straight to the heart of a big trouble about children's books....
The children themselves in view, eh? The ultimate consumers.... No.
I am sorry to say, we do not. We can't. Because children do not buy
books.... You see, a juvenile, like any other book on our list, has
to please the person that's likely to buy it. And that means, a book
to please adults--a book that a grown-up will mark down as something
a child ought to like. _Ought_ to, you see--the adult's judgment, not
the child's. We can't get past it. We can't find out what the child
really _does_ like. When children rally to an author, or a style of
book, then we get a glimpse of the children's state of mind. But that
is our only contact.... All our _new_ ventures have to be baited and
primed to catch the fancy of the mothers and the cousins and the
aunts--_against_ the interests of the ultimate consumer, you might
say, when that is necessary. Sometimes a juvenile runs to large sales
purely on the strength of adult appreciation alone, like Ferdinand,
for instance.... If it were possible, there is nothing I should like
better than to deal with the children direct. I have children of my
own. I think I understand them ... to a certain extent. I think I could
please them. Once or twice--this is a confession--I did take a direct
hand--made a couple the way I thought they ought to be. _My_ judgment
against the child's, eh?... Complete failures--drugs.... I couldn't
move them--couldn't get past the censor--couldn't sell the grown-ups.
--Have you ever thought of ways for getting into direct touch with the
children?
--I can see no practicable way. As the case stands you can't penetrate
the Adult Front Line.
MR. L.
Q: This scheme of Mr. McG.'s for a different kind of book--what do you
think of it?
--If he can _control_ his "decline from a high estate" I am with
him, emphatically. Books need to be cheaper. Books _vis-à-vis_ market
certainly need to be studied all over again--from a new base line. I
agree with his findings about shabby-genteel. And I'm sure that I'd
like his "cheap" books much better than the kind I buy now, _if_ he
can liven them up as he suggests. The question is, can he stop his
"strategic retreat" at the right point? It's like inflation: easy to
start, but...! He drops the standard of material and process--will
his proofreading go down hill too?... Many French books in paper
wrappers--made at the lowest cost-level, badly printed on cheap
paper--have an air and a style that our own more expensive affairs
can't quite achieve. _Somebody_ laid a finger on them. Who, in Mr.
McG.'s scheme, is to be this somebody whose touch creates liveliness
and interest? A highly important factor in the product!... If we
_can_ get the liveliness and interest, we will be glad to trade more
expensive paper and printing to get it. Our books are pretty dull....
But, _just_ inferior printing on cheap paper, _without_ the lively
touch and style, is going to bore us worse yet!
--You mean dull in content?
--I mean dull optically, visually.... Like--to put it into terms
of sound--like a long, droning recital of a tedious story--no
inflection--no climax--no motion. ... I like Mr. McG.'s figure of a
"good, interesting talker."
--You'd spice it up with "modernist" feeling?
--No. He's right, there. No fireworks. Keep the explosions _outside_
the book.
--_You_ have used "contemporary" design.
--Yes, but you'll notice, not in places where _reading_ is going
on.... Another point: letting the market set the _tone_ is not good
merchandising. The market needs to be led, by a tone a little higher
than its average taste.... And Mr. McG.'s good tool isn't made by
majority vote in Congressional committee--it's made by somebody who
knows, expertly and practically, just what the tool is intended to do
and how it works.
--You are for "books as tools."
--I am for books as tools--and that means cheaper books.... I think,
too, that a lot of the things that make books expensive are false
value--brummagem.... But the trade is so firmly established in the
tradition of false-front and bustle-rear that I'm afraid it's going
to take an awful tussle to get it back to real values again--to
the tool basis--to the simplicity and directness and general
fitness-for-its-job, for example, that makes a carpenter's plane a
masterpiece of appropriate design.
COMPOSED IN ELECTRA TYPES
[Illustration]DESMOND FLOWER[Illustration]
_The Publisher and the Typographer_
From _The Penrose Annual_, Vol. 44. Copyright 1950 by Lund Humphries
Ltd., London, and Pitman Publishing Corp., New York. Reprinted by
permission of the publishers.
We live in an unhappy age. I suppose that it must be the most wretched
known in history since the hordes of Genghis Khan swept across the face
of the eastern world. Yet it is not the physical losses--though these
are bad enough--which are responsible for the malaise, but a spiritual
shortcoming: a lack of direction and a lack of faith. Ours is an age in
which there is no single thing, not great or small, which can escape
our petty probing, our questioning and our doubts. Nothing is because
it is: a shadowy reason must be sought behind.
In the course of man's desire to examine and explain away everything,
one of the multitudinous minutiæ which have come in for worried
attention is the position of printers, particularly in relation to the
publishers they serve. The first four centuries of printing produced
ninety-nine per cent of all the books which are worth looking at: yet,
at what time during that period did anyone worry about the division
of responsibility in a book's production? Then, it was a matter which
somehow got done; now, unfortunately, it is a subject for discussion.
When Sweynheim and Pannertz started work at Subiaco in 1465 they were
at the same time both printers and publishers, and this represents
a dual personality. But when Fichet, the Rector of the Sorbonne,
decided to set up the first French press five years later within the
precincts of the University, he imported three printers from Germany,
and possibly the first printer-publisher relationship was born. That
this relationship was a living thing is shown by the fact that Fichet
had the books which the press produced printed in Roman type. Soon
after the great Rector had gone into voluntary exile for his political
opinions, the press moved out of the University precincts to become
a normal commercial printing shop, and Gering and Krantz reverted to
the use of gothic type! Since the use of Roman lay within the high
road of French classical development--France being the only country in
Europe which did not begin its printing history in gothic--this stands
as the first instance of the views of a publisher, as a man ordering
the print, being in advance of the more timorous craftsmen, who were
glad to revert to their old, safe and conventional ways as soon as the
refining influence was removed.
French printing as a whole in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries is full of printer-publisher problems for our questing minds.
Simon le Vostre, the great ecclesiastical publisher of his age, used
Pigouchet mostly for his printing; the Hardouyn brothers commissioned
several lovely books from Anabat: why, and who dictated the terms? The
balance of power may then well have lain with the printer, since in the
Hardouyn's 1500 _Book of Hours_ the first page is filled with Anabat's
superb device. But what shall we say of the _Hours_ printed in 1527 by
Simon du Bois, but which bears on every page the unmistakable stamp and
signature of its publisher, Geoffroy Tory? Now, they say, too, that
Tory was not a binder: yet from him we have two gilt panels done to his
order and to his design, matching exactly the work which he hired his
printers to do for him.
I feel we are too certain in our minds that in the past printers
were _ipso facto_ publishers, or that those "for" whom they printed
were merely agents. Like a fatal crack hidden for many years in the
foundations of an outwardly sound edifice, the split between printer
and publisher had occurred at the Sorbonne in 1470, but was patched,
mended and ignored from time to time for long thereafter. Yet like
that neglected flaw which, having widened until it defies repair,
will in the end bring the whole building down, the printer-publisher
relationship has now some time ago irrevocably divided.
Today the publisher and the printer are two separate men: there are
few exceptions to this rule. Mr. Oliver Simon recently began one of
his all too rare essays with the words "Printing is a way of life";
and later he remarked that "if he (the printer) is not something of an
artist, he cannot hope to evolve and maintain a typographic style."
But these words must be read in conjunction with one of Holbrook
Jackson's many wise remarks: "whether it (printing) is an art or not
is a secondary affair, so long as it is good printing. 'Art happens'
says Whistler, and the printer who sets out to be an artist is liable
to make a mess of both art and print." One further quotation will show
how readily Holbrook Jackson's wisdom can be thrown out of the window;
in these pages last year Mr. Herbert Read criticised the English
and American editions of his own book, _The Grass Roots of Art_. He
wrote "On balance, I do not find much to choose between these two
designs from a functional point of view, but discounting a poverty
due to material restrictions imposed on the English publisher, there
is a certain liveliness in the American production, which, were I a
purchaser faced with a choice, would induce me to buy the American
edition, even if it cost me rather more. But if the English edition
had been printed on better paper, it would have been the easier of the
two editions to read...." With the exception of the last sentence,
the whole of this passage seems misleading and irrelevant. The use of
the word "functional" is one of the crosses which we in the twentieth
century have to bear, but, since it has occurred, we must presume the
function of printing to be that of presenting the written word to the
reader in its most easily assimilated form; if the English edition
in question is, apart from its paper, more easily readable, how can
both editions be equally functional? The implication that a piece of
printing--particularly when the text is a work of serious criticism--is
to be purchased (even at a higher price) for its liveliness at the
expense of its readability is particularly unfortunate. If for
"liveliness" we read "speciousness" or "pretention" we have found a
ready definition of the one quality which should be excluded from
book printing at almost any cost. For this reason I am frightened of
Mr. Simon's statement that "printing is a way of life"; good printing
implies a philosophy, it is true, but I fear that printers who are
far from good may assume airs above their station and, when they
produce a perfect horror, state "that is my way of life--take it or
leave it." If they do, they may be astonished at how fast any decent
publisher will embrace the latter course. I disagree with a great deal
more which Mr. Read wrote in his article, but there is room here for
comment only upon his remarks about Baskerville type. Baskerville is
_not_ an easy type, nor a safe one (though printers may find that it
satisfies their customers). The "gentlemanly sort of type which passes
unnoticed, unquestioned" is undoubtedly Caslon and all its derivatives.
Baskerville with its broad face and flourishing Italic is hard to
handle, and in consequence is employed in a higher percentage of bad
printing than any other type face.
It is generally agreed that when an irresistible force meets an
immovable body, the result is a stalemate; equally obviously, whichever
power wanes first will suffer an immediate eclipse. From this we may
proceed by a process of elimination. A publisher who knows what he
wants employs a printer who is an artist, and the result should be a
masterpiece of give and take. A publisher who does not know what he
wants employs a printer who is an artist, and the result should be a
piece of fine printing. A publisher who knows what he wants employs a
printer who is not an artist, and the result will depend on the degree
of taste of the publisher. A publisher who either does not know what
he wants or does not care, and employs a printer who is not an artist,
will both get and deserve a shambles. From these simple equations one
constant factor emerges--the publisher; and this fact is not at all at
variance with the traditional saw that he who pays the piper calls the
tune.
There have been a number of eminent publisher-printer relationships in
the past. I have mentioned the French of 1500-1550, where there seems
already to be evidence of a publisher's taste exerting an influence.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries offer no examples which are
worthy of study: the works undertaken by one printer on behalf of a
syndicate of publishers produce no evidence of the book's appearance
being dictated by any taste other than that of the printer himself.
The nineteenth century saw the publisher come into his own. One of
the greatest publisher-printer partnerships in the history of British
book-production is that of Pickering and Whittingham. It would be
reasonable to suppose that Pickering was the moving force in this
partnership, since the ideas are publishing ideas mainly exemplified
by the Aldine poets and the Diamond classics, and their starting
point is Pickering's choice of the anchor and dolphin with the motto
grouped about it: _Aldi Discip. Anglus_. To the same taste of Pickering
and his delight in the printing of Aldus and his contemporaries may
be attributed the gracious and restrained use of sixteenth-century
fleurons which in the eighteen-thirties are not readily to be
found elsewhere, and the curiously appropriate renaissance borders
occasionally introduced. Another partnership in which I suspect that
the publisher had a considerable say was that of Edward Moxon and
Bradbury & Evans. In 1850 Moxon issued the first edition of two most
important works, Wordsworth's _Prelude_ and Tennyson's _In Memoriam_;
both were printed by the same printer. But eight years later we may
point to John Murray's edition of Coleridge's _Table Talk_; this,
too, was printed by Bradbury & Evans with more than a glance over the
shoulder at Pickering's publications, but without the guiding hand
of Moxon. It is an interesting book, for it just fails before every
problem which the text sets. Pickering would have set the solid prose
at least a point smaller and increased the margins; in the same way
he would have managed to get more space between each specimen of
_Table Talk_. Instead of a page of grace and readability, there is in
consequence a slightly crowded air and the eye skips disconcertingly
from line to line.
Little more than thirty years later British book production was
influenced by the most powerful small group of publishers which had
ever turned printing upside down: it was indeed a small group--it
consisted of three men: John Lane, Elkin Mathews and Leonard
Smithers. The splendid series of publications for which each of these
extraordinary individuals was responsible need no enumeration here
... but it is worth pointing out that they were the pioneers of the
asymmetry which Mr. Read praises as an unusual and notable feature in
the American edition of his book already mentioned. Holbrook Jackson
said the last word on the publisher-printer relationship: "it was
publishers like Pickering, Moxon, Field and Tuer, Elkin Mathews, John
Lane and J. M. Dent who by their example in the nineteenth century
helped to _defend_ [my italics] printing from printers who were
content to do as they were told, and, if no one told them, to follow
rule-of-thumb methods which tended always to become worse rather than
better."[32]
To quote again from Holbrook Jackson: "It was long before the average
printer took advantage of the awakening of typographical taste which
began in the eighteen-nineties. The men who extended and consolidated
that taste came from anywhere but the printing offices. The majority
of modern typographers are intellectuals or scholars who have forced
themselves on the trade, often through the publishing houses."
In almost every age there have been a few commercial printers of
first-class standing, but perhaps it is no coincidence that it would
be difficult to name one who was at work in the eighteen-nineties--the
most lively age of the publisher's influence. The situation has not
materially changed by the middle of the twentieth century, except that
in our own age we are fortunate in having among us a few printers who
bow to no man, and have left their mark upon this country's production.
First among them stands Mr. Oliver Simon, whose steady output of fine
printing must command unqualified admiration. Both the Cambridge and
the Oxford University Presses have evolved styles of their own, and
there are a few others who are fine printers in their own right. But on
the other side of the ledger there is Sir Francis Meynell, who, despite
the criticism that much of his work is pastiche, showed with exquisite
taste [in the first hundred Nonesuch Press books] what could be made of
the types and ornaments which Mr. Stanley Morison had made available
through the Monotype Corporation, and all this with a multitude of
printers who were set to work and produced but one result--pure
Meynell. There is also the more recent example of Mr. Jan Tschichold at
work in the Penguin pool.
This lamentable lack of taste among the generality of printers led
publishers to give instructions as to their wishes, and this in turn
has created a new position in publishing offices: the typographer. Once
this person made his appearance on the payroll, the initiative passed
from the printer for ever. In the first place, if the publisher employs
a typographer he is going to be sure he gets his money's worth; in the
second, human nature being what it is, most printers will willingly
accept a publisher's design because it is the line of least resistance,
and because, according to the best principles of business, the customer
is always right.
I cannot see why the initiative in design should ever pass back to
the printer. The problem was admirably expressed by D. B. Updike in his
little book of essays on the craft, _In the Day's Work_: "If printers
had more of a standard and a stiffer one, both about the types they
employ and the way in which they use them, printing would be better.
The printer, if he has no standard, _must_ allow the customer to
dictate his own wishes about types." I hope that there will always be
the handful of printers who are great enough to say "you will do it my
way--or else," but the rest will do as they are told by publishers'
typographers, which amounts to the substitution of house styles for
printers' styles. Printing, like so many arts, has fallen into the
hands of the middleman--for such indeed the publisher is. There I
am sure it will remain, and it is now for the middleman to justify
himself. If he will take his responsibilities seriously he can do
nothing but good. The good printer's compositor who is "something of an
artist" will go on setting the target; but the publisher's typographer
can, if he will, go far towards dragging the mediocre printers up
towards the same high standard. If this is done, design in British
printing will show a welcome overall improvement.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] _The Printing of Books._
[Illustration]WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT[Illustration]
_The Anatomy of the Book_
From the Manual of Linotype Typography, Copyright 1923 by Mergenthaler
Linotype Company, Brooklyn, N. Y. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers. Corrected and amended by the Editor.
The experienced designer is familiar with the successive parts of
a complete book. All less formal embodiments of the book idea have
some of these parts, and their position in the whole scheme should be
governed by the traditions of the book proper.
In order to leave complete freedom as to number of pages, the favorite
custom is to number the text pages in arabic folio numbers, beginning
with 1. The front pages are then numbered with Roman folios, and thus
it makes no difference with the body how many or few front pages are
finally found necessary.
The typographical treatment of front matter and chapter pages
throughout the book should be in perfect harmony, whether the
treatment is simple typography or calls for elaborate embellishment.
The character of the book is largely decided by what is done in this
respect, and the intelligent designer fully realizes its importance and
the chance thus given him for distinguished work.
The following summary gives these parts in proper sequence, and the
nature of each.
BASTARD TITLE (_always a right-hand page_)
Nowadays this page (often miscalled "Half Title") is used merely
because custom demands the familiar resting place for the eye in
advance of the Title Page. It should never be omitted in work of any
pretension to style and quality, and it should never be made unduly
prominent by decoration or other treatment. Conventional dignity is the
safe note for this page in the book.
ADVERTISING CARD (_always a left-hand page_)
If an Advertising Card or other similar announcement is required,
it should be typographically a part of the book, no matter what the
client's style in his advertising typography may be. If a customer has
a special or unique form of advertising, and insists on its use, the
printer should inform him that it conflicts with the harmony of the
book to do so.
THE TITLE PAGE (_always a right-hand page_)
The Title Page gives the reader his sense of the whole book's quality.
It should, therefore, be as nearly perfect as may be. Its first
essential is that the eye shall read instantly the three important
facts that it has to tell: the title of the book, the name of the
author, and the imprint. In the case of a business volume this means
the merchandise or business subject, the name of the business house,
and the address or addresses. The typography should make these three
divisions clear at a glance. There should be as little else on the
title page as possible. Everything that can be left out is an aid to
quality. The principle of the page is that it is an announcement of the
book's contents and that it should not go beyond a very few display
lines. It is the door to the house. White space is of the greatest
value in this part of the book. If decoration is used, it should never
be made more important than the type lines. The use of different faces
of type is almost always bad, and success is obtained only occasionally
by a genius. So important is harmony that it is not safe even to
combine lines of capitals and lower case letters, except after careful
planning and with assured understanding and talent.
COPYRIGHT (_always a left-hand page_)
The Copyright of the volume should be placed a little above the center
of the page. The best taste calls for caps and small caps, or small
caps alone. It is customary to use the bottom of this page for the
printer's imprint or the international requirement, "Printed in the
United States of America," or both, but the size of page should be
considered.
DEDICATION (_always a right-hand page_)
The character and purpose of the Dedication dictate that its treatment
should always be formal. The "monumental" style is appropriate and
correct. Small caps are the best. The Dedication should always be a
right-hand page. Its reverse must be left blank.
PREFACE [OR FOREWORD] (_always a right-hand page_)
A Preface that has simply the ordinary character usual to most prefaces
should be set in the same size of type as the body of the book, and
in the same face. For any preface of unusual importance, the page may
be double-leaded, or set in a type one size larger than the body. If
the book has both Preface and Introduction, the Preface may be set in
italics to mark the distinction. Italics may also be employed if the
Preface has been written by a person other than the author. In this
case, however, the Preface is preferably placed after the Contents and
the List of Illustrations.
CONTENTS (_always a right-hand page_)
The Contents or Table of Contents, filling as many pages as necessary,
follows the Preface. The quality of this part of the book-job
depends on the little niceties of spacing, margin, and proportion of
white space to type which are too often ignored, even in otherwise
pretentious books. The Contents pages are almost as important as the
Title Page in establishing a sense of quality.
THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (_always a right-hand page_)