RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage reviews books, reports, new periodicals, databases, websites, blogs, and other electronic resources, as well as exhibition, book, and auction catalogs pertaining directly and indirectly to the fields of rare book librarianship, manuscripts curatorship, archives management, and special collections administration. Publishers, librarians, and archivists are asked to send appropriate publications for review or notice to the Reviews Editor.
Sarah Werner. Studying Early Printed Books, 1450-1800: A Practical Guide. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2019. Paperback, 188p. $28.95. (ISBN: 978-1-119-04996-8). Reviewed by Erika Hosselkus.
Sarah Werner’s, Studying Early Printed Books 1450-1800: A Practical Guide, is a brief, accessible introduction to early modern European printing technologies and the components of early imprints. In one hundred and fifty pages, this textbook addresses paper and type, steps and personnel involved in hand press printing, the elements of a book, and how those factors impact use now and in the past. Illustrations, an annotated bibliography (Appendix 1), a glossary (Appendix 2), and a website (Early Printed Books; http://www.earlyprintedbooks.com) supplement the main text. Werner encourages the reader to utilize this book alongside early imprints, making it a particularly useful tool for students or novice researchers with access to rare books or special collections libraries. Curators and librarians may wish to incorporate this title into instruction sessions or employ it as a reference source or quick introduction to early printing.
The book is divided into five parts, which fit into two halves. The first, and longer, half of the book (Parts 1, 2, and 3) addresses the mechanics and material components of printing and imprints. Parts 1 and 2 work together to explain how paper is prepared, the work of a compositor, the hand press’s parts and functioning, post-printing drying and gathering, and distribution of printed works. Part 1, Overview, explains the entire printing process in a nutshell, while Part 2, Step-by-Step, offers more expansive discussions of each component of the process. Werner encourages the reader to make practical use of these two parts. They needn’t be read sequentially or in full. One can read and reread parts of interest and return to others as needed. While Part 1 primarily offers a concise description of the printing process, a concluding section on “The Economics of Printing,” provides context and helps to explain why some elements of early modern printing developed as they did. Part 1 will function well as a stand alone, introductory reading assignment in courses on the early modern book.
Part 2’s descriptions of paper, type, format, printing, corrections and changes, illustrations, and binding are thorough but not overly technical. The type section describes how early modern type was made, the evolution of typefaces, and how printers acquired fonts and the relative expense associated with this component of printing. The format section explains imposition, or how pages of printed text are laid out on a sheet of paper, and the role that formes play in printing. These operations can be difficult to apprehend in the abstract, so Werner provides multiple tools to assist the reader, including diagrams and instructions for how one can visualize the process of folding a page - or even engage in a folding exercise - to achieve a desired imposition. This dedication to simplifying and explaining elements of technical processes for a broad audience is a consistent theme of this book, making it a welcome introductory supplement to technical, if canonical, works on bibliography. Part 2 indeed works well when read alongside actual early modern imprints. For example, the discussion of wire lines, chain lines, watermarks, and countermarks in laid paper becomes clearer when examples of those components can be seen and touched. Part 2 also features a recurring section called, “Why does it Matter?” that serves to connect the chapter’s descriptive components to existing scholarship and avenues of inquiry.
Part 3, arranged alphabetically, discusses what can be found on an early modern printed page, from advertisements to volvelles. The discussions in this chapter explain each component of an imprint, often providing illustrations and connecting the components to scholarship. Here and elsewhere in the text, readers are pointed to Early Printed Books (http://www.earlyprintedbooks.com) for additional examples. The website, also created by Werner, links users to useful color, high resolution images made available from libraries as part of the public domain or under CC BY licenses. These zoomable images are a necessary supplement to the book’s necessarily small, black and white images. In fact, the text might more frequently encourage readers to consult the website, particularly if physical imprints are not readily available.
The second half of Studying Early Printed Books, is a guide to studying and using rare books - and their digital surrogates - and the descriptive apparatuses that have been created around them over time. It builds on the introduction to appearance and content developed in the first half of the book. Part 4 articulates good research habits and outlines many of the questions about appearance and contents that one should ask when interacting with an early modern imprint. Many of the questions that Werner presents will be familiar to special collections librarians and can be fruitfully posed to students as part of instruction sessions or coursework. The chapter also articulates questions about presentation that must be asked regarding digital surrogates. Part 5, “The Afterlives of Books” addresses description and interventions commonly made to early modern imprints over time. Werner explains catalog records and union catalogs, topics that may be of particular use to graduate students, scholars, and some undergraduates. She discusses bindings, sammelbands, users’ marks, and provenance. Part 5 also rightly devotes additional space to digitized books and the need to question what is, and is not, visible when approaching any digital object. The chapter’s discussions of metadata and its challenges and use restrictions are important and provide succinct answers to questions that are frequently asked of special collections librarians.
A number of additional features of Studying Early Printed Books contribute to its overall usefulness and merit brief discussion. Appendix 1 is a thorough annotated list of additional resources on all elements of the early modern book, with an emphasis on English-language published guides and secondary scholarship. This appendix logically directs readers to key works by Gaskell and Tanselle for further study, but offers many other more specialized resources as well. Appendix 2 is a useful glossary of terms. The text routinely points the reader to this glossary when new terms are introduced, making it an integral and necessary part of the book. The text also includes marginal sections throughout, such as “Printing in red and black,” and “A note about book smells,” that serve to address related, interesting phenomena, but can be read at the user’s discretion.
Overall, Studying Early Printed Books is a useful resource for those new to early Western European imprints. Its most natural use is as an assigned textbook in courses on the history of the book in Western Europe where a thorough understanding of printing processes and book components and construction is desired. However, those looking for a true history of the early modern book in Western Europe will need to supplement this practical text with work by the scholars cited in Appendix 1. The title can be employed within a library or special collections setting where curators and librarians provide specialized instruction sessions. Single chapters of the text might be assigned to support such sessions. Or, sections of the book can be singled out and used alongside a curator or librarian’s local rare books collections to dive deeply into specific components of printing or book construction during instruction sessions. For example, a librarian might assign pairs of students to explore individual elements of an early printed book held in their local collection - from advertisements to volvelles, as described in Part 3 - and report back for broader discussion. A fully online resource that combines the features of the book with those of the companion website might best serve curators and librarians developing plans for single or multiple instruction sessions rather than an entire course, but the print text can be adapted for this use.
The book focuses heavily on England, France, and Germany. Users looking for information on trends in Iberia and its American colonies or other parts of Europe will need to look elsewhere. Discussion of longstanding print traditions in Asia and the Middle East is also absent from this work. Future editions might provide students with a fuller perspective on printing history by placing the well-studied cases of England, France, and Germany within a more global context. As scholarship on printing, the book, and material culture works to diversify, globalize, and incorporate lesser-known perspectives, this accessible guide is well-positioned to introduce a broader audience to those important developments.
- Erika Hosselkus, University of Notre Dame