Assignments – Page 2 – Social Life of Books Course

Mapping Mr. Gray

This assignment had us mapping the various locations in which a particular book was published. We used the English Short Title Catalogue to find publications of the book of our choice, which ideally had to be published sometime in the 18th century. While we could have used any 18th century book that the ESTC could find for this assignment, I was curious about one book from my college library’s Special Collections in particular: The Poems of Mr. Gray by Thomas Gray. Their version was published in Dublin in 1775 and is part of the Rare section of the Special Collections. As my nifty, (mockingly) simple(-looking) map shows, this book was published in three different cities total: Dublin, London, and York.

I have mixed feelings about this section of the course. We are being introduced to different types of technology with the intent to give us a more expansive digital toolbox with which to build our final project. On one hand, this is completely necessary to create an interesting and worthwhile project, while on the other, it is slowly turning me into a computer gremlin. Figuring out this assignment had me sitting and staring at my increasingly harsh computer screen (for much longer than I probably should’ve had to), daylight slipping quickly away from me before my next real-world experience was realizing my room had gone pitch black and I emerged from this cave as a wild-eyed creature mumbling “geocode” nonsense at my concerned roommates.

I guess that’s just the nature of the beast.

The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Provenance Timeline

This week for The Social Life of Books, we had to find a book with evidence of provenance and create a timeline of ownership. I chose the Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This book was particularly interesting because there were lots of marks and writings throughout it as evidenced in the gallery above. I had a lot of fun with this assignment, because in my research, I found that three of the four previous owners are from Wichita Falls, Texas where I go to school at Midwestern State University. Although I couldn’t find out a lot on one of the owners, I found three of the four to be related, so before it was donated to my university, it was passed down through a couple generations of the McGregor family. I really liked learning more about each owner and how Mrs. A. H. Carrigan was the daughter of one of the founders of Wichita Falls. It was really neat learning more about the history of the small town where I go to school. At one point, I even had to get Dr. Pauley and Dr. Bankhurst to help me interpret an Outline Descendant Report on Patsy McGregor. I would love to continue researching the previous owners of this book to try to find more on Patsy and Mr. Henkle.

Timeline JS was a little confusing at first, but I think I figured it out.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this assignment and would love to do another one like it.

Constructing a Book’s History

Habent sua fata libelli. [Books have their own fate.] -Maurus Now that we’ve tackled understanding and recognizing the physical production of books in this course – something that is relatively regulated and widespread – we’ve come to a more personalized, if not rather intimate, study of bibliography. This past week we’ve been tasked with […]

Habent sua fata libelli.

[Books have their own fate.]

-Maurus

1864 publication of Alexis de Tocqueville’s *Democracy in America*.

Now that we’ve tackled understanding and recognizing the physical production of books in this course – something that is relatively regulated and widespread – we’ve come to a more personalized, if not rather intimate, study of bibliography. This past week we’ve been tasked with exploring the living history of a single book; it’s life. The book I chose lept at me from my university library’s Special Collections as I was browsing a particular section called the Wadsworth Family Papers: an 1864 copy of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (vol. II).

This book was nestled between land/business documents and books written by particularly well-known members of this extraordinarily influential small-town family. The Wadsworths are mega-stars in Geneseo, NY, where I attend university. This family settled the area around 1790 and maintained considerable control over the majority of Livingston County throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. My college, the State University of New York at Geneseo, owes much of its existence to this family of educated farmers-turned-politicians, and embraces them and their history in the Special Collections of their library.

Close-up of Wadsworth’s inscription on the title page of *Democracy in America.* Fig. 2.

Title page of James W. Wadsworth’s copy of De Tocqueville’s book. Fig. 1.

As most of the Wadsworth Family Papers collection is made up of primary sources from the family’s history – that is, business, land, and personal documents, photography, and books written by them – it was somewhat surprising to see an ordinary, widely-read book included on the shelves. As soon as I took it down and opened to the title page, I began to understand why. Note the inscription shown on the two pictures of the title page: “James W. Wadsworth – Jan. 1871, Geneseo.” This was a personal book of James W. Wadsworth himself: an influential farmer, then Civil War soldier, then U.S. Congressman.

Publication Information

This copy of de Tocqueville’s book was published in Cambridge, MA in 1864 by an American publishing company called Sever and Francis. Democracy in America was written by Alexis de Tocqueville, published in 1838 as analysis of early 19th century America and its flourishing democratic system. De Tocqueville’s motivation behind this study was to look at American democracy as a model for his own country of France following their revolution. It is still today considered one of the most important references for discussing both the American nation and the democratic system. So, the intended audience, at the time of its creation, was perhaps the French nation as a model, perhaps the American nation as a mirror, perhaps both; but most certainly the people who are interested in learning about the way in which achieving equality necessitates a change in social status for many.

Owner Information

As mentioned, this book was originally owned by James W. Wadsworth, and ultimately given to Milne Library at the State University of New York at Geneseo in 1976 by Mrs. Reverdy Wadsworth after the death of her husband, James’s great-grandson. Once the book was given to Milne Library, it was ultimately placed in the Wadsworth

Book plate from Milne Library at SUNY Geneseo. Fig. 3.

Family Papers collection, effectively kept out of circulation. There is some speculation as to whether or not it had been accidentally put into circulation when it first arrived, but even if it was, it would very quickly have been taken out given its condition.

Marginalia

How can I say so confidently that James W. Wadsworth was the original owner, even though there is a span of 7 years between its publication and his mark of ownership? Well, this book is in what I consider to be, with regard to my very little experience with bibliography, very interesting condition; or, at least very telling condition. As shown in Fig. 4, there are multiple occurrences of uncut signatures in this book.

In fact, as not shown in this picture, most of the book is made up of uncut signatures. As you can see in this and Fig. 5, the areas that are uncut are very roughly and crudely done so. While it might seem that this could be indicative of a neglected book, as shown in Fig. 6, the areas of the book that are cut free from their signatures are heavily underlined and even starred.

These markings are done in pencil, unlike the inscription made at the beginning in ink. In my opinion, the use of pencil implies a studious nature of reading, and the thoroughly marked areas of interest imply a purposeful reading, perhaps by someone who understood the book enough to cut the signatures in the correct place to find the information he wanted to highlight. Perhaps this wasn’t the reader’s first time reading a copy of de Tocqueville.

Current Home

Now resting in Milne Library’s Wadsworth Family Papers collection, this book’s purpose and use has unavoidably shifted. Considering it is no longer in circulation and has spent the past 41 years in a locked room for preservation purposes, I’d say that its use has indeed changed since it was owned by James Wadsworth in 1871. No longer is it turned to when de Tocqueville’s words of wisdom are needed; in fact, his voice is but a tiny echo almost completely consumed by the legacy of James W. Wadsworth to which this book is now irrevocably tied. Instead of reading it for de Tocqueville alone, it’s read for Wadsworth, and represents Wadsworth now far more than de Tocqueville.

Follow the dynamic Timeline JS I’ve created for this post to see the history of this book come to life!

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1oOF307tcalL81ojObtUExw_MQyzZAqlVGi1YKIac5T8&font=Bitter-Raleway&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650

The book studied in this post comes from the Special Collections of Milne Library at the University of New York at Geneseo.

Assignment #2 – A Book’s Beginnings

It’s week two of our SLOB class, and another trip to the archives was called for. This time, we were on a mission; having covered a brief introduction to bibliography, everyone in the class was asked to identify certain traits of a book’s beginnings and figure out the format in which it was made. With […]

I decided to use the oldest book in the Montevallo archives, which we identified last week: The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, 3rd ed. with sculptures. Published 1702.

Binding

This book was rebound by C.F. Rothweiler Bookbinding in Zion, Illinois, but the original binding can be seen attached to the new binding. Also, when rebound they cut out the title from the original binding and glued it onto the new spine.

Original Title Binding

Because they simply covered the old binding, there was no effect on the page margins. Although it is unfortunate that the original binding fell apart, because it happened I was able to clearly see the 5 stitch bindings. Another interesting thing about the binding was how it was falling apart. Upon further inspection is appeared to have split in three even sections, but there was evidence of smaller spitting happening as well. Mary Haynes and I came to the conclusion that this book was probably bound in smaller sections that were put into three bigger sections, and then finally bound together as a whole.

Original and New Binding

Paper

Right off the bat knew that the paper is laid, not wove. We can tell because of the visible chainlines, mostly horizontal but on pages with images the vertical wires can be seen as well. All of the pages are opened and are trimmed. I could not find a watermark despite looking for quite a while.

Horizontal Chainlines

Vertical Chainlines

Signatures?

This is where, in my opinion, things got interesting. There were signatures at the bottom of the pages in groups of four. They were denoted by letters of the alphabet, starting with A, and continued until they had to start over with Aa. The interesting part about it was that the signatures were four on, four off. As you can see in the pictures, the pages followed an A1, A2, A3, A4 pattern but then followed by 4 pages without a signature.

Example of Signature

Format

Based on the evidence we found (and a little origami on my part), I’ve come to the conclusion that this book was created using an octavo format. The biggest indicator of this was the signatures and their sets of four. Assuming they used them as a way to make sure the pages were in order when folding, it is safe to also assume that each new set of signatures means a new set of pages. If this is the case, that means there would be 8 leaves and 16 pages, hence, octavo.

Illustrations?

There were full page illustrations, generally with a black page on the opposing side. Because of that, I assume that the illustrations were printed separately and then bound together with the rest of the pages, but I did not see any glaring evidence of that so I may be wrong. Unfortunately, it slipped my mind to snap a picture of a whole illustration, but in this picture you can see part of one next to title page.

Illustration on Right

Extras

What caught my attention the most from examining the book was the way the typesetting worked. The first thing I noticed was actually a misprint in one of the signature series, as you can see in the pictures below.

Misprint Signatures

After that I started looking for mistakes, but then stumbled upon something much more telling of the handmade nature of the book. Apparently when a page used too much of a single letter and the printer would run out, they would substitute other letters to make it work, usually with W’s and V’s as you can also see in the pictures.

Ran Out of W’s

Out of everything I found, I think my favorite was something that apparently was a product of the time this book was written. You see, Mary Haynes and I kept finding all of these works with seemingly random f’s where one would assume s’s would go. Having no idea what this could mean, we asked the archivist and discovered that back then, the f indicated a long s as opposed to a short s sound.

F is Now S

Overall, this visit was super cool and involved a lot of discovery. I had no idea that the structure of a book could be so fascinating, and I have a feeling I will never look at book bindings the same again. (Nor will my friends, because I’m a sharer when it comes to things like this.)

book body language

On Wednesday, January 25th, Savannah Willard and I paid another visit to the archives of the University of Montevallo. During the bulk of today’s meeting, Mr. Carey Heatherly was in a meeting, so I got to go in and pull the books for Savannah and I to observe and interact with for this assignment. The […]

The book that I had the pleasure of looking at was Fables by John Gay, Volume 2, 4th edition. It was published in London in 1746, still in its original leather binding. On the spine, the whip stitching was visible. It was bound together with five whip stitches. The book was in relatively good condition, only the corners of the covers having worn through the leather over time. None of the pages were falling out, and it felt stable as I opened it.

The paper was without a doubt laid paper. Chainlines running horizontally were visible throughout the entire book, and on the first one or two pages on either cover you could also see them running vertically. The pages were high quality, neatly trimmed and all of them opened. I could not find any evidence of a watermark, unfortunately.

There were several signatures on the bases of pages. They started at B, and would go in a pattern of letter, letter 2, letter 3, letter 4 (for example: B, B2, B3, B4) on the right hand page for four consecutive pages. They would then be followed by four pages without signatures. Only pages that had text would have signatures There were also images in the book, but they were printed on slightly thicker paper and never had signatures nor print on both sides. They also were not inserted at regular intervals into the book, leading me to believe that they were added to the pages later, after the text content had been folded and arranged. The images coordinated to the fables, and probably had to be inserted afterwards in order to align with the correct fable. When one removed the image pages from the equation, the signatures started every eight pages, except for the last two sets, which were four and two pages respectively.

The typeset of this book had been punched in very firmly. Every single page was ridged with the letters that were on the other side, though I caught very few distortions of ink. There is a crest on the title page of the book that had been obviously pressed in after the other things, and left a very deep indention.

Based on the above evidence, but primarily on the frequency of the signatures, I would give the guess that this book was made in quatro style.

In learning about these things, I have definitely already noticed a change in my approach to books. Savannah and I were distracted when we went back into the archives to return the old books, looking at old student records accidentally because we thought the book was an old dictionary. I look forward to continuing to interact with the old books in our special collections, and learning more about their history.

Behind the Scenes

Getting to revisit Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia with a new mindset, I found some interesting items that I did not notice when I first handled the book. In order… Read More

Getting to revisit Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia with a new mindset, I found some interesting items that I did not notice when I first handled the book. In order to understand not only more about the book, but about the time period in which it was made, I had to test my hand at some bibliographical work. The book is indeed bound, albeit rather worn out and unattached. An old string now holds the book tightly together to the original binding and will otherwise fall apart without it. The cover is a brown, hard leather binding that clearly shows the material withering away. At one point it seemed to be a darker brown but now has faded in certain spots due to light or sun exposure, or possible poor handling. It reminds me of my dad’s old Bible that showed signs of use and love. This book was certainly handled and most likely not only by one person. There was a particular portion of an image which was on the inside cover, but was visibly torn. I wish there was a way of telling what it was and if it was something of importance or relevance to the book, like a map of Virginia or a crest of some sort.

Looking closer at the paper I could clearly see that it was laid because of the chain lines and wire lines on the pages. The chain lines were primarily vertical except for two particular pages which may have been inserted at a different time or otherwise just turned around. The first example of the chain lines running horizontally was on the left page of the actual title page. This is the only full illustration in the book and it’s a portrait of Thomas Jefferson. You can clearly see an imprint in the paper around the illustration as if that portion was pressed in. The title page to the right has the chain lines running vertically, which was a bit odd. The other page where they were horizontal was on an inserted pullout chart which listed Native American tribes, what country they resided in (unsure if this actually meant county and not country), the chief town, and the number of warriors in a particular tribe. Both of these examples of the pages having horizontal chain lines were also obviously shorter than the rest of the book. I couldn’t tell of any insertion after the book had been bound together, so I don’t believe they were inserted at a later time. I calculated the format of the book to be octavo due to the number of chain lines running vertically to be four. On those pages where the chain lines ran horizontally, there were seven of them which could possibly be a quarto fold.

All of the pages were open and trimmed. At first, I thought the book was untrimmed because of the first few pages. I later realized those pages were just handled roughly because the binding had come undone, therefore not being due to deckling, just torn due to the handling of the book. There were no watermarks that I saw. I glanced at every single page to determine the pattern of the chain lines, but as I did so, I didn’t catch sight of any watermarks. Unless I obliviously passed one, I may assume there isn’t one due to this being the fourth edition. (Perhaps the first edition had one?) It was first published in 1785 and this fourth edition was published only 16 years later in 1801, so I am not sure if that’s an appropriate assumption or not.

The signatures of the book were there at the bottom of the pages every so often. They started as upper case letters and ran alphabetically, although oddly there wasn’t an ‘A’, ‘J’, ‘V’, or ‘W’.

The signatures then followed with an upper case/lower case letter combination, and again the combos ‘Jj’, ‘Vv’, and ‘Ww’ were skipped or missing.

Following those signatures were 3A, 3B, and 3C and then came the conclusion of the book.

A few miscellaneous, yet interesting aspects of the book I found was that between pages 134 and 135 there seemed to be a page or insert torn out. It was shorter than the other pages so I believe it to be an insert and I wish I could tell what it was. The sewing was done with two sets of stitching with thick thread. The bottom stitching was still intact, but the bottom pages were starting to come apart from the glue which held it together to the spine of the binding.

At first glance, the book is rather interesting because of simply how it looks. It’s also a bit exciting holding a book one of our Founding Fathers wrote and published. It’s even more interesting and even more exciting to continue this exploration of the history of this book and other books that are waiting to be told. ✥

Nuremburg Chronicle Bibliography

To learn more about bibliography, I went back to our special collections library and looked at the Nuremburg Chronicle. The binding on the Chronicle is still bound and looks like it’s the original leather binding. There is some wear on the edges and corners, but overall it is in pretty good condition. I couldn’t see any chain lines so I think the paper was woven. All of the pages are open and trimmed with one inch margins. There are no watermarks that I could see, but you can see evidence of the paper being made by fabric as you can see some fibers in the pages. The paper is mostly smooth with a few rough spots on all open pages.

As far as book formatting goes, the book was printed on folio sized paper and folded in half to be bound. There are about 300 pages in the books so that would make the number of sheets needed to print the Chronicle 150 sheets.

Old Book Examination

This week, we were tasked with the physical examination of a book of our choosing from the special collections. I ultimately decided on a book from 1792 that was a bit different than the other books I’ve looked at up this point. This book has a beautiful brown and black speckled cover, with a small […]

This book has a beautiful brown and black speckled cover, with a small leather strip on the spine imprinted with the gold-filled word “Farces.” The library’s digital catalog titled this as A collection of the most esteemed farces and entertainments, performed on the British stage. I know this because I could hardly make out the title on the spine itself, and when I went to look for a title page, I was abruptly met with the first page of a short play, and consequently turned to the internet to provide me with the title of the book as a whole. I also noticed that there was no publication or printer information within the book itself either. What kind of book, even a book of plays, wouldn’t have this kind of information? Isn’t that what makes a publication? Also, when I began to examine the paper from each play, I noticed that each one had a different type of paper: some laid paper with horizontal chain lines while others woven paper with outer-edge watermarks. Even the text font wasn’t uniform between plays, although size looked pretty consistent.

I had to investigate.

According to Professor Pauley, this kind of book is “a “Sammelband” – a collected volume – in which separately published pieces have been bound together.” My special collections librarian was also interested in this book, and told me that some printers, especially ones who were also book dealers, would often take requests for custom bindings. Given the fact that this book is a second volume, and neither volume has publication information about the book as a whole, I think it’s likely that they were collected by an individual. The notion that this collection was a deliberate decision made by an individual or smaller group makes sense given that these plays all have a glaring similarity: they’re all farces. I hope to look more into this at another point in the semester, and hopefully update this post with some more detail and information!

For the purpose of this assignment, I chose one of the farces in this book to work with. This play is titled “The Cherokee: An Opera.” While I didn’t have to read it for this assignment, given the year it was written, its title, and its farcical genre, I’m not too disappointed about that.

When first looking at the binding, I’d consider it very well preserved for being 225 years old, save the back cover that is completely unattached. There is clear evidence of stab stitching, which makes sense considering that these plays were of distinctly separate origins, and were likely stitched together without covers before being put into this collection. The pages are all neatly trimmed, and the margins are tighter near the binding than at the outer edge.

For the play that I was working with, specifically, the paper was wove, and there was one instance of a watermark that I could see. In fact, all of the plays in this collection that were on woven paper had evidence of watermarks, while none of the laid paper did. The library I was working with didn’t have an available backlight for me to use to find these watermarks, but offered me a small flashlight that I could hold up to it while I snapped a picture with my phone. As you can see, the watermark in this play lies closest to the outer edge. This play also has signatures at the bottom center of some pages in the pattern of A, A2, A3, B, etc.

Given that fact as well as the fact that the laid paper plays have horizontal chain lines, I’d be comfortable concluding that the format of this play is duodecimo. Based on this format, I’ve calculated that two sheets of paper went into the copy of this play. Given that it cost one shilling, and any printers were likely trying to keep costs down for producing a mere farcical play, this result makes a lot of sense!

Anatomy of a Book

“These weren’t cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.” ― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight Books are not always just the thoughts contained within the text on […]

Books are not always just the thoughts contained within the text on their pages. To many, a book is the physical object itself, the smell of the binding, and the rustle of pages when they turn. While perhaps not everything is as idealistic as Pratchett’s quote above, it is true that there is a lot that goes into the physical creation of a book whether we are discussing the era of hand illuminated manuscripts, hand-pressed books, or more modern presses.

Philip Gaksell’s A New Introduction to Bibliography is an incredibly detailed account of making the physical body of a book in the hand-press era, from the 16th century to the early 19th. Everything is efficiently laid out from the making of paper and ink to the pressing of individual pages to the binding process. Books produced during this period are full of traces and marks from these various processes that are to books what scars, tan lines, and wrinkles are to us; they serve as a roadmap as to the origins of a particular book.

Tuesday morning presented the opportunity for me to perform this type of analysis on a book of my choosing. Since there is a more modern (20th century) binding on the A priest to the temple, I decided to find another book printed in the hand-press era. I chose a copy of the eighth edition of the uniformly titled Poems. Selections( officially titled as Poems, Ect. written upon several occasions, and to several persons) by Edmund Waller, Esq.

Basic Information:

This copy of Poems. Selections is one from the eighth edition printed with slight revisions and a summary of the author’s life. On the title page (Fig. 1) it states that the Shakespear’s Head (their spelling, not mine) “over against

Fig. 1: Title page with inscriptions

Catherine street in the Strand” printed the book for Jacob Tonson (although I think it possible that the first “n” is an “m” that did not get enough ink which would make the last name Tomson) in 1711. Also to be found on both sides of the title page is provenance. There is one inscription written in 1992 and another inscribed to a “Sherlock” in 1780. On the back side of the title page is a longer inscription to a lieutenant in 1792. (Fig. 2) Other small markings adorn the book in places, but they are either illegible or smudged such that I could not read them.

What is truly fascinating is that when I looked into some of the history of the Shakespear’s Head, I found that A. H. Bullen and Frank Sidgwick established the press in 1904. Yet the title page clearly states that this copy was printed in 1711. I did consider the possibility that perhaps the original collection of poems was published in 1711, with this copy having been printed much later, but there is no note of that in the book. In addition, checking the Special collections record of the book, it is listed as having been printed in 1711. I will be investigating this further with the help of our archivists.

Fig. 2: Inscription on back of title page.

Cosmetic Information/Observations:

As is normal for the time, the book is bound in some sort of leather, most likely tanned calf-skin, although I cannot say for sure. On both the front and back covers the binder tooled in a blind design decorated with flowers at the corners. (Fig. 3) An alternate title for the book, Waller’s Poems, is tooled in gilt on the spine (Fig. 4) which speaks to it’s publication date. Books at this point would have been facing spine outward on a shelf rather than fore-edge out, and so the gilt title would have been necessary to identify the book.

Fig. 3: Front cover of the book; shows blind tooling done in the leather.

The cover is beginning to wear along both sides of the spine and darker splotches are scattered along both covers. It is possible that this is some beginning stage of red-rot, but given the care taken by the Special Collections department, I suspect it has either been treated to stop the process, or it is simply old age. Several cracks and cress also adorn the spine, and one can clearly see the five cords that each gathering was sown onto. (I always wondered when looking at older books what the ridges along the spine were, and it delighted me to find out that rather than merely being decorative, they hold the book together and can only be seen due to the process of tightly stretching the leather over the cover boards.) Foxing can be found on the top, bottom, and fore-edge (Fig. 5) of the book with the only difference being that the top-head is darker than the other too due to an accumulation of dust. Also noticeable is that along the top edge one can see where the cords have been stitched to the gatherings in three places, and by studying the fore-edge it becomes clear that the paper was cut, for the edges are clear and not feathery.

Fig. 5: Example of foxing along the fore-edge of the book.

Fig. 4: Spine of book complete with detail of gilt title and evidence of cords.

Opening the book offered a new wealth of information. The edges of pages had yellowed and one could feel the slightly rough texture of the pages. Small flecks of brown from color differences in the paper pulp, or stuff, scatter themselves through the pages, which do become more rough as one gets to the middle of the book. one can also tell easily that the endpapers are made of a different quality of paper as they have a different texture and have not yellowed as much as the other pages. Opening to the front cover, one finds the watermark (Fig. 6) and also impressions of the strips used to connect the cover boards to the manuscript. So far I have been unsuccessful in tracking down the company that made the paper from the watermark as it is hard to ascertain the exact design. Indeed, I edited the picture below heavily in an attempt to make the watermark more visible.

Fig. 6: The watermark on the inside cover of the book.

Holding the pages up to the light, the chain and cross lines become visible with the chain lines running vertical. The impress of the letters can be seen on most of the pages and can clearly be felt by running fingers over the letters. It is an odd feeling as most books these days have very smooth pages, but it is not unpleasant. Additionally, on the last page there is a bit of bleeding from the ink on the previous. (Fig. 7)

The book contains both signatures and page numbers. The fact that there is pagination also speaks to the fact that this book was printed in the 18th century, and towards the earlier days of the hand-press period only foliation (use of signatures) marked the pages in a book. The last page is 423 and the last signature I found is Ee2 which can be found in the direction line of page 411. Counting leaves in a signature told me that each gathering holds 4 leaves and eight pages of text.

Fig. 7: This is the last page in the book and the page previously has left traces of it’s text.

Furthermore, I made note of several things of interest including pictures, tears, examples where one could see the stitching, and even two cancellanda. For example, on the page denoted with signature A2, the sheet of paper used was not exact and you can see the feathering at the end of the sheet. (Fig. 8)A small tear exists on page twenty-two, and there is a series of small holes that appear on the inner margin of pages 154-164. However, I do not believe them to be instances of stab-stitching for they only appear on these pages, are not quite close enough to the spine, are irregular in size and shape, and this is the only place in the book that I found them.

Fig. 8: Signature A2 where the edge of the page is feathered. Also known as deckled.

Examples where one can see the stitching of the gatherings exists on page 169 (Fig. 9), which is also the spot of one of the cancellandum (Fig. 10) , and again between pages 184-185. The other cancellandum is between pages 146-147. Rather than a page being sown in, re-inked, or having new paper pasted over, these pages have been cut out.

Fig. 9: An example of where the stitching of the gatherings shows.

Analysis:

With all of this data, it now becomes possible to answer a series of questions concerning the making of Poems. Selections. The first thing to discuss is the binding, which is in alright condition. There is definite evidence of wear along the spine where the spine meets the cover boards and the leather is not only beginning to crackle along the spine, but it is also covered in darker splotches, a sign of age. This is the original binding for the book as far as I can tell. The inner margins of the pages have not been tampered with, I see no signs of the book having been rebound at any point, and the wear on the binding suggests that it is as old as the book.

Of course, there is then the paper to examine. In this instance, the paper is of a type known as laid paper, with vertical chain lines and horizontal cross lines. All of the folds in this book have been trimmed and the edges have been cut. The only evidence I found of the deckling that one gets with laid paper is on signature A2 at the end of the tail margin. I did find a complete watermark on the inside cover of the book, but that is the only watermark I found. It is possible I missed other watermarks, but I looked through several signatures and did not find another. In addition to the page numbers, the book contains signatures in the direction line written in the usual pattern: uppercase letters, numbers, lowercase letters, numbers, one uppercase and one lowercase, and so on. The usual letters of I/J and W/V are skipped in order to avoid confusion.

With all of this information (4 leaves per gathering, vertical chain lines, and a book height of 20 cm), I believe that this book was printed in octavo format. This may also explain why it was hard for me to find a second watermark as watermarks are found at the head of the spine fold when the paper sheets are imposed in octavo format. Depending on how the book was bound, the watermarks may be too close to the spine for me to see properly. In addition, with 423 pages of text and eight pages of text per sheet of paper, I think that at least 56 sheets of paper went into the making of this book, at least where the actual poems are considered. With the endpapers and the preface added in, I think that there must be at least another 3-6 sheets bringing the total to somewhere between 59-62 sheets of paper.

Lastly, this book does include some images such as an illustration of the author (Fig. 11) and a picture representing his death at the end of the preface. (Fig. 12) Several other images of friends/family who he wrote poems for are included as well. All of these images seem to have been folded into the book or else sown in very tightly as I could not see any indication that they had been added in another manner.

Fig. 12: The picture at the end of the preface containing the author’s life.

Fig. 11: The portrait of the author included at the start of the preface.

Fig. 10: An example of a cancellandum where the page was simply cut out.

Conclusion:

All in all, I found this to be an interesting and informative exercise that forced me to look at books in a different light. While a part of me has always treated books as material objects in a sense (I am definitely not in the Kindle camp), this exercise made me consider a book almost as solely a physical object without a lot of regard to the meaning of the text within it.