, or took any joy in producing a handsome book. His
standards were those of a competent but unenterprising scribe, who
only wanted to set his words down accurately on the page so that they
could be easily read. The master printers all over the Continent of
Europe, when they had the courage to stand out against the pressure to
cut prices or increase profits by using cheaper and cheaper paper, and
crowding more on to it, were doing much better work than Caxton, and
when they found customers who encouraged them to do their best, their
work altogether outclassed his.

When we turn to the scholar-printers of the sixteenth century I think
it would be hard to deny the claim of Aldus and the Estiennes to a
disinterested love of good printing, as well as a desire to get the
books in which they were interested into print. It is true that the
rich scholars of Italy and France were used to a high standard of
excellence in the books, manuscript or printed, which they put on their
shelves, but it is to the credit of Aldus and the Estiennes and Simon
Colines and Geoffroy Tory that they catered also for the needs of less
wealthy scholars, not by cheapening paper or crowding more old types
on a page, but by designing, or causing to be designed, new fonts,
with which they could print more economically without loss of beauty.
Moreover, more especially at Lyons, the new ideals of compact printing,
of the small book beautiful, were applied to printing not only in Greek
and Latin, but in the vernacular, and these sixteenth century models
can still be imitated without archaism or ostentation, which, when
fifteenth century masterpieces are followed, are often difficult to
avoid.

"A penny, I trow, is enough for books," said one of Robert Copland's
customers to him, somewhere about 1530, and the spirit of that remark
haunted the vernacular English book trade for nearly a century and a
half. Amid all the outpouring of the wonderful Elizabethan and Jacobean
literature, though no printing was allowed in the provinces except
at Oxford and Cambridge, there was not a sufficient demand for books
in all England to provide work for more than about five and twenty
master printers many of whom had only a single press, with a couple of
journeymen and an apprentice. The Privy Council was always trying to
keep down the number, both of printers and presses, and its action in
so doing is usually represented as solely dictated by the fear of their
being employed in producing seditious or schismatic pamphlets. No doubt
this fear was the main cause of the Council's action. But if there had
been enough lawful work for twice as many printers and presses, the
number might have been doubled with no increase of risk. The risk lay
solely in the fact that a man who owned and could use a press, if he
could not get enough lawful work to give him a living, might be tempted
to take secret work. Unless they were desperate, men would not risk
hanging to earn a few shillings, or a few pounds, but there is ample
evidence that in Shakespeare's day some of the small master printers
really were desperate, and it was only natural that they should do bad
work--as indeed they did. All over Europe printing at the beginning of
the seventeenth century was bad; in England it was very bad indeed.

During the second half of the seventeenth century and the whole of the
eighteenth, the wealth of England steadily increased, and with its
wealth the standard of education. There was a much greater demand for
books, and though printing was permitted after 1693 in the provinces
without restrictions, there was clearly more work to do in London.
Printing became neat, and on occasion elaborate, and throughout the
eighteenth century, both in England and Scotland, there were constant
experiments and efforts to improve it, to which full justice has not
yet been done. Among these efforts to improve it there is no reason
to include Horace Walpole's private press at Strawberry Hill, or any
of the other private presses which, possibly in imitation of his
example, subsequently sprang up, except perhaps that at Lee Priory.
The Strawberry Hill books were handsomely printed according to the
taste of the day, but they showed no originality, such as was displayed
by Baskerville or even the Foulises, and they certainly started no
style. The other private presses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries were purely literary in their aims, and many of the books
produced at them are below the average good commercial work of the day.

In the middle of the nineteenth century the great spread of education
caused a demand for very cheap books, both for amusement and
instruction, which led to some lowering of standard. More dangerous
still were the very gaudy ideals of decorative work which found
favour during the era inaugurated by the Great Exhibition of 1851.
There was an epidemic of bad taste among book buyers and publishers,
and therefore printers responded to it, as they always will, whether
gladly or reluctantly, respond to any popular demand which brings grist
to their mill. Meanwhile much quite good work was being done by the
Chiswick Press and other firms, but the influence of the amateur on the
professional printing of that period is not much in evidence, either
for good or for evil.

The Daniel Press, worked as an amusement by the Rev. C. H. O. Daniel,
Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, for a good many years, beginning
about 1874, seems to me one of the best examples of a really amateur
press that can be adduced. The interest of its books is mainly
literary, but it is also typographical, and though the performance is
usually slight, and even thin, Dr. Daniel showed real _flair_ in his
revival of the old Fell types, his uses of italics, and the happy knack
with which the work was put on the page. I think that Dr. Daniel's
influence may possibly be traced, though only quite slightly, in some
of the pretty books (often a little spoilt by the weakness of the ink)
published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., in the eighties, most of them
printed by Messrs. Ballantyne. If this is true, it is so much more to
Dr. Daniel's credit.

We come now to the movement of which William Morris was the leader,
which placed to the credit of English typography some of the finest
books the world has ever seen. Morris must be classed as an amateur,
and his press as a private press, because he printed to please himself,
and no offer of money, however great, would have induced him to print
anything he really disliked. We must not, however, allow the private
income which enabled Morris to carry out his ideas without worrying
over cash-returns, or the fact that he sold most of his books by
means of circulars from a private house instead of over a counter,
or any other consideration, to blind us to the fact that he was one
of the world's greatest craftsmen, and certainly, if we consider his
versatility, his sureness of touch and his imagination, the finest
that the British Isles have ever produced. If he had had the largest
printing house in London, and had printed the Kelmscott books in a
special department of it to advertise the rest, it could not have made
him more of a craftsman than he was. He stands in a very real sense
alone by virtue of his unique and splendid personality.

                            [Illustration]

Admiration for Morris led to the setting up of several private or
amateur presses, which did excellent work in his spirit: notably
the Doves Press, conducted at first by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, an
ex-barrister, who had produced some real masterpieces as a bookbinder,
and Mr. Emery Walker, the photo-engraver, who had ever been ready
to help anyone trying to promote good printing; afterwards by Mr.
Cobden-Sanderson alone. There was also the Ashendene Press of Mr. St.
John Hornby, one of the partners in Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son, who, I
fancy, has done rather more of the work with his own hands than most
other private printers. Robert Proctor's Greek type, again, was brought
into existence by love of Morris, but Proctor, like Messrs. Ricketts
and Shannon, who were responsible for the Vale Press books, had no
press of his own.

The beauty of all these books reinforced the influence of the
Kelmscott Press ones, by proving that what Morris had done on his
own lines could be done by lesser men with the variations suggested
by their individual tastes. They reinforced also the proof which
Morris had given, that so long as it is regarded as a hobby (or in a
commercial house as an advertisement) the production of really fine
specimens of printing is not an impossibly expensive one. Morris made
no profit from the Kelmscott books as a publisher; could allot himself
no payment for all the magnificent decorative work which he put into
them with his own hands. He got nothing from his venture save the joy
of achievement and pleasure of giving copies to his friends. But he
proved the existence of a public willing to pay for the cost of print
and paper, even when both print and paper were the best which money
could buy; and I believe that most venturers in the same field have
been supported to about the same extent. From our present point of
view, this is one of the most important results which Morris achieved.
The direct influence of his work on men like Mr. Updike and Mr. Bruce
Rogers can only be reckoned very slight. But if the Kelmscott books had
not made the success they did, neither Mr. Updike nor Mr. Bruce Rogers
would have been given his chance, and to make it possible for younger
men to get their chance is one of the finest things a master craftsman
can do.

Private presses have multiplied greatly in the last thirty years,
and some of them have done fine work. But the influence which they
are exercising on the commercial printing of the present day is not
in any way comparable to that which the Kelmscott and Doves books
exercised a generation ago. There is no virtue in a book being printed
in a small edition or in a private house, and no virtue in producing
endless specimens of printing rather than books. Mr. Meynell and the
Nonesuch Press (whose achievements I should admire much more joyously
if it had not been called a "press") have shown what a diversity of
interesting work can be obtained from commercial printers by a man who
has good taste and knows how to get what he wants. When fine work can
be obtained in this way private presses seem of little use save as an
amusement to their owners. But no one is as yet making full use of the
revolution (a much greater revolution than that inaugurated by the
Aldine italics) which the "Monotype" machine has effected in modern
printing just at the moment when (owing to the economic conditions,
compositors having at last secured a fair wage) it was most needed.
Thanks to the wonderful facility with which small types can now be cut
and the greater quickness of machine-setting there is now only one
obstacle to a new triumph of the Small Book Beautiful; and that is the
obsession of the paymaster, the Customer, that it is unreasonable to
expect him to pay anything approaching the same price for compact books
in small clear type with no needless expanse of blank paper around
the type page, as for the same number of words printed in larger type
and with much more blank paper. The obsession is fostered by the fact
that the reprints of popular books which have passed out of copyright
and which often are produced in very pretty forms, are sold in large
quantities at small prices, because no author has to make a livelihood
out of them. But if a book does not appeal to a large public and yet
has to earn money for its author it cannot be sold at a low price,
and it is childish for the customer to insist that this fact should
be concealed from him by books being made needlessly large in order
that he may persuade himself that he is still getting plenty for his
money. Publishers and Printers and Authors should unite to educate
their paymaster the Customer on this point, and it is much to their
interest to do so, for the book space which is now occupied by a couple
of hundred volumes might easily hold two or three times as many if all
books were printed with pleasant compactness. If an Amateur would arise
who would help to train Customers to pay high prices for beautiful
compact books he would be doing good service. At present most of the
finely printed books are needlessly and inconveniently large.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[33] The story of Bible-printing in England runs on very much the
same lines. As soon as it was decided that English Bibles were to be
placed in all churches, the printers were chosen, the price was fixed
and every Parish was ordered to supply itself with a copy. From that
day to this, with only a very partial exception for a few years under
Queen Elizabeth, the printing of the plain text of the Bible has been
a monopoly in England. Since the seventeenth century it has been kept
absolutely in the hands of the King's Printers and the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge. From about 1770 onwards various provincial
printers tried to circumvent this monopoly by printing Bibles with only
a nominal amount of commentary, but hardly any of them found it worth
while to issue a second edition. The monopolists knew that to maintain
their rights in the nineteenth century, which made unrestricted
competition into a fetish, they must give good value to buyers, ensure
good workmanship, and give their workmen no ground for complaint. They
have fulfilled all three conditions, and as a result we still have a
Bible Trust in England, which is a Trust in the true meaning of the
word, because it is worked in the interest of everyone concerned.




              [Illustration]FRANCIS MEYNELL[Illustration]

                         SOME COLLECTORS READ

  This essay appeared originally in _The Colophon_, Part IV, 1930. It
  was revised and retitled The Personal Element for inclusion in _The
       Nonesuch Century_, 1936, from which it is here reprinted.


It wouldn't be easy to imagine an idea, a policy and a business more
"personal" than our Nonesuch has been. This is my excuse for the
personal (worse, the first-personal) character of these ensuing notes.

Nonesuch was started by three of us in the close quarters of a basement
room (two of the three became husband and wife); at our busiest and
most successful we have never had an office staff of more than three,
usually our friends as well as our associates; we later lived above
and in our office; we have been responsible ourselves not only for
every decision of policy of what to publish and not to publish but also
for every piece of printing, of make-up, of advertising; for jackets,
catalogues, specimen pages and a vast deal of miscellaneous editing.
And, more than anything else, it is our own taste which has determined
our choice of books and choice of styles. In short everything (except
typing and account-adding in later days) has been done by Vera Meynell
or David Garnett or me.

When I set myself to the making of these notes I thought I should only
have to remember, not to reconstruct. I had by heart all that was worth
knowing about the beginnings of the Nonesuch in itself. But for its
remoter beginnings in myself I found that I had in fact to go back to
my childhood.

What induced this revision of my opinion was a phrase (quoted in my
brother Everard's "Life" of Francis Thompson) from a letter of my
mother's. "Please return" she had written to Thompson, "the revise
proofs sixteen pages at a time."

First of all (said I to myself) I am the son of a mother who was not
only a poet but who knew also that page proofs have to be dealt with
in units of sixteen. Yes, and that was only a trifle of the family's
knowledge. I have often seen my mother unflinchingly cut a treasurable
phrase in one of her essays so that it should end to the line or
paragraph of the printer's prescription; and correct a proof so that a
word deleted here would be promptly balanced by an added word there to
save the over-running of the corrected lines. Where did she learn this
tenderness towards my craft? But from my father, of course.

And then I realised that, if he likes it or not, the Nonesuch Press is
really my father's grand-son. In establishing it I was doing no more
than reverting to type.

There was of course the literary background, the great names and
exciting personalities of the writers who were my parents' friends.
There was George Meredith whose limping descent of the staircase I can
just, and whose yearly tip of a pound at Christmas I can very easily,
remember. There was the silver teapot which I never carried to be
replenished without remembering my father's solemn sanctification of
it: "Robert Browning has taken his tea from this." There was W. B.
Yeats standing owl-like at the door blinking to discover my mother
through the smoke emitted from the Egyptian cigarettes which I had
lately been sent at top speed to buy, my father sometimes going
twice through his pockets before he assembled the necessary tenpence
halfpenny. (Tenpence halfpenny was also the price of a box of soldiers,
and once I thought of buying soldiers instead of cigarettes and
running away from home.) There was Francis Thompson, "The Poet" as
we children always called him, fragile, mannered, and complaining of
the weather or of the quality of our food. Much later I remember Jack
Squire discussing the plans for the first _London Mercury_; and Hilaire
Belloc brought by Wilfrid Blunt because of my father's "discovery" of
his first writing in the _Morning Post_. I don't remember Stevenson or
Patmore; but framed holographs of _In the Highlands_ and _The Toys_
were set between the gold Japanese embroideries which surrounded the
sitting room. This literary "atmosphere" was more continuously and
intensively itself than anything I know today--even in psycho-analytic
or Communist circles. "Does he write? Then do bring him." "Is he a
Thompsonian? Of course he must come."

Every Sunday afternoon and evening my parents were "at home." There
was endless poetry-reading, endless "literary talk" by my mother's
devoted admirers. No, not endless. There were two signals for their
departure. The first gong, so to speak, was the arrival of the hot
blackcurrant jam drink. The second was my father unbuttoning, almost
unostentatiously, the top button of his boots.

But all this was literature, not letters, and letters was after all
the chief occupation of the house. A literary hot-house should have
produced in me, very nearly did produce, an over-sensitive literary
plant. And sure enough I wrote poetry, with three of my sisters and one
of my brothers. (George Moore in one of the "Hail and Farewell" volumes
has a disconcerting fancy of the young Meynells assembling for their
verse-writing hour once a week.) But letters made me into a printer.

In a play about Francis Thompson which was lately produced my father
had necessarily to be represented. He objected to his portrayal under
his own name, and he was therefore made to appear as John Oldcastle,
his writing-name before I was born. In one scene he was shown sitting
in the office of the paper which he edited, _Merry England_. He struck
the bell twice for his sub-editor, once for his office boy, three
times for his secretary. There was indeed such a magazine. But there
was never an office, never a secretary, never a sub-editor, never an
office boy. The whole work was done by my mother and father and amateur
helpers on and about the library table. If I was allowed in the room on
press-days the bargain was that I was to sit under the table. Mostly
this was fun. I learned a lot about the leg-fidgets of writers. And
"under the table" became my own kingdom, from which I could at the age
of seven declaim without embarrassment Gray's "Elegy" to the Sunday
night supper guests. But one memory survives which still carries horror
with it--the memory of my mother suddenly going down on her knees, down
to my level, and burying her face in her hands. She had just been told,
in the midst of proof-correcting, of the death of Coventry Patmore.

"The Poet" was one of the helpers--a feared helper. He would wish to
engage all the rest in argument as to the desirability of this or that
paragraph. On one occasion, J. L. Garvin, who could disturb by his
brilliant relevance almost as much as Thompson by his dull irrelevance,
made an unexpected call. Proofs were already overdue. By a masterly
manoeuvre "the poet" was sent to entertain him. Garvin, the liveliest
talker of our day, was overwhelmed by Thompson's discussion of the
relative merits of Lyons and A.B.C. tea shops. He sat mumchance an
afternoon through. Thompson reported: "Never have I known Garvin so
brilliant."

_Merry England_ was a monthly, but its crises were not less acute for
that. You can put off so easily until too late what has to be done only
once a month. But _The Weekly Register_, which was also my father's
property, and which was written almost wholly by himself and my mother,
was a weekly. The correction of proofs was a diurnal occupation with
Thursdays as the grand climax. It was printed by the Westminster Press;
and here, too, my father was the begetter of my trade. For he was
part-owner of the Westminster Press and helped to establish with it a
style of typography and a care for detail in printing which were far
ahead of the run of commercial presses.

When he was over fifty my father added the last segment to the
circle. Magazine proprietor, editor, writer, printer, he now became
book publisher, as managing director of Burn & Oates. He transferred
from John Lane Francis Thompson's books and my mother's, and he gave me
my first job. He gave me also my first lesson in detail. _The Collected
Works of Francis Thompson_ were issued by Burns & Oates a few months
after I had joined the firm, and I was allowed to have a hand in
designing the edition. When it was printed my father discovered that
several commas had broken away from the ends of lines and that a number
of the kerns or top loops of the letter "f" had been broken. Day after
day piles of the imperfect volumes were massed in his flat, which was
immediately above the office. We had a sort of fire-bucket drill. One
of my sisters would find the page, my father would dab in the comma, I
would do the blotting and another sister would restack the books. Some
scores of thousands of pen corrections were thus made. I don't think my
father would have trusted any one of us to do the actual pen work. He
leant back, he quizzed, he admired after every stroke.

 [Illustration: The title page of Bunyan's classic, composed in Caslon
 and Deutsche Zeitschrift, printed by the Kynoch Press, edition, 1600
                               copies.]

In 1913, pursuing a common typographical errand, I chanced to meet
Stanley Morison, who had just emerged from a bank and was anxious to
concern himself with book-production, and he joined forces with me
at Burns & Oates. A year later as a personal venture I purchased a
hand press, which I kept in my dining room; and my next step was to
persuade the delegates of the Oxford University Press to let me use
some of their seventeenth century Fell types. They were very obliging,
and they let me have what I wanted, charged me for it as if it were
sold, but very properly kept the legal title to it, so that if I were
to misuse this cherished type they could at any time call upon me to
surrender it. I still have these Fell types in my possession. "The
Romney Street Press," since I lived in that street, was my new "style,"
and I issued a prospectus, which I regard now with mixed feelings of
shame and admiration at my audacity; for if ever there was a gold-brick
prospectus this was one! Here it is:

 "The Romney Street Press at 67 Romney Street, Westminster, has been
 set up for the better and unaffected production of Books, & Pamphlets,
 & single sheets of poetry. The type of the Press (used for this
 prospectus) is the finest of the series imported from Holland in
 about 1660 by Bishop Fell for the Oxford University Press, by whose
 courtesy it is now used. The editions of the Romney Street Press
 will be limited to a maximum of fifty copies. The preliminary costs
 of equipment amount to £40, & Francis Meynell, the Director of the
 Press, invites subscriptions to cover this amount. Subscribers will
 have first call upon the publications of the Press at cost price,
 upon the amount of their subscription. The first publications will be
 Seven Poems by Alice Meynell, written since the issue of the Collected
 Poems. There will follow Mary Cary, the meditations, occasional poems
 and spiritual diary of the wife of a Cromwellian captain, now first
 published, from her MS. note-book; & Love in Dian's Lap, by Francis
 Thompson. But the process of production will be slow. Suggestions for
 other books, particularly of 17th century reference, will be welcome.
 APRIL 1915."

I may say at once that the only two books which I issued (_Ten Poems by
Alice Meynell_, and _The Diary of Mary Cary_) were, with a good deal of
difficulty, disposed of--yes, the whole of the fifty copies; but there
were no general subscriptions to the Press, not one, and the cost of
equipment, forty pounds, bore heavily upon me. Perhaps because of this,
perhaps because my dining room was my workshop, and printer's ink was
apt to get into the soup, I discontinued the venture--which in any case
(since I had no technical assistance and very little competence myself)
was decidedly irksome.

Meantime decisive things had happened to me. I had met George
Lansbury, inspiration of my politics, and I had met Bruce Rogers,
inspiration of all eager typographers. For the next five years I
worked in close association with George Lansbury. (I suppose that he
has lately become one of the most generally loved men in England. To
anyone who has known him in times of deep stress as intimately as
I have that cannot be surprising. There is no qualification in my
admiration and affection.[34]) In him I found a most ready support for
my "propaganda" view of good printing and good craftsmanship of any
kind. Lansbury secured the financial support which made it possible
for me to start the Pelican Press. I think the Pelican was a pioneer
in the policy of having very few types but all of them of good design.
We set advertisements for commerce, which was in those days something
of an innovation; and we printed political pamphlets in the Minority
Labour interest. These pamphlets are odd to look at now. The slogan of
"fitness for purpose" had not yet informed us. A report of the great
meetings which we held at the Albert Hall after the first Russian
revolution was designed with the mannered elegance which would have
suited better an essay by Walter Pater. And I remember myself writing a
double-page political manifesto for the _Weekly Herald_, calling upon
the proletariat to rise and end the war, which was set in Cloister
Old Face with a seventeenth century flower border and sixteenth
century initials.... I set up with elegance what must be the rarest
of Siegfried Sassoon first editions. I myself have no copy. Bertrand
Russell brought him to see me when Sassoon had decided to refuse to go
back to the war, and I made into a leaflet his letter of explanation
to his Commanding Officer. I am now astonished at what we published
without prosecution. Now it would be "seditious propaganda." I can only
put it down to the innocent elegance of typography!

Soon after the war I began making proposals from the Pelican Press to
various publishers. Would they allow me to print for them this that and
the other book in a "really nice" edition? I pointed out that if they
were in fact wrecked upon the conventional desert island and wished to
take with them the conventional choice of two books, Shakespeare and
the Bible, they would not find a current edition of either fit for a
tasteful shipwreck. But my arguments were fruitless--except of a plan
for myself. Why shouldn't I do what I wanted them to do? Why wait on
them? So I began to hanker after the as yet unnamed, unmanned and
unfinanced Nonesuch Press. The next step was to bind David Garnett and
Vera Mendel to the adventure.

David Garnett's family history, like my own, is full of literature. He
is the son of two writers and the grandson of a third. He too, after
a brief excursion into the Natural Sciences, reverted to type, opened
a book-shop (with Francis Birrell), wrote his first novel and, in the
same year, lent both the cellar of his book-shop and the assistance of
his critical and book-learned mind to our new venture. He too "liked"
books. He could, I mean, enjoy the feel of a book, its weight, shape,
edges, the synthesis of sensitive things which is represented by that
most insensitive word "format."

Vera Mendel was the useful necessary incubator for our schemes. She
provided our small capital and she did the routine work. She was also
our fearless critic-in-chief. The things she stopped us doing! She,
too, developed in me the sense which David Garnett already shared with
her--the sense of responsibility about texts. And she put sobriety
whenever she could into my lush "blurbs." Her flexibility of mind made
our work, too, flexible. She translated Toller's first play, which
was among our earliest books; and shared with me the editing of _The
Week-End Book_. For the first eighteen months, while I was working
full time at the Pelican Press and David Garnett at his book-shop, and
before we felt justified in employing as much as an office girl, she
did everything, from editing to stamp-licking, that I could not steal
time to do.

This about ourselves. Whence our corporate name? We began by looking
not for a name, but for a device; and we found in a tapestry surviving
from Nonesuch Palace the elements which Stephen Gooden made into our
first "mark." In adapting the device, we took also the name; and I
silenced an early objection that it was too boastful by pointing out
that Nonesuch means "nonpareil" and so had an esoteric meaning. For
nonpareil is the name of a very small and very humble size of type.
Nonesuch was chosen, then, in a spirit of mixed hope and humility.
Ralph Hodgson, the poet, who was interested in my enterprise, was most
anxious that I should call it the Pound Press. (He had lately seen and
admired my father's seventeenth-century farmhouse, which has in front
of it a delightful yard or "pound.") Every book, he urged, warming
to his subject, should weigh a pound and cost a pound! After some
intensive correspondence his enthusiasm was routed, and the Nonesuch
Press came into being.

[Illustration: Page from Montaigne's _Essays_, composed in Poliphilus
and Koch Antiqua, printed by R. & R. Clark. Published 1931; edition,
1375 sets of two volumes.]

So there we were, in 1923, in our cellar under Birrell & Garnett's
book-shop, book-enthusiasts, amateurs in the literal, though not, I
hope, the derogatory sense of the word, tackling the donkey work of
book production and the mule work of book distribution.

For nearly two years we continued in the half light of our limited
premises, producing illuminating works in limited editions, and
varying the daily task with such occasional diversions as "invoice
bees"--parties to which our friends were bidden in order to help us
between drinks with the task of writing our invoices, "statements," et
caetera.

It is scarcely worth recording the vicissitudes of those underground
activities. Only when we tried to stop an ever-rising tide of
Congreves--which, as with breaking back I eagerly unloaded the volumes
from the lorries, narrowly escaping immuring V. M. in that unhistoric
cellar for good--only then did we wonder whether, for purposes of
self-preservation, the Press might not have to expand. (Indeed, one
wall did bulge alarmingly.) Happily, part of the edition of Congreve
got lost in Devonshire.... The lorries which were carrying the bound
books from the printers at Plymouth broke down before we did.

I myself travelled the first books, being received with varying degrees
of courtesy by the book-sellers. Of those who were civil some were
encouraging, some politely discouraging. When, very soon, we were
obliged to "ration" orders, these were rewarded and persuaded, and the
discourteous received no more than their small deserts.

We meant to have fun with our business and fun we have had. Even when
it had outgrown its puppyhood we continued to button-hole our customers
and sell them not only our goods but our tastes and our views. Let me
anticipate for a moment and quote a sample from the opening paragraph
of our 1929 catalogue.

 "In these days of literary censorship exercised by Sir Archibald
 Bodkin (of Savidge case fame), Sir William Joynson-Hicks and a
 Detective-Inspector of Scotland Yard, no publisher can be positive in
 his announcement that he will issue such and such a book. Chaucer?
 Fie, his language is coarse. Plato? The less said about Socrates and
 his young friends, _if_ you please, the better. Shakespeare? He will
 perhaps pass unchallenged, for Lamb's Tales doubtless exhausted the
 censors' interest in this prurient author. Farquhar, Don Quixote
 even--these too may corrupt the corrupt, which is the current legal
 test of obscenity. With a propitiatory bow to Sir Archibald and to
 the potent and anonymous Detective-Inspector (the unlamented Home
 Secretary gets no more than a distant nod), we therefore give to this
 list of announcements the precautionary title, 'Bodkin Permitting.'"

But this jape, and others, were part of a serious and deliberate
policy. From the beginning we had a plan and hoped to have a public. In
the words of our first (1923) catalogue, we intended to make books "for
those among collectors who also use books for reading." We intended
to choose our books to suit our tastes, not the imputed taste of a
hypothetical public.

Not that we felt ego-centric and exclusive about it, like the
Californian millionaire who, I am told, caused a Shakespeare to be
printed to suit his own taste and his own library--an edition of
one copy. We have made now over a hundred editions to suit our own
personal requirements--the author we wanted, the text we wanted, the
format we wanted, the decorations we wanted. And if there had been
no other profit from the Press, this shelf of my library would have
seemed in itself a sufficient recompense for my share of the work.
But fortunately, many other people also wanted these books. For our
taste proved to be a normal contemporary taste. We did not create the
vogue for Donne, for instance--we were ourselves part of that general
tendency which has in these days found him afresh.

My previous experience in printing had shown me quite clearly that,
in order to avoid monotony and to produce desirable editions at a
reasonable cost, one must intelligently exploit the best mechanical
equipment and the highest technical skill available. Today there is
more fine typographical material to be had than even the largest
printing house in the country could possess; and the various commercial
presses have developed technical skill and variety along various lines.
There was therefore no good reason, we thought, for a new "private
press" in the old style, arrogantly self-contained, and with but one
type and obsolete "hand" machinery.

Our stock-in-trade has been the theory that mechanical means could
be made to serve fine ends; that the machine in printing was a
controllable tool. Therefore we set out to be mobilisers of other
people's resources; to be designers, specifiers, rather than
manufacturers; architects of books rather than builders.

The propriety of our use of the word "Press" was called in question by
Arnold Bennett and others. Pedantically it may be wrong; by the spirit
it is nearly right. There is no exact word for our function, which
was new. Nor for my own part in that function. When I have wanted to
"sign" a book, at first I wrote "Typography by." But typography is
only a quarter of my battle, and that phrase puts undue emphasis on
one department, one only, of a job the essence of which is that it
is manifold. A number of books I signed F. M. _Finx_. But "finxit"
means "fashioned," and so "made," rather than "designed." I also used
the phrase "under the care of," but this is vague and inaccurate,
suggesting merely the oversight of someone else's designs. Perhaps
"This book was planned by" is the least inaccurate formula, though
this again leaves out the whole business of overseeing. Overseeing is
no purely typographical matter. It means the planning and coordinating
of the whole book--text, editor, and artist, as well as paper-maker,
printer and binder. In fact, it involves an editorial as well as a
typographical attitude.

[Illustration: Opening page from Voltaire's _Princess of Babylon_ with
  line drawing by Thomas Lowinsky. Composed in Caslon, printed by the
      Westminister Press. Published 1928; edition, 1500 copies.]

Foulk Grevill writing of the posthumous edition of Sidney's _Arcadia_
said "This requyres the care of his friends, not to amend (for I think
that falls within the reach of no man living) but only to see to the
paper, and other common errors of mercenary printing." My own interest
and ambition in founding the Nonesuch was to see to the paper and other
common errors of mercenary printing; but D. G. and V. M. aspired to
tackle the question of amendments as well. From our fourth book onwards
that policy has governed all our major publications. When, as sometimes
happens, a text needs no more editing: when it is adequately and
accurately "established," there is still the quasi-editorial function
of the illustrator. He may, he should, become in his designs more than
a decorator; he should, I believe, become a significant _commentator_.
"Kauffer on Burton" is, for example, how I would describe the drawings
for our edition of _The Anatomy_.

Our books were published in "limited editions" because we had to rope
in the collector as well as the reader and student. We have found that
it was necessary to impose another sort of limit on our output--a limit
to the number of titles we could conveniently and properly publish in
a given time. We came to the conclusion that eight books a year was
about as much as we could manage if every detail was to be our personal
concern and if all were to be freshly designed. The making of our
books in a great variety of styles was an early principle, firmly held
to. I did not want people to be able to say at the first sight of our
books, "Oh yes, that must be a Nonesuch book." I wanted them to say,
"That's not a bad looking book," and then to find that it was ours. My
calculation--it was a calculation, not a programme--proved surprisingly
right. Our first hundred books have taken us twelve years to make.

Our friends have been our editors; and our editors have been our
friends. We have had the most valuable suggestions for books, and the
most valuable criticism of details of production even, from them. I
have seldom "passed" a binding, for example, without asking Geoffrey
Keynes's opinion of it. His well-wishing has been of extraordinary
value to us, apart from the many editions which he has himself
admirably edited for the Nonesuch. It was he who introduced us to
those other excellent editors of our texts, John Hayward and John
Sparrow--the former a keen critic and helpful adviser. E. McKnight
Kauffer, Stephen Gooden and T. L. Poulton have also done for us much
more than illustrate a number of our books.

E. McKnight Kauffer (who drew us from the life for the last of
his illustrations to _The Anatomy of Melancholy_) at one time had
office-room with us. The hours I spent in discussing aesthetics with
him were stimulating--over-stimulating, we found, when there was work
to do. So, in the end, we nailed up a list of "red-herring words"
("functional," "the Artist" and so forth) which were not to be used
during office hours on pain of a fine of sixpence for each use. But
there was no sixpenny escape from George Moore. While _Ulick and
Soracha_ was at the printers, he came almost daily, hung up his square
bowler hat and settled down to read aloud to us the revisions he had
made in his last batch of proofs. Each time it was an entirely new
text. The first version was almost illiterate. The second grammatical
but undistinguished. The third a transfiguration. It was fascinating to
see the process of his composition at close quarters: and our feelings
were undisturbed by anxieties about the printer's bill, for he had
proposed at the outset that he should pay for his own corrections. They
exceeded the original cost of the setting. In any event, who am I to be
critical? For one book I had 37 different varieties of title-page set
up. My friend William Maxwell, who printed this book, said that he did
not mind "losing" (printers are like farmers) on the text of a Nonesuch
book because he always made up his loss on the title-page....

In 1925 we moved from our cellar to Great James Street and we decided
(with some misgivings) to incorporate the firm. It seemed better to
our auditors although we had suspicions that our subscribers might be
discouraged from collecting when they saw first the formula "Ltd."
on our letter-paper. We did them an injustice. The partners became
directors and shareholders. Vera Meynell bought a little book entitled
"The Secretary and His Directors" and, impressed by the legal penalties
that hedge about these offices, occasionally wound up one of our long
triangular discussions by taking down the minutes book and saying:
"Well, I suppose that this might as well have been a board meeting."
Once a year, for the benefit of Somerset House we (the directors)
presented to ourselves (the shareholders) with all due formalities,
a report on the year's accounts and progress. Otherwise it made no
difference.

    [Illustration: The Antigone Greek type used in Homer's _Iliad_,
decorated by Rudolph Koch. Printed by Joh. Enschedé en Zonen. Published
                     1931; edition, 1450 copies.]

Even the "mundial bad-time" (to quote the phrase of an Indian friend)
of 1930 did not seem to affect us or our customers much. But the second
year of the great depression brought onto the market many hoarded
copies of our books from the pickle-shelves of profiteers and deflated
some of their more astronomical prices. Our survival-value (as luxury
trades go) is perhaps due to the fact that even in boom-time we tried
to be honest traders, not using our success with collectors to put
prices as high as the traffic would bear, but giving a constant ratio
of good value in the sheer materials of book-making, so that our paper,
printing, binding were as good as any to be had at the price.

No book-producing of our kind can subsist without sales in America. It
was our good fortune to ally ourselves in 1927 with Random House of New
York. No collaboration could be more satisfactory from a technical or a
personal point of view. It survived the get-rich-quick temptations of
1929; it has survived the difficulties of the depression. New blood and
money entered the Press two years ago when Cecil Harmsworth, Desmond
Harmsworth and Eric Harmsworth joined our board. But they belong to our
Second Century, not to our first.

We have avoided antagonisms, even avoided competition. My friend Osbert
Sitwell suggested that we should publish a satire on Noel Coward;
Coward that we should publish his satire on the Sitwells. To both we
said "no." How pleasant it would have been to issue them together in a
single book! When I found that Peter Davies and the Nonesuch were both
planning to reissue Cobbett's _Rural Rides_, we met and tossed for it.
He won; and our editorial work was made over to him.

Of all Nonesuch books that by which I should best like the venture to
be judged is our Shakespeare, edited by Herbert Farjeon. It brought
us, among other things, a characteristic contact with T. E. Lawrence.
Lawrence had written a letter of fervent praise of the Shakespeare to
David Garnett; and I sought permission to use it. David Garnett was
himself our ambassador. Lawrence appealed to the group of friends with
whom he happened to be. "I don't want my letter to be reprinted. I
hate the advertising of my name and opinions," he protested. To his
obvious chagrin (for Lawrence had a passion for publicity as great as
his passion against it) his friends supported his view. "After all,"
said they "you are not a Shakespeare expert." That decided Lawrence. "I
think it is my duty to give permission," he said. This was his letter:

 "We turn over to the Nonesuch Shakespeare. There you have created a
 most marvellous pleasure. I have handled it ever so many times, and
 read THE TEMPEST right through. It satisfies. It is final, like the
 Kelmscot Chaucer or the Ashendene Virgil. And it is a book which
 charms one to read slowly, an art which is almost gone from us in
 these times. Every word which Shakespeare uses stands out glowing.
 A really great edition. The tact and grace of your editor have been
 surpassing. I think I like the size and shape and binding almost as
 much as the text. The paper, too, is just right. Altogether a triumph.
 One of the best things is that it can be done again. Nobody will
 ever dare to produce the old type of edition now, while your text
 stands there to reproach them. It means a permanent improvement in
 Shakespeares."

"There they are, my fifty men and women." They must speak for
themselves, and I have almost silenced them with my chatter. For their
successors I can say only this: that it remains the ambition of the
Press to make a worthy edition, textually and typographically, of every
major English writer who has not already been appropriately served. It
will make these books for money, and has no shame in that. We are not
"Gentlemen Farmers" but workers at our trade. But we are enthusiasts
also, even in our middle years; and still propagandists. Every
well-designed book or advertisement or prospectus is the begetter of
others; and good printing is one of the graces of life even where life
is ungracious.

  [Illustration: Title page for small book edited by Francis Meynell,
 composed in Janson and "printed on the premises" at the Press on Van
           Gelder mould-made paper. Edition, 1250 copies.]

In a letter from Vienna in 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes
of Prince Eugene's library that it is "though not very ample, well
chosen; but as the Prince would admit into it no editions but what are
beautiful and pleasing to the eye and there are nevertheless numbers of
excellent books that are but indifferently printed, this finikin and
foppish taste makes many disagreeable chasms in this collection!"

I should like to make Prince Eugene patron saint of the Nonesuch. And
dear Lady Mary as well; for it remains the object of the Nonesuch Press
to meet tastes finikin and foppish like his, studious like hers.

                COMPOSED IN POLIPHILUS AND BLADO TYPES


                              FOOTNOTES:

[34] When we published the Compendious _William Morris_ I sent
copies to G. L., to Ramsay MacDonald and to Mr. Baldwin--the last a
stranger to me. Their replies make almost a résumé of their political
characters. G. L. saw in the social essays a conscience-pricking
reproach about things left long undone. J. R. M. saw in them a cause
for self-congratulation. Mr. Baldwin did not answer for nearly two
years: the book had been mislaid. But when he did answer he covered two
pages with his close hand-writing to apologise and explain. The Perfect
Gentleman!




           [Illustration]CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD[Illustration]

                          _Printing for Love_

 From _Cockalorum_: A Bibliography of the Golden Cockerel Press, June
 1943-December 1948. (An address to the Art Society, University of the
  South West of England in Exeter, June, 1947.) Copyright 1950 by the
Golden Cockerel Press. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher.


[Illustration] I have called this talk "Printing for Love." I have not
come to preach a gospel to you, but, as I proceed to discuss printing
and publishing and book-illustration, it will be apparent to you that
one of the tenets of my religion is that we workers should do our
job, whether it be farming, or gardening, book-keeping or building,
hewing coal or engineering, _with a will_. In Ecclesiastes the Preacher
advises us: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
(Ch. 9, v. 10.) You may say that my job is a nice job; that it is all
very well for me to talk. I can assure you that book-manufacture is
a most intricate process. Things tend to go wrong at every stage of
production. Of worries we printers have no end.

I often feel like an Irish farmer driving his pig to market. In one
hand he holds a stick to prod the pig. In the other a string tied to
the pig's leg. The pig goes to the right and then to the left and
the countryman wonders will he ever get that pig to the market. Many
of my books are like that pig. They drive me to despair. And yet I
love my printing like a mountaineer loves his mountains, which he
climbs arduously with sweat and aching limbs. He has his reward when
he reaches the summit and enjoys a fine view, much as I enjoy the
appearance of a book which I have made with infinite pains. For both of
us there is the joy of achievement--of something attempted, something
done.

"Oh, but," you may expostulate, "supposing you were a sewer-man, could
you bring love into your work?" I am sure I would. In fact this case
in point was quoted recently on the wireless. If I remember rightly,
a speaker had referred with commiseration to the lot of the sewer-man
working underground among the rats in the muck and stench of drains.
He was called to task by a most insulted sewer-man, who explained that
his was a good job--as good as any other. All the artists and the
craftsmen who co-operate with me--the paper-makers, the cloth-makers,
the tanners, the brass-cutters, the illustrators, the compositors, the
pressmen, the binders--aye, and the authors too, who write and rewrite
their text until it seems to me just right for the Golden Cockerel--all
of them have their worries and their toil, but their work for me is
done with love.

This is a question you might ask yourselves: can a beautiful thing be
made cynically? The dice is loaded against the unwanted child of a
loveless marriage. You cannot divorce your work from your life. The two
are parts of a whole. My religion is that love should be the basis of
all one's living and all one's work. In so far as my books have been
successful as works of art, it is because they have been made with love.

Only with great self-restraint can I refrain from reading you again
that beautiful thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the
Corinthians on Faith, Hope and Love--you remember "Love suffereth long
and is kind, love envieth not, love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed
up." Please read it now and then. It is so important.

Perhaps, when you heard my talk was to be called "Printing for Love,"
you thought, "Oh, he means printing without financial reward." Believe
me, love, too, hath its reward. Make what you have to make, and do what
you have to do, the way I advocate, and you will have your reward. You
must have _faith_ in this. We have got to fight our battles against
obstructions, but, if we fight well, and do what we are intended to do,
everything is made possible for us: the most miraculous things happen
in their due time.

At the Golden Cockerel I never choose a book because I think it a
good seller. Publishing friends are astonished when I admit that quite
recently I refused books offered to me by Evelyn Waugh--one of the best
selling novelists of today--and Sir Osbert Sitwell. Of course I do not
disapprove of the authors. I admire them greatly. But in each case the
manuscript submitted was not one I wanted for the Cockerel.

I choose those books which I believe are _right_ for this gay,
mirthful, versatile bird. At times he likes to play, at times to be
serious. He is interested in genuine old tales of adventure written
by explorers and missionaries, who may have travelled in birch-bark
canoes or quaint unwieldy ships. He is interested in old peoples and
their poetry. At present he is printing a translation of the epic of
Gilgamesh preserved on stone tablets. It is at least six thousand years
old and refers to a flood--like Noah's Flood--which was recent history
to people then. They were either more or less civilized then than we
are now, according to your view of what constitutes civilization. They
appear to have had more to eat than we have now; they spent more time
in making life beautiful, and in thoughtful enquiry into spiritual
things, such as survival after death. They had libraries of books,
not printed like Golden Cockerels, but inscribed on series of stone
tablets. There were several "copies" of the epic of Gilgamesh in the
library at Nineveh.

To return to the Golden Cockerel, he also loves the masterpieces of
English and French literature and classical literature. He is really
a very human bird, kind and sometimes very amorous, never spiteful,
never morbid, never cruel. I personally pretend to run this Press, but
you know this chimeric cockerel really rules the roost. When I and two
friends took over the Press in 1933, I had quite different ideas for it
from those I had accepted a few months later. This Cockerel had his own
personality and traditions. I have rather enjoyed following his gaudy
plumage along the aerial avenues in which he seems to want to fly.

This has not always been easy for me. From time to time I had partners
to help me. Their ideas and mine naturally did not always coincide.
They gave in to me so often that just occasionally I had, in common
charity, to print and publish some book favoured by one of them and
which I did not myself like. Usually on such occasions the finished
book was to me abortive--a baby cuckoo among my own fledglings. And
they usually did not sell well. Try as you may, you cannot do quite as
well for someone else's offspring.

It has always been of paramount importance that my books should sell.
As a husband and a father of three children, I have had to make the
Cockerel pay. Otherwise I should have had to work at something else.
Obviously you cannot make a large income from the sale of, say, half
a dozen books a year in small limited editions. But the Cockerel
has never let me down and always made it possible for me to keep on
with this work. The late St. John Hornby, who used to publish those
monumental Ashendene Press books at prices in the neighbourhood of
100 gns. has said that, taken all over, he would just approximately
cover his costs. No profit! He was in a financial position to ignore
costs and the necessity to make his books pay. In theory that is
good. In practice I think it is wholesome that the products of your
labour should be commercially right. The absolute necessity for you
to sell what you produce makes you take notice of the reactions of
your patrons, keeps you from being too personal, too idiosyncratic,
too precious, shall I say too amateurish? Here I am on difficult
ground. It depends what you mean by amateurish. I think of myself as
a professional, but, to the trade publishers (who would not dream of
rejecting a manuscript from Evelyn Waugh), I, and others like me, are
looked on as amateurs, because we do what we like.

This type of amateur, who does what he likes, scientifically, is,
I believe, very important. Into this category would fall research
students, and poets, and scholars, and inventors, and all sorts
of people. Has a scientific study ever been made of the amateur
throughout the ages and his influence on our life? If not, _there_ is
a noble thesis for a research student, and he could make of it a most
interesting and I think saleable book. Perhaps _one of you_ will do it!

Now you may be thinking, "here's this chap and they tell me he has a
certain reputation as a printer. We get him down here to talk to us
about printing, and off he goes gassing about love, and Noah's flood,
and how to make money without trying to."

Please forgive me! You see I started as a printer and taught myself
how to dress a book according to my tastes. Then I became a publisher.
Let us make no mistake: the important thing is the literary content of
the book. How it is dressed is only of secondary importance. It _can_
be dressed any old how. Obviously it is better when it is suitably
dressed. But the dress, that is, the printing and binding, must not
be accorded _too_ great importance--it must not _vaunt_ itself. If
you ask a book-seller who has built up a circle of people who collect
"cockerels" _why_ they like cockerels, he will answer "because they
are _cockerels_." By this he does not, I hope, mean "because they wear
cockerel dress"--or, shall I say, "plumage"?--but rather that they are,
in their literary content, in their dress, and in their illustration,
examples of the cockerel idea of what a book should be.

Of course it is no good the author thinking he has done everything--it
is the composite whole which is so engaging. I have known some
illustrators who think the author doesn't count. And authors tend
to think the artist a hack who should do what he is told. Both
may think that my own small contribution, as the architect of the
whole structure, is unimportant. Quite the greatest joy for me in
publishing is being in constant delightful intercourse with these
beautiful authors and artists. Beautiful is the right word. I don't
mean physically, of course, but in their natures. Compare them if
you like, to the most sensitive instruments designed by man and you
behold these God-made beings a hundred-fold more sensitive. Go to the
races and delight in the controlled nervousness and the pent-up fire
of enthusiasm in those beautiful thoroughbred horses, and yet these
dreamers of dreams, these passionate romancers, these scholars, in
all the controlled exuberance of their knowledge and their zeal for
research, these drawers of pictures, who "see the light that never was
on sea or land": the horses are as nothing beside them!

Now, who are these authors and scholars and artists? Well, some are, of
course, professionals, in the sense that they live by their art, and
others, a lot of them, are civil servants, or architects, or even prime
ministers, who make their art a hobby. But can we end there? Is not
every roadman tidying his road, every thatcher on the roof, or every
good accountant neatly writing his accounts, and every worker planting
his allotment of a summer's evening, an artist to a greater or less
degree? He seems to me, watching him, to be working for love. And so
with those of us who make seemly books.

Normally you have the publisher who chooses what books he will
publish, and contracts with the author to produce and sell his work
in book form. You have also the paper-maker, the ink-maker, the
type-founder, the maker of printing machinery and plant. You have
the printer, with his compositors who prepare the type for press,
his proof-readers, his pressmen who print the corrected type on the
paper, and his warehousemen, who deal out the paper, and pack the
printed sheets. You have the binders and manufacturers of material
and machinery used in binding. Normally a host of people have taken
their part, however small, in processes which go to the making of the
finished book.

In a "private press" a very great deal of the work is concentrated in
the hands of its owner. In certain cases the owner himself has set
the type and printed it on a hand-press. His output has thus been
severely limited to the productivity of one single pair of hands.
This is not practical politics today--one's turnover is too small to
cover overheads. An alternative is to employ skilled help with the
type-setting and presswork. This was the method employed by the Golden
Cockerel up to 1933. For reasons I need not go into, this method does
not now pay.

The survival of the Golden Cockerel, since I and my friends took it
over in the midst of the great depression, has been due in large
measure to the method of production which we adopted. By working in
with the Chiswick Press, a famous old firm of trade printers, we
arranged that the Cockerel should have the use of their plant and
their skilled labour precisely as and when we wanted it, without
the necessity for capital expenditure on plant or of providing the
wages of skilled craftsmen, week in week out, whether or not fully
employed. Those were terrible times, and our solution was the only
one practicable. It was a great experiment, but it worked. Of all the
important private presses in this country, the Cockerel alone has
carried on--and right through the war. In the books of the Golden
Cockerel a great tradition survives.

But the survival of the Golden Cockerel, and of the tradition which
it holds dear, is not achieved solely by its method of production. On
the contrary, there are other prime factors. I have said that in my
view the literary content of the book is more important than its dress.
We must not print for the sake of printing. Firstly then I only print
what I greatly desire to publish--something that is really good. I
think I have been successful in finding a lot of new literary material
which a sophisticated section of the community does enjoy to read.
Of course some of my book-seller friends often beg me to print the
old favourites, for which there is such a great demand. Occasionally
I oblige. I have a Gray's _Elegy_ at the binders now and a Keats'
_Endymion_ in the press. But generally the Cockerel prefers to be more
enterprising. Look at all the literature we unearthed and published
on the subject of the Mutiny on the Bounty--book after book. And then
those volumes of Shelley's letters to Hogg. We found and published the
journal kept by the Pilgrim Fathers when they went to America. Then
there were the four previously unpublished books by that legendary
character, Lawrence of Arabia, and so on. These are typical of the sort
of thing we've found and published for the first time. Not the old
favorites, but, because they add to literature and knowledge, so well
worth making known.

The second important feature of Cockerels is their illustration with
engravings. More than any other process, engraving harmonizes with
type. Engraved wood-blocks and copper-plates are very difficult to
print as they should be printed, especially on a durable rag-paper.
They are therefore little used in these days of mass-production. In
the hands of the team of artists who work for the Golden Cockerel,
engraving as an artistic medium is flowering as never before. By the
enthusiasm and _love_ which these artists bring to their work, they
advance their techniques year by year, always improving on their own
previous best, or the previous best of their competitors, till there
sometimes seems to be no limit to the new effects they will obtain
in their illustrations. It is an undying satisfaction to the Golden
Cockerel to be able to encourage and advise talented engravers, and,
by displaying their work to the best advantage, to build up for them
the reputations they deserve. In the twenties it was Eric Gill, Robert
Gibbings, Eric Ravilious, David Jones, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Agnes
Miller-Parker and John Nash. In the thirties, and more recently,
other engravers like Clifford Webb, John Buckland-Wright, Reynolds
Stone, Gwenda Morgan, Peter Barker-Mill, and John O'Connor have come
to the fore. You have seen a few examples of my own wife's work
among the books I have brought along. And now we have others too,
of an astonishing brilliance, like Dorothea Braby, coming on. It is
impossible for me to be sufficiently grateful for the privilege of
being able in my small way to nurture this flowering and progressive
art.

After their literary content and their illustration, the third feature
of Cockerels which has sustained the Press, when other presses have
fallen out, is my policy of co-operating with the buying public--of
producing books which they can afford to buy. Obviously the very rich
men who can pay 100 gns. for a book are now very few and far between.
I have resisted the temptation to compete with the 100 gn. books--the
"museum pieces." I have resisted the temptation to spend so much on the
production of my books that they are inaccessible. With the levelling
of incomes there is now a considerable public, which, if it appreciates
them, can buy Cockerels at the 2 guineas or 4 guineas which their
production necessitates.

Those, then are the particular features of Cockerels which [Illustration]
have maintained the Press through difficult years. That they
are works of art--the conceptions of a book-architect--would not have
sufficed, but, since they are expressions of the art of the book, let
us consider them architecturally for a few minutes. The subject is
vast: I must try to epitomise it....

                   COCKEREL DEVICES BY MARK SEVERIN




                          ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE

_THE FUN AND FURY OF A PRIVATE PRESS. Some Voyages of The Golden Hind_

    From _Bookmaking and Kindred Amenities_ edited by Earl Schenck
 Miers and Richard Ellis. Copyright 1942 by Rutgers University Press.
               Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


[Illustration] "It's fun, isn't it?" said my wife. "I've gotten so
that I can recall whole sonnets just by reading these first lines." We
were sitting in a patch of warm September sunshine under the walnut,
trimmed high like a giant umbrella, over the terrace back of the press.
Proof and copy of the long Contents of Edna Millay's new volume of
collected sonnets lay on the table between us as we idled, savoring
the first signs of Fall in the yellow leaves that the breeze scattered
about the gray flagstones. The air was spicy and the ageratum and
marigolds in the border matched the autumn colors of the goldenrod and
wild asters by the roadside. "I love gardening, too," she said loyally.
"I must pot those double begonias before the frost gets them." I lit my
pipe again and we went on with the proofs. One hundred ninety-two pages
set in Bruce Rogers' beautiful Centaur, corrected, tied and wrapped,
lay in neat piles waiting to be taken to Camden for printing. We had
worked at it off and on all summer--painstaking work, but as rewarding,
in our eyes at least, as any labor we could think of--interesting
copy, lots of problems to argue over, the excitement of watching the
author's mind at work as proofs came back with alterations, changes
that in some miraculous way always added clarity or cadence to the
lines; reading and re-reading proof until the sonnets became part of
us. Now it was finished, and we had added one more book to the world's
store and to our little shelf of Golden Hind Press imprints. This book
will be published by Harper & Brothers in an edition which would take
us the rest of our lives to print by hand. The design, the whole format
and all the composition is ours. The printing and binding will be done
elsewhere. Thousands of people will share our pleasure (or brand us
failures). We feel that books of this type offer golden opportunities
for the private press. We are not selling them, we are making them our
way for someone else to sell. However, most of our books are printed on
an old hand press, and given to our friends. So far we still have our
friends.

As a hobby, a private press may be as extravagant, or as inexpensive,
as one chooses to make it. It's fun and hard work and a challenge to
all the intelligence one possesses.

We started our press in 1927, named it The Golden Hind after Drake's
flagship that went on adventures no more hazardous than ours. Elmer
Adler called it "A Busman's Holiday" for a publisher's production
man. Perhaps he was right. At that time we knew little about the
problems--about as much as parents do about the first baby. We don't
know much yet, but we've had a swell time and through it have made a
jolly lot of friends which in itself is reward enough.

We started with an ancient hand press of unknown vintage that had been
in use in the cut-room at the old Harper plant in Pearl Street since
before the knowledge of any man now living. I've an idea that it may
have come from England when Harpers started in 1817. Until the 1830's
all their books were printed on hand presses--so close are we to the
beginnings of the art of printing.

Later, in Philadelphia, we found a big Washington hand press in perfect
condition that was going out as old metal. The bed was smooth though
the edges showed the nicks of hard wear from the endless up-ending of
the forms of some country newspaper. With decent treatment it will be
just as good a hundred years from now.

We made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. It's not always
wise to know too much--it's a great damper on ambition. Shortly after
we started, a chance came to do a proposed definitive edition of
a well-known poet's works. It was to be in seven folio volumes on
handmade paper and no effort was to be spared to make it right. Six
hundred pounds of 18 point Lutetia and weight fonts of the smaller
sizes were ordered cast at the Enschedé Foundry in Haarlem, Holland,
for the job. The type duly came, pages were set, and sample forms
printed and bound--and then the project was withdrawn! In the light of
accumulated experience I still break out in a cold sweat at the thought
of our colossal nerve to have taken on such a task. Anyhow we had the
type, and have used it many times. With it we have set the limited
editions of each new book of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems as they
have come along, since 1928.

The status of a private press is difficult to define. As far as we are
concerned it is to make as well as we can only those books that we want
to do and to turn down all else; to have no "help," no payroll, keep
no books; to care not a hoot about a balance sheet which has no column
for satisfaction; and to take all the time we want to do the job the
way we want it. From the standpoint of factory speed we are nothing
to write home about--but we are not a factory and have no ambitions
in that direction. Ours is a private press and we work as we please:
that is where the fun comes in. We can work hard if need arises; then
hours have no meaning, and we work till we get exhausted, fed up, and
solemnly vow that we'll never do another book. But we have been at it
nearly fifteen years and we still think, even though composition is
exacting work, that such congenial labor is the best fun in the world.
Sometimes we have furious arguments over punctuation, as though life
depended on it. It is surprising how much warmth can be generated over
the position of a comma. When we set _Shakespeare's Sonnets_ we had
at least six different sources to work from, including a facsimile of
the first edition. A single punctuation mark will completely change
the meaning of a sonnet, so condensed is the wording to fit the mould.
No two sources agreed throughout--who were we to put in Shakespeare's
points for him--so the smoke got pretty thick sometimes, and the result
was still another reading of the sonnets embodying those details we
preferred from each: that's the fury of it.

The dream of every private press is to own its own private face. We
had our chance but didn't know what to use for money so we let it go.
One of the best presses in the United States now owns that type--alas!
We have many, too many, faces and borders and florets collected from
Europe when the world was sane, yet every new volume seems to need
something we do not have. Fred Goudy cast for us at his shop at
Marlboro two sizes of Mediaeval. We did Mrs. Browning's _Sonnets from
the Portuguese_ in it. That type is precious now since the matrices
were lost in the fire that destroyed all his equipment at Deepdene.
Long before the Monotype cut the Deepdene face, Fred cast it for us.
We used it for Dr. North's _Hymns_. Then along came a book my wife
wanted to do. Two hundred and eighty-eight pages of 14 pt. A.T.F.
Garamond all standing in galleys made a lot of type for us to store.
We used it again for Frederic Prokosch's _The Assassins_ and later for
_The Carnival_. Gradually the metal has crept into the house until
scarcely a room is spared. We sleep with 60 cases of type in stands on
our sleeping porch. We should be safe in a tornado--we have plenty of
ballast.

A couple of years ago we did a group of Edmund Spenser's _Amoretti_ for
Christmas. The lines breathe the spirit of another day and we wanted
to preserve, if we could, the romantic atmosphere. I remembered that
for the titles of the poems in _The Queen's Garland_, printed for R.
H. Russell in 1898, D. B. Updike had used an odd Italic which he told
me was Original Old Style cast by the old Farmer foundry in 1854. Some
one had had fun with the 18 point size--it had a swell set of oversized
vowels and all the long ſſ ligatures. The resulting effect looked much
like very early printing. The mats were in the possession of the A.T.F.
though they seemed never to have heard of them and were a bit annoyed
by my insisting on seeing their file copy of the Farmer type book.
There it was, and eventually they dug them out and cast them for us.
We printed the book on our old Hoe hand press on Arak Ash white paper.
For a frontispiece we used Virtue's beautiful engraving of Spenser. It
was bound in tan boards with dusty rose cloth spine and a bright yellow
label. In many ways it is our favorite book.

Last year we had fun (perhaps I should say I did as my wife did not
give her fullest sympathy). 1940 was celebrated, and how! as the 500th
Anniversary of the Invention of Printing. The whole country broke out
in a rash of exhibitions, lectures, special articles and such like,
on poor old Gutenberg about whom practically nothing is known to
begin with, not even that he invented movable type. If he did, he was
only trying to fake manuscript writing and should have been hung as a
forger. I got pretty fed up on the tosh that was being handed out. So,
to even the score, I "discovered" in a garret in Mainz, Germany, the
private diary of Gutenberg's wife (no one but I knew he had one). By
quoting from her diary I showed conclusively that all the credit was
really hers. I had cuts made of the old leather-bound volumes of the
diary (four old volumes from the Harper Medical Library) and a page
of the manuscript (translated _into_ German and written in the lovely
hand of Dr. Otto Fuhrmann). Dr. Herman Püterschein, that infallible
authority on things typographic, wrote a Foreword. It was titled _The
Mainz Diary: New Light on the Invention of Printing_ and 200 copies
went out for Christmas. Then the unexpected happened. Letters began
pouring in showing it was being taken as gospel. Pundits, librarians,
experts in the graphic arts, fell for it hard. My wife threatened to
disown me. Of course the tale hadn't a word of truth in it. I had been
in Mainz and Frankfort a few years before so that the thing started off
with some element of reality. A friend in London gobbled it whole--I
had to send a letter by Clipper to keep him from showing it proudly to
his friends. After all, my yarn had about as much truth in it as most
of the hash that I'd been forced to listen to during the year and I'd
gotten quite fond of Frau Gutenberg. I felt, too, that I'd done my bit
for the cause. Many of the biggest libraries, including the Library of
Congress, had requested and received copies. Ten years from now it will
pop up in some bibliography of a Ph.D. thesis.

I had my fun all right.

But the boys got even with me. A year later, the editor of a well-known
art magazine and his wife, with careful deliberation and much
ingenuity, sold me down the river with a hoax that I gobbled whole. So
we are even and everybody is happy.

Why are we so cracked about a private press? I often wonder myself.
The house smells of printer's ink and type wash. Right now there are
eleven metal-strapped type boxes on the sunporch where the expressman
left them a week ago; and my wife is to have a luncheon tomorrow. Fine
looking mess. I'll get around to them soon. There are piles of printed
signatures of our Christmas book all over the place. The composing room
is crawling with undistributed type. Can hardly work without spilling
it. My pet Vandercook brayer has fallen arches--it was left in the sun
yesterday and its insides turned to soup.

Next morning on my desk I found the proof of our new broadside _Emmer
Jane_ with the drawing at the top beautifully colored by the artist.
It's swell. Presently the messenger brought in the advance copies of
the new _Sonnets_ bound in blue natural-finished cloth stamped in gold,
just as I wanted it. I can hardly wait to get home to show them to my
wife. We must get that new type to use for _The Ghost Ship_. We'll
start it this week-end. How slow the days go. Isn't a private press fun!


_Postscript_ 1951:

Still hard at it. We are older but no wiser. Nowadays the
grand-children come in the back door and call up the composing-room
stairs, "Arthur, may we play type and picture cuts?" They spend hours
at it and I spend hours putting things to rights.

The check-list has grown to 186 books and pamphlets. The work is still
as exciting as ever, though we try to check the fury a bit. The skipper
of the _Golden Hind_ retired in January 1950, which released more time
for the press; being in business always was a nuisance.

We spent the summer doing a first edition of a Mark Twain book for
Harpers--mixed with a lot of farming. For a retirement occupation we
can commend a private press. It keeps up the interest in life.

Offers of work flow in, much more than we care to accept. We are not
in business and we have more projects of our own than we shall ever
complete.

It's fun to get up with the chickens and work together all morning,
spend the afternoon puttering about outdoors, and retire at night dog
tired--what my wife calls "nice tired," no nervous tension.

The _Golden Hind_ is twenty-four years old but her seams are tight and
she manages nicely--who knows, maybe the voyage is only nicely begun.

                      COMPOSED IN FAIRFIELD TYPES




              [Illustration]EDWIN GRABHORN[Illustration]

                      _The Fine Art of Printing_

 An address before the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco at its meeting
    in the Allied Arts Guild, Menlo Park, California, May 15, 1933.
 Fifty copies printed by Edwin and Robert Grabhorn for members of the
 Roxburghe Club, May 15, 1933. Reprinted by permission of the author.


[Illustration] I know of no better way of beginning this talk to you
tonight on PAPER, INK and TYPE than by first sketching a brief outline
of the Art of Printing.

Printing in its childhood was an art. The highest period of any art
is its childhood, because childhood moves by spontaneous inner urge,
not by rules and intellectual bondage that runs all into fixed moulds.
It is an accepted truth that as skill and elaboration creep into
development of an art, simplicity, feeling and beauty decline. The
early printers were not weighed down with rules, formulas and theories
which have smothered us today. With but one font of type, a wooden
frame with a screw attachment and a crude inking device, they have
given us books of strength and beauty that we have never equalled.

We all like to think of the invention of printing as springing
Minerva-like from the brain of man. Printing is, of course, the
combination of paper, type, ink and the press; and these various
elements were some three hundred years in the process of springing.
Paper was the cheap substitute for vellum, and type the substitute for
hand-writing.

All of us are more or less familiar with the invention of printing
and with its God-like first-born, the Gutenberg Bible. Those who have
had the thrill of examining the great 42-line Bible have told us that
it is the most beautiful book ever printed. This is a magnificent
tribute--one that I have never heard contradicted. Just how much of the
beauty of this Bible is due to the art of the illuminator and how much
to the skill of the printer has never been told by those who represent
it to be the most perfect specimen of printing.

A few years ago a book speculator dissected an incomplete copy, selling
the leaves with beautifully hand-illumined initials at twice the price
of those pages without decoration. I hope this speculator lost his
ill-gotten gains in the stock market.

A thing of beauty stands alone, and I know of no fixed law by which we
can judge beauty except through the emotions; and emotions are rather
difficult to tabulate. I, myself, can only contemplate the childhood of
printing with amazement and admiration. In its youth it exhausted every
possibility of type arrangement.

An estimate of the activity of those first wooden frames can only
be guessed at. In Venice alone, as early as 1472, over two million
separate volumes were printed. By the opening of the sixteenth century
the art of printing had spread to every civilized country and the
supply of its raw materials became so great that the process of
cheapening set in.

The first printers had selected as models for their types the beautiful
hand-written books of their day. The second generation of printers
modelled their types from those of the first printers. The illuminator
gave way to the wood-cutter and the fine art of printing became a
science, then a craft, and when William Morris tried to stop its
downward slide, in 1891, it was a trade.

During this downward trip through four centuries, weak attempts to
restore the art of printing to its first high place in the life of man
were made. Benjamin Franklin wrote on the "Improvement of Printing
Backwards," protesting the discontinuance of the tall "f." But man was
not interested in the intangible influence of art as much as he was in
the perfection of the machine.

The ink was hardly dry on the effusions of our modern printing critics,
when the collapse of over-production set in and silenced them, I hope,
permanently.

Writing about modern books in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Francis Meynell of the Nonesuch Press says: "The
type-setting machines used with as much skill as hand-set type will
give a better result, and in alliance with fast but very perfect
cylinder printing presses, will give this result not to a few, but to
a multitude. It has taken us from the day of 'the book beautiful,' and
given us the day of the beautiful book."

The fast moving cylinder presses of the Nonesuch Press have slowed
up since this was written. And we can thank God that we have some
opportunity for reflection.

One of the modern criticisms of William Morris and the private presses
that he inspired is that too much stress was placed on method. Method
means how a thing is done and how a thing is done is of very vital
importance if we want to give our work durability.

I have said before that it was William Morris who attempted to stop the
downward slide of printing. He was the leader in the revival of what
is known as "modern fine printing." It has been said that Morris was
inspired by a lecture of Emery Walker's on the Golden Age of Printing.
While not denying Walker's position in this revival, we must admit that
there is a vast gulf between talking and doing. Morris's was a very
simple yet positive personality. There were no tints in his make-up.
When asked if he liked colors, his answer: "blue and red," tells us
whole volumes in folio. He had no tolerance for the effeminate printing
of his day. He even scorned the sunny pages of the Italian Renaissance
printers. It is no wonder that his Gothic books, in violent contrast to
the weak old styles and modern type faces of his time--and our time,
too--were startling. I have no doubt that some antiquarian hundreds of
years hence, delving among musty tomes, will find Morris's books still
giants in a land of dwarfs.

Whether you like or dislike Morris's books is of little concern to me.
But what is of vital importance to me as a printer, and should be to
all printers who are endeavoring to print books that will last, is the
honesty of William Morris. Morris knew, because he was a collector of
the earliest printed books, that those early printed books could not
have descended to him, looking as sparkling and vital as the day they
left their makers' hands, without honesty of craftsmanship. It was
this craftsmanship that Morris revived, and that we today will have to
revive again before our books can have any claims to a long life.

Let me briefly describe to you the various processes used in the
making of books, beginning with the paper on which the book is printed.
Morris found no paper being manufactured that was suitable for his
use. It was only after months of experiment and failure, during which
he worked at the paper mill himself, that a satisfactory sheet was
made for him. With the closing of the Kelmscott Press after Morris's
death, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker used his specifications
for this paper at their Doves Press. This mill still manufactures this
paper, and it can be obtained easily enough. But it is not popular with
the printers of today because its texture is so tough, its resistance
to type so great, that we rather choose the short cut to the Royal Road
to Fine Bookmaking, using the many counterfeits with their imitation
deckle edges and their artificial ageing at the mill. We also like
opaqueness in our paper, although transparency is usually a guarantee
of its quality. All-linen-rag quality paper can easily enough be
printed on if dampened first. By lessening the resistance of the paper
through dampening, the type can penetrate its tough fiber, and the
ink thus becomes a part of the paper itself. But by taking the short
cut and not dampening the paper, at least four times the quantity of
pressure and ink must be used. This over-abundance of pressure and ink
still does not penetrate the paper but leaves the ink upon the paper's
surface so that it looks to me as if printed from an etcher's plate.
The excessive amount of ink, because of the heavy varnish used in its
manufacture, has a tendency to shine when dry, producing a luster
that is hard on the eyes. In time a film of oil will encircle each
individual letter, discoloring the paper, and the page will look like
those cheaply printed eighteenth-century books do to us today.

I know of no process in the making of a fine book more difficult of
perfecting than getting the right amount of pressure and ink into the
paper. In hand-made paper there is only an approximate uniformity in
the thickness of the sheets, and these variations can be overcome by
using a hand-press. The sense of touch must be developed until you can
feel the right amount of pressure through the lever. The mechanical
press is so regulated that it cannot control the variations of the
paper's thickness. The right pressure can, of course, be applied to the
average sheet--the heavier and lighter sheets can be sorted out before
printing. However, this is seldom done. The paper is usually sorted
when the finished book is being collated.

I can speak with some authority on the importance of dampening a sheet
of fine paper. Such a process takes lots of time, but if you think the
time not well spent compare a book from the Kelmscott Press with any
of the books of our best machine printers of today. You will see that
decay is already beginning to set in in the machine book. The edges of
the paper will soon turn yellow and the ink begin to spread.

I hesitate to turn from the processes of making a fine book endure
without impressing upon you the importance of using the finest
quality of paper. The paper, and the ink that becomes a part of that
paper, determines the life of the book, just as stones and mortar do
in architecture. No matter how fine the type or how beautiful the
decorations, the book must die if quality be lacking in both paper and
ink.

And now just a few remarks about the binding of a book. Bindings are
the protection for the body of a book. Here permanency decreases as
use increases. Only those books that have escaped usage have come down
to us with their original bindings, except those bound in limp vellum.
Heavy boards encased in leather were the protection of many early
books. The swinging of the heavy covers breaks the hinges of the book,
and this leads to destruction. William Morris revived the use of limp
vellum as a book covering.

Of far more importance than the cover in the making of a fine book is
the gathering and sewing. When the printed sheets are folded a trained
eye should put them together so that pages either under- or over-inked
may be taken out. If there are no extras, then all the light pages can
be put into one book, and the dark in another. If this is done, the
critic will say that the press work is even.

After the book is assembled the sheets are sewn together by hand, using
a strong linen thread. Of course, they can be sewn on a machine, but
you might just as well save that expense by gluing the sheets together.
If you don't believe me, take a machine-sewn book, before it is glued,
pull off the first section, hold it up by the last page and watch the
book fall to pieces. Hand-sewn books are sewn on either cords or tapes.
Of course, you can have cords and tapes on a machine-sewn book, but
they will be false ones, pasted on after the book has been stabbed to
death.

I do not want to give you the impression that I am some sort of John
the Baptist crying in a wilderness of machines. Machines are designed
for special purposes and when we try to use them for a different
purpose from that for which they were intended we fail. You would
think a carpenter who used a machine that was made to drive nails in
an orange box unbalanced if he tried to adjust that machine to build
a house. The delicately adjusted printing press that Francis Meynell
idealizes was designed for producing our ephemeral printing.

A machine cannot create--it can only assist, directed by the mind and
imagination. The more that is left to the machine, the worse the work.
The machine can arrive at perfection, perfection that is cold and dead
and mechanical. And it is this cold and dead perfection that brings me
to the beauty of the book of today.

I would say that "Post-Modern" Fine Printing began in America with
Bruce Rogers, at the plant of William Rudge. It was Bruce Rogers'
books that have influenced American and English printers more than
any other recent single force. It was the "charm" and finish of this
man's work that none of us escaped. During the years that Bruce Rogers
was designing special editions at the Riverside Press there were few
collectors of his books. As late as 1920, I bought some of these books
from the publishers. They had been in stock nearly twenty years! Among
them was "The Song of Roland" at the publisher's price. When I first
started printing I was already an admirer and collector of these
Riverside Press limited editions.

Now William Rudge was a better business man than a printer. He
recognized the ability of Rogers and engaged him. Then things began to
happen to our Fine Art of Printing. The typographical designer came
into fashion, the machine was glorified and we all became theorists.
Printing was aimed at suitability. The scholar and critic displaced the
master craftsman and the advertising artist was added by way of variety.

Each new type face, faithfully re-cut by the aid of the pantograph and
resurrected from our admittedly worst periods of printing, was eagerly
bought by our typographical experts. The printers who had been quietly
producing books, trying to make them a little better than necessary,
fell into the hands of the publisher and the publicity agent. And the
publisher announced that the next limited edition of 1600 copies was
completely over-subscribed--the poor printer got one-third of what you
had to pay. It was a Wonderland, indeed, until Alice woke up, and the
printer was left with all the cards, and they were all blank.

I am very glad it all happened. I would go through any form of hysteria
again, if we could produce another _Leaves of Grass_. Since I am
going to talk about type, I know of nothing better than to relate our
experience in printing Walt Whitman's masterpiece, for it has shown me
the folly of theory and intellect in art.

We accepted this undertaking with enthusiasm. Here was an opportunity
to prove that we could print a book. The first deposit had no more than
been spent when the publishers announced it as the finest book to be
printed in America, and off we started on the wrong track.

Well, the finest book had to have the finest type and the finest type
was the latest type. And it had to be a folio in size, because for One
Hundred Dollars you had to get a folio. We bought one thousand pounds
of the finest type; 18 point Lutetia, fresh from a new designer in
Holland. And we hired two printers to set this bright new type and
when it was all set, we pulled a proof and started to put grass into
it--pale green grass, and it looked like grass and we pulled it out and
tried again. Well, every time we tried that bright new type it didn't
look right. So we dug up some of the latest theories about suitability,
tried again, but it was no use. The brain told us one thing and our
eyes another.

Meanwhile, one thousand pounds of bright new type and months of labor
were tied up with strings and the Master Craftsman was getting worried.
He went to specialists for advice. They said: "Try this new initial or
this new picture," and the Master Craftsman went back to his shop and
bowed his head.

Then his tired eyes lighted on a dusty case of type, designed by the
artist Goudy but the critics had condemned it to the graveyard. Wearily
the Craftsman dug it up and set a page of Whitman in it. Then he pulled
a proof and Lo! He saw something that the machine had discarded; he saw
strength: he saw the strong, vigorous lines of Whitman, born of the
soil, without grass. He saw what he had heard whispered before. He saw
strong, vigorous, simple printing--printing like mountains, rocks and
trees, but not like pansies, lilacs and valentines; printing that came
from the soil and was not refined in the class-room.

And the printer knew that the limited edition was not a racket as long
as he had honesty and sincerity, and reverence for the best traditions
of his craft.




             [Illustration]HOLBROOK JACKSON[Illustration]

                   THE TYPOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM MORRIS

  From _The Printing of Books_ by Holbrook Jackson. Copyright 1938 by
   Cassell & Company, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
 First read as a paper, at the William Morris Centenary Dinner of the
                Double Crown Club, London, May 2, 1934.


William Morris is an ironic figure. His achievements not only missed
their mark, but hit marks he was not aiming at. His printing is no
exception. The masterpieces of the Kelmscott Press which he aimed at
making "useful pieces of goods" were typographical curiosities from
birth, and so far removed from the common way of readers that they have
become models of what a book should not be.

He was a Bibliophile, or more exactly, a typophile whose affections
became unruly in the presence of decorated incunabula, and, although
he was outwardly correct towards pure printing, his heart was not
there. According to Sir Sydney Cockerell he flirted with the idea of
a folio edition of _The Earthly Paradise_, "profusely illustrated by
Sir Edward Burne-Jones," a quarter of a century before the inception
of the Kelmscott Press. His personal taste was much the same then as
later, although he continued to pay homage to good as distinct from
fine printing. It was the "essence of my undertaking," he said, "to
produce books which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of
printing and arrangement of type." Thus inspired by the example of "the
calligraphy of the Middle Ages, and the earlier printing which took its
place," and in spite of his passion for decorated books he observed
that the early printed books "were always beautiful by force of the
mere typography, even without the added ornament with which many of
them are so lavishly supplied."

Much has been made of the emphasis he laid upon the book as an organic
assembly of paper, type, and binding. But although few printers or
publishers in the nineteenth century had insisted upon the excellence
of these ingredients, as he did, the architectonic principle had never
been wholly ignored. But in the main it was unconsciously observed.
Deliberation is evident in the construction of the Pickering books,
in the Keepsakes and Table Books of the thirties and forties, in the
illustrated books of the sixties, and the later productions of the
Daniel Press; and, if we may leave England for a moment, in such
convenient publications as those of Bernhard Tauchnitz, where there is
rectitude to satisfy the demands of the most austere of functionalists.

It was not, then, the architectonics of the Kelmscott books which
evoked a typographical revolution. Nor was it the pursuit of beauty
which always haunted Morris's intentions. "I began printing books," he
said, "in the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim
to beauty." Many printers and publishers of the time would have claimed
as much. Bad taste in the arts and crafts is invariably the result of
beauty-mongering, and the more costly books of the nineteenth century
are littered with beauty from cover to cover.

Neither was it originality. Morris never sought to be original. He was
a revivalist, and all his work is derivative. There is nothing new even
in that, for all the arts and crafts are derivative, and originality is
apt to be a myth and often a nuisance. Morris was even less original
than many other earnest innovators, and the Kelmscott books are
derivatives twice removed. They are modern variations of the early
printed books of northern Europe, as they in turn were but mechanical
imitations of the manuscripts which preceded the invention of movable
types.

Nor again was there anything peculiar even in that, for all
mechanical evolution seems to proceed in the same manner. The
earliest railway carriages followed the lines of the stage-coach; the
earliest steamships were schooners and brigantines with funnels and
paddle-boxes; and the earliest motor-car was a horseless-carriage
complete with tail-board. It is not surprising to learn that the
earliest printed books were imitations of manuscripts, but it is
surprising to find a nineteenth-century printer of genius imitating the
imitations.

 [Illustration: A page from _Poems By The Way_, written by Morris and
set in the Kelmscott Golden type. This small quarto was the first book
 printed at the Press in two colors, black and red. Issued in October,
     1891, in an edition of 300 copies on paper and 13 on vellum.]

There is, however, more than one difference between these mechanical
devices and the Kelmscott books. The engineers copied because they
could not think of anything better. Now and then they even made
concessions to beauty, in the form of superadded decorations, much as
Morris did. But there was a marked difference between them, for Morris
knew better. Although to him beauty meant decoration or ornament,
yet in the first edition of _The Roots of the Mountains_ he actually
produced an undecorated book of great distinction. The book is not
only admirable in itself, but it has had a better influence on recent
typography than all the Kelmscott books together. Morris himself was
delighted with the book. He declared it to be "the best-looking book
issued since the seventeenth century," and added: "I am so pleased with
my book, typography, binding, and must I say it, literary matter, that
I am any day to be seen huggling it up, and am become a spectacle to
Gods and men because of it." His enthusiasm rings true, but this was
a passing fancy, for even then he was in hot pursuit of more opulent
beauties.

It was the magnificence of the Kelmscott adventure which impressed and
influenced printers, professional and amateur, and resuscitated the
curious vogue for so-called "Private Press" books artificially rarefied
and deliberately beautified. But, in spite of many extravagances and
some few absurdities, the Kelmscott influence has been beneficial.
Morris reasserted sound principles, and the richness of his books
helped to secure their acceptance. "The road of excess leads to the
palace of wisdom." The style of the books themselves, because of their
massive individuality, must always provoke differences of opinion, but
in the house of books there are many mansions, and room for all tastes,
whims, and even fads.

I prefer my books pocketable, flexible, and legible. In the Kelmscott
books these qualities are not sufficiently balanced. Each is there in
some measure, but something is invariably added to weaken proportion.
William Morris (or worse, Burne-Jones) is always getting between
reader and author. I like my Chaucer neat. Morris produced Chaucer as
Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree produced Shakespeare. I suspect that
enthusiasts for such productions are not readers. The idea is supported
by the fact that the majority of Kelmscotts are still in mint state; it
is not easy to meet a copy bearing the honourable and endearing scars
of use.

  [Illustration: A page from the first book printed in the Kelmscott
  Troy type, _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, a large quarto
  printed in black and red and published by Bernard Quaritch in 1892.
 The edition: Two volumes, 300 copies on paper and 5 on vellum. "As to
 the matter of the book," wrote Morris, "it makes a thoroughly amusing
         story, instinct with medieval thought and manners."]

Legibility is relative, as I am reminded by my own experience,
for myself when young did eagerly frequent Pickering's _Diamond
Classics_--a practice I should probably have defended with conviction
based upon sight rather than insight. I take a different view today,
not only of miniature types, but of rules and spacings generally.
Morris granted the necessity of legibility. In this he differed from
another poet and amateur of printing, Robert Bridges, who used Gothic
characters for the Daniel Press edition of his poems to induce slow
ingestion. Morris believed that solidity of type and setting made for
easy reading. By solid type he meant "without needless excrescences" or
"the thickening or thinning of the line," which, with reservations, can
be defended. Density of type area is a different matter and, if I admit
charm, I reserve the right to question even aesthetical propriety in
favour of legibility. The solid page is impressive: solidity inspires
confidence, but confidence, as we know, is often illusion and not
always guiltless of trickery. The first edition of _The Roots of the
Mountains_ would probably have been more readable with than without
rules.

But although legibility must always be the first rule of printing,
there are other important principles. Morris summed them up in the
word "beauty" with impressive but dubious results, because of his
predilection for ornamentation. Any plain space for him was an
opportunity for decoration, or, in Ruskin's words, for "the expression
of man's joy in his work." He would go out of his way to make books
bigger than they need be so that he might have more space to fill with
his and Burne-Jones's illustrations. His type-faces became picturesque,
his margins inclined to pomposity, and his paper was pretentious.
The Kelmscott books are overdressed. They ask you to look at them
rather than to read them. You can't get away from their overwhelming
typography, and, even if you could, you might still be cheated of your
author by their high-minded purpose, for in addition to being the
creations of an impressive genius the Kelmscott books were protests
against the logical conclusions of mechanical book-production.

All these things are hindrances to reading, and I still believe that to
be read is the destiny of a book, and that reading is best when you are
least conscious of print or paper or binding. Since the Kelmscott books
are not likely to induce that condition they must remain museum pieces,
typographical monuments--beautiful and ineffectual angels beating in
the void their luminous wings in vain.

                       COMPOSED IN EMERSON TYPES




                           _Stanley Morison_

                    FIRST PRINCIPLES OF TYPOGRAPHY

   Published 1951 by the syndics of the Cambridge University Press.
               Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


 NOTE: This essay towards a rationale of book-typography was first
 attempted as an article, s.v. "Typography," in the twelfth edition
 of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ (Chicago and London, 1929). It
 was reconsidered and entirely rewritten for No. 7 of _The Fleuron_
 (Cambridge, 1930) when it also went out of print.... Although several
 reprints have been brought out and extracts have been made, demands
 continue for the whole text from printers as well as from those
 outside the trade for whom the article was originally written....
 As the brevity of the essay seems to be one of its most approved
 qualities, no expansion, and only slight revision, was made.... The
 present reprint is that of the Amsterdam edition published in 1947, in
 which the first paragraph was interpolated.... It may be added that
 while the principles here set forth apply to the typography of books,
 the sections dealing with composition may be adapted to the design of
 newspapers and publicity....

                                                                 S.M.


                                   I

Letters of the alphabet that are cast or founded for the purpose of
impressing upon paper are known as "types" and the impression thus
made as a "print." But every impression, from any raised surface, is a
"print." Hence the impression from the particular raised surfaces known
as "types" is called a "typographical" impression; or, to use a more
old-fashioned term, "letter-press." The precise form of the "types" and
the exact position they need to occupy upon the selected paper involve
skill in the art that is called "typography."

Typography may be defined as the art of rightly disposing printing
material in accordance with specific purpose; of so arranging the
letters, distributing the space and controlling the type as to aid to
the maximum the reader's comprehension of the text. Typography is the
efficient means to an essentially utilitarian and only accidentally
aesthetic end, for enjoyment of patterns is rarely the reader's
chief aim. Therefore, any disposition of printing material which,
whatever the intention, has the effect of coming between author and
reader is wrong. It follows that in the printing of books meant to
be read there is little room for "bright" typography. Even dullness
and monotony in the type-setting are far less vicious to a reader
than typographical eccentricity or pleasantry. Cunning of this sort
is desirable, even essential in the typography of propaganda, whether
for commerce, politics, or religion, because in such printing only the
freshest survives inattention. But the typography of books, apart from
the category of narrowly limited editions, requires an obedience to
convention which is almost absolute--and with reason.

Since printing is essentially a means of multiplying, it must not only
be good in itself--but be good for a common purpose. The wider that
purpose, the stricter are the limitations imposed upon the printer. He
may try an experiment in a tract printed in an edition of 50 copies,
but he shows little common sense if he experiments to the same degree
in the tract having a run of 50,000. Again, a novelty, fitly introduced
into a 16-page pamphlet, will be highly undesirable in a 160-page book.
It is of the essence of typography and of the nature of the printed
book _qua_ book, that it perform a public service. For single or
individual purpose there remains the manuscript, the codex; so there
is something ridiculous in the unique copy of a printed book, though
the number of copies printed may justifiably be limited when a book is
the medium of typographical experiment. It is always desirable that
experiments be made, and it is a pity that such "laboratory" pieces are
so limited in number and in courage. Typography today does not so much
need Inspiration or Revival as Investigation. It is proposed here to
formulate some of the principles already known to book-printers, which
investigation confirms and which non-printers may like to consider for
themselves.


                                  II

The laws governing the typography of books intended for general
circulation are based first upon the essential nature of alphabetical
writing, and secondly upon the traditions, explicit or implicit,
prevailing in the society for which the printer is working. While a
universal character or typography applicable to all books produced in
a given national area is practicable, to impose a universal detailed
formula upon all books printed in Roman types is not. National
tradition expresses itself in the varying separation of the book into
prelims, chapters, etc., no less than in the design of the type. But at
least there are physical rules of linear composition which are obeyed
by all printers who know their job.

The normal Roman type (in simple form without special sorts, etc.)
consists of an upright design, and a sloping form of it:

                      ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&

                      ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

                      abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

                     _ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&_

                     _abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_

The printer needs to be very careful in choosing his type, realizing
that the more often he is going to use it, the more closely its
design must approximate to the general idea held in the mind's eye
of readers perforce ruled by the familiar magazine, newspaper and
book. It does no harm to print a Christmas card in =black-letter=,
but who nowadays would read a book in that type? I may believe, as I
do, that black-letter is in design more homogeneous, more lively and
more economic a type than the grey round Roman we use, but I do not
now expect people to read a book in it. Aldus' and Caslon's are both
relatively feeble types, but they represent the forms accepted by the
community; and the printer, as a servant of the community, must use
them, or one of their variants. No printer should say, "I am an artist,
therefore I am not to be dictated to. I will create my own letter
forms," for, in this humble job, no printer is an artist in this sense.
Nor is it possible today, as it just was in the infancy of the craft,
to persuade society into the acceptance of strongly marked and highly
individualistic types--because literate society is so much greater in
mass and correspondingly slower in movement. Type design moves at the
pace of the most conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore
realizes that, for a new fount to be successful, it has to be so good
that only very few recognize its novelty. If readers do not notice the
consummate reticence and rare discipline of a new type, it is probably
a good letter. But if my friends think that the tail of my lower-case
r or the lip of my lower-case e is rather jolly, you may know that the
fount would have been better had neither been made. A type which is to
have anything like a present, let alone a future, will neither be very
"different" nor very "jolly."

So much for Type. The printer possesses also Spaces and Leads as a
normal part of his typographical material, straight lines of metal
known as rules, braces, and finally a more or less indiscriminate
collection of ornaments--head and tailpieces, flowers, decorated
initial letters, vignettes and flourishes. Another decorative medium at
his option lies in his command of colour; red is, with sound instinct,
the most frequently used. For emphasis, heavy faces are used. White
space is an important item of composing-room equipment--margins,
blanks, etc., being filled in with what are known as "quotations." The
selecting and arranging of these elements is known as Composition.
Imposition is the placing of the composed matter upon the sheet.
Printing includes impressing in due order, perfecting the sheet in
due register (backing up), regulating the inking, and achieving a
crisp type-page. Finally the tone, weight and texture of the paper are
important factors entering into the completed result.

Typography, therefore, controls the composition, imposition, impression
and paper. Of paper, it is at least necessary to demand that it be
capable of expressing the value of the composition; of imposition,
that the margins be proportionate to the area of the text, affording
decent space for thumbs and fingers at the side and bottom of the page.
The old-style margins are handsome in themselves and agreeable to the
purpose of a certain kind of book, but are obviously not convenient in
books where the page dimension is unavoidably small or narrow, or the
purpose of the book is to be carried in the pocket. For these and other
kinds of book, the type may be centred on the measure of the page, and
slightly raised above ocular centre.

Imposition is the most important element in typography--for no page,
however well composed in detail, can be admired if the _mise-en-page_
is careless or ill-considered. In practical printing today,
these details of imposition are on the whole adequately cared for;
so that it is possible to report that the mass of books presents a
tolerable appearance. Even a badly composed work may give a good
appearance if it is well imposed--good imposition redeeming bad
composition, while a good composition would be effectively ruined by
bad imposition.


                                  III

The designer of the book, therefore, first determines his imposition
and then tackles the details of composition. The first principles of
composition do not require much discussion since they necessarily
follow from the conventions of alphabetical printing in the Roman
letter accepted by those for whom we are printing. The matter is
relatively simple. First, it is certain that the eye cannot read with
ease any considerable number of words composed of letters embodying
sharply contrasted thicks and thins; secondly, it is none the less
certain that the eye cannot agreeably read a mass of words composed
even in a rightly constructed letter, if the lines are beyond a
certain length. The most expert reader's eye cannot seize more than
a certain number of words in a given size except in a proportionate
length of line. Thirdly, practice proves that the size of the letter
must be related to the length of line. Respect for these principles
will generally protect the reader from the risk of "doubling" (reading
the same line twice). The average line of words which the reader's
eye can conveniently seize is between ten and twelve. Nevertheless,
the typographer, while exerting himself to the utmost to respect this
ocular truth, is daily confronted with the fact that unavoidable
conditions make it impossible for him to secure a type of the duly
related size, and that he is driven to use a relatively small type.
To obviate here the risk of "doubling," he consistently inserts
proportionate leads through the matter, so opening the lines that the
eye comfortably travels and returns from beginning to end and from end
to beginning.

The practice of leading, denounced in certain quarters as essentially
evil, is an inevitable necessity to a large proportion of printing; and
the skilled typographer, making the best use of his material, makes in
turn, wise use of leads. The orthodox high-brow view that leads produce
in every instance an unhappy weak-looking effect will not survive a
wide experience. On the contrary, it will be found that their absence
may effectively ruin even a composition in large type, so that it is
true to say that the intelligent use of leading distinguishes the
expert from the inexpert printer. A slight differentiation of type-face
may make the practice advisable. Clearly, while a letter of the size
now under the reader's eye, with fairly long ascenders and descenders,
would not require leading unless set to a measure of more than 3-1/2
in., there exist letters with short descenders designed rather to
sustain leading by rule than by exception. Baskerville's is a type to
which leading is invariably an advantage. The problem of determining
the amount to be given is not to be settled by considering only the
ascenders or the body of the type, because breadth of letter is also
a factor to be reckoned with--some letters are narrow in respect to
their height, while others are wide. A composition in a round, open,
wide letter, chosen because it is rather loose (that is to say, the
space between the letters is greater, or appears greater, by reason
of the curves of the c, o, e, g), gains in consistency when there is
a satisfactory lead between the lines. It is often argued that loose
setting is not admirable in itself; to which it might be replied
that the printer is generally bound to carry out the instructions of
his customer; often to respect the wishes of an artist who may be
illustrating the work; and, not seldom, committed by the publisher to a
paper-size dictated by irrelevant considerations.

Further, it is obvious that the space between words composed in a
condensed letter may be less than that between words in a round, wide
form of letter. Where there is no leading between the lines, and the
composition is, for extrinsic reasons, necessarily tight, it may be
an advantage to set leads between the paragraphs, even though this
result in pages with uneven tails. In paragraphing, it is important
to realize that the opening sentence of a work should automatically
manifest itself as such. This may be secured by the use of the large
initial letter; the printing of the first word in CAPITALS, or SMALL
CAPITALS ; CAPITALS _and_ SMALL CAPITALS ; or by setting the first
word into the margin. On no account should the opening of a chapter be
indented, since indention should mark (and always mark) the subsequent
sections, i.e., the paragraphs, of the text. The abolition of
paragraph-indentions is plainly an undesirable practice; nor is setting
the first word in capitals or small capitals an agreeable substitute
for the indention. The space of the indention should be sufficient to
be noticeable.

As both measures must be related, displaying a proportion pleasing to
the eye, the depth of the page follows from its width. It seems that
the proportions of the oblong are more pleasing than those of the
square; and as a horizontal oblong drives out the line to an impossible
length, and a two-column arrangement is tedious, the vertical oblong
has become the normal page.

Such are the elements of typography; and a volume built up of
type-pages composed in accordance with them will be generally
satisfactory. There remain only the page headings and the folio. By
ranging the headings inside towards the gutter, to the left and right
respectively, two pages are fixed as a unity; but they can also be
ranged outside to the right and left, or they may be centered. The
folio may be centered at the foot, or range either way at the top or
bottom (preferably, for quicker reference, on the outside), but it
cannot be centered at the top without cancelling the running page
headline--only to be done by exception. The running headlines may be
set in capitals of the text, in upper and lower-case of the text, or
in a combination of capitals. Full-sized capitals overemphasize what
is, after all, a repetitive page-feature inserted chiefly for the
convenience of librarians and readers interested in the identification
of leaves which have worked loose. If set in upper and lower-case,
the headline loses in levelness, so that it seems well to employ
S M A L L   C A P I T A L S; these are best separated by hair spaces,
since the unrelieved rectangular structure and perpendicularity of
capitals tend to defeat instantaneous recognition. Full-sized capitals
may well be used for chapter headings, with the number of the chapter
in smalls; both indications being hair-spaced.

The reader, travelling from the generally invariable blank at the end
of a chapter to the beginning of the next, finds a dropped chapter
head an agreeably consistent feature, which saves him from feeling
suffocated or overpowered by the text.


                                  IV

The foregoing elementary directions affect the main part of the
book, its body. There remains a section which goes before the text,
known as the "preliminaries," often complicated both in respect to
arrangement and draftsmanship. Before considering these, it may be
well to summarize our present findings--to concentrate them into a
formula. According to our doctrine, a well-built book is made up from
vertical oblong pages arranged in paragraphs having an average line of
ten to twelve consistently spaced words, set in a fount of comfortable
size and familiar design; the lines sufficiently separated to prevent
doubling and the composition being headed by a running title. This
rectangle is so imposed upon the page as to provide centre, head,
fore-edge and tail margins of dimensions suitably related not only to
the length of line but to the disposition of space at those points
where the text is cut into chapters, and where the body joins the
prefatory and other pages known as "preliminaries."

Now these first pages, being intended rather for reference than for
reading and re-reading, are less strictly governed by convention than
the text-pages. They consequently offer the maximum opportunity for
typographic design. The history of printing is in large measure the
history of the title-page. When fully developed, the title occupied a
recto page, either partially or wholly; and the title-phrase, or the
principal words of it, has generally been set in a conspicuous size of
type. Sixteenth-century Italian printers generally used large capitals
copied from inscriptions, or by exception, from medieval manuscripts;
while English use emulated the French in employing a canon line of
upper and lower-case, followed by a few lines of pica capitals. Next
came the printer's device, and at the foot of the page, his name and
address. These large sizes of upper and lower-case, an inheritance from
printers who were accustomed to black-letter (which cannot be set in
solid capitals), have gone. The device has also vanished (it has been
revived by a few publishers), and thus the contemporary title page
is generally a bleak affair, exhibiting in nine out of ten cases a
space between the title and the imprint of the printer-publisher, so
that this blank tends to be the strongest feature on the page. When
the device was first abandoned, the author, printer or publisher took
advantage of the leisure of the reader and the blank at their disposal,
to draft a tediously long title, subtitle and list of the author's
qualifications, designed to fill the entire page. The present-day
publisher goes to the other extreme, reducing the title to as few
short words as possible, followed with "by" and the author's name. A
professional writer may insert, e.g., "Author of _The Deluge_" under
his name or there may be incorporated a motto; but apart from such
exceptions, three and sometimes four inches of space separate the
author's name from the first line of the imprint.

The result is that unless the title is set in a size of type out
of all relation to that of the remainder of the book, this space is
more conspicuous than the chief line. It is more reasonable to lessen
this space by shortening the depth of the whole piece from title to
imprint. It is clear that a volume in 12-point does not require a
30-point title unless it be a folio in double-column; and it is of no
consequence if the title page is a little shorter than the text pages.
There is no reason, other than a desire to be "different," for a title
page to bear any line of type larger than twice the size of the text
letter. If the book be set in 12-point, the title need be no larger
than 24-point--and may decently enough be smaller. As lower-case is a
necessary evil, which we should do well to subordinate since we cannot
suppress, it should be avoided when it is at its least rational and
least attractive--in large sizes. The main line of a title should be
set in capitals; and, like all titling capitals, they should be spaced.
Whatever may happen to the rest of the composition, the author's name,
like all displayed proper names, should be in capitals.


                                   V

Here we may pause to counter an objection. It will be contended that
whatever the value of our preceding conclusions, their adoption must
mean an increase in standardization--all very well for those who have
an economic objective but very monotonous and dull for those whose aim
is that books shall possess more "life." This means that the objectors
want more variety, more "differentness," more decoration. The craving
to decorate is natural, and only if it is allowed the freedom of the
text pages shall we look upon it as a passion to be resisted. The
decoration of title pages is one thing--that of a fount to be employed
in books is another. Our contention, in this respect, is that the
necessities of a mass-production book and the limited edition differ
neither in kind nor in degree, since all printing is essentially a
means of the multiplication of a text set in an alphabetical code
of conventional symbols. To disallow "variety" in the vital details
of the composition is not to insist upon uniformity in display. As
already pointed out, the preliminary pages offer scope for the utmost
typographical ingenuity. Yet even here, a word of caution may be in
place, so soon do we forget, in arranging any piece of display (above
all, a title page), the supreme importance of sense. Every character,
every word, every line should be seen with maximum clearness. Words
should not be broken except unavoidably, and in title pages and other
compositions of centred matter, lines should hardly begin with such
feeble parts of speech as prepositions and conjunctions. It is more
reasonable, as assisting the reader's immediacy of comprehension, to
keep these to the ends of lines or to centre them in smaller type and
so bring out the salient lines in a relatively conspicuous size.

No printer, in safeguarding himself from the charge of monotony
in his composition, should admit, against his better judgment, any
typographical distraction doing violence to logic and lucidity in the
supposed interests of decoration. To twist his text into a triangle,
squeeze it into a box, torture it into the shape of an hour-glass
or a diamond is an offence requiring greater justification than the
existence either of Italian and French precedents of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, or of an ambition to do something new in
the twentieth. In truth, these are the easiest tricks of all, and we
have seen so much of them during the late "revival of printing" that
we now need rather a revival of restraint. In all permanent forms of
typography, whether publicly or privately printed, the typographer's
only purpose is to express, not himself, but his author. There are,
admittedly, other purposes which enter into the composition of
advertisement, publicity and sales matter; and there is, of course, a
very great deal common to both book and advertisement composition. But
it is not allowable to the printer to relax his zeal for the reader's
comfort in order to satisfy an ambition to decorate or to illustrate.
Rather than run this risk the printer should strive to express himself
by the use of this or that small decorative unit, either of common
design supplied by the type founders or drawn for his office by an
artist. It is quite true that to an inventive printer decoration is
not often necessary. In commercial printing, however, it seems to be
a necessity, because the complexity of our civilization demands an
infinite number of styles and characters. Publishers and other buyers
of printing, by insisting upon a setting which shall express _their_
business, _their_ goods, _their_ books and nobody else's business or
goods or books, demand an individuality which pure typography can never
hope to supply. But book-printers, concerned with the permanently
convenient rather than with the transiently sensational or the merely
fashionable, should be on their guard against title-page borders,
vignettes and devices invented to ease their difficulties. There is no
easy way with most title pages; and the printer's task is rendered more
difficult by the average publisher's and author's incompetence to draft
a title or to organize the preliminaries in reasonable sequence.


                                  VI

Those who would like to lessen or vary the tendency towards
standardization in day-today book production have a field for their
activity in the last-mentioned pages. The position on the page of
the half-title, title, dedication, etc., and their relation to each
other, are not essentially invariable. Nevertheless, as it is well
for printers and publishers to have rules, and the same rules, it
may be suggested that the headings to Preface, Table of Contents,
Introduction, etc., should be in the same size and fount as the
chapter heads; and should be dropped if they are dropped. The order
of the preliminaries remains to be settled. With the exception of the
copyright notice, which may be set on the verso of the title page, all
should begin on a recto. The logical order of the preliminary pages is
Half-title or Dedication (I see no reason for including both), Title,
Contents, Preface, Introduction. The certificate of "limitation," in
the case of books of that class, may face the title where there is
no frontispiece, be incorporated with the half-title, or be taken to
the end of the volume. This order is applicable to most categories of
books. Novels need neither Table of Contents nor List of Chapters,
though one or the other is too often printed. If it is decided to
retain either, it would be reasonable to print it on the back of the
half-title and facing the title page, so that the structure, scope and
nature of the book will be almost completely indicated to the reader at
a single opening. Where the volume is made up of a few short stories,
their titles can be listed in the otherwise blank centre of the title
page.


                                  VII

Fiction, Belles-Lettres and Educational books are habitually first
published in portable, but not pocketable formats; crown octavo (5 by
7-1/2 in.) being the invariable rule for novels published as such.
The novel in the form of Biography will be published as a Biography,
demy octavo (5-5/8 by 8-3/4 in.), the size also for History, Political
Study, Archaeology, Science, Art and almost everything but Fiction.
Novels are only promoted to this format when they have become famous
and "standard"; when they are popular rather than famous they are
composed in pocket (4-1/2 by 6-3/4 in.) editions. _Size_, therefore, is
the most manifest difference between the categories of books.

Another obvious difference is _bulk_, calculated in accordance with the
publisher's notion, first, of the general sense of trade expectation
and, secondly, of the purchasing psychology of a public habituated
to certain selling prices vaguely related to number of pages and
thickness of volume (inconsistently enough, weight does not enter
into these expectations). These habits of mind have consequences in
the typography; they affect the choice of fount and size of type,
and may necessitate the adoption of devices for "driving out," i.e.,
making the setting take up as much room as possible. By putting the
running headline between rules or rows of ornaments; introducing
unnecessary blanks between chapters; contracting the measure;
exaggerating the spaces between the words and the lines; excessively
indenting paragraphs; isolating quoted matter with areas of white
space: inserting wholly unnecessary sectional titles in the text and
surrounding them with space; contriving to drive a chapter ending to
the top of a recto page so that the rest of it and its verso may be
blank; using thick paper; increasing the depth of chapter beginnings
and inserting very large versals thereto; and so on, the volume can be
inflated to an extra sixteen pages and sometimes more--which is a feat
the able typographer is expected to accomplish without showing his hand.

Limited editions of standard authors, or of authors whose publishers
desire them to rank as such, are commonly given a rubricated title
or some other feature not strictly necessary. A dreadful example of
overdone rubrication is to be found in an edition of Thomas Hardy's
verse, in which the running heads throughout the book are in red--the
production of a firm which desired to make an impression on the
purchaser in view of the price asked for the edition. This could have
been better done by reserving colour for the initial letters. Handmade
paper is generally used for _éditions de luxe_, and none but the
brave among publishers will disregard the superstitious love of the
book-buying classes for its untrimmed, ugly and dirt-gathering edges.
That most of the public prefer to have it so is because a trimmed
book looks "ordinary" to them. Any book which is "different" from the
"ordinary" in one superficial way or another is apt to impress those
lacking trade experience. And there has been a notable increase during
recent years in the category of books, generally illustrated, known
to the trade as _fine printing_, _éditions de luxe_, _press-books_,
_limited editions_, _collectors' books_, etc. Hence, it is hoped that
the above setting out of the first principles of typography may give
the discriminating reader some sort of yardstick which he can apply not
only to the entries catalogued by the book-sellers as limited editions,
but to the output of publishers responsible for printing the literary
and scientific books which are more necessary to society, and are often
designed with greater intelligence.

                   COMPOSED IN NEW TIMES ROMAN TYPES




          [Illustration]CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS[Illustration]

               _American Type Designers and Their Work_

 Published by The Lakeside Press 1947-1948. Reprinted by permission of
                            the publisher.


A piece of paper about two inches square, originally pinned to the
manuscript of the Rev. Ezra Stiles's diary in the Yale University
Library is all that remains of the first original American type design.
It is a proof of letters made by Abel Buell, a Connecticut Yankee, in
1769.[35] Buell was his own designer, punch cutter, and caster, since
in his day, as for many years after, the making of type was entirely a
hand operation. Not the least exacting part of the work was the cutting
of the punch on the end of a short bar of softened steel. It was not
until the invention of the Benton pantograph punch-cutting machine in
1885 that any other method was known. All type made before 1885 was
therefore dependent on hand punch cutting, and the designer of the type
was almost always the same man who cut the punches.

Who these type designers were after Buell is a matter of uncertainty
and obscurity. The first type specimen book in America was that of
Binny & Ronaldson of Philadelphia, issued in 1812; and from then
almost to our own day the type foundries have taken the credit for the
type designs which they have offered for sale. Type designers, like
architects, got no credit; possibly Modesty, with a backward glance at
old specimen books, raised a warning finger, and the designers were
willing to let the foundries have whatever glory there was.

    [Illustration: The Punch Cutting Machine. _Courtesy George Macy
                            Publications._]

Abel Buell and his contemporaries and successors followed the general
trends in design in the arts as a whole. The Greek Revival and the
Victorian Age, marked by the two great expositions at London and
Philadelphia with their crudities and extravagancies in design, found
echoes in our imitative craft of printing. So it is not surprising
that type design began to improve, along with the other arts, with the
advent of the '90's. We have always followed European and especially
English models, and it is natural that the upheaval in type design in
England under Morris's influence had immediate repercussions here.
But while imitations of Kelmscott types were soon on the market, two
surprisingly original American designs appeared at the same time as
the imitations. About 1894 or 1895 the Central Type Foundry of St.
Louis introduced a face which became widely used, called (for no better
reason than attends the christening of most type faces) "De Vinne."
It is of unknown parentage, though there is some reason to suppose
that it descended from the Elzevirs; but it was a face of character
and distinction. At the same time the same foundry brought out another
design which had an acknowledged father--Will Bradley. Of this face it
has been said that it has "remarkably bold letters, with peculiarities
of form never before attempted." Thus we have in the De Vinne and the
Bradley faces two fresh and distinctively American types, destined to
be the forerunners of many others. And in one case the name of the
designer was definitely attached.

With the invention of the pantograph punch cutter, type design became
an "art" rather than a craft, and as might be expected the personality
of the designer became for various reasons more important. It is
not without interest that the chief designer of the American Type
Founders Company--a man responsible for almost the whole type output
of that foundry for many years--Morris Fuller Benton, was the son of
the man whose machines were responsible for this revolution in type
design. For it was the two basic machines invented and developed by
Linn Boyd Benton which made it possible for those unskilled in the
intricacies of type making to provide the basic designs for type.
The machines were very ingenious, and the designs partook of the
"faultily faultless, icily regular" perfection of the mechanical
device. This method of making type faces involved the drawing of the
design and the making of two or three patterns in thin brass of the
outline of the letter--each pattern good for several sizes of type,
and slightly modified for another group of sizes. This is the way in
which modern type is designed. It is the reason why such a type series
as "Cheltenham," designed by the architect Bertram G. Goodhue in 1900
for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, while very expertly handled in
the details, seems monotonous in mass; whereas the Caslon type of the
original cutting shows all the inevitable variations of hand work.

A survey of the types of the first quarter of the present century,
made by the Editor of the _Inland Printer_ in 1927, displays 161 type
faces brought out by seven or eight of the leading foundries between
1900 and 1925. Of these, it was possible to name the designers of 72,
almost all from the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler foundry of Chicago,
whose records seem to have been in better shape, or whose generosity
was more spontaneous. Oswald Cooper, Sydney Gaunt, Will Ransom, Robert
Wiebking, and George Trenholm were the chief names. It is unfortunate
that the names of the designers of the types put out by the American
Type Founders Company have not been preserved except in rare instances.
Of course, Benton was responsible for the greater portion, and on the
aesthetic side they occasionally scored a triumph as in the case of the
"Cloister" face.

The list included in the _Inland Printer's_ survey fails to include
some of the outstanding designs of the period. Goodhue's "Merrymount"
was done in 1894, but after 1900 we have Mr. Rogers's "Centaur,"
Mr. Hunter's odd but forceful types (properly cut on punches by
the designer), the output of the rapidly growing composing-machine
industry, and Frederic W. Goudy's fifty designs completed in that
quarter century. Goudy's output of six score type designs in fifty
years is an amazing record, one probably never equalled. Such designs
as those for "Goudy Modern," "Goudy Text," and "Hadrian" would
establish his reputation. He had his limitations as a designer--most
of his designs lack a certain crispness--but his versatility was
extraordinary.

In the years since 1925 new designers have come to the fore: Blumenthal
with his "Emerson," Dwiggins with his "Electra" and "Caledonia,"
Ruzicka with his "Fairfield," and Chappell with his "Lydian." This
brief survey cannot hope to mention all types or designs which American
designers have contributed, but it is well to see if any tendencies can
be detected.

The type which Buell made in 1759, as well as the type of his
immediate successors into the first decades of the nineteenth century,
were mainly variations on the so-called "modern romans" of Didot,
Bodoni, Austen, and Thorowgood. As the artistic styles in design in
general, not alone in type, gradually lost the evolutionary force
which has developed letter forms through the centuries, eccentricity
and anarchy came into play. The nineteenth-century types as shown
in the specimen books of Bruce, Connor, Farmer, etc., and exhibited
in all their grotesque horror in Fred Phillips' "Old-fashioned Type
Book," had no legitimate parentage, and they are as well relegated
to the bizarre and pseudo-nostalgic advertisement. The result of the
Kelmscott "revival" was to turn attention to type forms of the past
which could be revived for modern use, and the type designers after
1900 did a remarkable piece of work in introducing good type faces.
The advertisers have been eager to use new and novel faces, and have
greatly stimulated this activity, even in many cases over-exciting
it. The most interesting result has been the renewed interest in
calligraphy. First directed toward new forms of script, the truer form
of broad pen lettering is now beginning to influence type design, to
free it from too slavish a devotion on the one hand to the serif, and
on the other to a too-free rejection of the serif altogether. Such
a face as Mr. Chappell's "Lydian" is an example of real advance in
design, and if one could adduce European examples, more could be cited.

American designers have not developed many new or good book faces;
such types as Oxford, Centaur, Emerson, Fairfield, Electra, are the
exception. Their efforts have been given to the drawing of display and
advertising types--too often not to the enrichment of the printer's
repertory. It is quite as true now as in the past that distortions of
the normal Roman letter form in the direction of extra condensed or
extra heavy or very light mono-line letters result in eccentricities
which have no permanent value. On the other hand such novel type
designs as Garamond Bold Italic, Hadriano, the newspaper Ionics, and
Lydian are meritorious additions to the printer's fonts. When it is
realized that eccentricity and originality are not the same thing, we
may expect from our increasingly intelligent designers indigenous types
of usefulness and charm.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[35] Reprinted in Lawrence C. Wroth's "The First Work with American
Types," page 65.




                         TYPOGRAPHY--ERIC GILL

     From _Printing & Piety_, An Essay on Typography by Eric Gill.
   Copyright 1931 by J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London. Reprinted by
                     permission of the publisher.


One of the most alluring enthusiasms that can occupy the mind of the
letterer is that of inventing a really logical and consistent alphabet
having a distinct sign for every distinct sound. This is especially
the case for English speaking people: for the letters we use only
inadequately symbolize the sounds of our language. We need many new
letters and a revaluation of existing ones. But this enthusiasm has
no practical value for the typographer; we must take the alphabets we
have got, and we must take these alphabets in all essentials as we have
inherited them.

First of all, then, we have the ROMAN ALPHABET of CAPITAL letters
(Upper-case), and second the alphabet which printers call ROMAN
LOWER-CASE. The latter, tho' derived from the Capitals, is a distinct
alphabet. Third we have the alphabet called _ITALIC_, also derived
from the Capitals but through different channels. These are the three
alphabets in common use for English people.

Are there no others? It might be held that there are several; there
are, for example, the alphabet called Black Letter, and that called
Lombardic. But these are only partial survivals, and very few people
could, without reference to ancient books, write down even a complete
alphabet of either. As far as we are concerned in modern England,
Roman Capitals, Lower-case and Italics are three different alphabets,
and all are current "coin." But however familiar we are with them,
their essential differences are not always easily discovered. It is
not a matter of slope or of serifs or of thickness or thinness. These
qualities, though one or other of them may be commonly associated with
one alphabet more than another, are not essential marks of difference.
A Roman Capital A does not cease to be a Roman Capital A because it is
sloped backwards or forwards, because it is made thicker or thinner, or
because serifs are added or omitted; and the same applies to Lower-case
and Italics (see Fig. 1).

[Illustration: Figure 1 illustrates the contention that slope in either
  direction does not deprive Capitals, Lower-case or Italics of their
                        essential differences.]

     [Illustration: Figure 2 in which the upper line of letters is
   essentially "Roman Lower-case"; the lower essentially "Italic."]

The essential differences are obviously between the forms of the
letters. The following letters, abdefghklmnqrtu and y, are not Roman
Capitals, and that is all about it. The letters shown in the lower
line of Fig. 2 are neither Capitals nor Lower-case. The conclusion
is obvious: there is a complete alphabet of Capital letters, but the
Lower-case takes ten letters from the Capital alphabet, and the Italic
takes ten from the Capitals and twelve from the Lower-case. Figure 3
shows the three alphabets completed, and it will be seen that CIJOPSVWX
and Z are common to all three, that bdhklmnqrtu and y are common to
Lower-case and Italics; that ABDEFGHKLMNQRTU and Y are always Capitals;
and that aef and g are always Lower-case.

[Illustration: Figure 3 shows the differences and similarities between
 the three "current" alphabets. Note: the curve of the Italic y's tail
             is due to exuberance, and not to necessity.]

But tho' this is a true account of the essential differences between
the three alphabets, there are customary differences which seem
almost as important. It is customary to make Roman Capitals upright.
It is customary to make Lower-case smaller than Capitals when the
two are used together; and it is customary to make Italics narrower
than Lower-case, sloping towards the right and with certain details
reminiscent of the cursive hand-writing from which they are derived.
Fig. 4 shows the three alphabets with their customary as well as their
essential differences.

   [Illustration: Figure 4 shows the Capitals, Roman Lower-case and
 Italics with their customary as well as their essential differences.]

Properly speaking there is no such thing as an alphabet of Italic
Capitals, and where upright or nearly upright Italics are used ordinary
upright Roman Capitals go perfectly well with them. But as Italics are
commonly made with a considerable slope and cursive freedom, various
sorts of sloping and quasi-cursive Roman Capitals have been designed to
match. This practice has, however, been carried to excess; the slope of
Italics and their cursiveness have been much overdone. In the absence
of punch cutters with any personal sensibility as letter designers,
with punch cutting almost entirely done by machine, the obvious remedy
is a much more nearly upright and non-cursive Italic, and for Capitals
the ordinary upright Roman. Even with a nearly upright Italic, the mere
presence of the Italic aef and g alters the whole character of a page,
and with a slight narrowness as well as a slight slope, the effect is
quite different from that of a page of Lower-case.

The common practice of using Italics to emphasize single words should
be abandoned in favour of the use of the ordinary Lower-case with spaces
between the letters (l e t t e r - s p a c e d). The proper use of
Italics is for quotations and footnotes, and for books in which it is
or seems desirable to use a lighter and less formal style of letter.
In a book printed in Italics upright Capitals may well be used, but if
sloping Capitals be used they should only be used as initials--they go
well enough with Italic Lower-case, but they do not go with one another.

We have, then, the three alphabets, and these are the printer's main
outfit; all other sorts of letters are in the nature of fancy letters,
useful in inverse proportion to the importance and quantity of his
output. The more serious the class of book he prints, the wider the
public to whom he appeals, so much the more solemn and impersonal and
normal will be and should be his typography. But he will not call
that book serious which is merely widely bought, and he will not call
that a wide appeal which is made simply to a mob of forcibly educated
proletarians. A serious book is one which is good in itself according
to standards of goodness set by infallible authority, and a wide appeal
is one made to intelligent people of all times and nations.

The invention of printing and the breakdown of the medieval world
happened at the same time; and that breakdown, tho' hastened by
corruption in the Church, was chiefly caused by the recrudescence of a
commercialism which had not had a proper chance since the time of the
Romans. The invention of double-entry book-keeping also happened about
the same time, and though, as with modern mechanical invention, the
work was done by men of brains rather than men of business, it was the
latter who gained the chief advantage.

Printing, a cheaper method of reproducing books than hand-writing,
came therefore just at the right moment. Since its first fine careless
rapture, and in spite of the genuinely disinterested efforts of
ecclesiastical presses, University presses and the work of many notable
individual printers and type-founders, the history of printing has been
the history of its commercial exploitation. As is natural with men of
business, the worse appears the better reason. Financial success is,
rightly, their only aim, and technical perfection the only criterion
they know how to apply to their works.

TYPOGRAPHY (the reproduction of lettering by means of movable letter
types) was originally done by pressing the inked surface or "face" of a
letter made of wood or metal against a surface of paper or vellum. The
unevenness and hardness of paper, the irregularities of types (both in
respect of their printing faces and the dimensions of their "bodies")
and the mechanical imperfections of presses and printing methods made
the work of early printers notable for corresponding unevennesses,
irregularities and mechanical imperfections. To ensure that every
letter left its mark more or less completely and evenly, considerable
and noticeable impression was made in the paper. The printed letter was
a coloured letter at the bottom of a ditch.

The subsequent development of typography was chiefly die development
of technical improvements, more accurately cast types, smoother
paper, mechanically perfect presses. Apart from the history of its
commercial exploitation, the history of printing has been the history
of the abolition of the impression. A print is properly a dent made by
pressing; the history of letter-press printing has been the history of
the abolition of that dent.

But the very smooth paper and the mechanically very perfect presses
required for printing which shall show no "impression" can only be
produced in a world which cares for such things, and such a world is
of its nature inhuman. The industrial world of today is such, and it
has the printing it desires and deserves. In the industrial world
Typography, like house building and sanitary engineering, is one of the
necessary arts--a thing to be done in working hours, those during which
one is buoyed up by the knowledge that one is serving one's fellow men
and neither enjoying oneself like an artist nor praising God like a man
of prudence. In such a world the only excuse for anything is that it is
of service.

Printing which makes any claim on its own account, printers who give
themselves the status of poets or painters, are to be condemned;
they are not serving; they are shirking. Such is the tone of the
more romantic among men of commerce; and the consequence is a
pseudo-asceticism and a bastard aesthetics. The asceticism is only a
sham because the test of service is the profits shown in the accounts;
and the aesthetics is bastard because it is not founded upon the
reasonable pleasure of the mind of the workman and of his customer,
but upon the snobbery of museum students employed by men of commerce
to give a saleable appearance to articles too dull otherwise to please
even the readers of _The Daily Mail_.

Nevertheless, as we have already shown, commercial printing, machine
printing, industrial printing would have its own proper goodness if
it were studiously plain and starkly efficient. Our quarrel is not
with such a thing but only with the thing that is neither one nor the
other--neither really mechanically perfect and physically serviceable
nor really a work of art, i.e., a thing made by a man who, however
laughable it may seem to men of business, loves God and does what he
likes, who serves his fellow men because he is wrapped up in serving
God--to whom the service of God is so commonplace that it is as much
bad form to mention it as among men of business it is bad form to
mention profits.

There are, then, two typographies, as there are two worlds; and, apart
from God or profits, the test of one is mechanical perfection, and
of the other sanctity--the commercial article at its best is simply
physically serviceable and, per accidens, beautiful in its efficiency;
the work of art at its best is beautiful in its very substance and, per
accidens, as serviceable as an article of commerce.

The typography of Industrialism, when it is not deliberately
diabolical and designed to deceive, will be plain; and in spite of
the wealth of its resources--a thousand varieties of inks, papers,
presses and mechanical processes for the reproduction of the designs
of tame designers--it will be entirely free from exuberance and fancy.
Every sort of ornament will be omitted; for printers' flowers will not
spring in such a soil, and fancy lettering is nauseating when it is
not the fancy of type-founders and printers but simply of those who
desire to make something appear better than it is. Paradoxical though
it be, the greater the wealth of appliances, the less is the power of
using it. All the while that the technical and mechanical good quality
is increasing, the de-humanizing of the workmen is also increasing.
As we become more and more able to print finer and more elaborate
and delicate types of letter it becomes more and more intellectually
imperative to standardize all forms and obliterate all elaborations and
fancifulness. It becomes easier and easier to print any kind of thing,
but more and more imperative to print only one kind.

On the other hand, those who use humane methods can never achieve
mechanical perfection, because the slaveries and standardizations
of Industrialism are incompatible with the nature of men. Humane
Typography will often be comparatively rough and even uncouth; but
while a certain uncouthness does not seriously matter in humane works,
lack of uncouthness is the only possible excuse for the productions of
the machine. So while in an industrialist society it is technically
easy to print any kind of thing, in a humane society only one kind
of thing is easy to print, but there is every scope for variety and
experiment in the work itself. The more elaborate and fanciful the
industrial article becomes, the more nauseating it becomes--elaboration
and fancifulness in such things are inexcusable. But there is every
excuse for elaboration and fancy in the works of human beings, provided
that they work and live according to reason; and it is instructive to
note that in the early days of printing, when human exuberance had
full scope, printing was characterized by simplicity and decency; but
that now, when such exuberance no longer exists in the workman (except
when he is not at work), printing is characterized by every kind of
vulgarity of display and complicated indecency.

But, alas for humanity, there is the thing called compromise; and
the man of business who is also the man of taste, and he of taste
also who is also man of business will, in their blameless efforts
to earn a living (for using one's wits is blameless, and earning
a living is necessary), find many ways of giving a humane look to
machine-made things or of using machinery and the factory to turn out,
more quickly and cheaply, things whose proper nature is derived from
human labor. Thus we have imitation "period" furniture in Wardour
Street, and we have imitation "arts and crafts" in Tottenham Court
Road. The-man-of-business-who-is-also-man-of-taste will tend to the
"period" work, the-man-of-taste-who-is-also-man-of-business will tend
to the imitation handicrafts. And, in the printing world, there are
business houses whose reputation is founded on their resuscitations
of the eighteenth century, and private presses whose speed of output
is increased by machine-setting and gas engines. These things are
more deplorable than blameworthy. Their chief objectionableness lies
in the fact that they confuse the issue for the ordinary uncritical
person, and they turn out work which is neither very good nor very
bad. "Period" printing looks better than the usual vulgar products of
unrestrained commercialism, and there is no visible difference, except
to the expert, between machine-setting and hand-setting, or between
sheets worked on a hand-press and those turned out on a power-driven
Platen.

Nevertheless, even if these things be difficult to decide in
individual instances, there can be no sort of doubt but that as
industrialism requires a different sort of workman so it also turns out
a different kind of work--a workman sub-human in his irresponsibility,
and work inhuman in its mechanical perfection. The imitation of the
work of pre-industrial periods cannot make any important ultimate
difference; the introduction of industrial methods and appliances into
small workshops cannot make such workshops capable of competition with
"big business." But while false standards of good taste may be set up
by "period" work, this "good taste" is entirely that of the man of
business and his customers; it is not at all that of the hands--they
are in no way responsible for it or affected by it; on the other hand,
the introduction of mechanical methods into small workshops has an
immediate effect on the workmen. Inevitably they tend to take more
interest in the machine and less in the work, to become machine-minders
and to regard wages as the only reward. And good taste ceases to be the
result of the restraint put upon his conscience by the workman himself;
it becomes a thing imposed upon him by his employer. You cannot see the
difference between a machine-set page and one set by hand. No, but you
can see the difference between Cornwall before and after it became "the
English Riviera"; you can see the difference between riding in a hansom
and in a motor-cab--between a "cabby" and a "taxi-man"; you can see
the difference between the ordinary issue of _The Times_ today and its
ordinary issue a hundred years ago; you can see the difference between
an ordinary modern book and an ordinary book of the sixteenth century.
And it is not a question of better or worse; it is a question of
difference simply. Our argument here is not that Industrialism has made
things worse, but that it has inevitably made them different; and that
whereas before Industrialism there was one world, now there are two.
The nineteenth century attempt to combine Industrialism with the Humane
was necessarily doomed, and the failure is now evident. To get the best
out of the situation we must admit the impossibility of compromise; we
must, in as much as we are industrialists, glory in Industrialism and
its powers of mass-production, seeing that good taste in its products
depends upon their absolute plainness and serviceableness; and in so
much as we remain outside Industrialism, as doctors, lawyers, priests
and poets of all kinds must necessarily be, we may glory in the fact
that we are responsible workmen and can produce only one thing at a
time.

That if you look after goodness and truth beauty will take care of
itself, is true in both worlds. The beauty that Industrialism properly
produces is the beauty of bones; the beauty that radiates from the work
of men is the beauty of the living face.

                      COMPOSED IN PERPETUA TYPES




                            [Illustration]

                           FREDERIC W. GOUDY

           [Illustration]TYPES AND TYPE DESIGN[Illustration]

    The Syracuse University School of Journalism awarded its first
  medal of honor to F. W. G. in 1936, "for distinctive achievement in
   typographic design." His address then, reflecting the typographic
 philosophy and practice of two-score years, is reprinted as published
                      by the University in 1936.


It would be mere affectation on my part were I to pretend not to be
touched by the signal honor you extend to me this evening, and I would
be ungrateful indeed if I neglected to voice my very great appreciation
of your kindness. I wish that I might express that appreciation in
words that would leave no shadow of doubt in your minds as to the depth
and sincerity of my feeling.

I am not conscious of any outstanding reasons for the kind words spoken
here tonight of my work. At the same time I am under no illusions as to
the ultimate value of the work I have _attempted_ to do, although it
is, after all, merely the every-day work of an earnest craftsman who
endeavors to perform each task well and the next one, if possible, even
better; and withal no thought or expectation of acclaim.

My craft is a simple one. For nearly two score years it has been my
constant aim and endeavor to create a greater and more general esteem
for printing and type design; to give to printers and readers of print
more legible and more beautiful types than those in current use. This
has involved some little sacrifice; the missionary seldom acquires much
more than the satisfaction of work well done, and yet, on the whole, I
haven't done badly, since my work has brought me a wealth of friendship
beyond measure.

And now to the subject which has been assigned to me for this
occasion--something about types of the past, type revivals, and a bit
about type design, as I see it. I trust you will not find that my brief
postprandial attempt bears out Gay's lines too literally:

          _So comes the reckoning when the banquet's o'er,
          A dreadful reckoning, when men smile no more._

One hundred and twelve years ago type design was generally imagined to
be a matter that concerned only the letter cutter. J. Johnson, author
of _Typographia_ (published in 1824), wrote of a type face that the
printer needed only to "observe that its shape be perfectly true, and
that it lines or ranges with accuracy, and that by noting certain
mathematical rules the letter cutter may produce Roman characters of
such harmony, grace and symmetry as will please the eye in reading;
and by having their fine strokes and swells blended together in due
proportion, will excite admiration." He says further that "if the
letter stands even and in line, which _is the chief good quality in
letter_, it makes the face thereof sometimes to pass, though otherwise
ill-shaped." Type design as a profession evidently did not exist in
1824. And even today many printers are uninformed as to the various
steps that must be taken between the inception of a type face in the
designer's mind and its eventual appearance on the printed page.

Today the designing of type is practiced by few artists as a separate
craft; it is an humble art at best--and a minor one. Yet every user of
types demands in them certain artistic qualities, i.e., invention,
novelty, style, beauty, distinction (a few insist on legibility); most
of those users forget or do not realize that these are qualities an
artist only may secure, and even the artist cannot always insure that
his design will present all of them.

First: Invention requires that we soar above mere caprices of fashion
or the demands of passing fancy. Our letter forms have become fixed in
their essentials by long use and tradition, yet a study of all that has
gone before will enable the designer seeking new expressions to infuse
new life and character into traditional shapes and inspire him to
create new designs based on the broad impressions stored in the granary
of his mind.

Second: Novelty gives us some new impression suited to and brought
about by new conditions of life and environment--by the changes that
time has wrought. By novelty I do not mean, however, the imitation
novelty so frequently met with and presented as something new; too
often it means simply some older thing newly described. Achieving the
fantastic quality reminiscent of the "slimy trail" of _Art Nouveau_,
which you older ones will recall as rampant in the 1890's, produces
freaks of fashion in an attempt to be novel, but may not, necessarily,
always secure the novelty desired. Traditions of the past need not
be disregarded nor overlooked in order to meet the prejudices of the
present.

Just now a seemingly insatiable demand for novelty is giving us a
senseless and ridiculous riot of "beautiful atrocities." The inundation
of freak types is largely due to a revival of some former products of
ignorance bringing in their train new designs even more bizarre in the
attempt to secure "novelty"--a detestable word used frequently, I fear,
like charity, to cover a multitude of sins. It has no place in artistic
considerations, as a thing that really is good should be good for all
time. Sporadic outbreaks in the name of novelty inevitably occur from
time to time and fortunately have usually only their little day in the
sun before vanishing forever into the limbo of the forgotten.

I do not wish to imply that novelty itself is undesirable--by no
means; striving for newness keeps things fresh and alive. It is the
re-presentation of the extraordinarily ugly and bizarre types of
the middle of the last century with no exceptional artistic warrant
for their revival, in an attempt to do something different, that I
deprecate. Newness for its own sake only may not always be worth while.

I find it difficult to speak dispassionately of some of the types
advertisers are using nowadays, because I am too deeply steeped in
the traditions of the past to accept them. I cannot be accused of
intolerance, however. The best art of the designer, the highest skill
of the printer, and the clear, lucid argument of the advertisement
writer must be requisitioned. Yet in much of the typography of today
many of the new types display a marked avoidance of everything that
is plain, simple and legible. Why are simplicity and easy readability
no longer esteemed as desirable qualities in print? Why are these
outlandish characters selected? For four hundred years the Roman types
of the early Italian printers have furnished models to suit all tastes
and serve every purpose.

For several years past advertisers and even our magazine and book
printers have somewhat strayed from a definite standard of dignity
and beauty in the quest for novelty. Foreign types, imported to add a
touch of novelty to our advertising (types which, no doubt, are good
enough for the conditions in the bailiwicks that gave them birth), too
frequently impart to print a fantastic or a too fanciful effect when
used under the entirely different conditions found here. These types
are likely to impart to our printing an air of incongruity displeasing
to the trained taste. _En passant_, I am reminded of a suggestion
offered by Reinhardt, the scenic designer: "Do not try to inspire from
foreign ideas. Be interested in them, of course, and they will help to
fertilize your own."

Third: Style is a subtle quality that comes from an intelligent use
of a good tradition renewed and advanced into our own times; it is
a quality inseparable from the tools and materials employed, and is
not to be acquired simply by taking thought or by a determination to
attain it. Style is the living expression controlling both the form and
the vital structure of the vehicle which presents thought in tangible
form--an intimate and inseparable something in the work of a craftsman
wholly unconscious of style or of any definite aim towards beauty for
itself.

Fourth: Distinction is more difficult to secure, yet, when a type
presents an unassuming simplicity; when it expresses thought in every
detail; when it is clear, elegant, strong; nothing in it that is loose
and vague, no finesse of design, but showing clearly in every line the
spirit the designer has put into the body of his work, that type can
hardly fail of real distinction. To meet the demands of utility and to
preserve also an esthetic standard is the problem the type designer
must attempt to solve. Obviously a large order for a mere amateur (or
even for a professional designer).

As to legibility, I shall not here comment. Everyone knows (or thinks
he knows) just what constitutes it; I fear I do not, or I would never
permit myself consciously to make a type that was not the quintessence
of legibility.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I am frequently asked how I design a type face. There are so many
things that lead up to one that it is difficult to give a specific
reply. I once told a student that "I think of a letter and then mark
around the thought." That is hardly real designing. It may be easy to
think of one letter, but to think also of its twenty-five relations
which with it form the alphabet and so to mark around them that they
will combine in complete harmony and rhythm with each other and with
all--that is the difficult thing, the successful doing of which
constitutes design. What is the inspiration for a new face? That also
is difficult to answer. In the first place, it is hardly possible to
create an absolutely new type or one that will not be reminiscent of
the past.

It is quite within the province of the letter artist to take his
inspiration for a new face from any source--the lapidary inscriptions
of the first centuries of the Imperial age of Rome; a mediaeval brass
that marks the last resting place of a departed ruler; a manuscript
letter by some unsung scribe of the Renaissance, or an early type of
the golden age of typography. Or maybe he may even strive to put into
tangible form on his drawing board some vision from out of nowhere--the
realization of a chance thought straying through an idle reverie which
he will whip into a satisfactory medium of intellectual exchange. On
the other hand, he may prefer to attempt the re-creation of new letter
from the bones of a more ancient form, endeavoring to secure in it a
new expression of life and vigor, with new graces suited to our times
and our use.

If the designer chooses to disregard old types and go direct to
their source, the manuscript hands of the scribes, well, why not? By
revising their forms, refining them, eliminating their whimsicalities
and vagaries and formalizing their irregularities, he may meet, too,
the mechanical requirements and technical limitations of type founding.
This, probably, is the more legitimate method, since in this way he
will inspire from the real beginnings of our lower case forms. For
myself I am inclined to agree with a writer who maintains that "it
is doubtful whether the type designer benefits from a close study of
hand lettering," meaning of course the manuscript hands of the past.
Interesting as old manuscripts are, I find them of little practical
use as offering models for new types. Speaking for myself only I find
it more feasible to get my inspirations from a study of the earlier
types that appeal to me. They frequently offer opportunity for new
expression. With no attempt to copy their particular forms, or to make
changes merely in weight or serif, I endeavor rather to tear from them
the qualities and the spirit that makes them good, for incorporation in
my own letter shapes.

I realize, of course, that the letters I may select as my models were,
without doubt, inspired by some manuscript hand that personally I may
find offers little for use in my own work. With complete independence
of calligraphy I attempt, instead, to secure the negative quality
of unpretentiousness; I strive for the pure contour and monumental
character of the classic lapidary forms of the first centuries of the
Christian era; I endeavor in my work to avoid any bizarre quality or
exhibition of conscious preciosity. (It has been said that in this
latter aim I sometimes fail.)

Once in a while a type face by some other designer seems to present an
interesting movement or quality that I like. I take early opportunity
to make it mine, frankly and openly, in the same way that a writer
might use exactly the same words as another, but by a new arrangement
of them present a new thought, a new idea, or a new subtlety of
expression. Or as two painters using identical tools and colors, each
might produce a masterpiece, yet the work of one probably would not
resemble that of the other in any detail. By copying carefully a few
characters of the type that appeals to me drawn by another hand, I try
to secure in my own drawings some certain movement or rhythm his may
present. I soon discard my model and proceed from there, as it were,
under my own steam, and sometimes produce a face which my good friend
Kent Currie says "has an acid, typy quality" and (in substance) that it
is regular and well-ordered, that it has interest, color, movement, and
sometimes quaintness.

Several years ago I accepted a commission to make a type for a
magazine of large circulation. At that time it was my practice to make
drawings from which matrices were engraved for me by the late Robert
Wiebking of Chicago. His death occurred just about the time I was to
send him my originals for translation into "mats" from which to cast
the type. In order to carry out my arrangement with the magazine, and
finding difficulty in procuring the work elsewhere, I determined to
try doing also the mechanical work of matrix engraving myself. Like
Moxon, I "learnt it of my own genuine inclination," with no previous
instruction in the craft. With no engraving or casting plant ready to
my hand I began the getting together of the various paraphernalia of a
type foundry. Procuring machines for a type foundry was comparatively
simple; the operation of them, making patterns for use in the engraving
machines, the lining and fitting of the cast types, etc., all after I
had reached my sixtieth birthday, was something else. Looking back, I
am amazed at my temerity. It was literally a case of rushing in where
angels might well fear to tread. Yet, since that time I have engraved
many hundreds of matrices.

And now, one other personal note. It is my credo. For nearly two score
years I have made use and beauty the great _desiderata_. I have never
permitted myself intentionally to utilize the message I was attempting
to present, to serve as a mere framework or scaffolding upon which to
exploit my own skill, nor ever to allow my craft to became an end in
itself instead of a means only to a desirable and useful end.

                      COMPOSED IN DEEPDENE TYPES




           [Illustration]THEODORE LOW DE VINNE[Illustration]

                         _The Old and the New_

             A FRIENDLY DISPUTE BETWEEN JUVENIS AND SENEX

                   with a note by FREDERIC W. GOUDY

       Published by The Village Press, Marlboro, New York, 1933.


_Juvenis_: What is it that you admire in the types of old books? Don't
you love them more for their quaintness than for their beauty? I have
seen originals or accredited facsimiles of the best books of Gutenberg,
Jenson, Aldus, Kerver, Caxton, and other notable printers, but I prefer
modern types.

_Senex_: Then you have seen the pointed black-letter, the round gothic,
the aldine Italic, the flemish black, and the early Roman. Did not any
of these styles please you?

_Juvenis_: Not one. To try to read the pointed black of Gutenberg
and Kerver is as repelling as a walk through the crypts of an old
church; the round gothics are as scraggy as a heap of oyster shells;
the Aldine italics are squeezed as to width, elongated as to height,
and incongruously mated with absurdly small capitals; the flemish
black-letter is the 'tour de force' of a literary acrobat. In all these
characters I see bad drawing and disregard of proportion. The founding
is as bad as the design; some characters are fitted too near, others
too wide, and many letters are out of line.

_Senex_: You surely cannot censure Jenson's Roman for bad fitting?

_Juvenis_: I do except that, for Jenson was a good mechanic, and so
was Kerver. Their types are well fitted and neatly lined. But I have
small praise to give Jenson for his much admired Roman letter. Better,
no doubt, than any other Roman of the period, but was it perfection?
Bibliophiles forget that this Jenson Roman was out of fashion fifty
years after his death, and that his models have been altered by every
succeeding punch-cutter.

_Senex_: How, then, can you explain the favor shown to the recent types
of William Morris? His 'Golden' type is based on the Jenson model; his
'Troy' and 'Chaucer' types are modeled after the round gothic of the
fifteenth century.

_Juvenis_: I do not pretend to explain freaks of fashion in typography
any more than in religion or art or music. The Athenians who worshiped
an unknown or forgotten god have successors in every generation.
There are Englishmen, nursed in the Catechism, who try to be devout
Buddhists; there are Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, and Wagnerians.

The lover of singularity who can invent nothing that is new must hunt
up something that is old, or at least odd, to keep up his reputation
for discernment. It is enough for me to know that the literary world,
outside of Germany, moved by common impulse, discarded all the
early types. The sacred black-letter of Gutenberg, and other forms,
went to oblivion for good reason. All were of bad form and hard to
read--obscured by abbreviations, misuse of capital letters, absurd
divisions, and inconsistent orthography. Much as a student of our time
may profess admiration for early typography, he will not consult the
'Bible of Forty-two Lines' for a disputed text, when a more readable
edition is accessible.

_Senex_: You confound two features of typography that should be kept
separate. The shapes of early types should be considered apart from
the skill, or want of skill, in their compositors. The black-letter
types of the fifteenth century are often fair copies of the admirable
manuscripts of the period.

_Juvenis_: The black-letter of every early printer was but a servile
copy of the manuscript most attainable. Malformations were copied,
but the flowing graces of penmanship could not be reproduced in
mechanically square types. No punch-cutter of the period improved on
the manuscript copy. All the early books abound in infelicities of
design and cutting, indicating that the work was not as thoughtfully
done as similar work is done now. It is a begging of the question
to assume that the early punch-cutters were demigods in art. To say
that they were right is to say that Albrecht Dürer and Geoffroy Tory,
who wrote books on the true proportions of letters, and Granjon and
Garamond, who gave a lifetime to type-making, were wrong. I prefer to
accept the teachings of known artists as of higher authority.

_Senex_: Is not the difficulty of reading old black-letter due to its
unfamiliar abbreviations and to mannerisms in type-setting now out of
fashion? Would not modern types be obscure if similarly treated?

_Juvenis_: They would; but the fault begins with the shapes of the
printed letters. You note it in the modern German fraktur, always
a perplexity to every English-born student. The Germans themselves
practically admit its inferiority. Their scientific books are usually
in Roman. Their preference for Roman is a confession that Roman types
are better, and that the printers of the seventeenth century did wisely
in their general abandonment of pointed letters. The reading world had
outgrown them. Why should we revive them?

_Senex_: Let us not trouble ourselves about pointed letters. There is
no probability that they will ever be accepted by Americans for the
texts of ordinary books. Let us consider the Roman types that have been
in use by the Latin races and by English-speaking people for three
centuries. Are modern types as readable as those of Jenson? Here is his
Pliny of 1472, and here is the 'soprasilvio' of Bodoni, as exhibited in
his _Manuale Tipografico_ of 1818. Which is better?

_Juvenis_: I am surprised at the question. Every character in the
Bodoni type is correctly drawn; every system of uniform thickness,
every hair-line and serif sharp as a knife-edge. Curves are true and
graceful, angles exact; fitting and lining beyond criticism. In the
Jenson type there is not one perfect letter. The hair-lines are scant
and of unequal thickness, the serifs are stubby, the stems of uneven
width, the characters out of proportion. Raggedness of drawing and
roughness of cutting are not concealed by its fairly good fitting and
lining. No publisher of the last two centuries would dare to print, and
no reader consent to buy, a contemporary book in this type.

_Senex_: Can you not see something more in this Jenson type? Is it not
more readable? I put them side by side at a distance of ten feet, where
you can read the Jenson and cannot read the Bodoni.

_Juvenis_: True: but types in great primer are not made to be read at
ten feet distance.

_Senex_: True again; but the mannerisms that obscure the Bodoni type
at ten feet are more distressing in his small types, usually read at
the distance of fifteen inches. The over-sharp hair-line, the dazzling
serif, and the vanishing curve are more irritating in the smaller than
in the larger sizes. Ordinary eyesight does not seize at a glance the
entire face of modern type; it dimly sees hair-lines or serifs; it
deciphers the stems only; it sees but half of the letter, and guesses
at the invisible. The type of Bodoni is a wearying strain on the eye.

_Juvenis_: Your remarks do not fairly apply to readers of good sight.

_Senex_: They do apply to the majority of readers. It is a mistake to
make for ordinary texts types with lines that cannot be easily seen by
all.

_Juvenis_: If you think boldness of most importance in a type, why make
Jenson's type your model? Why not go back still farther? Why not take
up the lapidary letters of old Rome, Greece, or Etruria?

_Senex_: They are uncouth and wasteful of space. Designed to be
chiseled on stone, they are unfit for types. The 'Caroline minuscule,'
which is the basis of our Roman text letter, is more compact, quite as
irregular, and much more readable.

_Juvenis_: If you believe that there was a gradual improvement in the
shapes of letters between the first and fifteenth centuries, why stop
at the fifteenth? Why not admit that this improvement continues?

_Senex_: Because the changes that followed were not always
improvements. The faultless curves, sharp lines, and exact angles of
Bodoni were disfigurements made at the expense of readability. Types
are made to be easily read, not to show the skill of the designer. When
they fail in readability the fault is fatal. The proper development of
typography was checked by the invention of copper-plate that trod on
its heels. Its delicacy of line, its perfect graduation of shadows, its
vigorous blacks, and its facile rendering of a receding perspective
put out of fashion all strong and manly work on wood. Dürer's 'Little
Passion,' Holbein's 'Dance of Death,' and Vostre's _Book of Hours_ were
put aside, and the insipid effeminacies of overworked line-engraving
took their place. Punch-cutters of the sixteenth century thought
that printing would be improved if they imitated the methods of
line-engravers, and so they cut their types sharper and thinner.
They would not see that relief engraving and incised engraving are
diametrically opposed in theory and practice, and that the imitation
of one process by the other is impossible. Repeated failures did
not check this desire to imitate. Increasing refinements in types
produced a corresponding degradation in printing. The inferiority
of the average book of the eighteenth century is largely due to the
so-called 'improved' faces of type. The most irrepressible imitator of
copper-plate effects was Bodoni of Parma. William Morris is right in
saying that his imitations of copper-plate delicacy indicate a real
abasement of the typographic art.

_Juvenis_: If correct drawing, exact proportion, and high finish are
merits in other arts, why should they be faults in type-making?

_Senex_: 'Finish' is a merit only when it improves; when it
over-elaborates, when it leads the reader to think more of the means
employed than of the object sought, it is a fault. Bodoni's careful
drawing and finical cutting defeat the purpose for which types were
made. They do not fully show the letter; they do show Bodoni; and it
is a fair supposition that he was more intent on showing his skill
than he was on aiding the reader. Your ideal of merit in types is that
of mechanical precision. You forget that letters are of irregular
shapes, with intent to make them distinct. The more you prune away the
irregularities, the more indistinct they become. Readers do not isolate
and critically examine each letter; they read words at a glance. They
prefer characters with enough of irregularity to arrest the eye and
fix the thought of the writer. It is with types as with penmanship.
Has it been your misfortune to revise a long manuscript written in
feminine style with a crow-quill pen, and with admirable precision,
but with almost invisible hair strokes? Recollect your exasperation at
its mechanical precision and wearisome monotony. How gratefully you
turned to a jagged and masculine but readable style of penmanship,
in which you were content to have all the rules of writing-masters
violated! Recall these experiences, and then understand why I prefer
old types. Not because they are old, or of faultless form, but because
the letters are more distinct. They were made, not to show the skill of
the punch-cutter, but to help the reader; and they deserve the credit
due to straightforward workmanship.


                      A NOTE BY FREDERIC W. GOUDY

_In 1898 the name "De Vinne" meant little more to me than the name of
a then popular display printing type, until the day, in a book-shop
in Detroit, I chanced on a copy of_ The Book-lover's Almanac _for
1896. Of the eight or ten articles listed in the table of contents
one was by Theo. Low De Vinne. The article was written in the form of
a discussion between "Senex" and "Juvenis" on the comparative merits
of the early type faces and those of Bodoni and his successors. This
was, I believe, my first realization that "De Vinne" was the name of a
living personality._

_I was just becoming interested in the history of the typography of
books and was making also a closer study of type design, but it did not
occur to me that such study would ever lead to the actual practise of
the art I have since made peculiarly my own...._

_When I first read Mr. De Vinne's article it seemed to me that "Senex"
had rather the better of the argument, indeed, I have not found, during
the nearly two score years that have elapsed, any statements elsewhere
that have changed materially the opinions then formed as to the
soundness of his asseverations...._

_If I were asked to say what I think has been the greatest single
influence in my work as a type designer I would be hard put to find
a satisfactory reply; but there is no doubt in my mind that the
principles set forth in this article and in his book_ Notable Printers
of Italy During the 15th Century _have certainly loomed large in
crystallizing the character of my types. The consistency of thought
he displayed, his sound knowledge of old types, his fairness in the
consideration of each moot point, the simple yet lucid presentation of
his ideas and opinions interested me; they influenced my own thought,
and in turn are reflected in my work._

_If, to my more mature consideration of this discussion there is any
lapse of the author's pen, it seems to me it is, that "Senex" failed
to stress more strongly a demand for greater grace and beauty in types
in closer combination with legibility. I feel that the proper standard
of beauty in types basically resides in their utility, but there are,
nevertheless, secondary esthetic attributes which may be included
without any sacrifice of life and vigor and legibility. A certain
rugged beauty is perceived without difficulty, and irregularities
which in isolated or individual characters, might seem objectionable
from the standpoint of grace alone, may prove highly desirable in the
composed line. Readability is of course to be considered above every
other quality, because, failing this it fails utterly, regardless of
every other excellence; yet, while striving for legibility, beauty of
form should also be given almost equal consideration.... I venture to
disagree with Senex's statement that "the lapidary letters of old Rome
are uncouth and ... unfit for types"...._

_Marlboro, N. Y., May_, 1933




                            [Illustration: Bruce Rogers]

                        PARAGRAPHS ON PRINTING

  From _Paragraphs on Printing_. Copyright 1943 by William E. Rudge's
         Sons. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher


_NOTE: The text for this book on the functions of the book designer
was elicited from B.R. in talks with James Hendrickson. These informal
observations on typographical problems were accompanied by numerous
reproductions of pages of Mr. Rogers' design, by way of illustration
and example._

You think of the _book_, the size and shape of the book, before you
consider type or anything else. What kind of a volume should it be? In
what particular form and in what face of type would _you_ like to read
it? The type and format should be governed by your conception of the
character of the subject matter. As an instance take Conrad's tale,
_The Tremolino_, recently printed. It is a slight but vivid story, to
be read almost at a glance, so it would have been a misfit to make it
larger, say in octavo size. The vividness is indicated by the dramatic
little cuts in color, the slightness by the dimensions and open
character of the pages.

After the size is determined the selection of a suitable type
comes next. And that depends usually on what types are available
in the office in which the book is to be made. Even this is not
always necessary, as many offices have composition done outside by
type-composition firms, so that an almost unlimited choice may be
yours. There are so many varieties of type now, that for almost any
size or kind of book you plan you will readily find an appropriate
face. At any rate it isn't so vitally important as other things.

                            [Illustration]

It is a great advantage in laying out a page, especially a title or
display page, if the designer can handle pen or pencil; and the more
definitely he can represent the type he proposes to use, the greater
saving of time and expense there will be when it comes to the setting
of it. It is true that some masters of printing do not resort to
sketching--at least not more than mere lines on the paper, labeled
with the kinds and sizes of type they represent. But to visualize the
completed page in such slight indications is an unusual gift, and if
one does not possess this gift there is the probability that the first
setting of the page will have to be torn apart several times before a
satisfactory one is produced. It is sometimes well worth while to work
a page out very carefully, even in pen-and-ink, so that it will be a
pretty close approximation to the finished thing; especially if you
have to submit the scheme to a customer for his approval, or if he asks
to see alternative treatments.

Of course, after many years of familiarity with type faces, it isn't
necessary to draw them accurately for your own guidance, even though
you should possess that ability; but some nevertheless find it a
pleasant thing to see the page take form under their pencil or pen
before it goes into actual type. Frequently, however, there is a sense
of disappointment in seeing the first type proof, for the freedom and
swing of your sketch has usually vanished in its translation into type;
and the more formal the style of type the less it will retain the
quality of your sketch.

                            [Illustration]

Making an "allusive" format for a book--that is, casting it in the
style of the period of the original text--is in a small way something
like planning the stage setting for a play. An up-to-date style for
an ancient text would compare with staging _Hamlet_ in modern dress.
However novel and effective in its own way, you feel it to be strange,
and this sense of strangeness is an annoying distraction; you are
forced to think of the setting and the designer rather than of the text.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The character of the text to be printed is of course the first thing
to consider in selecting the kind of type; and the number of pages
to which the book will probably run is the determining factor as to
what size of type is possible. The width and length of the type page
are then to be proportioned to the paper page, which in turn also
helps to determine the size of the type. All these considerations are
interlocking.

There have been several rules formulated for page proportions. One is
that the width of the page should approximate one-half of the diagonal.
Another is that the length of line should be one-half more than the
length of a line of the twenty-six lower-case letters of the type used.
But all such rules are only guides, to be discarded when the effect
you are after seems to require something else; this something else to
be determined only by the judgment of the designer and his feeling for
the appearance of the page. In the reproduction of the styles of early
typography the designer should avoid setting small type in too wide a
measure. The old printers in their folio volumes did not seem to mind
very long lines of comparatively small type. But most of these ancient
books in Roman type were never intended for rapid reading. They were
generally Latin texts where the eye follows the line better than in
English or French composition. Latin composition naturally makes more
beautiful pages on account of the preponderance of short letters--m, n,
u, etc., with comparatively few ascenders and descenders. The evenness
of spacing that the early printers got came from their abundant use of
Latin abbreviations and their indifference as to how many consecutive
word divisions occurred at the ends of lines, but it was never a
conscious effort to obtain what is called "texture" in the page. There
should be no laboring to produce a perfectly spaced page but rather an
endeavor to avoid a badly spaced one.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The amount of leading that a page requires depends on so many factors
that it is difficult to give any fixed method of procedure. The kind of
type, the size of type, the length of line and the general character of
the text all bear on this point. Generally speaking, most types should
be at least slightly leaded, especially if the lines are fairly long.
This helps the eye to catch the following line in rapid reading more
easily than when the type is set solidly. The solid pages were usually
adopted when old-style types were used exclusively; but when modern
type came in, beginning with Bodoni, the custom of leading, sometimes
double-leading, arose. The effect of these new types was helped by
a generous amount of white paper between the lines. This applies to
Bodoni, Bulmer, and the Scotch face and their derivatives. Antique
types were, however, occasionally very freely leaded, especially in
Spanish books of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

The conventional use of quotation marks is to place a double mark at
the beginning and end of the passage quoted, with single marks for
any quotations within it. In books with much conversation the use of
double quotes frequently results in very mottled typography, and for
many years some English printers have adopted the single mark for the
major quotations, using double marks only if an inner quote occurs.
This violates, a little, one's sense of relative importance, but in
a book where there are only simple quotations there is no reason why
the single mark should not suffice, much to the visual improvement of
the typography. There is some possibility of confusion if the last
word of the extract should chance to be a possessive plural, with
an apostrophe, as the two marks are identical; but this occurs so
infrequently as to be negligible.

Inverted commas were used for opening quotes in most founts until
comparatively recent years, but now a separate pattern is provided for
most founts. Reversed, instead of inverted commas now accompany many
founts, particularly the reproductions of late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century types, at which time they were first introduced.

French, Spanish and other continental founders furnish a special design
of marks, « »; but these look rather strange to Anglo-Saxon eyes.

In Elizabethan printing the quotation marks sometimes ran entirely
down the margins of the extracts, and if, as was frequently the case,
the page was enclosed with rules, they were often placed outside
the rules. This treatment occurs in one of the handsomest books of
that period, _Nobilitas Politica vel Civilis_, printed in 1608 by
William Jaggard, the printer of the First Folio fifteen years later.
The _Nobilitas_ is generally accounted the masterpiece of his press,
and in itself comprises nearly all of the various typographical
features of books of that time. Large and small types, Roman, Italic,
black-letter and Anglo-Saxon, both solid and leaded pages, tabular
work with handsome braces, side notes, woodcut initials, head-pieces
and tailpieces, and a series of costume plates engraved on copper and
printed within the rules on folioed blank pages left for them in the
form--all go toward making a book that is a compendious example for
students of Elizabethan typography.

                            [Illustration]

Red is the most satisfactory secondary color with black, and you will
often find that it is better to use just one spot of color on the page.
In using red for an occasional display line, blue-red or purple-red or
orange-red should be avoided. A red such as the early printers had, a
full-bodied, rather dull vermilion, which will hold up well with the
black, is the most successful. If it is desirable to employ the blue
for a border or an initial it shows up much more brilliantly when
the design is in white on a solid or stippled ground of the blue. An
outline design in blue is too light in mass to accompany the black of
the type. But black and blue alone are never so pleasing a combination
as when red is introduced as the second color, with blue as the third.

The black for the text or reading types should be intense without being
glossy, because the gloss causes a reflection of light and interferes
with legibility. The same objection does not apply to colors, for a
moderate gloss enriches them and overcomes a sort of dustiness that
their surfaces take on.

The text pages of most books should be printed in black ink.[36] The
tendency of a young printer is often to try for novelty by printing
with color rather than with black, not realizing that most types were
not designed for anything but black on white. If, however, the job is
somewhat aside from the usual run of books, and is not of too great
extent, a brown or green ink may be substituted for black if the tint
be dark enough to afford perfect legibility. But the result then
acquires something of the character of an object of art rather than a
book.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Letter-spacing is often misused. It is safe to say that lower-case
type should practically _never_ be letter-spaced, for the individual
letters were designed for close combination with other letters of the
alphabet. If it becomes necessary to fill out a line it is preferable
to put all the extra space between the words even though the resultant
"holes" are distressing to the eye. Sometimes with very large types
it is permissible to letter-space in a minor degree, as the spaces
between the letters naturally are larger and letter-spacing does not
detract too much from the appearance of the line, especially if it is
distributed according to the irregular space between the different
letters as normally set.

With capitals or upper-case letters the conditions are different.
Then it is frequently a great advantage to use letter-spaces, even
considerably; but this depends upon the general style of the typography
adopted for the book. In the hands of some contemporary printers the
Aldine practice of wide letter-spacing of small capitals has been
followed quite skilfully in title- or subtitle lines, chapter headings,
and other display work. This is of particular advantage with the rather
heavy-faced modern types, i.e., Scotch, Bodoni, etc.

It is well to avoid too many, and too open letter-spaced lines in any
kind of display composition, for the effect is sometimes disastrous.
Baskerville was very fond of letter-spacing and most of his work is, in
that respect, extremely ugly.[37] He sometimes pushed spacing to the
point of absurdity; notably in his great Bible, where in the heading of
the Book of Job he set the letters J O B in capitals of about 48-point
size with three inches of space between them. It could hardly be called
a word, but rather just a bad job of type-setting.

The practice of letter-spacing to produce blocked-out lines of
capitals must be done with great caution and skill or else a very
uneven texture will be produced. Frequently it is better to abandon
the idea of a block of type if the spacing cannot be done with a
fairly uniform effect. It is a mistake to start with a determination
to produce a block of type and then to persist in it at any cost of
legibility or appearance. When lines of capitals are set without
leading, letter-spacing should never be used. The leading should be
in proportion to the spacing in order to keep the continuity of the
lines of type, otherwise you will produce columns of letters instead of
lines. It is hardly necessary to say that the best letter-spacing is
not done with uniform spaces between the letters. The spacing on either
side of a letter should be determined by the shape of the adjacent
letters. Most compositors have now learned to use spaces according to
the shape of the letters, but the cutting of such letters as V, W, to
make them set closer than their natural width is usually very much
overdone. The new logotypes cut for this purpose are equally faulty
in this respect. The resulting effect is more noticeable and more
objectionable than the natural setting of the type would be. Anything
that strikes the eye as strange or unusual in a line of type is to be
avoided.

Periods and commas of letter-spaced capitals should not be set off from
the last letter of the word, regardless of the amount of spacing used
elsewhere in the line.

Colons and semicolons have traditionally been set apart from the word
they follow, whether in capitals or lower case. In old books they are
frequently centered in the space between the words where they occur.
Exclamation and interrogation points should if possible be set off
with thin spaces because they often form disagreeable and confusing
combinations with the last letter of the word, such as ff!, ll!, f?,
etc.

                 COMPOSED IN CENTAUR AND ARRIGHI TYPES


                              FOOTNOTES:

[36] Of the more than half-thousand books that Mr. Rogers has designed,
only four come to mind as having the text matter printed in anything
other than black; and these four were all slight volumes, more or less
in the gift-book classification.

[37] "When we look at his books we think of Baskerville; while to look
at the work of Jenson is to think but of its beauty, and almost to
forget that it was made with hands!" UPDIKE, _Printing Types_, II, p.
116.




                     ADVENTURER WITH TYPE ORNAMENT
                         [Illustration: B.R.]

                           _Paul A. Bennett_

Revised and amended from P.M., Vol. II, No. 5, New York, January 1936.


To anyone who has set or handled type, the achievements of Bruce Rogers
in combining decorative type units to form a design are extraordinary.
This may seem undiluted enthusiasm; actually and sincerely it is but
simple fact.

How? Why? Only a detailed examination of a particular B.R. design with
type ornaments will reveal. An examination, that is, accompanied by
simultaneous scanning of a proof of the individual elements comprising
the design. When one sees the units alone--some of them so seemingly
useless that one wonders that anything, even second-rate stuff, could
possibly be done with such drab material--then one appreciates the
typographic magic B.R. has accomplished.

_How_ he sees anything in some of the units he uses so dexterously, I
don't know. When and how he first became interested in doing designs
with type ornaments is worth considering.

His experiments date back to Riverside Press days, though in
that period no attempts were made to use type ornament except by
conventional combinations into borders or head-pieces. But even
at that time he had several seventeenth-century flowers recut
for the decoration of a collection of early American documents,
titled _Sailors Narratives of Voyages Along the New England Coast,
1524-1624_, edited by George Parker Winship.

Interest in combining type ornaments was shown again while at the
University Press in Cambridge, England, during 1918-19, but he
developed it there into nothing more than the revival of two or
three other earlier ornaments which were used, as at Riverside, in
conventional ways. A page of his scrapbook shows also a number of
trials with Egyptian hieroglyphs, but apparently nothing came of these.

The germ of his allusive use of ornaments is probably to be found in
the "Goosefest" menu which he concocted at Carl Rollins' Montague
Press; when at the bottom of an elaborate bill of fare three of Will
Bradley's strutting little figures are set (or laid) flat on their
backs in a row, with the legend, "Turn over (not us but the leaf)."

The earliest traceable use of ornaments and punctuation marks that
in combination bear directly upon the text thus decorated was in the
heading for the first page of _The Symbol and the Saint_, where a line
of parentheses, a cross and three dolphins symbolize the overseas
quest of the hero of the tale. This same motif was developed and
elaborated later in _Joseph Conrad the Man_, _The Ancient Mariner_,
and other pieces. His scrapbook shows many unused variations on this
theme. The sea and leaping dolphins and palms seem to be his favorite
preoccupation.

                            [Illustration]

Probably the most difficult compositions of this kind he has produced
are to be found in Conrad's unfinished novel, _The Sisters_; where in a
space the width of the page and one-quarter to one-half inch in depth
may be found suggestions of illimitable Russian wheat fields, Paris
with its mansard roofs and French roads leading into it, a farewell
scene at sunset on a winding Spanish road, etc., each based upon some
phrase or paragraph in the story itself.


                            [Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

Most certainly B.R.'s accomplishments surpass those decorative
combinations of type ornaments shown in early printers' and
type-founders' specimens--yes, even including the foremost achievements
of the hallowed rule benders.

Little research is necessary to support these rather inclusive
statements. An excellent example is the _Utopia_ title page, done for
the Limited Editions Club. Here is swirling movement in a border, if
ever you saw it. And accomplished, mainly, with two traits of ornament
and their reverses. The entire border took but several more.

                            [Illustration]

Setting them out individually, doesn't give a hint of their
possibilities. Yet look at the result of their use by B.R., scan the
design closely to discover just where and how each element is placed
with such telling effect--and you begin to appreciate the man's ability.

Another example--old stuff B.R. will call it--is the title page of a
little Christmas book issued a dozen years ago by Rudge. Could one
reasonably expect anything remotely approaching typographic whimsy from
a few typographic toy soldiers, a dog, an elephant, a few Christmas
trees, a half moon and some stars? Just glance at _The Symbol and the
Saint_ title page though, and see how B.R.'s subtle skill utilized
material teetering toward the junk pile.

"Never," your perceptive collector will say, "has anything more
masterful been done with type ornaments than in the Grolier Club
_Pierrot of the Minute_." Few would disagree, for if ever there was
a typographic jewel, the _Pierrot_ is it. Yet B.R., in discussing
it critically, termed it "French millinery. Probably all right for
its purpose. Rather over-decorated, but then the poem itself seems
over-decorative."

                            [Illustration]

There are dozens of other examples of B.R.'s mastery of typographic
decoration. But space is not limitless, and I want particularly to
say something about some designs with Linotype ornaments (drawn by T.
M. Cleland) that Mr. Rogers devised a few years ago for the Linotype
Company. These were used for the first time in the insert discussing
the auction prices of twenty B.R. books, which appeared in _Barnacles
From Many Bottoms_, several of which are shown on pages 290, 299 and
300.

That "something" may best be told, I believe, by excerpts from letters
written to a Company executive, in April and May 1931, by B.R., who
then was in London:

"... In an odd hour I got to playing about with some of the Cleland
ornaments, cutting them out of a specimen and pasting them into a
design which finally evolved itself into several amusing compositions.
Later on it occurred to me that you might be able to use them in some
piece....

"Having only a limited number of proofs, and no slugs whatever, I was
able to work out the idea in only the roughest fashion--not fit to show
anyone--but the principal one of the designs is for a page heading ...
or the elements composing it could be used singly--as tail pieces,
initial letters, etc.

"This probably is an impractical idea [a suggestion by Mr. Rogers on
how the material might be used], but I only make it to put into action
more or less work that I have already done to save it from the scrap
basket--work that might be useful to your firm as a demonstration of
what can be done with some of your product. I really don't think anyone
has yet worked out the possibilities of your ornamental material, much
of which is the best on the market."

                            [Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

Additional proofs of the Cleland ornaments were sent immediately to Mr.
Rogers in London. With them he made eight designs, cutting the proofs
and pasting the ornaments to show the desired effect. This tree, for
instance, was used on the title page of the _Barnacles_ insert:

                            [Illustration]

This was printed from a line engraving made direct from Mr. Rogers'
paste-up, and used "as is" to show how accurately his layouts for this
type of work reach the composing-room.

A month later, in May 1931, Mr. Rogers returned his layouts with
this note: "... I have only just been able to complete the designs
I had begun.... One or two other combinations occurred to me, which
I have also put in--but we could go on endlessly, almost, when once
started on this kind of thing.... I would have built up the designs
with impressions from sections of a slug, had you sent an inch or two
of each unit; but it is perhaps better, though slower, to cut and
paste proofs, as each cutting is a guide to the compositor as to how
and where trimming or beveling the ornaments are necessary. But only
a few such trimmings are required, and all the bevelings are at 45
degrees--as is the diagonal composition of the oak tree heads.

"If at all possible I would like to have a chance to revise proofs of
these, before they are actually printed--but if that isn't feasible,
then I must rely on the compositors getting the closest possible
approximation to my pasted-up designs. As close setting as possible
is the secret of most work of this kind. The various parts must
hang together well--though I do not mind a slight indication at the
joints that they are made of individual pieces of type. I once had
an over-zealous electrotyper fill up all the joints with solder--and
ruined the appearance of the design--it looked like a drawn one."

It wasn't possible to show Mr. Rogers what had been done with his
layouts for the insert in _Barnacles_, which was essentially a surprise
book distributed as a keepsake at a dinner in his honor.

The "fighting cocks," to cite one instance, were originally suggested
by B.R. to be used to dress a page folio at the bottom of the page; in
the insert they were raised to the top of the page and printed with his
initials. Other slight adaptations of similar character were taken in
that piece of printing.

                            [Illustration]

"Typographic whimsy," wrote Carl Purington Rollins in
_B.R.--America's Typographic Playboy_, in 1927, "is a pretty
difficult achievement. The compositor at the case is too much concerned
with the practical minutiæ of his craft to have much time for such
trivialities, and the man who designs printing at a draughting
board is apt to find his humor, if he attempts it in type, limping
like a thrice-told jest. Mr. Rogers has had the advantage of enough
familiarity with type to know what can be done, and he has been able
at times to work with compositors who take a large and robust view of
their calling."

That "whimsy" Mr. Rollins had reference to lies in many of B.R.'s more
ephemeral efforts, frequently reproduced. It is reflected to a measure,
by _The Symbol and the Saint_ page. But there is considerably more than
whimsy in the type ornament designs by B.R. These have graced dozens
of books of varying subjects ... and the marvel of it all is, to me,
that the man never repeats himself--he swings off on a new tack ...
adventurous, exploring, mastering new trails, scattering typographic
inspiration for dozens of others, pointing up paths they previously
never even suspected.


_Postscript_, 1951:

It is fitting to add a note concerning one of
B.R.'s more distinguished recent projects, the great folio Bible
designed for The World Publishing Company, which was four years in the
making.

The design of the World Bible employed decorative treatment for the
bordered title page, the sixty-six book openings, initial letters
and numerous tailpieces. "These, together with the type selected [a
revised, special cutting of Goudy New-style], are intended to give a
slightly oriental flavor to the volume," B.R. pointed out, "indicative
of the Syriac and Hebrew sources of the text on which the King James
translators based their classic version."

In discussing the matter of ornaments in the Bible with the publishers,
B.R. revealed his thinking concerning their use: "... Most of the Books
will probably not begin at the top of the page and the use of ornaments
are to me necessary to separate the end of the preceding book from the
title of the following one.

                            [Illustration]

"The Bible has always been a book on which much decoration and
illustrations have been lavished, and there is no reason in tradition
why it should be treated solemnly in that respect. The very first
edition (of which I have specimen sheets and a whole Bible printed
from the same type and with the same decorations by the same printer,
twenty-five years later, 1635) is just peppered with woodcut
decorations and type ornaments. So we have a good precedent for a
decorated treatment--if any were needed. You know the Bible is on the
whole one of the most exciting texts in existence, and the modern
'practical' treatment of it as mainly a book of devotion is ignoble, to
say the least...."

Some of the typographic decoration and initials used in the Bible
are included here. William Targ's detailed account, _The Making
of the Bruce Rogers World Bible_, contains most of the decorative
elements--initials, tailpieces and chapter initials--and reveals the
intimate story of the progress of the book's production through the
four years. It was published by World in 1949, in a limited edition of
1875 copies, 500 of which were for sale.

                 COMPOSED IN CENTAUR AND ARRIGHI TYPES

  [Illustration: Book labels devised with typographic ornament by B.
  R. In the originals, a second color was used for each excepting the
                               Reydel.]




                 SOME TENDENCIES IN MODERN TYPOGRAPHY
                            [Illustration]

                       _Daniel Berkeley Updike_

From _Some Aspects of Printing Old and New_ by D. B. Updike. Copyright
 1941 by the author. Reprinted by permission of the Providence Public
                  Library, Providence, Rhode Island.


Not very long since I was asked by a printer to what extent he should
accept or avoid modern trends in the design of types and books. I
attempt here to answer that question.

I have a friend, connected with one of the great companies supplying
machines for type composition. Not long since he spoke to me in
unflattering terms of the examples of typography shown at an exhibition
of the products of the Bauhaus School, originally of Weimar and
later of Munich. He protested against a practice there manifested
of discarding capital letters and depending solely on those in the
lower-case. I consoled him by showing him a French book, printed
entirely in this style. This volume, entitled _Typographie Économique_,
was published in Paris in 1837 and so far as it had any influence on
printing, then or later, is as dead as Queen Anne. The author, the
Count de Lasteyrie, who promoted this scheme, was one of a race of
French scientists, of some intellectual and social importance--one of
the daughters of Lafayette married into that family. In the eighteenth
century no less a person than the German writer Grimm tried a similar
typographical plan. In the Fairy Tales containing "Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs," later compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the
practice was not continued. This supports the contention that many
new and disturbing experiments, under the patronage of distinguished
names, are merely survivals or revivals of ancient failures. Thus in
the light of experience, there is in Bauhaus typography nothing for my
acquaintance--or anybody else--to be excited about.

Now Bauhaus typography is of the essence of modernism. That its
position may be fairly stated I quote the following from a _Bauhaus
Year Book_:--_verbatim_ and (I may add) _literatim_:

 ["] why should we write and print with two alphabets? both a large and
 a small sign are not necessary to indicate one single sound.

 _A_ = _a_

 we do not speak a capital A and a small a.

 we need only a single alphabet. it gives us practically the same
 result as the mixture of upper and lower-case letters, and at the
 same time is less of a burden on all who write--on school children,
 students, stenographers, professional and business men. it could be
 written much more quickly, especially on the type-writer, since the
 shift key would then become unnecessary, typewriting could therefore
 be more quickly mastered and typewriters would be cheaper because of
 simpler construction, printing would be cheaper, for fonts and type
 cases would be smaller, so that printing establishments would save
 space and their clients money. with these common sense economies in
 mind ... the bauhaus made a thorough alphabetical house-cleaning in
 all its printing, eliminating capitals from books, posters, catalogs,
 magazines, stationery and even calling cards.

 dropping capitals would be a less radical reform in english. indeed
 the use of capital letters occurs so infrequently in english in
 comparison with german that it is difficult to understand why such a
 superfluous alphabet should still be considered necessary.["]

Now in German printing all nouns have capital letters. In the sentence
"A Dog chases a Cat into a Barn," dog, cat, barn are all capitalized.
No one can be blamed for wanting to be rid of so much capitalization.
But when Germans purge anything the innocent invariably suffer with
the guilty. Thus all capitals must go. While it may have overcome a
difficulty felt in Germany, this imported missionary zeal corrects
no difficulty in the printing of English prose or poetry. In some
instances such a custom brings about surprising results. Suppose,
for example, a newspaper says "the white house favors black and
prefers even green to a dyed-in-the-wool red." To make the sentence
intelligible would need the addition of a number of words--which would
not be _typographie économique_! We need labour this point no further
but leave these experiments to the advertising of Coty and Elizabeth
Arden. Such effects have what is called attention value--like Neon
signs--but I am not considering that kind of typography. I have,
however, here traced the source of a current fashion of printing signs
and advertisements without capital letters.

I have been classed by my work as a conservative, but I am a liberal
conservative or a conservative liberal--whichever you like or dislike.
All I wish to conserve, either in traditionalism or modernism, is
common sense. What little I have was gained by experience. I regard
many typographic experiments with good will and many traditional
viewpoints with tolerance. I agree wholeheartedly with neither. I
remember--or try to do so--that every generation has in turn to be
told that there was once a man named Caesar, who wrote a very dull
book called the _Commentaries_, of which the first sentence is all
that most people remember; that the makers of Baker's Chocolate did
not invent the familiar picture of a chocolate girl, which was an
eighteenth-century painting by Jean Etienne Liotard now in a Dresden
picture gallery, and that William Blake did not write, but only
illustrated, the Book of Job. We who have long known these things
forget that people are born not knowing them. We should therefore look
tenderly on many typographic experiments. To us elders they may seem
akin to lighting a fire with kerosene or applying one's tongue to metal
in zero temperatures, but it is by such unwise ventures that we outgrow
them. And as I have spent a long life learning, and to most questions
do not yet know the answers, I have no right to frown on more youthful
and enterprising enquirers.

Obviously some of the eccentricities of present-day typography are
a natural reflection of that rather tortured world in which we find
ourselves. If art, the drama, literature, and music reflect current
trends of life it is natural that printing should in a measure do
so. If we throw overboard old standards of conduct, we may far more
readily throw over old standards of taste. When one casts a convention
away as useless and outmoded, we often learn for the first time why
it was there! It is urged that fuller expression of individuality,
unhampered by rules, is development. It seems to me more accurate to
say that through the experience of trying these experiments development
comes--though not always of a kind expected. Such development
ought never to stop until in the exact sense of the word we are
"accomplished"--finished--which few live to be.

The _problem_ is to distinguish between a true development, and a
false one. In judging either modernistic or retrospective typography,
that is what must be decided. Do these developments--wise or otherwise,
produce a well-made and readable book--in short a good book? "In the
printing of books meant to be read," says an authority, "there is
little room for 'bright' typography. Even dullness and monotony in
the type-setting are far less vicious to a reader than typographical
eccentricity or pleasantry. Cunning of this sort is desirable, even
essential in the typography of propaganda, whether for commerce,
politics, or religion because in such printing only the freshest
survives inattention. But the typography of books, apart from the
category of narrowly limited editions, requires an obedience to
convention which is almost absolute--and with reason."

It is the fashion, just now, to decry typographic conventions. Some
conventions and traditions deserve to be decried and some have already
been laughed out of existence. There are, however, good and bad
conventions and traditions in printing, just as there are true and
false developments, and the trick is to know which is which! Convention
and particularly tradition are, generally, the crystallized result
of past experiments, which experience has taught us are valuable. In
some of the extreme modernistic typography a little more tradition
might come in handy. The trouble with the modernist is that he seems
afraid not to throw everything overboard and mistakes eccentricity for
emancipation. Thus some books of today seem to be the arrangement of a
perverse and self-conscious eccentricity. Such printing is often the
work of eager, ambitious, and inexperienced men, and because they are
young and God is good, one can afford to be patient; sure that they
will, in the long run, outgrow the teething, mumps, and measles of
typography. Their convalescence will possibly be hastened by meditating
on the saying of Lord Falkland that "when it is not necessary to
change, it is necessary not to change."

No movement ever accomplishes all that its first promoters intended
or hoped for; almost all movements make some lasting contributions to
our common stock. Every new idea, every new invention brings along with
its expected benefits unforeseen evils. Modernistic architecture is
at present exciting because new and unusual; when more common it will
become commonplace. When it becomes difficult to differentiate the
exterior of a modernistic church from a warehouse, we may get very,
very tired of it. Then a compensating reaction will set in and balance
will be restored. The same thing is true of modernistic typography.
At present, it shocks us into attention, but we get tired of being
shocked, for we do not want printing to surprise but to soothe us. The
modernist must remember, too, that "such a thing as an underivative
work of art does not and cannot exist, and no great master in the
arts has thought or asserted otherwise." We gladly admit that some
modernistic formulas have had good results. In architecture, perhaps to
some degree in typography, they have taught us to get rid of clutter
and useless ornamentation. But neither the one nor the other leads
anywhere--except to a dead end.

The conservative, however, need not think that all truth is on his
side. However much he tries to practise retrospective or "period"
typography, consciously or unconsciously his work will show the
influence of his time. Just as there is a popular idiom in speech which
varies in each decade, so there is a current idiom in printing. All
these idioms, literary and typographic, have not come to stay, but some
become accepted terms. Under Theodore Roosevelt we suffered from the
word "strenuous." President Harding inflicted the word "normalcy" on
American speech. We now have "reactions," and "contacts." Clergymen
"challenge" things, have "spiritual adventures," talk of "strategic
positions" for their parish houses and aid parochial charities by
"clarion calls," though if confronted with a "clarion" (if this
instrument exists outside of sermons) they would be quite unable to
blow it. All these catch-words and stock phrases are in the air. We
suffer much the same thing in typography, about which there is also a
new jargon which replaces the old _clichés_ of my youth about rhythm,
balance, and colour. Neither in speech nor printing can one make a
clean sweep of the past nor help being of the present, no matter how
hard one tries. I deplore violent attempts to make current printing
accord with the spirit of the age. It always has, always will, and does
now.

Nor need the conservative sniff at typographic experimentation. To
turn to another department of daily life, what would happen if no one
had ever tried experiments with food? In the distant past there was
the first human being who--as an experiment--ate an oyster, though
perhaps first trying jelly-fish with less comfortable results. Others
died of eating toadstools before people learned that they could survive
on mushrooms. Almost all our vegetable food we owe to gastronomic
adventurers. Thus the hide-bound conservative owes sustenance to the
fruits, and vegetables, of experiment.

To speak more seriously, both modernist and conservative should lay
to heart what Benedetto Croce says in his _Autobiography_ about "the
impossibility of resting on the results of past thought" and the
necessity of modesty in stating one's present position. "I see," he
writes, "a new crop of problems springing up in a field from which
I have but now reaped a harvest of solutions; I find myself calling
in question the conclusions to which I have previously come; and
these facts ... force me to recognize that truth will not let itself
be tied fast.... They teach me modesty towards my present thoughts,
which tomorrow will appear deficient and in need of correction, and
indulgence towards myself of yesterday or the past, whose thoughts,
however inadequate in the eyes of my present self, yet contained some
real element of truth; and this modesty and indulgence pass into a
sense of piety towards thinkers of the past, whom now I am careful not
to blame, as once I blamed them, for their inability to do what no man,
however great, can do ... to fix into eternity the fleeting moment."

There is, to the reasonable mind, no real quarrel between modernism and
traditionalism in printing, _except in degree_. Modernism must and does
influence the conservative in spite of himself--if by modernism we mean
a healthy awareness of the needs of the time in which we are living.
Tradition must and does influence the modernist, if by tradition
we mean patient and respectful appraisal of what that accumulation
of yesterdays, which we call the past, has to teach. It is only by
experience that we can effect a wise blend of the two. Then we produce
books which, while representing the best practice of our time, will
outlast it. The appraisal of their ultimate values we must leave to the
future.

"There is no past that we need long to return to," said Goethe, "there
is only the eternally new which is formed out of enlarged elements of
the past; and our real endeavor must always be towards new and better
creation."

                        COMPOSED IN BELL TYPES




              [Illustration]PETER BEILENSON[Illustration]

                        _The Amateur Printer_:

                     HIS PLEASURES AND HIS DUTIES

 From _Graphic Forms: The Arts As Related to the Book_. Copyright 1949
by Harvard University Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


Although the title of this piece is sufficiently long to be impressive
and important-sounding, all I really want to write about is printing as
fun. I am going to write about the amateur printer, and the amateur is
the fellow who has fun.

I do not wish to belittle the affection a professional printer may
have for his work. He should love his work. But he can love it only in
a different way: for after all he is essentially a businessman about
it. His work, like that of any other businessman, is something he has
to sit down to by nine in the morning and something he can't leave
until five at night. It is something that involves landlords and labor
unions, payrolls and tax inspectors, truckmen, office-boys, salesmen,
compositors, pressman, bindery workers--and customers. He has to worry
about payments, and depreciation, and publicity, and time sheets.

The professional has to concern himself with all these things which are
not printing at all, because he is in business and has to make money.
His primary yardstick of success as a professional is: _How much money
did we make last year?_ Of course he has other minor yardsticks of
success too: he may be successful because his presses turn out useful
things like timetables, or gratifying things like corporation reports
for the year, or beautiful things like four-color reproductions of
Varga girls. To make these things well is a kind of fun; and insofar
as the fun comes from the satisfaction in the thing itself rather
than in the profit that derives from it, I'd like to call it amateur
satisfaction.

But essentially our professional printer--and permit me to limit
myself to the professional book printer--is supposed to make money,
not to have fun. And he makes money best, nowadays, if his plant is
equipped with the efficient modern machinery which is designed for
maximum production. Such machinery is a wonderful creation of man;
it is thrilling to watch in action; and it gets results. But it has
its disadvantages. Now that mechanization is becoming more and more
complete in more and more places, we can begin to see clearly the
greatest disadvantage of all: under such mechanization individual
workers have lost pride and satisfaction in their work, because they
have become mere replaceable units of less and less importance; whereas
the machines they operate are more and more important, and have become
the essential units.

A generation ago the professional printer might have boasted of his
skilled compositors, who could set type more expertly, or his skilled
pressmen, who could make more careful overlays or match ink better
than someone else's craftsmen. Today he boasts of his remote-control
composing machines, his presses which come close to eliminating
make-ready altogether, and his ink supplier's new gadget which matches
colors scientifically. Today the most successful printer is the one
who with the least possible dependence on man-power, can keep the most
presses running fastest for the greatest number of hours per day and
days per year. He is not the one with the most skilled craftsmen.

In such a world, where the executive's function is to feed the machine
and the workman's is to tend it, the human spirit begins to cry out
for the fun in work which I have called the amateur satisfaction. It
is true that today's shorter working hours--which the machine makes
possible--permit people to have more outside fun; permit the manager to
play more golf, and the workman to play more softball (or more pinball)
in the late afternoon; it is true that more people now see more beer
advertised on more television programs, and may even drink more of it,
in the evenings. But managers and workmen alike turn so avidly to such
kinds of fun because they no longer get fun out of their daily work. It
is becoming harder and harder for people to equate work and happiness.

Now I do not set myself up as a social reformer dedicated to the dream
that all people should be happy in their work. Nor do I propose as a
step to this end that we revert, smash the wonderful machines, and go
back to the good old days when everyone really _did_ work with his
hands--usually from dawn to dark, six days a week. There was no pinball
or television then, but _still_ I do not wish to go back! Nor do I
suggest that the solution is the promised thirty-hour week, with all
the workmen driving their own Buicks home at two each afternoon, and
taking out the wife and kiddies to Braves Field or the Gardner Museum.

But I do suggest that some of you people who really love printing, but
are too involved with the nine-to-five daily business of it to enjoy
it much, should enrich your lives by becoming amateur printers in your
spare time. You will have fun.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I yield to no man in my boredom with vegetables and salads. I see
green at every meal save breakfast. I have eaten enough stringbeans
to stretch--if they were straightened out and laid end to end--from
Fordhook Nurseries in Delaware to the city of Burbank, California. If
you could see all the lettuce leaves I have consumed in my lifetime,
piled leaf on leaf and dripping in their oils, their vinegar, their
mayonnaise, and their roquefort dressings, you would be absolutely
appalled. But, bored as I am with green things on the table--bored
because despite their goodness they have been too plentiful and too
easily come by--I am not bored on those occasions when, like Candide,
I cultivate my garden, get my hands into the dirt, and smell God's
good fragrance in the loam. To watch the power of living things like
salad greens and stringbeans pushing their way out of the seed, up
through the earth, reaching down for water and up for sunlight with
an irresistible drive, is to realize afresh the power of life on
this planet. It is a reinvigorating and religious experience. It is
impossible to watch seeds grow into plants and flowers and fruit and
still to believe cynically in a mere mechanistic explanation for such
a life drive. To get back to the seed, the earth, and the root is to
re-experience the fun and meaning of life.

In the same way that I have become bored with salad, we have all
become bored with words, printed words. We have seen too many of
them, we have read too many of them, we have measured, or proofread,
or edited, or sold, too many of them. We have forgotten their primal
power, their irresistible living urge. We have forgotten that sincere
authors have not put them down on paper because of two cents a word or
10 per cent of the retail gross--that they have been written (in the
best cases) out of human necessity, human ebullience, human passion,
human sympathy, or human understanding. The industrial book-printing
world cannot ever think of words in that way. It must always think of
them as areas of type 22 by 28 picas, as numbers of pages which do or
do not make up a multiple of thirty-two, as units of sale at $3.00 less
40 per cent.

To go back to nature and become an amateur printer in such an
industrialized book world is like working in the garden when you
are bored with salad. You really get back to the roots of words.
If you are a genuine amateur printer, and set the type and print
the pages yourself, you actually can share in the creative agonies
and satisfactions of the author. For you put down his words, letter
for letter in your type-stick, just as he did with his quill or his
battered Remington. The best way on earth to appreciate an author and
his creative spirit (or for that matter to realize more quickly the
faults in him) is to pick him up letter by letter from a California
case. An even more acid test is to distribute the type after printing
him. In such a case you pick up half a dozen lines of type at once and
work backwards, distributing the last word of the last line first. It
is a revelation how the hollowness of an author can show up under this
treatment. It is especially cruel to poets, for every word which is not
really necessary, which is there just for padding or for a rhythm or
a rhyme, becomes as noticeable as the well-known sore thumb. But the
genuine, sincere author with a pure style stands up beautifully under
such treatment, and has his reward in your pleasure at this discovery.

After you have set your author's type you must make up his pages,
choose his decorations or illustrations, and set his headings. You must
decide whether to stretch him to twenty-four pages or condense him to
sixteen. You must buy his paper, lock up his pages in your chase, make
him ready, curse your press which is printing him, apply your ink to
his words, and impress him for posterity. Perhaps you will thereafter
fold him, sew him, and encase him in boards.

In so doing, you become, to the extent of sixteen or twenty-four
pages, in an edition of one hundred or three hundred copies, God. You
have created something which did not exist before, and which would not
have existed save for your thinking brain and tired back and dirty
hands. True, you have not created Heaven and Earth, and you have
undoubtedly worked at your creation for more than the original quota of
six days. But anyway you have given the world something which was at
first only words you loved, and is now a whole, real book, which you
love all the more because it is your book, your child, your embodiment
of those words. That is the fun and satisfaction of being an amateur.
In our printing world there is no other satisfaction equal to it.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Good old Ralph Waldo Emerson was mortally right when he wrote down his
doctrine of Compensation. His doctrine of Compensation says that every
pleasure carries some penalty, every gain some kind of loss. Every duty
accepted gives you a satisfaction, and every satisfaction received
involves you in a duty. Thus far I have written of the satisfaction of
your being an amateur printer. Now I wish to write of your duty and
obligation.

The amateur book printer has a duty which, if he will accept it, will
in the long run return to him the greatest satisfaction. This duty is
to teach the professional, by example, about the outer cultural world,
and to experiment for him in matters of printing style. Now this is
directly contrary to what ninety out of one hundred current amateurs
would seem to think, and I must therefore beg their ninety pardons if I
disturb their habits of mind.

Most amateurs either don't trouble their minds about problems of
printing style at all, or else they fall too easily into the habit
of working in the Colonial style, or Venetian style, or some other
historical style, rather than in a contemporary one. Maybe they do so
for psychological reasons. And maybe not. I am too set in my diction
to learn the trick of talking in psychological terms. I would express
their case like this: Amateurs who work in historical styles do so
because they are romantics, romantics who turn away from the impersonal
machine world of the present for a breath of the more human and
glamorous-seeming past. I sympathize with such an instinct, and hold
myself ready to defend any man who seeks to re-inject a human element
into the printing craft.

The trouble is, such amateurs think that because printing in the past
was done by hand, and because there is something more satisfying and
human about printing by hand, they must therefore work in an antique
printing style and make Colonial and Venetian books in order to enjoy
themselves. This is a false syllogism. I strongly recommend printing by
hand to amateurs because it will give them greater satisfaction, not
because it will make their books look like antiques. It is too easy to
fabricate such antiques, and to do so will in the long run give you
less enjoyment than making something which in style is original and new.

As a matter of fact it is already too late to think in terms of
revivals and reproductions. In printing, the revival habit started over
a hundred years ago with Whittingham and Pickering, when they dusted
off the forgotten Caslon types and the eighteenth-century style. It has
been going on ever since, and reached a climax of understanding and
skill in our century at the hands of Updike, Rogers, Rollins, Goudy,
and others. This revivalism was a kind of search for humanism, and a
kind of rebellion against commercialism. These men were not unique. In
every generation since 1800, in every art and craft, every field of
thought, the Industrial Revolution has prompted men to make the same
search backward for satisfactions which the modern world did not seem
to offer.

Too many of our amateurs are still making the same search, although
the Industrial Revolution is well over one hundred years old, all the
necessary backward searching has been done, and all the historical
styles have been reworked. Our predecessors have made it unnecessary
for us to go through the process once again. We can see now that their
work was an escape perhaps for them, but that it can never be a durable
way of creative realization for us. From now on, we must join up with
the forward-looking crowd who think they can build a new world.

The book-printing industry has not been very forward-looking in matters
of style. With the exception of a few printers and designers, book
printers have been unhealthily backward. Therefore the time is ripe for
amateur book-experimentalists to prod and teach them. The amateur can
do it.

He is, or should be, a man with interests in other fields of culture
than his own. He is aware already of what has been done in painting
and music, in fabrics and furniture design, in architecture too--most
important of all. He must now help printing to develop its own new
styles, equivalent to those in other fields. That he can do so is
evidenced by the fact that in recent years the greatest strides forward
have been taken not by the professionals but by people who in a sense
are amateurs, but who have known how to apply modern ideas from other
fields.

The Bauhaus group first became notable, between the wars, by applying
the functional theories of modern architecture to the printed page.
The Black Sun Press and Harrison of Paris applied the ideas of Monroe
Wheeler and others who were stimulated by modern painting. There may
be similar publishing projects in this country today, but they are
not yet influential. The most effective, most vocal, most lovable
of contemporary American influences is that rugged individual Merle
Armitage, whose ideas have been influential in shaping my own attitude.
Such people all know that the world has changed; that it will never
turn back again; and that it is up to us to catch on to the flying
coattails of Today. I urge other amateurs to join the ranks of these
apostles of change. It will be a great day for all of us when ninety
out of one hundred are experimentalists, and not the other way around.

Of course in urging amateurs to develop new styles, I am not
recommending any easy hobby. It is simple, but dull, to copy an old
style. It is hard, but exciting, to work out a new one. And while you
are working at it, you must expect cynical observers to give your
experiments the adjective "wacky"; you must expect certain curious
kinds of people to praise your work for the wrong reasons; and you must
expect alternating moods of conceit and frustration. The proofs you
gloat over at night will become commonplace by dawn. Your wife may go
back to her mother in rage and despair. You may need sleeping pills.

You will make misjudgments about the intelligence of ordinary readers.
You will make mistakes of taste. You will find it too easy to get an
effect by means of shock, and you will forget that any book, even a
twenty-first-century book, must be a coherent unit. And you will often,
since there are no highway markers for the explorer, feel lonely and
discouraged, and want to go back to the old familiar well-traveled
roads again.

But if you go through with it, or even if you just play with it
sometimes as a hobby, you can have great fun. For it will put you out
in the open, free to please yourself, with the boss and the customer
left far behind. You can be subtle or bold, as you feel the urge, for
you do not have to please the great common denominator, the common man.
You can advance your own work by looking to other fields of creation,
enjoying and profiting by the experiments going on in them. You can
feel yourself a part of the whole forward-looking culture of your day,
and not someone off in a little forgotten corner.

And, if you do strike a vein with the glitter of real gold in it,
you will become rich indeed. For you will have become a creator in
a new sense; your duty done as an amateur will be compensated with
a twenty-four-carat satisfaction. At such a moment of realization
you will have earned the privilege to rest and feel content. As on
a seventh day after six of creation, standing late at night with
bloodshot eyes and inky fingers and aching back in a paper-littered
room, you have become a creator. You have not merely escaped from the
flattened monotony of the machine age--you have become one of the
shapers of its future. More power to you in that work!




                             T. M. CLELAND

                             _Harsh Words_

An address delivered at a meeting of The American Institute of Graphic
  Arts, in New York City, February 5th, 1940, on the occasion of the
 opening of the eighteenth annual exhibition of the Fifty Books of the
    Year. Copyright 1940 by T. M. Cleland. Reprinted by permission.


Mr. Chairman and Members of The American Institute of Graphic Arts:

The generosity of your invitation to me to speak on this important
occasion leaves me a trifle bewildered. I am so accustomed to being
told to keep my opinions to myself that being thus unexpectedly
encouraged to express them gives me some cause to wonder if I have,
or ever had, any opinions upon the graphic arts worth expressing. But
since it is the theory of your Committee that I have, and it may never
be anybody's theory again, and they have gone so far as to give me no
instructions or suggestions as to the scope or the limitations of what
I might say, it would seem as ungracious to decline such an exceptional
offer as it would be to abuse it. So if I accept it as wholeheartedly
as I believe it was given--if I take you at your word and say things
that I have long wanted to hear somebody say--I hope it will not be
thought an abuse of this kindly tendered privilege.

I realize that, nominally at least, my subject must be that of
printing and typography as exemplified by the selection of the fifty
best books of the year which we are here to celebrate; and I suppose,
by comparison to deplore the fifty thousand worst books which may be
seen elsewhere. But by what may seem a very odd paradox, I don't quite
know how to stick to this subject without wandering a good way off it.
Or, perhaps I should say that I cannot approach it directly except by a
very roundabout way.

If I have a thesis for these remarks, I can only develop it in terms
of a tree. This is because I do not believe that invention in the arts
can be picked from empty space like objects in a prestidigitator's act.
Fruits really grow on trees and trees have roots in the earth. The tree
I have in mind is cultural civilization: one of its limbs is art and a
branch of this we call the graphic arts, and a twig on this branch is
printing and typography. I promise not to dig into the roots of this
tree, but I may be found, monkey-wise, climbing all over it before I am
through.

I am at some disadvantage in that I do not belong to any organizations
for the advancement of typography and the graphic arts--not even to
this one--and I am ill-informed and out of touch with what is going on
in these fields except by casual observation. But as members of this
very useful organization, you are not engaged in printing or other
graphic arts, I take it, solely for each other, but for the enjoyment
and delectation of the world at large. So there is a partially
compensating advantage in my being "at large" myself, and thus able to
speak of present trends in the graphic arts as they appear from the
outside, looking in. But this advantage may in turn be offset by the
fact that I cannot honestly speak of what I see with much enthusiasm.
I can bring you no message of hope or light of inspiration. Much as I
am filled with admiration and respect for many individual talents and
accomplishments that still contrive to exist, they seem to me to stand
unhappily isolated in what I can't help viewing as artistic bankruptcy
and cultural chaos. Among them are printers making beautiful books
and other things about as well as these things have ever been made.
But as to the general volume of printing, no one has asked me, to be
sure, what I thought was the lowest point of artistic taste in the five
hundred years of its existence which we are celebrating this year,
but if anyone _should_ ask me, I would be bound to say that we have
reached that point just about now. Things may get worse, but it's hard
to see how they can. To paraphrase a remark in the concluding chapter
of Updike's classic work on printing types, it has taken printers and
publishers five hundred years to find out how wretchedly books and
other things can be made and still sell.

I am not forgetting that there were some very benighted periods of
taste in other centuries that would seem to refute this sweeping
assertion. Perhaps it is worth noting here--and the fact is peculiarly
ironical--that the design and style of official and governmental
things--money, postage stamps, bonds and stock certificates--was
created and solidified into a seemingly unalterable convention at
that hitherto all time low point of the decorative arts in the
mid-nineteenth century. So powerful is this convention that we would
be suspicious of a ten dollar bill that was not visually saturated
with ugliness. A counterfeiter with aesthetic sensibilities must not
only sweat blood but weep tears over the job of imitating one. But in
the sadly perverted taste of that epoch there was a kind of innocence:
standards were still respected, and proficiency, though overworked and
misdirected, was recognized and not condemned.

Today when I look about in the bookstore, and more especially on the
newsstands, or open the pages of most of the magazines with the biggest
circulations, I want to do what the little boy did in the story which
was a favorite of my friend, the late Hal Marchbanks. The little boy
had been to his first party, and when he arrived home, his mother
said: "Did mama's little boy have a nice time at the party?" "Yep," he
replied. "What did mama's little boy do at the party?" "I thow'd up."

Against this steady decline in both taste and workmanship, your fifty
books selection and exhibit each year has been a noble effort, and in
this country, almost the only concerted one of consequence to uphold
some standards. You have inspired both publishers and printers to
earnest endeavor to improve their products with frequently admirable
results. But these are only fifty books out of how many other books
and other printed things. Without this good work of yours, one wonders
if any standards at all would survive the flood of cheap and easy
mechanization, careless workmanship and bad taste. Not that there
is anything wrong with machines. The first hand press, it should be
remembered by its sentimental admirers, was also a machine. We have
not learned to use the machines at their best, but accepted them like
fruits in the Garden of Eden, and thought of nothing but how much we
could get out of them in speed and quantity and profit. Because we can
do with them easily what formerly demanded time and pains to do at all,
we have too easily assumed that they delivered us from the need of any
time or pains.

Before I go any farther on or off the track with these random
remarks, I should like it to be understood that I am addressing them
particularly to any students and beginners in the graphic arts that may
be present, rather than to those who are arrived. I am a student and
still a beginner myself, and so my interest and my heart are naturally
with my own kindred. I speak as an old beginner to younger ones. I am
at a great disadvantage with regard to the number of years I have left
in which to get started, and if I have any advantage at all, it is
only in experience with the bewilderments and illusions that clutter
our common way in learning and trying to practice one or more of the
graphic arts. The confusions and distraction of this day make the path
of the student and beginner rough and tortuous. Having travelled it for
more years than I like to admit, when I look backward, I am astonished
to discover the number of twists and turns and pitfalls I might just as
well have spared myself.

Perhaps the most foolish of these was the fear of not being
original--what Romain Rolland calls "the fear of the already said."
The notion that I must do something new every day, or I would not be
creative--forgetting that God made the planets all the same shape
as far as we can see, and that the oak tree does not alter the
form of its leaves from year to year. There is no supposition so
pathetically misleading as that creative originality is within your
own volition--the notion that it can be acquired leads to deplorable
results. It distracts the mind and energies of the young student from
gaining needful technical competence--from learning his trade, and in
more mature stages tempts the would-be artist into vulgar mannerisms
and formulas which he will call his "style."

The idea that originality is essential to the successful practice
of the graphic arts is more prevalent today than it ever was in the
days when the graphic arts were practiced at their best. The current
belief that everyone must now be an inventor is too often interpreted
to mean that no one need any longer be a workman. Hand in hand with
this premeditated individualism goes, more often than not, a curious
irritation with standards of any kind. The conscious cultivator of his
own individuality will go to extravagant lengths to escape the pains
imposed by a standard.

But of all the perils that lie in wait for adolescent artists there
is none more seductive than the bewildering array of ologies and isms
that leer and beckon to him at every crossroad of his journey. Just as
isms and ologies have taken the place, in social and political life, of
right and wrong; so have they become the accepted terms of the arts.
In fact, nonsense is now so universally the language of art that it is
nearly hopeless to try to make oneself understood in any other.

Brood mare to all of these extravagancies--and I have lived to see many
of them come and go--is that one which achieves the super absurdity of
calling itself "modernism"; and none has been expounded and exploited
in more contradictory and antic ways. To deliberately call oneself
"modern" is no less ludicrous than something an old Danish friend
told me years ago about a line in one of the books of a very prolific
writer of historical romances in his country. In a tale with a medieval
setting this writer had one of his knights in armour cry out to
another: "We men of the middle ages never take insults, etc."

Embraced with fanatic enthusiasm by many architects and designers is
the current quackery called "Functionalism." It, in common with its
many predecessors, offers a new gospel for the regeneration of our
aesthetic world by restricting all design to the function of its object
or its materials. Like the new religions and philosophies that have
paraded in and out of our social history for countless generations, it
purports to be an original concept. It has brought to us such gladsome
gifts as concrete boxes with holes in them for buildings, chairs of
bent pipe with no hind legs, glass fireplaces, beds of cement blocks
joined by structural steel, the queer agglomeration of unsightly
edifices we call the World's Fair and many other specimens of stark and
forbidding claptrap. Unless all signs are misleading me, it is another
mass vulgarity like the age of golden oak and mission furniture, even
now on its way to the junk pile or the attic, perhaps to be someday
rediscovered there and dragged out by future generations in search of
quaintness.

It seems to me, ladies and gentlemen, that _all_ art was _modern_ when
it was made, and still is if it is suitable to life as we now live
it; and I look in vain for any applied art worthy the name that was
not also, in some sense functional. From the buttresses of a gothic
cathedral to the gayest Chippendale chair one finds, upon analysis,
a perfect work of engineering perfectly adapted to its purpose. If
this were not so, these things would hardly have endured for so long
a time. So that common regard for function which has always been the
basic principle of first-rate design, assumes the impressive aspect of
a religion, with high priests and ritual, by the simple addition of an
"ism." As students and beginners in search of truth, we are today being
pushed and pulled about by no end of such bogus preachments--familiar
faces with false whiskers--old and common principles dolled up with new
names and often used to account for incompetence and laziness.

And what is the meaning of this term "functionalism"? Must a design be
related to no functions except mechanical and material ones? Might not
the most fantastic and elaborate works of the geniuses of the baroque
and rococo styles have also been functional in that they expressed the
spirit and fitted perfectly the life they were intended to serve?

We hear much holy talk of "simplicity" in this day and the idea of
simplicity expressed by a total absence of everything not essential to
mechanical function has been elevated to a fetich. We have divorced
simplicity from its old mate charm as we might break up the happy
relationship of ham and eggs or pork and beans. But in this reverent
renunciation of all adornment not strictly functional in this limited
sense, have we paused to ask whether we are in fact following a basic
human instinct, or merely attempting to make a virtue out of poverty of
invention? There is no evidence that man is imbued with an instinctive
love of simplicity in the objects with which he finds it useful to
surround himself. Indeed, our museums are bulging with evidence to
the contrary. From the Cro-Magnon cave to gothic cathedrals, from the
temples of India to the palace of Versailles, the earth has been made
to flower with man's inherent love of ornament. It would seem then that
ornamentation is deeply rooted in the human instinct since no tribe,
however primitive in other respects, is without it. The restraints of
this instinct and the tempering of it with what we call taste is a
cultivated faculty like the restraint of our other appetites; but to be
a teetotaler in ornament or in anything else, is to confess to either
weakness of control or incapacity for enjoyment. "A teetotaler," said
Whitman, "is just another kind of toper."

This instinctive yearning for ornamentation is well demonstrated in
the case of our own Rockefeller Center; where it has been catered to
with peculiar ineptitude. Here all the important structures have been
piously stripped of everything non-essential to mechanical function.
Pillars, pilasters, cornices and mouldings--ornaments that at least
have their genesis in structural functions--have all been piously
renounced. And then because it was found that the human spirit could
not tolerate such barren starkness, and business might suffer from it,
ornaments have been pasted around its doorways and approaches like gold
paper lace on a pasteboard box--ornaments completely unrelated to any
structural function of any kind. Sculptures, fountains, trees, flowers
and awnings have all been pressed into service to compensate for this
spurious simplicity. Many of these things are beautiful in their own
right like Mr. Manship's golden figure of Prometheus. One of the little
office girls that further decorate the scene at the noon hour, was
overheard the other day explaining to another that this was a statue of
"Primiscuous escaping from Responsibility."

So under this wildly flapping banner of "Modernism" marches a quaint
array of worn and shabby syntheses for art, each day parading a
new dress and a new alias. The common urge for self-expression can
always find one or another of them at its service. For those who are
particularly deficient in the talent, energy and patience demanded
for the mastery of an art, something called "non-objective" art has
been invented. For this the only things required are a box of paints,
brushes and a surface to exercise them on. With these simple and easily
procurable tools you express your own inner emotions and need not
trouble yourself with anyone else's or with what anyone else sees. If
you watch the others you will see that it is mostly being done with
triangles, circles or vortexes of paint just as it comes from the tube.
If you have no paint, toothpaste will do as well. If, after a few
minutes of this, you are tired, stop--you will have added spontaneity
to its other attractions. The fact that it deals only with your own
emotions will not prevent you putting it on exhibition for other people
to enjoy. If anyone balks at enjoying it, you smile wanly and shrug
your shoulders and pity them for their dumb enslavement to outworn
tradition. It works like a charm--no one will dare attack you--they
will all be afraid that you've got something there. People have a
terror of making mistakes--as if they had not been made by the best
people in all ages. It is the most perfect device yet invented for
attracting attention to yourself with the least trouble. A generation
ago we heard a great deal about "art for art's sake": now it is art
for the artist's sake, like bread for the baker's sake or medicine
for the doctor's sake. And I say, for God's sake, tell me what art
made through the vision of a human eye with a brain behind it is _not_
"non-objective"? No two men will ever draw or paint the same picture
of the same object. Only the lens of a camera will render it quite
objectively, and even the camera in the hands of an artist is capable
of some degree of subjectivity.

And since I have inadvertently mentioned the camera, I ought to say
a good word for it too. It is just now in its hey-day and people are
taking greater pains with it than they are willing to take with any
other medium of artistic expression. I see a great many very fine
pictures made with it, in spite of its obvious limitations. But it
has also been tortured into serving as a medium for self-conscious
originality until its "new ideas" have come to be, in their way, in
their monotony and staleness, an intolerable bore.

The marvels of color photography have revealed to us hitherto
unsuspected depths of aesthetic sordidness. This factual reproduction
of what we are told are "Nature's colors," I am given to understand, is
not yet wholly perfected. Only when it is will we know the worst--only
then will we know what the things that through our eyes have stirred
us by their beauty, really are! Perhaps another super instrument of
disillusionment will be invented to reveal us, not in form and color
alone, but in spirit, to each other as we really are. Good-by then to
human love, respect and friendship!

I have strayed a good way from my subject, as I warned you that I
might; and these remarks must appear by now to be not only ramblings
but the ravings of an old reactionary who is blind to anything that
is new. That deduction will be almost literally correct, ladies and
gentlemen. There is no denying that I am old, and toward much that I
see around me, I am reactionary; and I have learned nothing in all my
years of striving for knowledge, more convincing than that statement in
the Book of Ecclesiastes to the effect that there is nothing new under
the sun. I plead guilty to this hideous indictment and throw myself on
the mercy of this court. I am even happy to have learned that much, and
wish, in the manner of the camp meeting revivalist, that I might pass
on something of this blessed revelation to the "brethern and sistern"
present.

While I thus brazenly deny the existence of anything really new, and
fail to recognize what is called "progress" and deplore the waste of
talent and energy that is dissipated in striving for these things, I
am far from blind to the value of revolt. Our creative sense is all
too prone to doze off into dreams of past glories. From these, and the
sterile copying of them, we may be awakened and rescued by even the
crudest of revolutions. We may benefit from them provided we do not let
them tear up our roots--provided we still can recognize an illusion
when we meet it. The squirrel in his revolving cage must have some
illusion of progress, else he would not take any exercise, and without
exercise he would fatten and sicken and die.

And, remember, there is always progress to be made within yourselves,
no matter if it is the same progress in the same direction that has
been made by countless other souls. And there will, I hope, always be
things new to you, as there are every day things new to me, even if the
sun has seen them all before. I don't want to live a day longer than I
can learn.

There is no reason to suppose that there is not today as much latent
talent for the arts in existence, as at any time in their history. But
talent for art is not talent for being an artist--one may have much
of the one, without much of the other. It seems to me that there are
more temptations and distractions working against the talent to be an
artist today than ever before. More alluring short cuts and seductive
philosophies--a disturbing babel of undigested ideas and indigestible
objectives. If in this riot you can keep your heads and not lose sight
of the important difference between "a grain of truth" and the whole
truth, if you can grow in understanding of what it is you want to do,
you may, even now, have a good chance of doing it.

But what has all this to do with printing and typography and their
related graphic arts? I seem by now to be so far off the track that it
will take a derrick and wrecking crew to get me back on again. As a
matter of fact I have not forgotten the subject altogether and have,
in my lumbering way, been working toward it. But because I can't think
of typography as an art in itself, unrelated to all the other arts, I
could not approach it except by the way I have.

All of these things that I have been complaining about in the other
arts, have their counterparts in present-day typography and printing.
The same restless craving for something "new," the same preoccupation
with isms, the same monotonous sameness. But this poison is aggravated
in the case of printing and typography, by the fact that of all the
arts, it is, by its very nature and purpose, the most conventional.
If it is an art at all, it is an art to serve another art. It is good
only in so far as it serves well and not on any account good for any
other reason. It is not the business of type and printing to show off,
and when, as it now so frequently does, it engages in exhibitionistic
antics of its own, it is just a bad servant.

For this reason the embarrassing ineptitude of the current efforts
toward a "new typography" are even more distressing than similar
contortions in other fields. Typography, I repeat, is a servant--the
servant of thought and language to which it gives visible existence.
When there are new ways of thinking and a new language, it will be time
enough for a new typography. When we have altered all of our manners
and social customs, only then will it be time to radically alter the
well grounded conventions of this very minor art. Within them there
is now ample room, as there always has been, for the exercise of
ingenuity, skill and individual taste. I suggest that those who cannot
abide the conventions of typography are mostly those who have never
tried them.

In what does the newness of this new typography consist? It seems to be
new as the neu in neurosis from which it largely derives. It is new as
it would be new for a man to enter the dining room on his hands instead
of his feet, and instead of eating his soup, to pour it into his
hostess's lap. It is as new and agreeable and pleasing to look at as
delirium tremens which it closely resembles. The new typography engages
in such side-splitting pranks as putting the margins of a book page in
just the opposite arrangement to that which practical utility and well
founded tradition have always placed them. It might with equal reason
and originality, turn the type page upside down. In advertising display
it makes use of that highly original and refreshing device of printing
what is to be read at a cockeyed angle. The make-up expert indulges
that other fresh and original dodge of bleeding pictures off the edge
of the page so that a flat two dimensional photograph is viewed without
a frame on two of its sides and must compete with a background of all
the three dimensional things in the room.

I refuse to bore you or myself by enumerating all the tiresome
stock-in-trade eccentricities of the typographic expert in search of
something new--the epileptic fits he throws to attract attention to
himself at the expense of the words he is printing. You see enough of
them every day to know what I mean. Nearly every magazine and newspaper
page, not to mention a good many books, present the same revolting
spectacle--the order of the day, it seems, is disorder.

And speaking of magazines, it has fallen to my lot from time to time
in the past thirty-five years to design and redesign a number of
periodicals of one kind and another. Such jobs require really very
little actual work--it's by endless argument and conference that
they can wear you to the bone. My simple purpose with these things
has always been to bring any measure of order the case will permit
out of the disorder in which I generally find it. My mission, if I
have any, is to suppress typography, not to encourage it--to put it
in its place and make it behave like a decently trained servant. I
find magazines rolling in the gutter covered with the accumulated
mud of years of dissipation. I pick them up and brush them off, give
them a cup of black coffee and a new suit of clothes and start them
off on respectable typographic careers. But like other missionaries,
more often than not, I find them a year or so later, back in the same
gutter, drunk and disorderly and remorselessly happy about it.

If the philosophy of functionalism has hit the new typography as it
has the other applied arts, I see no evidence of it. On the contrary,
in this field, anything goes, so long as it is eccentric, free from
the restraints of reason, and can successfully discourage the reader
from reading. All the distortions of the Roman alphabet that were
discarded a half century ago--in fact any types which are as nearly
unreadable as types can be made--have been dragged out again and called
"modern." These range from the elaborately ornamental letters of the
most depraved periods of design to the stark diagrams of letters that
were called by type-founders in my youth: "Printer's lining gothic"--as
absurd a misnomer as could be imagined, since they have nothing
whatsoever to do with gothic letters or any other letter forms known
to history. Laymen called them, more accurately, "block letters"; but
in the new typography they are elegantly referred to as "sans serifs"
because, among other features of the Roman alphabet which they lack, is
a total absence of serifs. They bear the same relation to Roman letters
as would an engineer's drawings for a trolley track. At the moment
they are very much in vogue and are widely believed to be modern and
to be a simplification in harmony with the new architecture, furniture
and other things. They are supposed to represent the spirit of our day
like the noise of rivetting hammers in a modern musical composition.
They simplify the traditional forms of type as you might simplify a man
by cutting his hands and feet off. You can no more dispense with the
essential features of the written or printed Roman alphabet, ladies
and gentlemen, than you can dispense with the accents and intonations
of human speech. This is simplification for simpletons, and these are
block letters for blockheads.

The users of typography and printing, the publishers and advertisers,
are also confused by illusions of their own. Foremost among these is
the notion that they require every week new types to give freshness and
effectiveness to what they print and publish. This wholly unwarranted
assumption is undoubtedly a godsend to the type-founders, however
disastrous it is to the development of a sane and ordered typography.
It has peopled the earth with typographic experts who know "the latest
thing" and not much else, and it has relieved the designers of printing
from the burden of knowing anything about design. It is so much easier
to buy new types than to learn how to use effectively the types we
already have. And if, instead of flooding our composing rooms with
new types, which are seldom more than variations upon old themes of
distortion, our type-founders would give us at least twice as many
sizes as they now make, of a few good types, we should have a really
flexible medium to work in. We would have to make fewer compromises
with good design, and they might profit commercially, as typography
surely would profit artistically.

And this constructive suggestion reminds me that I ought perhaps
to temper this hurricane of destructive criticism with some further
helpful hints. At the moment I can only think of two that might relieve
the dreadful situation that I have pictured. One is that we organize a
pogrom of all type designers--a little hard on them perhaps, but they
would gain martyrdom to a cause--and the other is that we establish
a concentration camp in which to intern all those who think up or
think they think up new ideas in typography for such time as it will
take them to recover from their delusion. There they might while
away pleasant hours in the distinguished company of the inventors of
paper-towels, pasteboard milk bottles and beer in cans.

With my younger colleagues still in mind, I ought to say something of
the practical problems that we encounter in professing and practicing
one or other of the graphic arts. We are, or should be, if we are
really artists, more concerned with what we give to our art than with
what we get out of it. But we have to live--or think we do--and to do
that by the practice of art is certainly no easier now than it ever
was. If anything, it's a little harder. Beyond that inner satisfaction
with what we can give--and there is only a little of that and at rare
intervals--the only two things to be got _out_ of art are money and
fame; and I daresay there are few of us who would not welcome a little
of both. But we must compete today with a great many of those who work
for nothing else; and who, under the banner of one or another of these
isms of which I've been prating, can concentrate upon that unique
objective unhampered by any serious interest in art itself. They are
devotees of success, like their commercial brethren, and by means of
the same promotional paraphernalia they succeed so well that one is
tempted at times to believe that the only living art is the art of self
promotion.

Another curious development of these times is the classification of
artists according to political ideology. We hear now of "left wing"
artists. As nearly as I can discover, these are to be recognized by
their contempt for any sort of craftsmanship and a peculiar inability
to keep their drawings clean. They make penury--the unhappy lot of
nearly all artists--a pious virtue, and they are not infrequently big
with pretension to being the only serious interpreters of life and
truth. These are balanced on the other end of the political see-saw
by a school of "economic royalists" who have made of art a commercial
opportunity. As Industrial Designers with large staffs and control
boards and troops of indefatigable press agents, they have welded art
and commerce so successfully that it is nearly impossible to tell them
apart. Somewhere between the two is the artist; and he is as often
as not a forgotten man. Not quite poor enough to be picturesque or
heartrending, just well enough off to keep his collar and his drawings
clean, he must nevertheless spend an exorbitant part of his life and
energies in worrying about bills.

And now to stop the clamor of the butcher, the baker _et al._, to whom
must we sell our graphic arts? For the most part, I suppose, it will be
to publishers, industrialists and advertising agents. The publisher is
a pretty decent sort, on the whole, but if he is a book publisher, he
can generally be recognized as such by the fact of having very little
money to spend on art. In my own experience, the most generous and
appreciative customer for our wares has been the industrialist. What
you do for him can often increase his profit very materially, and he is
not slow to recognize that fact.

The advertising agent, speaking very generally and with the particular
exception of one very dear friend in mind, deals largely in what might
be called scientifically organized fraud. I am aware that to say this
now is to risk being called a "communist transmission belt"--whatever
that may be. It has even been suggested that by these animadversions
upon advertising, I am biting the hand that fed me; but I suggest that
I am biting the hand that I have fed until I am fed up on feeding it.
It may be that you will find, as I sometimes have, in the ranks of
these shock troops of deception, sympathetic and amiable clients for
your work who can deal differently with artists than they deal with
the public--but not very often. Each of them employs what is called an
Art Director whose importance is derived, not so much from art as from
the financial size and number of advertising accounts toward which he
directs it. It is his duty to furnish you with what he calls "ideas,"
upon the theory that an artist is not mentally up to having any of his
own. Ten to one he will end by altering your drawing to give it the
"wallop" thought to be essential to all advertising. A public, already
groggy and half blind from the incessant battering of advertisements
with a punch, will hardly notice the difference.

"To think at all," says the Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset,
"is to exaggerate." A careful measurement of anatomical detail in
the drawings and sculptures of Michelangelo will reveal startling
exaggerations of fact, but these enlargements upon fact are but his
medium for truthful expression. He gives us the figure of a man or
woman more essentially true than could be made by any anatomist with
micrometer calipers. So, I humbly pray, ladies and gentlemen, that you
will apply no instruments of precision to my words--they are the best I
could find in this emergency for saying what I believe to be true. If
you think me guilty of exaggeration, the foregoing remarks are my only
defense. But if you accuse me of being facetious, I will tell you that
I have never been more serious in my life.

                     COMPOSED IN BODONI BOOK TYPES




                 [Illustration]OSCAR OGG[Illustration]

               _A Comparison of Calligraphy & Lettering_

Copyright 1947 by the _American Artist_. Reprinted by permission of the
                         publisher and author.


Superior writing and able lettering have never made inconsequential
literature valuable, nor have poorly conceived, incompetent calligraphy
and lettering ever invalidated good literature. Letters which are well
considered, expertly executed, conscientiously fitted to their purpose,
however, can create visually a spiritual state in a reader which will
influence him to be receptive to the message he reads. It may even be
possible that beautiful writing, aside from the intense pleasure it
gives us as graphic art, helps to make uninspired authors seem more
profound.

Perhaps it is this realization that has made graphic artists in recent
years exhibit a notable increase in interest in American "calligraphy."
The quotes are intentional. So much which is not calligraphy has had
the term applied to it and so much which is calligraphy has been
considered something else, that some sort of evaluation and comparative
definition now appears to be wise.

The aura of romance which has surrounded the tools, the methods, and
the products of the scribe has tended, we believe, to place them in the
eyes of practicing letter artists somewhat higher in the scale of the
arts than those of the letterer. Hence the "lettering man" likes to
call himself a "calligrapher." This same snobbishness is often evident
between easel painters and illustrators, between book illustrators
and magazine illustrators, between book designers and advertising
typographers. And all of it is false. By simple definition lettering
and writing are related but certainly not competitive arts.

_Calligraphy_ is "beautiful writing."

_Lettering_, in modern usage, refers to built-up, designed forms.

Stanley Morison, in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, says: "Calligraphy
is the art of fine writing. Writing is a means of communication by
agreed signs; if these signs or symbols are painted or engraved on
stone or wood [or paper] we have that extension and application of
writing known as _lettering_, _i.e._ a script generally formed with
mechanical aids such as the rule, compass, and square. But it is the
essence of hand-writing that it be free from such, though not from
all, government.... Calligraphy may be defined as freehand in which
freedom is so nicely reconciled with order that the understanding eye
is pleased to contemplate it."

[Illustration: The same nib was used for built-up and written forms in
     this freely rendered fragment of a ninth-century manuscript.]

Built-up and written forms each have their place. One of the tenets
of fine letter art is that the forms be in perfect taste; that is,
that the letter and its method of production be in harmony with its
use. A delicately drawn cursive is as out of place on a subway card
advertising a cough remedy as is a poster _egyptienne_ on the title
page of a small volume of romantic poetry. To assume, however, that
either the written or the drawn form is the more aristocratic is
unsound. To attempt a representation of either by the other is likewise
illogical. Written letters, based on traditional manuscript usage,
are more serious in concept than their less restrained contemporary
built-up characters and do not permit of the same unconcern with
anatomical discrimination. Both, properly executed, can be superb
examples of letter art--and both can be terrible.

[Illustration: A simple Roman, executed entirely with a broad nib.
Characteristic strokes employed in writing the above.]

[Illustration: A similar letter designed and built up using a brush.
Characteristic outlines to be filled in for above.]

The growing practice of calling all script-like letters "calligraphy"
is unjust to writing and lettering alike. Particularly the practice
of producing with a pointed pen or brush the built-up, tricked-out
impersonations of broad nib writing must be abandoned if the art of
making letters is to remain honorable.

Having defined, then, the general limitation of the terms, let us
look at some of the principal differences in character between the
two. Historically, we find them side by side. Since they were both
produced by scribes and illuminators working in like tradition, there
was no question of fitness one with the other. Both stemmed from the
same source and were produced with the same type of tool. They were
necessarily in harmony.

Contemporarily, however, much lettering is executed by craftsmen who
neither know or care about the historical background of the alphabet.
The responsibility for this lies, we believe, as much with the
purchaser as with the producer of letters. The art director, working
in a viciously competitive field, demands of the letterer something
"different." The result is usually a built-up form which has little in
common with its ancestors, either in shape or method of production.
But, if it is handsome in itself, it may have a real affinity for a
text of type. A written element may also serve beautifully as a foil
for the rigidity of a type page.

  [Illustration: These two treatments of a title are by no means the
 only likely ones by either method. The lower form was actually used.
  The letter was designed in the spirit of the type which was used in
 conjunction with it. Perhaps if a written title had been chosen, one
 based on an Italian rather than an English hand would have been more
  suitable. The great difference in these two treatments is that the
 written serves as a contrast, while the built-up harmonizes with the
                          type on the page.]

To establish further the variance between calligraphy and lettering,
a brief inspection of the methods of production may be advantageous.
The designed form is conceived as a drawing--it is a device which may
be finished up with any instrument at hand. The only limitation which
the designer must not exceed is the recognizability of the particular
letter.

The written form depends upon tradition for letter shape and upon
tool for letter character. Distortion is possible and poor form not
unusual, but since the pen is essentially _the_ letter-making tool, the
natural action of a properly cut pen eliminates at least some of the
opportunities for improbable forms.

[Illustration: These two letters, enlarged from the two renderings
of "Wartime Correspondence," illustrate the control which is
exerted by the cut and size and handling of a square nib upon the
calligraphic form as opposed to the freedom from constraint in the
built-up treatment. The tool decided the shape of the first. A careful
patterning of curves and weights to conform to the type of the book
page (Poliphilus) determined the second. A Soennecken steel pen was
used for the written, and a pointed brush for the built-up.]

The calligraphic and the built-up approach to the execution of a book
title may indicate how each may be employed frankly and honestly
without recourse to camouflage to procure particular effects. The size,
general weight, and disposition of the letters are indicated in the
rough layout. The artist who executes the built-up rendering will keep
the weight of letters _even_ by constant checking of one against the
other. The calligrapher will cut a reed or pen to this weight and thus
maintain even color.

It will be noted that the designed form is completely and finally
established in the penciled form. The laying-out for the written form
is less accurate and is the product of a double pointed tool, set to
the width of the nib to be used. In any but a very tight design such
as this, the pen-executed letter requires rather less preliminary
penciling than is here indicated. A line for the bottom of the letters
is usually sufficient.

It has been impossible to crowd all one should like to write on this
subject into these few words. If, however, this first voicing of a need
for a sane concept of the relations between lettering and calligraphy
has even the smallest influence, the author will bear with pleasure the
rightful criticism of incompleteness.

 [Illustration: The width of the nib is that of the widest part of the
      down-stroke. Strokes 5 and 6 fill the openings thus left.]

      [Illustration: Layout and demonstration of the written form
                           (calligraphic).]

[Illustration: The center line is drawn by compass. Width of the swell
 is arrived at by moving the point 1/2 this width to right and left.]

     [Illustration: Layout and demonstration of the designed form
                             (lettered).]




               [Illustration]ALDOUS HUXLEY[Illustration]

             _Typography for the Twentieth-Century Reader_

  The introduction from _Printing of Today_, an illustrated survey of
 post-war typography in Europe and the United States, by Oliver Simon
  and Julius Rodenberg. Copyright 1928 by Peter Davies, Ltd., London,
  and Harper and Brothers. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.


In our enthusiasm for the spirit we are often unjust to the letter.
Inward and outward, substance and form are not easily separated. In
many circumstances of life and for the vast majority of human beings
they constitute an indissoluble unity. Substance conditions form; but
form no less fatally conditions substance. Indeed, the outward may
actually create the inward, as when the practice of religious rites
creates religious faith, or the commemoration of the dead revives, or
even calls into existence, the emotions to which the ceremonial gives
symbolical expression.

There are other cases, however, in which spirit seems not to be
so closely dependent on letter, in which the quality of the form
does not directly affect the quality of the substance. The sonnets
of Shakespeare remain the sonnets of Shakespeare even in the most
abominable edition. Nor can the finest printing improve their quality.
The poetical substance exists independently of the visible form in
which it is presented to the world. But though, in this case, the
letter is powerless to make or mar the spirit which it symbolizes, it
is not for that reason to be despised as mere letter, mere form, mere
negligible outside. Every outside has a corresponding inwardness. The
inwardness of letters does not happen to be literature; but that is not
to say that they have no inwardness at all. Good printing cannot make a
bad book good, nor bad printing ruin a good book. But good printing can
create a valuable spiritual state in the reader, bad printing a certain
spiritual discomfort. The inwardness of letters is the inwardness of
any piece of visual art regarded simply as a thing of beauty. A volume
of the Penny Classics may give us the sonnets of Shakespeare in their
entirety; and for that we may be duly grateful. But it cannot at the
same time give us a work of visual art. In a finely printed edition
we have Shakespeare's sonnets _plus_ the lovely equivalent of, say a
Persian rug or a piece of Chinese porcelain. The pleasure we should
derive from bowl or carpet is added to that which the poetry gives us.
At the same time our minds are sensitized by the contemplation of the
simple visual beauty of the letters: they are made more susceptible of
receiving the other and more complex beauties, all the intellectual
and spiritual content, of the verse. For our sensations, our feelings
and ideas do not exist independently of one another, but form, as it
were, the constituent notes of what is either a discord or a harmony.
The state of mind produced by the sight of beautiful letters is in
harmony with that created by the reading of good literature. Their
beauty can even compensate us, in some degree, for what we suffer from
bad literature. They can give us intense pleasure, as I discovered
in China, even when we do not understand what they signify. For what
astounding elegances and subtleties of form stare out in gold or
lampblack from the shop-fronts and the hanging scarlet signs of a
Chinese street! What does it matter if the literary spirit expressed by
these strange symbols is only "Fried Fish and Chips," or "A Five Guinea
Suit for Thirty Shillings"? The letters have a value of their own
apart from what they signify, a private inwardness of graphic beauty.
The Chinese themselves, for whom the Fish-and-Chips significance is
no secret, are the most ardent admirers of this graphic beauty. Fine
writing is valued by them as highly as fine painting. The writer is an
artist as much respected as the sculptor or the potter.

Writing is dead in Europe; and even when it flourished, it was
never such a finely subtle art as among the Chinese. Our alphabet
has only six and twenty letters, and when we write, the same forms
must constantly be repeated. The result is, inevitably, a certain
monotonousness in the aspect of the page--a monotonousness enhanced
by the fact that the forms themselves are, fundamentally, extremely
simple. In Chinese writing, on the other hand, the ideographs are
numbered by thousands and have none of the rigid, geometrical
simplicity that characterizes European letters. The rich flowing
brushwork is built up into elaborate forms, each form the symbol of a
word, distinct and different. Chinese writing is almost the artistic
image of thought itself, free, various, unmonotonous. Even in the
age of hand-writing, the European could never hope to create, by
means of his few and simple signs, an art of calligraphy comparable
to the Chinese. Printing has rendered the Chinese beauty yet more
unrealizable. Where the Chinese freely painted we must be content with
reproducing geometrical patterns. Pattern making is a poorer, less
subtle art than painting. But it is still an art. By some one who
understands his business the printed page can be composed into patterns
almost as satisfyingly beautiful as those of the carpet or the brocade.

The problem which confronts the contemporary printer may be briefly
stated as follows: to produce beautiful and modern print-patterns by
means of labour-saving machinery. There have been numerous attempts in
recent years to improve the quality of printing. But of these attempts
too many have been made in the wrong spirit. Instead of trying to
exploit modern machinery, many artistic printers have rejected it
altogether and reverted to the primitive methods of an earlier age.
Instead of trying to create new forms of type and decoration, they have
imitated the styles of the past. This prejudice in favour of hand-work
and ancient decorative forms was the result of an inevitable reaction
against the soulless ugliness of nineteenth-century industrialism.
Machines were producing beastliness. It was only natural that sensitive
men should have wished to abandon the use of machines and to return to
the artistic conventions in vogue before the development of machinery.
It has become obvious that the machine is here to stay. Whole armies
of William Morrises and Tolstoys could not now expel it. Even in
primitive India it has proved itself too strong for those who would,
with Gandhi, resist its encroachments. The sensible thing to do is not
to revolt against the inevitable, but to use and modify it, to make it
serve your purposes. Machines exist; let us then exploit them to create
beauty--a modern beauty, while we are about it. For we live in the
twentieth century; let us frankly admit it and not pretend that we live
in the fifteenth. The work of the backward-looking hand-printers may be
excellent in its way; but its way is not the contemporary way. Their
books are often beautiful, but with a borrowed beauty expressive of
nothing in the world in which we happen to live. They are also, as it
happens, so expensive, that only the very rich can afford to buy them.
The printer who makes a fetish of hand-work and medieval craftsmanship,
who refuses to tolerate the machine or to make any effort to improve
the quality of its output, thereby condemns the ordinary reader to a
perpetuity of ugly printing. As an ordinary reader, who cannot afford
to buy handmade books, I object to the archaizing printer. It is only
from the man with the machine that I can hope for any amelioration of
my lot as a reader.

To his credit be it spoken, the man with the machine has done his duty.
He has set himself to improve the sordid typographical surroundings in
which the impecunious reader was so long condemned to pass his life.
He has shown that cheap books need not necessarily be ugly, and that
machinery directed by a judicious mind can do as well as, or much
better than, the hand of an uninspired craftsman. There are publishers
in business today whose seven-and-sixpennies, regarded as typography,
are worth a guinea apiece. (What they are worth as literature is
another question.) There are a dozen Presses producing fine work at
moderate prices. The men behind the machines have used their brains.

Some of our excellent machine-printers are still, it is true, too fond
of using decorations borrowed from the past, and types that savour of
another age than ours. So long as our sense of period remains as strong
as it is, so long as we retain our love of the quaint and its more
modern equivalent, the "amusing," this tendency to substitute pastiche
for original creation is bound to persist. There is an incessant
demand for the antique: we should not be too hard on the printers who
supply it. If they are sinning, they are at least sinning in company.
Let the architects and painters, the interior decorators, and the
theatrical producers throw the first stone. There are pastichers among
the printers, just as there are pastichers among the professors of
every art. But there are also more original men, who are prepared to
encourage modern decorators and to use types that are elegant and
striking without being affectedly archaic.

With this last phrase I may seem to be damning the moderns with
the faintest of praise. But the truth is that Typography is an art in
which violent revolutions can scarcely, in the nature of things, hope
to be successful. A type of revolutionary novelty may be extremely
beautiful in itself; but, for the creatures of habit that we are, its
very novelty tends to make it illegible, at any rate to begin with.
I know a rather eccentric German typographical reformer, for whom
legibility is the greatest enemy, the infamous thing that must at
all costs be crushed. We read, he argues, too easily. Our eyes slide
over the words, and the words, in consequence, mean nothing to us. An
illegible type makes us take trouble. It compels us to dwell on each
separate word: we have time, while we are deciphering it, to suck
out its whole significance. Putting his theory into practice, this
reformer had designed a set of letters so strangely unlike those with
which the typographical practice of generations has made us familiar,
that I had to pore over a simple English sentence as though it were
Russian or Arabic. My friend was perhaps justified in thinking that we
read too much and too easily. But his remedy, it seems to me, was the
wrong one. It is the author's business to make reading less facile, not
the printer's. If the author concentrated more matter into the same
number of sentences, his readers would have to read more carefully
than they do at present. An illegible type cannot permanently achieve
the same result, for the simple reason that it does not permanently
remain illegible. If we are prepared to make the effort to read until
the novel forms have become familiar, the illegible type will come to
be perfectly legible. In practice, however, we are reluctant to make
this effort. We demand that typographical beauty shall be combined
with immediate legibility. Now, in order that it may be immediately
legible, a type must be similar to the types with which we are
familiar. Hence, the practical printer, who has to live by selling
his wares to a large public, is debarred from making revolutionary
innovations in the designs of his type. He must content himself with
refining on the ordinary, accepted types of commerce. If he has great
typographical reforms in view, he must proceed towards them by degrees,
modifying the currently accepted designs gradually, so as not to repel
the ordinary lazy reader, who is frightened by the idea of making
any unnecessary effort. In other arts, where form and substance are
directly associated, revolution is possible, may even be necessary. But
the outward form of literature is not typography. The association, in
a book, of literature with one of the graphic arts is in the nature of
an accident. The printer who would at one stroke revolutionize his art
frightens away readers, for whom the idea of revolution in literature,
or in any one of the graphic arts that is independent of literature,
has no terrors. The reason for this is obvious. People buy books for
the sake of the literature contained in them and not, primarily,
as specimens of graphic art. They demand of the typography that it
shall be beautiful, yes; but also that it shall give them immediate
and unhampered access to the literature with which it is associated.
Printers may desire to be revolutionary; but unless they can afford
to sell no books, they are compelled by the force of circumstances to
adopt a cautious policy of gradual reform. The Communist must either
turn Liberal or retire from business.




                            MERLE ARMITAGE

                               NOTES ON
                            MODERN PRINTING

    From Notes on Modern Printing by Merle Armitage. Copyright 1945
   by William E. Rudge's Sons. Reprinted by permission of author and
                              publisher.


HOW DOES ONE DESIGN A BOOK? I CONCLUDE AS I BEGAN WITH A FEW GENERAL
IDEAS AND SUGGESTIONS:

 1. Allow the subject of a book to determine its design and format.

 2. Design a book for effortless reading, utilizing the format to
 enhance or interpret the text.

 3. Use the prime materials--type, paper and space--to achieve your
 results. Meaningless decorations disclose the designer's poverty of
 invention.

 4. Simplicity is the best policy.

 5. Make no attempt to design every page ... let type and space have
 their natural rhythm.

 6. Understand the text ... know your primary aims ... let form follow
 function.

 7. Type ornaments have their place ... but an ornament designed for
 general use has no particular significance.

 8. A brilliantly designed book can't save a dull or mediocre text.

 9. A page of type can be a thing of unique, arresting beauty.

 10. Mere type legibility is to a book as mere shelter is to
 architecture.

 11. Book design should be a synonym for the arrangement and
 integration of materials--paper, binding, illustration, type and space.

My friends of the musical world believe that music is the most
important thing in life. Painters are absolutely certain that
the reformation will come only through an understanding of art.
Acquaintances among the engineers are sure that by technological
development alone can emancipation come to man, while scientists
rightfully take the credit for progress in the contemporary world.
Friends in industry insist that mass production is the great panacea.
The photographers can prove that photography makes the pictorial
painters unnecessary, and the writers I have encountered are convinced
that the written word is the one route to world unity.

However, the painter ... the musician ... the engineer ... the
photographer ... the industrialist ... the scientist ... and the writer
have a rendezvous with the book. Here, the knowledge, the romance,
the fiction, the facts, the speculations, the opinions, and the
accomplishments of the world are made permanently articulate.

This is our day, our time, our environment. We can make a statement,
through the employment of design, that is valid and true ... not
divorced from tradition, but using the great works of the past as a
springboard toward new horizons!

                      COMPOSED IN GILL SANS TYPES




                          Benjamin Franklin:
                         PRINTER and PUBLISHER

                           JOHN T. WINTERICH

    From _Early American Books and Printing_ by John T. Winterich.
Copyright 1935 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Reprinted by permission of
                      Curtis Brown, Ltd., agent.


Josiah Franklin was reared a dyer in the village of Ecton in
Northamptonshire, but soon after his arrival in America, about 1682,
he foresaw a greater future in the trade of tallow-chandler and
soap-boiler. It was a calling which seems humble enough in a day that
has evolved such mouth-filling occupational designations as sales
engineer, merchandising counsel, and mortician. Josiah Franklin, had
the locution been available in his era, might have asserted with all
accuracy that he was an important factor in public utilities--even
our own catch-phrase epoch has not been quite equal to the coinage
of the label "public utilitarian." For when the Boston town watch
wanted fresh candles they bought them from Josiah Franklin--from other
tallow-chandlers too, perhaps, but at least some, by documentary
evidence, from Josiah Franklin.

The close relationship between progress in the science of artificial
illumination and progress in the dissemination of the printed
word could be charted with almost mathematical accuracy.... Most
of the books of colonial days were designed for the use of those
whose professions exacted some considerable amount of "required
reading"--ministers, physicians, lawyers, public officials, schoolmen.
The man who toiled with his hands (and hands are eminently useful in
the building-up of a new country) labored while the light of heaven
would let him and then returned to a home wherein the conveniences were
hardly such as to make reading a pleasure. Lincoln studied by the glare
of blazing pine-knots, but the middle-class Bostonian and New Yorker
and Philadelphian of the generations immediately preceding Lincoln (to
say nothing of their country cousins) had to depend on illuminants that
offered no greater inducements to either the solace or the benefits of
type.

Josiah Franklin's wife and their three children accompanied him to
America. Before her death she bore him three more children. Josiah
remarried, and of the second union ten children were born. Of this
multitudinous offspring thirteen grew to maturity--a remarkable
proportion for the time and region. The eighth child and last son of
the second marriage, christened Benjamin after a paternal uncle, was at
first intended for the Church, but Josiah could not afford to give him
the education which this most learned of the professions demanded, and
at the age of ten, after receiving as thorough an intellectual rearing
as could be expected in so short a space, Benjamin Franklin quit
school to assist his father in the fabrication of candles and soap. An
elder brother, John, had already become proficient in the twin arts
of illumination and sanitation and had gone to the bustling colony of
Rhode Island to practice them. Another brother (and another Josiah) had
also investigated them, found them not to his liking, and run away to
sea.

Benjamin, also, made it clear that the parental pursuits were not
to taste, and a wise father, fearing another abrupt departure, took
Benjamin walking about Boston, that he might "see joiners, bricklayers,
turners, braziers, etc., at their work" and thereby, boywise, make
known to his elder which way his inclinations lay. A patent leaning
toward books at length persuaded the father to make him a printer,
despite the fact that another brother, James, Benjamin's elder by nine
years ... had adopted the craft. Benjamin conceded a preference to
the claims of printing over those of tallow-chandlery, but he still
sniffed, with the true landsman's appetite, the tang of the salt breeze
that blew in from the east. Josiah, however, was insistent, and the
parental insistence of 1718 was no toy scepter to swing above the head
of a sub-adolescent boy. Accordingly, Benjamin was duly indentured to
James "to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one years of age,
only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year."

Before long, Benjamin was writing odds and ends of verse, and James,
with the inbred Franklin sagacity, encouraged him in his endeavors and
let him put some of his compositions in type.

 One (declared Benjamin) was called _The Lighthouse Tragedy_, and
 contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with
 his two daughters: the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of
 Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the
 Grub-street-ballad style; and when they were printed he sent me about
 the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event being
 recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity; but my
 father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me
 verse-makers were generally beggars.

The importance of these two pieces consists in the fact that they were
"the first with which Franklin's name can be identified as either
author or printer," according to Dr. William J. Campbell, who adds
that "no copy is known to exist, nor is the exact title of either of
them known." This was true in 1918, when Dr. Campbell's admirable
catalogue of _The Collection of Franklin Imprints in the Museum of the
Curtis Publishing Company_ was issued, and it is unfortunately still
true today [1935]. If they were at all like similar productions of
both earlier and later date, they were broadsides--single sheets that
were distributed like handbills, the main difference being that they
commanded a price. They would command a fantastic price today, together
or singly, and their eventual discovery is by no means beyond the
bounds of possibility. A copy of one--or copies of both--may be tucked
away in some forgotten contemporary theological compendium which has
not been opened for a century.

The disappearance of these broadsides is regrettable on many counts,
not least of which is the fact that even if Benjamin had never
accomplished anything else, he could at least claim credit for
sponsoring perhaps the most textually interesting productions of his
brother's press. James Franklin was a skilled printer--London trained,
and "no slovenly self-taught colonial," in Paul Leicester Ford's
phrase--and James was not, of course, in any degree responsible for the
dullness of the copy that was brought to his shop. A brief glance at a
few of his imprints of this period is of interest mainly because of the
certainty that Benjamin worked on many of them.

 The product of James Franklin's press (says Ford in _The Many-Sided
 Franklin_, New York, 1899) is a dreary lot of "gone-nothing-ness." A
 few of the New England sermons of the day; Stoddard's _Treatise on
 Conversion_; Stone's _Short Catechism_; _A Prefatory Letter about
 Psalmody_, in defense of church singing, which many Puritans still
 held to be unholy; an allegory styled _The Isle of Man, or, Legal
 Proceedings in Manshire Against Sin_; Care's _English Liberties_;
 sundry pamphlets on the local politics of the moment, such as _A
 Letter from One in the Country to his Friend in Boston_, _News from
 the Moon_, _A Friendly Check from a Kind Relation to the Chief
 Cannonneer_, and _A Word of Comfort to a Melancholy Country_; two
 or three tractates on inoculation, and one aimed half at the Boston
 clergy and half at the fair sex, entitled _Hooped Petticoats Arraigned
 by the Light of Nature and the Law of God_, were the chief output of
 the new printer during the years his brother served him.

In the summer of 1721, James Franklin established a newspaper, _The
New England Courant_. Two years earlier he had been engaged to print
the _Boston Gazette_, but with the transfer of its management a few
months later the contract had gone elsewhere. The _Courant_ was a
new departure even for the novelty that was American journalism--so
extensive and violent a departure, indeed, that in the following
year the authorities sentenced the printer-proprietor to a month's
imprisonment for his insolence. The punishment did not improve him;
free again, he pressed the thorn of the _Courant_ deeper into the flesh
of his persecutors, with the consequence that he was soon forbidden "to
print or publish" either the _Courant_ "or any other pamphlet or paper
of the like nature" unless it were first submitted to the secretary of
the province.

There were two apparent ways out of the dilemma, and one was as
eminently unsatisfactory as the other. The first was to quit printing
and publishing. The second was to submit to the censorship. James
hit upon a more ingenious solution. He turned the _Courant_ over to
sixteen-year-old Benjamin. Benjamin's indentures as apprentice to
James had five years to run, and in order to forestall any objection
on the part of the authorities that an apprentice was not competent to
manage the paper, the indentures were ostentatiously canceled and a
new document drawn up as a private and confidential (but none the less
binding) memorandum which in theory was no one's affair save James's
and Benjamin's. The half-sheet issue of the _Courant_ for February
4-11, 1723, identified it as "printed and sold by Benjamin Franklin in
Queen Street, where Advertisements are taken in." Benjamin Franklin's
name thus first appeared in an imprint. It remained on the tail-board
of the _Courant_ until the paper's discontinuance in 1726, long after
Benjamin had left Boston.

The gratifying tableau of two stalwart brothers battling loyally side
by side for freedom of the press, however, was not the whole picture.
James and Benjamin had differences, and Benjamin later admitted
that he himself was "perhaps ... too saucy and provoking," and that
James, despite "the blows his passion too often urged him to bestow
upon me," was "otherwise not an ill-natur'd man." Benjamin, at all
events, decided to take advantage of the freedom accorded him by the
cancellation of his indentures, which act he later conceded to have
been "not fair" and "one of the first errata of my life." James spread
the tidings of this perfidy throughout Boston, and every local printing
establishment thereupon became a closed shop to Benjamin Franklin.

If James assumed that Benjamin would thus be forced to return to his
own shop, he reckoned without his Benjamin. For not long thereafter,
with the connivance of a friend, John Collins, Benjamin was smuggled
aboard a New York-bound sloop, and three days later, thanks to a fair
wind, he was in a city which was not yet a metropolis judged even
by easy colonial standards. He called on "old Mr. William Bradford"
(aged sixty), who had nothing to offer, but who suggested that his son
Andrew, then flourishing (after a fashion) in Philadelphia, might have
a position for him, since Andrew's "principal hand," Aquila Rose, had
just died.

Franklin set out by water by way of Perth Amboy. It is interesting to
note, in view of the dispute regarding the earliest New Jersey imprint
... that the trip from New York to the New Jersey port took thirty
hours. All in good time he reached Philadelphia.

Washington did not cut down a cherry tree and then inform his father
that he could not tell a lie; Wellington did not say "Up, Guards, and
at 'em!" or Pershing, "Lafayette, we are here." The dear old legends
explode all about us; it is gratifying to recall that there is one at
least the accuracy of which is unimpeachable. Walking up Market Street,
Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin did pass the home of his wife-to-be
with a roll under each arm and munching a third, and his wife-to-be did
see him and note that he made "a most awkward, ridiculous appearance."

Andrew Bradford had nothing to offer--the vacancy left by the death of
Aquila Rose had already been filled. But Franklin was not yet done with
the ghostly trail of Aquila. At Andrew Bradford's suggestion he waited
on Samuel Keimer, who had recently set up as a printer despite a meager
endowment of equipment, native ability, or acquired skill. He found
Keimer "composing an Elegy on Aquila Rose" directly from the type.

 So there being no copy (recorded Franklin), but one pair of cases,
 and the Elegy likely to require all the letters, no one could help
 him. I endeavor'd to put his press (which he had not yet us'd, and of
 which he understood nothing) into order fit to be work'd with; and,
 promising to come and print off his Elegy as soon as he should have
 got it ready, I return'd to Bradford's, who gave me a little job to
 do for the present, and there I lodged and dieted. A few days after,
 Keimer sent for me to print off the Elegy. And now he had got another
 pair of cases, and a pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work.

This broadside poem, therefore, was the first piece of Philadelphia
printing with which Franklin's name is clearly identified. The
"pamphlet to reprint" may have been _A Letter to a Friend in Ireland_,
_The Doctrine of Absolute Reprobation Refuted_, _A Letter from One
in the Country to His Friend in the City_, _A Parable_, or (and this
would certainly have been Franklin's choice) _The Curiosities of
Common Water_, all of which Keimer imprints of 1723 are listed in the
short-title check list which follows the Curtis catalogue. No more
specifically is it possible to identify the "little job" which Andrew
Bradford gave him.

It is not likely that Franklin would have long continued with Keimer
(who was "an odd fish; ignorant of common life, fond of rudely opposing
receiv'd opinions, slovenly to extream dirtiness, enthusiastic in some
points of religion, and a little knavish withal") even if a roundabout
coincidence had not brought him to the attention o£ the governor of
the province, Sir William Keith, whose quarrel with William Bradford
had been one of the impulses that had established the latter as New
York's first printer. Keimer "star'd like a pig poison'd" one day when
no less a worthy than Sir William entered the shop in search of the new
assistant from Boston. Governor and assistant adjourned to a tavern,
where the former disclosed a grandiose idea for setting the newcomer
up in a shop of his own. He must first, of course, go to London to
buy equipment, and to this end the governor loaded him down with
enthusiasm and letters of credit. After a short visit to Boston, where
all "made me welcome, except my brother," who "receiv'd me not very
frankly, look'd me all over, and turn'd to his work again", Franklin
sailed for London, which he reached the day before Christmas, 1724--to
learn, to his intense mortification, that Sir William's letters of
credit were worthless, since that gentleman's prowess as a promiser and
his shortcomings as a performer were rather more familiar in the old
country than in the new.

Franklin, however, had little difficulty in extricating himself from
the crisis into which he was precipitated on his arrival in London
by the non-negotiability of Sir William Keith's commercial paper.
"I immediately got into work at Palmer's," he says, "then a famous
printing house in Bartholomew Close, and here I continu'd near a year."
Samuel Palmer, declares John Clyde Oswald in _Benjamin Franklin,
Printer_ (New York, 1917), "was more than an ordinary printer. He had
visited America, was letter-founder as well as printer, and was engaged
in the writing of 'A History of Printing,' only a third of which he had
completed when he died in 1732."

Franklin identifies only one of the jobs on which he worked at
Palmer's. "I was employed," continues the _Autobiography_, "in
composing for the second edition of Wollaston's _Religion of Nature_."
The name of William Wollaston (1659-1724) now survives mainly by virtue
of this adventitious association with a nineteen-year-old immigrant
compositor. _The Religion of Nature Delineated_ first appeared in 1722
in a small privately printed edition. Presumably this first edition
is now rare, but no collector is impressed thereby, preferring above
it that on which Franklin worked (the third in strict sequence, but
the second published edition), which, happily, is relatively common.
It bears the imprint: "London: Printed by S. Palmer, and sold by
B. Lintott, W. and J. Innys, J. Osborn, J. Batley, and T. Longman.
1725." The printer from America pondered over the copy as he set it,
and out of his ruminations came a pamphlet reply to the recently
deceased author: _A Dissertation on Liberty And Necessity, Pleasure
and Pain_ (London, 1725). Franklin printed one hundred copies, gave a
few to friends, and then, repenting of his materialistic agnosticism,
"burnt the rest except one copy"; pride of authorship would not wholly
down. That copy may be one of the four known to survive today, all in
institutional collections.

Receiving a better offer from John Watts, who conducted a larger
printing establishment, Franklin went thither, remaining six months,
when he accepted the proposal of a Philadelphia merchant then in London
that he return and act "as his clerk, keep his books, in which he
would instruct me, copy his letters, and attend the store." In leaving
London, therefore, Franklin supposed that he thereby "took leave of
printing forever."

Man proposes. Franklin and his new employer reached Philadelphia; the
store was duly opened and its new clerk installed; four months later
the employer died. The establishment was taken over by the executors
and Franklin was out of work. Keimer wanted him back as foreman of his
new and larger shop, but Franklin, who knew well his Keimer, first
sought a place at his new trade of clerk and salesman. Nothing offered,
so he reluctantly accepted Keimer's bid. The affiliation did not last
long. Franklin and Keimer quarreled over "a trifle" that represented
the culmination of a long series of abuses:

 A great noise happening near the courthouse, I put my head out of the
 window to see what was the matter. Keimer, being in the street, look'd
 up and saw me, call'd out to me in a loud voice and angry tone to mind
 my business, adding some reproachful words, that nettled me the more
 for their publicity, all the neighbors who were looking out on the
 same occasion, being witness how I was treated. He came up immediately
 into the printing-house, continu'd the quarrel, high words pass'd
 on both sides, he gave me the quarter's warning we had stipulated,
 expressing a wish that he had not been oblig'd to so long a warning.
 I told him that his wish was unnecessary, for I would leave him that
 instant; and so, taking my hat, walk'd out of doors.

Had affairs not fallen out thus ludicrously, then some other incident
would have "snapt our connections." If no "great noise" had occurred
near the courthouse (what, one wonders, was the cause of the
disturbance?), there would still have been a subsequent great noise
in Keimer's shop, and the hireling would have spoken his piece to the
overlord and walked out of the identical door to the fulfillment of his
high destiny.

Franklin was of more than half a mind to return to Boston, in which
event Philadelphia would one day have been compelled to seek another
patron saint. Fortunately for Philadelphia, while working at Keimer's,
Franklin had struck up a friendship with Hugh Meredith, a fellow
craftsman, who suggested a partnership. A secret agreement was drawn
up, and pending the completion of arrangements for launching the
venture, Franklin sought temporary work at Bradford's. Keimer meanwhile
was negotiating with the provincial government of New Jersey for the
printing of an issue of paper money at Burlington, and urged Franklin
to accompany him if he was awarded the job. The plan went through, and
the pair were in Burlington three months. "There is not a single piece
of this paper money known to exist today," says Dr. Campbell, "and of
the New Jersey Laws that they printed at the same time there are only
two known copies...."

In the summer of 1728 the new firm of B. Franklin and H. Meredith came
into existence. They had scarce "opened our letters" (their cases, that
is, not the morning mail) when a friend "brought a countryman to us,
whom he had met in the street inquiring for a printer." The identity
of this bucolic, casual, but superlatively important patron of the
typographic arts is unknown and probably forever unknowable, for he
could hardly have been aware that he was the instrument of Providence
chosen to motivate the first imprint issued by Franklin as a master
printer. Dr. Campbell surmised the job was "probably stationery or a
small handbill." Whatever it was, it has probably vanished beyond hope
of recall, or at least beyond hope of positive identification.

Almost on the heels of this first customer came another--none other
than Samuel Keimer, whose general ineffectualness and chronic state
of panic provide much of the comic relief in the history of early
American printing. Keimer had been working off and on for three years
on William Sewell's _History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the
Christian People Called Quakers: The Third Edition, Corrected_. The end
was not in sight, and Keimer, evidently in a condition of acute mental
distress, rushed to the new shop for assistance. Franklin and Meredith
composed and printed "forty sheets," totaling nearly a third of the
seven hundred pages--the first known job to issue from their shop, even
though it did not bear their imprint. Sewell's _History_ is doubly a
Franklin item, as Franklin must have worked on the book while he was
still in Keimer's employ.

Thanks to the diligence of its proprietors--or of one of them, for
Meredith "was often seen drunk in the streets, and playing at low games
in alehouses"--the new shop prospered. But about the middle of 1730 it
encountered a hazard which its sponsors had not foreseen. Meredith's
father had advanced one hundred pounds to put the enterprise on its
feet and had promised another hundred. When the time came for him to
meet his obligation, he could not, and "the New Printing-Office near
the Market" was faced with a creditor's suit. This crisis confirmed
young Meredith's conviction that he was not cut out for the printing
business; moreover, he was anxious to join a company of fellow Welshmen
who were planning a settlement in North Carolina. Two of Franklin's
friends offered to come to the aid of the senior partner, and the
difficulty was amicably adjusted. Thus was the "B. Franklin" imprint
born. It appeared for the first time not on anything in English, but at
the bottom of the title-page of _Mystische und Sehr Geheyme Sprueche_,
by Conrad Beissel, whose religio-communistic Ephrata colony, itself to
become one day an important printing center, had been organized only a
few years before.

Shortly before the dissolution of the firm of Franklin and Meredith
there had been another odd run-in with Keimer. Franklin was already
planning a newspaper, and "foolishly" imparted the secret to a friend
who forthwith made it known to Keimer. Toward the end of 1728 the
not-to-be-anticipated Keimer issued the first number of _The Universal
Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette_. It was
Keimer's inescapable genius to start what he could not finish, and he
was soon glad to dispose of the paper to Franklin and Meredith, whose
control dates from October 2, 1729. One of Franklin's first acts as a
newspaper publisher--his memory must have harked back to the old Boston
days--was to shorten the too comprehensive title to _The Pennsylvania
Gazette_.

Probably some three months after the departure of Meredith, Franklin
initiated a new partnership. He married. "Partnership" is no romantic
figure of speech. The name of Deborah Read has an honored place on
the roster of women who helped to make American printing. By her
husband's own testimony, her share in the work of the establishment
included, in some measure, the "folding and stitching" of pamphlets,
and it is not unlikely that her hands had a busy share in the
preparation of some of the series of pamphlets with which, more
than with any other, Franklin's name is most clearly associated as
author-printer-publisher--the _Poor Richard_ almanacs.

The importance of the almanac in the colonial scheme has already
been stressed. Franklin was naturally alert to this importance; in
fact, as soon as the house of Franklin and Meredith was in existence
he had commissioned Thomas Godfrey to compile an almanac. Godfrey was
"a self-taught mathematician, great in his way," but "he knew little
out of his way," and there was considerable of the prima donna in his
make-up. He prepared almanacs for 1730, 1731, and 1732, and then, in
an outburst of temperament, transferred his skill to the shelter of
Andrew Bradford. The fortunate result, certainly not anticipated by
Thomas Godfrey in his dudgeon, was, as Paul Leicester Ford defines it,
the birth of American humor. Franklin initiated the _Poor Richard_
series, compiling the bulk of the contents himself, but attributing
their authorship to Richard Saunder or Saunders, whose almanacs
had enjoyed enormous popularity in England and were still enjoying
it, though Saunders had been gone this many a year. A _Poor Robin_
series of almanacs was also popular in England, and James Franklin a
few years earlier had begun a series of Rhode Island almanacs under
this title. _Poor Richard_ was an immediate success, and though the
first number was not advertised in _The Pennsylvania Gazette_ until
December 19, 1732, which was rather late in the year for a new almanac,
three printings were necessary to supply the demand. _Poor Richard_
thereafter issued regularly every December under Franklin's own
editorship until 1757 (for 1758).

_Poor Richard's_ rich wisdom has become part of common speech wherever
English or any other language is spoken. Everyone from China to Peru
knows that God helps those that help themselves, that three removes are
as bad as a fire, that

  _Vessels large may venture more,
  But little boats should keep near shore._

A recent commentator--Carl L. Becker in the _Dictionary of American
Biography_--says of the _Poor Richard_ almanacs:

 Nothing better exhibits the man, or better illustrates his ingenuity
 as an advertiser.... "Richard Saunders," the Philomath of the
 _Almanack_, was the Sir Roger de Coverley of the masses, pilfering the
 world's store of aphorisms, and adapting them to the circumstances and
 the understanding of the poor. "Necessity never made a good bargain."
 "It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." "Many dishes make
 diseases." "The used key is always bright." The _Almanack_ was
 immediately successful and commonly sold about ten thousand copies.
 "As Poor Richard says" became a current phrase, used to give weight to
 any counsel of thrift. The work made Franklin's name a household word
 throughout the colonies.... The introduction to the last _Almanack_
 (Father Abraham's speech at the auction) spread the fame of Poor
 Richard in Europe. It was printed in broadsides and posted on walls in
 England, and, in translation, distributed by the French clergy among
 their parishioners. It has been translated into fifteen languages, and
 reprinted at least four hundred times.

Franklin's rise to the position of the most important printer in the
colonies after the well-entrenched Bradfords was now rapid. Before long
he was official printer to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Of
the bulk of his non-governmental productions, Ford writes that while
generally "of little moment," still "there can be no doubt that as
a whole they contain more of genuine merit than those of any other
printer of the same or previous periods in the colonies, the amount
of doctrinal and polemical theology being a minimum, and bearing a
less proportion to the whole mass than can be found in the books of
contemporary American printers." In 1735 appeared over Franklin's
imprint James Logan's _Cato's Moral Distichs Englished in Couplets_.
Nine years later Franklin sponsored Samuel Richardson's _Pamela_--not
only the first American edition, but the first novel to be printed
in America, "Price 6 s." In the same year, 1744, he issued what is
generally regarded as the typographical masterpiece of his press, _M.
T. Cicero's Cato Major, or His Discourse of Old-Age: With Explanatory
Notes_ (also Englished by James Logan), referring to it in a four-page
foreword of his own composition as "this first Translation of a Classic
in this Western World." This was a wide error, for George Sandys had
translated Ovid on the banks of the James River a life-span earlier,
and the translation had been printed in London in 1626; moreover,
Franklin forgot those _Moral Distichs_ of Cato and James Logan which he
himself had issued in 1735.

In 1748, Franklin formed a partnership with an alert young Scotchman
whom he had engaged five years before, and the "Franklin and Hall"
imprint thereupon replaced (with a few exceptions) the familiar "B.
Franklin." A few earlier connections must be mentioned. Franklin's name
is found on several German titles in combination with that of Gotthard
Armbruester and with that of Johannes Böhm, and, apparently once only,
with that of Johannes Wüster, but these seem to have been purely
partnerships of convenience, and suggest no such dual affiliations as
those with Meredith and Hall. The Hall partnership lasted eighteen
years, and during that period Franklin's connection with printing
and publishing became less and less important as the crisis in
international affairs that was bringing on the American Revolution
grew more and more acute. But the printer in him could not wholly be
suppressed. When he went to Paris in 1776 as representative of the
colonies, he established a little press for his own amusement at his
home in Passy, then a suburb, now as much a part of the metropolis as
Greenwich Village is of New York. It was not quite such a toy as Robert
Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne were one day to set up
in Switzerland, the main difference being that the Stevenson-Osbourne
combination knew nothing about printing and was joyously aware of it,
whereas Franklin, with just as joyous awareness, knew as much about it
as any man of his time. One factor the two private presses of Passy
and Davos-Platz have in common--their productions are excessively rare
and costly collector's playthings. The story of the French venture
is authoritatively set forth in Luther S. Livingston's _Franklin and
His Press at Passy_, issued by the Grolier Club of New York in 1914.
Livingston listed thirty-two entries, and since his monograph was
published six others have come to light, according to Will Ransom's
_Private Presses and Their Books_ (New York, 1929).

The output of Franklin's press from 1729 to the termination of the Hall
partnership (1766) is statistically impressive. The following summary
is tabulated from the short-title check list of all Franklin imprints
known in 1918 which Dr. Campbell appended to the Curtis catalogue
(excluding _The Pennsylvania Gazette_ and the numerous issues of paper
currency printed by Franklin from 1731 to 1764):

          1729       8       1748      30
          1730      15       1749      33
          1731       8       1750      19
          1732      15       1751      24
          1733      14       1752      18
          1734      15       1753      16
          1735      20       1754      15
          1736       8       1755      27
          1737      13       1756      26
          1738       9       1757      31
          1739      12       1758      13
          1740      46       1759      16
          1741      45       1760      10
          1742      31       1761      12
          1743      25       1762       8
          1744      25       1763      15
          1745      15       1764      18
          1746      23       1765      19
          1747      27       1766       4

Any book, pamphlet, broadside, or periodical that bears a Franklin
imprint, alone or in combination, is worth treasuring on that account
alone. In general, the scale of desirability is set by scarcity, this
scale one might suppose, should follow the line of chronology with
reasonable accuracy, but it happens that it does not. The Sewell
_History_, for instance, ought by chronological measurement to be an
excessively rare book as the first book on which Franklin worked as an
independent printer, and rare it assuredly is, but by no means to the
point of utter elusiveness.

Twelve years later the total of Franklin imprints was moving toward two
hundred--and in that twelfth year, 1740, there issued from his press
the second edition of David Evan's _A Short, Plain Help for Parents
and Heads of Families, to Feed Their Babes with the Sincere Milk of
God's Word. Being a Short, Plain Catechism, Grounded Upon God's Word,
and Agreeable to the Westminster Assembly's Excellent Catechism._ No
copy of the first edition is known to be extant--Dr. Campbell quoted
the title imperfectly from a contemporary advertisement--and neither
Hildeburn nor Campbell knew that a second edition had ever been issued.
Neither did anyone else until 1929, when a copy came to light and won
its way to a New York book-seller's catalogue. The book is mentioned
here, not because it possesses great intrinsic importance (it would be
of trivial note if a hundred or two copies of it survived), but as an
indication of the fact that unrecorded Franklin imprints are likely
to appear at any time, and as indication, further, that the scarcity
of Franklin imprints does not altogether parallel the dates of his
activity as printer and publisher.

In these notes it has been necessary to neglect Franklin, the author
(save as Poor Richard), in favor of Franklin, the printer and
publisher. But it would be an effrontery to allude even briefly to
Franklin without mention of the _Autobiography_. Begun in 1771 in
the quiet charm of an English country-seat, the first great American
classic never was completed. The manuscript first appeared in print, by
an odd series of accidents, in French in 1791. Subsequently Franklin's
grandson, William Temple Franklin, issued it in a Bowdlerized English
version that would have afforded the old man quiet and somewhat
indignant laughter. The text was not definitely published until 1868,
soon after John Bigelow had come into possession of the original
manuscript.

Franklin's epitaph is easily the most familiar in American history,
and almost as well-known a document, perhaps, as Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address. It is not generally known, however, that the original version
of it was composed in 1728, the very year in which its author, a youth
of twenty-two, entered into partnership with Meredith. The version
written in that year, which differs in minor details from the final
draft, was this:

                              THE BODY OF
                          B FRANKLIN PRINTER,
                    (LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK
                         ITS CONTENTS TORN OUT
                AND STRIPT OF ITS LETTERING & GILDING)
                      LIES HERE, FOOD FOR WORMS.
                    BUT THE WORK SHALL NOT BE LOST;
            FOR IT WILL, (AS HE BELIEV'D) APPEAR ONCE MORE,
                   IN A NEW AND MORE ELEGANT EDITION
                        REVISED AND CORRECTED,
                            BY THE AUTHOR.

 _Note_: A documented account of the various transcripts of Franklin's
 celebrated epitaph appeared in _The New Colophon_, Volume 3, New
 York, 1950. It discusses the date of its composition, place of first
 publication and the differing texts, and was written by Lyman H.
 Butterfield, associate editor of the Jefferson papers.

                     COMPOSED IN BASKERVILLE TYPES




           [Illustration]EARNEST ELMO CALKINS[Illustration]

                        _The Book & Job Print_

 From _The Colophon_, New Graphic Series No. 1. Copyright 1939 by the
 publisher. Reprinted by permission of the author and Mr. Elmer Adler.


                                   I

The printing office was a long narrow room over a store. One front
window was appropriated to a cubicle known as "the office"--seldom
used, its desk piled high with galley proofs and dusty government
reports. Frames for type cases occupied the two remaining front
windows and the three at the back. In between were the hand-power
cylinder press, the two Gordon jobbers, an imposing stone for the
newspaper and one for job work. Along the walls ran the dump--sloping
shelves divided longitudinally by strips of wood, holding galleys and
standing jobs tied up with white packthread. The prevalent odor was a
mixture of benzine and warm roller composition familiar to old-time
printers, but sweeter than the scents of Araby to the young apprentice
about to be initiated into the craft and mystery of printing.

They seated him on a high stool before a case in the darker part of
the room, with a composing stick, a setting rule, and a piece of
patent medicine reprint. A slug on a string hung on his upper case to
hold the copy in place, for the oldest rule of the printing trade is
"follow copy though it goes out the window." In each corner of the
lower case boxes Big Sweeny, the foreman, had stuck letters from a job
font to guide the youngster in learning the case.

For days the tyro was absorbed in the seemingly impossible task of
setting a stick full of type and "dumping" it on the galley. The first
lot exploded in the air; it took hours to distribute the "pi."

In a few weeks he had learned his case, except the small boxes around
the edge, double ffls and ffis and little-used punctuation points.
He could distinguish a 3-em space from a 5-em, and justify a line by
distributing them judiciously, remembering, as was often impressed on
him, to put more space between words ending in tall letters. He began
to look about him and take stock of the curious world in which he
found himself.

For years he had dreamed of printing, his appetite whetted by the life
of Franklin in the Harper Story Books, and a manual of instructions
for young printers in the same volume. He pored over type specimen
books obtained from Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, and reveled in
the amazing faces shown. Other boys had their ambitions--firemen,
policemen, railroad engineer--but his hero was the journeyman printer,
a green shade over his eyes, sleeves rolled to display a bright red
undershirt, spitting tobacco with an accuracy that missed nothing
but the spittoon. Tales told by typographical tourists, the tramp
printers, were his folklore, and for some years after he learned his
trade his chance to work came mostly in "subbing" for printers frankly
laying off to get drunk.

Type had two names. He was setting brevier Roman; the smaller size
used for quotations and for county correspondence was nonpareil. Other
sizes with equally picturesque names piqued his curiosity. In the
early eighties the point system had not reached the prairies. Later he
became familiar with it. The old names of the types with approximate
sizes in points that prevailed in the days of our young apprentice
were as follows:

Diamond, 4-1/2-point; Pearl, 5-point; Agate, 5-1/2-point; Nonpareil,
6-point; Minion, 7-point; Brevier, 8-point; Bourgeois, 9-point; Long
Primer, 10-point; Small Pica, 11-point; Pica, 12-point; English,
14-point; Columbian, 16-point; Great Primer, 18-point; Paragon,
20-point; Double Pica (strictly this should be Double Small Pica),
22-point; Two-line Pica, 24-point; Two-line English, 28-point;
Two-line Great Primer, 36-point; Two-line Double Pica, 44-point;
Canon, 48-point.

It must not be supposed that all these sizes were found in the office
of the Book & Job Print, nor for that matter probably anywhere but
in the warehouses of Barnhart Bros. & Spindler, Marder, Luse & Co.,
MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan Co., Bruce, or other type-founders.

Our apprentice was afflicted with one of those curious prying minds
that sought to know the reason for all things. Much typographical
history lurked behind the names given to type sizes. _Diamond_,
_agate_ and _nonpareil_, it seemed, were merely fancy names, but
_brevier_ was so-called because it had been used to print breviaries;
_canon_, from the first lines of the canonical mass, and _primer_ for
primaries or elementary prayer books. _Bourgeois_ has been attributed
to the city of Bourges, to a printer named Bourgeois, and to having
been used in cheap books for the middle classes, the bourgeoisie.
_Minion_ was said to be the French word _mignon_, darling. But the
origin of _pica_, so constantly used as a yardstick for measuring
leads, slugs, reglets, and the width of columns and pages, is as
fascinating as it is baffling.

_Pica_ is Latin for magpie, and it has been ingeniously supposed
that some work now lost, an account of that thievish and mischievous
bird, was printed in type now bearing that name. De Vinne[38] cites a
far more amusing derivation: "Like great primer, pica takes its name
from its early use as a text letter. 'The Pie,' writes Mores, 'was
a table showing the course of the service of the church in the time
of darkness. It was called the Pie because it was written in letters
of black and red, as the Friars de Pica were so named from their
party-colored raiment black and white, the plumage of the magpie.'"
And is it not at least probable that "pi," a jumble of unsorted type,
is also derived from the same source, either because of the pied
feathers of the bird, or from its habit of assembling a miscellaneous
collection of objects in some hiding place?

As he explored his upper case, our apprentice discovered that while
the capitals and small capitals were ranged in alphabetical order,
_J_ and _U_ were left to the end like substitute ball players on
the bench. By studying an unabridged dictionary he learned that
those letters were late comers into the alphabet; the old scribes,
finding that _I_ tended to become confused with the last stroke of
the previous letter, gave it a tail to distinguish it. The two forms
were used indiscriminately for the consonant and vowel sounds of _I_
until in due course they were separated. In the same way _V_ was half
of _W_, distinguished as singleyou and doubleyou. _V_ was carelessly
written as _U_ and even as _Y_, and had all the sounds, but was at
length assigned one job, and the _U_ added to the alphabet. How long
ago that happened! So conservative was the printing art that even
after two hundred years the case had not been shifted to accommodate
them, and dictionaries as late as 1800 still used both forms in the
same classification. Our apprentice felt that the office where he was
learning his trade had not changed greatly, typographically at least,
since Plantin.


                                  II

The number and variety of faces at the disposal of the master printer
equalled their ugliness, though this apprentice considered them
all beautiful. There were of course the Roman faces, some of which
were good, and still are, but these were strangely distorted as
condensed, extra-condensed, extended, expanded, as well as shaded,
open, skeleton, contour, sloped (both ways), ornamented, and hair-line
letters.

One would think these were enough for all the printing anyone would
want to do, but there was also a bewildering multitude of so-called
job types of fancy and fantastic design. Each foundry put out a book
as big as a dictionary, filled with bizarre creations in which the
innocent alphabet was twisted and tormented and decorated until some
of its masterpieces were illegible.

Among them were a number informally standardized and cast by all
foundries. Such were Antique, Boldface, Gothic, Lightface, Clarendon,
Caledonian, Ionic, Doric, Egyptian, Runic, Celtic, Rustic, Script,
Grecian, Monastic, Norman, Title, and these too were also condensed,
extended and otherwise squeezed, stretched and pulled about. When the
type-writer came there was added that monstrosity, type-writer type.
But the pride of each foundry was its own exclusive creations, to
which were given names as fantastic as the designs, putting Pullman
nomenclature to shame, such as Pansy, Olive, Asteroid, Van Dyke,
Vulcan, Schwabacher, Florist, Teuton, Text, Eastlake.

From such an array the country printer was expected to choose the
types to equip his shop. His outfit consisted of fair quantities of
Roman, nonpareil, brevier and long primer for straight matter--the
weekly newspaper, booklets and pamphlets, with larger sizes for job
work, too many faces with few fonts large enough to set more than a
line or two. This did not matter since it seemed obligatory to set in
a different letter each line of display, advertisements, title pages,
as well as dodgers and handbills, the greater the contrast and variety
the better, with "ands" and "thes" in lines by themselves, centered
and flanked by flourishes on each side. Type larger than two-line
canon was made of wood, and was called "stud-horse type" because
used for the big bills tacked up on barns and trees to advertise the
services of a stallion.

Small fonts of job type were listed in foundry catalogues "5A 13a," to
indicate quantity, other letters being in proportion. There was seldom
more than one of little used letters, necessitating a shift to another
font when a line turned up with two Xs or two Zs. Job types were laid
in cases like the uppers of Roman, the boxes all of a size, capitals
on one side, lower case on the other.

New type was an abomination. The compositor's fingers, already tender
from the lye used to wash forms, were cut by the sharp edges, and his
eyes blinded by the glare from sorts, and the printers were forever
prowling the shining metal. There was chronic clack of up and down the
live bank with tweezers, pulling out the needed letters, and inserting
an equal-sized type upside down to mark the place. Another source of
trouble was the font from a different foundry, supposedly the same
body, but with a slight variation, that was forever getting into the
wrong case and being set up, dropping out when the form was lifted.


                                  III

The apprentice was kept too busy to have much time for the acquisition
of abstract knowledge. In return for instruction in the art and
mystery of printing he was expected to perform the duties of a
"devil." He arrived at half-past six, started the fire in the
pot-bellied stove, swept up (no light job, for the continuous barrage
of fine-cut and plug formed a coping around the feet of every frame,
and the trimmings from the big knife lay in windrows). All day he ran
errands with proofs, handbills, billheads, advertisements, to submit
to customers; wet down paper for the weekly run of the newspaper, and
pasted the subscribers' names on them for the mail; distributed "pi,"
and rushed the growler for thirsty journeymen.

But he learned that the printers in one shop were a "chapel," the
head was the "father," who was not the foreman. It thrilled him that
such expressions went back to the time when Caxton had his press in
Westminster Abbey. A small group of men working on the same job was a
companionship, and had strict rules as to who was to do what. Points
of procedure, such as the first or a "fat take," or the selection of a
victim to set up the beer, was determined by a curious custom. The men
gathered around the imposing stone, and each in turn shook out a few
em-quads, five or seven, throwing them on the stone like dice. The one
with the most nicks uppermost was the winner.

These were time-honored practices, but each shop had customs peculiar
to itself. He learned not to whistle at his case, for a sponge of
dirty water was apt to take him squarely in the mouth. When late he
found lines set up in his composing stick, which he had to distribute
before he began work, at his own expense--when he was finally promoted
to piece work,--

         _A diller, a dollar, a ten-o'clock scholar,
           What makes you come so soon?
         You used to come at ten o'clock,
           But now you come at noon._

For some time his tormentors had alluded mysteriously to the "type
louse" that haunted the forms, and promised to show him one when
found. A journeyman working at the stone over a newspaper form wet
down for distribution called him over, and pointing excitedly, cried,

"Now, there, look!"

He looked.

Handfuls of type had been removed, and the water gathered in small
pools between the columns. The apprentice bent over eagerly to behold
the strange insect, whereupon the journeyman shoved up a column of
type, forcing the water to rise like a fountain into the apprentice's
innocent face, while the force roared with laughter and pounded with
their composing sticks on the frames.


                                  IV

In a small office in pre-union days, every printer was or became
an "all-round" man. Not only could he stick type (and some old-time
printers had a wonderful instinct for spacing), but he could "kick"
a jobber, impose, make ready, and feed a cylinder press. Some of the
vagabond printers who drifted back and forth across the West, working
a few days at each halt, were not only craftsmen but characters. It
was amazing how promptly they became at home in a strange shop, in a
few moments working as if they had been there for years. The saga of
the typographic tourist has yet to be told.

It was not long before he found himself standing on one leg like
a stork, working the treadle of the Gordon jobber with the other,
feeding some small job, milk tickets or dodgers or billheads, against
three 3-em quads pasted to the tympan in lieu of gaugepins. As the
press had no grippers the feeder must grab the printed sheet before
the ink pulled it off and insert the next, regulating the speed
according to his need. Pasting scraps of cardboard on the quads to
project a bit helped hold the printed card or paper. The regular
gaugepins sold never seemed to work as well as quads, and anyway,
old-time printers were self-helpful and never bought what they could
make.

From feeding press he graduated to making ready and locking up
forms. There were always enough odds and ends of furniture for small
jobs without cutting new, but for big work, particularly a book or
pamphlet, the furniture was cut to fit the job. The form was "locked"
by driving quoins, wedge-shaped bits of hard wood, along the tapering
side sticks with an implement known as a shooting stick, notched at
one end. The form was planed with a block of wood beaten over the
form to drive down type that might stick above the printing surface.
Something like this still prevails, no doubt, but not with such
primitive tools, and very little printing is now done from the type.
I am sure the shooting stick and wooden quoins must be as obsolete as
ink balls.

The night before the newspaper was run off, the paper was laid down
on a broad platform, a quire at a time, drenched with water, covered
with a wide board, and a heavy stone placed on top to squeeze the
water out. Dampening was necessary to make the ink stick. Subscribers
received their papers so wet they had to dry them before reading. The
press was a cylinder with a large flywheel having a handle attached.
It was run by human power--a husky Negro, who also furnished the
muscle for the big knife, or guillotine, with which books were
trimmed. In the words of the proprietor he "always gives a scent back
no matter what we pay him." The apprentice and devil doubled for the
porter when he was otherwise engaged, but shortly steam was installed,
adding greatly to the excitement on press day.

Feeding the dampened sheets against the gripper was not easy, and
often he missed. To stop the press he grasped the long switch lever
and threw the overhead belt on to the idle pulley. If it failed, as it
sometimes did, the tympan was inked, and several sheets must be run
through before it ceased to offset on the wrong side of the paper, a
waste of which his employer made him emphatically aware. It had been
easier to stop the press when it was turned by hand.

A daily chore which fell to his lot cruelly sharpened the appetite
of a hungry boy toward the noon hour. This was the menu card from
the local hotel with corrections for the day's dinner (square meal,
25 cents). He picked up the standing type, slid it on a galley, and
proceeded to pull out yesterday's banana fritter and stewed corn and
insert today's pear fritter and stewed tomatoes. He then ran off
thirty copies, taking extra care as the stock was special and had the
word _Menu_ embossed in gold and other decorations. It was a sort
of Barmecide's feast for him, whetting an appetite that needed no
whetting.

Every printing office boasted one of those geniuses expert at rule
twisting, who with shears, file and pliers bent brass rule into
patterns that would print scrolls and flourishes around headlines
and on title pages, ornaments for the corners of boxes, and when
needed extra long braces. Some could create intricate designs, birds
with streamers in their beaks in which type could be set, like
those that were the pride of the writing masters. Like leads, brass
rule was bought in lengths of a foot or so, and cut as needed. Much
ingenuity was required to make the corners meet, until the arrival of
"labor-saving," with corners mitered or beveled.


                                   V

When work in the printing office became slack he was moved to the
bindery, where the files of Godey's, Peterson's and Ballou's Magazines
were put in dull black covers with names lettered on the spine. Its
principal work, however, was the manufacture of account books, made to
order to fit the individual book-keeping methods of bank or merchant.
The ancient ruling machine of mahogany looked something like a loom
for weaving cloth. Until the advent of loose-leaf books and adding
machines, business men kept their accounts in three enormous tomes
labeled respectively Day Book, Journal, and Ledger. Every transaction
was entered in the Day Book chronologically. It was reëntered in the
Journal to separate outgo from income. Finally, each item appeared in
the Ledger under the name of the customer, or creditor, to show the
status of individual accounts.

Sheets of paper, bearing picturesque old names--Royal, Crown, Demy,
or Foolscap--were fed to the ruling machine, and came into contact
with a battery of pens, each with its own little fountain of ink, red
or blue, as the line demanded--both colors ruled at once. The sheets
were then printed at the top of each page with the name of the firm,
numbered by hand, and bound in the familiar heavy books, with covers
half an inch thick, hinges of rawhide, red leather backs and corners,
and sides decorated with marbled paper.

The marbled paper was made in the shop. A square tray or pan of slate
was filled with a thin sizing of water and gum tragacanth. On its
surface were gently shaken little blobs of color that spread slowly
on the surface of the pool. The fashion in blank books seemed to run
to red, blue and white. The spots of color were combed into the wavy
patterns peculiar to such books. A sheet of paper laid on the surface
of the water took off a fine impression of the pattern. These sheets
were used for end-papers as well as covers. The edges of the book were
also marbled. All this was once done in a small printing office in a
prairie town of about 12,000 inhabitants. The books were sturdy and
durable. I have seen many of them preserved in vaults beneath banks,
filled with the neat Spencerian hand of the bookkeepers of that era,
the pupils of the writing masters who drew without taking pen from
paper the flowing florid birds trailing messages from their bills.

He was for some years a "two-thirder." A two-thirder received
two-thirds the wages of a journeyman printer, which were fifteen
dollars a week. They did not have piece work at the Book & Job Print,
but later he entered another world, worked on the evening newspaper
of the town and tasted the excitement of a race against bogie,
the average day's work of ten thousand ems, the printer's measure
familiar to all crossword puzzle fans. The piece rate was twenty-five
cents a thousand, whether leaded brevier or solid nonpareil. A rapid
compositor could set ten or more thousand a day, according to luck
with "takes." One learned the fine art of jockeying for position,
slowing up when the next take on the hook, was an undesirable one, or
speeding in the race for a fat one. Fat takes were pickups--railroad
time table, baseball score, market report, taken from the live bank,
corrected and added to one's string to be paid for as if set. Each
compositor had a numbered slug that he dumped on the galley with his
stickful of set matter. When the galley was proved he kept a copy,
and at the end of the day pasted up his work, being careful to join
the takes closely, signed his name and turned it in. As soon as the
paper was up there was a let-down, the tension relaxed, pipes were
lit, conversation was possible, and the men picked up incredibly long
handfuls of type from the forms returned from the pressroom, and
proceeded to throw in a thumping big case against next day's work.

Cuts, if any, were of wood. There was an engraver in the town who
supplied illustrations when badly enough needed and plenty of time was
available. He made both the drawing and the block, and was a better
engraver than artist. His pictures were what is now modernist and even
surrealist. An ingenious method of making cuts in an emergency was
nipped in the bud by the progress of zinc etching. That was the chalk
plate. A metal plate coated with a film of chalk could be drawn on
with a sharp instrument, cutting through the chalk to the plate. The
plate was then used as a matrix to make a casting that would print the
lines drawn, something after the manner of a stereotype.

But the pride of the country press was its stock of ready-made
cuts--Lodge emblems: Masonic, Odd Fellows, I.O.G.T.; patriotic:
eagle, star, flag, Liberty Bell; trade symbols: mortar and pestle,
false teeth, piano, anvil, watch, domestic animals, together with
the inevitable pointing finger (fist) and clasped hands. There were
houses, ships, buggies, and, even still on hand in some offices,
runaway slaves. These were used to embellish circulars, invitations,
or programs, and were also used in small ads in the newspaper.

There were molds for casting rollers that looked much like huge candle
molds. The roller composition was a mixture of glue and molasses,
consistency varying according to the season of the year. It was
more practicable to buy rollers by this time, but homemade rollers
were still cast occasionally. In a near-by village as late as 1889
a four-column folio weekly newspaper was run off--pulled, I should
say--on a hand-lever press, one page at a time, the same method and
almost the same press as that which printed the _Virginia Gazette_, or
the earlier _Saturday Evening Post_, or for that matter all incunabula.

It is quite likely that all the old-time editors of country
newspapers were printers. The tradition no longer holds, but one
apprentice printer in my old shop whose destiny was no doubt
influenced by this early contact with type was John Finley, who
became editor of the country's greatest newspaper. There are still
men, though not so many as there were once, playing important roles
in world affairs who at some time in their lives experienced the
thrill of handling the twenty-four (now twenty-six) potent little lead
soldiers that change the history of the world. No man ever loses that
sense of the importance of printing, or can look upon a printed thing
with indifference, who has once felt it. Nor for that matter does he
ever forget the lay of the case. It is a craft that gets into the
blood.

In 1889 or thereabouts I witnessed a scene which foretold the great
change that was coming to the art I had learned with such patience and
diligence, as revolutionary as the change of shipping from sail to
steam. There arrived and was set up a machine intended to set type.
Its name was Thorne, and its principle was to release the letter
called for when the key was pressed by means of nicks in the body of
the type, like the tumblers of a Yale lock. The type travelled in
the channels to a galley, and was justified by hand, if I remember
rightly. Obviously the device depended upon a hair-trigger nicety of
adjustment. Even the mechanics who came with it had difficulty in
making it work. It jammed repeatedly, and before many hours the floor
was covered with broken sorts. After a few months it was packed up
and sent back, and the old-fashioned method of setting by hand was
reinstated, until that day when that office, like every one of its
class, was equipped with a battery of linotypes. Thus vanished a craft
that had been four hundred years in the making, that uncanny skill
with which a good printer manipulated type.

The tramp printer, with his thirst, his steel setting rule, his budget
of gossip of all the printing offices in a wide territory, has become
extinct. The callous forefinger of the printer is as much a legend as
the miller's sensitive thumb.


                                  VI

Did they print books in those far-away prairie printing offices? They
certainly did. One of the rarest items of Western Americana bears a
Galesburg imprint. A pioneer of that town, a genius who played the
flute and made many inventions, one of them the rotary plow still
used to clear snow from the tracks of western railroads, was Riley
Root. In 1849 he caught the gold fever and made the trip to Oregon and
California over-land in a covered wagon. He had many adventures, and
on his return wrote a book that was printed in Galesburg and is now
a collector's item. A famous Boston book-seller became excited when
he discovered a copy. "Unknown," he wrote in 1932, "to Wagner, Smith,
Cowan, or as far as we know to any other bibliographer of the West,
and unrecorded in the entire run of American Book Prices Current."

The front wrapper reads:

 Journal of Travels / from / St. Josephs to Oregon / with /
 observations of that country / together with / a Description of
 California, / its agricultural interests, / and / a full description /
 of / its Gold Mines. / By Riley Root / Galesburg, Ill. / Intelligencer
 Print / 1850.

The matter on the wrapper is repeated on the title page with some minor
variations. The book is a substantial pamphlet, size 9-1/2 by 6 inches,
144 pages, uncut. The Boston bookman continues:

"Riley Root's Journal has everything that a rare piece of Western
Americana should have. In the first place, it _looks_ rare. Like
several rare Western items of which only a few copies exist, it was
printed in a small mid-Western town. 'Galesburg, Illinois, 1850' is an
imprint that has charm for the collector."

It must be excessively rare. The only other copy of which I know,
besides the one described, is now appropriately in the Seymour Library
of Knox College. Of this copy the librarian said (when he acknowledged
the gift to the Library in 1931):

"This little unbound pamphlet was written by Riley Root who came with
his family to this prairie country in 1836, when he was 37 years
old, and helped to build the houses of Log City, the forerunner of
Galesburg.... It was printed in Galesburg in 1850 by the 'Intelligencer
Print' and bears in the border of the cover the name of the compositor,
Southwick Davis, who graduated from Knox in the first class--that of
1846. This creditable piece of printing was done only about fourteen
years after Galesburg was staked out and when Knox College was
graduating its fifth class.

"In April 1848 Riley Root left Galesburg to make this over-land
journey, crossing the continent by way of the Oregon Trail to Oregon
City, a distance of 1846 miles from St. Josephs on the Missouri River,
which was regarded as the starting point for the long journey through
the Indian Country. Although gold had been discovered at Sutter's
sawmill in California on February 10th, 1848, nearly two months
before Mr. Root left Galesburg, it is not probable that he learned of
that famous event until he reached Oregon in mid-September. The news
spread slowly even on the Pacific coast, credible reports reaching
San Francisco only in May. Mr. Root says that the excitement ('yellow
fever,' he calls it) began in Oregon about the middle of August, and
that within one month nearly 2,000 persons left Oregon for the gold
fields. The purpose of Mr. Root's over-land journey to Oregon is not
stated, but it would seem from an entry in his diary seven months
after reaching Oregon City, to the effect that he had been 'roaming up
and down the valley, in pursuit of information,' that he was scouting
for new lands on a new frontier. Finding himself in the midst of all
the gold rush 'commotion' he may very well have been attacked by the
'yellow fever' bug himself. At any rate he left Oregon in April, 1849,
just a year after leaving Galesburg, and going to San Francisco and the
California gold fields, spent five months, returning to Illinois by way
of Panama and New Orleans. He arrived in Galesburg, January 8, 1850.

"This little pamphlet records the details of this epic journey, and if
Riley Root's reputation rested on this alone he would take high rank
as a historian. It is extremely well done and is a faithful journal of
not only the day to day happenings, but of the country and its climate,
the wild animals, the Indians, the geology and botany, the mountains,
the forests and streams, and many other features that give evidence of
the observant eye of the author. One interesting and important chapter
relates the harrowing details of the Indian massacre of November,
1847, in which Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife lost their lives. This
story was supplied to Mr. Root by eye-witnesses and is said to be its
earliest publication in book or pamphlet form."

Among the many changes of ownership of presses in Galesburg, it would
be difficult to decide whether the shop in which I learned my trade was
a descendant of the Intelligencer Print or not, but it was produced in
just such a primitive and resourceful plant.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[38] _Plain Printing Types_, Theodore L. De Vinne, New York, 1902.




                             _James Shand_

        _AUTHOR AND PRINTER: G.B.S. AND R. & R. C.: 1898-1948_

   From _Alphabet and Image_: 8, Winter, 1948. Copyright by Art and
  Technics, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.


    [Illustration: Topolski's drawing from the illustrated Penguin
                             _Pygmalion_.]

Author and printer, publisher and book-seller; these conjunctions
flow too easily from the pen. They cover an immeasurable sum of human
experience, both melancholy and magnificent, in the long history of the
book trade; they should be used with more reserve.

Fortunately for the reader, the writer is no doctor in bibliography
expounding the perils and diseases of textual transmission, but a
typographical reporter, with an interim case-history of a particular
author, a particular printer and a healthy body of work in progress.

Our author is George Bernard Shaw, sometime of Dublin: our printer, R.
& R. Clark, now, as always, of Edinburgh. The association is unique in
more than a geographical sense; in time it covers fifty years; in space
it defies quantitative analysis. Bernard Shaw's quota, if consigned to
the Society of Authors, would probably make that body independent of
the publishing trade for years to come.

Miss Marjorie Plant has pointed out, in her always readable economic
history, _The English Book Trade_, that there was once a time when
"the person who was of no account whatever in the early years of the
book industry was the author." At a later period when the printer was
dominated by book-seller and publisher, Dr. Johnson wrote in _The
Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1739, "We can produce some who threatened
printers with their highest displeasure for having dared to print books
for those who wrote them!"

In the history of English literature the relations of author, printer
and publisher have often been bitter and obscure, posing many problems
in bibliography and textual criticism. Dr. McKerrow, introducing the
literary student to bibliography, suggests that "the best way of
obtaining a clear and lively comprehension of the processes by which
the books of Shakespeare's time were produced" would be by actually
composing a sheet or two in exact facsimile of an Elizabethan quarto
and printing it on a hand-press. "Once he does this," he adds, "he
will find that the material book, apart altogether from its literary
content, can be a thing of surprising interest."

The surprise of Dr. McKerrow's student trying to disentangle the
impositions by which the Penguin edition of more than a million copies
of Shaw's plays were produced on modern perfector printing presses and
automatic folding machines would indeed be considerable. Nevertheless
it is to be doubted whether there are as many bibliographical vagaries
and obscurities in Shaw as in the folios and quartos of Shakespeare.
Certainly there is something of the same fascination in the printing
and production of the "material" books of the later playwright; apart
from the literary antics of an ebullient Irish author with that most
emotional of all romantic characters: seemingly hard-headed Scots
printers.

Since we are presenting the romance of playwright and printer,
without benefit of publisher, let us set our characters in their
dramatic place and scene. The place is Edinburgh; the scene R. & R.
Clark; the principal characters, Edward Clark, Bernard Shaw and William
Maxwell; with a faint echo off-stage from that habitual bankrupt,
Grant Richards, later deserted for the more solid attractions of a
"commissioned" Constable.

[Illustration: Shaw's original shorthand draft of his letter to Maxwell
              on the centenary of R. & R. Clark in 1946.]

Professor G. M. Trevelyan, in one of those two brilliant chapters on
Scotland in his _English Social History_, points out that rapidly
developing eighteenth-century Edinburgh "was hardly less important than
London in the British field of letters."

Mr. Stanley Morison, speaking in Edinburgh in 1944 on the subject
of _The Typographic Arts_, pointed out that the first history of
typography ever written for the instruction of the trade was James
Watson's _The Art of Printing_, published in Edinburgh in 1713.[39] A
few years later the Edinburgh book-seller, Alexander Donaldson, who
set up shop in the Strand and put Edinburgh printed classics on sale
at 30 per cent to 50 per cent below the usual prices, was largely
responsible for the creation of a "permanent and enlarged printing and
type-founding industry in Edinburgh." Mr. Morison also asserts that in
the last quarter of the eighteenth century Scotland led the interest in
technicalities of printing.

The first edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, printed in
Edinburgh in 1771, was brought out by "a Society of Gentlemen of
Scotland." John Bell's _British Poets_ and _British Theatre_ were
printed at the Apollo Press by Gilbert Martin, an Edinburgh printer of
whom Mr. Morison would gladly know more.

"The social, imaginative and intellectual life" of Scotland in the
early nineteenth century centred largely in Edinburgh on Burns and
Scott, Adam Smith and _The Edinburgh Review_. The familiar publisher
names, Ballantyne, Blackwood, Chambers, Constable, Nelson, were also
printers. In type-founding, Miller & Richards' Scotch Roman cut in
1803, and the later Old Style, were widely used throughout the trade,
at home and abroad, right up to the present day.

It was in 1846, six years before Alexander Phemister cut the now
famous Old Style, that Robert Clark, with a loan of £200, laid the
modest foundations of R. & R. Clark. After serving his apprenticeship
in Montrose as compositor and pressman (what is called in the Edinburgh
trade a "twicer") he sought experience in London as a journeyman,
before returning to Edinburgh to start his own business. His London
experience must have been of some value to him because it was not long
before he and his partner, James Kirkwood, had developed an active
business with London publishers: Macmillans, Bentley, John Murray,
Smith Elder, A. & C. Black, amongst others.

Robert Clark's policy of providing fine quality, with conscientious
service at the highest possible price, no doubt contributed to the
financial success of a rapidly developing business which moved to the
present printing works at Brandon Street in 1883. Robert Clark's only
surviving son, Edward, took over sole control after his father's death
in 1894. William Maxwell first appears on the scene at this time,
entering R. & R. Clark as a shorthand writer in 1892.

It was in 1892 that Shaw's first play, _Widowers' Houses_, was
produced; 1898 when _Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant_, published by Grant
Richards, were printed by R. & R. Clark.

Few living authors nowadays can claim continuous direct relations
with one printer over a period of fifty years. Books are now the
product of mechanical composing machines, automatic printing presses,
and mechanized binderies. They require expert control by experienced
production staffs dealing with many different paper-makers, printers
and binders. For this reason alone the printed works of such a
productive author as Bernard Shaw are a remarkable exception to the
general rule in the highly-organized printing and publishing trades.

Commission publishing is the resort of authors whose reputation
guarantees a lucrative circulation and who can afford the necessary
capital. Shaw now deals directly with his printer and binder, buying
and paying for his own composition, machining, paper and binding.

Shaw had always very definite ideas about the format of his books and,
with the complete and friendly co-operation of his present publisher,
has dealt continuously with R. & R. Clark since 1898. Clarks are now
102, Shaw 92, Maxwell 75; this unique association of author and printer
is also a competition in longevity.

[Illustration: Page from the Standard Edition, which began publication
   in 1931, in Fournier small pica, 1-1/2 points leaded, large crown
                         octavo, 5x8 inches.]

The influence of Bernard Shaw on our time has been profound; in
the theatre, in films and in broadcasting. The circulation of his
printed works has been immense. His direct collaboration with his
printer over a long period is of more than professional interest to
publishers, printers and bibliographers. This unique author-printer
relationship provides an unusual aspect for us of the wit, vigour and
working methods of one of the most successful authors and playwrights
of our time; demonstrating also in no uncertain terms the integrity,
craftsmanship and mechanical resource of the printing house of R. & R.
Clark, so soundly based and flexibly developed over the last hundred
years in the solid traditions of the Edinburgh book-printing trade.

In 1946, on the occasion of the centenary of R. & R. Clark, Shaw wrote
of that renowned Edinburgh printing firm, "Ever since it printed my
first plays, _Pleasant and Unpleasant_, in 1898, it has been as natural
a part of my workshop as the pen in my hand." Few printers can ever
have received so eloquent a tribute from so eminent an author.

As a young author, Shaw's experiences with publishers had not been
exactly encouraging. Between 1879 and 1883, as regularly as clockwork,
at the rate of one a year, they rejected all his novels. The climate
in publishing at that time is best described by Shaw himself writing
to Daniel Macmillan in 1943. The letter is quoted in full in Charles
Morgan's _The House of Macmillan_; a small portion bears reprinting
here. After describing how Meredith turned him down for Chatto's
without extenuating circumstances; how Blackwood accepted his first
novel but reneged; how Smith Elder were polite and asked to see future
efforts, Shaw goes on to write: "I am now one of the few who personally
remember the Grand Old Men of the publishing world of that day:
Alexander Macmillan, Longmans and Bentley. They were so powerful that
they held the book-sellers in abject subjection, and were denounced by
Walter Besant and his newly-organized Society of Authors as remorseless
sharks. When they died and were succeeded by their sons, the hereditary
system did not always work as well as it did in Bedford Street; and
the book-sellers got the upper hand. John Murray's Byronic prestige was
so select that I did not dream of trying him until years later, when
I was an author of some note and had already helped to bankrupt three
publishers. I offered him _Man and Superman_. He refused in a letter
which really touched me. He said he was old-fashioned and perhaps a bit
behind the times; but he could not see any intention in my book but to
wound, irritate and upset all established constitutional opinion, and
therefore could not take the responsibility of publishing it. By that
time I could command sufficient capital to finance my books and enter
into direct friendly relations with the printers (this began my very
pleasant relations with Clarks of Edinburgh). I took matters into my
own hands and, like Herbert Spencer and Ruskin, manufactured my books
myself, and induced Constables to take me "on commission."

Sidney and Beatrice Webb sent Shaw to their Edinburgh printer. An
informative and amusing correspondence reprinted at length by Grant
Richards in _Author Hunting_ reveals how he was ruled and educated by
Shaw in the choice of type, "Morris" margins, specimen pages, paper
and other details of production. Holbrook Jackson has pointed out in
an article in number four of _The Fleuron_ that Shaw's books followed
the model of William Morris's _Roots of the Mountains_, printed in
Caslon Old Face at the Chiswick Press in 1892. Shaw, Socialist intimate
and admirer of Morris, was also in close touch with Emery Walker, and
familiar no doubt with the typographical ideas of Morris, Walker and
Cobden-Sanderson, first elaborated in Edinburgh in 1889 at a meeting
of the National Association for the Advancement of Art, and later
published in _Arts and Crafts Essays_ printed in Edinburgh in 1893.

In preliminary discussions of the production of _Plays Pleasant and
Unpleasant_, Shaw insisted on a trade union printer. Grant Richards
doubted whether a union house could do justice to his ideal of the
book beautiful. "I had few notions of what makes a union house," wrote
Grant Richards. "I do not think I had a union house on my list. The
problem shifted to the question of fair wages, and R. & R. Clark were
approved." Shaw, in a letter to Grant Richards in 1897, observed,
"Clark is all right; a first-rate house. I enclose a letter which you
can hold as a certificate of compliance with my fair wages clause."...

Edward Clark doubtless also got much entertainment from his dealings
with a teetotal, non-smoking, vegetarian, Socialist of an author. There
is a story that, on one specimen, Shaw's instructions for close and
mechanically-equal spacing between words were so precisely followed by
the pragmatical Scots, that at the end of some closely spaced lines
the definite article "the" was divided "t-" and "he" turned over, and
the indefinite article "a-" with "n" turned over. Shaw's comment when
returning the specimen, as Maxwell tells the story, was, "Excellent;
but please do not go so far as to prove the author is really a damn
fool." Shaw denies the story; nevertheless, true or untrue, it has a
Shavian flavour.

Shaw's choice of Caslon for his original edition was inevitable. We
know that he picked up the pre-Kelmscott formula ready-made from
William Morris; but, unlike the founding fathers of the private press
movement, he lacked the unearned income to indulge in a privately-cut
type-face. In 1897 we must remember that there were only two text-types
available in most book-houses: Old Style or Modern. More often than
not, before mechanical type-setting, there was not even any choice.
Publisher and author often had to accept the type of which there
happened to be, at any given moment, the greatest amount of "dis."

Shaw's original hand-set page in type-founder's Caslon, long primer
solid, stood up to thirty years' constant use. To our post-war eyes,
conditioned by authorized economy standards, the precise and consistent
setting of the plays, with their even Roman small caps, lower-case
italics in square brackets, with occasional lower-case Roman words
letter-spaced, has considerable nostalgic typographical charm. Here is
sense and sensibility in book-making, well ahead of its typographical
time. Of course, there are many people, William Maxwell and Bernard
Newdigate amongst them, who protested that long primer Caslon set solid
was too small and too difficult to read. But Shaw proved faithful to
his original style and to his original setting until the plates wore
out. He liked a colourful block of letter-press without white "rivers."
He complains that modern printing ink is not black enough.

In the middle twenties when the project of a Limited Collected Edition
was discussed, Shaw still preferred Caslon, but agreed to a larger
size, pica solid, on a larger page, medium octavo. But, and to William
Maxwell it was a considerable but, Shaw specified hand-setting. As
a disciple of William Morris, Shaw objected to setting his books by
machine. Our William from Edinburgh thereafter called on Shaw with
two different specimen pages, one hand-set in original Caslon and one
"machine-justified" in Monotype Caslon. Both were submitted to Shaw
without saying which was which. The suspected Monotype "justification"
was preferred. Maxwell triumphed. Emery Walker, consulted by letter,
also approved the machine-set page.

What a victory for the machine! Or rather, what a subtle example of
Maxwell's typographical tact and persuasiveness! The re-setting of the
whole of Shaw by hand would have been an inexcusable and expensive
drudgery. Maxwell convinced Shaw that the mechanical composing machine
could equal hand-setting in typographical quality and close spacing
between words and sentences.

The devotion to Monotype Caslon in the middle twenties seems strange
to us now, looking back from a wealth of typographical equipment,
including Bembo, Bell and Times. But if we look round the literature
of the trade at that time, particularly at _The Fleuron_, we note
that Caslon in its Monotype version had a vogue, almost a kind of
typographical Indian summer. _The Fleuron_ number one was set in the
"then fashionable" design known as Garamond; number two in Baskerville;
numbers three and four reverted to Caslon. When Mr. Stanley Morison
took over the editing of numbers five, six and seven, and the printing
moved from Curwen to Cambridge, the final volumes were all set in
Fournier.

It was about this same time that William Maxwell told Shaw that his
old Caslon plates were worn out and suggested complete resettings in
a new Standard Edition in large crown octavo in small-pica Fournier
1-1/2-points leaded. In the final choice of type for the Standard
Edition, we detect again how Shaw trusted William Maxwell's judgment
and accepted his advice. No doubt there was an improvement in
readability over the original edition, but my own feeling is that the
Standard Edition, as at present printed, has none of the evocative
charm of the original edition. It may be that the Sundour binding seems
prosaic. But Shaw, disgusted by the fading of his green covers, was
converted to Sundour by a Winterbottom director emphasizing that not
even the Indian sun could change it.

When Shaw first saw Maxwell's specimens for the new Standard Edition
in various type-faces, Caslon, Baskerville, Scotch Roman, Old Style
and Fournier amongst others, he replied, "I like them all but I'll
stick to Caslon until I die: and after I am dead you can do what you
like." Fortunately, Shaw is still alive and the Standard Edition is in
Fournier.[40]

I cross-examined William Maxwell closely and at some length on this
switch from Caslon to Fournier. His persuasive and peculiar ability to
get his own way, even in face of such a do-or-die statement of Shaw's,
must be remarked here. I am afraid, however, the only light I can
throw on this, the greatest typographical conversion of all time, is
that Maxwell himself is very fond of Fournier italics. Maxwell is no
hard-headed Scot. He comes from the soft Hyperborean north, where the
Gulf Stream makes the fuchsias grow six feet high. When he confesses
to an affair with an elegant French type there isn't much chance for
even an Irish author, much less the English public, to break up the
"auld alliance." Thus Shaw's Standard Edition, now running into some
thirty-five volumes, began publication in Fournier in 1931 and has
steadily reprinted in this type and format at intervals ever since.

In an article on "Author and Printer" in the eleventh impression of
the ninth edition of Collins's _Authors' and Printers' Dictionary_ Dr.
R. W. Chapman observes: "The prolixity of modern writing, fostered by
cheap paper and print, by the habit of making books out of articles and
lectures, by the use of typewriters and stenographers, is a positive
evil."

  [Illustration: Shaw's meticulous proofreading is indicated by this
heavily-corrected proof of _On the Rocks_, with a complete retyping of
                          the passage below.]

Shaw's method, probably verging on the diabolical to Dr. Chapman, is to
write everything first in shorthand. A double-spaced typescript then
becomes his working copy, to be sent to the printer only after careful
emendation and revision, in Shaw's always clear hand.

The manuscripts, typescripts, galley, page and final press proofs,
indeed the whole apparatus of the Shavian "workshop" in William
Maxwell's collection, show the great pains Shaw takes in writing
and revising before setting. His meticulous proof reading is as
characteristic as the clarity of his proof correction. William Maxwell
tells me that Shaw's first-proof corrections are often heavy, sometimes
involving considerable re-setting and re-make-up. But wherever lengthy
excisions or additions are made in final proofs, Shaw is always careful
to supply the exact number of words; sometimes in shorter corrections
counting individual letters in substituted words in order to avoid
over-running and re-justification.

By all the standards of Horace Hart and Howard Collins, Shaw would
qualify as an admirable and expert author in the technical aspect of
his relations with his printer--except, perhaps, for Dr. Chapman's
scholarly strictures on prefatorial prolixity and diabolonian
authorship.

Shaw's plays are drafted in what he calls Author's Shorthand
(simplified Pitman); typed by his secretary; revised; printed; and
passed for press after two more revisions. For rehearsal, fifty copies
are struck off as "By a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature." If
more are required they are "By Bernard Shaw." These sets are "privately
printed." Alterations and additions in rehearsal and during the run of
the play are incorporated as final corrections before publication.

One of the most interesting Shaw exhibits in William Maxwell's
possession is the original of the filmscript of _Pygmalion_. Shaw
allowed no hand but his own on the scripts of his films. The corrected
copy of the play, with alterations in dialogue and time scheme for the
screen and the additional scenes and sequences, is in itself remarkable
visual evidence of Shaw's nimble-witted inventiveness. Few playwrights
at the age of eighty-five have tackled so successfully the transition
into another medium, cooperating with director and producer to present
in all its freshness and verve the authentic Shavian touch on both
sound-track and screen.

The original edition, the Limited Collected edition, the Standard
edition, form the bulk of Shaw's printed works; his printed ephemera
are not my concern here. There are, however, various editions of what
we might call out-of-the-run-plays-and-prefaces books: _The Intelligent
Woman's Guide_, _Everybody's Political What's What_, the two-column
quarto editions of the _Prefaces_ and _The Complete Plays_, the
illustrated _Black Girl_, the illustrated _Good King Charles's Golden
Days_ (there was also an illustrated edition of _Geneva_ printed by the
Chiswick Press) and the illustrated Penguin edition of _Pygmalion_.
"Omnibus" editions of the _Plays and Prefaces_ have been published by
Odhams, cheap editions by Penguin; and _Back to Methuselah_ by the
Oxford University Press in World's Classics. The Odhams omnibus was
reprinted from Shaw's plates; the Penguin editions were re-set in Times.

_The Intelligent Woman_ was instructed in Caslon on a page dimension
decided by William Maxwell; a binding design by Douglas Cockerell;
and a four-colour half-tone jacket from an original drawing by Eric
Kennington of a nude female Intelligencer looking down a well. She,
needless to add, had a much less shapely figure than the Black Girl.

The typography of _The Intelligent Woman's Guide_ (1928) is in the
Caslon formula. We need only note in passing that the drop initials at
the beginning of chapters are tightly fitted and spill over into the
margins. The binding suggests that too much Cockerell can spoil a trade
binding. The jacket was regrettable: the externals of this book seem
out of character with the rest of Shaw's production. A more acceptable
popular edition, printed from the same plates, with reduced margins in
small demy octavo, was published a year later in 1929.

 [Illustration: Shaw's note on the corrected _Pygmalion_ filmscript in
  which he altered the dialogue and time scheme, providing additional
scenes and sequences for the film as shown in the two pages following.]

                            [Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

The two-column edition of the _Complete Plays_, set in Scotch Roman
in quarto, is a skillful piece of book-making; a pleasant, readable
page, which William Maxwell can appropriate entirely to his own credit.
For size, weight and general colour the Scotch Roman was eminently
successful for all the plays in one volume, not too heavy in the hand,
in a format which makes for easy reference and re-reading.

The contrast of the two-column Fournier setting of the _Prefaces_ with
the two-column setting of the _Complete Plays_ in Scotch Roman is to
the advantage of the Scotch Roman. The small pica Fournier is too large
in relation to the width of the column and, to my eye, does not look at
all happy in this two-column setting.

_Everybody's Political What's What_ provides us with an interesting
example of the close collaboration in proof-reading between William
Maxwell, his press-readers and Shaw. Shaw, to illustrate some argument,
asserted erroneously that so many codfish were being caught at one
period that great quantities were being thrown back into the sea.
Maxwell pointed out that codfish were never thrown back into the sea;
they are salted, dried, preserved and disposed of in many other ways.
Shaw, hazy about varieties, intended fish in general and not codfish in
particular.

Also in this book, Shaw mentioned that when an outsider wins a race,
book-makers lose. William Maxwell, no mean expert in the making of
these other kinds of "books" and having absorbed, no doubt, from Edward
Clark some knowledge and appreciation of "the sporting spirits,"
questioned this; and innumerable letters from punters and bookies
overloaded Shaw's letterbox. He re-worded the passage to silence the
rule-of-thumb practitioners.

We have all been afflicted from time to time in prefaces and authors'
notes with the names of odd people who have also "read the proofs."
There can be few authors who get the benefit of skilled press-reading
and skilled scrutiny from a managing director so knowledgeable about
fish and about "bookies." The codfish and "bookie" stories are an
interesting indication of how every page of Shaw's goes through a
double sieve at Brandon Street, such is the passion of Scots for
accuracy in type-setting. The Scots' passion for perfection in
press-work comes to light in this association with the production of
_The Black Girl_.

Some time prior to 1932, Shaw asked Maxwell to suggest an
engraver-illustrator for this Voltairean tale; Maxwell suggested John
Farleigh. With that thorough attention to detail characteristic of the
Scot, he not only ensured that Shaw should have an illustrator capable
of interpreting his ideas, he also took care that the engravings,
paper and ink should all be happily matched and tested. By accepting
full responsibility for the typography of the illustrated page, he
undoubtedly produced an illustrated Shaw of a quality and at a price
which was a credit to author and printer.

My typographical feelings about _The Black Girl_ are mixed. The
engravings seem rather too heavy for the Fournier setting; it may be
an odd observation to make about a Shaw book, but the illustrations
overload the text of this slim book; the binding is too much and too
black. Shaw's own wash drawings of the Black Girl are much more subtle
in suggestion than John Farleigh's white line. But there was little
doubt about the success of _The Black Girl_ with a large public. It is
an interesting and successful example of a short book with text and
illustrations printed at one impression, and without any complications
in binding.

The contrast between Farleigh's sharp white line and Topolski's loose
black squiggle in the illustrated edition of _Good King Charles's
Golden Days_ demonstrates what I mean by the rigidity of _The Black
Girl_ page. Shaw as an author is impossible to illustrate; he can only
be annotated and decorated. There is an engaging light-hearted quality
about Topolski's cosmopolitan draughtsmanship which seems to suit Shaw
better than Farleigh's engravings.

Maxwell's earliest recollection of meeting Shaw is of going to see Mrs.
Shaw at the Adelphi about the printing of her translations of some
plays by Brieux, the author of _Damaged Goods_. Shaw had written an
introduction to them.

In the centenary letter to William Maxwell in November 1946, Shaw
wrote: "I remember Edward Clark very kindly and very well; but it was
with you that our business relations developed into a cordial personal
relationship which has been of inestimable value to me as an author...."

   [Illustration: Correction in popular edition of _The Intelligent
Woman's Guide_ showing careful count of words and letters for exact fit
                       of substituted passage.]

William Maxwell at an early stage in his career became aware of the
printer's responsibility to the author. Clark's work for Robert Louis
Stevenson must often have been recollected and discussed. Many other
authors have passed through Brandon Street on their way. It is one of
the doubtful pleasures of a book-printing establishment to deal direct
with authors. Maxwell has had his full share of that kind of mixed
pleasure and responsibility with Hardy, Kipling, the Webbs, Sir James
Frazer, Hugh Walpole, Virginia Woolf, Charles Morgan, Osbert and Edith
Sitwell.

I began with an Edinburgh book-printer; I conclude with an honorary
LL.D. of Edinburgh University. In 1947 that ancient University
conferred on William Maxwell that honour which he values above any
personal recognition. It was a deserved compliment to R. & R. Clark and
to Scottish printing as a whole.

No man is self-made; but so far as any one individual can by his own
efforts raise the standard of his trade, the renown of his firm and add
to the lustre of his native city, Dr. William Maxwell has done so by
his devoted and sedulous years in the service of many authors and many
publishers....

This inadequate typographical report is in no sense intended to be
either accurate or inclusive. Nor do I make any claim for startling
innovations in graphic design or any particularly noteworthy
contributions to typography. This productive association has covered
fifty of the most inventive years in the mechanical development of
book-printing; Bernard Shaw himself wrote, "I have not had to think
about my printing. I have left it to do itself, which means that R. &
R. Clark had to do it." All the same he thought a lot about it.

I may well conclude with the final paragraph of Shaw's letter to
William Maxwell of November 1946. "Long may you and R. & R. Clark Ltd.
flourish after we have said our last farewell which we shall both, I
hope, be still too busy to attend to."

                      COMPOSED IN CALEDONIA TYPES


                              FOOTNOTES:

[39] Two excerpts are included in this book, see pages 86 and 87.

[40] A specimen page from _The Devil's Disciple_ is shown on page 386.




              [Illustration]PAUL A. BENNETT[Illustration]

                       _On Type Faces For Books_


It is simple enough to understand that type, paper and ink are
components of book printing. But not so easy to comprehend the reasons
for the variety of papers available, nor the many dozens of type faces
offered for book composition.

The reasons for this great variety are partly functional, partly
aesthetic, and competitive. Papers differ in many ways--color, finish,
opacity, strength and bulk are some of them.

Type faces differ, too, and for equally valid reasons. There are the
important design and style differences that comprise the old style,
transitional and modern faces suitable for books. And distinctions in
weight or "color"; distinctions in roundness, in degree of compactness,
and distinctions in legibility, and in size.

To the designer of books, type face selection is important in relation
to the character of the text to be printed. The size of type selected,
and the amount of "leading," or space between its lines, has a bearing
upon the number of pages the manuscript will make.

Some shorter manuscripts, for instance, need to be "driven out" or
padded, to make the book appear greater in content than it actually is,
to justify its price. Others need every possible degree of compression
to get the manuscript into a lesser number of pages, which, in turn,
means fewer "forms" to print, fewer "signatures" to bind, and less
paper to use.

To turn from the functional use of type to the aesthetic, and also make
a rather loose analogy, one may think of the type face as a garment
with which the designer dresses the author's words.

In this instance the designer selects a type face to develop an
"allusive" format--to reflect something of the style of the period
of the manuscript. Bruce Rogers, the greatest master of allusive
book-making, in his "Paragraphs on Printing" points out that in a small
way this is "like planning the stage setting for a play.

"An up-to-date style for an ancient text would compare with staging
_Hamlet_ in modern dress. However novel and effective in its own way,
you feel it to be strange, and this sense of strangeness is an annoying
distraction; you are forced to think of the setting and the designer
rather than the text."

It is easier to suggest a feminine appeal with types like Estienne
or Fairfield or Garamond, than with less decorative faces such as
Baskerville, Bodoni or Janson. Yet it is foolish to go too far in this
direction. Strictly speaking, there are no definitely feminine or
masculine types--the way type is handled has much to do with the mood
it evokes. And it is dangerous to pin labels on types without knowing a
great deal of their background and derivation.

The idea of using many distinguished types for the composition of this
book was deliberate: The intent was to demonstrate, on a uniform paper
surface and under identical printing conditions, the "behavior" of
twenty of the finest types of our time.

And to afford a basis for comparison that might not only illumine some
of the points mentioned, but also provide reference specimens of these
notable book faces. To that end, a complete alphabet showing in caps
and lower-case of each face is included, with a brief account of its
background and development.

Not every essay will be equally appealing, typographically. Yet the
variety of faces used in setting them seems more successful than would
be the less sensitive treatment of uniform typography. Reading the
articles and studying the performance of the individual types should
provide an increased appreciation of the part typography plays in
developing the book's format.

In this present instance, the designer has chosen one basic
"background" face, Janson, for the majority of the essays. And has
"interleaved," so to speak, many of the essays set in different types.
This treatment lessens any tendency toward uneven color and spottiness,
and minimizes some of the potential "scrap book" feel of many differing
type specimens.

The problem of coupling face with essay was carefully considered. There
could be none but the obvious selection of the author's own design
in connection with five of the essays: Electra for W. A. Dwiggins'
"Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books"; Perpetua for
Eric Gill's "Typography"; Times Roman for Stanley Morison's "First
Principles of Typography"; Deepdene for Frederic Goudy's "Types
and Type Design"; and Centaur for the extracts from Bruce Rogers'
_Paragraphs on Printing_.

Some background on the type selections for other essays may be of
interest: Monticello, a recutting of one of the earliest American
types, was a natural and excellent choice for Lawrence Wroth's "First
Work with American Types," as was Bembo, one of Beatrice Warde's
favorite faces for her "Printing Should Be Invisible." Bell, which
Mr. Updike was one of the first to use with distinction--he called it
Mountjoye when he acquired it in 1903--was the choice for his "Some
Tendencies in Modern Typography."

The selection of Poliphilus for Sir Francis Meynell's "Some Collectors
Read" seemed appropriate in recognition of the many fine Nonesuch
books he had set in English Monotype faces; while that of Baskerville
for John Winterich's essay on Franklin as printer and publisher was
because Baskerville was a type Franklin greatly admired. Caledonia, an
original Dwiggins face influenced by Scotch Roman, was the more subtle
choice for Scot printer James Shand's revealing account of George
Bernard Shaw's relations with his printer--more appropriate to Shand's
preference and background, than would have been the choice of Caslon or
Fournier, in which Shaw's books have been set.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The brief mention of old style, transitional and modern faces may need
amplification. And also the descriptive terms Linotype and Monotype,
which are trade-marked words that indicate _methods_ of composition.

In _Linotype_, the product is an actual line of type, called "slug"
in printer's parlance. This is produced by one machine, from matrices
assembled through finger action on a keyboard. In operation, the
assembled line moves to the mold for casting and the matrices are then
returned (distributed) to their channels in the magazine for use in
other lines.

In _Monotype_, the product is individual pieces of type--letters and
spaces assembled into a line of many elements, as in hand type. The
Monotype machine consists of two units: the keyboard (which resembles
a type-writer) punches holes in a roll of paper, not unlike that in
a player piano. This roll is then fed into the casting unit, where
it functions by controlling levers which bring the matrix of each
character into position for casting letters and spaces in sequence in
the lines.

                            [Illustration]

The distinctions between type faces called old style, transitional
_or_ modern, are apparent at a glance to the technician. Just as,
for instance, you distinguish instantly between a Scandinavian, a
Latin-American, or a Mongolian. Analysis may indicate that the chief
factor in your instant recognition of these types is memory of features.

So too in type faces. Here the differences are more minute, and
essentially a matter of design distinctions: the weight and relation
of thick and thin strokes, the treatment and stress of curves, and the
handling of "serifs." There is little difference in the actual shapes
of letters, which is as it should be.

One of the more lucid accounts of the development of letter forms is W.
A. Dwiggins' "The Shapes of Roman Letters," included in his _Mss. by
WAD_. Illustrations from this minor classic are used here by permission.

Remember that most of the letter forms we meet are modifications of
written letters, shaped by pen action. Some differences in the details
of serif treatment are indicated by these Dwiggins drawings:

                            [Illustration]
                      _a_     _b_    _c_    _d_

_a_ shows a commonly designed serif detail, much better handled by
natural pen action in _b_. The arch of a letter, frequently handled in
type as _c_, is more crisp and attractive in _d_, the natural pen form.

In type, serifs help carry the eye in a horizontal direction, a
designer friend points out, setting up a "flow" from letter to letter
within the word, and from word to word across the line.

                           [Illustration]
                         _e_           _f_

Contrast the "degenerate, commonly used" form of o shown in _e_, with
the more attractive pen form in _f_. Here is graphic distinction in the
treatment and stress of curves.

The two most common classes of type faces are "old style" and "modern."
The "transitional," a merging of the old style form into the modern--is
typified by the illustration of Bulmer, between the Janson and Bodoni
specimens used for the visual presentation on page 404.

Our old style faces descend from the early Italian Roman types and
differ in minor details and "national" characteristics. Among the old
style faces used in this book are Bembo and Centaur, which reflect
the Italian form; Estienne, Granjon and Garamond, which reflect the
French form; Caslon and Janson, typical of the English-Dutch form; and
Fairfield and Times Roman, as differing expressions of contemporary old
style types.

Modern faces, the result of a swing of taste in the opposite
direction, stemmed from an effort to copy in type the letters of
eighteenth-century copper-plate engravers. Bodoni, the classic form of
the modern, is included in its lighter rendering, named Bodoni Book.
The first English modern, named Bell, is also included; together with
two contemporary moderns, the Dwiggins-designed Electra and Caledonia
faces, cut by Linotype. All three are less severe than Bodoni and
retain elements of the transitional form in some letters.

The two really transitional faces included are the classic Baskerville,
and Monticello, which verges somewhat more to the old style character.

"Letters," as Mr. Dwiggins illustrates graphically, "are made out of
thick 'stems,' thin 'hair-lines,' loops and 'serifs,' or finishing
strokes."

                            [Illustration]

How the variations that produce the different styles of Roman types
actually came about is easily understood by seeing how the nib of the
pen is slanted to write an old style letter like Caslon (_g_), as
against holding it at right angles to the written line for the modern
letter, such as Scotch (_h_):

                          [Illustration]
                            _g_    _h_

Differences in curve and finish are a natural result of these two pen
positions.

As Mr. Dwiggins explains: "In writing lower-case 'a,' for example, the
stroke begins at the little bulb at the upper left-hand corner, passes
over the arch at the top, descends to form the straight stem, and
finishes with an upward flick; a second motion forms the loop. As the
line moves, it swells and thins in accordance with the shape of the pen
and the direction of the movement.

                        [Illustration]
                          _i_    _j_

"In the Caslon letter (_i_), the swelling at the top begins at the bulb
or dot; the arch expands throughout its whole curve; the loop has a
decided tilt, as has the finishing stroke.

"In the Scotch letter (_j_), the arch is a thin line; the expansion
does not begin until the downward stroke of the stem; the swelling of
the loop is at right angles to the line of writing, and the letter ends
with a perpendicular flick.

"In the 'b,' one notices the difference in the loops and in the serifs
at the tops of the letters.

                      [Illustration]
                         _k_   _l_

"The typical 'old style' serif at the top (_k_) tilts as the pen is
tilted; the loop is a tilted sweep of the slanted pen; while the serif
and loop of the 'modern' letter (_l_) partake of the perpendicular
position of the pen. These characteristics of tilt or perpendicularity
appear in all the lower-case letters and to a limited extent in the
capitals."

To check the distinctions in different characters in the following
twenty types, a magnifying glass will be helpful.

"The artistic quality of a type letter," Mr. Dwiggins concludes, "is
determined by its degree of grace of line and proportion. The standards
of grace and proportion are to be looked for in the natural motions
of the pen. But the quality called art is dependent, too, upon the
artist's appreciation of the material in which he works--namely metal.
The draughtsman does not attempt to copy _exactly_ the form of his
pen-written model, but modifies the pen form to a shape suitable to its
final state--that of a metal punch."




               NOTES ON THE TYPE FACES USED IN THIS BOOK
                         _By Paul A. Bennett_


 NOTE: The following specimens are set in a 10 point type size, except
 Centaur, in 14 point, and Eldorado, in 11 point, which were the only
 sizes available for this book.


BASKERVILLE, the fine transitional face named for the
eighteenth-century English printer, is available in several
contemporary versions. The Linotype cutting used here, most faithful
to the original Roman, was produced from a complete font cast from
the original matrices, exhumed at Paris in 1929. For twenty years
Baskerville has been a favored type with American book-makers.

  [Illustration: BASKERVILLE was used for setting _Benjamin Franklin:
                 Printer and Publisher_, pp. 352-367.]

BELL, the fine English transitional-modern, was cut by Richard Austin
about 1788 for John Bell, a leading English book and newspaper
publisher. The English Monotype version used here was reproduced
in 1931 from the original punches, then in possession of the
Stephenson-Blake foundry in Sheffield. Bruce Rogers used the type
(calling it Brimmer) for many fine Riverside Press books.

  [Illustration: BELL was used for setting _Some Tendencies in Modern
                       Typography_, pp. 306-312.]

BEMBO, the fine Venetian old face, is a revival by English Monotype
of one of the earliest Aldine romans. That was cut before 1500 by
Francesco Griffo of Bologna, the designer responsible for the first
Italic type a half-dozen years later, and named for Pietro Bembo, the
humanist scholar (later Cardinal and secretary to Pope Leo X), whose
_De Aetna_ was printed by Aldus in 1495.

     [Illustration: BEMBO was used for setting _Printing Should Be
                       Invisible_, pp. 109-114.]

BODONI BOOK, a light weight rendering of the popular A.T.F. Bodoni, is
widely used in the United States for book and periodical composition.
Introduced in 1910, it is not a copy of the types of the great Italian,
Giambattista Bodoni, but rather a version retaining his principle of
modern letter design. The lessened degree of contrast between its thick
and thin lines make it gain in reading ease.

  [Illustration: BODONI BOOK was used for setting _Harsh Words_,
                           pp. 321-336.]

CALEDONIA, a contemporary Linotype face designed by W. A. Dwiggins,
was inspired by the work of Scotch type-founders, in particular by a
lighter weight, more slender transitional face cut by William Martin
for Bulmer around 1790. Christened for its forebears, Caledonia
resembles neither--though it has touches of both Bulmer's Martin and
Wilson's Scotch, and also "something of the simple, hard-working,
feet-on-the-ground quality of Scotch Modern."

  [Illustration: CALEDONIA was used for setting _Author and Printer:
                  G.B.S. and R. & R. C._, pp. 381-401.]

CASLON, the great eighteenth-century English old style, has suffered
more from "improvement and refinement" by succeeding generations of
type founders than most celebrated types. A development based on Dutch
models rather than an original creation, Caslon has been eloquently
termed "the finest vehicle for the printed conveyance of English speech
that the art of the punch-cutter has yet devised." Monotype's excellent
rendering used here (No. 337) reflects the essential qualities of the
original.

  [Illustration: CASLON was used for setting _Typographic Debut_, pp.
                 78-82 and _Metal-Flowers_, pp. 83-84.]

CENTAUR, a distinguished Italian Renaissance face designed by Bruce
Rogers, was cut by Robert Wiebking of Chicago in 1914, in the 14 point
size. Its first use by BR was in a limited edition of De Guerin's _The
Centaur_, printed at Carl Rollins' Montague Press. The face, recut by
English Monotype in 1929, seemed to D. B. Updike to be "one of the best
Roman founts yet designed in America." The Italic is Arrighi, designed
by Frederic Warde, used since there is no Centaur Italic.

 [Illustration: CENTAUR was used for setting _Paragraphs On Printing_,
 pp. 281-289, and _B.R.: Adventurer With Type Ornament_, pp. 290-305.]

DEEPDENE, designed and cut by Frederic W. Goudy in 1927, was named
for his estate at Marlboro-on-Hudson. In his _A Half Century of Type
Design_, Mr. Goudy mentions the face was "suggested by a Dutch type
(the Lutetia of Van Krimpen) which had just been introduced ... but as
with some of my previous designs, I soon got away from my exemplar to
follow a line of my own." The Monotype recutting, done later, is used
here.

 [Illustration: DEEPDENE was used for setting _Types and Type Design_,
                             pp. 267-273.]

ELDORADO, the latest Linotype face designed by W. A. Dwiggins, was
developed through the war years and completed in 1951. It was suggested
by an uncommonly compact and distinctive eighteenth-century face
used in Madrid by the Spanish printer, DeSancha. In no sense a copy,
Eldorado retains in its letter anatomy something of the treatment
of curves, arches and junctions that brought distinction to its
antecedent, as well as flavor of Spanish typographic tradition.

[Illustration: ELDORADO was used for setting _What is a Private Press_,
                             pp. 175-181.]

ELECTRA, an original modern, designed for Linotype by W. A. Dwiggins,
reflects the warmth and distinction of his personal lettering. The
effort was to work into Electra letter shapes, where possible, some
of the twentieth-century spirit: electricity, high-speed steel,
streamlined curves, the readers' familiarity with newspaper and
type-writer faces ... to develop letters filled with energy, human
warmth and personality. Electra is available with either an oblique
Roman lower-case companion form, or the more familiar cursive.

  [Illustration: ELECTRA was used for setting the _Investigation Into
   the Physical Properties of Books_, pp. 129-144 and _Twenty Years
                         After_, pp. 145-152.]

EMERSON was designed by Joseph Blumenthal and cut by Monotype in
England in 1934. The face is a duplicate of his Spiral Press type,
designed several years earlier and cut for him by Louis Hoell in
Frankfort, Germany, in 1931. This face was initially used for a
limited edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on _Nature_, printed
on a hand press at Croton Falls in 1932, and privately published. The
accompanying Emerson Italic was designed in 1936.

  [Illustration: EMERSON was used for setting _Typography of William
                         Morris_, pp. 233-238.]

FAIRFIELD, a slightly decorative, original and contemporary old style,
was designed for Linotype by Rudolph Ruzicka, the distinguished
American wood engraver. Sharply cut, as though the letters came from
the artist's graver rather than pen, Fairfield was designed for reading
by "one of the most knowledgeable men in the country about letter forms
and their style." To invite continuous reading, the designer feels,
"type must have a subtle degree of interest and variety of design."

 [Illustration: FAIRFIELD was used for setting _The Fun and Fury of a
                     Private Press_, pp. 220-225.]

GARAMOND was introduced in America by ATF in 1919, when their cutting,
based on the _caractères de l'Université_ of the Imprimerie Nationale,
appeared. Since, at least eight other versions have been made: by the
English and American Linotype and Monotype, by Intertype, Ludlow, and
the Stempel foundry. A documented article considering the XVI and
XVII sources of the Garamond types, by Paul Beaujon, appeared in _The
Fleuron_, V. This version is the American Monotype.

[Illustration: GARAMOND was used for setting _Colophons_, pp. 31-44.]

GILL SANS, designed by Eric Gill in 1928, was patterned after lettering
done for the Douglas Cleverdon book-shop in Bristol. First offered by
English Monotype as a titling font (caps, figures and points only), the
lower-case was added as the face grew in favor. Today, Gill is the most
popular sans serif in England. It ranges through a variety of weights,
including light, normal, heavy, extra heavy, and shadow and outline
display and condensed versions.

    [Illustration: GILL SANS was used for setting _Notes on Modern
                        Printing_, pp. 350-351.]

GRANJON was designed for Linotype by the late George W. Jones, one of
England's greatest printers. It is neither a copy of a classic face nor
an original creation, but rather something between the two, with its
basic design stemming from classic Garamond sources. An exceedingly
compact and useful old style, Granjon is exceptionally clear in
small sizes. Its space-saving virtues are important in the book and
periodical field.

  [Illustration: GRANJON was used for setting _Printers as Men of the
                          World_, pp. 88-102.]

JANSON, the distinguished seventeenth-century old style face, is
presumed Dutch in origin. It was issued by Anton Janson, a Leipsic
punch-cutter and type-founder, between 1660 and 1687. Little is known
of Janson to supplement his first type specimen issued in 1675. The
original matrices, bought in Holland from the heirs of Edling, Janson's
successor, are possessed by the Stempel foundry in Frankfort, Germany.
The Linotype recutting of Janson was made from type cast from the
original matrices.

[Illustration: JANSON was used for setting all the essays in this book
              excepting those indicated in other faces.]

MONTICELLO is a recutting of the famous Binny & Ronaldson Roman No. 1,
a distinguished early American face cut in 1796 in Philadelphia. Type
cast from the original matrices by A. T. F. has been favored for years
by such discriminating printers as D. B. Updike, Fred Anthoensen and
the Grabhorns. Linotype's remodeling of the type for modern use was
named for the _Papers of Thomas Jefferson_, a fifty-volume publishing
project by Princeton, for which the face was adopted.

  [Illustration: MONTICELLO was used for setting the _First Work With
                      American Types_, pp. 65-77.]

PERPETUA was designed by Eric Gill, the eminent English sculptor and
maker of letters with pen, chisel and graver. Mr. Gill's account of
his type (cut in England): "from drawings made by me. Those drawings
were not made with special reference to typography--they were simply
drawn with brush and ink. For the typographical quality of the fount,
as also for the remarkably fine and precise cutting of the punches, the
Monotype Corporation is to be praised."

[Illustration: PERPETUA was used for setting _Typography_, pp. 257-266.]

POLIPHILUS is a literal reproduction of the Aldine Roman used in the
_Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ in 1499, cut by Francesco Griffo. The
recutting, by the English Monotype organization in 1923 (from sheets of
the book) was attempted with the thought of providing a type to convey
an old-world atmosphere appropriate for reprinting fifteenth-century
classics. The accompanying Italic, named _Blado_, was the first of a
number of Chancery italics to come from European type-founders.

[Illustration: POLIPHILUS was used for setting _Some Collectors Read_,
                             pp. 191-211.]

TIMES ROMAN was designed by Stanley Morison for the London _Times_,
and first used in that great newspaper. Its masculine simplicity,
directness of design and excellent color makes it exceptionally useful
for periodicals and general commercial work. The basic design objective
of maximum legibility in minimum space has resulted in the larger
letter-structure that makes each point size seem the equivalent of a
size larger in most other types.

 [Illustration: TIMES ROMAN was used for setting _The First Principles
                     of Typography_, pp. 239-251.]




                                 INDEX


  Adler, Elmer, 221

  advertising card, 160-61, 167, 168

  _Aesop_ (Parma, 1483), 57

  Aldine Poets series, 156

  Aldine type face, 241
    Italic, 274

  Aldus; _see_ Manutius, Aldus

  alphabet
    Greek, 4-14
    Hebrew, 13-14
    letters of, 6-13
    Phoenician, 4-14
    Roman, 4-14
    sources of, 3-14

  American Institute of Graphic Arts, xiv, 170
    "Fifty Books of the Year," 165, 321-22
    Trade Book Clinic, 164, 165

  American Type Founders Co., 254

  Ames, Joseph, _Typographical Antiquities_, 38, 78

  Anabat, 154

  Anne of Austria, 105

  Anthoensen, Fred, 419

  Antigone Greek type, 207

  Apollo Press, 384

  appendix, 163

  Applegarth, Augustus, 27

  Armitage, Merle, xii-xiv, 319
    _Notes on Modern Printing_, 350

  Arnoullet, Balthazar, 60

  Arrighi type face, 414

  Arrivabene, Georgius, 53

  Ashbee, C. R., _The Private Press_, 180

  Ashendene Press, 181, 188, 215
    _Bibliography_, 181
    _Virgil_, 209

  Austin, Richard, 92, 99, 411


  back matter, 163-64

  Bagford, John, 64

  Bailey, Francis, 76

  Baldwin, Stanley, 197 n.

  Barker-Mill, Peter, 218

  _Barnacles from Many Bottoms_, 297

  Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (Chicago), 254, 369

  Bartlett, Edward E., 164

  Baskerville, John, 60, 64, 92, 98, 186
    letter-spacing of, 287-88

  Baskerville type face, 155-56, 244, 404
    specimen, 411

  bastard title, 160, 168

  Bauhaus School, typography of, 306-7, 319

  Bay, Jacob, 69-77

  Bayer, Herbert, xii, xiv

  Beaujon, Paul, 417

  Becker, Carl L., 363

  Begg, John, xiv

  Beilenson, Peter, xiii, 164, 165, 168
    _Graphic Forms_, 313

  Bell, John, 92, 411
    _British Poets_, 100, 384
    _British Theatre_, 78, 384
    career of, 99-100

  Bell type face, 403
    specimen, 411

  Belloc, Hilaire, 192

  Bembo, Pietro, 53, 94, 412

  Bembo type face, 403
    specimen, 412

  Beneti, Cyprian, 41

  Bennett, Arnold, 203

  Bennett, Paul A., xv, 290

  Bensley, Thomas, 92

  Benton, Linn Boyd, 254

  Benton, Morris Fuller, 254

  Berghen, Adrien van, 46, 48

  Bernard, St., _Sermones_ (1481), 44

  Berners, Juliana, comp., _Book of St. Albans_, 107

  Berthelet, Thomas, 50

  Besant, Walter, 387

  Bible
    Estienne, 97
    first printed, 183-84
    German (1478), 18
    Gutenberg, 226-27
    Latin (1456), 18
    Plantin polyglot, 96
    printing monopoly in England, 184 n.
    Rogers _World_, 302-4
    Sower's German, 67, 70
    Vulgate (Venice, 1487), 53

  bibliography, 163

  binding, 119

  binding, limp vellum, 230

  Binny, Archibald, 76

  Binny & Ronaldson (Philadelphia), 77, 252, 419

  Birrell, Francis, 199

  black-letter
    Gutenberg, 274-76
    modern, 241

  Black Sun Press, 319

  Blado, Antonio, 54

  Blado Italic type face, 54, 420

  Blaeu, Willem J., 89

  Blumenthal, Joseph, 164, 165
    Emerson, 255, 416

  Blunt, Wilfrid, 192

  Bocard, Andrieu, 41

  Bodoni, Giambattista, 60, 64, 92, 98
    _Manuale Tipografico_ (1818), 276

  Bodoni Book type face
    specimen, 412

  Bodoni's 'soprasilvio,' 276-78, 284, 287

  Bologna, Francesco da, 92

  book, anatomy of; _see under individual headings_

  book design, principles of, 115-28, 281-89, 350-51

  _Book of St. Albans_, 107

  Bourdillon, F. W., 79

  Boydell, John, _Shakespeare_, 78

  Braby, Dorothea, 218

  Bradbury & Evans, 157

  Bradford, Andrew, 356-57, 362

  Bradford, William, 356, 358

  Bradley, J. W., _Dictionary of Miniaturists_, 40

  Bradley, Will, 253, 291

  Bradley type face, 253

  Bridges, Robert, 238

  Brimmer type face, 411

  Browning, Robert, 192

  Buckland-Wright, John, 218

  Buell, Abel, 65-66, 68, 71-73, 252, 255

  Bull of Pius IX (Mainz, 1463), 42, 53

  Bulmer, William, 92, 100, 413

  Burn & Oates, 194, 196

  Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 233, 236, 238


  Caledonia type face, 255, 404
    specimen, 413

  Calkins, Earnest Elmo, 368

  calligraphy, 255, 337-43
    defined, 337-38

  Cambridge University Press, 51, 158, 184 n., 185, 291

  Campbell, Dr. William J., _Collection of Franklin Imprints_, 354, 357,
    360, 365

  Canstein, Baron von, 29

  Capell, Edward, _Prolusions_, 78

  capital letters, 257-61

  Cary, Mary, _Diary_, 197

  Caslon, William, 63, 64, 89, 92

  Caslon type face, 142, 156, 195, 204, 241, 254, 391
    rediscovery of, 318
    Shaw's preference for, 390
    specimen, 413

  Catherine de Médici, 106

  Catherine the Great, 106

  Caxton, William, 19, 29, 42, 49, 89, 92, 184-85
    _Dictes or Sayengis_, 19, 80

  Caxton Club, 33

  Centaur type face, 220, 255-56, 403
    specimen, 414

  Central Type Foundry (St. Louis), 253

  _Century Dictionary_, 34

  Champollion, J. F., 3

  Chapman, Dr. R. W., 392, 394

  Chappe, Paulinus, 18

  Charlemagne, 12

  Charles, Thomas, 29

  Cheltenham type face, 254

  Chesterfield, Earl of (Philip Stanhope), 90

  Chiswick Press, 217

  Christie, E. D., 95

  _Chronicles of the londe of England_, 40

  Cicero, _Epistolae_ (Venice, 1469), 40

  Clark, Edward, relations with Shaw, 382-401

  Clark, Robert, 384-85

  Clark, R. & R., Shaw's printer, 381-401

  Claudin, Anatole, 176

  Cleland, T. M., xiii, 112-13
    _Harsh Words_, xi, 321
    type ornaments, 297, 299

  Cleve, Johann von, _Cantiones_, 42

  Cloister type face, 254

  Cobbett, William, _Rural Rides_, 208

  Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., 180-81, 188, 229, 388

  Cockerell, Douglas, 395

  Cockerell, Sir Sydney, 233

  Coleridge, S. T., _Table Talk_, 157

  Colines, Simon, 185

  Collins, F. H., _Authors' and Printers' Dictionary_, 392

  Collins, Howard, 394

  Colman, Morris, 164, 166-67

  colophon, 32-44, 52
    defined, 32-38
    examples of, 38-42, 44

  composition, defined, 242

  Conkwright, P. J., 164, 166

  Conrad, Joseph, 116

  Cooper, Oswald, 254

  Copland, Robert, 185

  copyright, notice of, 161, 166, 167, 168

  Coward, Noel, 208

  Cowper, Edward, 26-27

  Croce, Benedetto, _Autobiography_, 312

  Crompton, 26

  Currer, Mrs. Richardson, 107

  Currie, Kent, 272


  Daniel, Rev. C. H. O., 178, 187

  Daniel Press, 187, 234, 238

  Darton, F. J. H.; _see_ Sawyer, C. J.

  Davies, Peter, 208

  Davis, Southwick, 379

  Dawson, Thomas, 51

  Day, John, 50, 80

  Daye, Matthew, 97

  Daye, Stephen, 97

  _Deceyte of Women, The_, 53, 61

  Decretals of Gregory IX (Rome, 1474), 41

  dedication, 161-62, 166-68

  Deepdene type face, 223, 403
    specimen, 414

  de La Haye, Corneille, 60

  Dent, J. M., 157

  DeSancha, Antonio, 415

  De Vinne, Theodore Low, x, 31
    _Notable Printers of Italy_, 279
    _Plain Printing Types_, 370
    _Treatise on Title-pages_, 42-43, 274

  De Vinne type face, 253

  Diamond Classics, 156, 236

  Diane de Poitiers, 106

  Dibdin, T. F., 104

  _Dictionary of American Biography_, 363

  Didot, Firmin, 26
    career, 100

  Didot, François Ambroise, 92

  Didot family, 64, 90, 92, 101

  _Diui Athanasii_ (Paris, 1500), 41

  Dolet, Etienne, 94-96

  Donaldson, Alexander, 384

  Dorici brothers, 53

  double-page spread, 168

  Doves Press, 117, 180, 188, 229

  Du Barry, Countesse, 105

  du Bois, Simon, _Hours_ (1527), 154

  Dunlap, John, 76

  Dunster, Henry, 98

  Dunster, Mrs. Henry, 98

  Dürer, Albrecht, 55, 92, 275, 277

  Dwiggins, W. A., x
    Caledonia, 255, 413
    Eldorado, 415
    Electra, 255, 415
    _MSS by WAD_, 129, 405
    "Shapes of Roman Letters," 405-7

  Dyck, Christoffel van, 92


  Edinburgh, publishing history of, 384-85

  Ege, Otto, ix, 3

  Eldorado type face, specimen, 415

  Electra type face, 255-56, 403
    specimen, 415

  Elizabeth, Queen, 105-6

  Elzevir family, 60, 92, 97

  Emerson type face, 255-56
    specimen, 416

  _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 35, 227, 239, 338
    first edition, 384

  engraving
    for illustration, 218
    invention of, 25

  Enschedé Foundry, 221-22

  Erasmus, Desiderius, 94
    _Adagia_, 29
    _Colloquia Familiaria_, 29

  Essex House Press, 180

  Estienne, Robert, 94 n.
    career, 96-97

  Estienne family, 92, 96 n., 185

  Eugene, Prince of Savoy, 211

  Evans, Sir Arthur, 4

  Eve, Clovis, 105

  Eve, Nicolas, 105

  _Exercitium super Pater Noster_, 23


  Fairfield type face, 255-56

  Fairfield type faces, specimen, 416

  Faques, William, 50

  Farjeon, Herbert, 209

  Farleigh, John, 399

  Fell types, 178, 187, 196

  Fichet, Guillaume, 153-54

  Field and Tuer, 157

  Figgins, Vincent, 92

  Fine, Oronce, _Quadrans Astrolabicus_, 56

  Finley, John, 378

  _Fleuron, The_, x, 388, 391, 417

  Flower, Desmond, 100, 153

  Ford, Paul Leicester, _Many-Sided Franklin_, 354-55, 362, 363-64

  foreword; _see_ preface

  format; _see_ book design

  Foulis, Andrew, 186

  Foulis, Robert, 186

  Fournier, P. S., 57, 59, 64

  Fournier family, 92

  Fournier type face, Shaw's choice of, 392

  Fox, Emmanuel, 70, 76

  Fox, Justus, 67-77

  _Fragment of World Judgment_, 18

  François I, 49, 94-95, 97

  Franklin, Benjamin, 29
    _Autobiography_, 366
    career, 101-2; as printer, 352-67
    _Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity_, 359
    epitaph, 366-67
    and Hall, 365
    imprints, 357, 361, 364, 366
    "Improvement of Printing Backwards," 227
    _New England Courant_, 355-56
    _Pennsylvania Gazette_, 362
    _Poor Richard_ almanacs, 362-63

  Franklin, Deborah Read, 362

  Franklin, James, 353-56, 358, 362-63
    imprints, 354-55

  Franklin, Josiah, 352-53

  _Freeman's Oath, The_, 97-98

  Froben, Johann, 62

  front matter
    elements of, 160-63, 166-68
    typography of, 246-49

  Fuhrmann, Dr. Otto, 224

  Funk & Wagnalls' _Standard Dictionary_, 34

  Fust, Johann, 18, 38-39, 42, 49, 53, 91, 92, 183


  Galesburg imprint, 378-80

  Galloway, Joseph, 74

  Garamond, Claude, 92, 93, 276

  Garamond type face, 62, 223, 256
    specimen, 417

  Gardiner, Thomas, 51

  Garnett, David, and Nonesuch Press, 191, 198-99, 205, 209

  Garnett, Porter, xiii, 115, 178

  Garnett, Richard, 37-38

  Garvin, J. L., 194

  Gaunt, Sydney, 254

  _Geistliches Magazien, Ein_, 67-69, 71

  Geminus, Thomas, _Anatomy_, 57

  Gentry, Helen, _Chronology_, 91

  Gering, Ulrich, 154

  _Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke_, 31

  Gibbings, Robert, 218

  Gilgamesh, epic of, 214

  Gill, Eric, xiii, 218, 257, 417
    Perpetua, 419

  Gill Sans type face, specimen, 417

  Glick, Milton, 164, 166

  Glogoviensis, Johannes, 53

  glossary, 163

  Godfrey, Thomas, 362

  Golden Cockerel Press, 212-19
    imprints, 217-18

  Golden Hind Press, 164, 220-25
    imprints, 220-23

  Goltzius, Hubert, 60

  Gooden, Stephen, 199, 206

  Goodhue, Bertram G., 254

  Gordon, Watson, 129

  Goudy, Frederic W., xiii, 222, 232, 267, 274, 279, 318
    Deepdene, 414
    _Half Century of Type Design_, 414
    type designs, 222, 255

  Grabhorn, Edwin, xiii, 226

  Grabhorn Press, 181, 226-32, 419
    Whitman, _Leaves of Grass_, 232

  Graf, Urs, 55

  Granjon, Robert, 57, 276

  Granjon type face, specimen, 418

  Granniss, Ruth Sheppard, 31, 107

  Greene, Belle Da Costa, 107

  Greenhood, David; _see_ Gentry, Helen

  Grevill, Sir Foulk, 203

  Grien, Hans Baldung, 55

  Griffo, Francesco, 412, 420

  Grimm, Baron Melchior von, 306

  Grimm, Jacob, 307

  Grimm, Wilhelm, 307

  Grolier, Jean, 92, 94

  Grolier Club, 51, 83 n., 107, 365
    Dowson's _Pierrot of the Minute_, 297-98

  Grotefend, G. F., 3

  Gryphius, Sebastian, 95

  Gutenberg, Johann, 18, 23-24, 90-92, 183
    Bible, 226-27
    Rushmore hoax, 223-24
    types of, 274

  Guthrie, James, 179


  Hadrian type face, 255

  Haebler, Dr. Konrad, 53

  Haight, Anne Lyon, 103

  half title, 163, 165, 167-68

  Hall, D., 364-65

  Han, Ulrich, 41

  Hardouyn brothers, 154
    _Book of Hours_ (1500), 154

  Harmsworth, Cecil, 208

  Harmsworth, Desmond, 208

  Harmsworth, Eric, 208

  Harper & Brothers, 221, 225

  Harrison, Henry, 319

  Hart, Horace, 394

  Harter, Evelyn, ix, 88, 164-66

  Hayward, John, 205

  Heber, Richard, 107

  Hector, Benedictus, 48

  _Heiligen_, 22

  Hendrickson, James, 281

  Henry II of France, 106

  Hind, Arthur M., 23

  Hodgson, Ralph, 199

  Hoell, Louis, 416

  Hogben, Lancelot, ix, 15

  Holbein, Hans, the Elder, 55

  Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 55
    "Dance of Death," 277-78

  Hopfer, Daniel, 55

  Hornby, St. John, 188, 215

  Hroswitha, 104

  Hughes-Stanton, Blair, 218

  Huxley, Aldous, xiii, 344

  _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, 420


  imposition, defined, 242-43

  impression, 119-20, 229-30

  index, 163-64

  ink
    colors used, 286-87
    varnish in, 229

  _Inland Printer_, 254

  Intelligencer Print (Galesburg), 378-80

  introduction, 162-63

  Italic type, 257-61
    first used, 412
    proper use of, 261


  Jackson, Holbrook, xi, 155, 388
    _Anatomy of Bibliomania_, x
    _Fear of Books_, x
    _Printing of Books_, x, 157-58, 233

  Jacobs, S. A., xiv

  Jaggard, William, _Nobilitas Politica_ (1608), 285-86

  Janson, Anton, 418

  Janson type face, 210, 403
    specimen, 418

  Jenson, Nicolas, 34, 92, 274, 288 n.
    _Pliny_ (1472), 276

  Jenson's Roman type face, 274-77

  John of Speier (Spire), 19, 40

  Johnson, A. F., 52

  Johnson, J., _Typographia_, 78 n., 268

  Johnson, Samuel, 382

  Jones, David, 218

  Jones, George W., 418

  Josephy, Robert, ix, xiii, 169

  Judith, Countess of Flanders, 104


  Kauffer, E. McKnight, 205-6

  Keimer, Samuel, 357-58, 359-62
    imprints, 357
    _Universal Instructor_, 362

  Keith, Sir William, 358

  Kelmscott Press, 43, 177-80, 187-88, 233-38
    binding, 230
    _Chaucer_, 101, 209, 236
    paper, 228-29
    _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, 237
    types, 253, 255
    _see also_ Morris, William

  Kennington, Eric, 395

  Kent, Henry Watson, xiv

  Kerver, Thielman, 274

  Keynes, Geoffrey, 205

  Kipling, Rudyard, 7

  Kirkwood, James, 385

  Koberger, Anton, 92

  Koch, Rudolph, design, 207

  König, Friedrich, 26

  Krantz, Martin, 154

  Kromberger, Johann, 97


  Laboratory Press, 178

  Lamb, Charles, 32

  Lane, John, 157, 194

  Lang, Andrew, _The Library_, 103-4

  Lansbury, George, 197-98

  Lasteyrie, Count de, _Typographie Economique_ (1837), xii, 306

  Lawrence, T. E., 209, 218

  leading; _see_ letter-spacing

  Lee, Marshall, ed., _Books for Our Time_, xiv

  Lee Priory Press, 186

  Leeu, Gerard, 40

  LeRouge, Pierre, 50

  lettering, 338-43, 405-7
    defined, 338

  letter-spacing, 287-88
    leading, 243-44, 284
    "driving out," 250, 402

  Lewis, W. S., 98-99

  ligature, 80-81

  Linotype, defined, 404

  list of illustrations, 162

  Livingston, Luther S., _Franklin and His Press at Passy_, 365

  Longlond, J., _A Sermon_ (1536), 58

  Lowell, Amy, 107

  lower-case letters, 257-61

  Lowinsky, Thomas, drawing, 204

  Lutetia type face, 232, 414

  Luther, Martin
    _To the Christian Nobility_, 29
    tracts, 55

  Lydgate, John, 53

  Lydian type face, 255-56


  McCulloch, William, 69-71, 74, 76

  MacDonald, James Ramsay, 197 n.

  Machiavelli, Nicolò, _Discorsi_ (1531), 54

  Mackall, Leonard L., "Notes for Bibliophiles," 34

  McKerrow, Ronald B., ix, 78
    _Introduction to Bibliography_, 31, 35-36, 382

  Macmillan, Daniel, 387

  McMurtrie, D. C., _The Book_, 18-19, 23, 27, 28

  Madan, Falconer, 176

  Maillet, Jacques, 47, 50

  _Mainz Diary: New Light on the Invention of Printing_, 224

  Malory, Sir Thomas, _Morte d'Arthur_, 41

  Mansion, Colard, 19

  Manutius, Aldus, 48-49, 50, 89, 92, 156, 185
    Bembo's _De Aetna_, 412
    career, 93-94

  Marchant, Guy, 47

  Marguerite of Navarre, 105

  Marie Antoinette, 105

  Martin, Gilbert, 384

  Martin, John, _Bibliographical Catalogue of Books Privately Printed_,
    175-76

  Martin, William, 92, 413

  Mary Stuart, 105

  _Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter_, 66

  Mathews, Elkin, 157

  Maxwell, William, 206
    relations with Shaw, 381-401

  Mazarin, Jules, 105

  Mendel, Vera; _see_ Meynell, Vera

  Meredith, George, 192, 387

  Meredith, Hugh, 360-62

  Mergenthaler, Ottmar, 27, 254

  _Merry England_, 193-94

  Merrymount Press, xii, 181

  Merrymount type face, 254

  metal flower; _see_ printer's flower

  Meynell, Alice, 192-94
    _Ten Poems_, 197

  Meynell, Everard, 192

  Meynell, Sir Francis, xiv, 158, 189, 231
    Nonesuch Press, 191-211
    "Printer's Flowers and Arabesques," x
    on type-setting machines, 227-28

  Meynell, Vera
    and Nonesuch Press, 191, 198-99, 201, 205, 206-7

  Meynell, Wilfrid, 192-96, 199

  Middle Hill Press, 178

  Middleton, Henry, 80

  Miller & Richards, 384

  Miller-Parker, Agnes, 218

  missals, first printed, 22-23

  Mitchelson, David, 66-67

  Monotype, 158, 189
    defined, 404

  Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 211

  Montague Press, 291
    De Guerin's _The Centaur_, 414

  Monticello type face, 403
    specimen, 419

  Moore, George, 193
    _Ulick and Soracha_, 206

  Mores, Edward Rowe, ix, 83, 370

  Morgan, Charles, _House of Macmillan_, 387

  Morgan, Gwenda, 218

  Morison, Stanley, x, xiii, 99, 116, 158, 196, 384
    on calligraphy, 338
    "First Principles of Typography," 239
    Times Roman, 420

  Morris, William, xi, 179, 390
    achievement and influence, 187-88, 227, 228-29, 230, 253
    career, 100-1
    _Note on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press_, 180
    _Roots of the Mountains_, 236, 238, 388
    typography of, 233-38, 275, 278
    _see also_ Kelmscott Press

  Mountjoye type face, 403

  Moxon, Edward, 83, 157

  Moxon, Joseph, 57

  Murray, John, 157, 387-88

  Musurus, Marcus, 94


  Nash, John, 218

  National Association for the Advancement of Art, 388

  Nelson, George, xiv

  _New Colophon, The_, xv

  _New England Courant, The_, 355-56

  New York _Herald Tribune_, 34

  Newdigate, Bernard H., 181, 390

  Niccolo, Simon di, 41

  Nichols, Dr. Charles L., _Justus Fox_, 70

  Nonesuch Press, 158, 181, 189, 228
    history of, 191-211

  Nonesuch Press, imprints, 195, 200, 204-5, 207, 209-10
    press mark, 199
    and Random House, 208
    _Shakespeare_, 209

  _Nuremberg Chronicle, The_, 41, 91, 92


  O'Connor, John, 218

  Ogg, Oscar, ix, 337

  Olpe, J. von, 91

  Orcutt, William Dana, _Manual of Linotype Typography_, 160-65

  Original Old Style type face (Italic), 223

  ornament; _see_ type ornament

  Oswald, John Clyde, _Benjamin Franklin, Printer_, 358

  _Oxford English Dictionary_, 34-35

  Oxford type face, 256

  Oxford University Press, 51, 79, 158, 184 n., 185, 196


  Palmer, Samuel, 358-59

  Pannartz, Arnold, 78, 153

  paper, 16-18, 26-27
    Chinese invention of, 17
    dampening of, 229
    esparto grass, 26
    mills, 17-18, 26-27
    papyrus, 17
    rag, 26
    texture of, 119
    wood pulp, 26

  Patmore, Coventry, 193, 194

  Pelican Press, 198

  Pelliot, Paul, 25

  Pembroke, Countess of (Mary Herbert), 106

  Penguin Books, 158
    editions of Shaw, 381-82, 395

  _Pennsylvania Gazette, The_, 362-63

  _Pennsylvania Mercury, The_, 65, 68, 71-74
    types for, 74-76

  Perpetua type face, 403
  specimen, 419

  Peter Pauper Press, 165

  Petit, Jean, 41

  Phillips, Fred, _Old-Fashioned Type Book_, 255

  pi, derivation of name, 370

  pica, derivation of name, 370

  Pickering, William, 156-57, 234, 318

  Pigouchet, Phillipe, 154

  Pio family, 94

  Plant, Marjorie, _English Book Trade_, 382

  Plantin, Christopher, 60, 96

  playing cards, 21-22

  Pleydenworff, Wilhelm, 41

  Poe, E. A., "The Gold Bug," 8

  point system, x, 369

  Poliphilus type face, 200, 403
    specimen, 420

  Pollard, Alfred W., xi, 35, 36-37, 176, 182
    _Essay on Colophons_, 33, 37-38, 40-41

  Pollard, Graham, 78 n.

  Pompadour, Mme. de, 105

  Poulton, T. L., 206

  preface, 162-63

  printer, amateur, 182-90
    _see also_ private press

  printer's flower, 57-59, 83-84, 156-57
    _see also_ type ornament

  printer's mark, 45-51

  printing
    development of, 15-30
    importance of, 85-87
    principles of, 226-32
    restricted in England, 185-86

  private press
    defined, and aims of, 175-81, 182
    influence of, 186-90
    principles and pleasures of, 313-20
    types of, 177-79
    _see also_ printer, amateur

  Proctor, Robert, 188

  Proctor's Greek type face, 188

  Psalter (Mainz, 1457), 38-39, 49, 183

  punch-cutting machine, Benton pantograph, 252-54

  punctuation marks, 81-82, 285, 289

  Püterschein, Dr. Herman, 224

  Pynson, Richard, 53

  Pythagoras, 12


  Rabelais, François, _Pantagruel_, 95

  Radin, Simon, 41

  Random House, and Nonesuch Press, 208

  Ransom, Will, ix, 254
    _Private Presses_, 175, 365

  Ratdolt, Erhard, 53, 55

  Ravilious, Eric, 218

  Rawlinson, Sir Henry C., 3

  Read, Herbert, _Grass Roots of Art_, 155, 157

  _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, 19, 49

  Regiomontanus (Müller, J.), _Calendar_, 53

  Reichl, Ernst, xiv, 164-65, 168

  Reinheckel, Andreas, 42

  Reuchlin, Johann, 94

  Richards, Grant, 384, 385
    _Author Hunting_, 388

  Ricketts and Shannon, 188

  Riverside Press, 231, 291, 411

  Rochester Press, 177

  Rodenberg, Julius; _see_ Simon, Oliver

  Roeder, Ralph, 93

  Roffe, Edwin, 177

  Rogers, Bruce, xiii, 164, 165, 188, 220, 318, 411
    Centaur, 255, 414
    designs, 290-305
    influence, 231
    _Paragraphs on Printing_, 181, 281-89, 403
    _World_ Bible, 302-4

  Rollins, Carl Purington, xiii, 98, 164, 166, 252, 291, 318, 414
    _B. R.--America's Typographic Playboy_, 300-1

  "Romney Street Press," 196-97

  Root, Riley, _Journal of Travels_ (Galesburg, 1850), 379-80

  Rose, Aquila, 356-57

  Routledge, George, 26

  Rudge, William, 231

  Rudge Press, 295

  running head, 245

  Rushmore, Arthur W., ix, 164, 167-68, 220

  Russell, Bertrand, 198
    _Unpopular Essays_, xii-xiii

  Ruzicka, Rudolph
    design, 51
    Fairfield, 255, 416


  Sandford, Christopher, _Cockalorum_, 212

  sans serif type face, 332-33, 417
    specimen, 417

  Sassoon, Siegfried, 198

  Savonarola, Girolamo, tracts, 53

  Sawyer, C. J., and Darton, F. J. H.,
    _English Books 1475-1500_, 176

  Schöffer, Peter, 38-40, 42, 49, 53, 91, 183

  School Press, 179

  Scotch Modern type face, 284, 287, 413

  Schwartz, Joseph, xv

  Schwartz, Miriam, xv

  serifs, 255, 405-7

  Shand, James, xiv, 381

  Shaw, G. B., xiv
    editions, 385-88, 391-92, 395, 398-99
    filmscripts, 393-95
    letters quoted, 383, 387-90
    proof correction, 393-94, 396-97, 398, 400
    relations with R. & R. Clark, 381-401
    shorthand, 383, 394
    type preferences, 391-92

  Shaw, Mrs. G. B., 399

  _Ship of Fools, The_ (1494), 91

  Sidney, Sir Philip, _Arcadia_, 106, 203

  Simon, Oliver, 154, 158
    and Rodenberg, Julius, _Printing of Today_, 344 n.

  Sitwell, Sir Osbert, 208, 213

  Smithers, Leonard, 157

  Sower, Christopher, Jr., 67-70, 72, 74-75

  Sower, Samuel, 76

  Sparrow, John, 206

  Spiral Press, 165, 416

  Squire, Sir John C., 192

  Steele, Robert, _Revival of Printing_, 181

  Stevenson, R. L., 7

  Stiles, Rev. Ezra, _Literary Diary_, 71-72, 252

  Stöckel, Wolfgang, 53

  Stone, Reynolds, 218
    design, 102

  Strawberry Hill Press, 176, 186

  Strozzi, Piero, 106

  Sutton, Hannah, 107

  Sweynheim, Conrad, 78, 153


  table of contents, 162, 167

  Targ, William, xv
    _Making of the Bruce Rogers World Bible_, 304

  Tatham, Elizabeth, 107

  Tauchnitz, Bernhard, 234

  Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, _In Memoriam_ (1850), 157

  Thomas, Isaiah
    _Additions to Thomas's History of Printing_, 69-70, 74
    _Specimen of Printing Types_, 63

  Thompson, Francis, 192-94

  Times Roman type face, 403
    specimen, 420

  title page
    Bagford collection, 64
    development of, 42-43, 52-64
    engraved, 57-60
    type ornaments, 57-60
    typographic, 60-64
    typography of, 161, 167-68, 246-47
    woodcut, 53-57

  Tomkinson, G. S., _Select Bibliography of Modern Presses_, 181

  Topolski, Feliks, 399
    drawing, 381

  Tory, Geoffroy, 60, 62, 92, 154, 185, 275

  Tournes, Jean de, 55, 95

  Trautwein, Joseph, xv

  Trenholm, George, 254

  Trevelyan, G. M., _English Social History_, 384

  Tschichold, Jan, 158

  type faces
    modern, 170-71, 174, 404-6
    old style, 404-5
    principles of design, 267-73
    transitional, 404-6
    used by job printers in 1880's, 369-72
    _see also_ typography, _and under individual names_

  type founding, early history of, in U. S., 65-77

  type ornament, 57-59
    Cleland's designs, 297, 299
    Rogers's designs, 290-305
    _see also_ printer's flower

  typographer, and publisher, 153-59

  _Typographie Economique_; _see_ Lasteyrie, Count de

  typography
    Bauhaus, 306-7
    characters in early English, 78-80
    defined, 239-40
    in modern trade books, 169-74
    of William Morris, 234-38
    old vs. modern, 274-80

  typography, principles of, 109-14, 160-68, 239-51, 257-66
    problems in modern, 344-49, 402-7
    tendencies in modern, 306-12, 321-36
    _see also_ type faces

  Typophiles, The, 102, 129


  Ulhard, Philip, 42

  Updike, Daniel Berkeley, xii, xiii, 92-93, 95, 188, 223, 288 n.,
     318, 403, 414, 419
    _In the Day's Work_, x, 158
    _Notes on the Merrymount Press_, 181
    _Printing Types_, x, 88
    _Some Aspects of Printing_, x, 181, 306


  Vale Press, 188

  Valéry, Paul, _Les deux vertus d'un livre_, 122

  Van Doren, Carl, 101

  Van Hoesen, H. B., _Bibliography_, 36

  Vascosan, Michel de, 60

  Vele, Abraham, 53, 61

  Verrue, Countesse de, 105

  Vico, Enea, 60

  Vincentino, Lodovico, 54

  Vorsterman, Willem, 50

  Vostre, Simon le, 154
    _Book of Hours_, 278


  Waflard, 92

  Walker, Emery, 188, 228, 229, 388

  Walpole, Horace, 98-99, 178, 186

  Walter, F. K., _Bibliography_, 36

  Wang Cheng, 25

  Warde, Beatrice, xiii, 109

  Warde, Frederic, 414

  Warton, Thomas, _History of English Poetry_, 37

  Watson, James, ix
    _Art of Printing_, 85, 384

  Watts, John, 359

  Waugh, Evelyn, 213

  Way & Williams, 177

  Webb, Beatrice, 388

  Webb, Clifford, 218

  Webb, Sidney, 388

  Webster's _Dictionary_, 35

  _Week-End Book, The_, 199

  _Weekly Register, The_, 194

  Weiditz, Hans, 55

  Westcott and Thomson (Philadelphia), xv

  Westminster Press, 194

  Wheeler, Monroe, 319

  Whitnash Press, 179

  Whittingham, Charles, 156, 318

  Wiebking, Robert, 254, 273, 414

  Wight, John, 50

  Williams, Iolo, _Elements of Book-Collecting_, 36

  Willoughby, Edwin Eliott, 45

  Wilson, Alexander, 89

  Winship, George Parker, 88-89
    _Sailor Narratives_, 291

  Winterich, John T., xiv, 176
    _Early American Books and Printing_, 352

  Wolff, H., Co., 165

  Wolgemut, Michael, 41

  Wollaston, William, _Religion of Nature Delineated_, 358-59

  women, as bibliophiles, 103-8

  wood-block printing
    Chinese origins, 21
    _Heiligen_, 25
    playing cards, 21-22

  Worde, Wynkyn de, 57, 58

  Wordsworth, William, _Prelude_ (1850), 157

  World Publishing Co., xv
    _World_ Bible, 302-4

  Wroth, Lawrence C., 65


  Yeats, W. B., 192

  Young, Thomas, 3


      _This book was composed in twenty-two different type faces
              by Westcott & Thomson, Inc., Philadelphia.
               Typography and design by Jos. Trautwein._