www.castlehillpress.com

 

CATALOGUE

Untitled 1

Works

Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula
The Mint, 1928 text
The Mint, 1955 text

Translation

The Forest Giant

Letters

T. E. Lawrence Letters series
Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw
Correspondence with Henry Williamson
Correspondence with E. M. Forster and others
Letters from Carchemish

See our full catalogue

 Page updated
 1 February 2010

 

Castle Hill Press News

by Jeremy Wilson

Updated 1 February 2010

Most links from this page open in a new window

 

CONTENTS
 T. E. Lawrence, The Mint (updated 1 February)
 Design Notes - introduction
 T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw
Where can I find the price of your books?
Trade paperback editions, 2010

 

T. E. Lawrence, The Mint and Later Writings About Service Life

Update 1 February

Both the large-format and Library Editions of The Mint are in progress. We will post information about shipping dates when these are confirmed.

Note. The planned J. and N. Wilson paperback edition of The Mint will use the text published in 1955, not the 1928 text published by Castle Hill Press. It will not include the later writings selected for the Castle Hill Press edition..

Design Notes

Jeremy Wilson

Revised, 4 November 2009

During the past twelve years we have published sixteen volumes. Their content totals about 1.8 million words. Most of these volumes were issued in more than one binding, and most contain some form of illustration.

Each publication - and each of its variants -  reflects numerous decisions about appearance, materials and production. I have occasionally commented here on the design of a particular book. This posting is the introduction to a series that will look at each of our books, discussing the design and production decisions that shaped it.

First principles

Although I learned letterpress printing at school, my main career was as a writer and editor rather than a printer or publisher. My thinking about book design is strongly influenced by that background. Book designers with other backgrounds may reach different conclusions - and these notes aren't intended to be prescriptive. My purpose here is simply to show that our design thinking stems from reasoning, not from accident or hunch.

I believe that the fundamental purpose of a book is to preserve and communicate information (which could be any kind of text or graphic). I do not believe that the physical form of a book should push that fundamental purpose into second place. If that happens, the result loses its moral claim to be a book, though it may become an art object of some different kind. 

I nevertheless believe that a reader's appreciation of text and illustrations can be enhanced if a book is well designed and produced, just as a painting can be enhanced by a well designed frame.

We assemble and edit most of the texts we publish at Castle Hill Press, so we are in some measure responsible for both picture and frame. The challenge we face is to optimise both - without creating a frame so showy that it dominates. Designing books for readers often calls for restraint.

Some basic principles apply to all the books we publish. To avoid repetition, I will list them here.

1. Production values

T. E. Lawrence loved and collected fine-press books. His copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer, bound by T. J. Cobden Sanderson, is now a treasure of Queen's University, Ontario. His library included Kelmscott titles on vellum, a Doves Press Bible, and other magnificent books that few people today can afford to own.

In our edition of Lawrence's works and letters we aim for the highest-quality production we can achieve, without abandoning the requirement that (except for very small printings) a 'standard' version of our books, available on advance subscription, must be represent fair value to a scholar or library. This is because many people buy our books primarily for their content.

Given the length of the texts we publish, this constraint has ruled out letterpress printing. However, we are watching with interest technical developments that might allow us to transpose our typesetting to metal after we have hand-adjusted it on a computer. 

2. Design in relation to content
The quality and appearance of a book ought to be appropriate to its content. That's obvious enough, but not too helpful. It doesn't imply any particular style. You might present a nineteenth-century text in an avant-garde setting, and that might work very well. In architecture, such juxtapositions are commonplace - and often successful.

In this case, we are publishing the works and letters of T.E. Lawrence, who had well-informed opinions about book design. These were based on his own ambition to run a private press, on a wide knowledge of the trade and fine-press editions of his day, and on his experience producing the subscribers' edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He could and did discuss book design and production with experts such as Sydney Cockerell, St. John Hornby, Bruce Rogers and Emery Walker, as well as design-conscious trade publishers like Peter Davies and Jonathan Cape's partner G. Wren Howard.    

Lawrence's writings date from the 1920s and 1930s, which was a distinguished period in British publishing. We therefore decided at the outset that our designs should be inspired by the kind of book that Lawrence knew.  

3. Illustration

We publish scholarly editions of long non-fiction texts. Many of these call for specific illustrations - portraits, contemporary photographs of places, maps, images referred to in the text, or facsimiles of manuscripts.

Should we also commission new imaginative illustrations for our books? Lawrence himself did that for his subscription edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, using the work of artists rather than the large collection of wartime photographs he had amassed. That said, many of the illustrations he commissioned were portraits of participants in the Arab Revolt or scenes adapted from photographs.  

We considered commissioning illustrations but, after much thought, decided against it. In these volumes we are publishing letters and texts from a defined historical period. If appropriate, we can (and do) illustrate them with relevant art from that period. However, we feel that modern illustrations would be out of place. Their only purpose would be to give the books an artistic cachet. The modern contribution to our books lies elsewhere - in the editing and notes.

4. Durability

Most of our books contain previously unpublished writing, and few are likely to be reprinted in a hardback edition. Copies belonging to libraries and researchers may be read and referred to repeatedly. They must function well as books - and not fall apart.

For most publications we offer libraries and advance subscribers the chance to buy the text in a strong full-cloth hardback binding. That may not seem very glamorous, but it fulfils a responsibility towards the research community. We do our best to make our cloth bindings attractive, even though the beautiful glazed buckrams that used to be available are no longer made.

5. Typography

Ostentatious typography - however beautiful in itself  - can distract the reader's attention. This is a classic case where the frame begins to dominate the picture. In doing so, it falls under the same censure as ostentatious writing. The college tutor quoted by Dr Johnson said: "Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." The same applies if you are designing a book for people to read. You should avoid forms of ostentation that readers may find intrusive.

I often see typefaces and fine-press typography that I admire - as art. But - to give an example - however much I like Centaur (the face in which Bruce Rogers set Lawrence's Odyssey translation) I would not myself set a book in it. We don't use bold fonts, nor typographic decorations like the 'ct' ligature. In our books we have used Caslon - Lawrence's preferred face - and Garamond. Such choices are not innovative. We like these faces because they are elegant, unostentatious and highly readable. Their track-record as successful book faces goes back for generations. 

Lawrence was conscious of these issues. He described the design he aimed for in the subscribers' Seven Pillars as 'vehicular'. His Seven Pillars is not without faults - it was the first book his printer, Manning Pike, produced. But it easily passes the test of readability.

Another typographical distraction I try to avoid is using different faces and font sizes on the same opening. A print designer I used to work with would sometimes say of such mixtures that they "look like a Letraset catalogue". Consistent typography is one of the reasons I prefer endnotes to footnotes. Endnotes in the body of a book - for instance following the text of a letter - can be set in the same font as the main text. At the end of the book they can be set smaller, but on their own pages. Footnotes, however, are usually set in a smaller font to distinguish them from the body text higher up the page. In any case, if a note contains anything significant, why print it in tiny type?  

Some typesetting reduces comprehension. David Ogilvy, the advertising guru, pointed out again and again that readers find it easier to grasp the meaning of black text on a white background rather than white text reversed out of black. He had similar objections to 'ragged-right' (left-justified) typesetting, citing reader usability tests showing that ragged-right leads to a large fall in comprehension. For some reason the human eye finds it wearisome to read text set in lines of differing length. The usability results for text that is right-justified (ragged left) were even worse.

I have often wondered why so many modern designers set text left-justified. Is it because doing so reduces the vertical emphasis of fully justified columns? Is it because graphic designers, unlike the professional hot-metal typesetters who preceded them, don't know the rules of hyphenation and can't be bothered to use a hyphenation dictionary? Whatever the reason, if you want readers to comprehend the text in your book, you should print it fully justified.

For the same reason, it's a bad idea to set type in very long lines. I've come across different theories that seek to explain why increasing the line-length reduces comprehension. If there has been definitive research, I haven't seen it.

More generally, I don't like needlessly small type. A few years ago there was a fashion for setting books in small type with a generous space between the lines. It may have looked 'different' - but it was also bad. As eyesight deteriorates with age, many people find small type difficult to read. Why add to their problems? Good design isn't necessarily about doing something new, it's also about doing things well. 

6. Format and binding

I have no preconceived ideas about book format, except that it is sometimes determined by the content, and sometimes by the intended use. Some illustrations may look far better if reproduced as large as possible. That may suggest binding a book bound in landscape format rather than portrait format. Books in pocket-format are handy for holiday reading.

When you design a book, you have to choose a format. At present we use three. My comments about our individual books will explain, in each case, the choice we made.

Given the constraints on format and content and typesetting, binding is perhaps the area where we have the widest freedom. Historically, the appearance of a binding has had three purposes. One is to present the book in an attractive way that will make readers wish to look inside. Another, undoubtedly, is to look good on the owner's bookshelf. The third, more modern, is to act as "packaging" - providing a sales hook that will grab attention in a bookshop. In a modern commercial hardback, the last function has passed to the dust-jacket. How many people, I wonder, look at the binding under the jacket before buying a book?

Beyond this, binding is strongly affected by personal taste. I have some likes and dislikes that influence what we do.

On a leather binding, I usually prefer blind-stamped designs to gilt - but from time to time we make exceptions.

Unless a book is truly hand-bound, I prefer not to have raised bands on the spine. They are legitimate, as decoration, but we only use them if we are trying to create a particular impression. On a narrow spine they cramp the titling. 

Our ideas about standard bindings have changed. Our early cloth-bound books had dust jackets, because we expected to sell them through bookshops; but this caused problems. If collectors preserve the jacket, they never see the binding. Also, if you put jackets on books in a multi-volume set, you add significantly to the bulk. The jackets on three volumes add twelve times their paper thickness. That has consequences if you issue the set in a slip-case. If someone removes the jackets, the books may appear loose in the case. On the other hand, if someone puts transparent covers on the jackets, the fit could be so tight that the slip-case bursts.

We no longer sell many books through bookshops, so we are phasing-out dust jackets. 

Conclusion

Overall, our aim is to produce books that are both functional and handsome. The finest compliment we have yet received came from a rare-book librarian who wrote, on receiving one of our books, "This is something that not only pleases the eye but will be used."

I will end this introduction with two passages from a  letter that Lawrence wrote in the summer of 1934, a year before his death, to someone interested in fine-printing. He was, I think, being deliberately controversial:

"I have grave doubts about the decency of hand-printing today: it feels archaistic: hand-writing perhaps, if you feel like that: but if you want to use a machine, why not an ingenious one? Felt balls, for instance, are not as good as rollers."

He went on: "The man who slightly improves the general level of commercial printing seems to me to be better than the artist who sets it an impossibly-precious example. If I ran a press, now, I should work as an aide to some small individual publisher . . . and print only his best-liked new books. This labouring at classics is rather off target, I fancy."

To me, one of the joys of today's fine-press books is the sheer variety of work, created by people with different talents and enthusiasms. Lawrence's library and letters show that he too appreciated a wide range of fine-press work. However, these two passages suggest that his preference was for editions of original work produced with the best machinery avialable. 

Jeremy Wilson

 

T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw

Trade abridgement

We are working on an abridged two-volume print-on-demand trade paperback (a future trade abridgement was announced when we invited subscriptions to Vol. I of the fine-press edition). The abridged edition will be called T.E. Lawrence, Selected Letters to Bernard and Charlotte Shaw. It will be published by J. and N. Wilson.  Both volumes will be published in 2010. There will be less editorial matter, and we are saving some space by re-setting the text. Most of Lawrence's letters will be retained.

Q: Where can I find the price of your books?

3 July

A: Either from the price list or in the online shop. The price list includes approximate equivalents in US$ and Euros. Be warned, however, that these equivalents applied on the stated date. Exchange rates have fluctuated considerably in the past few months and may continue to do so.

Note that these prices are for direct sales from this website. The nominal 'Recommended Retail Price' for books available to the book trade is usually higher. 

Looking ahead...

Having lost time during the winter of 2009-10 as a result of Nicole's accident last November, we are currently reviewing our plans for the rest of this year.

Trade paperback editions, 2010

We plan to issue these titles during 2010 under our J. and N. Wilson imprint, to mark the 75th anniversary of Lawrence's death.

Jeremy Wilson, T. E. Lawrence, A Short Biography with Letters

  • New edition with amendments and a selection of passages from Lawrence's letters.

 

T. E. Lawrence, The Mint

  • New edition, type reset. New introduction by Jeremy Wilson
  • This is the 1955 unexpurgated text, reset as a readable paperback
  • Notre that this edition will not include the later writings about service life to be published in the Castle Hill Press Library Edition (hardback)

 

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Complete 1922 'Oxford' Text

  • 2 vols. New introduction by Jeremy Wilson
  • This will use the typesetting of the 2004 trade hardback, including the award-winning index. The edition is an interim measure: in the medium term we will print a one-volume trade paperback, but it will be in a smaller format, with smaller type. This larger-format 2-volume paperback may remain popular with people who prefer larger type.

 

T. E. Lawrence, Selected Letters to Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1922-1927

T. E. Lawrence, Selected Letters to Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1928-1935

 



We accept payment by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Maestro, and PayPal