Читать книгу Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles - Various - Страница 25

THE DECEYTE OF WOMEN, A. VELE, LONDON, C. 1550. The combination of black-letter and a woodcut is a usual title page in an early English book. This undated example is probably mid-century, as the printer, Vele, is not heard of before 1548. The cut seems to date much earlier. (Size, 5-1/4x7-1/2 inches.)

The purely typographic title page is naturally of greater interest to the modern producer of books. At all periods the title page which was effective mainly by the arrangement of type has been common, and at most periods there have been printers who preferred to dispense with ornament of any kind. In the sixteenth century the books of the Paris printer, Michel de Vascosan, illustrate this severer manner, and the classical style of the great printers at the close of the eighteenth century was likewise independent of decoration. Some sort of arrangement of the letters displayed on the title page suggested itself from the first, and very soon various shapes were tried. Perhaps the commonest arrangement was the conical one, or the so-called hour-glass shape, in which the lines of type begin by being long, to become short at the center, lengthening again in the imprint at the foot. Others have preferred a natural arrangement, printing the matter exactly as if on a page of the text. Geofroy Tory, a book producer whose work was of great importance in the history of the book, seems to have been against the fashion of his day in his choice of the natural layout. It has certainly been the usual custom to aim at some sort of pattern in the division of the lines of type. In this respect the earlier printers had one advantage which was not enjoyed by their successors. They felt no difficulty about dividing a word in a title, even when the second part of the word was to be set in a different size or even a different kind of type. Frequently we find examples of such breaks in words as custom has made impossible for the modern printer. The simplification of the task for whoever was responsible for the layout is obvious. One rule which seems to have been almost universally observed is that the mass of the type must be in the top half of the page and not evenly distributed. [Page 69.]