printing

(William brought a traveling mint along too, to speed the creation of coins with the new kingly and queenly mugs. Image from the NYPL Digital Gallery.)

I've been making an effort to sort out my English history once and for all, and lately have been reading my way around the seventeenth century. And what have I learned? All about William of Orange's use, in the year 1688, of a traveling hand press to churn out political propaganda.

William of Orange, along with his wife Mary, tidily orchestrated what has come to be known as England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. This transfer of power unfolded through both military and propaganda campaigns. And, as one might imagine, that traveling printing press was part of the latter. As William moved across England on his way to London to claim the English crown for himself and his wife (who was English royalty,incidentally), he arranged for pamphlets, broadsides, and declarations, and even early comics of a sort to be printed and distributed across the countryside. Copies were given to local printers and booksellers to distribute to townspeople, and the texts were read aloud at public venues as well.

Historian Lois Schwoerer has shown in her research that on-the-fly media creation was just one element of a long and savvy print campaign on the part of William of Orange to lay the groundwork for his claim of rightful possession of the crown. In her article "Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688-89," Schwoerer explains the prominence of printing as a campaign element: "William was really prepared to keep the presses rolling for his cause after he landed in England. What better proof is there of this intention and his interest in propaganda than the fact that he brought a printing press with him--along with soldiers and horses--as part of his invasion equipment?" "Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688-89" appeared in American Historical Review's vol. 82, no. 4, p. 843-874, and is available via JSTOR at the Library.

Other sources of information on the history of this period include Britain's Bloodless Revolution, William III and the Godly Revolution, Arts and Society in England Under William and Mary, The Declaration of Rights 1689, and The Age of William and Mary. Additionally, digital editions of documents created during this propaganda campaign are ready to be viewed in Early English Books Online (EEBO), a database available at the Library.

Did these little fellows see their shadows, I wonder?

Happy Groundhog Day to you! This image is just one of more than 150 more lithographed images of four-legged beasts that appeared in Audubon's Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America in the 1840s. The Library has made the art from this work available for easy browsing in the NYPL Digital Gallery, so go and check out the other animal portraits. (I'm partial to the prairie dogs myself.)

Lithography was developed in Germany in 1798 by Aloys Senefelder, and this manual printing method uses a flat stone surface, water, and greasy medium to create the image. To learn more about lithography, read Bamber Gascoigne's invaluable reference How to Identify Prints. This friendly guide can help you to sort your engravings from your etchings, and your woodcuts from your wood engravings. And you'll learn about the variety of means of making printed illustrations by hand. Gascoigne cannot teach you about the weather, however; you'll have to count on a groundhog for that.

(The private act of reading in the very public space of Bryant Park in the 1930s, a heyday for private presses. From the NYPL Digital Gallery.)

In 1929, Giovanni Mardersteig, the head of the Italian private press Officina Bodoni, offered this explanation of his press's ideals: "A book consists of five elements: the text, the type, the ink, the paper, and the binding. To create a unity from these five elements in such a way that the result is not a passing product of fashion, but assumes the validity of permanent value--that is our desire." Private presses--those small publishing houses that devoted loving attention to type, design, illustration, and (usually*) adherence to handpress production--blossomed on both sides of the Atlantic in the early twentieth century. Often, as Geoffrey Glaister explains in his Encyclopedia of the Book, the bibliophiles and typophiles who ran private presses published limited editions of books which were then distributed to subscribers or to members of an associated club.

Just such a club here in New York City was the Limited Editions Club, founded by George Macy in 1929 and credited (in Grove Art Online, an excellent resource available at the Library) as one of the most influential private presses to promote the creation of finely illustrated books. Macy recruited the period's greatest artists, designers, and illustrators--including Bruce Rogers and Thomas Hart Benton--to contribute to the Club's luxurious editions of classic literary texts.

For students of the craft of printing and illustration, NYPL's collection of Limited Editions Club publications is a treasure trove (a search for Limited Editions Club in Catnyp brings up over two hundred titles). And to get the big picture concerning the scope of the Limited Editions Club's printing efforts, you can also look at a bibliographical catalogue of the Club's publications, entitled Great and Good Books.

*As Glaister reports, some presses did not limit themselves to small handpress runs and instead sought to deliver finely designed and produced volumes to the masses. One such press was Nonesuch Press, established in England 1923. Nonesuch aimed "to adapt mechanical methods to the production of finely made books which were to be sold at modest cost through normal trade channels." And indeed, Nonesuch had tremendous success with The Week-End Book, a lovely volume in decorated cloth covered boards, endpapers printed with whimsical (and useful) gameboards, and jaunty illustrations throughout.

I admit it—I love Benjamin Franklin. A printer, a founding father of democracies and libraries, a good-natured autodidact who maintained his curiosity to a wise old age, and a fellow charming enough to sway the ladies of France. Really, what’s not to like? And the fact that he labored as one of the country's most renowned early printers of the hand press period more than qualifies him for mention here.

Today is the ingenious Dr. Franklin’s birthday, and in his honor I’d like to suggest that you come to the Library and browse our digital collection of his works. At any branch or research library in the NYPL system, you can browse the Early American Imprints (Series I) database for works written or printed by Franklin. And this database allows you to read, print, and save for yourself the full text images of any books, pamphlets, broadsides and periodicals that strike your fancy.

Another option for Franklinophiles out there is a visit the Grolier Club, which currently has on offer an exhibition called Benjamin Franklin, Writer and Printer. The curators, James N. Green and Peter Stallybrass, are scheduled to give a lecture on their exhibition at 2:00pm on January 23rd. And NYPL holds a copy of the curators’ accompanying book, so you can come long after the lecture and exhibition have passed and still take it all in. There’s plenty of Franklin to go around, as you’ll see, and I’m willing to share. Happy Birthday!