I commend to those who love books the fascinating study of title pages. I entered upon it from curiosity, and quickly found in it an abiding hobby. The early manuscripts and first printed volumes possessed no title pages, due probably to the fact that the handmade paper and parchment were so costly that the saving of a seemingly unnecessary page was a consideration. The incipit at the top of the first page, reading “Here beginneth” and then adding the name of the author and the subject, answered every purpose; and on the last page the explicit marked the conclusion of the work, and offered the printer an excellent opportunity to record his name and the date of the printing. Most of the early printers were modest in recording their achievements, but in the famous volume De Veritate Catholicæ Fidei the printer says of himself:
This new edition was furnished us to print in Venice by Nicolas Jenson of France.… Kind toward all, beneficent, generous, truthful and steadfast in the beauty, dignity, and accuracy of his printing, let me (with the indulgence of all) name him the first in the whole world; first likewise in his marvelous speed. He exists in this, our time, as a special gift from Heaven to men. June thirteen, in the year of Redemption 1489. Farewell
Bibliographers contend that the first title page was used in a book printed by Arnold Ther Hoernen of Cologne in 1470. In this volume an extra leaf is employed containing simply an introduction at the top. It has always seemed to me that this leaf is more likely to have been added by the printer to correct a careless omission of the introduction on his first page of text. Occasionally, in the humanistic manuscript volumes in the Laurenziana Library, at Florence, there occurs a “mirror” title (see [opp. page]), which consists of an illuminated page made up of a large circle in the center containing the name of the book, sometimes surrounded by smaller circles, in which are recorded the titles of the various sections. This seems far more likely to have been suggestive of what came to be the formal title page.
MIRROR TITLE
From Augustinus: Opera, 1485. Laurenziana Library, Florence
By the end of the fifteenth century the title page was in universal use, and printers showed great ingenuity in arranging the type in the form of wine cups, drinking glasses, funnels, inverted cones, and half-diamonds. During the sixteenth century great artists like Dürer, Holbein, Rubens, and Mantegna executed superbly engraved titles entirely out of keeping with the poor typography of the books themselves. In many of the volumes the title page served the double purpose of title and full-page illustration (see pages [228] and [241]). What splendid examples would have resulted if the age of engraved titles had coincided with the high-water mark in the art of printing!
As the art of printing declined, the engraved title was discarded, and the printer of the seventeenth century seemed to feel it incumbent upon him to cover the entire page with type. If you recall the early examples of American Colonial printing, which were based upon the English models of the time, you will gain an excellent idea of the grotesque tendency of that period. The Elzevirs were the only ones who retained the engraved title (page [241]). The Baskerville volumes (page [247]), in the middle of the eighteenth century, showed a return to good taste and harmonious co-ordination with the text; but there was no beauty in the title until Didot in Paris and Bodoni in Parma, Italy, introduced the so-called “modern” face, which is peculiarly well adapted to display (page [253]). William Morris, in the late nineteenth century, successfully combined decoration with type,—over-decorated, in the minds of many, but in perfect keeping with the type pages of the volumes themselves. Cobden-Sanderson, at the Doves Press, returned to the extreme in simplicity and good taste (page [265]), excelling all other printers in securing from the blank space on the leaf the fullest possible value. One of Cobden-Sanderson’s classic remarks is, “I always give greater attention, in the typography of a book, to what I leave out than to what I put in.”