Page from the Standard Edition, which began publication in 1931, in Fournier small pica, 1-1/2 points leaded, large crown octavo, 5x8 inches.
The influence of Bernard Shaw on our time has been profound; in the theatre, in films and in broadcasting. The circulation of his printed works has been immense. His direct collaboration with his printer over a long period is of more than professional interest to publishers, printers and bibliographers. This unique author-printer relationship provides an unusual aspect for us of the wit, vigour and working methods of one of the most successful authors and playwrights of our time; demonstrating also in no uncertain terms the integrity, craftsmanship and mechanical resource of the printing house of R. & R. Clark, so soundly based and flexibly developed over the last hundred years in the solid traditions of the Edinburgh book-printing trade.
In 1946, on the occasion of the centenary of R. & R. Clark, Shaw wrote of that renowned Edinburgh printing firm, "Ever since it printed my first plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, in 1898, it has been as natural a part of my workshop as the pen in my hand." Few printers can ever have received so eloquent a tribute from so eminent an author.
As a young author, Shaw's experiences with publishers had not been exactly encouraging. Between 1879 and 1883, as regularly as clockwork, at the rate of one a year, they rejected all his novels. The climate in publishing at that time is best described by Shaw himself writing to Daniel Macmillan in 1943. The letter is quoted in full in Charles Morgan's The House of Macmillan; a small portion bears reprinting here. After describing how Meredith turned him down for Chatto's without extenuating circumstances; how Blackwood accepted his first novel but reneged; how Smith Elder were polite and asked to see future efforts, Shaw goes on to write: "I am now one of the few who personally remember the Grand Old Men of the publishing world of that day: Alexander Macmillan, Longmans and Bentley. They were so powerful that they held the book-sellers in abject subjection, and were denounced by Walter Besant and his newly-organized Society of Authors as remorseless sharks. When they died and were succeeded by their sons, the hereditary system did not always work as well as it did in Bedford Street; and the book-sellers got the upper hand. John Murray's Byronic prestige was so select that I did not dream of trying him until years later, when I was an author of some note and had already helped to bankrupt three publishers. I offered him Man and Superman. He refused in a letter which really touched me. He said he was old-fashioned and perhaps a bit behind the times; but he could not see any intention in my book but to wound, irritate and upset all established constitutional opinion, and therefore could not take the responsibility of publishing it. By that time I could command sufficient capital to finance my books and enter into direct friendly relations with the printers (this began my very pleasant relations with Clarks of Edinburgh). I took matters into my own hands and, like Herbert Spencer and Ruskin, manufactured my books myself, and induced Constables to take me "on commission."
Sidney and Beatrice Webb sent Shaw to their Edinburgh printer. An informative and amusing correspondence reprinted at length by Grant Richards in Author Hunting reveals how he was ruled and educated by Shaw in the choice of type, "Morris" margins, specimen pages, paper and other details of production. Holbrook Jackson has pointed out in an article in number four of The Fleuron that Shaw's books followed the model of William Morris's Roots of the Mountains, printed in Caslon Old Face at the Chiswick Press in 1892. Shaw, Socialist intimate and admirer of Morris, was also in close touch with Emery Walker, and familiar no doubt with the typographical ideas of Morris, Walker and Cobden-Sanderson, first elaborated in Edinburgh in 1889 at a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Art, and later published in Arts and Crafts Essays printed in Edinburgh in 1893.
In preliminary discussions of the production of Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Shaw insisted on a trade union printer. Grant Richards doubted whether a union house could do justice to his ideal of the book beautiful. "I had few notions of what makes a union house," wrote Grant Richards. "I do not think I had a union house on my list. The problem shifted to the question of fair wages, and R. & R. Clark were approved." Shaw, in a letter to Grant Richards in 1897, observed, "Clark is all right; a first-rate house. I enclose a letter which you can hold as a certificate of compliance with my fair wages clause."...
Edward Clark doubtless also got much entertainment from his dealings with a teetotal, non-smoking, vegetarian, Socialist of an author. There is a story that, on one specimen, Shaw's instructions for close and mechanically-equal spacing between words were so precisely followed by the pragmatical Scots, that at the end of some closely spaced lines the definite article "the" was divided "t-" and "he" turned over, and the indefinite article "a-" with "n" turned over. Shaw's comment when returning the specimen, as Maxwell tells the story, was, "Excellent; but please do not go so far as to prove the author is really a damn fool." Shaw denies the story; nevertheless, true or untrue, it has a Shavian flavour.
Shaw's choice of Caslon for his original edition was inevitable. We know that he picked up the pre-Kelmscott formula ready-made from William Morris; but, unlike the founding fathers of the private press movement, he lacked the unearned income to indulge in a privately-cut type-face. In 1897 we must remember that there were only two text-types available in most book-houses: Old Style or Modern. More often than not, before mechanical type-setting, there was not even any choice. Publisher and author often had to accept the type of which there happened to be, at any given moment, the greatest amount of "dis."