- The Case of the Initial Letter: Charles Dickens and the Politics of the Dual Alphabet by Gavin Edwards
In The Case of the Initial Letter, Gavin Edwards traces the multifaceted nature of capitalization across Charles Dickens's works in the context of a century where capitalization was both normalized in texts and expanded in potential meaning. Edwards examines how "capital" meanings arise and evolve in printed texts, and how the relationship between author and printer allows (or suppresses or changes) those meanings. Dickens, with his clout and control over his publications, due to his popularity and financial success, proves an ideal author for a study of this kind.
Edwards begins with a brief history of the transition, around 1820, to standardized capitalization: upper case for proper nouns, the beginning of sentences, the major words in titles. The "dual alphabet", as Edwards calls it — lower and upper case — exists before the printing press, and "Gutenberg took over the practice of beginning all sentences with capitals from an increasingly widespread scribal practice" (11). (A "single alphabet" would be lower case for all words, as promoted by Herbert Bayer at the Bauhaus in the 1920s.) From the mid eighteenth century to the early nineteenth, printers — such as John Smith in Printer's Grammar (1755) — reacted to the "typographical instability", the various "hybrid systems in use", and began restricting capitals to "proper names and Emphatical words" (3). As well, there was in Romantic poetry generally a move to a democratic, "typographical levelling", so that even "Emphatical" words were now in lower case. Consider the difference between Heaven and heaven, Man and man, or I and i. To study the "politics" of the dual alphabet in the nineteenth century, then, is to consider not only the turn to a limited use of capitals, but also the potential significance of them after 1820 when they do appear: as we read Dickens's novels we can ask why this word is capitalized and that one is not. The appearance of non-standard capitals would be a distinct choice, and so too a lack of capitals — such as in Augusta [End Page 165] Webster's poems in Portraits (1870), which, radically, eschews capitals at the start of lines. Edwards also considers the problem of unheard capitals in public readings by authors, as well as handwrittten manuscripts (where the dual alphabet can be fuzzy) and, by the end of the century, typewritten texts (where the cases are markedly contrasting).
The transition around 1820 was neither total nor smooth, but that year can stand as useful marker. In Chapter 2, on the poetry of William Wordsworth and of George Crabbe, Edwards compares Crabbe's Tales (1812) with the 1823 edition (retitled as Tales in Verse) to show the difference a decade made. Whereas in the 1812, Crabbe used the older "three-part system (italic capital, roman capital, roman lower case)", in the 1823 there are "no italics, and almost all capitals have been removed" (37). In Crabbe's "The Frank Courtship" we can note that historical figures, such as Oliver Cromwell, see their positions of authority cut down, from "Protector" to "protector" (37). (Edwards sees a "link between decapitalisation and decapitation, as though, inspired by the French revolution, London printers set about guillotining the heads off capital letters" [3].) Indeed, the 1823 edition also lowers the capitals for "King", "Sovereign", and "Saint". From these changes, we can deduce the intentionality of either Crabbe or his printer, Thomas Davison, or both, and historicize — in turning from Romantic poetry to the Victorian novel — how Dickens (1812–1870) will approach issues of this kind in his manuscripts as they head to print.
Edwards provides necessary context to understand how printers addressed capitalization with the arrival of the dual-alphabet standard. Printers labored, much as editors still do now, at the mercy of the manuscript, and also dealt with logistical and financial obstacles. Faced with deadlines, and often late author revisions to copy, printers...