Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text like =this=. A letter preceded by the sign ^ indicates a superindex. For instance ^a represents superindex a.

There are some characters quoted in the text that cannot be reproduced in the text version of the book.

The sign ſ represents the ancient long s; the sign [ct] represents the ct ligature and the sign [ffi] represents the ffi ligature.

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.

Not all the font families used for the different articles included in the book were available for the HTML version. The font families that could be used for the transcription are Times New Roman, Gill Sans, Garamond, Bodoni MT (instead of Bodoni Book), Baskerville, Centaur, Perpetua and Bell. Most of the currently available browsers are compatible with those fonts. However, it is not certain that the currently available hand-held devices would be able to reproduce the text with those fonts.

Punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected. Nevertheless, there are some portions where the author quotes text written in ancient style in which the punctuation rules applicable nowadays were not followed. Those have been left unchanged.

* * * * *

FORUM BOOKS

_This ebook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders
20th Anniversary._

BOOKS
AND PRINTING

A TREASURY FOR TYPOPHILES

_edited by Paul A. Bennett_

_Forum Books_

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK

A FORUM BOOK

Published by The World Publishing Company
2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio

Revised Edition

First Forum printing February 1963

Copyright 1951 by The World Publishing Company.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief
passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper or magazine.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 52-612
Printed in the United States of America. WP263

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply grateful to many friends who have helped in the preparation of material for this book, and have freely granted permission to reprint their brain children.

To the Typophiles of New York, and to the individual authors in their series of Chap Books, I am indebted for including: T. M. Cleland's _Harsh Words_; W. A. Dwiggins' celebrated "Investigation Into the Physical Properties of Books," first published for the Society of Calligraphers and included in _Mss. by WAD_; Evelyn Harter's _Printers As Men of the World_; and Lawrence C. Wroth's "First Work With American Types," from _Typographic Heritage_.

To the editors of _The Colophon_, and the three authors, I am indebted for reprinting the essays of Earnest Elmo Calkins on "The Book and Job Print," Ruth S. Granniss on "Colophons" and Sir Francis Meynell's "Some Collectors Read."

To the individual authors, the editors of _The Publishers' Weekly_ and its publisher, R. R. Bowker Company, I am indebted for permission to include W. A. Dwiggins' "Twenty Years After," the sequel to his "Investigation"; excerpts from two articles by Robert Josephy; and Will Ransom's introduction from his _Private Presses and Their Books_.

To Beatrice Warde, who has graciously permitted reprinting her classic "Printing Should Be Invisible."

I appreciate greatly the counsel of the good friends who made possible the symposium on "The Anatomy of the Book": Peter Beilenson, Joseph Blumenthal, P. J. Conkwright, Morris Colman, Milton Glick and Evelyn Harter, William Dana Orcutt, Ernst Reichl, Carl Purington Rollins, Bruce Rogers and Arthur W. Rushmore. To Mergenthaler Linotype Company I am indebted for reprinting the text of the "Anatomy," now slightly revised, from _The Manual of Linotype Typography_.

To both authors and their publisher, William E. Rudge's Sons, I am indebted for including the extracts from Bruce Rogers' _Paragraphs on Printing_ and Merle Armitage's _Notes on Modern Printing_.

To George Macy, and the directors of the Limited Editions Club, I am indebted for reprinting Porter Garnett's prize-winning essay, "The Ideal Book." And also for the illustration of the punch-cutting machine (from _The Dolphin_, No. 2) to accompany Carl Purington Rollins' essay, "American Type Designers and Their Work," for which permission to reprint was granted by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Chicago.

To my good friend, James Shand, publisher of _Alphabet and Image_ in London, I am indebted for including his account of George Bernard Shaw's relations with his printer (first published in _A & I_ No. 8), and for assistance in securing electrotypes of the illustrations.

To Oscar Ogg and the editors of _The American Artist_ I owe thanks for reprinting his "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its illustrations.

To Edwin Grabhorn I am indebted for including "The Fine Art of Printing," his address to the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco.

I particularly appreciate the assistance of the late Otto Ege, Mrs. Anne Lyon Haight and Lawrence C. Wroth in revising their essays for publication here, and the thoughtfulness of Robert Josephy, Will Ransom and Arthur W. Rushmore in writing postscripts to enhance their essays.

I am thankful to Mrs. Caroline Anderson of Los Angeles; my colleague Jackson Burke at Linotype; to Christopher Morley of Roslyn, L. I., and Arthur W. Rushmore of Madison, N. J., for valuable suggestions and help in research.

For assistance in securing illustrative material I am indebted to my Typophile friends: John Archer, A. Burton Carnes, Lester Douglas, George L. McKay and William Reydel. To Fred Anthoensen of Portland, Maine, I am thankful for help in securing electrotypes to illustrate two articles.

The publisher, and I as editor, acknowledge our appreciation to the authors of the other essays included, and to their editors and publishers, for permission to reprint this valuable material, for which detailed mention of copyright and publication date is printed elsewhere.

And I hope my apologies may be accepted, should there be inadvertent omission of appreciation to the numerous other individuals who have so generously assisted me in preparing this book for the printer.

P. A. B.

CONTENTS

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION _Page ix_

OTTO F. EGE. The Story of the Alphabet 3

LANCELOT HOGBEN. Printing, Paper and Playing Cards 15

RUTH S. GRANNISS. Colophons 31

EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY. Printers' Marks 45

A. F. JOHNSON. Title Pages: Their Forms and
Development 52

LAWRENCE C. WROTH. The First Work with
American Types 65

RONALD B. MCKERROW. Typographic Debut 78

EDWARD ROWE MORES. Metal-Flowers 83

JAMES WATSON. The History of the Invention and
Progress of the Mysterious Art of Printing &c. 85

EVELYN HARTER. Printers As Men of the World 88

ANNE LYON HAIGHT. Are Women the Natural
Enemies of Books? 103

BEATRICE WARDE. Printing Should Be Invisible 109

PORTER GARNETT. The Ideal Book 115

W. A. DWIGGINS. Extracts from an Investigation
into the Physical Properties of Books 129

W. A. DWIGGINS. Twenty Years After 145

DESMOND FLOWER. The Publisher and the Typographer 153

WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT, BRUCE ROGERS, CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS,
JOSEPH BLUMENTHAL, P. J. CONKWRIGHT,
ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE, MILTON GLICK, MORRIS COLMAN,
EVELYN HARTER, PETER BEILENSON, and ERNST REICHL.
The Anatomy of the Book: A Symposium 160

ROBERT JOSEPHY. Trade Bookmaking: Complaint
in Three Dimensions 169

WILL RANSOM. What Is a Private Press? 175

ALFRED W. POLLARD. The Trained Printer and the
Amateur: and the Pleasure of Small Books 182

SIR FRANCIS MEYNELL. Some Collectors Read 191

CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD. Printing for Love 212

ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE. The Fun and Fury of a Private
Press: Some Voyages of The Golden Hind 220

EDWIN GRABHORN. The Fine Art of Printing 226

HOLBROOK JACKSON. The Typography of William Morris 233

STANLEY MORISON. First Principles of Typography 239

CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS. American Type Designers
and Their Work 252

ERIC GILL. Typography 257

FREDERIC W. GOUDY. Types and Type Design 267

THEODORE LOW DE VINNE. The Old and the New:
A Friendly Dispute between Juvenis & Senex 274

BRUCE ROGERS. Paragraphs on Printing 281

PAUL A. BENNETT. B.R.--Adventurer with Type Ornament 290

DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE. Some Tendencies in Modern
Typography 306

PETER BEILENSON. The Amateur Printer: His Pleasures
and His Duties 313

T. M. CLELAND. Harsh Words 321

OSCAR OGG. A Comparison of Calligraphy & Lettering 337

ALDOUS HUXLEY. Typography for the Twentieth-Century
Reader 344

MERLE ARMITAGE. Notes on Modern Printing 350

JOHN T. WINTERICH. Benjamin Franklin: Printer
and Publisher 352

EARNEST ELMO CALKINS. The Book & Job Print 368

JAMES SHAND. Author and Printer: G.B.S. and R.& R. C.:
1898-1948 381

PAUL A. BENNETT. On Type Faces for Books 402

PAUL A. BENNETT. Notes on the Type Faces Used in This Book 411

_Index_ 421

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

Labeling these observations "introductory" isn't to confuse the purist. He knows that the terms preface, foreword and introduction become mixed frequently, he doesn't like it and he much prefers retaining the proper distinctions.

"An introduction," he will insist, "should be solely concerned with the subject of the book, and introduce or supplement its text. And the preface or foreword should properly deal with the book's purpose, and define its limitation and scope. Let's keep things that way."

Unfortunately, there isn't one term that covers comment which flows from one division to the other in a miscellany like this. At times--and at the risk of editorial modesty--I may seem something of a typographic barker, singing the praises of certain essays and pointing up different attractions. At others, the text will be supplemented with an explanatory note, or amplified to bring it up to date, as in the Josephy, Ransom and Rushmore articles.

It amounts to an assist in getting back to purpose: that of informing on matters typographic, and on books, their printing and some of the fascinating steps along the way. In selecting material of appeal to the collector, printer, typographer and student, I have not overlooked the professional curiosity of editors and technicians. That's the thinking behind the inclusion of extracts from McKerrow and Mores and Watson, among other scholarly contributions.

Where there was a choice, the preference was for the author with a point of view and the ability to express it interestingly. Four articles indicate this approach. "Printing, Paper and Playing Cards," the brilliant survey of Lancelot Hogben, illumines the birth and spread of writing and printing as nothing else I know. Otto Ege's brief account of the development of our alphabet, with its memorable letter-diagrams, has a different, not less valuable appeal, as does Oscar Ogg's comparison of "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its specimens of his own distinguished hand. And in "Printers As Men of the World," Evelyn Harter writes of a number of great printers as men of intellect, at home in the world of ideas. Her stimulating text suggests the compensation of looking at the background of printing in relation to world events.

There was no preconceived attitude to consider in evaluating the essays included: no restriction by country of origin; no fixation about the traditional or modern in typographic approach; no desire to slant, or plant, ideas; no intent other than to select much of the best writing in English by authors of substance. That the gathering may provide riches to be added to "the savings account of your memory" is my hope.

In a quite real sense, the experience has been something like spending many long weekends with friends in good, solid talk--some of it controversial, much of it illuminating and informing. The re-reading has not only opened "doors and windows for a welcome flood" of ideas, it has suggested new trails and made for valuable comparisons of favorites first met with years ago.

It has been difficult to resist the temptation to include more essays of historic and technical appeal to typographers and printers. Many of the present generation, I presume, may not know De Vinne's authoritative account of the development of the American Point System, which occurred in the late eighties and is detailed at length in his _Plain Printing Types_; or the invaluable Meynell and Morison essay on "Printer's Flowers and Arabesques," with its fascinating reproductions, from _The Fleuron_. I have omitted these two with reluctance, and have used the space they would occupy for a half-dozen shorter essays not less worthy in themselves, but on different topics.

Since space was limited, I needed to be. I would have welcomed the opportunity to include additional essays by D. B. Updike, whose incomparable _Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use_; _In the Day's Work_, and _Some Aspects of Printing: Old and New_, and other writings on typography should not be missed; by W. A. Dwiggins, the distinguished American letter artist and designer, who writes as well as he draws; and by Holbrook Jackson, the great English critic, literary historian and essayist, whose _Anatomy of Bibliomania_, _Fear of Books_ and _Printing of Books_ are required reading.

There are other favorites omitted too, for unlike Jackson's remark about the house of books, "There are many mansions and room for all trades, whims, and even fads"--this book could comfortably hold no more.

It has not seemed desirable, as it would be possible, to eliminate a degree of duplication in part among some of the essays. That would have required an amount of editorial surgery and revision unfair to the authors concerned. More importantly, it would have assumed that every reader would read every essay--hardly an attainable ideal.

Nor has any documentation been attempted to reconcile opposing viewpoints--that of A. W. Pollard and Holbrook Jackson, for instance, in respect to William Morris as printer and typographer. Happy will that reader be who finds this and other instances sufficiently provocative to embark upon further research of his own.

And while it is easier to come upon material in a collection such as this than to track down each item individually, much of the fun of the search is missing, along with the memorable thrills of discoveries in scattered places. There's much gold yet to be found by even moderate digging.

* * * * *

The greatest area for argument is that within the opposing views of the modern and traditional approach to book design. It is unrealistic to oppose the concept that contemporary typography should reflect some of the differences that mark our time from other epochs. Defining distinctions and relating them precisely to the arts of the book is something else again.

In his eloquent _Harsh Words_, T. M. Cleland decries the restless craving for something new. "This poison is aggravated in printing and typography," he insists, "by the fact that of all the arts it is, by its very nature and purpose, the most conventional. If it is an art at all, it is an art to serve another art. It is good only so far as it serves well and not on any account good for any other reason.

"It is not the business of type and printing to show off, and when, as it so frequently does, it engages in exhibitionistic antics of its own, it is just a bad servant.... Typography, I repeat, is a servant--the servant of thought and language to which it gives visible existence. When there are new ways of thinking and a new language, it will be time enough for a new typography."

The modern designer disagrees. He believes books can be freshened, made more appealing to eye and hand, and more inviting to read, just as product-packaging has benefited by the imaginative conceptions of skilled industrial designers. He concedes that books remain unsurpassed as a medium for transmitting thought to the reader's mind--and admits they do it best with a minimum of visual distraction. But, he asks, "is it not reasonable to remain open-minded and appraise the modern artist for what he may contribute?

"Books, to be sure, are much more than packages to be styled for shelf attention and sparkle. Yet it seems reasonable to believe they also may benefit by traveling the road of visual appeal and design attractiveness, and that they may be assisted in typographic handling to convey the author's words with a minimum of reading effort."

It isn't difficult to dismiss the modern approach and call it uninformed nonsense, but that doesn't lift the curtain and illumine the problem--or settle the continuing debate.

I recall discussing modern typography some years ago with the late D. B. Updike, in his library at the Merrymount Press in Boston. A catalog from the Museum of Modern Art was at hand, designed by Herbert Bayer of Bauhaus fame.

It looked strange in its all-lower-case typography, and seemed to slow reading because of that strangeness. To many it was the newest of the new ... perhaps it would institute a trend? Mr. Updike smiled, reached to a shelf for a book. It was printed more than a hundred years earlier in Paris and set throughout in lower-case. "So far as this had any influence, then or later," he remarked, "the experiment of _Typographie Economique_ is as dead as Queen Anne."

All of which points up Bertrand Russell's remarks, "On Being Modern Minded," in his recent _Unpopular Essays_[1]: "The desire to be contemporary is new only in degree," he declares, "it has existed to some extent in all previous periods that believed themselves to be progressive.

"The Renaissance had a contempt for the Gothic centuries that had preceded it; the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered priceless mosaics with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised the age of the heroic couplet.... But in none of these former times was the contempt for the past nearly as complete as it is now.

"From the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century men admired Roman antiquity; the Romantic movement revived the Middle Ages.... It is only since the 1914-18 war that it has become fashionable to ignore the past _en bloc_.

"The belief that fashion alone should dominate opinion has great advantages. It makes thought unnecessary, and puts the highest intelligence within reach of everyone."

Really thinking through the design potential not only seems the nub of the matter, but is basically sound typographically. Read Peter Beilenson attentively as he discusses the amateur printer and the development of a new style (page 313). "It is simple, but dull, to copy an old style," he points out. "It is hard, but exciting, to work out a new one. And while you are working at it, you must expect cynical observers to give your experiments the adjective 'wacky'; you must expect certain curious kinds of people to praise your work for the wrong reasons; and you must expect alternating moods of conceit and confusion. The proofs you gloat over at night will become commonplace by dawn....

"You will make misjudgments about the intelligence of ordinary readers. You will make mistakes of taste. You will find it too easy to get an effect by means of shock, and you will forget that any book, even a twenty-first-century book, must be a coherent unit. And you will often, since there are no highway markers for the explorer, feel lonely and discouraged and want to go back to the old familiar, well-traveled roads again....

"You can be subtle or bold, as you feel the urge ... you can advance your own work by looking to other fields of creation, enjoying and profiting by the experiments going on in them. You can feel yourself part of the whole forward-looking culture of today ... and if you do strike a vein with the least glitter of real gold in it, you will become rich indeed. For you will have become a creator in a new sense; your duty done as an amateur will be compensated with a twenty-four-carat satisfaction...."

There's sense in that essay, as there is in the views of Merle Armitage, T. M. Cleland, Porter Garnett, Eric Gill, Frederic W. Goudy, Edwin Grabhorn, Robert Josephy, Aldous Huxley, Stanley Morison, Bruce Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins, D. B. Updike and Beatrice Warde on related topics. Admittedly, some are in opposition--yet that very quality of provocativeness may help in dispelling the fog.

* * * * *

Whether we like it or not, the factor of competition affects the sale of books and their reading. Because so many elements compete for reading time, we frequently forget that they comprise the obvious: sports and the allure of the outdoors, newspapers and magazines, the theater and movies, radio and television, as well as social and family distractions.

These elements are real, measurable to a degree, and materially affect the reading of books and consequently their sales. To the trade publisher and printer they affect the business future and may be considered opponents. To them, the question of whether the modern approach is more effective than the traditional is no academic matter.

We have indicated the problem at length, though only in part, because of its consuming interest. For a comprehensive and sympathetic account of the modern view, see _Books for Our Time_. That illustrated record of the exhibition sponsored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (recently published by Oxford University Press), was designed and edited by Marshall Lee, and has essays by Merle Armitage, Herbert Bayer, John Begg, S. A. Jacobs, George Nelson and Ernst Reichl.

It was Henry Watson Kent who sagely pointed out that the collector who has affection for the book's format is not necessarily indifferent to its soul--"the thought enshrined in it." And so, as the one may proudly discuss his Kelmscott, Doves or Ashendene items and their literary background, so the other--more knowledgeable in graphic arts lore--may find equal pleasure in his discoveries: John Winterich on Franklin as printer and publisher, possibly, or Sir Francis Meynell on collectors who also read, or James Shand's revealing account of G.B.S., his interest in typography and his relations with his printers.

Instead of asking the fine press enthusiast to show his Doves Bible, his B. R. _Pierrot_, Nonesuch Dickens, or Grabhorn _Leaves of Grass_, the collector who reads about the making of books may get even more satisfaction in discussing his favorite essays or his most recent "find."

That the one can be as satisfying as the other is quite definite in my mind. In fact, I am certain that the collector who learns to appreciate book-making details will find the greater pleasure: his knowledge becomes a part of him as prized items on his shelves never can; he will enjoy looking _in_ books even more than looking _at_ them.

* * * * *

A concluding typographic note: Excepting for strictly type specimen material, and the degree of typographic expression attempted in Parts six and seven of _The New Colophon_ for a different reason, I don't recall any other book set in such a variety of distinguished body types. Yet that seemed so natural and sensible an idea for this that it has been stimulating to work it out.

Much of the detail and burden has fallen to the willing hands of Joseph Trautwein, the able designer responsible for this format, and the continuing interest of Joseph and Miriam Schwartz of Westcott and Thomson, the superior Philadelphia typesetters, whose wealth of typographic resources is evidenced in these pages.

Some of the reasons for coupling specific essays and types are detailed in the final chapter, which includes also a brief specimen of each face with a note on its attribution.

And finally, I want to salute William Targ, World's editor, for inviting me to put this miscellany together, and for his patience in watching the book develop. That hasn't proved anything like the challenging experience I envisioned, but instead became a spare-time, weekend pleasure I've enjoyed for months. Indirectly, of course, this is related to the great fraternity of book-makers and typophiles, rich in its friendships and international in scope, that I have been privileged to enjoy through the years. As I scan the contents again, I see not only the names of many good friends and the rewarding associations they bring to mind, but also some of their best writing. My chief regret is that there just wasn't room for more of it in this collection. But that's a different adventure--and possibly another book.

PAUL A. BENNETT

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bertrand Russell, _Unpopular Essays_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950).

BOOKS AND PRINTING

OTTO F. EGE

_The Story of the Alphabet_

ITS EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT

Copyright 1921 by Norman T. A. Munder & Company. Reprinted by
permission of the author.

_Do you know your A B C's? Each Letter Character Has a History and a Reason for Its Present Form. Have you Ever Questioned the Origin and Significance of the Alphabet?_

Our transition from barbarism to civilization can be attributed to the alphabet. Those great prehistoric discoveries and inventions such as the making of a fire, the use of tools, the wheel and the axle, and even our modern marvelous applications of steam and electricity pale into insignificance when compared with the power of the alphabet. Simple as it now appears after the accustomed use of ages, it can be accounted not only the most difficult, but also the most fruitful of all the achievements of the human intellect.

Man lived by "bread alone" and without the alphabet untold ages, and with a practical alphabetic system not more than 3,000 years. So important and wonderful was this step deemed by those who lived nearer the time of its inception--in the time before the wonder of its extraordinary powers had been blunted by long possession and common use--that its invention, as well as that of writing, was invariably attributed to divine origin.

Modern investigation always seeks sources other than mythological ones, and thus the science of ancient hand-writing, paleography, came into existence. In the last hundred and twenty-five years the writing of the ancient Egyptians, which was a "sealed book" for nearly twenty centuries, has been deciphered through the efforts of Champollion and Young; the mysterious cuneiform characters of ancient Assyria and Babylon have been interpreted by Grotofend and Rawlinson, and the "missing link" to connect our present alphabetic system to these ancient ones is being partly completed by Sir Arthur Evans, who is compiling and analyzing Cretan characters and pre-Phoenician writing. The story, however, will probably never be told in its entirety.

* * * * *

The forms of our letters, with the exception of G, J, U, W, reached their full development two thousand years ago. The Roman letter was the parent of all the styles notwithstanding the diversity that has appeared in Europe since the beginning of the Christian era. With a little imagination it is not difficult to note the resemblance between similar letters of the old Roman capitals and those following that have been designated as script, Italic, Old English or black-letter, versal, uncial and an endless list of alphabet families. The desire for speed, and the influence of the tool, pen, reed, chisel, brush, were the determining factors in the change of form. Curiously enough instead of being archaic, the Roman alphabet, which is now 2,000 years old, is still the most useful because of its legibility, and also the most beautiful.

We derived twenty-three of our letters from the Romans. They had taken probably eighteen of these from the Greeks about the fourth century B.C. and afterwards borrowed elsewhere or invented seven more. Instead of giving them names as the Greeks did, they simply called them by the sounds for which they stood: A (ah), B (bay). They introduced the curve wherever possible, whereas the early Greek letters were all angular--what an interesting analogy is evident in the architecture of those two peoples, the temple pediment and angularity of the Greeks as contrasted with the dome and arch of the Romans.

The Greeks, in their contact with those great traders and "Yankees of ancient time," the Phoenicians, saw the value of their alphabetic writing and inaugurated its use about the time of the first Olympiad, 776 B.C. Three or four centuries before they gave it to the Romans the ancient Greeks found use for fifteen of the Phoenician letters and then conceived enough to round out an alphabet of twenty-four characters. The changes that took place in the shape of their letters can be attributed to their sense of order; the letters are balanced better and the parts better related.

The Greeks were interested in the sound value only, not in the picture value of the symbol, and, therefore, they probably did not notice that A, for instance, had ever been a picture of the head of an ox and that it was now drawn upside down; and that the Phoenician name "Aleph" meant ox and that they mispronounced the sound in calling it "Alpha."

The Romans borrowed from the Greeks and the Greeks had borrowed from the Phoenicians, but where did the Phoenicians obtain their letters? Did they invent them? To what extent were these letters influenced by earlier systems of writings as those employed by the Cretan, Assyrian and Egyptian civilizations? These are questions that probably will never be answered satisfactorily. Many arguments and theories are advanced. We can, however, trace back with certainty a number of our letters to the Phoenician alphabet of 1000 B.C. Beyond this all is, at present, a matter of conjecture.

The Phoenician alphabet consisted of twenty-two pictures of familiar objects. These pictures were rudely and simply made, for writers and readers soon recognized the fundamental characteristics and all unnecessary details were eliminated. The great advance that can be credited to them is that they realized that a small number of sound-expressing characters, if well selected, are sufficient to express any word. Other races at this period had phonetic systems but they consisted of numerous symbols and cumbersome appendages of non-alphabetic characters--"eye pictures" side by side with "ear pictures." No doubt earlier Phoenician writing passed through the stages of development traceable in so many countries:

1. The pictures or characters suggesting the thing or incident (picture writing).

2. The pictures or characters symbolizing the thing or idea (ideographic or symbolic writing).

3. The pictures or characters representing the sound of the thing or idea (phonograms).

4. The sign suggesting the various sounds of the language (alphabetic system).

To free this last stage from the others was the great Phoenician contribution.

A

Why is A the first letter? It represents one of the commonest vowel sounds in ancient languages. Naturally the Phoenician alphabet makers selected a familiar object in the name of which this particular vowel sound was emphasized. Since food is of primal importance, it is not surprising to find that he chose the ox--"Alef" (ah´lef), or rather the head of the ox, for the characteristics of animals are chiefly embodied in the head. Not only was the ox important as food but also as a beast of burden, for the ox had been harnessed to the plow centuries before the horse was domesticated. Thus one of the earliest and most important of man's friends among the brute creatures was honored.

In making this letter repeatedly and rapidly they became careless and instead of crossing the letter V they tried to make it with one continuous scratching, hence when the Greeks became acquainted with it three to five centuries after its invention, the picture had deteriorated almost beyond recognition. They introduced balance and the V was inverted, and the cross-bar was retained between the lines. Unknowingly they were drawing the ox head upside down; and it remains so with us to this day. The Greeks called the first letter alpha, the Romans called it A (ah) and we call it A (ay), a sound it never possessed in Latin.

B

The second letter of the alphabet represents a crude house, roughly outlined. After food, shelter is an important consideration and this fact was expressed by the early alphabet maker. The Greeks again were ignorant of the picture and careless or indifferent as to the exact name of the character, and thus two triangles instead of the square supporting a triangle were made and the name changed from "beth" to "beta" (ba´ta). Combine the Greek names for the first two letters and we have (alphabeta) "alphabet." The Romans shortened the name "beta," calling it B (bay) and introduced the curved loops. The original name is familiar to us through names found in the Scriptures: Bethel (house of God) and Bethlehem (house of bread).

C-G

The "ship of the desert," the camel, gave its name to the third letter. Our name for this animal is traceable back to the Phoenician "gimel" (ghe´mel) or "gamel" (gah´mel). The long neck and the peculiar angle of the neck in relation to the head could easily be represented. The Greeks made changes similar to those in other letters--they improved the shape and changed the name to "gamma." The Romans did not forget the curve and gave it both the hard and soft sounds (kay and gay). Later on, about the third century A.D. to distinguish the "g" sound from the "k" sound they added a little bar below the opening. Thus we get both C and G from the picture of the camel.

Stevenson said that when he was a child the capital G always impressed him as a genii swooping down to drink out of a handsome cup. Kipling's story of the invention of the alphabet is filled with similar delightful stories of the picture origin of letter forms.

D

The next letter, D, came from a representation of a door--"daleth" (dah´leth). It probably pictures the door of a tent. A custom that prevails among the Arabs and in a number of countries gave particular importance to the door of a tent--a stranger, or even an enemy, if he entered through the door of a tent must receive food, drink and shelter. "Daleth" became "delta" with the Greeks and D (day) with the Romans, who, of course, rounded the angle.

E

The house picture gave us B, the door, D, and the window, E. "He" (hay) meant to look, to see, or window, and one writer asserts our familiar street cry "hey, there" can be traced to these ancient times. One side bar of the window was lost early.

The Greeks at first used this sound for the long "e" (epsilon) but afterwards employed the character H or "eta" for the long sound. The Romans at first made no change except to call it "eh."

This is the letter that occurs so frequently in English words, and many no doubt recall the interesting use that Poe makes of this fact in his story "The Gold Bug."

F

Our letter order does not agree with that of the Phoenicians or the early Greeks. Our sixth letter, F, is missing in classical Greek, but it is found in earlier writings. It comes from a Phoenician representation of a hook or nail (?) "vau." The Hebrew form resembles the latter object. The nail was important in shipbuilding, a common industry of the early traders. When the Greeks used this letter they called it "digamma" (double gamma) and its form represented one "gamma" (Greek c) superimposed over the other. The Romans called it F (ef) and during the reign of Emperor Claudius the consonant V was represented by the F inverted. This was done because the Latin alphabet had but one character to represent U and V and OCTAVIA became OCTAℲIA.

H

Two fence posts and three horizontal boards gave us our eighth letter, H. The fence was called "cheth" (haith). The Greeks omitted the upper and lower boards thus making it like our H, and called it "eta" (ata). The Romans gave it a soft sound H (hah) just as we do today.

I-J

The parts of the human body also played an important part in giving form to the letters of the alphabet. The early peoples recognized the value of the hand and the head and these members gave rise to the letters I and K, and Q and R respectively. The hand in profile bent at the knuckles and wrist gives us the character "yod" (the hand) as used by the Phoenicians. The Greeks, who always liked to have their words end in vowels, added "a" and called it "Iota" (e-o´ta). When the Romans received it, it was simply a vertical stroke, I (ee) which represented the same long "e" sound as it did with the Greeks, but later they used it both as a consonant and vowel, differentiating the consonant by making the letter I longer, J; but they did not give a distinct letter form for the capital J until the sixteenth century.

The small j came into being nearly a century later. The dot over the i was first introduced in a thirteenth century manuscript.

Until the 3rd Century B.C. the character _c_ represented the sounds of both _g_ and _k_ when a slight modification of the character _c_ was made for the _g_ sound.

In a table of this sort, dates, forms, and even meanings must be arbitrary. For instance, _Koph_ can be spelled _Goph_ or _Qoph_; He may have no meaning; _Lamed_ (_Lamedh_) may mean _teacher's rod_; _Samech_ (_Samekh_) may mean _fish_ or _fulcrum_; _Zayin_ may mean _olive_ or _balance_.]

K

The silhouette of the open hand, with its radiating lines, discloses the origin of the letter K, "kaph," which signified hollow or palm. We know that palmistry was practiced by the ancients, and probably the association of reading the hand and writing influenced the inclusion of this character. The Greeks added their favorite vowel sound, "a," again and thus obtained their "Kappa." The Romans had no need for this letter at first, as C furnished the same sound. When they did accept it, they made no change.

L

The ox goad or whip lash, "lamed" (lah´med) gave rise to the next letter. Herding oxen and sheep was the important occupation of the slaves of the Phoenicians and hence the last, an object so unfamiliar to us, was easily recognized by them. The Greeks again added an "a" and called it "lambda" and made it in the form of an inverted V. The Romans, strangely, adhered more closely to the original form than did the Greeks.

M-N

The Phoenicians were lovers of the sea, and from this source two letters were derived, M and N. They explored not only all of the Mediterranean shore at an early date, but they also sailed boldly through the gates of Gibraltar, and "beyond the world" where they found Britain. They were the first navigators that sailed by night and it is said they discovered the north star. Therefore it is not surprising that water "mem" (maim) is the source of M and that fish, "nun" (noon) the source of N. The letter M has changed but little in form, it is the Greek letter "Mu" and the Roman M (em). The head of the fish, from which the letter N is pictured, was simplified even more than the head of the ox, in A. It no doubt represents the fisherman's viewpoint--not a swimming fish but a suspended one. The Greeks reversed the stroke and called it "Nu" and the Romans did not change its form but called it N (en).

O

In Phoenicia, as in Egypt, China and Mexico, the eye is one of the commonest elements found in the writing. It was called "Ayin" (ah-yin). The Greeks used it for two sounds now designated by "Omicron," little "o," and "omega," great "o," the letter which, strangely, was placed at the end of the Greek alphabet. We find in the Bible: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." How many today would think of using the alphabet for such an important illustration? It is easy to trace the Roman O (oh) from its Greek parent, "omicron."

P

Many letter pictures run in pairs--finger and hand, water and fish--and now after eye we find mouth "pi" (pe) which represents the lower lip. The Greeks made little change in the name or shape at first, but later they introduced the angles and made the downward strokes equal. The Romans formed the letter by continuing the curve farther than the Phoenicians and called it "pe" (pay).

Q-R

Now we come to Q and R, the letters which were mentioned above as those probably coming from the head. Whether Q (koph) was derived from the picture of the back view of the head and neck, or whether it represents a knot, which, no doubt, was as important to navigators then as it is now, is a mooted question. The Q sound is guttural and the tail of the letter is supposed to indicate the throat sound. The Greeks soon discarded "koppa," as it was called, and the Romans went back to the original source for their Q (koo).

The back view of the head is the unusual one, for as we look at the drawing of the early races, or memory pictures, or the delineations of a child of seven or eight we find they are almost without exception profile pictures. The Phoenician "resh" represents the profile and shows very little resemblance to a human being, although at first the features may have been more clearly indicated. The Greeks, as was to be expected, turned the letter around, and later, oddly enough, introduced a curve making it exactly like the Roman letter P. The extra stroke which we find in the Roman letter was no doubt due to the carelessness in copying. They pronounced it R (air).

S

There is a common legend explaining S, the letter with the hissing sound. Because of its curved shape and its hissing sound many people believe it to be derived from a snake. Its real history is easily followed from Phoenician "shin" or "sin" (teeth) to the present day. Its form closely resembled our W. The Greeks made it perpendicular for their "sigma" and the Romans simplified and curved it giving S (ess).

T

Our twentieth letter, T, is particularly interesting because it is derived from "tahv" a mark or cross made by people who could not write, and no doubt their signature frequently resembled it. We must not forget that even Charlemagne and other kings of the middle ages had to make their mark or trace their initials through stencil plates. The only change of "tahv" to Greek "tau," and to Roman T (tay) was the raising of the cross-bar.

U-V-Y

The letters U, V and Y were all taken from the letter "Upsilon," and it may have been derived from the queer Hebrew form of "Ayin" which closely resembles Y. The letters U and V were interchangeable. Upsilon, known as the "Samian letter," was used by Pythagoras as an emblem to represent the parting of the ways--the young man making a choice in life.

W

Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers contributed two letters, W (wen) and another often confused with Y, called "thorn." These were introduced during the thirteenth century. The French always called the former letter double vay, and in English it may be said to represent double U, as its name indicates. The letter "thorn" had the value of the digraph "th," and "ye" in old English should be pronounced "the" like the definite article.

X-Z

Although we have no direct need for the letter X, for Z can be substituted for it when it is used as an initial letter, and "ks" when used elsewhere, it has remained in the alphabet since its frequent use by the Greeks. It came from the Roman X (eex) which may have been derived from the Greek "ksi." The latter resembles the Phoenician character "samech," meaning a post or support.

The dagger "zayin" from which we obtain our Z must have been important in the daily lives of the Greeks, Hebrews and Phoenicians for it occupies the sixth place (Zeta) and the seventh in the latter alphabets. The Romans did not change its name or shape, but although there has been little change in 2,000 years we see little resemblance to the short sword in the letter the Romans gave to us.

* * * * *

Many slight changes that have occurred in the formation of the letters of the alphabet may be accounted for. At first the Greeks wrote from left to right in one line and from right to left on the next line--a mode of writing which has been termed "boustrophedon" because it runs as an ox plow does in a field, up one furrow and down another. It is due to this fact that many letters were reversed from their original prototypes. It is interesting to note that recently books for the blind have been embossed in this manner.

The small letters of the alphabet, sometimes called "lower case" letters because printers keep them in a case below the capitals, or "minuscule letters" in contrast with "majuscule," or capital letters, illustrate further changes due to rapid writing of capitals in a cursive or running hand.

The few characters selected by the Phoenicians, the great traders, artificers and farmers of the ancient world, not only influenced Greek literature and life, Roman and modern nations in Europe, but also spread eastward to the very walls of China. The Hebrews copied them as a whole and retained the original names with only slight variations. They did change the shapes because a different writing instrument was employed.

According to a legend, Jehovah gave the letters to Moses, hence all the left curves in Hebrew letter form turn upward--as symbols of a finger pointing heavenward.

The Phoenician alphabet is also the parent of the Arabic, Indian, Javanese, Corean, Tibetan, Coptic syllabaries and alphabets. No small country ever gave such a great gift to humanity; no large country could have given a greater gift.

THIS ARTICLE COMPOSED IN JANSON TYPES, AS ARE THOSE
ARTICLES FOLLOWING FOR WHICH NO OTHER
TYPE FACE IS INDICATED.

LANCELOT HOGBEN

_Printing, Paper and Playing Cards_

_From Cave Painting to Comic Strip_ by Lancelot Hogben. Copyright 1949 by The Chanticleer Press. Reprinted in abridged form by permission of author and publisher.

Twenty thousand years or more separate the way of life of the Aurignacian hunters, who contributed the first pictures to the modern symposium of human communications, from the beginnings of settled community life and the beginnings of a priestly script. Fully three thousand years separate the way of life of the first Semitic trading folk who had an alphabet from the vast expansion of knowledge which occurred in Northern Europe after the spread of printing from movable type during the half century before the voyages of Columbus. Civilised mankind had to surmount many hurdles before it was possible to exploit to the fullest extent the considerable economy signalised by the introduction of alphabetic writing.

At first, there were few people who had any use for the art of writing except as a convenience of commercial intercourse. There was in fact no incentive to adapt the art of writing with letters to the flexible uses of daily speech.... An age-long popular tradition of community singing and community dancing lies back of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes; but it was one which could assume so novel an aspect only in the trading communities of the islands in the Mediterranean, where constant interchange of personnel promoted conditions less propitious to the dominance of a priestly class of avaricious landed proprietors than under the earlier dynasties of Egypt and the near East. Thus and there, at an early date, a segment of tribal ritual crystallises as a secular pursuit; and where there is a flourishing drama there is also a motive for writing, equally aloof from association with the repetition of sacred texts or from the limited requirements of the counting-house. There is, in fact, an incentive to write down what is more than a ceremonial password, an epitaph or a bill of goods, an incentive to record in writing what living people actually speak.

It is indeed a far cry from the Greek drama to the free-and-easy visual speech of a modern novel or of a modern newspaper in the Western world; but we unduly belittle our too often overrated debt to Greek civilisation, if we fail to pay tribute to an innovation which entitles Greek literature to rank as a cardinal contribution to the self-education of the human species. To a far greater extent than the Romans, the Greeks wrote about the life of their times with an intimacy and liveliness which foreshadows the adaptation of writing to all the familiar uses of speech. For the Latin which generations of schoolboys reluctantly construed in the grammar schools, Latin in the Gladstone tradition, was actually dead when committed to writing, a language as remote from the common speech of the Italian peninsula as the idiom of Gertrude Stein from that of the contemporary American household.

Within the framework of Greco-Latin society, the written word became available to the more prosperous citizens on a scale unprecedented in the civilisations which had preceded them; but there were still very few who read much or read often. The spoken word was still the main instrument of instruction and of political persuasion. Even among those who could read, there were still few who could also write. There were in fact two formidable impediments alike to the use of the written word as a medium of instruction or of propaganda and to the availability of any considerable body of written matter for those with inclination and training in the art of reading. Needless to say, one was the laborious nature of the only available means of multiplying the products of the pen, when it was necessary to copy every script individually by hand; and since this was a labour commonly entrusted to slaves, deficiency in penmanship gave little affront to self-esteem among the still privileged few who could read with ease. The other handicap was the writing surface itself, often of its very nature inadaptable to free circulation and at best costly.

PAPER is so much a part of every-day life that we too easily overlook the significance of writing material as a circumstance limiting the advancement of literacy. It is on that account worthy of more than a single sentence. The clay tablets of Babylon and Crete might serve the purpose of stocking a temple or a palace library; but no household of modest size could have accommodated the contents of several issues of the _New Yorker_, if transcribed in the cuneiform tradition. Much the same may be said about the wax tablets in common use among the Roman contemporaries of Cicero. Indeed the advantage Egyptian civilisation, and thereafter the mainland Greek, Alexandrian, and late Latin, enjoyed from the use of _papyrus_ is difficult to exaggerate. Papyrus consists of longitudinal ribbons of reed laid on a wet surface, stuck with gum to an overlaying layer of similar strips at right angles, dried in the sun and subsequently polished. It has a double advantage over clay and wax. It is not bulky, and its smooth surface permits an easy cursive style of writing. On the other hand, its manufacture is tedious; and it does not stand up to a moist climate.

Long before printing began in Europe--during the Han dynasty in the first century A.D.--the Chinese had taken a lesson from the wasp, which makes its nest by chewing vegetable fibre and pressing the moist suspension into a film of even thickness. As a source of vegetable fibre, the Chinese used anything which came to hand: old fishing nets, worn-out rope and hemp, macerating it in tubs before removing with a sieve the artificial detritus. It is then possible to compress the latter to required thickness, and the triturated fibres adhere when dry. The Mandarin had now material far superior to papyrus, alike for copying or for storing the written word; but he lacked the incentive to share the advantage of this invention with his underprivileged compatriots. Chinese literature received a new impetus; but there were still few who could enjoy its benefits....

The capture of Samarkand by the Arabs in A.D. 750 marks the date when paper starts on its trek to the as yet non-existent printing presses of Europe. The Moslem invaders of Spain and Sicily brought it with them into the territories they conquered, and with it a recipe for deriving the fibre basis from old rags. For three centuries after its introduction to Christendom, somewhere about A.D. 1200, it had to compete with parchment or vellum made from stretched, pressed and dried animal membranes. What was probably decisive in establishing its supremacy was the spread of water mills in the two centuries before Caxton. Power was necessary to speed up maceration of the raw material; and we have record of paper mills in Germany by A.D. 1336. Had it not been for this new tempo and economy of production of thin, smooth and flexible material for the impress of the written word, the vastly increased volume of written matter put into circulation by the printing press could not have come about.

As we all know, printing from movable type began in Europe about fifty-years before Columbus set out on his first voyage; but few of us reflect upon the dramatic speed with which the new trade spread from one city or one country to another. A single leaf of a sibylline poem called the _Fragment of World Judgment_ is supposedly the earliest extant product of the new technique, probably issued about the year 1445 from the press of Gutenberg, a master printer, then resident in Strasbourg. From law-suit records we know that Fust, a goldsmith of Mainz who financed Gutenberg's earliest trials, was printing there during the fifties; and McMurtrie, author of _The Book_, states that