University of Virginia Library

The Headline

The first scholarly attention to headlines came over a century ago,[6] but the realization of their analytical importance should be dated from the work of Professor Bowers, beginning in the late thirties.[7] The usefulness of headlines in deducing aspects of presswork—one of its primary uses in bibliographic scholarship—has been called into question by D. F. McKenzie in his "Printers of the Mind." [8] But, his criticism is merely a salutory reminder that conclusions should be warranted only by evidence; the bibliographical analysis of the headline still remains valid as a technique.

Now, headline analysis entails collation, but collation of this kind is not primarily between surviving copies of an edition (though this is still important), but within any copy of that edition. To save a compositor the labour of continually resetting them, headlines are usually repeated within their skeletons at varying intervals throughout a book. In fact, the earliest English printing manual, Moxon's Mechanical Exercises, 1683-84, stressed the importance of keeping intact the configuration of the skeleton (which includes the headline) when it moves from one forme or signature to another and is imposed about new letterpress. The recurrence of headlines can be readily

ascertained when large type is used, as in Shakespeare's Folios, for damage or idiosyncratic features render the types identifiable. Gradually it was realized that, besides the evidence of typeface, the nonprinting types that space and justify the headline also contributed evidence—the lengths of their segments. In fact, such information proves invaluable in the present case, Shakespeares Sonnets, 1609, because the typeface is too small and the inking too irregular always to permit identification of single types.

Traditionally headlines have been analyzed by the painstaking method (attributed to Charlton Hinman)[9] that entails exacting measurements of various parts of the headline arbitrarily chosen and then comparison with similar measurements from other headlines. As there are in the present quarto four new skeletons employed in the first four sheets, the analyst must accumulate a mass of data blindly before even a tentative analysis can emerge. Even so, as there are no exact margins to measure from, and as the inking is variable and sometimes makes two impressions of the same type slightly different in size or placement, one cannot be sure that the correct distance is being measured. Even with the discovery of a repeated headline in different formes, one is still far from knowing the correlations of the headlines in the forme mates.

It is possible to collate headlines on the Hinman collator, but only if one possesses two copies (or photocopies) of the text and, of course, has access to a collator. Although individual headlines can be matched by keeping one copy fixed and turning the pages of the other copy one at a time while searching for correlations, the going is necessarily slow. In the quarto format headlines as part of the skeleton come in groups of four and are printed on one of the formes of a sheet; ideally one needs a method that compares such groups simultaneously, but the binding process forbids this formal simplicity. On the collator one fumbles with atoms when a molecular approach is required. To obviate these difficulties I have devised a method of photo-collation. This method has the benefit of displaying its evidence readily in the formats used in the plates of the present paper. The procedure is simple. A photocopy is made of the original text, or even, as in the present analysis, of a well-made photo-facsimile of the text. Before copying begins, the copy machine should be checked for distortions, and the copying should be done all at one time with the book in the same orientation and location. As light weight paper as possible should be used, for translucency is a necessity. The copied pages are now cut apart, trimmed where necessary, and loosely taped together in groups of four in the arrangement by forme they had on one side of each original sheet. This returns them to the molecular format mentioned above, and undoes the folding and cutting of the binder.

The comparison of headlines grouped in formes can now proceed at a rapid rate. One simply superimposes any two of these reconstituted formes one over another on a light-table or sunny window pane. Then, with a slight

shifting of one forme relative to the other, one aligns margins, individual words, letters or spaces in the headline. If no significant pattern emerges, one forme should be rotated 180°, and the matching repeated. Observation is often facilitated by interchanging the top and the bottom formes. Also useful is turning one forme over to compare headlines (one of which will now be in mirror image) along their base lines. These procedures will quickly reveal any molecular correspondence present.

The following theoretical information and practical example show the great precision of photo- or mechanical collation in this kind of analysis. An individual typeface that is indistinguishable from others of its sort can sometimes be identified by the effect of its typebody (and the typebodies next to it). Printers have long been aware of the individual set of each piece of type even in the same sort in the same fount. Writing in The Printer's Grammar, 1755, Smith showed that the same words "composed out of the same Cases, without picking or chusing the Sorts" exhibit "a small difference in the thickness of the same Sorts in one word," hence "a greater might be discovered in a long line."[10] Smith's interest, of course, is in justification and in driving out and getting in, but the principle serves well those who wish to identify individual types. However much the two headlines of Plate 5 look alike by virtue of similar typeface and centering, the internal spacing of the typefaces as a function not only of their sets but also of any letterspacing present reveals decisively that they are not printed from the same array of types.