Sources
Every photograph on the site is a real image of a real object, credited below. Every name in the entries is a person, house or institution that can be checked.
How the entries handle evidence
An entry states what the record supports and stops there. Where an edition, a house or a place is named, it is named because it is documented: Chapman & Hall in the Strand, the Aldine Press in Venice, Mudie’s Select Library on New Oxford Street. Where the record is uncertain, the entry says so rather than rounding it into a figure.
No quotation on this site is invented, and no print run, price or provenance is estimated to fill a sentence. Terms are defined in the glossary of formats.
Photographs
26 images
| Subject | Credit | Collection |
|---|---|---|
| A monthly part in its printed wrapper | Gül Işık / Pexels | Pexels |
| A page of hand-set type locked in the forme | Erik Mclean / Pexels | Pexels |
| A sewn text block before casing | Moussa Idrissi / Pexels | Pexels |
| A compositor's stick with type in it | Matej / Pexels | Pexels |
| The Aldine Octavo | Erasmus Adagia, Aldine 1508 (Basel Univ Lib) · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| Folio Quarto Octavo | Kaboompics.com / Pexels | Pexels |
| Continental Editions | Negative Space / Pexels | Pexels |
| Yellowbacks | Esra Erdem / Pexels | Pexels |
| Pickwick In Parts | Suzy Hazelwood / Pexels | Pexels |
| The Wrapper | Marta Branco / Pexels | Pexels |
| What Serialisation Does To A Plot | Suzy Hazelwood / Pexels | Pexels |
| Mudies Select Library | Webster Free Circulating Library NYC NYPL · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| Subscription | hello aesthe / Pexels | Pexels |
| Ten Titles At Sixpence | Bookshelf of orange Penguin books · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| What A Book Cost | Joao Fernandes / Pexels | Pexels |
| Paper And Price | Can Ceylan / Pexels | Pexels |
| Hand Setting | Metal movable type · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| Hot Metal | Linotype machines, Anthony Hordern and Sons department store, c. 1935 · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| The Penguin Composition Rules | Kurt Schwitters, Für Jan Tschichold · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| Sewn And Cased | Norman Saunders - cover of Marvel Science Stories for April-May 1939 · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| Perfect Binding | Marta Branco / Pexels | Pexels |
| Boards And Cloth | Marta Branco / Pexels | Pexels |
| Word Spacing | Photograph of folios (likely from a Sikh scripture) written Larivar (scriptio continua) Gurmukhi script · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| Measure | Alexander Popadin / Pexels | Pexels |
| Margins | Page from a manuscript of Idrīs Bidlīsī's Salīm-shāhnāmah (Persian MS 47) · Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons |
| Running Heads And Apparatus | Kaboompics.com / Pexels | Pexels |