The Printing of Jefferson's
Notes, 1793-94
[*]
Coolie Verner
P. J. Conkwright
Mathew Carey[1] came to
America
from Ireland in 1784, after a brief stay in Paris where he had
worked with Benjamin Franklin in his Passy printshop. With the aid
of a $400 loan from the Marquis de La Fayette he began his
publishing career in Philadelphia. Among his earlier publications
were the Pennsylvania Herald, first issued on January 25,
1785; the Columbia Magazine, in October, 1786, with five
partners; and in 1792, the first book printed with Greek type in
America.[2]
Although he had been a printer in Ireland before fleeing to
avoid persecution for political pamphleteering, Carey did not do
all of his own printing. When, in 1793, he decided to publish a
second American edition of Jefferson's Notes on
Virginia
[3] in 1,000 copies,
he
engaged Parry Hall at "149 Chestnut near Fourth" to be the
printer.
Hall composed the work in Edmund Fry's Pica Roman No.
1
and Pica Italic No. 2.[4]
As
soon as he had pulled a proof sheet, he sent it to Jefferson on
July 25, 1793, with a note:
Parry Hall incloses a Proof Sheet of the Notes on Virginia;
which with the greatest respect and a high sense of obligation, he
lays before the Hon
ble M
r. Jefferson.
[5]
So far as can be determined, Jefferson made no textual changes;
however, a curious alteration occurred which cannot be attributed
specifically to either the author or printer. In all prior editions
of the Notes, numbers (in parentheses) had been used to
refer to the appended material containing Charles Thomson's
comments on various passages in the text. Hall's sheets, however,
used upper-case letters[6] in lieu of
numbers. This change persists in most of the subsequent editions of
the Notes and is an indication of the copy utilized in their
composition.[7]
Hall and his daughter are listed among those who died between
the first of August and the middle of December in the Philadelphia
plague of 1793.[8] Thereafter,
the firm of Wrigley and Berriman moved into his shop and completed
the printing of Carey's edition of the
Notes, continuing
with signature E. By the time they got to working sheet O, Carey
increased his edition to 1500 copies,
[9] and Wrigley and Berriman were
forced to
reset and run 500 additional sheets of the first three gatherings,
B, C, and D. This explains the differences in the settings of these
first three sheets. The two different states are easily
distinguished. Hall ran his sheets on thin or ordinary paper, while
Wrigley and Berriman used a thick paper water-marked A L MASSO that
is clearly superior to the ordinary paper.
[10]
The presswork was probably done on a full sheet imposed eight
pages up, in a "work and turn" operation; thus, 750 sheets were
printed on one side, and the sheets were then turned and worked on
the other side with the same eight pages. Each sheet thus produced
two copies of the same signature.[11]
Printing was completed by November 10, 1794, and the bill for the
job was submitted to Carey.[12] From
this bill we can learn the full details of the cost and production
of the book. The bill lists the following items:
-
To printing 1500 copies Jeffersons Notes on Virginia
containing 42 forms and 4 pages 8vo
.
This means, of course, 336 pages + 4, i.e., 42½ formes or
really 43 formes to be charged at press.
- COMPOSITION
To 40 forms 6888 m a form &c.mmat; 2/9 a thousand is 19/3 a form
38.10.0
Composition is still computed by the thousand ems. An em is the
square of the body of a type. Each text-page of this book required
861 ems, or 6888 ems for the eight-page forme.
-
To 2 pages pica
4.9
These are the title, advertisement, and contents pages. Probably
the three pages were lumped together and charged as two normal pica
pages.
-
To 2 forms long primer 11026 ms a form &c.mmat; 2/9 a
thousand
is 30/3 a form 3.0.6
These two formes, or 16 pages, are the tables in the text. They
average about 1378 ems per page.
-
To 2 pages brevier 4752 ms &c.mmat; 2/9
13.9
These are the small footnotes and such matter. They have 2376 ems
per page.
The composition to this point makes 42 formes plus 4 pages, as
totaled above.
-
To a table equal to 3 pages long primer 3675 &c.mmat; 2/9
11.0
This was undoubtedly the folding table of Indian Tribes, and
represents the cost of composition only.
- PRESSWORK
To 43 forms at press each form 6 Tok &c.mmat; 2/9 is 16/6 a form
35.9.6
Since a token is 250 impressions, and the edition was 1500, 6
tokens were required. Paper was no doubt furnished by Carey.[13]
-
To presswork of the table 6 Tok
16.6
Although this was a smaller forme than the regular eight pages, it
took the pressman just as long to run it; hence there was the same
charge as for a regular forme, or 16/6.
The total bill was £79.6.0; but since Parry Hall had already
worked 1,000 copies of the first three formes, this was deducted
from the bill:
-
Deduct 4 Tok from each of the 3 first forms is 12 Tok &c.mmat;
2/9 1.13.0
The final bill, then, was £77.13.0. The printing was completed
on November 10, 1794, and the imprint dated November 12th. Carey
advertised the book as available ". . . in about three or four
weeks . . ." in the Philadelphia Gazette of Monday,
November
17th. On November 26th he listed the Notes as ". . . neatly
bound—1 dollar and a half."
Notes
