Home July 2002 Vol 63 No 4 Smith book review

College and Research Libraries
July 2002, Vol. 63, No. 4

Book Review

Smith, Margaret M. The Title-Page: Its Early Development, 1460–1510. London: British Library; New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2000. 159p. $39.95 (ISBN 0712346872, British Library; 1584560339, Oak Knoll Press). LC 00-060609.

Very nearly every book published in the past several centuries contains a title page that provides the basic facts of publication. On the antiquarian market, its absence causes a book’s value to plummet. But this wasn’t always so. Five hundred years ago, as Western printing emerged from its infancy, this now-vital element of books was similarly evolving. In The Title-Page, Margaret M. Smith explores reasons for its introduction, traces its development, and suggests its early functions. Hers is the first book on this subject published since 1891.

Part of a larger project to ascertain the influence of printing on numerous aspects of design that changed in response to this new means of production, The Title-Page regards the book as a historical artifact that holds clues to its creation and use. It examines what the appearance of the book—more precisely, what the appearance of its title page—reveals about “the producer’s expectations of his market: the purchasers and readers of the book. The physical book can be said to embody his expectations of how the book will be used, where it will be read and stored, whether its readers need illustrations and diagrams, etc.” From these clues, the eminently qualified Smith, a member of the faculty of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, deduces a remarkable story and tells it knowledgeably and compellingly.

Smith defines the title page as “a separate page containing the title of the book, and not containing any of the text,” usually found at or near the beginning of the volume and with or without decoration and additional information about content, author, and production. She describes several stages in the title page’s development: the blank page, the label title, the label title combined with a woodcut and/or a printer’s mark, and the addition of a decorative border. During the half-century of this evolution, Smith argues, the title page took on the task of “announcing not only the text but also its producer. An author may be responsible for the text, but the book that carries the text requires a complex set of expensive collaborations. Both are represented on the title page, and the producer’s name there clearly establishes the book as an object of commerce.” Thus, the title page became a vehicle for promoting the book, probably concurrent with the addition of the woodcut to the label title. Smith concludes that in the five decades preceding 1510, the storage and marketing of books profoundly affected the history of the title page. “They drove its growth: first providing the opportunity, and then developing the features borrowed from elsewhere in the book, from modest pieces of information, to effective enticements to buy the book.”

Painstakingly thorough and cogently argued, The Title-Page is focused narrowly, perhaps too narrowly for the casual reader. For the specialist, however, it is instructive and engrossing. A significant addition to the literature of the history of the book, it superbly exemplifies the sort of data to be mined from the careful examination, comparison, and analysis of a quantity of books as physical objects. Extensively illustrated with title pages from the holdings of the British Library and supplemented by a detailed glossary, a bibliography, concordances, and indexes, this excellent publication deserves consideration for all collections that include the history of the book or of graphic design.—Florence M. Jumonville, University of New Orleans.