The Description of Volumes Gathered in Nines B. J. McMullin No doubt most bibliographers could produce other instances beyond those I have considered, and they are free to invent ways of describing them if they find it desirable to do so. W. W. Greg 1 The purpose of this note is to suggest a mechanism for describing formulaically, within the accepted Greg-Bowers conventions, the make-up of volumes gathered in nines. Such volumes are admittedly of great rarity, such that their description has not been dealt with specifically in Bowers s generally exhaustive chapter Format and collational formula ; what follows is therefore intended to serve as a footnote to his exposition. 2 For the sake of discussion I have taken as my norm the eighteenmo gathered in nines, though the same observations will apply to all volumes imposed for gathering in an uneven number of leaves; nonetheless the eighteenmo imposed for gathering in nines is likely to be the only such instance to be encountered. In the second half of the eighteenth century publications imposed in eighteenmo became increasingly common in British printing. 3 Such elegant and legible productions as the eighteenmo 109-volume Bell s Edition, The Poets of Great Britain, Complete from Chaucer to Churchill (Edinburgh: by the Martins at the Apollo Press, 1777 83) were made possible through increases in the size of sheets of paper of traditional nomenclature 4 and through the greater precision provided by improvements to the common press, 5 which facilitated exemplary 1 W. W. Greg, A Formulary of Collation, The Library, 4th ser., 14 (1934): 365 82, reprinted in Collected Papers, ed. J. C. Maxwell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 298 313 (312). 2 Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), chapter 5, 193 254. 3 For an account of eighteenmos of the period see Pamela E. Pryde, Determining the Format of British Books of the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century Gathered in Sixes, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin 23 (1999): 67 77. See further Brian Hubber, Eighteenmo in Nines: An Experimental Technique, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin 7 (1983): 183 86, a study of a much earlier eighteenmo in nines, Johannes Leusden s Hebrew-Latin edition of The Psalms (London: Samuel Palmer, 1726), which changes imposition scheme in midstream and may well be the earliest example of the two schemes in British printing. Hubber also cites a Gaelic translation of Joseph Alleine, Alarm to Unconverted Sinners (Edinburgh: Macfarquhar and Elliot, 1781) reported on by Hector Macdonald, A Book Gathered in Nines, The Bibliotheck 7 (1974): 76 78. Imposing eighteenmos in nines was not, however, confined to Britain (see further below). 4 See the tables of sizes in Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 73 75 and Philip Gaskell, Notes on Eighteenth-Century British Paper, The Library, 5th ser., 12 (1957): 34 42. 5 On improvements to the common press see James Moran, Printing Presses: History and Development from Script & Print 37:1 (2013) 32 39 2013 BSANZ [ISSN 1834-9013]
The Description of Volumes Gathered in Nines 33 impressions from type smaller than hitherto generally considered practicable. By late in the century printers were thus able, in producing books of small dimensions, to impose eighteen pages to a forme rather than the customary twelve, and, if imposing for gathering in sixes (as for the Bell s Poets), they were in effect creating three half-sheets of twelvemo from the one sheet, 6 thereby reducing significantly the time spent at press. In the hand-press period, imposing pages within the forme so as to produce two gatherings from the one sheet was commonplace witness, in particular, the imposition of twelvemos for gathering in sixes, a practice which in fact may possibly have been more common than for gathering in twelves. The eighteenmo, however, is an oddity among the formats commonly employed in book-work in that halving a sheet of eighteens creates a binder s nightmare, in so far as each half-sheet comprises nine leaves i.e. an uneven number with, at the very least, one singleton (or disjunct leaf ) accompanying four conjugate pairs: 7 how is the binder to cope with the odd leaf in each gathering? In order to avoid this difficulty eighteenmos were regularly imposed for gathering in sixes or in alternating twelves and sixes. The eighteenmo in nines is, to repeat, decidedly uncommon. The assertion that a half-sheet of eighteens is a binder s nightmare is based on the expectation that the resulting volume is to be sewn through the folds, in the normal way, and therefore that the singleton(s) will need to be tipped in in a separate, labour-intensive and hence more expensive process. 8 But what if the volume is to be stabbed? i.e. with the thread passing through the inner margins of the Fifteenth Century to Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), chapters 1 and 2. 6 In the note to his imposition scheme 62, Sheet of eighteens, with three signatures, as three half sheets of twelves, William Savage, A Dictionary of the Art of Printing (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1841), 404, observes that This is now the usual method of imposing a sheet of eighteens; it cuts up equal to three half sheets of twelves, and is the most convenient mode both to the pressman and bookbinder, as it is in the regular way of their business. 7 See imposition 67, Half sheet of eighteens [by work and turn, producing two sets of the one nine-leaf gathering], in Savage, 356, 404. It is also possible to produce a half-sheet of eighteens with three singletons ($4,5,6) and three conjugate pairs ($1.9; 2.8; 3.7), as illustrated by Hubber for one of the Leusden schemes (184). The Leusden is a variant of Savage s imposition 69, Half sheet of eighteens, without transposing the pages (357, 404), which produces three singletons. Savage s schemes 70 78 are best regarded as curiosities of little practical application apart from allowing fragments of different publications to be imposed together, as in printing collections of plays in eighteens, where each play has separate folios, [and thus] fragments in every variety arise (405) hence the likes of 78, Half sheet of eighteens. Four times 4 pages, which produces four conjugate pairs, with the remaining leaf available for some other purpose (Savage suggests advertisements, catalogue, or other matter (405)). 8 In the note (404) to imposition scheme 69 Savage observes that single leaves [... ] are charged in binding the same way as plates and that it is a principle that ought always to be acted on, not to increase the expenditure, when it can be avoided.
34 Script & Print the leaves; as Philip Gaskell has already observed, imposing eighteenmos in nines was indeed occasionally used for stabbed books in the early nineteenth century. 9 The simplest imposition scheme in producing half sheets of eighteenmo will result in a singleton being inserted between the two leaves constituting the innermost pair of each gathering (best not to call them $4.5 i.e. the conjugate pair constituting the fourth and fifth leaves in any/every gathering), and, if singletons are signed to indicate their intended position within their respective gatherings, there would seem to be no difficulty in putting together an eighteenmo in nines by stabbing. (But for a possible consequence see below!) The publication that has prompted my renewed interest in a phenomenon of admittedly rare occurrence 10 is a slim volume by Miss Mant 11 that, at least in the copy seen, 12 has been stabbed, a form of assembling perhaps intended originally as only a temporary measure, with any decision on a permanent binding being left to the owner: The Little Blue Bag; or A Visit to the Bazaar: A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons (London: T. Allman, 42, Holborn Hill, 1832). (Frontispiece and one plate (opp. C9 v, p. 38), both with imprint Holloway & Thomas, 7, Hanover S t. Hanover Sq e. Jan y. 1825.) 13 It is an eighteenmo, consisting of 32 leaves, measuring 140 92 mm. Representing its physical make-up formulaically appears to be straightforward: [A]1 B D 9 E 4 The objection to such a formulation is that it does not meet the fundamental Greg-Bowers prescription that each gathering be described in such a way as to indicate not only the number of leaves contained but also their conjugacy. Greg wrote that In my opinion the index number should always be even, but this is a moot point ; his concern, though, was with gatherings to or from which a leaf or leaves had been added or removed. 14 In a further footnote he acknowledged that 9 Gaskell, New Introduction, 329. 10 For example, there is no instance of an eighteenmo in nines among the 761 items, many of them at some stage of their life stabbed, described in John Meriton, with Carlo Dumontet, Small Books for the Common Man: A Descriptive Bibliography [of chapbooks in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum] (London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 2010). 11 Alicia Catherine Mant (1788 1869), from 1835 Mrs Phillott, author of Christmas, a Happy Time. 12 Copy examined: Monash University, Rare Books, PAM 398.5 M291L; it is part of the Library s modest but varied collection of chapbooks. 13 In Meriton there is no copy (of any edition) of The Little Blue Bag, and there is only one Allman item, no. 244 (no format determined and no collation provided, but with twenty-eight pages, itself a bibliographical curiosity if in fact in only one gathering). 14 Collected Papers, 303, fn. 5.
The Description of Volumes Gathered in Nines 35 I am aware, through Dr. McKerrow, of the existence of certain wholly abnormal books in which, for some particular purpose, the quires were made to contain an odd number of leaves throughout. Happily they are very rare, and I do not think they are worth taking into consideration. (In fact they could probably be described by the method here proposed.) 15 But that is as far as he went. Similarly Bowers, who nonetheless takes a small step forward in actually allowing, as an exception to the requirement for an even index number, a formula such as that just provided. He writes: There do exist, however, a very few extraordinary books for which it would be acceptable to use odd index numbers when the odd leaves indicate a consistent method of printing a whole book and not simply of an isolated gathering, 16 but he does not proceed to give any collations to illustrate how such books are to be treated. Gaskell merely states: The exception is the 18 o in 9s which is written A 9, etc. 17 The difficulty here is that Gaskell no doubt assumes gatherings in which only the fifth leaf is a singleton i.e. he does not take into account the possibility of there being three singletons. 18 Once the latter possibility is acknowledged we would seem to need to have recourse to the convention that, in describing formulaically a gathering containing an uneven number of leaves, the location of any singleton(s) must be indicated by some form of qualification. In conventional terms one might therefore expect the formula of The Little Blue Bag to be rendered: [A]1 B 8 (B4+1) C 8 (C4+1) D 8 (D4+1) E 4 That is, in gatherings B, C and D there is a singleton inserted after the fourth leaf. Both requirements number of leaves and conjugacy are satisfied by this recasting, but at the cost of a certain ambiguity or conflict of usage and an uncertainty in referring to leaves beyond the fourth. The use of + assumes a genuine insertion i.e. of a leaf (or leaves) not planned, or perhaps overlooked, at the time that the formes of a particular sheet were imposed and therefore needing to be inserted after that sheet if not the whole volume had been worked off. The distinction being made here is between the occasional and the routine or between the unplanned and the planned (or, in Bowers s terms, irregular and regular ). 19 As an instance of the unplanned or overlooked occasional insertion take, for example, the nine-leaf gathering L in vol. XI of Sir Walter Scott s edition of The Works of John Dryden (London: William 15 Ibid., 309, fn. 3. 16 Bowers, Principles, 228 29. 17 Gaskell, New Introduction, 329. Hubber also uses the index number 9, without comment. 18 In the first section of the Leusden the three singletons are inserted after $3 see further below. 19 Excision may also produce gatherings of an uneven number of leaves, but such instances, I assume, must be occasional, or, if planned, confined to the odd gathering rather than being routine. Consequently I have disregarded them.
36 Script & Print Miller; Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1808), 20 an octavo in eights, where a leaf has been inserted after L1. The added leaf contains the verses Farewell, fair Armida, taken from the Covent-Garden Drollery (1672), a publication that must have come belatedly to Scott s attention; 21 the leaf carries the tomaison VOL.XI. in the direction line and is paged 161, 162, thus duplicating the (inferred) numbers of L1. 22 By contrast the singletons in gatherings B, C and D in The Little Blue Bag are clearly planned, in that they are a product of the imposition scheme employed. In the case of an occasional insertion the surrounding leaves retain their original designation, so that, in the Scott-Dryden volume, the nine leaves of gathering L are to be designated and referred to as L1 L1+1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 L7 L8 If this practice were to be applied to the routine insertion in the nine-leaf gatherings of The Little Blue Bag the leaves would be designated and referred to as C1 C2 C3 C4 C4+1 C5 C6 C7 C8 But C4+1 is actually signed C5, and it would seem perverse to regard it as missigned, to insist that the following leaf is C5, which it would indeed be if C4+1 were an occasional insertion. In the case of an eighteenmo in nines with, inevitably, at least one routine singleton in each gathering, its presence intrinsic, I think that, despite arguments to the contrary, an uneven index number should be admissible (as implied by Bowers, allowed by Gaskell and accepted by Hubber), that the formula for The Little Blue Bag may be represented in the manner initially employed: [A]1 B D 9 E 4 But one consequence of admitting an uneven index number into the collation formula without providing any indication of the number and location of the singletons is that it will be necessary to append a note elucidating both the make-up of the gatherings and the system of signing the leaves. At this point it is apropos to intrude the example of Salmagundi, the publication that occasioned Bowers s passing comment, made on the basis of an article by Jacob Blanck. 23 Salmagundi is an irregular journal that appeared in twenty 20 See William B. Todd and Ann Bowden [ T/B ], Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History 1796 1832 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 1998), 30Aa.11. 21 The Covent-Garden Drollery also supplied additional versions of the Prologue and Epilogue to The Maiden Queen, the inclusion of which required the cancellation of the final two leaves (2G3,4) of vol. II in the Scott-Dryden edition (T/B 30Aa.2) and their replacement by a conjugate pair. 22 L1 r is the divisional title ODES, SONGS, AND LYRICAL PIECES. ; L1 v is blank. 23 Jacob Blanck, Salmagundi and its Publisher, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 41
The Description of Volumes Gathered in Nines 37 numbers between 24 January 1807 and 25 January 1808, written by Washington Irving, his brother William and James Kirke Paulding and published in New York by David Longworth. As Blanck observes, it is by all odds, one of the most interesting problems that any bibliographer might essay. It is also one of the most irritating. 24 I would add puzzling and intriguing, and even bizarre. The journal is on unwatermarked wove paper, and, for the most part, each number comprises one gathering of nine leaves, signed A ; 25 on the other hand the pagination is continuous through the twenty numbers. Blanck does not venture a format: one would assume eighteenmo, though for present purposes establishing the format is not vital; 26 the essential characteristic of Salmagundi is that it is routinely gathered in nines. A verbal account of the make-up of the gatherings in The Little Blue Bag may be expressed quite simply e.g. In gatherings in nines the singleton appears after leaf 4, or, to use the symbol $, In $ 9 [i.e. gatherings of nine leaves] the singleton appears after $4. There remain the questions of signing and of reference, in relation not only to the singleton but also to the following leaves. The signing of the singleton could be incorporated in the statement of its position, as In $ 9 the singleton (signed $5) appears after $4. Then the signing of the gatherings as a whole will need to be indicated: In $ 9 $1 5 signed would do, ignoring for the sake of illustration the exceptionally unsigned leaves in C and D. Perhaps it would be simpler just to record Signed B1 5 C1,3 5 D1,3 5 E1, though for a more extensive volume than The Little Blue Bag the use of $ 9 would probably be desirable. The foregoing supposes that the total number of leaves in the gathering is not 8+1 [a gathering in eight to which one leaf has been added subsequent to printing] but 9 [a gathering in nine, so imposed], the latter to be referred to thus: C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 That is, the singleton is C5 and therefore the following leaves are (though, as expected, unsigned) C6 9. To follow the printer s signing and numbering of the leaves particularly as there is no disruption of the page-numbering seems inevitable in describing the volume. I claimed earlier that a stabbed eighteenmo in nines should not cause the binder any particular problem if the singletons are signed to indicate their position. The (1947): 1 32; the descriptions have been incorporated, substantially unchanged, in Jacob Blanck, Bibliography of American Literature, vol. 5, Washington Irving to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), entry 10097 and in Edwin T. Bowden, Washington Irving: Bibliography (Boston: Twayne, 1989; vol. 30 of The Complete Works of Washington Irving), 3 86. 24 Salmagundi and its Publisher, 1. 25 Though some numbers extend to a second gathering, that gathering never exceeds four leaves. 26 Blanck, Salmagundi and its Publisher, 3, quotes Longworth, in the first number: it will be a small neat duodecimo size, reflecting trade usage, not bibliographical.
38 Script & Print copy of The Little Blue Bag seen illustrates the fate that singletons are nonetheless heir to: it lacks B5, and C5 has been partly dislodged (D5 is intact). To return to Salmagundi. The make-up and signing of a typical nine-leaf gathering is described by Blanck in the following collation: <A> 9. Signed: <A, A 1 >, A 2, A 3, A 4 (inserted), <A 5 -A 8 > Bowden renders such a gathering as: [A] 9. Signed [A, A 1 ] A 2 4 [A 5 8 ]. A 4 is an inserted leaf. Blanck s and Bowden s idiosyncratic conventions aside, 27 the publication is, as I have suggested, bizarre, specifically in that the first two leaves are unsigned and that the third is signed A2, so that all the subsequent signed leaves are one out. 28 For a single-gathering publication such as a number of Salmagundi a collation and statement of signing might take this form: A 9 (A5 inserted after A4; A1,2 unsigned, A3 5 signed A2 4) That is, the first five leaves would be referred to as A1 5, in keeping with their position within the gathering (and regardless of their actual signing), and thus the remaining leaves as A6 9, indicating too their position within the gathering, as in normal Greg-Bowers practice. If the individual numbers of Salmagundi had been confined to a single gathering of nine leaves and signed successively A U we might have anticipated a statement such as this: A U 9 ($5 inserted after $4; $1,2 unsigned, $3 5 signed $2 4) The relevant section of Leusden s Psalms collates A 2C 9 Hubber reports that gatherings A P were imposed in such a way as to produce three singletons, 29 Q 2C as to produce the one singleton. 30 Applying the procedures advocated above would suggest this statement: 27 In Bibliography of American Literature <angled brackets> are used to indicate inference; any [brackets] are in the item being described. In Bowden, as in Salmagundi and its Publisher, conventional [brackets] are used to indicate inference. 28 To add to the singularity of Salmagundi it may be noted that Number VIII comprises a single gathering of eleven leaves of which the fourth is signed A2 i.e. the singleton, A4, is preceded by five leaves. What seems to have happened here is that A started as a customary nine-leaf gathering, with another pair wrapped around it, with the verso of the first leaf bearing the woodcut portrait of Launcelot Langstaff. And in Number IV the fourth leaf and the following singleton are both signed A4. 29 See his Fig. 1 (p. 184). 30 See his Fig. 2 (p. 184).
The Description of Volumes Gathered in Nines 39 A 2C 9 (in A P $4,5,6 inserted after $3; in Q 2C $5 inserted after $4; $1 5 signed [F3 mis-signed F2 ]) Where an eighteenmo in nines is relatively short, as in The Little Blue Bag and in the individual numbers of Salmagundi, a natural-language account of the make-up and signing may suffice, but in longer publications there is, I suggest, merit in couching the account in Greg-Bowers terms terms that are applicable to volumes of no matter what format, make-up or signing. The extension to Greg- Bowers advocated here is the principled acceptance of an uneven index number when there are planned singletons within gatherings notably in gatherings in nines on the understanding that a statement of the make-up of a typical gathering will follow the collation formula. Melbourne
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