 | Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography |  |
NON-LETTERPRESS MATERIAL
The treatment of illustrative materials in books (such as pictures and
maps),
especially those—like engravings and lithographs—produced by
non-relief processes,
is taken up in my "The Description of Non-Letterpress
Material in Books," Studies in Bibliography, 35 (1982), 1–42. Since that
least from a practical point of view, is Bamber Gascoigne's How to Identify
Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to
Ink Jet (1986). After explaining the different kinds of prints (sections 1–46),
it provides "Keys to Identification" (47–79) and suggests how to proceed
("The Sherlock Holmes Approach," 82–106). It is full of enlarged photo-
graphs of details; there is no better source of help for bibliographers who
wish to identify the process used to produce a given print.
Another important book, which bibliographers should not overlook,
is Joseph Viscomi's
Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993). Although his
book
deals with only one process, relief etching, its first 150 pages describe
that
process with a well-illustrated account that is perhaps the most
thorough
exposition of a graphic process ever written. The broader significance
of
the book for bibliographers, however, is its thoughtful discussion of
vari-
ants among copies printed from the same plate. In the case of Blake's
il-
lustrated books, prints were produced in batches at discrete periods;
each
batch has certain stylistic features (especially in coloring) that
distinguish
it, and each subsumes various lesser variations. Although Viscomi
calls
these batches "editions" (since "impressions" in graphic-art
terminology
refers to each "copy"), they clearly are analogous to what
bibliographers
of printed books call "impressions" or "printings." The example of
Blake
is of course unique in some ways, but Viscomi's approach to it provides
a
model for thinking about variants in non-letterpress material in general.
As I
noted in my 1982 essay, bibliographers often need to relate a
given
illustration (and different states of it that may appear in different
copies
of an edition) to its history as an independent entity (offered for sale
on
its own); and reading Viscomi can help a bibliographer to approach
this
problem. (He also deals with the editorial implications of his
analysis:
see my review in Nineteenth-Century Literature, 49
[1994–95], 534–537,
reprinted in Portraits and Reviews
[2015], pp. 334–337.)
One more basic and distinctive publication is Roger Gaskell's
"Print-
ing House and Engraving Shop: A Mysterious Collaboration" (The Book
Collector, 53 [2004], 213–251). He begins by pointing
out, quite rightly,
that bibliography has been verbal-text-oriented and that "a
bibliography
of images" is needed, one that deals not only with inserted
illustrations
but also those (even when produced on different presses) that appear
on
the same pages as verbal text. His approach thus moves a step beyond
my
essay, which was largely concerned with inserted plates. After an account
of
the history and process of copperplate printing (drawing on the early
rolling-press
manuals), Gaskell makes a number of observations based on
an examination of some
seventeenth-century books with engravings. He
notes, for example, that plates were
usually printed on the mould side of
the paper, with chainlines parallel to the
shorter sides of the image. The
plates were normally printed by a different printer at a different location,
and often two or more images (sometimes intended for different books)
were printed on the same sheet; the plates for a given book appear on
mixed paper stocks somewhat more often than the letterpress text does.
Descriptive bibliographers will be particularly interested in knowing
(whether or
not the intended placement of plates was specified in print)
that printers
occasionally put the plates in their proper positions before
sending the folded and
gathered sheets to the binder (who, in first-class
work, may have removed them
before beating the sheets and then re-
placed them). Sometimes engravings were
printed on the same sheets as
letterpress text, and in those instances the
letterpress was printed first,
with spaces left for the engravings, before the
sheets were sent to the
rolling-press printer (with faulty register a not uncommon
result). It is
worth remembering, as Gaskell notes, that engravings would have
been
added to the letterpress in a single press run for the whole edition
and
are thus less likely to display variations than inserted plates, which
could
have been printed before or after the letterpress and possibly in
distinct
batches. Gaskell concludes with advice for descriptive bibliographers:
that
they should record "the spatial relationship of graphics and verbal
text,
the internal reference systems in use, [and] the placing and folding of
the
plates" (p. 233), all of which help to reveal author' and publishers'
inten
tions. Although Gaskell focuses on engravings, he includes a discussion
of
woodcuts (pp. 232–233) and believes that his approach is applicable
to lithography.
His article should be required reading for all descriptive
bibliographers who deal
with illustrated books.
A good analysis of an instance of adding an engraving to letterpress
is offered by
Randall McLeod ("Orlando F. Booke") in "IMAGIC: a long
discourse" (Studies in the Literary Imagination, 32.1
[Spring 1999], 190–215).
See also Karen Bowen, "Illustrating Books with
Engravings: Plantin's
Working Practices Revealed" (Print
Quarterly, 20 [2003], 3–34). The pres-
ence of engravings on
integral letterpress leaves poses no problem for the
letterpress collation formula,
since those leaves can simply be regarded
as letterpress leaves. But sometimes
inserted leaves contain both letter-
press and non-letterpress, and the question of
whether to report them in
the letterpress collation or the non-letterpress collation
was not taken up
in my 1982 essay. Therefore I will add here a
generally applicable rule
of thumb: when the letterpress part consists of words that
connect with
the verbal text on the adjacent pages, the insertion belongs in the
let-
terpress formula; but when the letterpress part is directly related to
the
non-letterpress image (as with a caption) rather than to the
surrounding
verbal text, the insertion belongs in the non-letterpress formula. It
should
same treatment as a non-letterpress one—when, for example, it contains
only a chart or a table, without verbal text connecting it to the adjacent
pages. (See also my comments, under "Collation" above, regarding the
role of textual content in structural formulas.)
More information on the rolling press can be found in Anthony
Dy-
son, "The Rolling-Press: Some Aspects of Its Development from
the
Seventeenth Century to the Nineteenth Century" (Journal of the
Printing
Historical Society, 17 [1982–83], 1–30), and in his Pictures to Print: The
Nineteenth-Century Engraving Trade
(1984). Gascoigne can be supplemented
on photography by Richard Benson's
The Physical Print: A Brief Survey of
the Photographic
Process (2005). And for lithography there are the books
by the
great scholar of the subject, Michael Twyman, including Early
Lithographed Books: A Study of the Design and Production of
Improper Books in
the Age of the Handpress (1990), which deals
with verbal-text books printed
entirely by lithography, and A
History of Chromolithography (2013), which
includes color plates
of sequential color proofs with magnified images.
Also useful for bibliographers are
Geoffrey Wakeman, Graphic Methods
in
Book Illustration (1981); Gavin D. R.
Bridson and Donald E. Wendel, Print-
making in the Service of Botany (1986); Lois Olcott
Price, "The Development
of Photomechanical Book Illustration," in The American Illustrated Book in
the Nineteenth Century, ed. Gerald W. R. Ward (1987), pp. 233–256; Carol
Wax,
The Mezzotint: History and Technique (1990); and
Bamber Gascoigne,
Milestones in Colour Printing,
1457–1859
(1997).
The matter of terminology—that is, the relation of the classificatory
terms used by
letterpress bibliographers to those used by scholars treat-
ing non-letterpress
processes—is the main concern of Sarah
Tyacke's
"Describing Maps," in The Book Encompassed,
ed. Peter Davison (1992),
pp. 130–141. Her
survey of cartobibliographical approaches to early
maps shows that the emphasis has
often been on the production of indi-
vidual plates (and their states) rather than
on the published combinations
of images printed from the plates; but she recognizes
that cartobibliog-
raphy must combine these approaches, and she makes particularly
clear
the difficulties of accounting for atlas editions made up of widely
varying
combinations of states of plates. These difficulties have caused some
car-
tobibliographers to reject the term "edition"; but she believes that
"the
word 'edition', if sensibly applied, is still useful." She does not,
however,
formulate her own definition of this or other terms, though she
adds,
"The balance [in current usage] seems to be coming down in favour
of
defining the word 'plate' as the equivalent of a book 'edition'" (p.
138).
But such a definition applies only to plates as independent entities,
not
to the collections that form "books" (such as atlases). The random nature
causes her to say that "often only the title and text are the identifiers of
some new stage in their [the plates'] history"—but that in itself points
to a distinct publishing effort that can define an edition of a book as a
whole, regardless of how many variants exist within it. As I pointed out
in 1982, a basic complication of dealing with all non-letterpress contribu-
tions to books, not just maps, is that they often have separate histories
outside the books; but that complication does not prevent the application
of standard bibliographical classification both to the printed plates and
to the books. Bibliographers who wish to gain additional background for
thinking about these questions may find Tyacke's essay useful.
An excellent example of a descriptive bibliography concerned with
books consisting
entirely of engravings is David Hunter's
Opera and Song
Books Published in England, 1703–1726
(1997). His approach is
notable for
his recognition that "the standard techniques of bibliographical
descrip-
tion and the concepts of analytical bibliography … are applicable
to
non-letterpress material" (p. xxiv). They "have all been tested," he says
(in
his thorough discussion of "Bibliographical Description" in his
introduc-
tion, pp. xxiv-xxxvi), "and have been found to apply"—with only a
few
adjustments needed. One of them is that for these books an impression
(in
the bibliographer's sense of the copies printed at one time) is often
distinguished
by whether one or both sides of each leaf were printed, or
else by the use of
modified "passe-partout" title pages (in which the plate
has a blank space to be
filled in, usually with text from an extra small
plate). These books represent the
earliest extensive use of passe-partout
title pages, which are the most distinctive
feature that Hunter had to
deal with. To accommodate them, he created two new
symbols for use
in title-page transcriptions to mark the beginnings and ends of the
blank
spaces. Other small modifications arise from the fact that these books
are
made up primarily of disjunct leaves printed one at a time, and often
on
only one side. Bibliographers dealing with the same kind of books will
be
helped by examining Hunter's thoughtful practice, whether or not they
decide
to follow it in every respect.
An article expressing the same conclusion as Hunter's—that "the
standard methods of
descriptive bibliography" can be used in dealing
with engraved matter—is Ronald K. Smeltzer's "Typographic Books
from Intaglio Printing
Plates" (Caxtonian [Caxton Club], 24.5 [May
2016],
1–5). The difference here is that Smeltzer focuses on
verbal-text books
printed entirely from intaglio plates, with each plate being made
up of
multiple text-pages arranged for folding into gatherings (and even
bearing
signatures). Obviously the structure of such books can be represented
by
the usual style of formula that is regularly employed for letterpress
books.
Smeltzer's only innovation arises from the fact
that the book he chooses
proposes noting them within the formula in bold-face type, to distinguish
them from the intaglio-printed leaves. This suggestion seems appropri-
ate in such an instance, for nothing would be gained (and indeed some
clarity lost) by creating a second formula for the few letterpress leaves
of verbal text. Thus there can be occasions on which it is not objection-
able to report the products of two different printing processes in a single
formula, as long as the two are clearly distinguished. The nature of the
content of the inserted leaves is likely to play a role, as I suggested above
in connection with leaves that combine letterpress with intaglio. The book
Smeltzer describes also has nine engraved folding illustrations inserted,
but he sensibly does not include them in the formula for the gathered
sheets and letterpress inserts, even though they were printed by the same
method as the gathered sheets.
An example of an unusually detailed description of a plate book is
Lord Wardington's "Sir Robert Dudley and
the
Arcano del Mare.
1646–8
and 1661" (The Book
Collector, 52 [2003], 317–355). Other good, but less
elaborate,
descriptions of plates are in Paul W. Nash's "Pinxit, Sculpsit,
Excudit, Etcetera:
Some Notes on the Lettering Which Appears on Prints"
(The Private
Library, 5th ser., 4 [2001], 148–187); but the most useful
part
of his article, as the title suggests, is its glossary of terms and
abbreviations
used in prints, which serves as a supplement to Gascoigne's section
48
("Words below the Image"). One bibliography that focuses exclusively
on the
illustrations in the books it records is the second volume of
Nigel Tattersfield's
monumental
Thomas Bewick
(2011). A helpful discursive and
evaluative guide to the literature
is Gwyn Walters's "Developments in the
Study of Book
Illustration" (covering primarily post-1945 work, includ-
ing the
history of science), in The Book Encompassed, pp. 142–150.
Fuller
listings are Gavin D. R. Bridson and Geoffrey Wakeman's
Printmaking &
Picture Printing (1984); Bridson and James J. White's
Plant, Animal & Ana-
tomical Illustration in Art &
Science (1990); and my Introduction to
Bibliography
(2002 revision), part 7, pp. 225–236, which
includes references both to
art-historical works and to technical treatises and
cites additional check-
lists. The literature is large, but bibliographers cannot
avoid exploring
some of it if they are to treat the non-letterpress parts of books
as carefully
as they do the letterpress parts.
| Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography | |