In my last post, I wrote about my joy in finding printer’s errors and what we might learn from them about early modern printing. In this one, I want to look at some examples of what printers do to correct their errors. Mistakes happen, as I tell my kids; it’s what you do about your mistakes that matters. So, what do you do when you make a mistake? You fix it! In most cases, you’d hope that the error came to light during a proof stage so that you can correct it before you start your print run. Sometimes, however, you find mistakes during a print run; in that case, you can stop the press to replace the incorrect type with correct type. (“Stop the presses!”) The petition I wrote about in the last post, where I was focused on the curious shadow-type, is also a good example of the different…
Tag: errors
learning from mistakes
One of my favorite categories of early modern books are those that show errors, small mistakes made in the process of printing them. I don’t love them because I like to laugh at them. I love finding them because they remind me that books are made by people and they carry with them traces of their making. Books don’t just magically appear.
pretty picture penance
It’s been much longer since I’ve written a proper post here than I meant for it to be. In my defense, I’ve been pretty busy over at The Collation, running the show and writing my own contributions. There’s lots of good stuff over there, including a whole world of manuscript exploration that I don’t do here; check out Heather Wolfe’s and Nadia Seiler’s interesting posts if you like that sort of thing (and if you don’t think you do, browse anyway and you’ll learn that you do!). And if you’re looking for advice on using Folger digital resources, like searching Luna and the power of permanent URLs and Mike Poston’s new tool, Impos[i]tor, the tooltips series is for you. In any case, this post isn’t meant to be an advertisement, but to do a pretty picture penance: sharing some great book images, even if I don’t have the time to…
today’s post is brought to you by the letters k and e
Do you ever get the feeling that something’s just not quite right, but you’re not sure what it is¿ If you’re curious what the other screensavers are on the new Kindle, scroll through the twenty I snapped. They’ve clearly moved on from the book illustrations and author themes they had in earlier models to writing implements. I’m not sure what larger message I’d want to draw from this, but they’re mostly very pretty. I just wish those turned letters didn’t bother me so much. Is it artsy or just wrong? I’m all for artsiness and playfulness. But I can’t help suspect it’s just wrong, or at least, less about art and more about a fear that people will fail to recognize the “kindle” embedded in the picture.
that thei they thnt
My students are in the process of choosing the books they’re going to work with this semester, so I’ve been looking at lots of books I haven’t seen before. One of them is an English translation of Nicholas Monardes’s Historia medicinal, a 1577 book with one of those glorious long titles: Ioyfull newes out of the newe founde worlde, wherein is declared the rare and singuler vertues of diuerse and sundrie hearbes, trees, oyles, plantes, and stones, with their aplications, aswell for phisicke as chirurgerie, the saied beyng well applied bryngeth suche present remedie for all deseases, as maie seme altogether incredible: notwithstandyng by practize founde out, to bee true: also the portrature of the saied hearbes, very aptly discribed: Englished by Ihon Frampton marchaunt. (Want more info? Check out the record on Hamnet.) In doing her description of the book, my student noticed something funny about the headlines. They…