ABSTRACT
The process of book production or, as A. W. Pollard called it, “book-building”, has been many times described, and in its elements is quite easy of comprehension. It must be outlined because the bibliographer will constantly be faced with problems which can only be solved by reconstructing in the mind exactly what happened in the printer’s office. “Printing” covers the very ancient art of taking impressions from blocks of wood or metal on paper or on textiles; taking impressions from a block built of movable letter-units or “types” is the invention of Gutenberg in Western Europe in the mid-fifteenth century, and is called “typography”. A catchword is the first word of a page printed at the foot of the preceding page. The modern hand-press is used largely for pulling proofs. The actual “working-oflf” is more economically accomplished by the machine-press. Stereotyping and electrotyping are both methods of converting the forme of movable letters into a solid block.
