Book printing

“ The early printers were their own publishers and booksellers. Previous to the invention of typography the maker and seller of the book were not ordinarily the same person. It was only natural that in a short time the stationers, that is to say, the sellers of manuscript books and of writing materials, should sell printed books also. Both the printer and bookseller were interested in an attempt to cut out one profit. If the printer sold to the bookseller and the bookseller sold to the public, both must profit by the transaction. ”

“ In closing this Foreword, the printer desires to emphasize the fact that the typesetting and presswork of this book are entirely his own work. No one acquainted with the methods employed in a legitimate book-printing house will fail to recognize the fact that it is well nigh impossible to print a book without possession of the minute technical knowledge essential in each department. Hence the most skillful book-printer is distrustful of himself, unless supported by experienced craftsmen, and more especially by time-tried proof-readers. ”

“ In those days printing was regarded as a profession rather than strictly a trade, and the printer was deeply impressed with the value and importance of his work, a value and importance which were not only claimed by him but recognized by his fellow citizens. It was very strongly felt that a man who made a book was engaged in a much more important piece of work than a man who made a pair of shoes or forged a sword. The more of this spirit of self respect, the more of this recognition of the importance of printing and the printed product 14we can recover today, the better off we shall be. ”

“ As we have seen, the typical book during the first quarter of a century of the history of printing is one in which the printer supplied the place of the scribe and of the scribe alone. An appreciable, though not a very large, percentage of early books have come down to us in the exact state in which they issued from the press, with a blank space at their beginning for an illumination, blanks for the initial letters, blanks for the chapter headings, no head-lines, no title-page, no pagination, and no signatures to guide the binder in arranging the sheets in the different gatherings. ”

“ How persistently even the best printers in the trade ignore this principle is known to any one who has asked for a specimen of how a book is to be printed, it being almost impossible to get more than a single page set up. ”

“ We shall see that the makers of playing cards and of image prints were the men who first made extended use of printing, and that self-taught and unprofessional copyists were the men who gave encouragement to the manufacture of paper. The more liberal use of paper at the beginning of the fifteenth century by this newly created class of readers and book-buyers marks the period of transition and of mental and mechanical development for which the crude arts of paper-making and of block-printing had been waiting for centuries. ”

“ The name of the printer, the author, and the publisher was to be placed in every book, and, with a view to encouraging English printing, it was decreed further that no merchant or bookseller should import any English book printed abroad. No person was to erect a printing-press, or to let any [Pg 179] premises for the purpose of carrying on printing, without first giving notice to the Company, and no joiner or carpenter was to make a press without similar notice. ”

“ He should have one copy of every book printed. Books for publication should be selected at a general meeting of all partners. The corrector and the copyists should be paid in printed books. Every workman should be bound by oath to keep the secrets of the partners, and was forbid to give any book to any other master printer of the city. ”

“ Cameron. "A printer does and should take pride in the looks of his page. The beauty of a book is quite an element in its production. [98] After the type has been set up and corrected, and the proof paged, the next consideration is the size of the paper to be used, the quality, the texture. The width of the margins, the clearness or brilliancy of the text, the appearance and flexibility of the binding all have to do with the artistic result which is, or should be, the aim of every publisher. ”

“ The printing and the binding of a book should be done by artists or craftsmen actuated by a unity of purpose and effort similar to the unity that must prevail in the book if it is to express anything worthy. In the production of books of a high excellence it is necessary that the binding shall chord with the general nature as expressed through the printing and as fixed by the literary body. This result can only be assured if the printers and the binders work in close harmony. ”

“ And here should be introduced a word in general on the appearance of the printed matter that is sent out by a publishing house. It must be good printing. It must be attractive printing. It is the indication to the people whose eyes it meets of the work of the house it advertises. Few people want to buy badly made books; and, unconsciously, if a circular or catalogue is commonplace and badly printed, those qualities will be attached to the book advertised. ”

“ Should printing be done in a less thoro manner? Is not the making of a book, catalog or business card each proportionately as important and as well entitled to proper attention as the larger undertaking? ”

“ The printer could now secure printed copy to be edited and improved. Scholars were easily obtainable from the universities for editing and proofreading. Printing machinery could be purchased instead of being manufactured from original models. The sale of books had been greatly systematized. A printer could now devote himself to his art without dividing himself into various semi-related parts. Plantin proved himself a business man. Who else ever established a printing or publishing business on such an enduring basis that it continued for three hundred years! ”

“ Commercial printing is never done quickly or cheaply by amateur methods. The printing-house (p. 002) that undertakes to print miscellaneous books for publishers must be provided with tons of type of different faces and sizes. It needs type-making and type-setting machines of great complexity, printing-presses of great size and cost, and much curious machinery in the departments of electrotyping and bookbinding; but these machines, intended to relieve the drudgery of monotonous manual labor, do not supplant the necessity for a higher skill in craftsmanship. ”

“ It is not until a comparatively modern period that any single man has been able to mass together thousands of volumes during the course of a single lifetime, for it is only recently that printing has been used on every trivial occasion, and in the manufacture of books which would originally have been deemed unworthy of the application of the art. ”

“ As to the paper of our ideal book, we are at a great disadvantage compared with past times. Up to the end of the fifteenth, or indeed, the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries, no bad paper was made, and the greater part was very good indeed. At present there is very little good paper made and most of it is very bad. Our ideal book must, I think, be printed on hand-made paper as good as it can be made ”

“ No trade or interest in the world has, perhaps, so many repre sentatives in the press as printing. The journals which record its progress and describe its products are unrivalled in their excellent mechanical attri butes, some equalling the highest class of book-work printing and using paper of the most luxurious description. ”

“ This neglect of printing in a city renowned for the elegance of its manuscripts and the skill of its calligraphers shows that the professional book-makers regarded printing as an inartistic and mechanical method of making books. ”

“ Historiated initials are less frequent in the block-books, the only one we have found being the S of an Ars Memorandi, of which a reproduction is given.
We have noted briefly the successive changes in the manuscript book, the different phases of its evolution towards its final formula and expression as an impression from movable type.
This brings us to the invention of printing, but it must be noted that printing, which revolutionised in so many ways the world, did not immediately put an end to the professions of the rubricator and illuminator. ”

“ For a long time the manuscript book retained the esteem which is so often felt for hand work as compared with machine work. Long after the invention of printing there were many eminent collectors of books who would not have a printed book in their libraries. To this day there are a few people who live by engrossing and illuminating, although not generally by the copying of books. ”

“ HE invention of printing, we have often been told, added to book production only the two commercial elements of speed and cheapness. As regards the book itself, we are assured, printing not only added nothing, but, during the four and a half centuries of its development, has constantly tended to take away. ”

“ The monthly issues of these publications have shown ordinary printers how to produce work above the average by placing before them actual examples of the best combinations of type, paper, and colour harmonies. They have been educational in the extreme, teaching buyers of printing as well as printers how to secure the effects desired.
In the matter of domestic production America shows little originality in book-papers, the “Old Stratford” being the only distinctive exception. No hand-made book-paper is now produced in America, owing principally to the high cost of labour. ”

“ In this book, printed at the very end of the century in Paris, where the book trade had for centuries been highly organized, it is natural to find printer and publisher clearly separated, both being tradesmen working for gain. The lines for such a distinction already existed in the days of manuscripts, the scribes and the stationers belonging to quite separate classes, though they might assume each other’s functions. In the earliest days of printing the craftsmen were, as a rule, their own publishers ”

“ The activity of the early printers is remarkable. The task of preserving the literature of the world was fairly done at a very early date. There were not many books that promised to be salable and profitable, and some of them were scarce, and copies were obtained with difficulty—but nearly every valuable book was found and printed. ”

“ If the author retains his proof longer than is necessary to read and correct it, this delay frequently forces the printer to work over-time to meet publication-day; this over-time work is charged for at double price.
An author would never have any difficulty in securing a letter of introduction from his publisher to some large printing-house, and the printer would gladly give him every opportunity to familiarize himself with the mechanical processes. ”

“ To-day, amid the whirr of many presses, and the hurrying to and fro of the printing office, the printer finds little or no time for literary pursuits, despite the fact that printing is, in very truth, the handmaid of literature. ”

“ The printer must learn more than he now knows about art or he will become only a caddie in the game of booklet printing, with the artist and ad.-writer making all the puts. The printer is depending too much upon the artist and too little upon himself. ”

“ Paper for linotype operators as well as that for hand-compositors should be about the size of commercial note, and the writing should run the long way of the page, the reason being that sheets of the commercial note size fit into the machine ‘copy-holder’ very neatly. Good margins should be left at the top and sides, this for side-notes and catch-lines for headings. Names of persons, etc., should be ‘printed out’ carefully in manuscripts, and interlineations should be avoided. Blind hands have always caused infinite trouble in printing-houses. ”

“ The first block-printers were men outside the pale of literature, and not indebted to any school or scholar for the suggestion of printing. The first merchantable products of printing on paper were not books, but playing cards and images. ”

“ General Magazine advertising of paper has been principally devoted to writing paper. This is natural, since of all paper products this commodity has the largest number of buyers, and the matter of taste is not so over-shadowed by technical considerations, as in the case of printing papers.
The specifications for general printing, involve more knowledge of printing processes than most people possess, hence the final decision rests in a majority of cases on the printer’s judgment, so that logically the printer is the most necessary individual to convert. ”

“ A knowledge of paper in this thorough sense is even more desirable if a printer presumes to arrogate to himself the title and qualities of an artist. It is scarcely too radical to assert that the esthetics of printing depend for exemplification more upon paper than upon typography. It has been said that type, ink, and paper go to the making of good printing. This formula may be reversed and made to read paper, ink, and type, since so much of the effect of decorative printing depends upon the paper and the ink. ”

“ If the printer could sell directly to the public or the bookseller could print his own books, obviously the whole or the greater part of both of these profits might go to one man. In this competition, however, the bookseller had three advantages. One came from the fact that the carrying on of a printing plant was a business enterprise and the additional care of maintaining a selling organization for marketing books with the 52public was more than most printers were equal to. The second was that the bookseller could buy a whole edition or contract for its publication. ”