 | |  |
III
On the basis of these examples of American books with press figures, drawn from the twenty-five year period between 1790 and 1814, a few observations may be made: (1) press figures do not occur in American books of this time with great frequency, but they appear regularly in the work of certain printers; (2) the two most extensive examples thus far discovered are volumes printed in Philadelphia by several printers (especially Thomas Dobson) in the 1790's and books printed in New York by Isaac Riley and Charles Wiley in the 1810's; (3) Dobson, using four figures, figured about 66% of the quarto formes he printed for his Encyclopaedia, figured 36% of the sheets in both formes, and figured 85% of the outer formes; (4) Riley, using six figures, figured 73% of the formes in his legal octavos in half-sheet, Wiley 93%; (5) Dobson generally figured inner formes on $4r and outer on $4v, while Riley and Wiley placed their figures on $3v of the half-sheet gathering;[31] (6) evidence exists, in the press figures, for possible detailed reconstruction of the printing history of several large projects, such as the Dobson Encyclopaedia, the Riley legal reports, and the Mathew Carey Bibles, as well as many smaller works turned out by these printers during the same years. Furthermore, the data lean slightly toward the conclusion that press figures stand for men and that unfigured formes are the work of at least one additional press crew, working without a number. Press figures have not yet been located in American books before 1790, but further search is obviously called for.
A sketch of this kind can do no more than describe, record, and suggest possibilities; it raises more problems than it solves. Those solutions, as in any scientific investigation, can come only after a large body of data has been accumulated and recorded in such a way as to bring out patterns and trends, ideally by tables listing every figure, forme by forme. For American figures, unless one assumes at the beginning that they behave in the same
| | |