Item 15 - Notes by W. A. Jackson(?) on An Introduction to Bibliography

4 single sheets

Transcript

P. 76 n. 1.

Another example of the use of ‘w’ as a signature is to be found in A. Fitzherbert’s “Graunde Abridgement” 1565, Vol. II pt. 2.

P. 81.

I was interested in your remarks in regard to the abbreviated form of the title sometimes found printed on a line with the signature because I had observed the use of this device in some of the books printed by Wynkyn de Worde. Recently I got together the books which we have in the Chapin Library from his press. I found sixteen originals and eight facsimiles. Of these, eighteen (13 originals and 5 facsimiles) were printed during a period which extends from c. 1509-c. 1530, and of the 18, fifteen had “title-signs” or “signature-titles.” This relatively high percentage may be due to the fact that 10 of the 18 are school-books (8 Whittington and 2 Stanbridge) and that de Worde found it convenient to use this method of identifying the sheets of that particular class of book which he published in such a bewildering number. However, the most interesting example that I found was in a volume of quite a different type viz. (S.T.C. No. 23877) his 1521 volume of “Ihesus: The floure of the commaundementes of god,” a folio in sixes, which has the title-sign “The.[a sign resembling a six-petalled flower].”

That this device was used to aid the binders is evident from the fact that in the majority of cases the title-sign appears only on the first leaf of the single sheet quires and on the first and third leaves only of the six or eight leaf quires.

In two cases (really one for they were different editions of the same Whittington tract, S.T.C. Nos. 25533 and 25536) the title-signs were altered to accord with the contents in the manner of subject-headings.

(One of the Whittington tracts, a variant of S.T.C. No. 25484 dated 5 September 1522, has on both sides of the last leaf an earlier impression of de Worde’s device, No. 46β, than you have noted in your “Printers’ and Publishers’ Devices” p. 17).

None of the six books from de Worde’s press which we have printed either before or after the period mentioned above have title-signs, although one of them, a copy of M. T. Cicero’s “The thre bookes of Tullyes offyces” 30 Sept. 1534, belongs to the series of small 8vo. school texts which de Worde issued about that time and which would seem to be particularly suited for such a practice.

The source of the name “title-sign” or “signature-title” is not known to me though I have an impression that I have seen it in Herbert. Until I read your comment I believed it was in current usage.

P. 82.

In regard to the purpose of catchwords. Before I even knew what the name of this device was, from seeing it used in Everyman Library reprints, etc., I thought that it was provided as an aid to the reader that he might follow through, without pausing, while turning pages or passing from the foot of one page to the top of the next. On the face of it this seems rather more altruistic than is compatible with the use of so many of the eye-straining fonts of type of the 15th and 16th centuries and I have little evidence to adduce in support of it. However, the use of catchwords at the bottom of each column (2 columns to the page) in Berthelet’s 1532 edition of Gower’s “Confessio Amantis” seems a case in point. (I admit it also appears to strengthen the argument that this device is a guide “to the printer in imposing the pages”). Of the various usages which you have noted on p. 84, three of them, b, c (an English example of this is Pynson’s “Berner’s Froissart” PTs. III-IV (to S, with exceptions) 1525), and d, the first, b, obviously can be used to support no other thesis than the one you have advanced on p. 82, but c and d, as you noted in the case of the latter, are aids to the binder rather than the printer. The three other varieties you have listed there might be twisted to support the theory which I have here set forth largely because I cannot seem to get rid of the feeling that no matter what purpose the compositor had the device does serve as an aid to the reader. (An earlier example of ‘a’ than you have noted is Goodman’s “How superior powers, etc.” Geneva, J. Crespin, 1558).

P. 140.

Having recently read A. W. Reed’s “Early Tudor Drama” I was somewhat surprised that you did not refer to his chapter (VII), entitled “Notes on the Regulation of the Book Trade before the Proclamation of 1538,” which I had found very enlightening on the transfer of the authority from ecclesiastical to civil jurisdiction before 1538 when Pollard takes it up.

P. 155 ff.

In your treatment of unusual collocations you do not take up the matter of regularly alternating sequences of signatures. This practice while more common I believe in continental printing is not unknown in English books especially those produced in the first half of the sixteenth century. For example of the group of fifteen books with title-signs mentioned above from de Worde’s press I find that nine of them have either double or triple sequences.

The only example of this practice other than in legal printing, particularly year-books and statute-books, after 1550 that I have noted is Gascoigne’s “Droomme of Doomes day”, 1576 in which quires H-O are printed in alternating eights and fours.

In recording such sequences I have followed the formula set forthe by Prof. Pollard in the Introduction of the “Catalogue of XVthe Century Books in the B.M.” Pt. I p. XIX.

Do you know of any other explanation for this practice than that which Prof. Pollard suggests, namely, that it might serve to make the binding more flexible (see Trans. Bibl. Soc. VIII (1927) p. 132)? This seems to me very reasonable except that it does not explain the practice when applied to slender volumes of just a few quires. Or does it?

P. 229. Coryate. Crambe 1611.

The Chapin copy is in original gilt vellum but with green morocco label of recent date on back. It appears to have been issued first unbound and stabbed. It also has binders’ marks in pencil on contiguous leaves, Moreover, though the end-papers and flyleaves appear to be of early paper one of them has some marks in pencil which have been cropt. It has therefore probably been resewn. This may be the Robert Samuel Turner copy sold at Sotheby’s 18 June 1888 but that is suggested only because no other copy in vellum in listed in B.P.C. up to 1919 at which time this copy had been purchased for the Chapin Library.

In regard to the collation of the Capell copy. From the description in Dr. Greg’s catalogue it appears to me at least possible, that a portion of that copy consists of sheets from the Crudities, 1611, viz. signatures a-b4 (repeated); c-g8; h-l4. {1}

In the Chapin copy the abnormal signature D consists of two quarto sheets, sewn between the 2nd and third leaves of each sheet and signed as you have described. As you suggest it appears that the whole of “D” must have been reprinted.

Sheet H would seem to be of a later issue than the rest of the work for it contains an address protesting against two insults which Coryate (somewhat quixotically) singles out in the pirated (?) Odcombian Banquet, 1611. The O.B., however, mentions the Crambe on the title-page and one is led to assume that some copies of the Crambe must have been in circulation before the O.B. was published and that the protest was then appended to the unsold copies of the Crambe. The format adds weight to such a conjecture, G4 being a blank.

There are two other matters concerning which I should like to be enlightened. The first of these is in regard to the short-titles sometimes found printed perpendicularly on an otherwise blank leaf. The only examples of this that I have met with are:

Browne, Sir Thomas. Hydrotaphia, 1658. recto [O8] {2}
Hookes, Nathaniel. Amanda, 1653; on leaf preceding engraved frontispiece.
Billingsley, Nicholas. Brachymartyrologia, 1657, [P4]? {2}
(This leaf is lacking in Chapin copy. Corser and Hazlitt state that it has “only the title on it,” thought they do not say in what position it is printed.)

These books were all printed within a few years of each other. Were these titles intended to be cut out and pasted on spines in the same manner as the extra paper labels now inserted in some books or as in the case of the horn “window” bindings of the 16th century?

The other matter is in regard to the rules frequently found immediately over imprint dates when these are printed in roman numerals. This practice is almost universal in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mr. Edmonds of the Huntington Library first called my attention to it. He thought that the custom would not have become so widespread if it had no significance.

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Typed, except the flower sign, the β, and some inverted commas. The square brackets round signatures are original. The references to the Chapin Library (at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts) suggest that the writer of these unsigned notes was W. A. Jackson, who was a cataloguing assistant there from 1927 to 1930. The notes, on four leaves numbered from 1 to 4, are evidently complete; but they may have been accompanied by a letter.

{1} The numbers in these signatures are superscript in the original.

{2} The number in the signature is subscript in the original.