Chapter 6
Choice of Type, Format and Size of Edition

In Plantin's well-equipped printing office the cast type stood ranged in orderly rows in the cases, paper and ink were to hand. But even when a manuscript lay ready, covered by approbatio and privilege,1. there were still a number of important decisions the master had to make before he could hand it over to his men for printing. Taking the nature of the intended publication into account, he had to select the design and size of the type, the format of the book, and the number of copies to be printed.

Type designs2.

Printing types are stylized versions of script. To be legible and usable they have to be based on the style of handwriting in current use. Foreign alphabets posed no special problem for Plantin. He bought or commissioned punches and matrices for Greek and Hebrew alphabets of various sizes but fairly uniform design. He ordered only one size of Syriac, just as his son-in-law Raphelengius later had one size each of Arabic, Ethiopic, and Samaritan cut at Leiden.

Matters were much more complicated when it came to printing

texts in a ‘Latin’ alphabet. Various ‘Latin’ hands had evolved through the years. With the coming of printing in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries these scripts influenced and conditioned the printed letter.

The Italian humanists of the fifteenth century rediscovered the beauty of the Carolingian minuscule and began to imitate it. The typographers responsible for introducing the art of printing into Italy soon started to reproduce this script in their punches and thus created the type that already acquired its name of roman in this period. At the end of the fifteenth century this type began its triumphal progress beyond the Alps and soon became the characteristic printed letter of the Western world. Plantin too knew this type as ‘roman’ and it was the one he used most. However, the roman had a number of competitors.

In fifteenth-century Italy there developed out of this littera humanistica or roman script a cursive form, the littera cancellaresca. In 1501 Francesco Griffi (of Bologna) adapted this for Aldus Manutius to use as a printed type. Like the form from which it developed this cursive or italic quickly spread all over Western Europe in the sixteenth century. Almost every one of Plantin's roman type sizes had its italic counterpart.

Roman and italic expanded at the expense of the gothic scripts, although north of the Alps, and particularly in the Germanic countries, it was a long time before the replacement was complete. A number of forms of gothic had evolved over the years and before the fifteenth century was out they had all been adapted for printing. For example the ‘round gothic’, which was in fact the form of gothic script used in Italy, where it was swiftly supplanted by roman, continued to be employed for a time in transalpine Europe for scholarly works. But here too it was eventually replaced by roman, a process that had been completed before Plantin set up his first press. Only

in Spain did this round gothic persist for a time, especially in service books.

The angular, upright Fraktur, or black letter form of gothic had been typical of the painstaking manuscripts of Western Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. It fell out of use at the end of the latter century for handwriting, but lived on tenaciously in print in Germany, England, and in particular the Netherlands. Plantin even referred to this kind of gothic as flamande or Nederduits.

Alongside this angular type a more cursive form had developed, rather rounded in France and the Netherlands (bastarde), more pointed in Germany (Schwabacher). During the first half of the sixteenth century the bastarde disappeared from French and Netherlands printing practice and Plantin seems never to have used it. The Schwabacher persisted in Germany a little longer but eventually also went out of fashion. Plantin occasionally employed a cursive gothic type of this kind, calling it allemande or Hoogduits.

In France and the Netherlands the bastarde script was replaced by a still more cursive and rounded hand. In 1557 Robert Granjon, the French type-cutter referred to in an earlier chapter, introduced a printed version of this new gothic handwriting. Plantin was one of the first printers outside of France to obtain founts of this type. He called it lectre françoise or lectre d'écriture. Typographical historians use the term ‘civilité’.1.

When printing a book in a ‘Latin’ alphabet Plantin had the choice of a range of types - roman, italic, and all the various forms of gothic, although as far as the gothic was concerned, the printer confined him-

self in practice to the flamande (black letter), allemande (Schwabacher) and lectre françoise or civilité. However, the printer did not really have a free choice. It was determined by quite strict rules and stubborn traditions which could not lightly be flouted. Particular types were reserved for certain kinds of work and certain languages. Contemporary attitudes to these matters are revealed in a letter from Plantin to Morillon1. in which he explains that certain persons had rejected a proposed psalter simply because of the type used in a specimen page ‘of which they complain that it is a Flemish (i.e., a black letter) type that they will not have’.2.

According to the ideas current in Plantin's time, Latin texts were printed only in roman or italic, with the exception of certain liturgical works such as psalters and antiphonaries for which gothic, of either angular or rounded style, was used. In practice this was nearly always a Flemish or angular gothic. On one occasion, however, Plantin planned to employ a round gothic for these service books. He knew from experience that the Latin peoples did not much care for the angular flamande and so when he proposed to produce for Philip ii and the Spanish market the biggest choir books (antiphonary, psalter, and gradual) ever printed, he took the precaution of commissioning a round gothic alphabet that was more to Spanish taste. However, the revolt of the Netherlands against Philip ii thwarted the project and Plantin's ‘lectre castillane’3. remained unused.4.

In the case of the vernaculars, a distinction was made between the Romance and the Germanic languages. Roman or italic was customary for French, Spanish, and Italian; gothic for the Germanic languages. Plantin issued books in two of the latter languages, using flamande in accordance with Netherlands tradition for Dutch texts and allemande for the very few works that he published in German.

The advent of civilité complicated matters considerably. Robert Granjon tried to launch his creation as a national French type. It was in fact used for a time in his homeland for French books. Plantin and some of his contemporaries in the Netherlands attempted to introduce this imitation of current handwriting into the Netherlands as a national type for both French and Dutch texts. However, Plantin soon abandoned his attempt to use civilité for French-language works, for competition from roman and italic in this sphere was too strong.1. For publications in Dutch he and his fellow printers kept up their efforts for a little longer. Few large works in the Officina Plantiniana were set in civilité,2. but it did figure to some extent as an accompanying type to black letter.3. The Netherlandish publishers, in fact, mainly reserved it for primers for Dutch-speaking schoolboys.4. It was in this capacity, and also in popular romances and novels, that Granjon's design persisted in the Netherlands as long as until the end of the eighteenth century.

Plantin consequently adhered to the traditions of his time when choosing types, in order to avoid the possibly adverse financial consequences of nonconformity. In one instance, however, he resisted the prevailing custom. Aldus's italic was so successful that before long

many books, especially those of some literary merit - or pretension - were being set entirely in this type, a fashion followed by Plantin in his early years. But in the foreword to his Terence edition of 1560, he protested against this too liberal use of italic, especially in small format books. He based his objections on practical considerations: the italic letter was too narrow and slanted for comfortable and easy reading over long passages.1. Plantin was not altogether consistent in this matter himself, but henceforward few of the books of any length - and none of the pocket editions - which he issued were set in italic. From being an equal and rival of roman, italic was reduced in the officina to the secondary role already noted, differentiating or emphasizing words or sections of a text. The same tendency was noticeable in the whole of Western Europe at this time, but only an examination of all the works published in the second half of the sixteenth century would establish whether Plantin actually pioneered this trend, or whether he simply put into words what his fellow printers were already thinking and practising.2.

Although the printer was restricted in his choice of typeface by certain conventions, he had much more freedom when it came to type size. But here choice had obviously to be governed by the format selected for the work to be published: a small type for a book of monumental dimensions or a large one in a pocket edition would obviously have looked ridiculous.

Format1.

The advent of the art of printing brought with it the problem of putting a printed book together in the literal, physical sense. Very soon, during the incunabula period, the procedure of printing a sheet of paper, folding it, and then assembling such a folded sheet in sequence was developed.

Each side of a sheet is printed as one forme, which can be made up of different numbers of pages. Thus a forme consisting of one page only will result in the ‘full-size’ format,2. printed recto and verso if required. It was used exclusively for broadsides. The author knows of no instance where an actual book was printed and made up in this way. If two formes (one for recto and one for verso) of two pages each were used, the sheet could be folded in two, giving a folio (two leaves, printed recto and verso, making four pages). A quarto was produced by printing formes of four pages each, four backing four. The sheet was then folded twice, once across and once lengthwise, thus giving eight pages. This progression was continued to produce an octavo (eight pages backing eight, i.e., sixteen pages on a sheet); a 16mo (32 pages: 16 backing 16); a 32mo (64 pages); and a 64mo (128 pages).

These were the more usual ways of folding a sheet of paper for book work and they evolved during the course of the fifteenth century. But there were other, more complicated arrangements. Two formes of twelve pages each would result in a 12mo, a sheet containing 24 pages, twelve backing twelve. This could be produced in two ways. One method was to place the pages in the forme in three rows of four and then fold the sheet twice lengthwise and three times across.3. The result was a book that was rather wide compared to its height. The other method was to place the pages in

two rows of six, then divide the sheet into pages with five vertical folds and one horizontal.1. This made for a comparatively tall, but slim book. A further step in this direction was the 24mo, sheets printed in formes of 24 pages each, which was achieved basically by the same two methods.2. There are examples of 12mo from 1524 (and possibly from as early as 1479), although it was not until about 1550 that they began to be a little more common. It seems to have been in Antwerp that these rather complicated formats were first generally adopted. Mortet quotes Plantin's catalogue of 1567 as the first known explicit mention of the 12mo and 24mo.3.

The 18mo is something quite different. It is produced by folding a sheet in two unequal sections, one of one third the total area and the other of two thirds. The first section is folded in six and the second in twelve. The first example cited by Mortet is a Leiden Elsevier edition dating from 1627,4. but the format had already been quoted in the catalogue of the Officina Plantiniana in 1615 and concerns an edition of 1595.5.

These were the various methods of folding in use from the end of the fifteenth century, and during the following century books began to be specified in these terms. As far as is known it was Aldus Manutius the Younger who first employed the expressions folio, quarto, octavo, and 16mo in his catalogue of 1541. The terms were adopted by Christoph Froschouer at Zürich, Sebastien Gryphius and Jacques Frellon at Lyons, and Johann Frobenius at Basle in their catalogues of 1548 and 1549. Henri ii Estienne in his 1552 catalogue used both the older, vaguer definitions (forma majori, forma minori, and so on) and the newer, more precise terminology; it was not until 1569 that he employed the latter systematically. When Plantin began his printing career in 1555 the new system had only recently emerged but it was already generally accepted and he was to use no other.6.

The method of folding determined the size of books. A book produced by folding a sheet of paper in two would obviously be larger than one where the sheet was folded in four. However, the size of sheets of the handmade paper which printers had to use until the beginning of the nineteenth century was determined by the size of the scoop - and scoops could vary greatly. The normal rules could be upset and a quarto volume printed on larger than average sheets of paper could be almost as big as a folio book on small sheets.1. Similarly two folios, two quartos etc. were not always exactly the same size.2. Indicating formats by the number of times the sheets were folded gave only an approximate idea of actual size.3. In the catalogues of the officina it was sometimes found necessary to state that editions might be larger than usual for their format. There were quarto or octavo books ‘in minori et maiori forma’ and besides ordinary folios there were works ‘in folio regali’ and even ‘in maximo folio regali’.4.

In a letter to Cardinal Granvelle on 20th November 1568 Plantin stated that his workmen were not allowed to begin a work of any importance before he had seen a specimen page and decided on style and specifications.5. In practice, probably as a result of his frequent stays abroad, Plantin often deviated from this rule. Another letter, in fact, deals with an instance where his staff started on a book during

one of his absences, the result of which was not too much to his liking.1. From these and other references it appears that deciding on format, type size, and design were matters in which the Master of the Golden Compasses took great personal interest. For his own publications Plantin could make up his own mind as to which format and design would most stimulate sales, but where he was commissioned by third parties, these too had a say in the matter. In these cases the printer would first sound out his clients about the format and type design they wanted. If these negotiations went smoothly, he sent them a specimen page.2. Such specimen pages were continually under discussion in Plantin's correspondence with Granvelle. The cardinal was a bibliophile and keenly interested in the aesthetic appearance of printed books and always eager to ask Plantin questions or give him advice on such matters;3. a solicitude which does not seem to have always been an unalloyed joy for the printer. In the publication of breviaries and missals for the Spanish market it was often Philip ii himself who gave instructions or suggested alterations; and whenever he failed to do so, his advisers were ready to continue the barrage. It was, most probably, because of this more than anything else that Plantin, after 1585, let it be known - in what for him were rather

brusque terms - that he did not want to produce any more liturgical works for the Spanish king.

In his letters Plantin would often give his authors good advice in these matters and would explain his preference for a particular format or page design. This correspondence affords an insight into the factors he took into account when making decisions about the production of his own editions. For example he counselled the Spanish writer Sepulveda against a magnum folium, recommending instead a quarto: ‘for I have learnt from experience that I would be able to sell many more copies in this format than in the other.’1.

He explained to Genardus why he had set the text of Navarrus's work in two columns to the page: it would be easier for the eye to follow and read the shorter line that this arrangement gave.2. In a letter to Granvelle he expressed his views on type size and legibility.3. Sometimes he was given advice too. Pierre Porret told him that it would be better not to print too many copies of Lipsius's De Constantia in quarto for the French market, but rather to make a petit manuel of it for schoolboys.4.

To judge from his letter to Sepulveda, Plantin does not seem to have cared much for bulky tomes. It is true that he printed a goodly number of these when there were sound commercial reasons for

doing so, but his preference was for handier sizes. Characteristically, in his own impressions of the French editions of Leo Africanus, Historiale description de l'Afrique, and Belon de Mans, Observations et singularitéz trouvées en Grèce et autres pays étrangers, Plantin reduced the formats from a hefty folio and quarto to octavo.1. His reissue of Corpus iuris civile in 1567 appeared in ten small octavo volumes, whereas the original edition, published in Lyons six years before, consisted of two unwieldy volumes. Throughout his career he experimented with pocket editions. In this he followed the example of his great predecessor Aldus Manutius and in turn served as a model for the Elseviers. It was only by chance that he came to publish the first pocket atlas: this was commissioned by Philip Galle, who provided the maps himself, Plantin simply setting and printing the text.2. It was on his own initiative, however, that in 1563 he began to bring out handy-sized editions of Classical authors in 16mo. At the end of his career he went a step further and launched a series of such authors in what for the time was a ‘super pocket’ format, the 24mo. Plantin outlined his purpose in this several times. The series was intended in the first place for ‘poor scholars and for travellers who want to carry a large store of books with them in a small space’.3. With the same idea in mind he published a Missel in 8^o portatif,4. a pocket Bible, and a New Testament in octavo for schools.5.

This predilection for small format books led Plantin to use small type sizes even when this was not strictly necessary. This sometimes brought him into conflict with his clients. He set the Elucidationes in omnia sanctorum apostolorum scripta by his friend Arias Montanus in a larger type size than he had used for his preceding book because of the complaints that had been made about the smallness of the print.1. Always a shrewd businessman, however, he sometimes took the opposite course and issued work in extra large print for those of poor eyesight.2. In editions of Classical authors intended for school use, Plantin not only chose a large format and type size, but allowed generous margins and leading that made it easier for pupils to make notes or cribs.3.

Title-pages also received Plantin's attention, although the only time he recorded his ideas on the subject was on one of the few occasions when the printer himself was guilty of negligence. He published a large antiphonary in 1572 without providing it with a title-page. He

had to make one hastily after the work on the book had been completed (and after a number of copies had already been disposed of) to pacify his grumbling customers.1.

These few details scattered through Plantin's correspondence have to be sufficient. Neither he nor his successors left behind any considered and detailed exposition of their views on format or on the relation of type sizes to format. However, the following tables, extracted from three of the firm's catalogues2. are revealing.3.

In Plantin's early period, until about 1570, medium sizes predominated, particularly the octavo and 16mo. Later both the larger and the smaller formats increased in number. In the seventeenth century, with the disappearance of Classical authors from the Plantinian lists, the bigger formats soon began to catch up.4. The less usual formats (12mo, 24mo and 18mo) remained fairly exceptional; the smallest sizes (32mo and 64mo) were little more than curiosities.

(26) Opposite: Virgil, Bucolica, 1575 (A 379), a quarto edition for school use, with wide margins and generous leading to facilitate making notes or cribs. The annotations in this interleaved copy are in the handwriting of Plantin's grandson, Balthasar I Moretus. (Slightly reduced.)

(27-28) Uncut and unfolded sheets of a 24mo book, printed in a work-and-turn operation, of Cicero, De officiis libri III, 1565 (Arch. 1230, f^o 69). Note the printed line at the top; this told the collator and binder that this part of the sheet had to be cut off before folding Reduced. Cf. App. [...], p. [...].)

(29) Opposite: Uncut and unfolded sheet for one the smallest works published by Plantin, the 64mo Kalendarium, 1570 (Arch. 1230, f^o 462). (Reduced)

Size of edition1.

The number of copies of a book to be printed was decided by the potential market, or by the wishes of the customers. Plantin's smallest runs were printed to order: twelve copies of an edition of De Kerle's music;2. fifty of a small work by Moschus;3. and 120 copies of a volume of Latin verse by Maximilian de Vignacourt.4. In the case of the De Kerle, Jan Moretus was at pains to point out that such a ridiculously small number made no sense financially.5.

The edition was usually much larger when Plantin had a free hand. The number of copies was as a rule 1,250 for ordinary editions, 1,000 for black-and-red liturgical works. These figures were not arrived at arbitrarily but were based on the rate at which the journeymen-printers worked: an average of 1,250 sheets per day for ordinary work, 500 per day for service books.6. Plantin in fact stressed the connexion between the two factors in a letter.7. For works in great demand the run was sometimes raised to 2,000 or 2,500. Plantin does not seem to have exceeded the latter figure except with his Hebrew Bible of 1566,8. for which he probably expected a good market

in the Jewish communities scattered through Europe and North Africa, and with the ill-fated Pseaumes de David of 1564.1.

Nevertheless Plantin did not stick rigidly to these figures. He did not hesitate to raise or lower them according to his anticipation of the market, so that besides his norms of 1,000, 1,250 and 2,500 there was a whole range of intermediate figures. The numbers of copies printed for 155 works published in the period 1563-67 were as given in table A on p. 172.2.

The peak lies between 1,000 and 1,500 copies: 94 out of the 155 works come within this range, 63 of them on the standard figure of 1,250.3. The 800 category is also well represented, chiefly by scientific and scholarly works.4. Very small5. and very large6. editions were exceptional. It also appears from the records for this period that appendixes for a particular work might sometimes be printed separately and in a smaller run than the text itself, some copies being therefore issued without appendixes.7.

The number of copies of a particular book to be printed was sometimes determined by rather special considerations. The breviary that Plantin printed in 1569 promised to be an unparallelled success. However, instead of printing 2,000 copies as he would have liked to have done, he kept the edition to 1,000 so as to have it on sale as

quickly as possible to eager customers.1. In another instance he restricted a missal to 750 copies. This was partly from fear that last-minute changes might be ordered which could cause costly alterations or even entail taking the book out of sale (Plantin experienced this with revised versions of service books), partly so as to be able to follow the first edition immediately with a second on better paper and with better illustrations.2.

Under Jan i Moretus the figures seem to have differed to some extent from those for the period 1563-67, as can be seen from table B showing the numbers printed of 254 works in the years 1590-1600.3.

The peak still came in the 1,000 to 1,500 range (163 out of 254 publications), although this time there were nearly as many editions in the 1,500 group as in the previous norm of 1,250. Compared with the earlier period two features are noticeable. First, there are many more categories, less adherence to standard runs. Secondly there is a marked upward trend in the figures. The number of large editions has increased and Plantin's upper limit of 2,500 is surpassed by 17 books: 3 at 2,550, 1 at 2,590, 8 at 3,000, 1 at 4,050 and 4 as high as 5,000. The increase was caused by liturgical books and all but one of the runs of more than 2,500 copies was of these; the exception was a school book by Despauterius that reached 3,000. The many publications of works by Justus Lipsius achieved the relatively modest figure of 1,500 copies.

A further analysis of both series of figures is interesting: it appears that under Jan i Moretus the business had grown in so far that higher runs occurred more frequently, though on the other hand Plantin produced about 200 titles in a mere four years, whereas Jan Moretus produced 254 titles in ten years. Of only 155 of Plantin's titles particulars are to be found, but Jan Moretus's production is practically

Number of Copies printed

known in its entirity. The total number of copies of the 155 titles in 1563-67 amounted to 201,575, an average of exactly 1,300 copies per title, and a year production of some 39 titles totalling 50,000 copies. Under Jan i Moretus the production of the period 1590-1600 amounted to 392,865 copies for 254 titles, an average of nearly 1,550 copies per title, but a year production of only 25 titles, totalling 40,000 copies.