Item 25 - Letter from Kenneth Sisam to R. B. McKerrow

1 single sheet

Clarendon Press, Oxford.—Commends McKerrow’s suggested title-page, and discusses the size of the first printing.

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Transcript

The Clarendon Press, Oxford
8th August 1927.

Dear Mr. McKerrow,

Thank you for your letter of August 6th. We shall try your titlepage, and personally I think it is an improvement. One modernist tendency in titlepages is to give them the size formerly given to half titles. I understand this is based on the theory that the jacket provides the real external title,—a very false theory when applied to learned books which will in their later days require a binding. I imagine some teachers in the schools of printing have always novels in mind when they lay down their rules on construction.

As for the number—let 1,500 be the minimum. I am inclined to think that writers of theses will buy this book, and when Chapman returns I shall raise with him the question of making it 2,000 or splitting the difference. I am inclined to think the sale will be long and steady, and in that case it is all a matter of overtaking the interest charges; but we shall be well satisfied not to examine too closely into commercial profit in producing such an admirable work.

Yours sincerely,
Kenneth Sisam

R. B. McKerrow Esq.,
Enderley,
Little Kingshill,
Great Missenden,
Bucks.

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Typed, except signature. At the head are the reference ‘3249/K.S.’ and, elsewhere, the letters ‘MG.’