The History of the Book in the West: 1700–1800

Volume III

Eleanor F. Shevlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351888226
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Influenced by Enlightenment principles and commercial transformations, the history of the book in the eighteenth century witnessed not only the final decades of the hand-press era but also developments and practices that pointed to its future: 'the foundations of modern copyright; a rapid growth in the publication, circulation, and reading of periodicals; the promotion of niche marketing; alterations to distribution networks; and the emergence of the publisher as a central figure in the book trade, to name a few.' The pace and extent of these changes varied greatly within the different sociopolitical contexts across the western world. The volume's twenty-four articles, many of which proffer broader theoretical implications beyond their specific focus, highlight the era's range of developments. Complementing these articles, the introductory essay provides an overview of the eighteenth-century book and milestones in its history during this period while simultaneously identifying potential directions for new scholarship.

Part I
The Physical Book, or Matters Material

[1]
CONTINENTAL PAPER WRAPPERS AND PUBLISHERS’ BINDINGS IN THE 18TH CENTURY

GILES BARBER

ATTRACTIVE AND CHEAP paper covers, probably intended only for the moment of sale, seem to have been used for printed books from an early date. Originally some were wrappers, often with woodcut designs, placed around a volume while others were in fact printed designs placed on what would otherwise have been the blank first and last pages. In his study of the styles and designs of bookbindings in the Broxbourne Library Howard Nixon discussed two early examples there, one on an Augsburg publication of 1494, another on one from Ferrara in 1518, these representing the only countries from which a number of examples seem to have survived.¹ Such specimens are remarkably rare and for a considerable period they seem to have been the result of individual initiative rather than any regular trade practice. However the later introduction of more regular publishers’ bindings, at least in England, has been carefully studied in the past forty years and since Michael Sadleir and John Carter have described the various stages of this evolution it is the purpose of the following notes to record observations on early examples of similar movements on the Continent.²

Sadleir pointed out the extreme difficulty in attempting to generalize in a kind of study which was neither straight publishing history nor concerned with standard printing or binding. Further, the intentionally ephemeral coverings preceding the more solid, established, publishers’ bindings have in nearly all cases been disposed of and the books bound. This is particularly so in institutional libraries, which, at least until recent years, rarely preserved these original covers. Another difficulty comes from the differing attitudes of book collectors in various European countries. Thus the relative failure of publishers’ bindings in France, allied there to the love of fine leather bindings, has led to a lack of interest in what the Anglo-Saxon world terms ‘original condition’. While different conditions, either aesthetic or economic, seem in Germany to have encouraged a widespread use of paper-covered boards by binders, thereby complicating the study of the use of boards by publishers. Another aspect which has to be borne in mind is that various classes of publication may be marketed in different manners and that a general trend may be difficult to establish. School-books, prayer books, almanacs, periodicals may each have their own history quite apart from the general fields of literature and science.

Throughout the 18th century the usual practice was for slight publications to be stabbed and oversewn, while larger books were sewn ‘two on’ (or even three on) with no more than two thin cords, the sections being largely held in by the kettle stitch. The whole then had a sheet of plain or marbled paper wrapped around and it would seem more than likely that many books were not only sold but even first read in this form. Voltaire’s own working copy of the 1775 edition of his works (now in Leningrad) is bound in precisely this manner. A portrait of Madame de Pompadour shows her reading with, on a side table, another work thus-covered cast negligently aside.³ In French this was termed ‘Brochure’ and Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1751) describes the action of doing this as ‘plier les feuilles d’un livre les vines sur les autres, les coudre ensemble, & les couvrir de papier marbré ou autre’, adding later both that ‘les meilleurs livres se brochent ainsi que les plus mauvais’ and that the term was also applied generally to all slight publications. Incidentally this verb, ‘brocher’, has a long history in French, meaning to stitch or to tack together but is first mentioned with this specific meaning in 1718. Also, rather unusually, it seems to have spread as a trade term and is the basis of both the German (Broschüre) and Italian (brossura) words, although in the latter language, as in Spanish, the phrase ‘all rustica’ or ‘en rústica’ is sometimes preferred. In German the overriding sense was originally that of a small publication and, first recorded in 1759, it is used with this meaning in Denis, Einleitung in die Bücherkunde (1777), in the phrase ‘Brochüren oder pièces fugitives’. Schiller uses it in the same way and its use in a strictly binding sense is not recorded before the mid 19th century.⁴

In France the use of marbled and blue-grey paper wrappers certainly continued through the 18th century and indeed the revised bookbinders’ code of 1750 specifically gave publishers and printers the right to cover pamphlets and small books in paper or vellum without stiffening.⁵ Gradually plainer and lighter coloured papers became more general and, by the fall of Napoleon, covers tended to be yellow or some similar light colour which would allow the printed text or decoration they bore to be seen easily. That this development should come so late is perhaps surprising in view of the regular use of blue wrappers on the monthly parts of periodicals and their inclusion of considerable printed matter from a relatively early date. In 1695 the Mercure Galant, published in Paris, advertised monthly parts in two forms, either calf or vellum bound, but this note has disappeared by 1701 and the first pages of many early 18th-century periodical parts are evidently intended as title-pages needing but little protection until the annual volume was bound up. It has been claimed that printed wrappers occurred first in England on numbers of the London and Gentleman’s Magazine about 1740, while in an important article Professor Jackson records their use in Boston on the American Magazine in 1743.⁶ However, while by this date French periodicals have ceased mentioning binding with their price, I have not so far found any extant specimens to compete with these claims. Certainly by the 1770s the practice was widespread in France, and the Taylor Institution Library, Oxford, possesses a fine set of the monthly parts of the Mercure de France in their original blue wrappers for the period 1778–92. The same Library has various other periodicals with the monthly parts in their original wrappers, for example the famous Journal encyclopédique, published at Bouillon in 1782, in blue wrappers, the upper and lower covers having a long text on the other periodicals also available from the publishers together with full details on subscriptions, and the spine bearing, similarly within a plain frame, titles such as ‘JOURNAL ENCYCLOPEDIQUE. 15 FEVRIER 1782. Tom. II Part. I’. The Schweitzerisches Museum for 1783, published by Orell, Gessner, Fussli and Company of Zurich, is distinctly more elegant, having an interlace and ornamental border, attractive typographical layout with a central medallion on the upper cover, and keeping its subscription and advertising material to the inner sides and lower cover of the wrapper. The first of these incidentally announces at length, under the heading ‘Avertissement’, the German translation of William Coxe’s Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden and Denmark. The Bodleian possesses several numbers of C. A. Gunther’s Helmstadt periodical, Annales literarii, published in 1778 and 1779, in their original wrappers.

Periodical covers would seem to be the natural forerunners of the 19th-century book wrappers with advertisement but some other 18th-century forms of cheap covering deserve to be mentioned. Theses, especially in Scotland and in Germany, were often covered in marbled, embossed and gilt papers of a very decorative character. These papers have often been called Dutch but were in fact mostly manufactured in Germany and this appellation probably stems from the loose contemporary use of the word Deutsch.⁷ Another influential source of decorated paper covers was Italy and Professor Jackson has commented on the frequency of their use there in the later 18th century, especially on folio poems. These were often bound in pasteboard covers whose paper exterior bore a stencilled baroque design, often including the arms of the dedicatee, or, if on tinted paper, they may have had a design printed in gold. He also suggests that as these were probably made for a limited number of specific copies they must be considered as a class on their own. The example he quotes is the Harvard copy of Clemente Bondi, La felicità, Parma 1776. Two examples in the Broxbourne Library can also be recorded.⁸ They are found on Poesie per le gloriose nozze dell’ eccellenze loro il signor cavaliere Alvise I. Mocenigo e la signora Francesca Grimani (Venice, nella stamperia Albrizzi 1766, fol.), where the mauve paper bears a stencilled frame and the Grimani arms, and on Componenti poetici in occasione de solenne ingresso di sua eccellenza Mss. Zorzi Pisani alla dignita di Procuratore di S. Marco (Venice 1780, fol.), stencilled with the arms of Brescia. A fine green and red rococo design is also found stencilled on the pink paper boards of the quarto Austrian official Provinzialkalender (Vienna, J. Edlen von Rurzbeck 1785) in the Broxbourne Library.

While these large covers were intended for special productions, others, either in decorated paper or with open rococo frames, were occasionally produced, aimed at being suitable for any book, the details (author, title) of which could be added later into the blank spaces. The Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, and the Staatliche Ku...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• Part I The Physical Book, or Matters Material
• Part II Matters Authorial
• Part III Trade Matters: Practices and Practitioners
• Part IV Periodicals and Newspapers, or Matters Serial
• Part V Reading and Related Matters
• Name Index