The Booklover and His Books | Page 4

own occupation be gone. It is recognized
that for a large proportion of our publications the design--the outward
appearance--is in great measure counted on to sell the book; and
printers and publishers will not consent to send the paupers of literature
forth upon the world in their native rags, for so they would find no one
to welcome them. It will be useless to quarrel with the fact that the
design of many books is meant as a bait and not as a simple
interpretation of their meaning and worth. Design of this character,
however, is relatively easy; it is really not design at all, but millinery. It
is when his work becomes genuinely interpretative that the designer's
difficulties begin.
The first business of the designer, therefore, is to understand the book
he is treating. Here, of course, his judgment, however sincere, may be
mistaken or misled. A classical instance of this is found in connection
with one of the most famous books in the history of modern

printing,--Barlow's "Columbiad." This work, which first appeared in
1787 under a different title, was enlarged to epic proportions during the
next twenty years, and was finally given to the world in 1807 in the
belief on the part of its author and in the hope at least on the part of its
publisher that it would take rank and be honored for all time as the
great American epic. Under this misconception the book was clothed in
a form that might worthily have enshrined "Paradise Lost." Its stately
quarto pages were set in a type specially designed for the work and
taking from it the name of Columbian. The volume was embellished
with full-page engravings after paintings in the heroic manner by
Smirke; in short, it was the most pretentious book issued in America up
to that time, and it still ranks, in the words of Professor Barrett Wendell,
"among the most impressive books to look at in the world." But alas for
the vanity of human aspirations! "The Columbiad" is now remembered
as a contribution to typography rather than literature. The designer
overshot his author.
We have tacitly assumed that a book has but one interpretation and
therefore but one most appropriate design. This, however, is far from
the truth. When, after various more or less successful editions of
Irving's "Knickerbocker" had appeared, Mr. Updike brought out some
twenty years ago his comic edition, with the whole make-up of the
book expressive of the clumsy and stupid Dutchmen depicted in
Irving's mock-heroic, we felt at the moment that here was the one ideal
"Knickerbocker." Yet, much as we still admire it, does it wholly satisfy
us? Is there not as much room as ever for an edition that shall express
primarily not the absurdity of its subject-matter, but the delicate
playfulness of Irving's humor and the lightness and grace of his
exuberant style? Has there ever been a final "Don Quixote"? Certainly
not in the recent monumental editions with their quagmire of footnotes.
Moreover, if we had a final edition of the great romance it would not
remain final for our children's children. Every age will make its own
interpretations of the classics and will demand that they be embodied in
contemporary design. Thus every age in its book design mirrors itself
for future admiration or contempt.
Obviously, in giving form to a single work a designer is freer than in

handling a series by one or by various authors. In such cases he must
seize upon more general and therefore less salient characteristics. The
designer of "Hiawatha" or "Evangeline" has a fairly clear task before
him, with a chance of distinct success or failure; but the designer of an
appropriate form for the whole series of Longfellow's works, both
prose and poetry, has a less individualized problem, and must think of
the elements that run through all,--sweetness, grace, gentleness, dignity,
learning. Yet, though general, these qualities in a series may be far
from vague. We have only to consider the absurdity of a handy-volume
Gibbon or a folio Lamb. On looking at the bulky, large-type,
black-covered volumes of the Forman edition of Shelley and Keats one
instinctively asks, "What crime did these poets commit that they should
be so impounded?" The original edition of the life of Tennyson by his
son, in two lumbering, royal octavo volumes, comes near to what
Thackeray called the Farnese Hercules, "a hulking abortion." Contrast
with it the dignity linked with charm of the original edition of
Longfellow's life by his brother. But of all monstrosities of book design
the British three-volume novel mania is responsible for some of the
worst. Henry Ward Beecher's one novel, "Norwood," which appeared
in America becomingly clad in a single volume, received in England
the regulation three-volume dress, in which it