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2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

9. For Lack of Letters: Early Typographical Shibboleths of English and Other Foreign Languages

Author : James Misson

Published in: Print Culture, Agency, and Regionality in the Hand Press Period

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The chapter delves into the historical challenges faced by British printers in the sixteenth century when attempting to print texts in foreign languages. The lack of appropriate typefaces for non-Latin scripts led to innovative solutions such as using manuscript or wooden type, resulting in visually distinct and often imperfect representations. The text also examines how the English language itself was 'othered' by continental printing technology, leading to unique typographical features like the 'kludge' of the letter W. This chapter offers a fascinating exploration of the intersection between language, technology, and national identity in early modern printing.

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previous chapter Print Agency and Civic Press Identity Across the Border: Commerce and Regional Improvement in the Glasgow Advertiser, Liverpool General Advertiser, and the Urban Directories of Liverpool and Glasgow, 1765–1795

next chapter A New Type: Sans Serif Typography and Midlands Regional Identity

A typographic facsimile is given in Surtz and Hexter (1965, 18–19).

See the OED’s first sense of the adjective ‘strange’: ‘Of persons, language, customs, etc.: Of or belonging to another country; foreign, alien’ (‘strange, adj. and n.,’ OED [accessed 19 February, 2019]).

British Library, MS Lansdowne 15, fol. 99^r, cited by King (2006, 86). Parker writes that the ‘newe Italian letter’ cost 40 marks—a denomination normally reserved for substantial expenditures like land, worth two-thirds of a pound (‘mark, n.2,’ OED).

‘Tertiam partem propter inopiam hebraicorum characterum quibus impressor caret’ (Lloyd Jones 1989, 45).

‘Pro tuo candore optime lector aequo animo feras, si quae litterae in exemplis Hellenismi uel tonis, uel spiritibus, uel affectioribus carean. Iis enim non satis erat instructus typographus uidilicet recens ab eo fusis characteribus graecus, nec parata ea copia, qua ad hoc agendum opus est’ (Linacre 1524, fol. 1^v).

Lekprevik is discussed by Rebecca J. Emmett in this volume (Chap. 7).

These observations are based on two copies examined, Bodleian Library Ashm. 1188 (1) and Bodleian Library D 12.6 (11) Linc.

A grammatically unclear phrase but which may be translated as ‘deification of eternal love.’ I am grateful to Geri Della Rocca de Candal for his assistance with this line.

‘skil’, Middle English Dictionary, University of Michigan http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED40677 [accessed 28 February 2019].

The ragged r (sometimes called R rotunda) which Carter describes is a variant form of blackletter r resembling the numeral 2. See Updike (1922, 109).

For a discussion of proportional distribution in fonts, see Werner (2019, 41).

Hellinga, for instance, describes an upside-down ‘Q’ playing the role of a ‘d’ (Hellinga 2007, 272).

‘kludge, n.’ OED Online [Accessed 20 February 2019].

Pynson printed a counterpart book in the same year that gave some of Whytstons’ argument in English verse: The Gardyners Passetaunce. It is, typically, set in blackletter throughout. Like De justicia, it employs explicitly nationalist strategies such as invoking Saint George: ‘And saynt George assistynge our valiau[n]t Englysshmen/Fraunce shall haue a fall our lorde saye Amen.’ Williams gives a summary of the political context of the two books (1985, 15–25).

‘shibboleth, n.,’ OED Online [accessed February 27, 2019].

Anonymous. 1493. Here endith a compendiouse treetise dyalogue. of Diues [et] paup[er]…. London: Richard Pynson.

Anonymous. 1539. Articuli ad narrationes nouas pertinentes formati. London: Robert Redman.

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Derrett, J. Duncan M. 1966. ‘The Utopian Alphabet’. Moreana 3.4: 61–65.CrossRef

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Dolman, John. 1561. ‘To the Reader’, in Those fyue questions, which Marke Tullye Cicero, disputed in his manor of Tusculanum…. London: Thomas Marshe.

Galbraith, Steven K. 2008. ‘“English” Black-Letter Type and Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender’. Spenser Studies 23: 13–40.

Gaskell, Philip. 1974. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Granholm, Jackson W. 1962. ‘How to Design a Kludge’. DATAMATION 1962.

Hellinga, Lotte. 1999. ‘Printing’. In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, III, ed. Lotte Hellinga and Joseph B. Trapp, 65–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

———. 2007. Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century now in the British Library (BMC). Part XI: England. T’Goy Houten: Hes and De Graaf.

Hope, Andrew. 2014. ‘The Printed Book Trade in Response to Luther: English Books Printed Abroad’. In A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, ed. Vincent Gillespie and Susan Powell, 272–289. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.

Horman, William. 1519. Vulgaria. London: Richard Pynson.

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King, John N. 2006. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

Lekprevik, Robert. 1563. ‘The Printer to the Reader’. In The confutation of the Abbote of Crosraguels masse. Edinburgh: Robert Lekprevik.

Linacre, Thomas. 1524. De emendata structura Latini sermonis. London: Richard Pynson.

Lloyd Jones, G. 1989. On the Three Languages. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts.

Loades, David. 1998. ‘Books and the English Reformation prior to 1558.’ In The Reformation and the Book, ed. Jean-François Gilmont, 264–291. Aldershot: Ashgate.

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Turner, William. 1538. Libellus de re herbaria novus. London: John Byddell.

Tyndale, William. 1530. [The Pentateuch]. Antwerp: Hans Luft [i.e. Johan Hoochstraten].

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Title: For Lack of Letters: Early Typographical Shibboleths of English and Other Foreign Languages
Author: James Misson
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Print Culture, Agency, and Regionality in the Hand Press Period
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-88054-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-88055-2

Copyright Year: 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88055-2_9