University of Virginia Library

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