Rare Books: Making a 19th-Century Book

Increased printing --> increased paper consumption
 

Problems: 1) hand-making process was labor-intensive & 2) increasingly limited supply of cotton and linen rags

Solutions:

Fourdrinier machine = the first successful continuous paper making apparatus (early 19th)

Rag --> Wood pulp

• Experiments as early as 18th c with other types of vegetal fibers
• Process only became viable w/ advances in mechanical pulping in 1840s 
• Chemical pulping in 1860s, sulfite process 1870s

Early 18th c – Stereotype, widely used starting in early 1800s

1790s – Lithography invented by Aloys Senefelder

• Chromolithography “the peoples’ art”
• Illustrations, not text

1822 – William Church’s typesetting machine
1880s - Automated punch-cutting and casting

• Ottmar Merganthaler – linotype (1884)
• Tolbert Lanston – monotype (1887)
• Linn Boyd Benton – pantographic punchcutting machine (1884)

1800 - Earl of Stanhope produces the first cast-iron printing press
greater pressure --> larger printing areas

1812 - Friedrich Konig creates press w/ mechanism that raises and lowers printing platen --> steam 
London Times adopts in 1814: From 250 sheets an hour to 400 and then over a thousand large (approximately 36” x 22” inch) sheets/hr

1840s - Richard March Hoe invents the rotary drum printing press 
Greater pressure and faster impressions (25k/hr)

1820s – 1st publisher cloth bindings
1827 - William Burn’s Rolling Press

• flatten and consolidate folded sheets 
• Protested by the Society of London Bookbinders

1832 - Imperial Arming Press (emboss/stamp)
1832 - Archibald Leighton develops book cloth that could take and retain impressed gilt decoration rapidly and in sufficient quantity to allow for gilt-stamped cloth edition bindings.
1880 - David McConnell Smyth’s (book) Sewing Machines

In the early 1800s there was an evolution in the world of book binding, taking us from leather and casings to the first cloth bound books. Prof. Simon Eliot as he explains these developments at a pivotal time in the world of publishing.

An up close and personal look at the National book sewing machine. Book sewing was one of the last hand bookbinding process to be mechanized

**Increase in Literacy**

Literacy rates in the UK

• 1841: 67% men and 51% women
• 1891: 93-94% for both groups

Books increasingly seen as a means of self-education

**The book as a ready-for-market commodity**

Publishers’ bindings aid advertisement and distribution

Railroads & Steam powered ships --> 

• “Steam serials,” published in installments, and the 1-3 volume “triple-decker” become standard publication formats.
• “littérature de gare” a genre of books acquired at the train station for travelers to read en-route

Chap books, from the term “chepe book,” small and inexpensive books meant for a downmarket readership

Paperbacks first appear in the 1870s

**Fine Press Movement**

Perceived quality of mass-produced printed books increasingly negative. 

• Reactions combined aesthetic and political criticisms of its impacts on workers and commercial products