Printing
At least two of my publishers were also listed as printers, and Darton and Harvey, were listed as intaglio printers. It’s therefore possible that all my printing was done in-house. However, no mention of this is made within my pages, and no archival records exist in the few extant Darton and Harvey publishers' archives.
My pages were printed on a wooden handpress. Each page destined to settle between my covers was typeset, meaning that individual metal letters on type blocks would be set up into pages of words and sentences in a frame called a forme. This placed into a printing press. This would then would be operated by two printing staff. The forme would be inked, the paper would be placed in a separate frame called a tympan, this would be moved under the press squeezed against the type, in order to achieve an impression on the page.
There were a number of techniques a printer could use to ensure a clean, even impression on a page, but in times of haste (or when a book was, like me, not destined to sell for much) a printer might eschew an even print in order to save time.
There is some evidence of double impressions, as a faint ghosting of letters appears (left image) which suggests some slippage of paper against the type in the forme. Some of the type has been pressed into the paper so hard that it has caused a deep smudging impression in the paper (centre image). In other places, the letters are so unevenly inked as to look as if there were applied in an almost painterly manner (right image).
My typeface is a Baskerville Roman, in the standard size known in England at the time as 'English'. Even with this smudging, smearing and smashing of the letters into the paper, the words are still legible. And, for myself, I do not mind so much as it is likely that if I were compared to one of my sister copies in my generation, we would show many different signs of the printers' whim on individual pages, and these distinguish each of us from one another.
My pages were printed on a wooden handpress. Each page destined to settle between my covers was typeset, meaning that individual metal letters on type blocks would be set up into pages of words and sentences in a frame called a forme. This placed into a printing press. This would then would be operated by two printing staff. The forme would be inked, the paper would be placed in a separate frame called a tympan, this would be moved under the press squeezed against the type, in order to achieve an impression on the page.
There were a number of techniques a printer could use to ensure a clean, even impression on a page, but in times of haste (or when a book was, like me, not destined to sell for much) a printer might eschew an even print in order to save time.
There is some evidence of double impressions, as a faint ghosting of letters appears (left image) which suggests some slippage of paper against the type in the forme. Some of the type has been pressed into the paper so hard that it has caused a deep smudging impression in the paper (centre image). In other places, the letters are so unevenly inked as to look as if there were applied in an almost painterly manner (right image).
My typeface is a Baskerville Roman, in the standard size known in England at the time as 'English'. Even with this smudging, smearing and smashing of the letters into the paper, the words are still legible. And, for myself, I do not mind so much as it is likely that if I were compared to one of my sister copies in my generation, we would show many different signs of the printers' whim on individual pages, and these distinguish each of us from one another.