Well-Made Books

EVERY holiday season brings books whose appeal is to the eye. Formerly more than now, stress has been laid upon the illustrations of such books ; for the ease with which pictures of all sorts can be copied and printed has made illustration a very common accompaniment of books published in any season, and the prodigality of the illustrated montldies and weeklies has accustomed the user of books to abundant pictorial setting. Pictures are no longer a distinction, and it may be added that this sort of currency has become so free that few persons discriminate between the genuine and the counterfeit. For the purposes of lavish decoration, there is little difference to the public between an art which represents great design in the artist and patient toil on the part of the interpreter, and an imitation which means a conjunction of paper-maker, pressman, and chemist to produce a superficial show of likeness to an original. There can be little doubt that the steady improvement in mechanical processes tends to diminish the importance of the engraver’s craft, and to multiply enormously the capacity of bookmakers to reproduce designs, old and new; it also blunts the perception of true values by accustoming the eye to mechanical as distinguished from artistic excellence.

We suspect that the cheapening of illustrated books by the apparent reduction of art and artisanship to one common level has had something to do with the increased attention paid by the makers of books to those elements which enter into substantial beauty of book-making independently of such accessories as pictures. Possibly, also, the need of studying the several constituents of a book compelled by the conditions of printing process-made cuts has led to greater dexterity in the management of these constituents. At any rate, the lover of good books takes pleasure in noting how many satisfactory books and sets of books have appeared lately which owe their attractiveness to the attention paid to the fundamental properties of the art of book-making.

We had occasion, in a recent number of this magazine, to make some appraisal of the literary worth of the studies in nature which for nearly a generation Mr. John Burroughs has been making and publishing, and which now have been brought together anew in a series of nine volumes.¹ We refer to these books again simply as examples of the beautiful effect produced by a combination of the simplest means. The eye is filled with the harmony of parts, and not fixed upon some single excellence. The type is delicate, yet firm ; the proportion of the page is obedient to just laws which prevail in architecture as much as they do in typography ; there is an absence of meaningless ornament and stupid, impertinent points in captions and head-lines ; the paper is flexible, agreeable to the touch, and real all the way through, not all surface and no depth ; the margins are sufficient and well balanced ; the printing is even and of good color, and the number of pages is well related to the size of the volumes. The binding, too, and the lettering have the simplicity which is not barrenness. The portraits of Mr. Burroughs, which present him at different periods, are full of personal interest, and the scheme of title-page vignettes and frontispieces facing them is a pleasant revival of a good fashion of former days, though the etchings themselves are not all equally agreeable.

Here is a case where the generous virtues have been cultivated in a decorous, quiet way, so that it is scarcely a stretch of language to call the books a most gentlemanly set. But that bookmakers can cultivate the frug’al virtues also is apparent in the one-volume edition of Robert Browning ² which comes from the same jiress. Here the problem was to pack a prodigious amount of verse into a single book without making the volume unwieldy or levying too heavy a tax on the eyesight. When one looks at the six volumes of Browning’s writings published by the same firm, and sees how large a page is required and how solidly set, and counts the pag’es with the result of 11550 in all, and then considers that all this matter was to carry in addition an equipment of headnotes rebiting such histories as were connected with the several poems, and a tolerably full biographical sketch, as well as explanatory notes, chronological list, and indexes, the wonder grows how all this substance could be pressed without being squeezed into 1050 pages; doublecolumned, it is true, but entirely legible and fair to the sight. Again, the actual bulk of the book is by no means considerable. The paper is thin, but opaque, and the binding in cloth free, and not weak. The book lies open as if it were a well-made Bible, and it does not tumble to pieces with the using.

A similar success must be chronicled of Mr. Stedman’s Victorian Anthology,³ and a comparison of this work with the Browning affords a fresh illustration of the value of good taste and sound judgment in the exereise of the book-maker’s art. The two volumes are of the same size externally. Both are in double columns, and though Mr. Stedman’s book contains two hundred and fifty pages less than the Browning, it required skill to pack all lie bad to oiler into a single volume. What we wish to note is that, though it is built on the same lines as the Cambridge Editions, the nature of its contents determined variations which render the effect of the book individual, though it is in harmony with its fellows, there was a classification of an elaborate sort which called for several distinctions of type in the headings, and these distinctions are perfectly clear through the careful adjustment ot the proportions of the type used. In this instance both compactness and freedom were demanded, and the combination of these elements on the printed page testifies to a high degree of skill and a scholarly taste on the part of those who regulated the page. We are occupied with the externals only of the books under review, but which has made the Anthology not only a most convenient survey of contemporaneous English verse, but, by its precision, its method, its order and classification, an analysis at a glance of the whole contents of the poetic period. the studious care shown in this piece o book-making is very intimately connect ed with the extraordinary editorial ar

Of somewhat more monumental character, as befits the man whose recent death calls for all the tribute which the craft he blessed can give him, is the edition of Stevenson’s works ⁴ which the publishers of his more important writings have set forth. The edition is in sixteen volumes, of which the novels and tales form the larger half, the remainder being divided among his travels, poems, and miscellaneous essays. There is a variation of perhaps a hundred and fifty pages between the largest and the smallest members of the series, a variation compelled, it would seem, by the grouping of the material; yet, there is little apparent difference in the thickness of the volumes. It is a mistake, we think, to build up the smaller books in a set by the use of heavier paper, or to equalize the thickness by using a lighter weight in the books having a larger number of pages. It should be said, however, that the character of the laid paper in these volumes makes this inequality less per ceptible in the handling.

The treatment of this series of books proceeds upon a different plan from that adopted in the edition of Burroughs already mentioned, and one may please himself with the fancy that an equal sense of fitness prevails in each case. For as a certain severe simplicity characterizes the Burroughs throughout, here the note is a picturesque one. Stevenson justifies the picturesque, and these volumes attack the eye with a boldness which is not displeasing. They are bound in red buckram and have elaborately gilded backs. The page is large, and the type is of a cut which should be used sparingly by book - makers, especially when there is much matter to be set, for it has a brilliancy of display which is not restful, but insistent. Yet as one turns over page after page of this new Stevenson, and stops to read a favorite passage, or has his eye caught by some bit of color in speech, he is bound to confess that there is a natural harmony between the page and the witty thought it carries.

We have chosen a few examples with which to illustrate our thesis that the solid satisfaction which the book-lover takes in his books is due less to the extent with which they may be embellished than to the obedience they show to fundamental principles ol art in book-making. Such books as are carefully studied, and are not governed by the ruling caprice, never lose their beauty ; age does but mellow their graces, and the satisfaction they give when they are new is enhanced by the consideration that it will endure by companionship.