Miscellaneous (last couple presentations) for Book History Final

• all copies of a book printed with a single setting of type, NOT REMOVED FROM PRINTING PRESS

• connected to type

Edition

• number of copies printed at one time, i.e., without removing the type or stereotype plates from the press

• batch printing

Impression

• all copies put on sale at a given time

• issued by publisher as a unit

• “first & second issue” OR “trade (widely available) & signed limited issue”

Issue

• noted variation in a book’s text, illustrations, binding or dust jacket effected during the manufacturing process

State

selling of books in parts/sections in intervals (i.e. subscriptions)

Serialization

• began with Diderot’s Encyclopedie in 17th century

• height of popularity in Britain in 19th century

first serialization + height of serialization popularity

W H Smith and Sons kiosks opened next to railroads (1st was in Euston in 1848), sold cheap novels for passengers to read during travels

Railway Novels

• small, cheap books for children & adults sold on the streets

• everything from fairytales, ghost stories, politics, crime, disasters

• 17th-19th century

• audience = mostly the poor + middle class children

• eventually transformed into comics/comic books

Chapbooks

unknown, but…

• Robinson Crusoe, 1709

• OR Malory’s La Morte d’Arthur, 1485

first English novel

• Quotations of Chairman Mao, 1964

• 1964-67: 720 million copies published (world record)

• became sacred text; anyone caught damagaing would be imprisoned or killed

• Abolishing “4 Olds”: eliminate old ideas, old customs, old culture, old habits of mind

Little Red Book (LRB)

• first release sold awfully

• Vintage Publishing released on e-book and sold 3 million copies in less than a month

• sold 6x more e-books than print books

E-Book phenomenon: 50 Shades of Grey

• influenced by deism (supreme being created everything but does not intervene in daily life)

• cut out sections he thought were true in Polyglot Bible, a French Geneva Bible, and KJV 4 gospels; pasted text into a new book w/ 4 columns (Greek & Latin on one side, French & English on other)

• 1820: 84-page volume called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth

• created a book that was more philosophical than religious, for his own personal use

• never officially published

Jefferson Bible

• invented by William Ged in 1813

• mixture of plaster is poured on a tray of completed type to
  make a mold from it

• after 1848, molds are created from paper mache instead of plaster

• makes larger press runs & reprints much cheaper

• late 1800s: replaced by electrotyping

• protested by many working in printing

Stereotype Printing

• characters are cast in type metal as a complete line rather than as individual characters

• Linotype System

  • 1. operator selects a magazine containing brass matrices to mold an entire font of type of the size and face specified in the
    copy at hand

  • 2. A keyboard is manipulated (or driven by paper or magnetic
    computer tape) to select the matrices needed to compose each line of text, including tapered spacebands, which automatically wedge the words apart to fill each line perfectly

  • 3. Each matrix is transported to an assembling unit at the mold

• Parts

  • elevator, distributer, magazine, space band box, assembler, mold disk, vise, keyboard

Linotype Press

• prints on paper that passes between a supporting cylinder and a cylinder containing the printing plates

• primarily used in high-speed, web-fed operations, e.g. newspaper

• page could be printed on both sides at the same time

Rotary Press

• 1855: Whitman designed and published 1st edition of Leaves of Grass

• 8 editions between 1855-1892

• his “carpenter portrait” on frontispiece

Walt Whitman

• 1st published in 1859

• 1st print run was 1250 copies, sold out in 1 day so another 3000 copies

• 6 editions

  • 2nd edition in 1860, 3rd edition in 1861, 4th edition in 1866, 5th edition in 1869 (“survival of the fittest”)

Darwin’s The Origin of Species