Book Lust and the Cultural Erotics of Fine Printing
- by Mmegan Benton
Close-up specimen of nineteenth-century "modern" type
Significantly, machine-made books were physically different from those printed in preceding centuries. Before industrialization, the majority of books produced were considered “serious”—that is, their content was anything except contemporary fiction—and they generally bore a highly traditional, subdued typographic style. They were printed on enduring rag papers, and bound by hand according to owners’ instructions, as had been the custom for centuries. Issued in relatively small editions, these were the costly and elegant books that lined the traditional gentleman’s library walls. This preindustrial style of bookmaking seemed synonymous with serious, important books intended for traditional gentlemen readers.
Victorian machines yielded books as likely as not to be fiction. By mid-century newly published books were usually sold ready-made, already bound. Printed quickly on cheap and plentiful machine-made papers, most were destined for a probably short, hopefully splashy, life along the bustling railroad platforms and in the circulating libraries, not the hushed eternity of an aristocrat’s library. Printed covers of the least expensive paperbound books shamelessly advertised their wares, forever fusing cheap physical form with dubious content.
Bibliophiles left no doubt about which kind of books they loved, or why. To many, “serious” book culture, not to mention a well-ordered society, seemed in danger of drowning in a flood of mass-produced popular books. In the 1880s, these fears helped to galvanize ardent new interests in traditional bookmaking crafts. William Morris’s Kelmscott Press and others launched a “fine printing” revival of preindustrial typography and book crafts. Above all, the revival called fresh attention to the material book as an object of beauty, dignity, and cultural import.
This now-famous revival is usually hailed for courageously resisting the industrial and commercial deterioration of modern bookmaking standards of aesthetic and material quality. But I’m convinced that the new fine book served other agendas as well. After all, the term fine made sense only in contrast to the machine-made ordinary. In no small part, fine editions were meant to register difference, and especially eliteness. A “limited” edition size soon became the defining feature of the fine book. The ensuing boom market in limited editions, including those that were only vaguely “fine,” repudiated everything ordinary and common; that meant not only the mass-produced popular books of the day but also those who read them. By resurrecting preindustrial book forms with heavily freighted cultural associations, fine printers distanced the serious book from the marketplace forces that threatened to cheapen, vulgarize, and feminize it.
In 1892 Theodore Low De Vinne, America’s leading printer, hailed Morris’s reform as a long-overdue return to "masculine printing." He deplored as effeminate, weak and fussy the standard typography and bookmaking of the day. In De Vinne’s mind the chief villains were ornamental types and the most commonly used text typeface of the century, simply called "modern." Modern type featured a relatively small surface area, pronounced contrast between the thick and thin strokes, and very sharp, hairline serifs. The sharp, thin forms of modern type were well suited to the thinned inks that enabled the machine presses run efficiently. The result was a page that De Vinne ridiculed as "weak and misty, thoroughly feminine." He applauded Morris’s Kelmscott types because their heavier weight and closer fit would bring plenty of black color to the page and deliver a firm impression when letterpressed into good papers. De Vinne felt this would restore "virility" to the printed book.
DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800
Freeman’s | Hindman Western Manuscripts and Miniatures July 8, 2025
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUM (active Milan, 1431-1459). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.