TYPOGRAPHY IN COLONIAL DAYS
Typography has been an important factor in the development of modern civilization. In the battle for civil and religious liberty, in both Europe and America, the man with the pen and he of the composing-stick have been together on the firing line. With Paul they could well boast that they had been “in perils of waters, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness and painfulness, in hunger and thirst.” William Tyndale died at the stake, Richard Grafton and John Daye suffered imprisonment; Robert Estienne became an exile from his own country; Jesse Glover on his way to America found a grave in the waters of the Atlantic; Stephen Daye set type in a wilderness; James Franklin, William Bradford and John Peter Zenger were imprisoned, and Benjamin Franklin suffered hunger and privation.
As ecclesiastical and political conditions in Europe strongly influenced the practice of typography during the days of the American colonies, I will briefly review the events of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the reader may better understand and appreciate the subject.
In the year 1521, when Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms in Germany, the English people were ardent Roman Catholics. Henry VIII. was King of England and the great Cardinal Wolsey was in high authority. Henry, in the early part of his reign, was exceedingly loyal to the Catholic Church; he published a book in answer to the attacks of Luther, for which the pope gave him the title “Defender of the Faith.” However, when Henry wished to divorce his wife that he could marry Anne Boleyn, the church authorities did not approve. This so angered the king that he took from Wolsey his office and possessions, denied the authority of the pope over the Church of England, and had himself declared the supreme head of that organization. The king was excommunicated by the pope and in return Catholics were persecuted and put to death, and their monasteries, colleges and hospitals broken up. Henry repeatedly changed his religious opinions, and for many years both Catholics and Protestants were put to death for differing with him.
For six years after Henry’s death in 1547, during the reign of his son Edward VI., the Protestants were in power. Then for five years under Mary the Catholics controlled the religious affairs of the country, and the flesh of “heresy” was toasted at the stake.
THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED IN ENGLISH AMERICA
By Stephen Daye at Cambridge, Mass., 1640. (Page slightly reduced)
TITLE-PAGE OF A SHAKESPEARE BOOK
Printed in 1600, while Shakespeare was in the midst of his literary labors
Elizabeth, who began to rule in 1558, was proud of the appellation “Virgin Queen” and gave the name “Virginia” to the English colony in America. She never quit spinsterhood, but about the year 1570 considerable correspondence was carried on between the English and French courts regarding her intended marriage. This resulted in the accumulation of over three hundred letters, which eighty-five years later were collected and printed as a 442-page quarto. (The title-page is reproduced full size as an insert in this chapter.) A poor Puritan named Stubbs and a poor bookseller named Page published a pamphlet against the marriage of Queen Elizabeth to the French king’s brother, and tho the queen herself had said she would never marry, these unfortunate subjects were punished for their audacity by having their right hands cut off.
Under Elizabeth, the “Protestant” religion was permanently established in England, but the enactment of severe laws, such as prohibiting any one attending the ministry of clergymen who were not of the established religion, gave rise to dissenters derisively called Puritans because they wished to establish a form of worship based on the “pure” word of God. It was by these so-called Puritans that printing was introduced into English America. Elizabeth reigned until 1603 and was the last of the Tudor family of sovereigns. The first of the Stuart Kings, James I. (son of Mary Queen of Scots), then ruled until 1625, when he was succeeded by his son Charles I. Charles was a despot and claimed that the people had no right to any part of the government. A civil war resulted, Charles was beheaded (1649) and a form of government known as the Commonwealth was established. Oliver Cromwell shortly afterward became Lord Protector with more power than the king had possessed.
Cromwell was a Puritan, but of the radical element known as Independents, differing from another element of Puritans known as Presbyterians. The Independents have come to be known as Congregationalists. Under Cromwell’s severe Puritanic rule, sculpture and painting were declared as savoring of idolatry and public amusements were sternly put down. However, Cromwell encouraged printing and literature. He was an intimate friend of John Milton, the blind author of “Paradise Lost” (see title-page reproduced on a following page), which book was published in 1667, the year following the Great Fire. Milton was Latin secretary to Cromwell, and published a book which argued against royalty, for which, on the accession of Charles II., he was arrested.
In 1657 (the year before Cromwell died) was published the sixth and last volume of the London Polyglot Bible, compiled by Brian Walton and printed by Thomas Roycroft. In this Bible there were used nine languages: Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Persian and Latin. The work took four years in printing, and was the first book ever published in England by subscription. Cromwell encouraged the undertaking by allowing paper to be imported into England duty free, and by contributing a thousand pounds out of the public money to begin the work.
In those days the Puritans presented a curious contrast to the Royalists. The Puritan, or “Roundhead” as he was also called, wore a cloak of subdued brown or black, a plain wide linen collar, and a cone-shaped hat over closely-cut or long, straight hair. The Royalist, or “Cavalier,” wore clothes of silk or satin, a lace collar, a short cloak over one shoulder, short boots, and a broad-brimmed beaver hat adorned with a plume of feathers.
The period designated as the Restoration, long celebrated by the Church of England, began soon after Cromwell’s death, when in 1660 Charles II. ascended the throne. This period brought with it a reaction from the Puritanic conditions that previously existed and all sorts of excesses were practiced. Cromwell’s body was taken out of its grave in Westminster Abbey, hanged on a gallows and beheaded.
It was during the reign of Charles II. (1665) that the Great Plague killed one hundred thousand people in London, a terrible experience followed by one equally terrible the next year: the Great Fire, which consumed thirteen thousand houses.
In 1688 there was another revolution; the people passed a Bill of Rights, and set a new King (William III.) on the throne.
George I., the head of the dynasty now represented in England by King George V., came to the throne in 1714. He was a German, could not speak English, and was the grandfather of George III., the “villain” in the great drama of the American Revolution.
In France the Protestant Huguenots were persecuted by Cardinal Richelieu, whose strong personality dominated King Louis XIII. from 1622 to 1642, and many of them left for America. In 1643 Louis XIV. became King of France and his long reign of seventy-two years is renowned because of the magnificence which found expression in sumptuous buildings, costly libraries, splendidly-bound books, and gorgeous dress.
Cardinal Mazarin, in whose library was later discovered a copy of Gutenberg’s Forty-Two-Line Bible, acted as advisor while Louis XIV. was under age.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many mechanics in England worked for a shilling a day; their chief food was rye, barley and oats; and one-fifth of the people were paupers. Teachers taught their scholars principally by means of the lash, masters beat their servants and husbands their wives. Superstition was strong and children and grown folks were frightened with lugubrious tales into being “good.” This spirit is especially noticeable in the chap-books that were sold during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A title to one of these chap-books (dated 1721) reads:
A Timely Warning to Rash and Disobedient Children; being a strange and wonderful Relation of a young Gentleman in the Parish of Stepheny in the Suburbs of London, that sold himself to the Devil for twelve years to have the Power to be revenged on his Father and Mother, and how his Time being expired, he lay in a sad and deplorable Condition to the Amazement of all Spectators.
THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE LONDON “TIMES” UNDER THAT TITLE. 1788
The heading mentions that logotypes were used in the composition of this newspaper
Children in those days were either devilishly bad or ridiculously good. Read this title-page:
The Children’s Example; shewing how one Mrs. Johnson’s Child of Barnet was tempted by the Devil to forsake God and follow the Ways of other Wicked Children, who us’d to Swear, tell lies, and disobey their Parents; How this pretty innocent Child resisting Satan, was Comforted by an Angel from Heaven who warned her of her approaching Death; Together with her dying Speeches desiring young Children not to forsake God, lest Satan should gain a Power over them.
FIRST EDITION OF “PILGRIM’S PROGRESS”
Title-page (actual size) of Bunyan’s well-known book, London, 1678
Jack the Giant Killer, the hero of our childhood days, was a favorite subject for chap-book exploitation. There is shown on the following page the title of such a “history.”
Chap-books are poor representatives of the art of typography in Colonial days because they were to the book industry then what reprint books are to the trade in our time. Today it is customary for some publishing houses to buy up old electrotype plates of obsolete editions of dictionaries and other popular books. The plates having already been put to extensive use, are battered and worn, and impressions from them cannot be accepted as criterions for determining the quality of modern printing. Neither are the chap-books true printing representatives of their times. The woodcuts, crudely drawn in the first place, were also worn and battered by repeated use.
PAGE FROM A “CHAP-BOOK”
Probably a Dicey product of the eighteenth century
In the early part of the seventeenth century chap-books were 8vos. (sixteen pages of about 5 × 8 inches), but later were reduced to 12mos. (twelve or twenty-four pages of about 4 × 6½ inches). The stories were condensed to fit these small penny books, which were peddled by chapmen. A chapman is described in a “Dictionarie” of 1611 as “A paultrie Pedlar, who in a long packe, which he carries for the most part open, and hanging from his necke before him hath Almanacks, Bookes of News, or other trifling ware to sell.”
Many of the chap-books of the eighteenth century were printed and published at Aldermary-Church-Yard and Bow-Church-Yard, London, by William and Cluer Dicey, afterward C. Dicey only. The Dicey books were better productions than those of their imitators. It is not possible to determine the exact year in which the majority of chap-books were printed, as many title-pages merely read “Printed and sold in London,” etc., or “Newcastle; printed in this present year,” without the formality of the date.
There were also other cheap productions known as broadsides, single sheets about 12 × 15 inches, in most cases printed broadwise of the paper and on one side only.
On December 21, 1620, there landed at Plymouth Rock, in what was afterward the colony of Massachusetts, a band of Puritans from England. These non-conformists, unable conscientiously to obey the laws of their native country, had come to America to worship God in their own manner. Ten years later Governor Winthrop with one thousand Puritans landed at Charlestown, and in the following year these immigrants began to settle Cambridge and Boston. A building for an academy (now Harvard University) was erected at Cambridge in 1638, and in 1639 Stephen Daye began to print there.
For the establishment of this, the first printing office in what is now the United States, Rev. Jesse Glover, a Puritan minister of some wealth, was chiefly responsible. Himself contributing liberally, he solicited in England and Holland sufficient money to purchase a press and types, and June 7, 1638, entered into a contract with Stephen Daye, a printer, to accompany him to the new country. Rev. Glover (with his family, Stephen Daye and the printing outfit) embarked on a vessel for New England, but on the voyage across the ocean he was taken ill and died.
PAGE FROM “DESCRIPTION OF TRADES.” LONDON, 1747
Showing use of decorative bands to separate subjects
The press and types having reached Cambridge were finally placed in charge of Stephen Daye and printing was begun in 1639. The first work produced was “The Freeman’s Oath,” probably a single sheet, and the first book (1640) was the “Booke of Psalmes,” familiarly known as the “Bay Psalm Book.” (The reproduction on the first page of this chapter is from one of these books preserved in the public library, Forty-Second Street, New York.) This book of Psalms is a revision of Ainsworth’s version of 1612, and was in use in New England for upwards of a century, more than fifty editions having been published. The size of the type-page of the first edition is 3¼ × 6¼ inches.
In quality of presswork this first book of Stephen Daye affords a decided contrast to the Bible of Gutenberg, near which it lies in the cases at the public library. The print on the pages of the Psalm Book is uneven in color and impression, while that on the pages of the Bible is dense-black and firmly and evenly impressed. The reproduction of the title-page of the Psalm Book does the original no injustice. It is difficult to determine whether the shoulders of the border printed the angular lines, or whether these are a part of the design. It is interesting to note how in the word “Whole,” Daye formed a W by combining two Vs, his font of types being one evidently intended for Latin work only.
FRENCH SPECIMEN OF 1742
(Actual size)
Daye continued in charge of the printing office for about ten years. Jesse Glover’s widow had married Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard College, and Dunster, for his wife and as president of the college, managed the printing office and received such profits as were made. For some reason Daye in 1649 ceased to be master printer and Dunster appointed Samuel Green to the position. Green had come from England in 1630 with Governor Winthrop, but was not a printer at that time.
The commissioners of the united colonies, who had in charge the propagation of Christianity among the Indians, added another press to the one already at Cambridge, together with types, etc., for the purpose of printing the Bible and other books in the Indian language. In 1662 Green gave to the commissioners the following “account of utensils for Printing belonging to the Corporation:”
The presse with what belongs to it with one tinn pann and two frisketts.
Item two table of Cases of letters with one ode Case.
Item the ffont of letters together with Imperfections that came since.
Item one brasse bed, one Imposing Stone.
Item two barrells of Inke, 3 Chases, 2 composing stickes, one ley brush, 2 candlestickes one for the Case the other for the Presse.
Item the frame and box for the sesteren.
Item the Riglet brasse rules and scabbard the Sponge 1 galley 1 mallett 1 sheeting sticke and furniture for the chases.
Item the letters that came before that were mingled with the colledges.
CASLON TYPES AND ORNAMENTS
From the specimen book of W. Caslon and Son, London, 1764
In 1670 the commissioners presented this equipment to Harvard College. Green continued to print until he was very old, and upon his death in 1702 the printing office was discontinued.
Before 1740 more printing was done in Massachusetts than in all the other colonies. Printing was not introduced into the colony of Virginia until about 1727, principally because the authorities deemed it best to keep the people in ignorance.
Pennsylvania was the second English colony in America in which typography was practiced. The charter of this colony was granted to William Penn in 1681 and in 1687 William Bradford at his printing office “near Philadelphia” printed an almanac. This was a sheet containing the calendar of twelve months (beginning with March and ending with February, as was customary in the seventeenth century). In England, Bradford had worked for a printer who was intimately acquainted with George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers). This influenced Bradford to adopt the principles of that sect and he was among the first to emigrate to Pennsylvania in 1682.
FIRST EDITION OF “PARADISE LOST”
Title-page (slightly reduced) of Milton’s famous book, London, 1667
Bradford became involved in a quarrel among the Quakers of Philadelphia and in 1692 was arrested for printing a pamphlet. The sheriff seized a form of type pages to be used as evidence, and it is said that Bradford later secured his release because one of the jurymen in examining the form pushed his cane against it and the types fell to the floor, “pied” as it is technically expressed. The trouble into which Bradford found himself in Philadelphia very likely influenced him in 1693 to leave that city and establish a printing office in New York “at the sign of the Bible” (the site at 81 Pearl Street is now marked by a tablet), his being the first printshop in New York and the only one for thirty years. He was appointed in 1693 official printer to the government. In 1725, when Bradford was sixty-one years old, he began the publication of the first newspaper in New York (the Gazette).
No review of Colonial printing would be complete without an account of Benjamin Franklin, whose birthday (January 17) is each year widely celebrated. Franklin’s father was an Englishman who came to New England about 1685, and Benjamin was born in Boston in 1706, the youngest but two of seventeen children. He came near being a minister, a seaman, a tallow-chandler or a cutler, but love of books caused him finally to be indentured to his brother, James Franklin, who had opened a printing office in Boston. Benjamin was twelve years of age when indentured and was to serve as apprentice until his twenty-first birthday. Making an arrangement with his brother to be allowed to furnish his own board, Franklin provided himself with meals “often no more than a biscuit or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins, or a tart from the pastry cook’s and a glass of water,” using the money thus saved for the purchase of books. In 1721 James Franklin began to print a newspaper (the New England Courant) and Benjamin tells how some of his brother’s friends tried to dissuade him from the undertaking, “one newspaper being, in their judgment, enough for America.” Some articles in this newspaper giving offense to the Assembly, James Franklin was imprisoned for a month, and on his discharge was forbidden to publish the Courant. To evade this order Benjamin’s name was substituted for that of James Franklin as publisher.
A short time afterward (1723) the brothers disagreed, and Benjamin left Boston, coming by ship to New York. Here Franklin offered his services to William Bradford, then the only printer in the city, but he could give him no work. However, he suggested that Franklin go to Philadelphia where Andrew Bradford, his son, had a shop. Franklin did not succeed in getting work with Andrew Bradford, but was more fortunate with Samuel Keimer. The printing house of Keimer, as described by Franklin, consisted of an old damaged press, a small worn-out font of types, and one pair of cases. Here Franklin worked until he left for England to select an equipment for a new printing office to be established by him in Philadelphia. At that time there was no type foundry or press manufactory in the United States. Franklin had been encouraged by Governor Keith with promises of financial assistance, but the trip to London proved a fool’s errand and Franklin went to work in a printing office there as a journeyman, first at the press, later in the composing-room. (It is told that forty years afterward when Franklin was residing in Great Britain, he went into this printing office and with the men there drank “Success to printing.”) He returned to Philadelphia, worked as a foreman for Keimer, and then with a partner, Hugh Meredith, opened a printing office.
One of the first jobs done by the new firm was forty sheets of the history of the Quakers, set in pica and long primer. Franklin tells how he “composed a sheet a day and Meredith worked it off at press; it was often eleven at night, and sometimes later, before I had finished my distribution for the next day’s work. But so determined I was to continue doing a sheet a day that one night, when, having imposed my forms, I thought my day’s work over, one of them by accident was broken and two pages reduced to pi, I immediately distributed and composed it over again before I went to bed.”
In 1732 (for the year 1733) Franklin first published “Poor Richard’s Almanack.” For this purpose he used the name of Richard Saunders, an English astrologer. This almanac continued to be published by Franklin for twenty-five years, nearly ten thousand copies being sold annually. The two pages here reproduced are full size, and as it is likely that Franklin gave close attention to the typography it will be interesting to study their arrangement. They are good examples of title-page and tabular composition of Colonial days.
Franklin considered this almanac a proper vehicle for spreading instruction among the common people, and filled the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences. These proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, were latter gathered together as a harangue of a wise old man under the title “The Way to Wealth,” and the familiar phrase “As Poor Richard says” is often repeated therein.
In 1748 Franklin took as a partner David Hall, the firm name being Franklin & Hall until 1766, when Hall became sole proprietor.
Quaintness is the chief characteristic of Colonial typography. While the treatment lacks the artistic quality, the refinement, and the dainty finish of the productions of Aldus, Froben and other printers of classics, it has natural simplicity, human interest, and an inexpressible something that makes it attractive to the average printer of today.
TWO PAGES FROM “POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACK”’
Printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1732
The title-page of the “Compleat Ambassador,” showing the actual size of the original, is constructed in a severely plain manner, a style known as the “long and short line,” with catchwords.
The “Midsommer Nights Dreame” title-page is one of the most artistic of Colonial pages, printed when Shakespeare was in the midst of his famous literary labors (1600). To get contrast the compositor alternated lines of roman with lines of italic. The spacing material could not have been accurate, and two capital V’s were used for a W, as in the Daye title-page.
The “Paradise Lost” title-page is a poor specimen of composition and presswork. It was common in Colonial days to surround the type-page with a double rule border, and in this specimen the rules are bent and battered. Printed in 1667, it is a part of the first edition of Milton’s famous book.
The London Times heading is interesting, representing as it does the first number, under the new name, of a newspaper which has since become world-famous. The heading mentions that the Times was printed “logographically.” Logotypes (two or three letters cast together) were being experimented with to facilitate type composition, but did not prove successful.
ITALIAN SPECIMEN OF 1776
Showing use of decoration
The printers “At the Peacock in the Poultrey near Cornhil” surely were good workmen. The “Pilgrim’s Progress” title-page is a finished bit of printing.
The custom of using decorative border units to make printed books attractive was seemingly practiced thruout Europe. The Italian page of 1776 is an example of this, as is also the French specimen of 1742.
The page from the Colonial book, “Description of Trades,” exhibits the use of the decorative band for dividing subjects, which idea has possibilities in the direction of general job printing that make it worthy of experiment.
Because Caslon types and ornaments were extensively used by Colonial printers I have reproduced on a previous page specimens of types and ornaments from the type-specimen book of W. Caslon & Son, printed in 1764. The Caslon type-face was original in the sense in which the type-face cut by Jenson was original; both had characteristics which identified them with their designers, but both also had a general resemblance to type-faces previously used. The Roman face cut by Caslon bears a marked similarity in its capitals to the type-faces used by Thomas Newcomb on the title-page of the “Compleat Ambassador” (see [insert]).
There are shown here two specimens of type-faces designed by Bodoni, which were the first of the so-called “modern” romans. The letters reveal a thinning of the lighter lines and a thickening of the heavier lines. The serifs are straight and sharp. The design of the letters was such as to afford the typefounders of the nineteenth century a model upon which to base their efforts at mechanical accuracy in the cutting of type-faces. As a result of the introduction of Bodoni’s new type-face there was not a type foundry in the world in 1805 making the old-style roman type-faces. Giovan Battista (John Baptist) Bodoni was a printer-typefounder of Parma, Italy.
The illustrations in this chapter were in most instances photographed from originals in the New York Public Library, the library of the New York Typothetæ, and the private library of The American Printer.
Pages from Bodoni books of 1789 and 1806, showing the first “modern” type-faces
Title-page of the “Historyes of Troye” designed by Morris and engraved on wood
First text page of “The Story of the Glittering Plain” showing the “Golden” type
The Morris style of typography and decoration
