Typographical Consciousness and the Diffraction of Authorship

Abstract

Robert Darnton’s identification of a ‘typographical consciousness’ in his landmark essay comes out of the observation that eighteenth-century book advertisements and prospectuses tended to include remarkably detailed information about typeface, paper, and other material features of the books being promoted.¹ So, for example, the prospectus for an eighteenth-century edition of a sixteenth-century French text on the customs of the province of Angoumois names the different typefaces used respectively for the text, summaries, and commentary, as well as noting the source of the superior paper used in the printing. By the early nineteenth century, when bibliographical information had become somewhat more standard, such a degree of specificity was more rare if still to be encountered, but the typographical consciousness noted by Darnton remained very much in play. Indeed it may be said to have intensified, fuelled both by the increased presence of printed matter in everyday life and by high-profile bookish practices such as the bibliomania. Moreover, as Jon Klancher’s work has shown, typography achieved ‘a strangely exalted sense’ around 1800 when the term broadened to include much more than the visual look of the page, encompassing both the entire physical form of the book and the history of printing’s invention, development, and dispersion .²

From vellum leaves their graceful types arise;

And whilst our breasts the rival hopes expand,

BULMER and BENSLEY well-earn’d praise demand.

John McCreery, The Press, A Poem. Published as a Specimen of Typography (1803)

Buyers and sellers alike shared a typographical consciousness that is now nearly extinct.

Robert Darnton, ‘First Steps Toward a History of Reading’