Who printed Piquet for Francis Cogan? Thank you Compositor!

(udpated 3/13 to link to Patrick Spedding's post, with his discussion of Compositor)

Last week, I watched Joseph Hone present a paper 'Secrets, Lies, and Title Pages' (now available on YouTube) sponsored by ODSECS, the Open Digital Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies. Joseph discussed how 18c printers "corrupted title pages with false names, dates, and places...to disguise the origins of dangerous  books or piracies." I recommend the talk highly. 

In general, we don't know who printed a particular book in the 18c. The imprint, if honest, tends to identify the publisher and only occasionally the printer. Several times, Joseph made reference to the Compositor database of 18c printers' ornaments which he used to unmask printers who would otherwise have stayed hidden. I knew that Compositor was an upgraded version of Fleuron, a site I had used frequently. In my online Hoyle bibliography I had links to Fleuron which no longer worked in Compositor. It had been on my list to update the links and Joseph's talk prompted me to do so. Done!

I also explored Compositor and was blown away by a new feature: "image search", with a tutorial on their blog. It allows you to take an ornament in one book and find matches in others. Sometimes, those matches will be in books that identify the printer, suggesting a printer for the original book. Before giving an example, here is some background:

• Printers ornaments are decorative elements, generally woodblocks, used in books through the late 18c. For a charming example, see the squirrely headpiece here. 

• The source for Compositor is ECCO, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, a subscription database of nearly 200,000 18c books that can be accessed through most university libraries. ECCO began as microfilm and was digitized from the film. For a great history of ECCO, see Steven H. Gregg's paper "Old Books and Digital Publishing: Eighteenth-Century Collections Online" available here. The path from film to digital means that the reproductions are not always of pristine quality. 

• The Compositor/Fleuron team must have done an immense amount of image processing that I can imagine only vaguely. They extracted the ornaments from full pages, developed ornament metadata, and, most magically, allowed visual search. Well done!
  

Okay, enough talk. Let's figure out who printed Piquet for Francis Cogan. My description of the book is here. The imprint, "Printed for F. Cogan at the Middle-Temple-Gate", is silent as to the printer. Scroll down to the contents where it says ‘[headpiece] | SOME | Rules and Observations | FOR | Playing well at CHESS. | [...]’. Click on the link to see again the headpiece with squirrels and then click on "Load Ornament in Visual Search". 

Now for the part requiring some dexterity. As described in the tutorial, you can use the right mouse button to select a rectangular area in the ornament. It will highlight red as you drag, and turn yellow when you are done.  

Selecting an Ornament

When I clicked "search", I found 103 matches: 

Matching an Ornament

You can click on a match and the original image on the left and the match on the right. If you click the middle image, it will toggle between the two and you can determine whether they were made from the same woodblock. Many things can account for differences even when the block is the same: Woodblocks become worn from use. Any given impression can use more or less ink. The microfilm and digitization can introduce artifacts. Despite the differences, I'm awestruck by how well this works! Truly, this be miraculous!!

Now for the part I found a bit clunky. You can click on the filename of the rightmost image to go to a page like this and then click on the link "This ornament was extracted from this book". In this example, you see the first of ten volumes of Moliere's works with the suggestive imprint "printed by and for John Watts at the Printing-Office in Wild-Court near Lincoln's-Inn Fields". One match does not a printer identify, so you'd want to look at more ornaments and more matches. That entails a lot of clicking. And a lot of keeping track of what you're seeing. Well, I wondered, couldn't I automate that?

Did you notice the little button that let you export the search results as a .csv (comma separated variable) file? Well, I saved the 103 matches to a file and dragged out some rusty Python skills to read the .csv file, visit the 103 matches, visit the book from which the ornament was extracted, extract the imprints, and print them out. Ninety minutes of coding; sixty lines of code. It took longer to write this blog post. If you run it for the 103 matches of the squirrel ornament, the first eight results are:

filename:  105540010000600_1
ornament ID:  1171998
ESTC:  T048220
publisher:  printed for F. Cogan at the Middle-Temple-Gate

filename:  005770040202750_0
ornament ID:  944832
ESTC:  T052789
publisher:  printed for H. Lintot, J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper

filename:  041920010801090_0
ornament ID:  634261
ESTC:  T064098
publisher:  printed for John Watts at the Printing-Office in Wild-Court near Lincoln's-Inn Fields

filename:  025940030001100_0
ornament ID:  1028312
ESTC:  T064113
publisher:  printed for John Watts at the Printing-Office in Wild-Court near Lincoln's-Inn Fields

filename:  086630010201970_0
ornament ID:  166790
ESTC:  T089176
publisher:  printed for J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper in the Strand

filename:  025940040000700_0
ornament ID:  838797
ESTC:  T064114
publisher:  printed for John Watts at the Printing-Office in Wild-Court near Lincoln's-Inn Fields

filename:  094430010500090_1
ornament ID:  706629
ESTC:  T064441
publisher:  printed by and for John Watts at the Printing-Office in Wild-Court near Lincoln's-Inn Fields

filename:  015270010000960_0
ornament ID:  763509
ESTC:  T063293
publisher:  printed for Jacob Tonson in the Strand 

It would have been easy and useful to extract the title and date. And to replace the ' with an apostrophe. But that would have taken more than 90 minutes. Had I done so, you would have seen the first item listed is the source book Piquet. Only one of the eight imprints identifies the printer: "printed by and for John Watts...". Of the 103 entries, 31 of them include "printed by" and in all cases, the printer is John Watts. I've visually inspected a good number of the ornament matches and similarly checked other ornaments from Piquet. I'm completely confident that I have identified the printer. 

There are some caveats in working with ornaments to identify printers. The printing of a book may be shared by more than one printer. A printer may loan out his ornaments. You have to be careful about when a printer died--another printer may have inherited the ornaments. My sense is that these caveats are mostly (repeat mostly) theoretical, but you should be aware of them. 

In fact I had done a lot of pre-Compositor ornament searching and had already identified Watts as the printer of Piquet. But with this new tool, I have identified printers for some of the Dublin Hoyles and for some non-Hoyles in my collection. 

Thank you Compositor! And thank you Joseph for the nudge!

For Patrick Spedding's take on Compositor, see his blog essay here.

Hoyle's "Sixth" Edition and Progressive Ornament Damage

(updated 9/29/2012 with link to online edition of Maslen on Richardson)

Last month I was the successful auction bidder for an early Hoyle I'm quite excited about. The book is the "sixth" edition of the treatise on whist, published by Thomas Osborne, which I referred to as Whist.6 when I discussed it here. I have other copies of this work in Osborne collections (discussed here), but this copy was separately published.

Whist.6 title page
Levy [1761]

Whist 6 title page verso
with Hoyle autograph

What I like about the book is that it is in its original binding. Previously, I had written:

What did these Osborne's individual treatises actually look like as published? I've seen a very few of them in original bindings. They were sold in drab blue unprinted paper wrappers. They were stab sewn through four holes in the paper, rather than sewn through the folds. In nearly all cases, surviving individual treatises have been rebound some time in the past quarter millennium and the original appearance is lost.

My new copy, despite some minor paper repairs, is a rare survival of the original binding and confirms my earlier statement: the unprinted blue wrapper and the four-hole stab sewing. The sewing adds weight to my contention here, that one of my Osborne collections consists of separately sold treatises bound by the customer.

front wrapper

detail of stab sewing

The full imprint of the book is "Printed for T. Osborne, at Gray's Inn; J. Hildyard, at Hork; M. Bryson, at Newcaste [sic]; and J. Leake, at Bath. M DCC XLVI." The imprint does not reveal who printed it, nor is there a colophon identifying the printer. I was able to identify the printer through his use of woodblock ornaments such as the one appearing in Whist.6 on the first page of text below.

ornament from Whist 1746

The ornament provides a clue as to the printer. For a very small number of printers, there have been published studies their ornament usage:

• Maslen, Keith., The Bowyer Ornament Stock. Oxford, Oxford Bibliographical Society, Bodleian Library, 1973
• Maslen, Keith., Samuel Richardson of London Printer. A Study of his Printing Based on Ornament Use and Business Accounts. Dunedin: University of Otago, 2001. As of 9/28/2012, the book is freely available online.
• Goulden, R. J., The Ornament Stock of Henry Woodfall, 1719-1747 : a preliminary inventory London : The Bibliographical Society, 1988.

This ornament appeared in none of the books, so a lot of tedious work was required. I looked at reproductions of lots (and lots) of 18th century books where the printer had been identified. After some time, I was able to find the same ornament in a contemporary work, Life's Progress Through the Passions: or, the Adventures of Natura. London: Printed by T. Gardner, and sold at his Printing-Office. 1748. The author has been identified as novelist Eliza Haywood. The form of imprint "printed by" rather than "printed for" identifies Thomas Gardner as the printer of the Haywood work and thus as the printer of Hoyle's Whist.6. 

Osborne used Gardner to print many of the early Hoyle's and the same headpiece often appeared at the beginning of the text. What is striking is that we can see damage to the ornament over time. See the examples below, perhaps enlarging them in a separate window. In 1745 and 1746, it appears to be in good condition. In Whist.7, the ornament is fine at the beginning of the book, but when it was reused on page 72, the beginnings of a vertical crack are visible to the left of center. By March 1748, the crack is more pronounced in the "eighth" edition of Hoyle's Games. It is difficult to tell from the reproduction from Haywood's Life's Progress if there is any worsening by April. In 1750 the crack appears to be slightly larger in the "tenth" edition of Hoyle's Games.

Backgammon 1745

Whist "seventh" edition page 1

Whist "seventh" edition page 72

Hoyle's Games "eighth" edition March 1748

Haywood, Life's Progress, April 1748

Hoyle's Games "tenth" edition 1750

One could expand this study by identifying and looking at all of Gardner's output during this time period. I can only imagine how much work Maslen and Goulden must have done to produce ornament inventories for the printers they studied.

I noted earlier that the "tenth" edition was a reissue of the "eighth" with the same setting of type. There appears to be more damage apparent in the 1750 "tenth" edition as compared with the 1748 "eighth."  Obviously this suggest that the pictured copy of the "tenth" was printed later than the copy of the "eight." Was there a single continue printing operation or multiple impressions from the same set of type?

The Humours of Whist as a satire of piracy

In my previous essay about The Humours of Whist, I discuss the play as a satire of Hoyle. The writing is witty and demonstrates an intimate familiarity with Hoyle's Short Treatise on Whist. Even more intriguing are the references in Humours to the publication history of Whist—its piracy and the efforts of publisher Cogan and Hoyle to battle the pirates.

I discuss the details of the piracy and the efforts to combat the pirates in my article "Pirates, Autographs, and a Bankruptcy: A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist by Edmond Hoyle, Gentleman." It was originally published in Script & Print, 34 no. 3 (2010): 133-61 and is available for download here. To recap the chronology:

• November 1742: Hoyle publishes Whist privately, selling it for one guinea (21 shillings).
• February 1743: Hoyle sells the copyright to Francis Cogan for 100 guineas. Two piracies appear, one selling for 2 shillings, the other for less.
• March 1743: Cogan publishes an authorized second edition selling it for 2 shillings, rather than the 21 he expected. Hoyle begins to sign all genuine copies.
• April 1743: Cogan (belatedly) obtains an injunction against the pirates.
• May 1743: The Humours of Whist is published.

Beginning with the second edition of Whist, Cogan inserts this advertisement:

This Book having been entered at Stationers Hall, according to Act of Parliament, whoever shall presume to print or vend a pirate edition, shall be prosecuted according to law. (p ii)

The Humours of Whist opens with a similar warning, styled "The Author's Protest":

Whereas authors are every day invaded in their properties…be it at the peril of all booksellers, publishers, mercuries, hedge-printers, hawkers, and others, to print or vend any pirated copies, for that they will be prosecuted for the same with the utmost rigour, I having duly entered this my property at Stationer’s Hall and am within an Am’s ace of being honoured with the Royal License. (pp3-4)

To decode some of the unfamiliar terms:

• An "am's ace" refers to the roll of double-aces at dice. 
• Registering a book at Stationers Hall is the first step to copyright protection in 18th century England. 
• A royal license a stronger form of copyright protection in England—a monopoly from the King to print. A royal license was granted for the King James Bible and The Book of Common Prayer.

Just as Hoyle autographed authorized copies of Whist, Humours notes "The genuine books published by the author, will be all signed with his name." (p5)

There is also an epilogue, a dialogue in which the author of Humours negotiates with a bookseller (what we would now call a publisher) for the copyright:

Book. The copy is but small, sir. 'Twill make but a shilling thing.
Auth. The treatise on Whist has abundantly less in it, and is sold for two shillings.
Book. That's true, sir—but you see, 'tis pyrated—Truly, it's a shameful thing those pyrates shou'd be suffer'd in a free country. At this rate, no man is safe in his property—It makes very bad, sir, for both author and bookseller...

Auth. ...I suppose if I ask you the third part of what was given for the Professor's book, you will not think it unreasonable?
Book. Alack-a-day, sir, you are greatly out of the way—indeed you are. 

Auth. ... I think the thing is very well deserving of what I ask, and cannot think of taking any less.
Book. Pray, consider, sir, the expense of paper, print, stamps, advertisements, and pyrating as I said before; I shall be a great deal of money out of pocket before a penny comes in. ...

Book. The admirers of the Treatise are a very numerous body, and will scarce read the satire.
Auth. On the contrary—they will read it thro' curiosity; and the enemies to play of course will do it for its utility. (pp 57-9)

In fact the author signs the book over to the bookseller, but the echo of Cogan's plight is clear—Cogan paid too much for the Hoyle copyright and suffered when the pirates forced him to lower the selling price.

I detect one more veiled reference to the Hoyle piracy, though I may be overreaching. By way of background, one of the two printers to pirate Hoyle in 1743 was James Watson. Earlier, Watson had been sued for pirating Alexander Pope’s Dunciad of 1729  and John Gay’s Polly, a sequel to The Beggar’s Opera.  (Sutherland 1936 and 1942) Some copies of both The Beggar’s Opera and Polly include engraved music bound in at the end.

Now, back to Humours. The author says that if the play should ever be performed (as were The Beggar's Opera and Polly), he has a set of music which can be added to the text:

A set of curious songs are ready to be clapt in (little inferior, if not equal to any in the Beggar’s Opera) in case the said representation takes place. ( p5)

It is reasonable to infer that the author of Humours knew that Watson had pirated both Gay and Hoyle. Whether readers would have detected the connection is much more speculative.

Let me mention one final irony about The Humours of Whist. We don't know the author. Contemporary newspaper advertisements give a hint as to the publisher, but that story will wait for another time. What I do know is that is was printed by Thomas Gardner, a prolific London printer of the mid-eighteenth century. Gardner's name appears nowhere in the book but I recognize his woodblock ornaments, such as the ones pictured at left below. The irony?

Gardner headpiece in Humours
Levy [1726]

Same headpiece in Piquet.2 (1746)
Levy [1014]

When publisher Thomas Osborne purchased the Hoyle copyright from the near-bankrupt Cogan in 1745, he quickly reprinted all of the Hoyle titles. What printer did he use? Thomas Gardner—the ornaments that appear in Humours also appear in nearly all editions of Hoyle sold from 1745 to 1755.

References

• James R. Sutherland, "The Dunciad of 1729" in The Modern Language Review 31:3  (July, 1936) 347-35.

• James R. Sutherland, "'Polly' among the Pirates" in The Modern Language Review 37:3 (July, 1942) 291-303.

An Artificial Memory for Whist

Memory.1
Levy [1537]

Hoyle's third book is An Artificial Memory for Whist (1743). It is a small thirty page pamphlet published by Francis Cogan in London.

The long title promises "an easy method of assisting the memory" but the recommendations are terrible. For example, "If in the course of play you find you have the best card remaining of any suit, put the same to the left of your trumps." (page 6) If you were to follow Hoyle's advice, a card sharp could watch you manipulate your cards and make inferences about your holdings, much to your detriment.

The book adds "several cases not hitherto publish'd" in the same style as the original Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (1742).

Cogan sold the Hoyle copyright to bookseller Thomas Osborne in 1745 and when Osborne republished the Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (6th edition, 1746), he included the text from An Artificial Memory and it ceased to be published as a separate book (except in Ireland, but the story of the Irish reprints is a story for another time).

For me, the big mystery of An Artificial Memory is who printed it. The title page of books from the eighteenth century generally identify the author and publisher, but not the printer. Sometimes you can identify printers through archival records such as the ledgers of the Bowyer print shop. More often you need to look at woodblock ornaments used throughout a book and compare them with those in other books for which you know the printer. That work is time consuming; nonetheless, I have identified the printer for all the early Hoyles, except...An Artificial Memory.