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Printed books are the chief textual witnesses for the majority of Renaissance English literature. Lacking authorial manuscripts, our knowledge of the words from the author's pen comes to us through the medium of print. Modern bibliographical researches have only begun to explore fully the possibilities of reducing this distance between the author's pen and the extant printed text by investigating the process by which the author's words reached print. In this beginning, however, the printing house compositor has already emerged as a significant factor in the transformation of manuscript into printed text. Compositorial study concentrates on the identification and evaluation of the work of these men, and a comprehensive spelling analysis is one of the first necessities in any thoroughgoing compositor study.
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