How Penn's Printer Worked a Study of the Penn-Mead Trial Book

THE BULLETIN OF Friends Historical Association Vol. 42Autumn Number, 1953No. 2 HOW PENN'S PRINTER WORKED A STUDY OF THE PENN-MEAD TRIAL BOOK By Carroll Frey WILLIAM PENN'S book called The Peoptes Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted, printing Perm's own account of the trial of William Penn and William Mead, is one of the most important books he ever wrote. It is certainly one of his most readable books, not onlybecause of the colorful manner in which it was written, but also because the Penn-Mead trial had such historical importance. In English jurisprudence the book is a classic, for the trial which is its subject determined the right of a jury to refuse coercion by the judge. The book also has interest bibliographically. Average readers are often puzzled by the bibliographer's partiality for first editions and first printings of famous books. They put it down to some vagary like primogeniture, while very often the insistence is simply a minor manifestation of bibliomania. But in many cases the interest is genuinely scholarly, and a very good example is in the case of the research on the first printing of this book. Ever since 1867, when Joseph Smith, the bibliographer of Quaker books, published his volume identifying the different editions, it has been accepted that the first printing of the first edition of this book is easily determined by a typographical error of very highvisibility onthe titlepage. The typographical error is the word "ASSSRTED" thus misspelled in double pica type on the title page of the usually accepted first printing of the first edition. It stands out so strongly as to constitute a 71 72Bulletin of Friends Historical Association genuine attraction when the book is exhibited in a showcase. This was remarked to Mathew Smith, the modern typographer, and, it was added, "it is a useful typographic error because by its evidence we know that the book was the first printing of the first edition." To this remark Mathew Smith replied that to him it would be more likely evidence that the book was the second or a later printing. It was, he said, not really a typographical error, but rather a matter of deliberate borrowing of type. Out of this statement came a detailed study of the problem and from the facts revealed it would appear that bibliographers sometimes have been misguessing at first printings of old books. His theory of what probably had happened in the case of the Penn-Mead trial book back in 1670 was that after the first printing the type of the title page was laid aside and, while it was awaiting the presswork of a later printing, the printer, needing a capital "E," borrowed it from this page and replaced it with a capital "S." (An "E" is the most used letter in the alphabet. The letter "S" is of approximately the same size in caps, although an "F" or an "L" would be much the same size and furthermore nearer in the font.) Then when the page required reprinting the printer forgot to replace the borrowed letter. There were three printings known to collectors of this first edition of the book in the year 1670. The "SSS" printing, if we may call it that, has been accepted as the first of the three. Joseph Smith, in his Quaker bibliography, listed two printings of the 1670 edition and offered the evidence of the "SSS" as the key to knowing the first. Mathew Smith's theory caused several of us to re-examine the three known printings of the 1670 edition. There are many puzzling points in the variations of the three printings. But it was found that, after ignoring Joseph Smith's decision, common -sense logic gave new positions after reshuffling. The generally-accepted second printing is clearly the first, and the "SSS" printing must have been the third. In other words the letter "E" was borrowed between the second and third printings. The formerly-accepted second printing (now seen to be the first) may be qpiickly recognized. It has a list of errata on How Penn's Printer Worked73 page 63.1 There is another clue. On page 5...