4/23/2020 Another Shakespeare Day on The Farm repost, this from December 2019. (And before I forget– of course I know who the dude is. He’s one of my favorites.) What was so striking to me about these books was how differently they were handled compared to those in the Shakespeare exhibition. No armed guard. No temperature and humidity controlled environment. There are no doubt a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which are 1) it’s a Shakespeare folio! and 2) Romania is not exactly a thriving country. But still… the oldest book I saw there was published in 1517. That’s more than 100 years before the first folios. Which led me to a recurring brain process whereby I wonder why some people and things exist since their beginning until forever, some for a time (Pilgrim’s Progress always comes to mind– for a long time seconded only by the Bible in terms of sales and popularity, and now mostly forgotten), and some only for a few relative seconds. Actual Daily Readings will be coming along shortly.

From the collection at The First Romanian School in Brasov.

Interestingly, books and pamphlets were printed as single (double sided) pages, and not in quarto format.

A quarto (from Latin quartō, ablative form of quartus, fourth ^[2]) is a book or pamphlet made up of one or more full sheets of paper on which 8 pages of text were printed, which were then folded two times to produce four leaves. Each leaf of a quarto book thus represents one fourth the size of the original sheet. Each group of 4 leaves (called a “gathering” or “quire”) could be sewn through the central fold to attach it to the other gatherings to form a book. Sometimes, additional leaves would be inserted within another group to form, for example gatherings of 8 leaves, which similarly would be sewn through the central fold. Generally, quartos have more squarish proportions than folios or octavos.^[3]

That Infallible Source

According to our informal guide– a retired Romania judge and friend of our host– this guy has been in the business, by himself, of preserving the school, the press, and thousands of old Romanian books for about 40 years or so. It’s impressive.

Note the lack of climate control. Most of the books are in glass cabinets, but not all.

In news of other crappy old books…

That’s it for now. Enjoy today!