Penny-Pinching Printers and Tampered
Titles
by
Franklin B. Williams, Jr.
Since the titlepage is in some degree the show-window of a book,
printers from Elizabethan to Caroline times usually took pains to make it
conform to the pattern intended. As a result, cancellation of titlepages was
common, whether —among other reasons— to eliminate a
misprint, as
in the first edition of Ignatius his Conclave, 1611, by John
Donne, or simply to substitute a better piece of advertising copy, as in
The Period of Mourning, 1613, by Henry Peacham. Once in
a
while, however, a printer was so intent on economy that he endeavored to
patch up a titlepage rather than replace it. This note calls attention to some
of these penny-pinching expedients.
In one of his lighter moments, Donne himself dashed off a Latin
catalogue of amusing imaginary books, a catalogue now available in English
as The Courtier's Library. One imaginary book that Donne
overlooked may be consulted by the curious at the Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris. In an edition printed at London by Thomas Vautrollier in
1577, it is the Commentarius in Epistolam Pauli ad Iacobum
of
the Danish Scripture scholar Niel Hemmingsen (or Hemmingius in the more
familiar Latin form). A glance at the text will satisfy any divinity student
as to the true identity of the book, but the bibliographer is concerned rather
with the way in which the blunder originated. Luck rather than ratiocination
makes it possible to trace the error to careless use of standing type,
aggravated by the loss of a paste-over cancel.
The book is one of a series of three Hemmingsen commentaries, all
unknown to the Short-Title Catalogue but printed by
Vautrollier
in 1576 and 1577. Copies of all three are in the Bibliothèque
Nationale,
and doubtless single copies may be traced elsewhere.[1] In presumed order of printing, the
three
titles are as follows, with the third in both its actual and its intended form
(in the originals, diminishing type sizes reverse the pyramid effect):
COMMENTARI-VS IN EPISTOLAM PAVLI AD
EPHESIOS |
COMMENTARI-VS IN EPISTOLAM PAVLI AD
ROMANOS |
COMMENTARI-VS IN EPISTOLAM PAVLI AD
IACOBUM |
COMMENTARI-VS IN EPISTOLAM IACOBI
APOSTOLI |
Now Vautrollier was a more responsible and conscientious printer
than most, and yet in this instance he apparently balked at cancelling the
title-page.
Instead he resorted to a one-line paste-over cancel slip. Such paste-over
slips exist within the text of books in fascinating variety, but they are rare
on Renaissance title-pages —much rarer than on titlepages today,
where
they supplement or substitute imprints on imported books. The disadvantage
of such slips is that with time and wear they may be lost. That is just what
happened with some copies of this book. Happily Joseph Ames observed the
phenomenon and carefully collected an example in each state. These are
preserved today, together with the titles of the other two Hemmingsen
items, in the Ames titlepage collection in the British Museum (Vol. I, items
301-304). The freak imperfect state was also preserved by John Bagford,
so that the Museum has a second, partly defaced copy (Harl.5936, item 13).
The Paris copy shows traces of paste where the slip fell off.
An alternative method of amending a titlepage is by over-printing,
akin to the process of surcharging in philately and familiar to book buyers
nowadays in the price alterations on dust jackets. An unusual Caroline
example resulted from doubt about authorship—a technical question
that
this note will evade. Among the works that the Short-Title
Catalogue attributes to the puritan preacher Thomas Hooker is
The Christians Two Chiefe Lessons, 1640. In its original
form,
represented by the copy at Harvard, the titlepage has an inconspicuous
statement: "By T. H." Subsequently the bookseller or editor must have had
doubts about either the authorship or the copyright, for there is a revised
issue, represented by the Harmsworth copy at the Folger Library. Here a
pattern of type ornaments is printed over the authorship inscription,
effectively camouflaging it. In addition there is a fresh editorial dedication
by Z. S., which refers only to "a grave and godly Author." Better
known instances of titlepage over-printing, or perhaps hand-stamping,
involve the augmentation of imprints, usually the addition of a bookseller's
name or a date.
The alteration of engraved copperplate titlepages to make the date and
edition number fit successive printings is too commonplace for mention, but
the combination of engraved titles with paste-over slips may cause
bibliographical headaches. This economy was devised by Dutch and Belgian
publishers of engraved picture-books, such as Jacob de Gheyn's
Exercise of Armes, printed at the Hague in 1607. Alternative
printed texts in various languages were provided for the basic sets of plates.
Merely for a small English edition the publisher was unwilling to alter his
handsome title plate or, heaven forbid, pay for a new one. As a
compromise, cancel-slips were printed in the desired language, usually two
in number: a larger panel with the title information and a smaller slip with
the imprint (which might differ in date as well as wording from the imprint
on the plate itself). Subsequent owners have usually kept the title panel
intact, but less interest has been shown in the
imprint slips. Loss of them results in ghost editions, for careless cataloguers
now accept the imprint of the underlying plate. The handsome large-folio
Mercator atlas published in English at Amsterdam
(the Hexham version competing with the cheaper small-folio Saltonstall
version printed in London) is a fine example. The
Short-Title
Catalogue lists two "editions," and other variants are claimed
elsewhere. Yet all the copies I have been able to consult that preserve the
imprint slips show a single pattern that in part explains the conflicting
descriptions: Volume I dated 1636 and Volume II dated 1638.
Expediency reached the stage of fantasy in a small remainder issue
perpetrated in 1637 by Humphrey Moseley. This book was James Mabbe's
translation of Juan de Santa Maria's Christian Policie, alias
Policie Unveiled, which has a tangled bibliography starting
in
1632.[2] Moseley obtained sufficient
copies of the engraved titlepage of another book, cut out the
original oval title panel with great care, and pasted a fresh title panel on the
back so that it could be read through the window. One conjectures that this
was an attempt to salvage engraved leaves that were either surplus or had
been provided for a book never published. The rarity of the 1637 book
might mislead one into thinking it a unique freak, since STC
lists only the Cambridge University copy (in which the title panel has been
clumsily pasted in upside down!). Yet other copies may survive, and
certainly there is a duplicate title among the Bagford fragments at
the British Museum (Harl.5965, item 43). Furthermore, Moseley made a
last effort to dispose of the slow-moving remainder by printing a fresh
panel for the same engraved titlepage in 1650. Of this the only recorded
copy is in the Library of Congress, showing the same curious window
technique.[3]
Notes
[1]
The Folger Shakespeare Library, for instance,
has a copy of the Romans volume. The three Paris copies, which are bound
together, must have been brought to my attention by the oracle on
STC locations, Prof. William A. Jackson.
[2]
The original (uncancelled) state of the book, not
noted in STC but preserved at the British Museum, has the
imprint: T. Harper f. E. Blount, 1632. Blount died the same year. Arthur
M. Secord establishes the identity of the translator and provides other
information in JEGP, XLVII (1948), 379-381.
[3]
Any bibliographer determined to clear up the
puzzle of this title plate will start with the information given by Secord
(op. cit.) and by A. F. Johnson, A Catalogue of
Engraved
English Title-pages (1934), p. 20. By failing to mention the paste-in
panel, however, Johnson implies that the plate was engraved for this book.
And Secord finds it odd that the original dedication was
restored
in 1650, whereas of course Moseley simply did not bother to cancel it from
the remainder sheets.