ABSTRACT
Lithography is a medium that allows a vast range of drawn marks to be reproduced at will almost infinitely; the slightest sketch and autographic writing can be transferred directly to the plate without the mediation of compositors or engravers. Such ‘improper printing’ (Twyman 1990) was used to reproduce marks and symbols outside conventional typesetting systems, for example in such fields as music, non-Western languages, caricatures or handwritten pages in which text and image were freely combined. From its invention around 1800, lithography was used to disseminate exact facsimiles of historic documents, old prints and contemporary artworks. This medium could thus reproduce the authentic trace of the personal signature or intimate sketch whilst in equal measure it fuelled exaggerated fears of piracy and forgery. Lithography in this chapter will be considered as a subversive element, a perturbation in the ‘Gutenberg galaxy’ of print culture. For example, it elides some clear distinctions that have been made between writing and printing, or between text and image, just as it destabilised clear distinctions between original and copy.
