Imposition
Meanwhile the work of imposition continued concurrently, and the
clicker made ink annotations in the manuscript as the lines were imposed.
He recorded alternate galleys, plus slip numbers and (as explained above)
chapter numbers and compositors' names. It is evident that these entries do
not simply refer to the proofs that had been imposed but form a bridge
between the casting-off and the imposition. They are, indeed, so cryptic that
it is only possible to speculate on the answers to the questions that arise.
How did the cast-off galleys he had estimated tally with the precise lengths
of text imposed for each proof? Did the compositors set portions of text
according to the pencil record or the ink record of their names in the
manuscript? How did they hand on copy or spare lines between
takings?
As the compositors delivered the lines of type to the clicker, he
probably made them up into the correct lengths for the galley-trays ready
for imposition then headed and numbered each column or slip. But he
entered in ink in the manuscript both slip and galley numbers. These ink
entries contain irregularities which make the sequence hard to follow simply
by turning the pages of the manuscript, so they are summarised in the next
three paragraphs.
Since there are four slips to a galley proof, the number of the first
slip of each proof is one more than four times the previous proof-number,
e.g. galley proof 3 should start with slip 9. The first entry, however, is
"Slip 9 Gal 2", but the "2" may simply be an error for "3". The next entry
records only the slip number, 17, and omits a galley number, presumably
5. Thereafter the entries in ink consistently note alternate galleys, such that
galley 7 starts at slip 25 and so on, until galley 19, at which point some
confusion occurs.
On reaching galley 19, which started with slip 73, the clicker omitted
the galley number from his entry. He next entered galley 22, instead of 21,
as starting with slip 81; and then galley 24 also as starting with slip 81.
This latter must have been a simple error for 89, and the net effect was the
loss of galley number 21. Then from galley 26 nearly to the end of the
book, all the even-numbered galleys are consistently recorded, but the slip
number for the start of each is now lower than it should be by a difference
of four, such that the first slip of galley 26 is numbered not 101 but 97, and
so on. This was apparently rectified at galley 43 by the insertion of
subdivisions 43A and 43B; for thereafter odd-numbered galleys are
recorded and the slip numbers are as one would expect at four to a
galley.
What in fact happened at galleys 21 and 43 was that the casting off
turned out, as the lines of type were imposed, to be significantly inaccurate.
When the lines are counted[11] it is
clear that too little copy had been cast off up to galley 21 and 22, and too
much for galleys 38-43. Therefore the clicker first omitted the number 21
from his ink marks and then he rearranged cast-off galley 39 and
subdivided 40 and 43 in his pencil marks, and finally as the matter was
imposed he noted the new galley numbers in his ink marks.
From this it becomes clear that the clicker's ink marks actually
combine two separate records: the slip number refers to the proofs, while
the galley number refers back to the cast-off galleys as pencilled and
adjusted in the
manuscript. Thus the ink entries form a link that enabled him to relate the
manuscript copy to the first proofs. The original casting off was in places
widely divergent from the imposition, but once these adjustments had been
made, it is generally the case that (apart from the opening six galleys which
are untypical) the ink entries occur on average five MS pages after the
pencil entries referring to the same galley number, though in one place the
gap is only four lines. To take an illustrative example: the pencil entry on
p. 75 (Lawrence's numbering), "7 L. Bristow", marks the start of L.
Bristow's first stint in the large taking of cast-off galleys 4-10 set by him
and Rendell. The next entry by the clicker, p. 79 (Lawrence's numbering),
is in ink and records: "L. Bris. Gal 7 Slip 25 lc III" with a large square
bracket in the text before: "'Well our mother!' he answered."
Two observations can be made about this pair of entries. First, the
pencil entry had occurred at a new paragraph five lines from the top of p.
75, and therefore the most likely procedure would be that when L. Bristow
had set from there to the bottom of the page, he handed the leaf of MS
back to Rendell, so that Rendell could complete the remaining four lines of
the preceding paragraph when he reached the end of his stint. Second,
although L. Bristow had begun setting at p. 75, it was not until p. 79 that
the clicker was able to mark up the first proof imposed by him. The
intervening text that he had set amounts to about eighty-six lines of type,
nearly a whole slip. These lines were needed to complete slip 24 of the
previous proof, set by Rendell, and probably imposed by him. Therefore
L. Bristow must have passed these lines of type set by himself back to
Rendell, or to the clicker. This suggests that the inclusion of names in the
ink entries may indicate the compositor who
imposed the proofs, most of which had been set by him, but not all.
Thus in general the compositors began setting the takings given them
at the new paragraph where their name was pencilled, and had set on
average as many as 177 lines of type before the part of their taking they
actually imposed began. Then, because only alternate proofs were noted,
the next pair of proofs appears to be marked in ink as
imposed
by them, whether or not they had in fact set both. Thus, on MS p. 109
"L. Bris (9) slip 33." indicates that L. Bristow was
responsible
for galley 9 slip 33, and it is followed on p. 130 by "Notley (11) slip
41 l.c. IV", so that there is no record in these ink annotations that
Rendell set cast-off galley 10, allocated to him, of course, in pencil.
If therefore the clicker kept a debit and profit account of the lines
passed backwards in this way between compositors so as to pay them fairly,
he must have done so in a line-book, for his pencil and ink marks in the
copy are widely discrepant from the evidence of the proofs. If one supposes
that the compositors set all the text allocated to them in pencil, and
compares that with the lines of type which that amounted to in the page
proofs, the following figures emerge.[12] Wright's total work of c. 1865
lines set
(62 MS pages) is
represented in pencil as 5 cast-off galleys and in ink as 6 in proof;
Rendell's c. 1900 lines (68 MS pages) as 6 cast-off and 4 in proof;
Deacon's c. 1910 lines (57 MS pages) as 7 cast-off and 6 in proof;
Knowles's c. 1910 lines (56 MS pages) as 6 cast-off and 4 in proof (but his
name is omitted at proof 51 and his total should clearly be 6 proofs);
Notley's c. 2045 lines (60 MS pages) as 6 cast-off and 6 in proof; Moore's
c. 2345 lines (53 MS pages) as 7 cast-off and 4 in proof (but again his
name was omitted in error at proof 17 and his total should be 6 proofs); L.
Bristow's c. 2380 lines (74 MS pages) as 7 cast-off and 6 in proof; and
finally F. Bristow's largest number of lines, c. 2560 (67 MS pages) is
represented as 9 cast-off galleys and 8 galley proofs.
The ink entries may have had one further purpose. The fact that the
clicker noted only alternate galley proofs indicates that he was thinking in
terms of the 16-page signatures of the next round of proofs. His ink
annotations may indicate which compositors would be responsible for which
pairs of galley proofs when it came to incorporating the author's corrections
and revisions, and imposing the revised type into page-proofs.
