Hammersmith (London, England) -- Imprints; Kelmscott Press; Printing -- Great Britain -- History
Before I finish I should like to say a word concerning large-paper
copies. I am clean against them, though I have sinned a good deal in
that way myself, but that was in the days of ignorance, and I petition
for pardon on that ground only. If you want to publish a handsome
edition of a book, as well as a cheap one, do so, but let them be two
books, and if you (or the public) cannot afford this, spend your
ingenuity and your money in making the cheap book as sightly as you can.
Your making a large-paper copy out of the small one lands you in a
dilemma even if you re-impose the pages for the large paper, which is
not often done, I think. If the margins are right for the smaller book
they must be wrong for the larger, and you have to offer the public the
worse book at the bigger price; if they are right for the large paper
they are wrong for the small, and thus spoil it, as we have seen above
that they must do; and that seems scarcely fair to the general public
(from the point of view of artistic morality) who might have had a book
that was sightly, though not high-priced.
As to the paper of our ideal book, we are at a great disadvantage
compared with past times. Up to the end of the fifteenth, or indeed, the
first quarter of the sixteenth centuries, no bad paper was made, and the
greater part was very good indeed. At present there is very little good
paper made and most of it is very bad. Our ideal book must, I think, be
printed on hand-made paper as good as it can be made; penury here will
make a poor book of it. Yet if machine-made paper must be used, it
should not profess fineness or luxury, but should show itself for what
it is: for my part I decidedly prefer the cheaper papers that are used
for the journals, so far as appearance is concerned, to the thick,
smooth, sham-fine papers on which respectable books are printed, and the
worst of these are those which imitate the structure of hand-made
papers.
But, granted your hand-made paper, there is something to be said about
the substance. A small book should not be printed on thick paper,
however good it may be. You want a book to turn over easily, and to lie
quiet while you are reading it, which is impossible, unless you keep
heavy paper for big books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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