BOOKS AND BOOKBINDING 



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BOOKS AND BOOKBINDING 



EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK 



1. The cairn. 



2. Story-telling. 



At first the only books printed were copies 

 of the Greek and Roman classics and religious 

 works. They were bound without title page, 

 and there was no statement anywhere as to 

 when the books were printed or where or by 

 whom they were produced. Occasionally the 

 printer put in a paragraph on the last page of 

 the book containing this information and used 

 the seal of the town in which he lived, or his 

 own coat-of-arms, as a trade mark. The first 

 dated title page was used in 1470, but title 

 pages did not become common until after 1500. 

 Most of the books were very large. The Bibles 

 especially were immensely thick and heavy, and 

 the paper on which they were printed was very 

 thick and strong. 



About the year 1500 smaller volumes began 

 to appear. Books were read more and more, 

 and they had to be made so that they could 

 be conveniently handled. Thinner paper was 

 used, and pasteboard was substituted for 

 wooden boards for stiffening the binding. Dur- 

 ing the seventeenth century the art of printing 

 was at its worst, but the badly-printed pages 

 were often most beautifully bound in orna- 

 mented leather or in velvet gaily embroidered 

 in gold and silver and bright-colored threads. 



At the end of the eighteenth century and the 

 beginning of the nineteenth, book-making made 

 a conspicuous advance. The outward appear- 

 ance of books was greatly changed by the intro- 

 duction of glazed cloth as a covering for the 

 pasteboard sides. Better paper was used, and 

 printing presses were greatly improved. The 

 most famous artists of the day were doing 

 book-illustrations, principally engravings on 

 copper and wood-cuts, but also etchings and 

 lithographs. These methods have been almost 

 entirely superseded by zinc etchings and other 



photo-mechanical processes. A noteworthy 

 feature of the last decade of the century was 

 the general revival of printing as an art, due 

 chiefly to William Morris, the English poet, 

 painter and craftsman. The most noteworthy 

 advance of recent years has been the intro- 

 duction of very thin paper, called India paper, 

 in standard books, resulting in volumes an 

 inch thick, yet containing a thousand pages. 

 Such paper is hard to handle, and has been 

 largely superseded by a paper somewhat heavier 

 but still much lighter than the average of the 

 last century. 



Book Publishing and Selling. There was a 

 time when the author of a book was often also 

 the publisher and bookseller, and not so many 

 years ago books were sold only at the printer's 

 or the author's house. Practically all of the 

 early printers acted as their own booksellers, 

 and later some of them began to print books 

 for other printers and carry in stock books 

 printed by others. 'To-day, however, few 

 authors have a more intimate connection with 

 the publishing and selling of books than to 

 make their terms with the publishing company 

 and receive their royalties, the royalty being 

 a percentage of the price at which the book 

 is sold. The publisher makes all arrangements 

 for printing and binding, and also distributes 

 the book through the retail booksellers. 



American Book Trade. In 1672 the first 

 book store was opened in Boston by a man 

 named Hezekiah Usher. Benjamin Franklin, 

 too, was one of the early American printers and 

 booksellers and because of his many other 

 achievements he probably did more than any- 

 one else to make the new trade famous. Many 

 of the books sold by the early booksellers were 

 imported from Europe, but the printing trade 



