Vintage 1903) Joseph Gould sixth Edition-Strange Book

Very concise book written with all the common sense shown and known by printers of the time. I have a presumed 1st edition; printed in 1876. Much the same content of the later editions but done with aprox 10 fewer pages. Rummonds cites, in his book “Printing on the Iron Hand Press”, that Gould’s book is the earliest to mention using benzoline to clean a form as prior instructions generally referenced the use of lye.

Hey Butch,

Wow that’s amazing! Would it be possible for me to see an image of your first edition? As I’m now on the hunt for the other editions.

I noticed as further down the editions you go there seems to be an added amount of more pages. Also I’m guessing there must of been a lot more of the 5th and 6th edition as in the older versions the print number appeared in the first page/contents.

Thanks again!

End of the 19th century into the 20th there were a number of printer’s guides published. Gould’s, Southward’s Modern printing, and MacKellar’s American Printer being only a few. Great resources! Interesting the composer’s stick is also what MacKellar used for the cover. I think his publication was an American version of the British compilations. There is actually a fair number of these resources available on google books and print on demand(albeit the original copies are much more fun and worth having, especially the ones with printing samples, if you can find them, some go for quite the price these days). I have ‘wasted’ hours scouring the internet for such resources. I need to compile a list of what I have found free for download. Best of luck with your research!

Hey Michael,

Thank you for the input, perhaps Mackellar preferred the cover of the British version and choose to keep the same appearance in design. Agreed! These books are priceless for beginners such as my self getting into he field of Letterpress, they offer a great insight to the roles and disciplines of the field.

Perhaps you should create a PDF file of your research or take it further and create a downloadable app? Thanks to Butch for sending me some wonderful photo’s of the first edition!

Cheers I’ll keep at it!
Alex

Since MacKellar was published more than a decade before Gould you might think it was the other way ‘round.

Paul

The 2nd and 4th editions, scanned from Univ. of Calif. copies, are online in reasonable scans at The Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/letterpressprint00goul

https://archive.org/details/letter-pressprin00goulrich

The same scan of the second edition is online at The Hathi Trust in less convenient form at:
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007698811

A poorer Google scan of the 2nd ed. from a Univ. of Michigan copy is at Hathi at:
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001160988
(Hathi ID: mdp.39015024460332 )

Google also has a scan of the Oxford University copy of the 1876 edition. You can get this either through the Google Books advanced search:

http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

(beware - it also shows two print-on-demand copies, which are almost certainly just printouts of the freely available copies)
or, more easily, cached at The Internet Archive at:
https://archive.org/details/letterpressprin00goulgoog

At the moment, ABEbooks is showing one quite affordable copy of the 6th ed., albeit in modern binding, from typographia (John Trevitt) in England, as well as three less affordable editions (all in England or Oz).

Regards,
David M.
www.CircuitousRoot.com

Thanks for the correction Paul. I had read in one preface to one of these books something to the affect. Mackellar does not mention it in the 12th(1880) or 14th(1883) editions and I believe the first edition came out around 1866.

David, Thank you for the research/links

Hey Devils,

Yeah cheers for the correction aha. And thanks David for the awesome amount of links and leads for me to dive into!

Nice website and I’ll keep it book marked! Currently working on my site.

All the best
Alex