University of Virginia Library

The Rate of Work

The surviving galley proofs were annotated with the date 21 February 1913 as they were checked and despatched to the author; and since they all belong to the latter part of the novel, this provides a clue as to how long the manuscript was in the printing shop. For the clicker entered another

date, "27.1.", i.e. Monday 27 January 1913, in the manuscript in three places, pages 196, 205 and 324. As this note first occurs in the body of a 23-page taking set by one compositor, it does not in context appear to mark the start of setting the book, but a fresh large-scale distribution of copy at the beginning of a new week. If so, the first 195 manuscript pages had been started if not completed the week before. Thus, the period from sometime before Monday 27 January to Friday 21 February being four to five working weeks, it is possible that the compositors set the novel in three or four weeks and the last batch of proofs was checked and despatched within another week.

The book when printed was in the region of just under a million (c. 975,000) "ens" in length. The average rate of work for an English compositor at the time has been calculated at about a thousand ens per hour including the distribution of type back into the cases, but this type was left standing and so the setting-rate would probably average more like 1,500 ens per hour at a minimum. The job therefore represented about 650 hours' work, and as the week was normally 50 or 55 hours, a companionship of five or six compositors could have set the novel in only two weeks.[10] Thus the nine compositors named in the manuscript cannot have been working solely on this book.

Since the total work of 975,000 ens was printed in 52 galley proofs, each proof was about 18,750 ens long. At an average rate of 1,500 ens per hour a compositor may have set enough matter for a galley proof in about twelve and a half hours, or one and a quarter working days, and so in a 55-hour week could have set four and a half galley proofs. This consideration may have influenced the clicker in his distribution of the manuscript in takings to the compositors, for he gave them anything from one to six cast-off galleys at a time, so that the takings vary between ten and sixty manuscript pages.