A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898

by Henry R. Plomer

There is not much to be said of the work of the elder Whittingham. He confined his attention to the issue of small books, such as the British Classics, which he began to print in 1803. His books are chiefly notable for the printing of the woodcuts, which by the process known as overlaying, he brought to great perfection. His relations with the publishers were, however, none of the best. They accused him of piracy, and considered it to be against the best interests of the trade to issue small and cheap books. The productions of the elder Whittingham's press have, moreover, been largely overshadowed by those of his nephew.

Charles Whittingham the younger was a genuine artist in printing. He loved books to begin with, and thought no pains too great to bestow upon their production. Born at Mitcham, on October 30th, 1795, he was apprenticed to his uncle in 1810. In 1824 he was taken into partnership, but this lasted only four years, and he then set up for himself at 21 Took's Court, Chancery Lane. A near neighbour of his at that time was the publisher William Pickering, who since 1820 had been putting in the hands of the public some excellently printed and dainty volumes. It is stated in the Dictionary of National Biography that the series known as the Diamond Classics was printed for Pickering at the Chiswick Press. But this was not the case. He had no dealings whatever with the Whittinghams or the Chiswick Press before his introduction to Charles Whittingham the younger in 1829. The Diamond Classics, which he began to issue while he was living in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1822, were printed by C. Corrall of Charing Cross, and the Oxford English Classics, in large octavo, chiefly by Talboys and Wheeler of Oxford, while most of his other work, amongst it the first eleven volumes of the works of Bacon, was done by Thomas White, who is first found at Bear Alley, and subsequently at Johnson Court and Crane Court in Fleet Street.

Fig. 35.—Old-faced Type.

Few of these early books of Pickering's had any kind of decoration beyond a device on the title-page. Simplicity, combined with what was best in type and paper, seem to have been the publisher's chief aim at that time; but in some of the Diamond Classics will be found the small and artistic border-pieces which he afterwards used frequently.

The first of Pickering's books in which anything of a very ornamental character occurs is The Bijou, or Annual of Literature, a publication which fixes very clearly his association with Whittingham. The Bijou first appeared in 1828, printed by Thomas White, with one or two charming head-pieces designed by Stothard. The volume for 1829 was also printed by White, and is noticeable as having the publisher's Aldine device, showing that this came into use during the year 1828. The volume for 1830 was printed by C. Whittingham of Took's Court. The meeting between the two men had been brought about by Basil Montagu in the summer of 1829. They found themselves kindred spirits on the subject of the artistic treatment of books, and a friendship sprang up between them, that ceased only with Pickering's death in 1854, and was productive of some of the most beautiful books that had ever come from an English press. Mr. Arthur Warren in his book, The Charles Whittinghams, Printers (p. 203), tells us: 'The two men met frequently for consultation, and whenever the bookseller visited the press, which he often did, there were brave experiments toward. The printer would produce something new in title-pages, or in colour work, or ornament, and the bookseller would propound some new venture in the reproduction of an ancient volume.... They made it a point, moreover, to pass their Sundays together, either at the printer's house or at Pickering's.'

Fig. 36.—Early Chiswick Press Initials.

In the artistic production of books they were ably assisted by Whittingham's eldest daughter Charlotte, and Mary Byfield. The former designed the blocks, many of which were copied from the best French and Italian work of the sixteenth century, and the latter engraved them.

Among the notable books produced by these means were the Aldine Poets, editions of Milton, Bacon, Isaak Walton's Complete Angler, the works of George Peele, reprints of Caxton's books, and many Prayer-books. In 1844 Pickering and Whittingham were in consultation as to the production of an edition of Juvenal to be printed in old-face great primer, and the foundry of the latest descendant of the Caslons was ransacked to supply the fount. The edition was to be rubricated and otherwise decorated, and this, or the printer's stock trouble, 'lack of paper,' occasioning some delay, the revived type first appeared in a fiction entitled Lady Willoughby's Diary, to which it gave a pleasantly old-world look in keeping with the period of which the story treats. By the kindness of Mr. Jacobi, the present manager of the Chiswick Press, an exact copy of the title-page of this book is here given, and with it, examples of the decorative initials and devices, in the revival of which also the Chiswick Press led the way.