University of Virginia Library

See my article "A Tale of Two Printings: Don Quixote, Part II", Studies in Bibliography, 39 (1986), 281-296. The formula of the first edition of Don Quixote, Part II is: 4° in eights, ¶8 A-Mm8 2N4, 1-8 1-280 281-284 (584 pp.).

The compositors set mainly spaces before punctuation marks, but at times they also set quads. Here I use the term "quad" to designate both pieces of type regardless of width. I use the term "character" to designate ordinary sorts of type, not special symbols.

In Table 1 the contraction q͂ has been counted as two contractions because its use saves two characters (q͂ que). Ligatures have been counted as one character each because a ligature is one type. Leadings and lines of type not entirely filled with characters (titles, lines of poetry, end of paragraphs) have been averaged taking into account the usual unber of characters per full line of the page under consideration. Only twelve lines out of a possible total of five hundred and forty-four have been averaged; see pages B1v (four lines), B5v (three lines), B8r (four lines), and B8v (one line).

By introducing eighteen contractions (including three q͂'s) to eliminate a total of twenty-one sorts of type, compositor H saved an entire line at the close of Chapter 3 (B5v, 1 to 14).

Only twenty-five paragraph divisions occur within the text proper in the entire book; see my old-spelling control edition of Don Quixote, University of British Columbia Press, 1988 (FCE for Flores Control Edition), vol. 2 at page xii, lines 20 to 30. It may be worthwhile noting here that the paragraph break occurs in the middle of the line (B8v, 2), thus greatly facilitating the displacement of text which could thus be moved by half or near-half lines of type thereby requiring only minor adjustments.

For other compositorial omissions of references to the identity of characters see FCE, vol 1 at page xxxvi, lines 31 to 43.

An unnecessary paragraph division (L5v), four wider than normal leadings (L1v and

L5v), two narrower than normal leadings (M6v), one extra line of type (M6r), and strikingly dissimilar numbers of quads (from o to 33; pages M3r and L2r respectively) and contractions set per page (from o to 68; pages L5v and M6r respectively).

Nineteen average full lines of type set correspond to one page of Cervantes's manuscript; see my article "Cervantes at Work: The Writing of Don Quixote, Part I", Journal of Hispanic Philology, 3 (1979), at pages 148-149. The manuscript page retained by compositor I probably ended with the syllable "eſ—".

The blatant disregard shown by compositor I towards the text of his copy could be the unhappy result of his having been asked to cast off copy when he was in the middle of setting a page and of his having to share with another compositor a section of a gathering which in all probability had originally been assigned to him alone.

The fact that page Y2v has a substantial number of contractions suggests that the compositor was probably casting off copy by complete manuscript pages and sheets, which was the most practical, though not necessarily the most accurate, way for estimating cast-off copy; hence he had to absorb in this page an overrun which he did not want to pass to page Y3r. Setting the pages of the outer forme of a sheet first was the most common method used when setting from cast-off copy because if an overrun occurred the compositor could leave the extra text aside to be set later on as part of the cast-off copy for the pages of the inner forme; see Table 6, cf., for instance, pages Y1r → Y1v-Y2r, Y7r → Y7v-Y8r.

The word "vna" is actually the last word on line 13, and line 17 actually ends with the readings "dos hõ—", but these minor discrepancies are to be expected. When a compositor was setting in sequential order there was usually no reason why he should strive to end a full line of type with the last word of a manuscript page unless, of course, there was a formal break in the printer's copy (paragraph division, beginning of a poem, chaptertitle, etc.) or the compositor was either casting off copy (Y1r, 34) or setting the last line of a page belonging to cast-off copy (Y2r, 35; Y2v, 34).

When setting by formes from cast-off copy, a textual discrepancy arising from the accidental shifting of manuscript sheets can occur only between pages belonging to different sheets (manuscript pages 13 and 4) and would stand out clearly only if both pages are being set in sequential order one immediately after the other as part of either the same page of type (Y3r) or consecutive pages belonging to the same forme (Y3v—Y4r).