The Book Lovers' Miscellany
by Claire Cock-Starkey
(Oxford, Bodleian Library, 2017)
Ever since the first scrolls and manuscripts we have had an urge to collect and share books in their many forms, protecting our cultural heritage and ensuring the survival of many of our most precious books.
Page 1.
A book is not simply an object of beauty in itself; treasures can also be found between its covers.
Page 1.
Any celebration of books must also consider writers and writing.
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Books are not just about their literary merit but also embody a whole technological history from papyrus scrolls through handmade codices to modern mass-produced novels.
Page 2.
The papyrus plant (Cyperus papyrus) grows all across the Nile valley and was used by the Ancient Egyptians since c. 3000 BC to create a paper-like material to write on.
Page 7.
In Roman times the use of papyrus spread to Europe.
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Papyrus tended to degrade in the European climate and so vellum or parchment was more frequently used until papermaking techniques were imported into Europe form China.
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The act of censorship itself can be very revealing of the changing attitudes and morals of society.
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All Quiet on the Western Front has come to be seen as a great anti-war work, highlighting the futility of conflict. At the time of publication the book struck a chord with many who had lived through the war and it went on to be made into a very successful Hollywood film. However, as the Nazi party rose to power many began to criticize the book for denigrating the German war effort and accused Remarque of exaggerating the atrocities of war in order to promote his pacifist agenda.
Page 10.
America became the first English-speaking country where Ulysses was freely available.
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The first books with printed type were published c. 1455; all books produced in Europe between then and 1501 (an arbitrarily chosen end date) are defined as incunabula. The term was first coined by Bernhard von Mallinckrodt in 1639 when he produced a pamphlet to celebrate the bicentenary of moveable type … Mallinckrodt used the Latin term incunabula, which roughly translates as ‘cradle,’ to describe this developing book art, at the time in its infancy.
Page 15.
George Orwell’s Writing Tips
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word If you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.
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The scriptorium was a place of collaboration where many monks, scribes and illuminators would work together to produce the finished manuscript - analysis of some of the medieval texts written in eleventh-century Salisbury Cathedral suggest that as many as eight different hands might have been at work on the same manuscript, sometimes switching scribes mid-sentence. Medieval scriptoria played a huge role in the creation of early books and manuscripts, but once the printing press became a reality and secular book production increased, their importance gradually faded.
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The word ‘vellum’’ derives from the Latin word velin and the French word veau, or veal, and denotes an ancient method of producing parchment from calfskin (or occasionally lamb or kid skin).
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Due to its cost and complex method of production it remained a luxury item, reserved for the best books and manuscripts.
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As the printing press came into use in the fifteenth century, vellum continued to be used to make books; it was seen as a more luxurious and long-lasting alternative to paper.
Page 23.
As the printing industry grew, vellum producers struggled to make enough to keep up with demand and the more easily sourced paper swiftly took its place. Vellum was still used for bookbinding, and some early books have their original vellum covering. However, tooled leather soon became more fashionable and vellum became a niche product.
Page 24.
The origin of copyright law comes from the Statue of Anne, first passed in 1709, which gave copyright not to the publisher but to the author for a period of fourteen years.
Page 28.
The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, or Bay Psalm Book, was the first book to be printed in the new colony of America, in 1640. … Today only eleven known copies survive and when one came to auction in 2013 at Southeby’s in New York it reached a record-breaking $14 million, becoming the most expensive book ever sold at auction.
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In the 1460s/70s more legible fonts came to the fore, based upon the writing style of Italian humanists; these became known as Humanist or Venetian type. … Humanist fonts feature small letter height and relatively dark type styles.
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As technology in printing improved so too did font styles diversity, with the introduction of sans serif fonts. Manual typesetting became redundant and industrialization meant that new fonts were easier to develop and distribute.
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Quills as writing implements were d around the sixth century AD and quickly superseded the reed pen or metal stylus as the implement of choice for the writing of books.
Page 41.
Quill pens needed regular sharpening with knife (hence the origin of the term penknife) and if heavily used lasted only about a week before they had to be discarded.
Page 41.
In the Middle Ages writing was a two-handed affair: in one hand the quill or stylus would be held; in the other a knife - for sharpening the quill, scrubbing out mistakes and keeping place in the text.
Page 43.
The Gutenberg Bible is probably the most valuable printed book in the worlds; in one sense it can be considered priceless, as all complete copies are owned by institutions and so unlikely ever to come up for sale. … Only 180 were originally printed, of which only 49 survive today and of those only 21 are complete. Nearly all the surviving Gutenberg Bibles are owned by museums, institutions or libraries.
Pages 44-45.
The Bible is the bestselling book of all time, selling an estimated 5 billion copies worldwide. The Bible was the first book off the printing press in c. 1455 and has since been translated into over 394 languages.
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When books are published in different territories the title sometimes needs to be changed to better fit the local market.
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ASSOCIATION COPY These are some of the most valuable types of book signature. An association copy is a book with a personal dedication by the author to another famous person connected to the book or the author.
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DEDICATION Tis is the holy grail of book signatures due to their rarity, a book signed by the author and inscribed with the name of the person to whom the book is dedicated in print.
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An International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a code used to identity every individual edition of a work - each hardback, paperback, and audiobook and e-book has a different ISBN. The system is international and ensures authors, booksellers, libraries and publishers can identity the varying editions of a work and market it accordingly.
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A true first edition is the first print run of a book. A book does not become a second (or subsequent) edition until it has been reprinted with changes to the typesetting - perhaps substantial corrections have been made a foreward added or suchlike. If all copies of a first edition sell out and a publisher reprints the book without major changes then these copies are still considered first editions but would be referred to as ‘first edition second printing’.
Page 58.
The paper used for books is traditionally off-white in colour to make the type easier to read, and must be opaque to prevent the text being seen through the page.
Page 63.
Books account for less than one per cent of the world’s timber usage (however 40 per cent goes on making all types of paper including toilet roll, newspaper and office paper).
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Modern paper is made from chemical wood pulp which comes from both softwood and hardwood trees - there is no one tree that is most commonly used for making paper.
Page 64.
Chapbooks were cheap paper booklets sold by hawkers from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth. Chapbooks provided easily accessible reading material for children and the working classes and covered a wide variety of subjects such as sensationalist crime stories, poems, songs, biographies, almanacs, manuals, nursery rhymes and ghost stories.
Chapbooks were made from cheap, coarse paper folded many times to create a booklet, usually between eight and twenty-four pages long …
… Today they are highly prised, as comparatively few survived and they provide a valuable glimpse into the popular culture of the day.
… Chapbooks fell out of fashion and their role as cheap disposable reading for children was taken on by ‘penny dreadfuls’ and, later, comics.
Pages 65-66.
Writing with ink evolved at roughly the same time in both china and Egypt in around 2,500 BC and went hand in hand with the development of papyrus.
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By the eighth century AD a new type of ink was developed in Europe called IRON GALL INK. This was derived form iron salts and tannic acids from vegetables … and became the ink of choice in Europe from the twelfth to nineteen centuries.
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Johannes Gutenberg designed a new style of ink with better adhesion to the metal type. This new ink was oil-based (rather than water-based).
Pages 74-75.
Most modern ink preparations are rather like a trademark and as such exact formulas remain secret.
Pahe 75.
BOOK OF HOURS Popular medieval illuminated book used for private devotions, with lists of prayers and scriptures to be read at prescribed canonical hours.
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OCTAVO The most common size for modern hardback books (approximately 5 inches by 8 inches); to make the book the paper is folded to create eight leaves or sixteen pages.
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RECTO The right-hand page of an opened book (the front of a leaf)
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VERSO The left-hand page of an opened book (the back of a leaf)
Page 79
He must have had a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve as it is though that it took him at least ten years to develop his moveable type.
Page 80.
Approximately 180 copies of the Bible were printed, some on paper and some on vellum. Today only 49 (twelve of which are on vellum) copies survive, making it one of the most valuable books in the world.
Pages 80-81.
It is unclear what happened to Gutenberg in his later life but it is known that the Archbishop of Mainz provided him with a pension and that he died in c. 1468.
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Within twenty-five years of the first printing of the Gutenberg Bible, the printing press had spread around Europe and workshops had been established in many leading cities, heralding the advent of cheaper printing and the democratization of knowledge.
Page 81.
The first paper dust jackets were introduced in the nineteenth century. Initially they were just plain paper wraps, designed to protect find bindings from damage when they were transported form the bookbinder to the library. These plain jackets were intended to be discarded once the book had safely reached its destination. Sometimes dust jackets were produced with windows that allowed the fine decorative bindings beneath to be seen; this soon developed into the jackets themselves including decoration.
Page 87.
Dust jackets had become a new way to draw in a reader, and o the designs became more eye-catching.
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Book jackets have developed from a simple way t protect a fine binding to collectable pieces of art in their own right.
Page 88.
Although some Egyptian manuscripts used illuminations, such as the Book of the Dead from the twentieth century BC, the first known illuminated manuscript from Western Christianity was the Quedlinburg fragment, which was produced in the fourth century AD. The production of illuminated manuscripts in Europe took off around the sixth century AD and lasted until the birth od modern printing techniques in the fifteenth century signalled its demise.
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The concept of legal deposit, according to which a copy of every book published in the country is preserved in a national library, was developed by Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. In 1610, Bodley reached an agreement with the Stationers’ Company of London that a copy of every book published in England would be deposited at his library.
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Legal deposit ensures that national collections are constantly growing and represent and preserve the output of the British publishing industry.
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Bookplates are small printed labels which are pasted into a book to indicate ownership. They are also knows as ex libris as many are adorned with the Latin term, meaning ‘from the library of’, allowing collectors to trace the ownership of a book.
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From the mid-twentieth century, as books became cheaper to make and buy, bookplates became less vital and fell out of fashion.
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In the world of book collecting, those which ere printed with errors or mistakes can become highly sought after. It might be because the inclusion of the error indicates that it is an early printing of a book or because once the misprint had been noticed the books were recalled and pulped, making them scarce.
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The word ‘paper’ derives from papyrus, the plant used by ancient Egyptians to crate thin sheets on which to write. Although papyrus is similar to paper, the method by which it is created, by layering reeds, does not fit the definition of paper as being made from macerated fibres, and therefore true papermaking is credited to the Chinese in c. 100 AD.
Page 101.
When the first substantial printed book, the Gutenberg Bible, came off the printing press in Germany in 1455 it was printed on vellum and paper. Early European paper pulp was made from recycled rags of linen and cotton, and before the discovery of chlorine in the eighteenth century was unbleached, and thus frequently had a greyish hue.
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Wood pulp was finally discovered as a cheap and plentiful source of paper in 1841. Coupled with improvements in automated papermaking machines, this rendered paper ever more abundant and affordable.
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The language into which most books are translated is German, followed by French, Spanish, English and then Japanese.
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Codices were made from leaves of vellum or parchment sewn together between two boards - the recognizable shape of a modern book. This development not only made the book stronger but also made it easier to store, and the is method slowly became established as the norm.
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The oldest intact surviving European book is the St. Cuthbert Gospel, which was beautifully bound in embossed tooled leather and buried with St. Cuthbert c. 698 in Lindisfarne, Northumberland. The book was retrieved from Cuthbert’s coffin in 1104; since 2012 it has been held at the British Library.
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Most books were bought from the printer without a binding and many collectors would have all their books bound in a similar style to create a beautiful library.
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By the 1930s, with the advent of paperback books, perfect binding - whereby books were glued rather than sewn together - had become the norm.
Page 109.
When printing a book an even number of pages are printed on both sides of a large piece of paper; this paper is then folded and the edges cut so that the pages are in the correct order.
Page 109.
Some posit that early forerunners of comics include cave paintings or the Bayeux Tapestry.
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Early comic strips were found in popular newspapers and were intended to be funny (hence the name), but it was the creation of Superman by Jerome Siegal and Joseph Shuster in 1938 that really changed the genre and moved the idea of a comic book from an amusing short to a superhero-driven adventure. During the Second World War superhero comic books boomed as the public found solace and inspiration in the patriotic characters, such as Captain America.
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Project Gutenberg, the first digital library, which since 1971 has been digitizing out-of-copyright documents and books of cultural importance, making them available online under open access.
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E-books did not really start to become mainstream until after 2000 when Stephen King released a novella, Riding the Bullet, the first mass-market e-book.
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Early fonts all contained serifs, the small flicks at the end of each letter as if written by a pen or with a brush stroke.
Page 118.
Serif fonts are considered much easier to read on the page than sans serif fonts, partly because the serifs at the bottom of the letters help create a stronger line for the eye to follow.
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Traditionally in book publishing serif fonts were used. … However, as more and more people are taking to reading on a computer screen, sans serif fonts are becoming more popular for online content.
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The earliest known dictionaries were discovered in modern-day Syria and were from the Akkadian Empire.
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In 1775 Samuel Johnson’s dictionary-defining tome A Dictionary of the English Language was published. Johnson’s work was so thorough that it was recognized as a reliable source for English usage and set the tone for all future dictionaries.
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The full Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was finally published in 1928 and ran to twelve volumes, representing the most comprehensive guide to the English language.
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From the second century AD codices began to creep into use. A codex is the early form of a modern book, with pages and a cover. It is much more economical with parchment than a scroll as both sides of the page can be written upon and it can be transported and shelved more easily, perhaps in part explaining why the codex soon became the favoured shape for books in the Western world.
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