Tucked into this copy of American Cookery (1796), often cited as the first American cookbook, is an unexpected and rather scandalous insert. Labeled simply “ADVERTISEMENT,” this errata sheet lays bare a bitter dispute between the book’s author, Amelia Simmons, and the person hired to help prepare her manuscript for print. An errata sheet usually offered …
Although T.S. Eliot was never a full-fledged member of the Bloomsbury Group, he developed relationships with many of its members, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf. In fact, the Woolfs published many of Eliot’s most important works on the small press they operated out of their kitchen.
During the hand press era, composing the text of a book was among the most technical elements of the printing process. This post describes the labor involved in typesetting and imposition.
Most of us learned in school that Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which is not entirely accurate. He is, however, conventionally credited with inventing the process of mass-producing individual pieces of type. These innovations in moveable type allowed for books to be efficiently produced in large quantities and revolutionized the human ability to share ideas. This post explains the multi-step process of mass-producing metal letters to be used in printing texts.
