No printed books yet - but there about to be. In Germany a revolution is afoot that will change the world. Up to now monasteries have a virtual monopoly in book production. Their scriptoriums produce hand copied books, many of immense beauty, but unbelievably expensive. The church has almost a monopoly on the written word.
Printing arrives. The books from this period are know as incunabula [the infancy]. All the jobs in making a book are done by hand. Each signature is printed one at a time. These sheets are then folded, bound and cased by hand to make up the books. But the speed compared to the scriptoriums - the monasteries can not compete. Woodcut illustrations are tried out. The best know artist to produce cuts for books is Albrecht Dürer. The first books are printed in Gothic type. Roman type styles are also invented.
gothic = letters in which the length and height are about equal. They would fit into a square if you forgot the acceders and descenders. The letter "o" is almost a circle.
roman = letters in which the height is greater than the length. They would fit into a upright rectangle if you forgot the acceders and descenders. The letter "o" is an oval.
Books from this period are so rare that it is normal for collectors to make do with single sheets from one of these books.
Printing presses are improved, as is paper making and book binding. Intaglio printing is developed and so the plate book is born. Engraved illustrations begin to become much more common part of books, although woodcuts are still the predominant form of illustration. The book selling trade begins to develop and the first publishers appear.
Books from this period tend to be incomplete and have often been rebound several times. Collectors should be well pleased to get part of a book from this period, and delighted to get a complete one, especially in its original binding.
[Strictly antiquarian cover everything produced prior to 1830]
This was to golden age of the hand crafted book. Master craftsmen carried out each stage of production. The market in books was for the rich. Most people were illiterate and far to poor to be able to afford books at all, or if they could read, then owning a copy of the bible was about as extensive as their library was. There were chapbooks, sold at fairs and by travelling peddlers. These tended to be pamphlet style booklets of 16 to 32 pages with no covers. These were often children's stories, poems, religious tracts, fairy stories, or novellas.
The antiquarian book is:
hand printed, often with fine type, on a letter press. The indentations made by the pressure of the press can be felt if the hand is run over the pages.
on hand made paper; often made from linen or cotton. The paper is soft to touch, very durable and does not discolour. Book worms do like to eat it, so sometimes there are worm holes through the pages.
hand bound, often in leather. Sometimes the bindings are exquisite. French books are among the most beautiful from this period.
if illustrated the illustrations tend to be engravings, etchings, aquatint or mezzotint printed on separate plates, printed by the intaglio method. These were sometimes finished by hand colouring.
At this period printing and binding were done separately. The printed books were first put into printer's boards and sent to the publisher/ book seller. The buyer would then have a binding added to suit their tastes - "... and have them bound in red leather this time, I think, with our usual family crest on".
Publishers were often book sellers as well with their own shops. Mass retail selling had not yet begun.
Woodcuts were considered a poor form of illustration for use in cheap books or chapbooks. This changed in Britain in the late 1700s. when Thomas Bewick started work. He developed the white line process of wood engraving.
Lithographic illustrations began to appear in books around 1800, first in Germany, especially Bavaria, and later in England.
A period of change and transition from the expensive hand produced work of craftsmen to that of mass produced, mass marketed, mechanically produced popular and affordable goods. By 1860 just about every stage of book production had been mechanised. This changed the look and the feel of the majority of books for ever. Books from this period are amongst the worst as artefacts. For instance, first editions of Dicken's novels tend to be on yellowing, brittle paper, in poor, sagging dull cloth.
Engraving emerged once more as a fine form of illustration, especially the steel plate engravings of Gustave Doré.
The printers, the Dalziel Brothers and also Edmund Evans, perfected the arts of wood engraved printing that made possible lavishly illustrated, decorative works in which the text is festooned with illustrations. Amongst the finest artist providing illustrations for this were many of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, such as D G Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.
Punch is founded, and starts to produce its half yearly bound volumes of the magazine that continue until the magazines demise in the 1990's.
The standard book by now is a factory product, sold by publishers through a network of book retailers.
The standard book is:
printed on wood pulp paper. This is given to yellowing and to foxing with age.
bound in cloth, which is often pictorial, decorated or embossed and highly coloured.
sold ready bound in publisher's boards. The publisher now sees to the binding, not the book seller. Publishers sometime have an edition printed and then story many of the copies for later sale, issuing them in lots as demand dictates. Each issue may end up with a different binding.
sometimes sent to the book sellers with a protective dustwrapper [dustjacket] folded around to protect the binding prior to sale.
sometimes illustrated with wood engravings, decorative lettering and other decorations mixed in with the text.
sometimes illustrated with coloured wood engravings - as in the works of Walter Crane, Randolf Caldecott or Kate Greenaway.
sometimes with chromo-lithographic illustrations - the books produced by Ernest Nister being the most notable of these. Much of the finest chromo-lithographic illustration was printed in Bavaria.
Copyright laws mean that there are distinct editions for the British [& empire] market, the American market [USA] and the European [continental] market. Some Tauchnitz editions, published in Lieipzig and unusually bound in paper, predate the British or American 1st editions.
As a reaction to machine produced books, William Morris founds the Kelmscott Press, dedicated to promoting the arts and crafts of fine printing.
The development of the railways produced books intended for use by the traveller - the Railway Book or Yellow Back.
Advances in printing mean that text and illustrations can be produced on the same page without the use of woodblock. This produces a rash of topographical books such as the Highways & Byways series amongst others. Notable for these new line drawn illustrations are such artists as Hugh Thompson.
The new processes also lead to a new generation of more naturally coloured illustrations, although these are still produces as separate plates pasted into the books. It becomes fashionable to produce Christmas gift books, finely illustrated and lavishly bound. Notable amongst these are books illustrated by Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac & Willy Pogány. In children's books Beatrix Potter set new standards for colour illustrations.
The prevailing art style effects the decoration of the bindings and illustrations. There are many examples of decorative and pictorial cloth bindings that make the books superb artefacts in their own right.
The Everyman Library was started, with its aim to reprint rear and important titles in a form that could be afforded by the average person; titles that otherwise would only be known to the few. Many antiquarian titles are included in the series that have never been reprinted elsewhere.
The effects of the war time rationing, and of the simpler styles popularised by the Art Deco movement, alter the look of books considerably. Plain cloth bindings become more normal, with the art work being printed on the dustwrapper. Unfortunately many people still regarded the wrapper as a disposable packaging, there for the shops convenience, so survival rates of wrappers are not as high as they might otherwise be.
Robert Gibbings reinvigorated the art of wood engraving and founded the Golden Cockerel Press. He and his collaborator Eric Gill inspired a generation of wood engravers.
This is sometimes regarded as the period 1890 - 1930, and marked the period when affordable colour illustrated books first appeared. The great depression of 1930 -35 put an end to the production of the more lavish of these books.
Good colour lithography becomes normal, especially in Europe, and gives rise to a generation of books where colour illustration and text appear on the same pages, such as Kathleen Hale's "Orlando" books and Jean de Brunhoff's "Barbar" books.
In 1935 Penguin books were first published. Their high standards set for printing, binding and presentation altered the paperback market for ever. Early editions were stitched like hardbacks, and had their own dust wrappers [dust jackets] just like hardbacks. Although most titles were reprints, Penguin did commission books to be written, or illustrated especially for them. To celebrate each decade, quarter century, etc. of its life, Penguin have issued special commemorative books.
The appearance of the children's comics and cartoon strips in newspaper leads to the production of the annuals with these in, such as the Beano Annual and the Rupert Annuals. Later these are joined by the annual book of Giles cartoons.
Art inspired wood engraved books were amongst the finest book produced in the period, with work by such artist as Clare Leighton, Agnes Miller-Parker, Joan Hassell, BB [D J Watkins-Pitchford] & C F Tunnicliffe. The use of scraper board extended the range and ease of producing wood-engraved style illustrations.
The Second World War and the austerity period afterwards effected books in Britain by reducing the quality of paper, so that the books from this period are often found on yellowing, brittle paper. From about 1950 onwards paper and printing quality returned to a higher standard. It becomes much more normal for dustwrappers to survive.
Book clubs begin to become common, with their cheaper reprints, often in lesser formats, as a staple. Exception are the Limited Editions Club, which produces exquisitely illustrated and bound books, The Folio Society, which emphasises high quality and specially illustrated editions. The Left Book Club published books of political interest. Notable amongst its title is the first edition of George Orwell's "Road to Wigan Pier". Some specialist clubs occasionally produce titles that are not published any other way. The Country Book Club [CBC] is one of these.
The Book Society existed to recommend titles, a sort of seal of approval, that indicated to the potential buyer the quality of the book. A panel of "experts" read the books to be published and if they thought they were good they added the societies recommendation. This was shown on the dustwrapper.
The introduction of plastics lead to the use of laminated boards, often pictorial, for many books.
The development of modern presses and compositing meant that there was now almost no limit to the ways in which text and illustration could be combined on a page and produced a new generation of colour illustrated books by such artist as John Birmingham, Raymond Briggs, Ralph Steadman & Michael Foreman in which their imaginations are the only limit and in which the text and illustrations work together to advance the story.
The inclusion of plastics in or over the paper of dustwrappers leads to a much higher durability and therefore higher survival rates.
The Booker Prize and its associated short list provide a focus of interest for the more literary works of the period.
The paperback has become the dominant form, with hard backs diminishing in numbers, so much so that some modern first editions are smaller in number than the limited editions of the first half century.
© P&D Doorbar [Books] 1999