Glossary of Terms

Quarter bindings are those in which only the backstrip is leather; the sides are covered with a different and cheaper material, usually cloth or paper. May also be expressed as e.g. calf-backed boards.

The size of a book, or of the page of a book, produced by a standard printing sheet being folded twice to form a section of four leaves, or eight pages: widely abbreviated 4to. Hence also a book or volume of this size. As the size of a standard printing sheet has varied greatly over the centuries, the size of a quarto varies accordingly.

The cords sewn across the back of the book to keep the gatherings together, when covered with leather, form raised bands on the spine. The finisher often emphasises these raised bands with gilt rules either side or a gilt decorative roll across the raised band itself. In a book with a smooth back, either from flat stitching or recessed cords, the illusion of raised cords under the spine can be created, if desired, by gluing strips of leather or thick board to the back before covering.

The entire text block of a case-bound book has been removed from its case and reinserted. This implies that some restoration to the text block has taken place while it was out of the case, perhaps re-sewing, and that the re-casing will necessitate restoration of the ties or cords that keep the text block in place, and perhaps paper restoration to the inner hinges or repositioning of the endpapers. The end result may be difficult to distinguish from a copy left undisturbed in its original case, but we always note when such a repair has been executed.

To reback is to replace the damaged spine of a binding or book. "Rebacked to style" means that the spine has been replaced with new material matching the original as closely as possible. "Rebacked with the original spine laid down" means that the spine has been lifted away from the original binding and preserved, a new backstrip inserted, and the old spine laid down (permanently fixed) on top of it, thereby preserving as closely as possible the original appearance of the binding.

The book has been put into an entirely new binding, which may or may not resemble its first binding.

The outer corners of the boards have been restored with new leather or cloth.

The front of a leaf. The right-hand page of an open book is the recto of that leaf, and is faced by the verso of the preceding leaf. In a conventional book, the page number of the recto is an odd number.

The endpapers have been renewed.

A repaired dust jacket has a nick or tear closed, probably with some kind of adhesive, but there is no added paper or colour. A restored jacket has added paper and/or colour.

A soft flexible leather prepared from sheepskin, used chiefly in bookbinding as a substitute for morocco.

The binding has suffered some superficial abrasion but the underlying material does not show through.

The simplest binder’s roll-tool, the fillet, produces a single straight line. Boards which are decorated all round with a single gilt line are said to be “ruled in gilt”. Rolls are fillets with wider surfaces, on which an ornamental pattern has been cut.

A smooth leather dyed a distinctive pinkish tone with birch oil, usually “diced” (that is, ruled or embossed in diamond squares); popular in England around the latter part of the eighteenth century, but unfortunately prone to weakness at the joints.

By extension from the artistic use of the term for a crayon coloured red with iron oxide or a drawing executed with red chalks, any printing in blood-red ink.

The size of a book, or of the page of a book, produced by a standard printing sheet being folded four times to form a section of 16 leaves, or 32 pages: widely abbreviated 16mo. Hence also a book or volume of this size. Sextodecimo is a small format largely confined to modern children’s books such as those of Beatrix Potter.

An inexpensive and rather soft leather used for trade bindings. Its natural colour is a plain mid-brown, but it can be dyed different colours in imitation of calf. Specific treatments of sheepskin designed to resemble more expensive bookbinding materials include roan and skiver.

Rather than the usual method of sewing the inner fold of the gatherings, stitches are inserted through the leaves in the inner margin at the binding edge.

The outer covers of the book, excluding the spine.

1a. A letter or figure, a set or combination of letters or figures, etc., placed by the printer at the foot of the first page (and frequently on one or more of the succeeding pages) of every sheet in a book, for the purpose of showing the order in which these are to be placed or bound.

1b. A specific leaf, as distinguished by its signature (usually abbreviated), e.g. sig. A2.

2. The more common sense, though used less often by us in the context of descriptions: the name of a person written with his or her own hand, usually inside a book or at the end of a letter.

A small edition limited to a specific number of books, commonly in the hundreds of copies. These editions usually include a limitation leaf that the author signs, and which states the size of the limitation and the number assigned to the individual book. Signed limited editions are often produced concurrently with the trade edition of a work, often from the same setting of type but are usually constructed of higher quality materials.

A thin kind of dressed leather split from the grain side of a sheep-skin and tanned in sumach. Most commonly used in the bindings of mass-produced items such as photograph albums.

A close-fitting protective case with an open end into which a book is placed for protection, while allowing the spine to remain visible.

Protective box with a lid that entirely encloses the book, named after its inventor, the Swedish botanist D. C. Solander (1736–1782), usually custom-made and often with a titled and decorated spine. These boxes provide an important extra layer of protection from sunlight, moisture, dust, and insects.

A spill is a thin slip of wood, or a folded or twisted piece of paper, used for lighting a candle, pipe, etc. A spill-burn is a small brown mark or hole in paper caused by a fallen spill or by small amounts of burning material from the candle, pipe, etc.

The back of a book, that is, the part bearing the title, etc., which is visible when the book is standing on a shelf; also, the corresponding part of a dust jacket, solander box, case etc.

In binding, the leather has been treated so that it develops an attractive pattern of small dots of a darker tint than the underlying brown. On the text-block, the edges have been sprinkled with red, blue or some other colour.

Any change made in some copies before publication produces different “states”. Changes can occur while the entire edition is still in the publisher’s hands, or at the printer’s, at the binder’s, or even at a stage between the issue of some of the review copies and the actual date of publication. States are bibliographically interesting, but not necessarily hugely significant. A famous example of a state is Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Some copies have “gve” on vol. I, S4 recto; others have the correct word, “give”. The mistake was noticed during the print run and corrected by the printer. Sheets with the mistake “gve” are self-evidently in the first state. This does not however constitute an issue point; copies with this sheet in both uncorrected and corrected state were bound up at the same time and both were available to the first purchasers on publication day, 16 May 1791.

One method of reducing the risk to an author or publisher was subscription publishing, where future buyers committed themselves to take one or more copies of a book at an agreed price after its publication. Publication by subscription began in England in 1617 and became wide-spread during the eighteenth century, before dying out in the nineteenth century. Publishers printed lists of the subscribers (placing them usually after the preface and immediately before the text) both in order to advertise their distinguished subscribers to the less exalted reader, and also probably to ensure that subscribers did not weasel out of their original commitment.

An heraldic ownership device, usually but not always a coat-of-arms, stamped on the cover of a book.

Brown or yellow discoloration to any part of a book, typically caused by exposure to sunlight or acidic materials such as newspaper clippings. Mechanically-ground wood pulp paper used in books from the mid-nineteenth century onwards is prone to tanning from its high acid content. Leather turn-ins often tan the adjacent endleaves.

A tear to a leaf or dust jacket has been repaired by closing the tear and placing a piece of self-adhesive cellophane tape behind it. Generally not a repair executed by a professional book restorer.

The finished book excluding its binding; the totality of the paper or other material on which the text is printed.

Pieces of flexible material, either material (usually linen or silk) or tawed leather, used to tie the fore edges of a binding together; often found in limp vellum bindings where the fore edges might otherwise be liable to spring apart. In older bindings, the ties are frequently lacking.

Lightly attached by gum or paste, usually at the inner edge. Tipped-in items may include integral material, such as the colour plates in deluxe illustrated books, or extraneous matter such as letters or signed slips of paper added later by the owner.

Each plate is preceded by a thin sheet of tissue, intended to prevent any offsetting from the illustration onto the adjacent text page. Tissue guards may be tipped in or loosely inserted. It is not normally possible to state whether or not they were issued by the publisher, and so their presence or absence is rarely considered crucial.

The page at or near the beginning of a book which bears the title. The title page falls on a recto, and typically bears the title of the book, the name of the author, and the publisher’s imprint and date of publication at the foot. This may be simplified in modern books, especially in paperback editions, with the publication date and other details relegated to the verso. The earliest printed books did not have a title page, but were identified by the first few letters of the text, or incipit. The separate title page did not begin to come into widespread use until the end of the fifteenth century.

The top edge of the book left exposed by the binding has been gilded. The other two edges may be left untrimmed, or simply ungilded. The gilt forms a seal to prevent dust and moisture penetrating the text block, and is a regular feature of deluxe book production. Other booksellers sometimes abbreviate to "t.e.g.".

The top edge of the text-block has been stained or dyed one colour, leaving the other edges uncoloured, a technique usually limited to modern books. Some top stains are liable to fading if exposed to light.

In the hand-binding era, a significant proportion of books were normally stocked and sold ready bound, with a range of further binding options available on request. These are conventionally called trade bindings. The best recent survey of this is Stuart Bennett’s Trade Bookbinding in the British Isles, 1660-1800; which can be shelved next to David Pearson’s English Bookbinding Styles 1450–1800. Both these books challenge the traditional belief that the majority of books in the hand-binding era were put into bespoke bindings executed to the individual buyer’s personal requirements.

Calf stained with acids in conventional imitation of the branches of a tree.

In a leather-bound book, the portion of leather that wraps over the edges of the boards and is glued down to the inner side of the covers. These can be decoratively blind- or gilt-stamped. Turn-ins featuring a lacy gold pattern are called inner dentelles.

A letter typed either by its author or his or her secretary and signed by its author in his or her own autograph. Traditionally abbreviated as "TLs", though at the risk of confusion with the Times Literary Supplement, and not our practice.

When the standard sheet of paper with its four rough or deckle edges is folded to produce a gathering, the resulting gathering has rough edges, and folds which need to be trimmed off or slit open before the book can be read. A book in which all the edges have been left rough, deliberately or otherwise, is known as “uncut”. A book in which the folds have not been slit is known as “unopened”.

Disparate books or volumes have been rebound at the same time in matching style. Though the sizes of the bindings may vary, the bindings are otherwise uniform in material and finish.

The whole binding, including the spine, has no lettering or label to indicate its contents. Simple English calf or sheep bindings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were often left unlettered.

A fine kind of parchment prepared from the skins of calves, lambs, or kids, distinct from leather in that vellum is not tanned, but stretched, scraped, and dried under tension, creating a stiff white, yellowish or translucent animal skin. Thicker grades of vellum are suitable for binding, either on its own (limp vellum) or stretched over wooden boards or pasteboard. More delicate vellum has been used as a medium to write on for scrolls or codices from the second century BCE on. The invention of printing by movable type saw books printed on vellum, but this was quickly reserved only for royal or deluxe copies. Printing on vellum was revived during the private press era; most Kelmscott Press books, for example, were produced with hundreds of copy printed on paper and a few examples on vellum.

The back of a leaf; the side presented to the eye when the leaf has been turned over. The left-hand page of an open book is the verso of that leaf, and faces the recto of the next leaf. In a conventional book, the page number of the verso is an even number.

An illustration without a border or distinct separation from other elements on the page, often used as head- or tailpieces. Title pages with vignettes are specifically referred to as vignette title pages.

A technique of book production, familiar from comic books but widely used for pamphlets in the modern era, in which the gathering is held together at its inner fold not by cotton stitches but by one or more wire staples.

Generally used for any illustration printed from a carved block of wood. In technical usage, a wood engraving is carved from a cross-section of the tree, while a woodcut is carved from a plank. Cross-sections are harder than planks, allowing for finer lines and more detail in wood engravings than is possible in woodcuts.

Damage caused by the fabled bookworm, a coverall term for any insect that bores through text leaves or other book parts. Worm-damage to the text generally involves small holes through the leaves, with or without affecting the printed area of the page. Worm-damage to leather bindings may involve similar holes, or more wide-spread superficial damage to the surface of the leather. Silverfish are a distinct cause of damage to more modern books, as they consume matter that contains polysaccharides, such as starches and dextrin in adhesives used in cloth and paper bindings.

The binding material is sufficiently abraded that the underlying material shows through.

A narrow, removable band of paper wrapped around a book to advertise additional information, such as critical praise, that the publisher could not or did not want to include on the dust jacket. These are ephemeral items whose survival is unusual.

The outer paper cover of a book, published part, etc., generally used by us to refer to covers that are attached, sewn or glued to the book block, rather than a detachable dust jacket.

A style of bookbinding in limp leather with overlapping edges or flaps. Books bound in limp vellum with overlapping edges are sometimes said to have yapp edges, although this is not strictly accurate.