With the nineteenth-century revival of interest in typography, the printer came to the fore again and we see his name appearing in a new place, the certificate, preceding the title page—an entire leaf, moreover, on which are set forth the details in which he is interested, the paper, number of copies, and so on. This use seems to have been introduced by the finely printed volumes of the French book clubs, with their "Justification du tirage," and it was followed through the later decades of the nineteenth century, in the publications of book clubs and many other privately and finely printed volumes. Simultaneously with these came the publications of the Kelmscott and other private presses, which revived the use of colophons in the early manner. The separate page, placed at the end of the finely printed book of today, giving details of the making of the volume, is the result of this modern impetus in book-making[9]—the interest in fine production of the person for whom the book is made, added to the desire of the modern printer for recognition of himself as the producer.
St. Bernard. Sermones. Rostock, Fratres Domus Horti Viridis, 1481.
COLOPHON WITH PRINTER'S MARK.
This is but the very logical expression in the books themselves of the modern trend, so assiduously cultivated, toward the making of good books, and the return to prominence of the printer after the long period of his subservience to the publisher. In the present-day notice of its makers, on the final page of a book, the colophon is revived, and once more the printer has the last word!
COMPOSED IN GARAMOND TYPES
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1927).
[3] Iolo Williams, The Elements of Book-Collecting (London: Elkin Mathews, 1927).