[DCRM-L] Gathering in 9s?!

[John Lancaster]

There are lots of 18mo's gathered in 9s; I've only seen it in American printing - a quick look at the American Antiquarian Society catalogue, using "18mo" as a keyword, turns up several in the first couple of dozen I looked at.  There are at least as many gathered in 12s+6s.  I imagine it is uncommon to find both versions in one volume, though.  (Matthew Carey's Miscellaneous trifles in prose, Philadelphia, printed by Lang & Ustick, 1796, is a combination of 12mo and 18mo, the 18mo part gathered in 9s.)
 
Typically, the singleton is the center leaf in the gathering (at least in my experience), but it always needs to be specified, e.g. "A-D^9 ($5 a singleton)".  [Sorry, I can't do superscripts in this e-mail program.]
 
Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography, gives one common 18mo imposition (fig. 61); Savage's Dictionary of the Art of Printing gives dozens, with commentary.

________________________________

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu on behalf of Deborah J. Leslie
Sent: Fri 10/2/2009 2:44 PM
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Gathering in 9s?!



When giving my lecture on format in Rare Book Cataloging, I used to say that there was one exception to the rule that you couldn't have an odd number of leaves in a gathering. I stopped saying it because I think it just confused the issue. But you can have an 18mo in 9's, and the only one I've ever seen was a late 18c Philadelphia German imprint. I have no idea how the forme would be imposed. Wherever I read the explanation (which I now cannot find and cannot even remember where I came across it) must not have had a diagram. The alternating 12's & 6's is at least as strange to me.   

 

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Ann KD Myers
Sent: Friday, 02 October, 2009 14:34
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: [DCRM-L] Gathering in 9s?!

 

I have a bit of a conundrum here. I'm cataloging a 1795 Philadelphia imprint (Richard Baxter's A call to the unconverted to turn and live) and the signature pattern I'm getting is: [A]-D¹²·? E-H?

 

How is a gathering in 9s possible? The alternating 12 and 6 gatherings suggest 18mo to me, so 9s makes mathematical sense, but not physical sense in terms of how the paper was actually folded. I see no evidence of cancels or additions of any kind and the binding is coming apart enough that I can see the structure pretty clearly. 

 

To further confuse the issue, while the book in hand has vertical chainlines, the citation in Evans indicates that this book is a 24mo, which doesn't seem like it could be right.

 

Any wisdom on this?

 

--Ann, feeling very befuddled

 

Ann Myers

Special Collections Cataloger

Morris Library Mail Code 6632

Southern Illinois University Carbondale

605 Agriculture Drive

Carbondale, IL 62901

618-453-1499

amyers at lib.siu.edu

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