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3.
Once Herringman had received the sheets from de Pienne, he did not, however, attempt to sell all of them at his own London shop, for one incomplete set of the romance, consisting only of "The First Part," "The Second Part," and "The Third Part," now in the Huntington Library,[32] exists with Herringman title-pages bearing the press-variant imprints of Humphrey Moseley,[33] the leading London bookseller and foremost dealer in romances at that time. How the title-pages for this Herringman-Moseley London publication of Parthenissa were printed is bibliographically informative, especially in view of an error on the printer's part which caused the title-page imprint for "The Third Part" to exist with three variants.
The London title-pages of the four parts of the romance all have the same general appearance, and all are printed in two colors of ink, black and red. The distribution of matter printed in the two colors of ink on the title-pages of all four parts follows this of the Herringman state of the 'The First Part':
A comparison of the four title-pages reveals at once that the title-pages for 'The First Part' and 'The Third Part' are printed with the exception of the necessary substitution of 'Third' for
The printing was evidently done by a modified form of half-sheet imposition. The two different type-settings for Parts One and Two were imposed side by side in half of a regular quarto forme and printed together at one time. Upon completion of the run, the formes were unlocked, the part numbering was altered to 'Third' and 'Fourth,' and the title-pages for these parts were machined. Whether this second machining perfected the previous sheets or whether a complete run of printing and perfecting was made for each set of title-pages is impossible to determine.
Thus the general method of printing may be explained, but there are two other printing operations which call for particular consideration. The first of these is the way in which the title-pages were printed in two colors of ink. Several faint but distinct red ink overprintings of type meant to appear only in black, one of them a full line, indicate first that two machinings took place, one for the letterpress in black ink, the other for the letterpress in red ink; and second that the letterpress appearing in red ink was printed by means of raised type in a forme which also contained the letterpress meant to appear only in black. This method is the normal one as described by Moxon[36] except that the pressman neglected to cut a specially designed frisket to prevent the red ink printing from type which had previously printed in black.
The second operation worth attention is that involving the stop-press substitution of Moseley's imprint for Herringman's and the attendant error of the pressman which produced a hybrid imprint. The pressman, having wrought off his sheets black, an operation in which he stopped his press only once for the substitution of the Moseley imprint in place of that of Herringman, returned the forme to the stone where the compositor removed certain rows of quads in favor of the raised type to appear in red ink. With the second or red ink machining underway for the Herringman title-pages of Parts Three and Four, the pressman needed to watch only for the last sheet bearing the Herringman black ink imprint in order once again to stop his press for the substitution of Moseley's name in place of Herringman's. Evidently in the instance of the Yale University Library Part Three title-page, the pressman either failed to stop the press immediately after he had wrought off the last sheet bearing the Herringman imprint in black or failed to notice a stray sheet bearing the Moseley imprint in black mixed among the sheets carrying the Herringman black ink imprint. Whatever the circumstance, the error was made and later rectified with the following results: there exist two correct states of the title-page, (1) Herringman's name in red ink in the correct black ink imprint and (2) Moseley's name in red ink in the correct black ink imprint. The third state is the hybrid with Herringman's name in red ink in the black ink portion of Moseley's imprint.[37]
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