Early Printed Books

by E. Gordon Duff

An approximate date should always be supplied to the description of an undated book; but this date should not be a mere haphazard conjecture, but should be determined by an examination of the characteristics of the book, and comparison with dated books from the same press, so that the date that is ascribed is merely another expression for the characteristics noticed in the book. It is only after careful study that accurate dates can be ascribed to books of a particular press, and monographs on particular printers must be consulted when it is possible.

On the question of sizes there seem to be many opinions. There was originally no doubt on the subject, and there is no reason for any doubt now.

There are two opposing elements at work, size and form. Originally, when all paper was handmade, and did not vary very much in measurement, books were spoken of as folio, quarto, octavo, etc., according to the folding of the sheet; and these terms apply to the folding of the sheet. In the present century, when paper is made by machinery, and made to any size, the folding cannot be taken as a criterion, and the various sizes are determined by measurement, the old terms, applicable only to the size by folding, being retained. What has evidently led to all this confusion is the application of the same terms to two different things.

In describing old books, the old form size should be used, being the only one which does not vary. Under the other notation, a cut-down copy of a book in quarto becomes an octavo, and thus two editions are made out of one.

The size of an old book is very simply recognised by holding up a page to the light. Certain white lines, called wire-marks, will be noticed, occurring, as a rule, about an inch apart, and running at right angles to the fine lines, These wire-lines are perpendicular in a folio, octavo, 32mo, and horizontal in a quarto and 16mo. In a 12mo, as the name implies, the sheet is folded in twelve; and in the earlier part at least of the sixteenth century this was done in such a way that the wire-lines are perpendicular; the height of the sheet forming two pages, as is the case in an octavo, while the width is divided into six, instead of four as in an octavo. The later habit has been to fold the sheet differently, the height of the sheet forming the width of four pages, and the width of the sheet the height of three pages; consequently the wire-lines are horizontal. Among early printed books the 12mo is a very uncommon form; quartos are most numerous, and after them folios.

It should always be remembered that the signature has nothing whatever to do with the size. It is merely a guide to the binder to show him how many leaves go to the quire, and the order in which they come. The binder found it convenient to have his quires of from eight to twelve leaves each, and the quires were thus made up whether the book was folio, quarto, or octavo. Let us assume, for example, that the quires were to consist of eight leaves each, then each quire of the folio book contained four sheets, of the quarto book two sheets, and of the octavo book one sheet. A book on Book Collecting, lately published, gives the following extraordinary remarks on finding the size:—“The leaves must be counted between signature and signature, and then if there are two leaves the book is a folio, if four a 4to, if eight an 8vo, if twelve a 12mo, etc.... I should advise the young collector to count the leaves between signature and signature, and to abide by the result, regardless of all the learned arguments of specialists.” The absolute folly of these remarks on the sizes of books will be apparent to any one who has seen an old book. The earliest folios printed in Germany and Italy are in quires of ten leaves, i.e. there are ten leaves between signature and signature; in the majority of early folios there are eight. Again, there is no folio book in existence among early books (excepting the block-books, which are in a class apart) with only two leaves to the signature.

Wynkyn de Worde made up many of his quartos in quires of eight and four leaves alternately; most early 16mos were made up in quires of eight leaves, and had therefore two signatures to each complete sheet. In the same way many 24mos were made up in quires of twelve leaves. All these books would be wrongly described by counting the leaves between the signatures; in fact, that method comes right by accident only in the case of some octavos and a few 12mos and 16mos.[41]

[41] On the subject of the sizes of old books, the reader would do well to consult the Athenæum, 1888, vol. ii, pp. 600, 636, 673, 706, and 744, where some instructive and amusing letters will be found. A further series of letters relating generally to the same subject appeared in the same paper in the early part of 1889.

The collation of a book is the enumeration of the number of leaves according to the way in which they are arranged in quires, and this collation should be given whether the quires are signed or not. If there are signatures, there can be no difficulty in counting the number of leaves which go to each quire; but when there are no signatures, as is the case with most books before 1475, the collation is a more difficult matter. The first thing to be looked at, if the book has no MS. signatures, is the sewing, which shows us the centre of the quire,[42] and we can then count from sewing to sewing. This gives us only the halves of two quires; we must then have recourse to the watermarks. In a folio, if one leaf has a watermark, the corresponding leaf which forms the other half of the sheet has none. Again, in a quarto, corresponding leaves have either no watermark, or each half a one. Judging from the sewing and the watermarks, there is rarely any difficulty in making out the collation, the first and last quires being the most difficult to determine with accuracy; the others present no difficulty. It is thus always best to settle the arrangement of the interior quires first, and work from them to the outer ones, which are more likely to be mutilated.