| ||
I
One of the basic physical attributes of any object is its size, and the dimensions of the sheets of paper used in the production of a book naturally constitute one of the most important characteristics of that paper. Obviously the bibliographer, in order to determine those dimensions, cannot simply measure the sheet directly, since in most cases he has before him a copy of a finished book, in which the dimensions of the sheet have been obscured through folding and perhaps trimming. Specifying the dimensions of the original sheet can come only through the process of analyzing the evidence present in the finished book; even if the bibliographer has access to external documents (such as printers' or publishers' records) which list the size of
A consideration of the sizes of paper used in books therefore necessarily involves the question of format.[11] As a concept, of course, format has nothing directly to do with size, for it is merely an indication of the number of leaves which result from the folding of a sheet, whatever the size of the sheet. Quarto format means that a sheet has been folded twice to produce four leaves, but the term implies nothing about the dimensions of the sheet or the resulting leaves.[12] The designation of format in a bibliographical description, according to the Greg-Bowers formulary, is the first element in the collation line, not part of the description of paper: format is not one of the properties of paper but represents something done to the paper. However, since the bibliographer can measure directly only the dimensions of a leaf, he must know the format if he is to arrive at the size of the unfolded sheet. There will be many instances in which he has insufficient evidence to establish the format, and in these cases all he can give is the leaf measurement; but whenever the format can be discovered, he should provide an indication of the sheet, as well as the leaf, measurement.
The use of certain characteristics of paper, such as chainlines and watermarks, to assist in determining the format of a book was one of the earliest techniques of bibliographical analysis. William Blades explained the method in the Library in 1889,[13] and further instructions appear in any of the introductory manuals of bibliography, such as those of McKerrow and Esdaile.[14] Many people, even with only a
In the case of later books, it is not the frequent absence of chainlines and watermarks which causes the chief difficulty in determining format but rather the widespread use of machine-made papers. Before the introduction of paper-making machines early in the nineteenth century, the size of sheets was limited to the size of the mould which one man could pick up; but after the technological revolution, which produced presses that could print larger sheets and machines that could manufacture them, the sizes of sheets used for books showed much greater variety. In addition, any chainlines present in machine-made paper are of no use for analysis since they are not a natural result of the manufacturing process but merely a design impressed upon the paper. Of course, whenever nineteenth- and twentieth-century books have been printed on handmade paper with chainlines, the standard method of analysis can be used just as effectively as for pre-1800 books;[20] but the point is that for the majority of books of these two centuries the traditional procedure is of no help. A modern book, for example, may have the same general shape as an old octavo and may even be gathered in eights, but it may well have been printed on quad sheets, each of which furnished four eight-leaf gatherings, so that the format is 32°. Although the number of leaves in a gathering cannot be taken in the books of any period as an indication
As bibliographers begin to turn their attention to problems of machine-printed books, various new techniques for ascertaining format may be developed. But at present one of the few techniques available is the analysis of the edges of leaves, a technique which presupposes the existence of an untrimmed copy — indeed, an unopened copy, or at least one opened in such a way that it is still possible to tell which leaves were originally joined at the edges. Such conditions, while not common, are more easily found in nineteenth- and twentieth-century books than in earlier ones, since most modern books have been issued in publishers' bindings and, if issued untrimmed, may still remain so. In the case of an untrimmed — and, preferably, unopened — machine-printed book, one can sometimes work out the format by observing the pattern of joined leaves, or of rough edges where joined leaves have been opened. Using this method Oliver L. Steele has shown that the first edition of The Scarlet Letter was printed on double-size sheets, each of which formed two of the eight-leaf quires;[23] the format of the book could thus be described as octavo-form sextodecimo, and the size of the sheet could easily be calculated by multiplying both dimensions of the leaf by four. Steele has also detected in this way the 32° format of Cabell's Jurgen and the 64° format of Cabell's Gallantry and has recorded the patterns of the edges which can be used to recognize half-sheet imposition of eight-leaf quires in these two common formats.[24] One is often not so fortunate, however, in finding untrimmed copies and in working out the format,
For books of all periods, once a format has been determined, the bibliographer is ready to supply the first element in a description of paper — the specification of the size of the sheet. He simply multiplies the dimensions of the leaf the proper number of times to correspond with the format[28] and checks to see whether the resulting dimensions approximate one of the sheet sizes known to have been standard, or at least common, during the period in question. The match can rarely be more than a rough approximation for two reasons: the dimensions of the original sheet can be expected often to be larger than those obtained by multiplying the dimensions of the leaf, since the sheet
Despite the considerable amount of historical research on paper,[29] information about paper sizes in different periods is not easy to come by. The English paper trade, from at least some time in the seventeenth century,[30] has employed a series of names — ranging from "Post" through "Crown" and "Demy" to "Royal" and "Imperial" — to designate sheet sizes, and these names were also common in America[31] until the twentieth century. Apparently some of the names originally referred to watermarks but gradually came to stand for certain relative sizes of sheets, regardless of what watermarks they bore. Although a great many names have been used at various times, there are only seven of primary importance in connection with paper for printing: Foolscap, Post, Crown, Demy, Medium, Royal, and Imperial. However, with the addition of such adjectives as "Super," "Large," "Double," "Extra," and the like, a bewildering array of individual designations has been constructed. While the relation of all these names to each other has remained virtually unchanged over the years, the specific measurements attached to each have varied considerably, and the standard sizes adopted by law or agreement in one period are not always retained unaltered by a later generation.
The whole matter is extremely complex, and it seems unrealistic to require of descriptive bibliographers any great precision in the naming of these sizes. Sometimes the differences between two standard
Standard | Variation | |
Foolscap | 17 x 13.5 | 15 x 12.75 / 18.5 x 14.5 |
(431.8 x 342.9) | (381 x 323.85 / 469.9 x 368.3) | |
Post | 19 x 15 | 18.75 x 15.25 / 20 x 16 |
(482.6 x 381) | (476.25 x 387.35 / 508 x 406.4) | |
Crown | 20 x 15 | 19 x 15 / 20 x 16.5 |
(508 x 381) | (482.6 x 381 / 508 x 419.1) | |
Demy | 22.5 x 17.5 | 18 x 14.5 / 23 x 18 |
(571.5 x 444.5) | (457.2 x 368.3 / 584.2 x 457.2) | |
Medium | 23 x 18 | 21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19 |
(584.2 x 457.2) | (533.4 x 419.1 / 609.6 x 482.6) |
Royal | 25 x 20 | 22.25 x 18 / 26 x 20 |
(635 x 508) | (565.15 x 457.2 / 660.4 x 508) | |
Imperial | 30 x 22 | 28 x 20.5 / 36 x 24 |
(762 x 558.8) | (711.2 x 520.7 / 914.4 x 609.6) |
- 15 x 12.5 (381 x 317.5) Pott
- 17 x 13.25 (431.8 x 336.55) Foolscap
- 17 x 13.5 (431.8 x 342.9) Large Foolscap
- 18.5 x 14.5 (469.9 x 368.3) Small (or Pinched) Post
- 19 x 15 (482.6 x 381) Post
- 20 x 15 (508 x 381) Crown
- 20 x 16 (508 x 406.4) Copy; Tea Copy
- 20.75 x 14.375 (527.05 x 365.13) Music Demy; Short
- 21 x 14 (533.4 x 355.6) Large Half Royal
- 21 x 16.5 (533.4 x 419.1) Large Post
- 22.5 x 17.5 (571.5 x 444.5) Demy
- 23 x 18 (584.2 x 457.2) Medium
- 23.5 x 19.5 (596.9 x 495.3) Sheet-and-a-half Post
- 24 x 19 (609.6 x 482.6) Small Royal
- 25 x 15 (635 x 381) Double Pott
- 25 x 20 (635 x 508) Royal
- 26.5 x 16.5 (673.1 x 419.1) Double Foolscap
- 26.5 x 22.5 (673.1 x 571.5) Sheet-and-a-half Demy Square
- 27.5 x 20.5 (698.5 x 520.7) Super Royal
- 28 x 21 (711.2 x 533.4) Double Music
- 28 x 23 (711.2 x 584.2) Elephant
- 29 x 19 (736.6 x 482.6) Small Double Post
- 30 x 20 (762 x 508) Double Crown
- 30 x 22 (762 x 558.8) Imperial
- 30 x 25 (762 x 635) Quad Pott
- 30 x 30 (762 x 762) Sheet-and-a-half Demy Double
- Crown
- 30.5 x 19 (774.7 x 482.6) Double Post
- 33 x 17.75 (838.2 x 450.85) Sheet-and-a-half Demy Usual
- 33 x 21 (838.2 x 533.4) Double Large Post
- 33 x 22 (838.2 x 558.8) Large News
- 34 x 27 (863.6 x 685.8) Quad Foolscap
- 35 x 22.5 (889 x 571.5) Double Demy
- 36 x 23 (914.4 x 584.2) Double Medium
- 38 x 28 (965.2 x 711.2) Double Globe
- 40 x 25 (1016 x 635) Double Royal
- 40 x 27 (1016 x 685.8) Double Elephant
- 40 x 30 (1016 x 762) Quad Crown
- 40 x 32 (1016 x 812.8) Quad Post
- 41 x 27.5 (1041.4 x 698.5) Double Super Royal
- 44 x 30 (1117.6 x 762) Double Imperial
- 45 x 35 (1143 x 889) Quad Demy
- 50 x 40 (1270 x 1016) Quad Royal
- 55 x 31.5 (1397 x 800.1) Double Atlas
- 56 x 38 (1422.4 x 965.2) Quad Globe
Although these lists will serve to identify in general terms the sheet sizes of the majority of English and American books since the seventeenth century, they can profitably be supplemented by other tables or sources of information for particular periods. A bibliographer dealing with eighteenth-century books should certainly take advantage of the research of Philip Gaskell and Allan Stevenson, both of whom have worked out tables for that period.[33] At other times one can utilize specimen books which reflect the standard practices of a period. For instance, the book of paper samples issued in 1855 by T. H. Saunders of London gives 151 specimen sheets of handmade, machine-made, and special papers, along with a table of contents providing the name for the size of each sample.[34] Modern American paper, following the standardization codified in 1923 by the National Bureau of Standards (and revised in 1932), is not referred to by the traditional English names but simply by the dimensions of the standard
- 29 x 26 (736.6 x 660.4) 44 x 33 (1117.6 x 838.2)
- 32 x 22 (812.8 x 558.8) 44 x 34 (1117.6 x 863.6)
- 35 x 22.5 (889 x 571.5) 45 x 35 (1143 x 889)
- 36 x 24 (914.4 x 609.6) 46 x 33 (1168.4 x 838.2)
- 38 x 25 (965.2 x 635) 48 x 36 (1219.2 x 914.4)
- 39 x 26 (990.6 x 660.4) 50 x 38 (1270 x 965.2)
- 40 x 26 (1016 x 660.4) 51 x 41 (1295.4 x 1041.4)
- 41 x 30.5 (1041.4 x 774.7) 52 x 29 (1320.8 x 736.6)
- 42 x 28 (1066.8 x 711.2) 56 x 42 (1422.4 x 1066.8)
- 44 x 28 (1117.6 x 711.2) 56 x 44 (1422.4 x 1117.6)
- 44 x 32 (1117.6 x 812.8) 64 x 44 (1625.6 x 1117.6)
Once the original sheet size is ascertained, either precisely or approximately, the bibliographer has to decide how to enter the information in his description. Since minimum sheet-dimensions can be calculated on the basis of direct measurement of the leaves and since any indication of the original name or size of a sheet is generally an inference based on that direct measurement, the description should emphasize the former (which constitutes demonstrable evidence) rather than the latter (which usually constitutes speculation). An economical way of achieving this emphasis is to begin the description with the demonstrable measurement (the longer dimension preceding the shorter), followed in parentheses by the speculated name or dimensions of the original sheet. When an uncut copy is available for examination, the calculated dimensions and the original dimensions coincide, and the figures can be given without qualification; but when trimmed, or possibly trimmed, copies are the only ones available, the measurements based on the largest examined copy must be prefixed with "at least," or some equivalent phrase, and the inferred name or size with "probably":
- 25 x 20 (Royal) . . .
- 24.5 x 19.5 (a variety of Royal) . . .
- at least 24.5 x 19.5 (probably Royal) . . .
- at least 24.5 x 19.5 (probably Royal, 25 x 20) . . .
- at least 26 x 19.75 (probably a variety of Royal, 26 x 20) . . .
- at least 31 x 21.75 (probably 32 x 22) . . .
Two further problems in the specification of size should be commented on: the degree of accuracy required and the system of measurement to be employed. Questions of accuracy are part of the whole matter of tolerances,[37] but in general it can be said that one should follow Bowers's recommendation of measuring leaves to the nearest thirty-second of an inch (Principles, p. 431) — or, in the metric system, to the nearest millimeter. In practice, however, only the bibliographer who is intimately acquainted with a particular situation can say just what tolerance is meaningful or appropriate. The presence of deckle edges in an untrimmed copy of a given book may render ridiculous the idea of measuring to the nearest millimeter, though one should attempt, as Bowers suggests, to measure to an imaginary line drawn through the base of the deckle (checking the measurement in several leaves). On the other hand, a situation may arise, in connection with a machine-trimmed book, which requires the bibliographer to take readings to the nearest half-millimeter if he is adequately to distinguish certain states, issues, or impressions.
The question of what system of measurement to use — inches or millimeters — has been discussed in the past[38] with inconclusive results. Although the theoretical advantages of the metric system are obvious, English and American bibliographers are accustomed to measuring in inches, and paper sizes in both countries have traditionally been expressed this way. Despite the weight of tradition, it seems desirable to utilize the same system of measurement throughout a bibliographical description, and the metric system has already become established for certain measurements, particularly those relating to
or 635 x 508 (Royal; i.e., 25” x 20”)
at least 622 x 495 (probably Royal, 635 x 508)
or at least 622 x 495 (probably Royal, 635 x 508 [= 25” x 20”])
| ||