to us now, looking back from a wealth of typographical equipment,
including Bembo, Bell and Times. But if we look round the literature
of the trade at that time, particularly at _The Fleuron_, we note
that Caslon in its Monotype version had a vogue, almost a kind of
typographical Indian summer. _The Fleuron_ number one was set in the
"then fashionable" design known as Garamond; number two in Baskerville;
numbers three and four reverted to Caslon. When Mr. Stanley Morison
took over the editing of numbers five, six and seven, and the printing
moved from Curwen to Cambridge, the final volumes were all set in
Fournier.
It was about this same time that William Maxwell told Shaw that his
old Caslon plates were worn out and suggested complete resettings in
a new Standard Edition in large crown octavo in small-pica Fournier
1-1/2-points leaded. In the final choice of type for the Standard
Edition, we detect again how Shaw trusted William Maxwell's judgment
and accepted his advice. No doubt there was an improvement in
readability over the original edition, but my own feeling is that the
Standard Edition, as at present printed, has none of the evocative
charm of the original edition. It may be that the Sundour binding seems
prosaic. But Shaw, disgusted by the fading of his green covers, was
converted to Sundour by a Winterbottom director emphasizing that not
even the Indian sun could change it.
When Shaw first saw Maxwell's specimens for the new Standard Edition
in various type-faces, Caslon, Baskerville, Scotch Roman, Old Style
and Fournier amongst others, he replied, "I like them all but I'll
stick to Caslon until I die: and after I am dead you can do what you
like." Fortunately, Shaw is still alive and the Standard Edition is in
Fournier.[40]
I cross-examined William Maxwell closely and at some length on this
switch from Caslon to Fournier. His persuasive and peculiar ability to
get his own way, even in face of such a do-or-die statement of Shaw's,
must be remarked here. I am afraid, however, the only light I can
throw on this, the greatest typographical conversion of all time, is
that Maxwell himself is very fond of Fournier italics. Maxwell is no
hard-headed Scot. He comes from the soft Hyperborean north, where the
Gulf Stream makes the fuchsias grow six feet high. When he confesses
to an affair with an elegant French type there isn't much chance for
even an Irish author, much less the English public, to break up the
"auld alliance." Thus Shaw's Standard Edition, now running into some
thirty-five volumes, began publication in Fournier in 1931 and has
steadily reprinted in this type and format at intervals ever since.
In an article on "Author and Printer" in the eleventh impression of
the ninth edition of Collins's _Authors' and Printers' Dictionary_ Dr.
R. W. Chapman observes: "The prolixity of modern writing, fostered by
cheap paper and print, by the habit of making books out of articles and
lectures, by the use of typewriters and stenographers, is a positive
evil."
[Illustration: Shaw's meticulous proofreading is indicated by this
heavily-corrected proof of _On the Rocks_, with a complete retyping of
the passage below.]
Shaw's method, probably verging on the diabolical to Dr. Chapman, is to
write everything first in shorthand. A double-spaced typescript then
becomes his working copy, to be sent to the printer only after careful
emendation and revision, in Shaw's always clear hand.
The manuscripts, typescripts, galley, page and final press proofs,
indeed the whole apparatus of the Shavian "workshop" in William
Maxwell's collection, show the great pains Shaw takes in writing
and revising before setting. His meticulous proof reading is as
characteristic as the clarity of his proof correction. William Maxwell
tells me that Shaw's first-proof corrections are often heavy, sometimes
involving considerable re-setting and re-make-up. But wherever lengthy
excisions or additions are made in final proofs, Shaw is always careful
to supply the exact number of words; sometimes in shorter corrections
counting individual letters in substituted words in order to avoid
over-running and re-justification.
By all the standards of Horace Hart and Howard Collins, Shaw would
qualify as an admirable and expert author in the technical aspect of
his relations with his printer--except, perhaps, for Dr. Chapman's
scholarly strictures on prefatorial prolixity and diabolonian
authorship.
Shaw's plays are drafted in what he calls Author's Shorthand
(simplified Pitman); typed by his secretary; revised; printed; and
passed for press after two more revisions. For rehearsal, fifty copies
are struck off as "By a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature." If
more are required they are "By Bernard Shaw." These sets are "privately
printed." Alterations and additions in rehearsal and during the run of
the play are incorporated as final corrections before publication.
One of the most interesting Shaw exhibits in William Maxwell's
possession is the original of the filmscript of _Pygmalion_. Shaw
allowed no hand but his own on the scripts of his films. The corrected
copy of the play, with alterations in dialogue and time scheme for the
screen and the additional scenes and sequences, is in itself remarkable
visual evidence of Shaw's nimble-witted inventiveness. Few playwrights
at the age of eighty-five have tackled so successfully the transition
into another medium, cooperating with director and producer to present
in all its freshness and verve the authentic Shavian touch on both
sound-track and screen.
The original edition, the Limited Collected edition, the Standard
edition, form the bulk of Shaw's printed works; his printed ephemera
are not my concern here. There are, however, various editions of what
we might call out-of-the-run-plays-and-prefaces books: _The Intelligent
Woman's Guide_, _Everybody's Political What's What_, the two-column
quarto editions of the _Prefaces_ and _The Complete Plays_, the
illustrated _Black Girl_, the illustrated _Good King Charles's Golden
Days_ (there was also an illustrated edition of _Geneva_ printed by the
Chiswick Press) and the illustrated Penguin edition of _Pygmalion_.
"Omnibus" editions of the _Plays and Prefaces_ have been published by
Odhams, cheap editions by Penguin; and _Back to Methuselah_ by the
Oxford University Press in World's Classics. The Odhams omnibus was
reprinted from Shaw's plates; the Penguin editions were re-set in Times.
_The Intelligent Woman_ was instructed in Caslon on a page dimension
decided by William Maxwell; a binding design by Douglas Cockerell;
and a four-colour half-tone jacket from an original drawing by Eric
Kennington of a nude female Intelligencer looking down a well. She,
needless to add, had a much less shapely figure than the Black Girl.
The typography of _The Intelligent Woman's Guide_ (1928) is in the
Caslon formula. We need only note in passing that the drop initials at
the beginning of chapters are tightly fitted and spill over into the
margins. The binding suggests that too much Cockerell can spoil a trade
binding. The jacket was regrettable: the externals of this book seem
out of character with the rest of Shaw's production. A more acceptable
popular edition, printed from the same plates, with reduced margins in
small demy octavo, was published a year later in 1929.
[Illustration: Shaw's note on the corrected _Pygmalion_ filmscript in
which he altered the dialogue and time scheme, providing additional
scenes and sequences for the film as shown in the two pages following.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The two-column edition of the _Complete Plays_, set in Scotch Roman
in quarto, is a skillful piece of book-making; a pleasant, readable
page, which William Maxwell can appropriate entirely to his own credit.
For size, weight and general colour the Scotch Roman was eminently
successful for all the plays in one volume, not too heavy in the hand,
in a format which makes for easy reference and re-reading.
The contrast of the two-column Fournier setting of the _Prefaces_ with
the two-column setting of the _Complete Plays_ in Scotch Roman is to
the advantage of the Scotch Roman. The small pica Fournier is too large
in relation to the width of the column and, to my eye, does not look at
all happy in this two-column setting.
_Everybody's Political What's What_ provides us with an interesting
example of the close collaboration in proof-reading between William
Maxwell, his press-readers and Shaw. Shaw, to illustrate some argument,
asserted erroneously that so many codfish were being caught at one
period that great quantities were being thrown back into the sea.
Maxwell pointed out that codfish were never thrown back into the sea;
they are salted, dried, preserved and disposed of in many other ways.
Shaw, hazy about varieties, intended fish in general and not codfish in
particular.
Also in this book, Shaw mentioned that when an outsider wins a race,
book-makers lose. William Maxwell, no mean expert in the making of
these other kinds of "books" and having absorbed, no doubt, from Edward
Clark some knowledge and appreciation of "the sporting spirits,"
questioned this; and innumerable letters from punters and bookies
overloaded Shaw's letterbox. He re-worded the passage to silence the
rule-of-thumb practitioners.
We have all been afflicted from time to time in prefaces and authors'
notes with the names of odd people who have also "read the proofs."
There can be few authors who get the benefit of skilled press-reading
and skilled scrutiny from a managing director so knowledgeable about
fish and about "bookies." The codfish and "bookie" stories are an
interesting indication of how every page of Shaw's goes through a
double sieve at Brandon Street, such is the passion of Scots for
accuracy in type-setting. The Scots' passion for perfection in
press-work comes to light in this association with the production of
_The Black Girl_.
Some time prior to 1932, Shaw asked Maxwell to suggest an
engraver-illustrator for this Voltairean tale; Maxwell suggested John
Farleigh. With that thorough attention to detail characteristic of the
Scot, he not only ensured that Shaw should have an illustrator capable
of interpreting his ideas, he also took care that the engravings,
paper and ink should all be happily matched and tested. By accepting
full responsibility for the typography of the illustrated page, he
undoubtedly produced an illustrated Shaw of a quality and at a price
which was a credit to author and printer.
My typographical feelings about _The Black Girl_ are mixed. The
engravings seem rather too heavy for the Fournier setting; it may be
an odd observation to make about a Shaw book, but the illustrations
overload the text of this slim book; the binding is too much and too
black. Shaw's own wash drawings of the Black Girl are much more subtle
in suggestion than John Farleigh's white line. But there was little
doubt about the success of _The Black Girl_ with a large public. It is
an interesting and successful example of a short book with text and
illustrations printed at one impression, and without any complications
in binding.
The contrast between Farleigh's sharp white line and Topolski's loose
black squiggle in the illustrated edition of _Good King Charles's
Golden Days_ demonstrates what I mean by the rigidity of _The Black
Girl_ page. Shaw as an author is impossible to illustrate; he can only
be annotated and decorated. There is an engaging light-hearted quality
about Topolski's cosmopolitan draughtsmanship which seems to suit Shaw
better than Farleigh's engravings.
Maxwell's earliest recollection of meeting Shaw is of going to see Mrs.
Shaw at the Adelphi about the printing of her translations of some
plays by Brieux, the author of _Damaged Goods_. Shaw had written an
introduction to them.
In the centenary letter to William Maxwell in November 1946, Shaw
wrote: "I remember Edward Clark very kindly and very well; but it was
with you that our business relations developed into a cordial personal
relationship which has been of inestimable value to me as an author...."
[Illustration: Correction in popular edition of _The Intelligent
Woman's Guide_ showing careful count of words and letters for exact fit
of substituted passage.]
William Maxwell at an early stage in his career became aware of the
printer's responsibility to the author. Clark's work for Robert Louis
Stevenson must often have been recollected and discussed. Many other
authors have passed through Brandon Street on their way. It is one of
the doubtful pleasures of a book-printing establishment to deal direct
with authors. Maxwell has had his full share of that kind of mixed
pleasure and responsibility with Hardy, Kipling, the Webbs, Sir James
Frazer, Hugh Walpole, Virginia Woolf, Charles Morgan, Osbert and Edith
Sitwell.
I began with an Edinburgh book-printer; I conclude with an honorary
LL.D. of Edinburgh University. In 1947 that ancient University
conferred on William Maxwell that honour which he values above any
personal recognition. It was a deserved compliment to R. & R. Clark and
to Scottish printing as a whole.
No man is self-made; but so far as any one individual can by his own
efforts raise the standard of his trade, the renown of his firm and add
to the lustre of his native city, Dr. William Maxwell has done so by
his devoted and sedulous years in the service of many authors and many
publishers....
This inadequate typographical report is in no sense intended to be
either accurate or inclusive. Nor do I make any claim for startling
innovations in graphic design or any particularly noteworthy
contributions to typography. This productive association has covered
fifty of the most inventive years in the mechanical development of
book-printing; Bernard Shaw himself wrote, "I have not had to think
about my printing. I have left it to do itself, which means that R. &
R. Clark had to do it." All the same he thought a lot about it.
I may well conclude with the final paragraph of Shaw's letter to
William Maxwell of November 1946. "Long may you and R. & R. Clark Ltd.
flourish after we have said our last farewell which we shall both, I
hope, be still too busy to attend to."
COMPOSED IN CALEDONIA TYPES
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Two excerpts are included in this book, see pages 86 and 87.
[40] A specimen page from _The Devil's Disciple_ is shown on page 386.
[Illustration]PAUL A. BENNETT[Illustration]
_On Type Faces For Books_
It is simple enough to understand that type, paper and ink are
components of book printing. But not so easy to comprehend the reasons
for the variety of papers available, nor the many dozens of type faces
offered for book composition.
The reasons for this great variety are partly functional, partly
aesthetic, and competitive. Papers differ in many ways--color, finish,
opacity, strength and bulk are some of them.
Type faces differ, too, and for equally valid reasons. There are the
important design and style differences that comprise the old style,
transitional and modern faces suitable for books. And distinctions in
weight or "color"; distinctions in roundness, in degree of compactness,
and distinctions in legibility, and in size.
To the designer of books, type face selection is important in relation
to the character of the text to be printed. The size of type selected,
and the amount of "leading," or space between its lines, has a bearing
upon the number of pages the manuscript will make.
Some shorter manuscripts, for instance, need to be "driven out" or
padded, to make the book appear greater in content than it actually is,
to justify its price. Others need every possible degree of compression
to get the manuscript into a lesser number of pages, which, in turn,
means fewer "forms" to print, fewer "signatures" to bind, and less
paper to use.
To turn from the functional use of type to the aesthetic, and also make
a rather loose analogy, one may think of the type face as a garment
with which the designer dresses the author's words.
In this instance the designer selects a type face to develop an
"allusive" format--to reflect something of the style of the period
of the manuscript. Bruce Rogers, the greatest master of allusive
book-making, in his "Paragraphs on Printing" points out that in a small
way this is "like planning the stage setting for a play.
"An up-to-date style for an ancient text would compare with staging
_Hamlet_ in modern dress. However novel and effective in its own way,
you feel it to be strange, and this sense of strangeness is an annoying
distraction; you are forced to think of the setting and the designer
rather than the text."
It is easier to suggest a feminine appeal with types like Estienne
or Fairfield or Garamond, than with less decorative faces such as
Baskerville, Bodoni or Janson. Yet it is foolish to go too far in this
direction. Strictly speaking, there are no definitely feminine or
masculine types--the way type is handled has much to do with the mood
it evokes. And it is dangerous to pin labels on types without knowing a
great deal of their background and derivation.
The idea of using many distinguished types for the composition of this
book was deliberate: The intent was to demonstrate, on a uniform paper
surface and under identical printing conditions, the "behavior" of
twenty of the finest types of our time.
And to afford a basis for comparison that might not only illumine some
of the points mentioned, but also provide reference specimens of these
notable book faces. To that end, a complete alphabet showing in caps
and lower-case of each face is included, with a brief account of its
background and development.
Not every essay will be equally appealing, typographically. Yet the
variety of faces used in setting them seems more successful than would
be the less sensitive treatment of uniform typography. Reading the
articles and studying the performance of the individual types should
provide an increased appreciation of the part typography plays in
developing the book's format.
In this present instance, the designer has chosen one basic
"background" face, Janson, for the majority of the essays. And has
"interleaved," so to speak, many of the essays set in different types.
This treatment lessens any tendency toward uneven color and spottiness,
and minimizes some of the potential "scrap book" feel of many differing
type specimens.
The problem of coupling face with essay was carefully considered. There
could be none but the obvious selection of the author's own design
in connection with five of the essays: Electra for W. A. Dwiggins'
"Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books"; Perpetua for
Eric Gill's "Typography"; Times Roman for Stanley Morison's "First
Principles of Typography"; Deepdene for Frederic Goudy's "Types
and Type Design"; and Centaur for the extracts from Bruce Rogers'
_Paragraphs on Printing_.
Some background on the type selections for other essays may be of
interest: Monticello, a recutting of one of the earliest American
types, was a natural and excellent choice for Lawrence Wroth's "First
Work with American Types," as was Bembo, one of Beatrice Warde's
favorite faces for her "Printing Should Be Invisible." Bell, which
Mr. Updike was one of the first to use with distinction--he called it
Mountjoye when he acquired it in 1903--was the choice for his "Some
Tendencies in Modern Typography."
The selection of Poliphilus for Sir Francis Meynell's "Some Collectors
Read" seemed appropriate in recognition of the many fine Nonesuch
books he had set in English Monotype faces; while that of Baskerville
for John Winterich's essay on Franklin as printer and publisher was
because Baskerville was a type Franklin greatly admired. Caledonia, an
original Dwiggins face influenced by Scotch Roman, was the more subtle
choice for Scot printer James Shand's revealing account of George
Bernard Shaw's relations with his printer--more appropriate to Shand's
preference and background, than would have been the choice of Caslon or
Fournier, in which Shaw's books have been set.
* * * * *
The brief mention of old style, transitional and modern faces may need
amplification. And also the descriptive terms Linotype and Monotype,
which are trade-marked words that indicate _methods_ of composition.
In _Linotype_, the product is an actual line of type, called "slug"
in printer's parlance. This is produced by one machine, from matrices
assembled through finger action on a keyboard. In operation, the
assembled line moves to the mold for casting and the matrices are then
returned (distributed) to their channels in the magazine for use in
other lines.
In _Monotype_, the product is individual pieces of type--letters and
spaces assembled into a line of many elements, as in hand type. The
Monotype machine consists of two units: the keyboard (which resembles
a type-writer) punches holes in a roll of paper, not unlike that in
a player piano. This roll is then fed into the casting unit, where
it functions by controlling levers which bring the matrix of each
character into position for casting letters and spaces in sequence in
the lines.
[Illustration]
The distinctions between type faces called old style, transitional
_or_ modern, are apparent at a glance to the technician. Just as,
for instance, you distinguish instantly between a Scandinavian, a
Latin-American, or a Mongolian. Analysis may indicate that the chief
factor in your instant recognition of these types is memory of features.
So too in type faces. Here the differences are more minute, and
essentially a matter of design distinctions: the weight and relation
of thick and thin strokes, the treatment and stress of curves, and the
handling of "serifs." There is little difference in the actual shapes
of letters, which is as it should be.
One of the more lucid accounts of the development of letter forms is W.
A. Dwiggins' "The Shapes of Roman Letters," included in his _Mss. by
WAD_. Illustrations from this minor classic are used here by permission.
Remember that most of the letter forms we meet are modifications of
written letters, shaped by pen action. Some differences in the details
of serif treatment are indicated by these Dwiggins drawings:
[Illustration]
_a_ _b_ _c_ _d_
_a_ shows a commonly designed serif detail, much better handled by
natural pen action in _b_. The arch of a letter, frequently handled in
type as _c_, is more crisp and attractive in _d_, the natural pen form.
In type, serifs help carry the eye in a horizontal direction, a
designer friend points out, setting up a "flow" from letter to letter
within the word, and from word to word across the line.
[Illustration]
_e_ _f_
Contrast the "degenerate, commonly used" form of o shown in _e_, with
the more attractive pen form in _f_. Here is graphic distinction in the
treatment and stress of curves.
The two most common classes of type faces are "old style" and "modern."
The "transitional," a merging of the old style form into the modern--is
typified by the illustration of Bulmer, between the Janson and Bodoni
specimens used for the visual presentation on page 404.
Our old style faces descend from the early Italian Roman types and
differ in minor details and "national" characteristics. Among the old
style faces used in this book are Bembo and Centaur, which reflect
the Italian form; Estienne, Granjon and Garamond, which reflect the
French form; Caslon and Janson, typical of the English-Dutch form; and
Fairfield and Times Roman, as differing expressions of contemporary old
style types.
Modern faces, the result of a swing of taste in the opposite
direction, stemmed from an effort to copy in type the letters of
eighteenth-century copper-plate engravers. Bodoni, the classic form of
the modern, is included in its lighter rendering, named Bodoni Book.
The first English modern, named Bell, is also included; together with
two contemporary moderns, the Dwiggins-designed Electra and Caledonia
faces, cut by Linotype. All three are less severe than Bodoni and
retain elements of the transitional form in some letters.
The two really transitional faces included are the classic Baskerville,
and Monticello, which verges somewhat more to the old style character.
"Letters," as Mr. Dwiggins illustrates graphically, "are made out of
thick 'stems,' thin 'hair-lines,' loops and 'serifs,' or finishing
strokes."
[Illustration]