University of Virginia Library

Guide-Lines in Small Formats (about 1600)
by
Giles E. Dawson

Printed fragments recently recovered from an old binding in the Folger Library (MS. V.a.213) reveal a printinghouse practice that appears, not surprisingly, to have escaped the notice of bibliographers. They are the first two half-sheets (A and B) of a 24to Book of Common Prayer printed between 1602 and 1631. The bound manuscript is a heraldic compilation of such matter and in such a manner as is most probably attributable to a professional herald. The whole of the writing, or nearly the whole, can with some confidence be assigned, from internal evidence, to the years 1603 and 1604. The style of the binding is right for the earliest decades of the century, but unfortunately we cannot know whether the sheets were bound before or after the writing of the manuscript.

The binder, following a practice common then (as now, among hand binders), lined both sides of his two boards with strong but thin paper. For this he used the two half-sheets of printer's waste—a half-sheet for each board. Apparently it was after he lined them that he cut the boards down to the right size, trimming all four edges. Thus each half-sheet is in two equal pieces and each piece has had all of its edges so cut away that sixteen of its pages have lost some ten lines of text at the bottom of each (together with whatever signatures and catchwords they bore) and the other eight have lost a horizontal band through the middle that contained about eight lines of text (about 1.7 cm.). I estimate that the original size of the ruled type-page was close to 9.7 x 4.1 cm. and of the whole sheet about 48 x 33 cm. (19 x 13.5 inches).

The title-page (A1) having lost its imprint, the date can only be inferred. Luckily a clue has survived. On the verso of the title-page is printed "An Almanacke for 30. yeeres", beginning with 1602 and lacking the ten years after 1621. These almanacs, then printed in virtually every Book of Common Prayer, were reprinted from year to year without being brought up to date, so that they usually lead off with a number of past and useless years. The forty-five-year almanac in STC 16370, for example, begins with 1597 and was thirty years wasted when it was published in 1627. The STC records two editions in twenty-fours between 1602 and 1631—STC 16331 (1606), represented by a single copy in the Bodleian, and STC 16346 (1615), a single copy in the British Museum. The newly-found fragments do not correspond with either. Miss A. O. Donovan, of the British Museum, to whom I sent a photostat, tells me that while the title and certain other preliminary pages of the 1615 edition were printed from

a different setting of type, the thirty-year almanac and the monthly almanac appear to have been printed from the same setting as those of the Folger fragments. She cogently adds that this use of standing type suggests dates not widely separated for the two editions. What we can say of the date of the fragments then is this—that they could not be earlier than 1602, that a date much after 1620 is unlikely, that a date within a year or two of 1615 is more likely than others. We must then favor an opinion that the manuscript was bound years after it was written.

Each of the two half-sheets shows an imposition exactly like that of a 12mo sheet. The two could have been printed in either of two ways: as a whole sheet of twenty-fours with two signatures,[1] or by half-sheet imposition. Since a whole sheet of twenty-fours would be too thick for sewing as one unit, it must always, I imagine, have been printed in one way or the other to produce half-sheets. Neither Johnson nor Hansard illustrates any scheme that would not do so. Which of the two methods was used in this Book of Common Prayer there is no way of determining. A sheet of twenty-fours with two signatures in 12's would normally result in one half-sheet with a watermark and one without, and that is just what I find—a watermark, partly torn away, in the outer margins of B9 and B10. When half-sheet imposition is used we cannot have, in one copy of a book, the two half-sheets that originally formed one whole sheet, but in any two successive half-sheets we may find one watermarked and one not. Two watermarks or none in the two halves would tip the balance of probability in favor of half-sheet imposition, but it would do no more, for clear proof could not exist in two detached halves.

The printinghouse practice that I speak of in my opening paragraph lies in printed lines whose only conceivable purpose was to indicate where the binder should cut each of the two halves. Following the usage common in English printing of 12mos, the type for these half-sheets was imposed for 12mos by cutting, instead of by folding. One-third of each half-sheet would have to be cut off and separately folded to form the inner four leaves of the gathering. It is this cut that is indicated by the lines printed on each side of each half-sheet. Each line is in two sections, interrupted at the vertical center gutter. Like most rules the eight used here were somewhat bent, especially at the ends.

It is not apparent to me why such lines would be needed at all, and why, if they were, they would be needed on both sides of the paper. Surely any binder would have to know how and where to cut a 12mo sheet; nor could he fail to know that a 24to sheet when cut apart became two miniature 12mo sheets. Perhaps—though even this seems to me redundant—the lines were designed to show the binder, not that a cut was to be made or which one-third was to be cut off, but precisely where the cut was to be

made in order to produce the desired margins: half as wide at the top as at the bottom.

These sheets were of course printed by the King's Printer—probably Barker, possibly (if after 1617) Norton and Bill. We can assume that the printing of the guide-lines was standard practice in at least this one important house. And it is safe further to assume that the lines would possess the same utility in a 12mo as in a 24to and that therefore the King's Printer used them in 12mo printing. And since the printing of the guide-lines, which had to be more or less precisely placed, could not have been as easy as not printing them, their use by one printer suggests some distinct value inherent in the practice which would have led to its general adoption. But if such lines were commonly printed in 12mos and 24tos, why have they not been observed or commented upon before now? This is a question to which I think an answer can be found.

In the two prayerbook half-sheets the lines are so printed that any single cut would leave traces of them—because they are not quite straight and because the register is poor. Unless the binder made his cut with greater care than we have any right to expect, even perfectly straight and well-registered lines would leave traces at the bottom edges of $3 and 4, $9 and 10, or at the tops of $5-8. That we do not find them is owing to the fact that we do not find uncut 12mos and 24tos. Uncut edges are repugnant to the bookbinder's concept of what a finished book ought to look like. This was no less true in the seventeenth century than in the present one, and at that time neither collector nor reader seems to have complained very loudly even of losses to sidenotes or headlines, to say nothing of useless uncut edges.[2] The few uncut books that have survived from earlier centuries are for the most part those that were never exposed to the binder's tender care until the age when collectors began to value uncut condition. Most of those few are quartos. Quite aside from the fact that about 1600 approximately half of the books published were quartos, this is the format most likely to be sold—and to be kept—unbound. Unless it was too thick, a quarto was almost always stabbed and stitched and so could be kept unbound. Now and then an octavo was stabbed and stitched, but not often, because the gutters were too narrow. When we get down to 12mos and smaller formats, it is hard for a reader to see down into the valley even when the sheets were folded and sewn with unusual care. Stabbing and stitching would render the book unreadable. These formats were bound, then, before they were read, and from this it follows that they were cut and are therefore quite unlikely to show traces of printed guide-lines at the edges.

Notes