Thread Name: ML 77.1, REDEMPTION AND TWO OTHER PLAYS BY LEO T. From: johnwolansky at verizon.net (John Wolansky) Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 10:02:36 -0400 Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I recall someone, be it Scott or Henry, referred to using the title page title to reference the book. This was done because the jacket title sometimes different. My copy in a 4Cc configuration has Redemption and Two Other Plays on the title page, but Redemption and Other Plays on the jacket, the book spine, and the half title page. I have a jacketless copy in a 2B format with the same spine, half title page and title page discrepancy. On Scott's array, he lists the book title as Redemption and Other Plays. Whether it matters or not is up to you, but why do books contain both a half title page and a title page? All the info on the half title page can be contained on the title page and it was wastes material increasing production costs. Can any literati out there shed light? John ------------------------------------- From: willthemad at aol.com (Bill Hornick) Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 11:05:09 -0400 John, I, too, have often wondered about the purpose of the half-title page but have never found a satisfactory answer. When I restarted collecting ML titles again eight years ago, I noticed the frequent discrepancies between titles on the title page, book spine, DJ cover and DJ spine. I convinced Scot that a table listing these differences would be helpful to ML collectors, especially beginning collectors, who might think that some titles had different content when in reality they had only title differences among the four categories I just mention. As established by Mr. Toledano, a true variant with a new Toledano subnumber was listed only when the title-page title changed. I came up with thousands of differences and provided the data to Scot and later to Ron Holl who have updated the chart on the ML website as I discover new discrepancies. Anyone can report such discrepancies since I certainly do not have all bindings and dust jackets of all titles. Bill ------------------------------------- From: lathbury at gmu.edu (Roger Lathbury) Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 16:14:09 +0000 Dear John: Not all books have half titles. He knows who has seen some (the first edition of Wuthering Heights does not have one, for example, and there are others that either do not or don't appear to have). I think I can shed light here. They are a hold over from olden times, is the short answer. Here is the longer one. Up until the early 19th century, one did not buy bound books from a bookstore. One bought loose signatures (the folded pages that make up books) and then took those loose signatures (folio, quarto, octavo [8vo], etc.) to a binder who would sew them together and case the book. On the case (or cover) one would put one's coat of arms if one had such or request a special binding, or ask for plain leather, or use plain cloth if one were middle class?but the middle class was not, until the mid 18th century with the rise of the novel, a steady buyers of books. Sometimes, in very old days, these sewn together pages would be sewn into the binding, thus creating those ridges on the spine of the book, raised worms (as it were). Later ideas of casings simply held the pages to the case by means of endpapers and attachment to a piece of cloth or gauze (called the super) also pasted under the front and rear endpapers. Modern Library editions of the 1930's that use "balloon" cloth lack this super. That is why those editions are especially fragile, since all that keeps the pages attached to the case is the endpaper and the glue that sometimes also makes the signatures stick to the cloth. The paper is light enough in weight so that this sometimes suffices, but often if the book was much read or roughly opened, the binding was greatly weakened. Back to the 16-early 19th centuries: The first signature the binder received would feature a title page and a half title because the half title would often be lost in handling the pages for binding, the work of binding being messy, with all the glues and sewing and mashing of pages under a press to compress the text block. That would mean that on more than few occasions the first page (the half title) would be cast aside and the first thing one would see upon opening the book would be the title page. However, the text and the rest of the book would be intact. Nothing consequential was lost, though, as the important identification was still there. True, the single conjugate leaf to the half title might be loose and held in place only by glue. Sometimes the binder would cut the bolt (the folded part of the signature through which threads were put) in such a way that a stub was left so that would be covered by the endpaper that the binder employed but still sewn in with the rest of the pages. When books, around the time of Walter Scott and Jane Austen's time began to sell widely, publishers would present finished goods and sell bound books to bookstores and libraries. Indeed there were often two bindings (as is the case with Wuthering Heights, mentioned above), one for regular purchasers who would get cloth over boards or half cloth and boards and one in buckram or heavier cloth for libraries. Why continue with half titles? Book buyers are conservative people. That is why one still sees fake deckle edges on some books, and why the old time ridges on the spine are sometimes faked. Best, Roger ------------------------------------- From: kamins at modernlib.com (Scot Kamins) Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 09:36:53 -0700 Thanks much, Roger. What an informative read! ------------------------------------- From: johnwolansky at verizon.net (John Wolansky) Date: Mon, 15 May 2017 08:38:50 -0400 Fascinating history, Roger. Much appreciated. John -------------------------------------