Abstract
This chapter considers how Joseph Moxon’s commercial publications use, and therefore exemplify, the editorial practices manifest in Mechanick Exercises (1683). To do this, a comparative textual analysis of Moxon’s A Tutor to Astronomie and Geographie (1659) with Mechanick Exercises is conducted. Through this, the chapter develops the concept of ‘architecture of the page’ to demonstrate how Moxon’s published output worked towards standardising editorial instruction on, or documenting, the early modern living page.
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- 1.
Note that this concept was developed independently from Frans A. Janssen’s (1991) discussion of Roger Laufer’s ‘architecture of the book’.
- 2.
See also Chartier (2014, 151).
- 3.
See also Robert (2011, 143).
- 4.
Nicola De Liso (2013, 727) explains that, ‘according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, the word technology appeared in 1615. Before then what we call today technology was referred to in different ways, for example, crafts, and from the Middle Ages, as mechanical arts’.
- 5.
See also Whitney (1990, 82) and Robert (2011, 143). De Liso’s (2013, 728) interpretation implies a technological determinism: ‘Despite the fact that the medieval elite perpetuated the idea that the arts were the liberal ones, many technical progresses took place, and through time a change of mentality emerged. The new vision clearly emerged when the Middle Ages made room for the Renaissance’.
- 6.
This material occurs on the 32nd page of the preface.
- 7.
This material occurs on the 33rd page of the preface. See also Galey et al. (2012, 36).
- 8.
Note that Henry R. Plomer (1900, 210) explained that Moxon ‘endeavoured to prove that each letter should be cast in exact mathematical proportion’. The inclusion of mathematical rather than geometrical presumably refers to the mathematical quadrivium, of which geometry is a constituent.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
See also Sullivan (2007, 646).
- 12.
Moxon (1683, 275) uses architectural theory when discussing pressmen’s work: ‘But though this be the Rules of Architecture, the strongest, firmest, and most concise method for Bracing-up a Press, yet will not the Room the Press is to stand in always admit of convenience to place the Braces thus: Therefore the Press-man ought to consider the conveniences of the Room, both for the places to fit the Braces to, and the positions to set the Braces in; placing his Braces as correspondent as he can to these Rules’.
- 13.
Walsham and Crick (2004, 10) have reiterated Parkes’s (2008b) observations, albeit for socio–political context: ‘as Malcolm Parkes has argued, the patterns of reasoning and interrogation of authorities integral to scholastic learning caused changes in the organisation and layout of texts, as well as the evolution of increasingly sophisticated systems of glossing and mechanisms of reference, including the use of running titles, indexes and tables of contents’; see Alexandra Walsham and Julia Crick, ‘Introduction: Script, print and history’.
- 14.
According to Long (2013), at the time of the fire, Moxon had two premises: Ludgate Hill and Cornhill.
- 15.
The Davis and Carter (1962) edition of Mechanick Exercises includes reproductions for most titles; see pp. 410, 423 and 430.
- 16.
Another reason for this sobriety might be the Great Fire of London in 1666, as William Blades (1888, 10) has observed for books more generally though no less applicable for cases of type: ‘At the Great Fire of London in 1666, the number of books burnt was enormous. Not only in private houses and Corporate and Church libraries were priceless collections reduced to cinders, but an immense stock of books removed from Paternoster Row by the Stationers for safety was burnt to ashes in the vaults of St Paul’s Cathedral’.
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Hargrave, J. (2019). The Architectural Principles of Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises: Documenting the Early Modern Living Page. In: The Evolution of Editorial Style in Early Modern England. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20275-0_3
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