Martina LAUSTER - Interférences littéraires

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Martina Lauster
“Black Art” in the service of enlightenment
Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
in sketches of the 1830s and 1840s
Abstract
The industrialization of printing during the first part of the nineteenth century entailed
a loss of values traditionally associated with authorship and literature on the one hand, and with
the artisanship of the print trade on the other. Yet those involved in the industrial production of
print could also be aware of their unique opportunities to spread, in the age of steam, the spirit
of enquiry that had powered the first ‘print revolution’ in the age of Gutenberg. This paper deals
with ways in which awareness of the ambivalent nature of industrial print (its promotion of enlightenment at the cost of authenticity and artistic quality) informed serial works of the 1830s and
40s such as Les Français peints par eux-mêmes. These new media, occupying a position between book
and journal, enabled a mass production of often illustrated ‘Sketches’, a hybrid genre combining
discursive texts with witty verbal and/or graphic portraits. Serial sketches were both highly visual
proponents and analysts of the profound changes that society and, not least, the production of
print underwent in those decades, by playing with the image of the potentially subversive ‘black art’
of printing, demonised as it was in more superstitious centuries, and by projecting an egalitarian
ethos of the trade suitable for the nineteenth century.
Zussammenfassung
Die Industrialisierung des Druckgewerbes in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts bedeutete den Verlust von Werten, die traditionell mit schöpferischer oder handwerklicher Tätigkeit
verbunden waren; dies gilt gleichermaßen für die Literatur wie für die Druckkunst. Die industrielle Herstellung von Gedrucktem bot jedoch auch einzigartige Möglichkeiten, im Dampfzeitalter
einen ähnlich kritischen Geist zu verbreiten, wie er die erste ‘Druckrevolution’ zu Zeiten Gutenbergs angetrieben hatte. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht, inwiefern sich das Bewusstsein von
der Ambivalenz des Druckerzeugnisses (seiner aufklärerischen Wirkung einerseits, seiner Einbuße
künstlerischer Authentizität und Qualität andererseits) in Serienwerken der 1830er und 40er Jahre
wie z.B. Les Français peints par eux-mêmes niederschlägt. Diese neuen Medien, die eine Stellung
zwischen Buch und Journal einnahmen, brachten eine Massenproduktion von oft illustrierten Skizzen mit sich: eine Mischgattung aus darstellendem Text und pointierten Porträts in Worten und/
oder Zeichnungen. Diese Skizzenserien dienten sowohl der augenfälligen Repräsentation wie auch
der kritischen Analyse jenes tiefgreifenden Wandels, dem die Gesellschaft und nicht zuletzt das
Druckgewerbe der Zeit unterlagen, indem sie mit dem Image der (potentiell subversiven, in abergläubischen Zeiten verteufelten) ‘schwarzen Kunst’ des Druckens spielten und ein egalitäres, auf
das 19. Jahrhundert zielendes Berufsethos entwarfen.
To refer to this article :
Martina Lauster, “‘Black Art’ in the service of enlightenment: Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade in sketches of the 1830s and 40s”, in: Interférences littéraires/
Literaire interferenties, May 2012, 8, Nathalie Preiss & Valérie Stiénon (eds.), “Croqués
par eux-mêmes. La société à l’épreuve du ‘panoramique’”, 61-74.
Comité de direction - Directiecomité
David Martens (KULeuven & UCL) – Rédacteur en chef - Hoofdredacteur
Ben de Bruyn (FWO - KULeuven), Matthieu Sergier (FNRS – UCL & Factultés Universitaires Saint-Louis) & Laurence
van Nuijs (FWO – KULeuven) – Secrétaires de rédaction - Redactiesecretarissen
Elke D’hoker (KULeuven)
Lieven D’hulst (KULeuven – Kortrijk)
Hubert Roland (FNRS – UCL)
Myriam Watthee-Delmotte (FNRS – UCL)
Conseil de rédaction - Redactieraad
Geneviève Fabry (UCL)
Anke Gilleir (KULeuven)
Gian Paolo Giudiccetti (UCL)
Agnès Guiderdoni (FNRS – UCL)
Ortwin de Graef (KULeuven)
Jan Herman (KULeuven)
Marie Holdsworth (UCL)
Guido Latré (UCL)
Nadia Lie (KULeuven)
Michel Lisse (FNRS – UCL)
Anneleen Masschelein (FWO – KULeuven)
Christophe Meurée (FNRS – UCL)
Reine Meylaerts (KULeuven)
Olivier Odaert (UCL)
Stéphanie Vanasten (FNRS – UCL)
Bart Van den Bosche (KULeuven)
Marc van Vaeck (KULeuven)
Pieter Verstraeten (KULeuven)
Comité scientifique - Wetenschappelijk comité
Olivier Ammour-Mayeur (Monash University - Merbourne)
Ingo Berensmeyer (Universität Giessen)
Lars Bernaerts (Universiteit Gent & Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Faith Binckes (Worcester College - Oxford)
Philiep Bossier (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Franca Bruera (Università di Torino)
Àlvaro Ceballos Viro (Université de Liège)
Christian Chelebourg (Université de Nancy II)
Edoardo Costadura (Friedrich Schillet Universität Jena)
Nicola Creighton (Queen’s University Belfast)
William M. Decker (Oklahoma State University)
Dirk Delabastita (Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la
Paix - Namur)
Michel Delville (Université de Liège)
César Dominguez (Universidad de Santiago de Compostella
& King’s College)
Gillis Dorleijn (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Ute Heidmann (Université de Lausanne)
Klaus H. Kiefer (Ludwig Maxilimians Universität München)
Michael Kolhauer (Université de Savoie)
Isabelle Krzywkowski (Université de Grenoble)
Sofiane Laghouati (Musée Royal de Mariemont)
François Lecercle (Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne)
Ilse Logie (Universiteit Gent)
Marc Maufort (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Isabelle Meuret (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Christina Morin (Queen’s University Belfast)
Miguel Norbartubarri (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Andréa Oberhuber (Université de Montréal)
Jan Oosterholt (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg)
Maïté Snauwaert (University of Alberta - Edmonton)
Interférences littéraires / Literaire interferenties
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Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 – Bus 3331
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Contact : [email protected] & [email protected]
Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties, 8, may 2012
“Black Art” in the service of enlightenment:
Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
in sketches of the 1830s and 40s
It has been remarked that the industrialization of the print trade predates the
general industrial take-off during the second half of the nineteenth century, at least
in Germany.1 But even in countries where industrialization set in earlier, the commercialisation of publishing was experienced and commented on as a distinct phenomenon. One form of print that reflected on the increasing industrialization of
publishing was the witty typological sketch, often illustrated, – a genre that became
notorious through the big panoramic collections, issued in serial form, by which
publishers sought to establish new markets.2 Collections of this kind abounded in
Europe before 1850, including, as their most famous and influential representative,
Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (1839-42). My contribution examines the representation of professional types associated with the print trade in some of these collections.
Illustrated serial panoramas of this kind appealed to an early mass market
while at the same time offering a comprehensive, in some ways prophetic, critique of industrialism. It is probably due to the close association of print with the
cherished worlds of letters and cultural values that the industrialization of the trade
met with sensitive responses, and it seems somewhat paradoxical at first glance that
such responses should have been printed in the new industrial media. The critique
of the publishing industry went hand in hand with the affirmation of a professional
ethos of the print trade. This took into account the effects of industrialization on
the producers of literature, i.e. writers, publishers and printers, and the increasingly
important mediators, i.e. journals and the press. The literature developing this ethos
concentrated on print as a new mass medium in the service of enlightenment, while
imaginatively playing on the early modern reputation of print as a “black art” in
league with the devil. Publishing in the age of early mass media seemed to call back
such atavistic, negative connotations of printing. By addressing them, writers and
graphic artists – as well as publishers and printers – established a proud self-image
of the nineteenth century as one of an unparalleled gain of secular knowledge. In
this way, industrial print asserted its role as a medium of enlightenment and as a
form of artisanship more than ever bound up with the ephemeral.
The decade in which the industrialization of publishing, and its effects on the
production of literature, made themselves felt on a European scale was the 1830s.
1. See Peter Stein, Schriftkultur, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006, 284.
2. On the “sketches industry” see Nathalie Preiss, Les Physiologies en France au XIXe siècle. Étude historique, littéraire et stylistique, Mont-de-Marsan, Éditions InterUniversitaires, 1999, and Martina Lauster,
Sketches of the Nineteenth Century. European Journalism and its “Physiologies”, 1830-50, Basingstoke, Palgrave,
2007.
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Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
The social distinction of Romantic authorship was seriously on the wane. As the
young critic Gustave Planche, of the Revue des Deux mondes, wrote in 1832: “Thanks
to a unique application of Adam Smith’s theory of the division of labour, there are
nowadays two very distinct areas of literature, – art and industry.”3 This analysis can
be found, not in the Revue des Deux mondes, but in a medium which itself qualifies
as a prime example of literary “industry”, that is to say, in a serial of sketches
describing contemporary Parisian life. Because of its collaborative nature it was
entitled Paris, ou Le Livre des Cent-et-Un (Paris, or the Book of the One Hundred and
One). Far over a hundred contributors were in fact united in the enterprise, from
celebrated authors via salon hostesses and men of letters to professional journalists. The Livre presented itself as a forum in which equality between contributors
reigned supreme. Jules Janin remarks in the opening essay that everybody in post1830 Paris has learned the art of social observation. As a corollary, sketches of
contemporary life can be produced by any reasonably practised pen and are in fact
an everyday sort of business; a journalistic activity in the true sense of the word.
Gustave Planche’s sketch, in which he makes the distinction between art and
industry in literature, is entitled “The Daily Life of a Journalist” (“La Journée
d’un journaliste”). It therefore offers a striking example of the way in which the
“everyday” and the “journalistic” aspect are coupled in outlining the parameters
of professional writing after 1830. The journalist is clearly seen as a pioneer in the
fast-moving publishing world which turns authors into producers of text or “copy”.
The fact that the master of feuilleton,4 Jules Janin, introduced the Livre des Cent-et-Un,
which as an innovative form of publication was highly seminal throughout Europe,
further illustrates the importance of journalism for the changes that authorship
underwent during the 1830s. Not only through journals and newspapers which had
a revolutionising effect on literature, but through serials such as the Livre des Cent-etUn, journalists emerged as the uncrowned princes in the republic of letters, and it is
to “journalistic” publications in the narrow and wider sense that we owe a detailed
critique of the process of commercialisation in nineteenth-century publishing. I
have grouped in certain categories the sketches dealing with literary life and publishing alone which are contained in the Livre des Cent-et-Un; these do not include the
theatre which, in the 1830s, became an industry in its own right:
1. Literary sociability
Sainte-Beuve, Des Soirées littéraires, vol. 2 (1831).
Le marquis de Custine, Les Amitiés littéraires en 1831, vol. 5 (1832).
Kératry, Les Gens de lettres d’autrefois, vol. 2 (1831).
Kératry, Les Gens de lettres d’aujourd’hui, vol. 6 (1832).
2. Reading
Le bibliophile Jacob, Les Bibliothèques publiques, vol. 1 (1831).
A. Fontaney, Une Séance dans un cabinet de lecture, vol. 9 (1832).
3. “[...] par une singulière application de la théorie d’Adam Smith sur la division du travail, il
y a aujourd’hui deux parts bien distinctes dans la littérature, l’art et l’industrie.” (Gustave Planche,
“La Journée d’un journaliste”, in: Paris, ou Le Livre des Cent-et-Un, 15 vol., Paris, Ladvocat, 1831-34,
vi (1832), 149).
4. Ségolène Le Men refers to Janin rather more negatively as the “pasha of feuilleton”. See her
contribution, “Peints par eux-mêmes...”, in: Les Français peints par eux-mêmes. Panorama du XIXe siècle,
Paris, Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1993, 32.
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Martina Lauster
3. Bibliophilia and bibliomania
Charles Nodier, Le Bibliomane, vol. 1 (1831).
Henry Monnier, La Manie des albums, vol. 5 (1832).
4. Journalism
Alexandre Duval, L’Apprenti journaliste, vol. 4 (1832).
Gustave Planche, La Journée d’un journaliste, vol. 6 (1832).
5. Publishing
Frédéric Soulié, La Librairie à Paris, vol. 9 (1832). [book trade]
Le comte Édouard de la Grange, Les Traducteurs, vol. 11 (1833). [industrial
translators by line]
Bert, Le Compositeur typographe, vol. 5 (1832).
While we can see an engagement with the polite aspects of literary culture
(section 1), the predominant interest is in phenomena produced by the expansion
of the reading public (section 2) and by the literary industry (sections 3-5). Bibliophiles and bibliomaniacs (section 3) only emerge in an age where books as artefacts
have become rare and where industrial book production engenders new forms of
addiction; journalism (section 4), as already outlined, is portrayed as the centre of
accelerated literary production; and publishing (section 5) is analysed as an industry with its typical symptoms such as empire-building in the book trade, human
exploitation and literary devaluation in the professional translation business, and
the constant threat of losing one’s subsistence in the case of the typesetter. The
print trade is as sensitive to market fluctuations as the book trade.
The typesetter or compositor is in fact a profession that is crucial to the formulation of the ethos mentioned above. For various reasons, typesetting was the
only part of the printing process that resisted mechanisation; attempts to speed up
the laborious manual composition of type through the introduction of setting machines proved unviable until the end of the nineteenth century.5 Printing, by contrast, had been mechanised and vastly accelerated through the introduction of the
steam-powered cylinder press in the second decade of the nineteenth century, and
then again by that of the rotary press in the 1840s. The typesetter, working within a
context of constant efficiency gains, carried out his task by hand in the same way as
it had been done since Gutenberg’s invention of the printing process in the 1450s.
Thus, in the world of industrial labour the typesetter remained an artisan, a remnant
of the centuries-old print trade. A comparison of depictions from the sixteenth
and from the nineteenth century shows that nothing significant had changed in the
compositor’s work (images 1-3).
Those involved in the print trade were traditionally – and still are in Germany, I believe – known by their figurative description as “sons of Gutenberg”. No
wonder that this epithet resounded with sentiment in the nineteenth century when
industrialization changed the production of print beyond recognition. In 1840 a
contributor to Les Français peints par eux-mêmes ended his portrait of the compositor
by encouraging him to expose the status of industrial slave he has been reduced to,
and by reminding him of his trade’s true mission: “Just prostrate yourself on top of
5. See François Jarrige, “Le mauvais genre de la machine. Les ouvriers du livre et la composition mécanique (France, Angleterre, 1840-1880)”, in: Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 2007,
54:1, 193-221.
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Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
the perfumed or putrid works of your literary pashas! Come on, son of Gutenberg,
lift up your head and take heart!”6 This is an invitation to show the trade’s proud
body in public and thereby to smother the sickly, foul-smelling products of the literary industry which devalues and threatens the profession. The name of Gutenberg
here not only carries connotations of typesetting as an art, which must be saved from
being sacrificed totally to cheap industrial production, but it also recalls the humanist
connections of early print. Like the anti-Papal reformers of the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth century, a son of Gutenberg of the nineteenth is expected to stand
up to the new profit-makers (publishers and authors alike) who keep the masses
ignorant by churning out literary bilge. Clearly, the typesetter is here called upon as
an ally in the anti-commercial cause of the intelligentsia. Not without justification,
as the profession was an elite among labourers and had the reputation of including
quite educated people. By the 1840s the trade was notorious, at least in Paris, for its
social heterogeneity, a melting-pot of “defrocked priests, former teachers, ruined
shopkeepers,” office clerks who had lost their post in one of the revolutions, poor
students and only a minority whose fathers had also been compositors or printers.7
1. Jost Ammann (1539-1591), Printer’s workshop (1568).
In the background, compositors at their cases.
From: Philip B. Meggs, A History of Graphic Design (New York-Chichester, Wiley, 1998), 64.
6. “Applatis-toi sur les œuvres parfumées ou nauséabondes de tes pachas littéraires ! Allons,
fils de Guttemberg, lève la tête et prends courage.” (Jules Ladimir, “Le Compositeur typographe”,
in: Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, ii, 276).
7. “[...] des séminaristes défroqués, d’anciens professeurs, des marchands ruinés, des employés que la griffe de fer des révolutions a enlevés de leur fauteuil de cuir, des étudiants pauvres
[...]. Le plus petit nombre se recrute de fils de compositeurs ou d’imprimeurs.” (Jules Ladimir, “Le
Compositeur typographe”, 266.)
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Martina Lauster
2. Henry Monnier, ‘Le Compositeur typographe’. Engraved on wood by Fontaine.
Head page of: Jules Ladimir, ‘Le Compositeur
typographe’, in: Les Français peints par eux-mêmes.
Encyclopédie morale du XIXe siècle, Paris, Curmer, 1840-2, II (1840), before 265.
3. Typesetter, 1860s. Wood engraving in Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig), no 1000 (1862).
From: Wolfgang Weber, Johann Jakob Weber. Der Begründer der illustrierten Presse in Deutschland, Leipzig,
Lehmstedt, 2003, 93.
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Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
The expansion in publishing and the comparative slowness of typesetting
obviously opened this part of the production to lots of untrained labourers from
rather more privileged backgrounds. But the print trade was also known for its upward mobility, as a school of future “writers, artists, military men and statesmen”,
for it famously produced Benjamin Franklin as well as Pierre-Jean Béranger, France’s
great republican lyricist.8 “Typesetting is the antechamber of literature”, says Jules
Ladimir in his sketch for Les Français peints par eux-mêmes.9 The ambiguous social
position of compositors made their trade an emblem of the nineteenth century’s
social mobility. As we read in the sketch on the typesetter of the Livre des Cent-et-Un:
“society, that eminently methodical book, has forgotten him in its wise divisions and
in its contents table”.10 Typesetting, having become an unclassifiable profession that
is situated neither among the plebeian majority of society (“le peuple”) nor among
its educated minority (“le monde”), heralds the undermining of class distinctions
in industrial society. The compositor’s trade therefore signals the very opposite of
the old-worldliness associated with the “sons of Gutenberg”. In vain did a German
author and journal editor, Karl Gutzkow, who was otherwise known for his liberal
opinions, protest against a typesetter’s “transgression” which consisted in setting up
his own journal. Not a journal devoted to local news and entertainment for the lower
classes – that would have been all right in Gutzkow’s view, – but a journal having the
audacity to interfere with literary criticism, considered in 1840s Germany as a serious
nation-building business. Gutzkow concedes that a typesetter, who handles so much
literature written by others, may rise to literary production, but never to judgement
of literature; here the line is firmly drawn.11 Not so, it seems, by Gutzkow’s Parisian
counterparts, the journalists producing portraits of the print trade in the Livre des
Cent-et-Un and in Les Français peints par eux-mêmes. They tend to see the trade’s potential for transgression as positive. And it is at this point that we come to the devil.
The early modern associations of print are also connoted with the old popular
belief that the trade was in league with Satan. It was known as “black art” because of
the sooty blackness of printer’s ink, which was also sticky and therefore covered those
who handled it, inspiring fear in superstitious minds. The inextricable link between
the Reformation and early print is one of the main factors behind the diabolical image, as the print media spreading the spirit of Protestantism were demonised by the
Catholic Church. The confusion of Gutenberg’s business partner Johann Fust with
the slightly later figure of Johann Faust, the legendary alchemist who was believed to
have sold his soul to the devil, certainly also has something to answer for in giving
print a “black name”. The very denomination “black art”, which was no more than a
metaphor for printing, could have evoked associations with “black magic”. And then
there is also the “printer’s devil”, to whom I will return later.
In the 1830s and 40s, diabolical references abounded in serial print media,
by which I mean anything not appearing between book covers. The devil served
8. See Bert, “Le Compositeur typographe”, in: Paris, ou Le Livre des Cent-et-Un, v, 280-1.
9. “La typographie est l’antichambre de la littérature” (Jules Ladimir, “Le Compositeur typographe”, 275).
10. “La société, ce livre si méthodique, l’a oublié dans ses savantes divisions et dans sa table
des matières.” (Bert, “Le Compositeur typographe”, 280-1).
11. ����������
See Karl Gutzkow, “Literarischer Augiasstall. Der Schriftsetzer J. Mendelsson in Hamburg”, in: Telegraph für Deutschland, 184, [17] November 1841, 733-735. In: Gutzkows Werke und Briefe,
ed. by Editionsprojekt Karl Gutzkow, Exeter, Berlin, 2004. [Online], URL: http://www.gutzkow.de
Digitale Gesamtausgabe, Schriften zum Buchhandel und zur literarischen Praxis.
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Martina Lauster
as a metaphor for penetrating social observation, in other words, as a kind of selfreferential device in particular of the sociological critique that panoramic sketches
were engaged in.12 The origin of the observing devil is to be seen in Le Sage’s picaresque novel of the early eighteenth century, Le Diable boiteux (The Limping Devil;
usually known in English by the demon’s name, Asmodeus). Asmodeus, having
insight into the complete spectrum of contemporary mores, fired the imagination
of later moralists, including the one hundred-plus contributors to the Livre des Centet-Un. This serial was originally to be entitled Le Diable boiteux à Paris, and although
its title changed to a much more original and appropriate one, the vignette on the
title page (image 4) still made reference to Le Sage’s devil, and to eighteenth-century
moralists who are grouped around the figure of Asmodeus.
4. Henry Monnier, Title vignette. Engraved on wood by Charles Thompson.
In: Paris, ou Le Livre des Cent-et-Un, Paris, Ladvocat, 1831-34, I (1831).
12. ��������������������������
See Chapter 4 in Martina Lauster, Sketches of the Nineteenth Century, 129-172.
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Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
As a title figure for an innovative and lucrative print medium of the 1830s,
the throning devil of observation is self-referential with regard to sketches reviewing the state of society. It is interesting to see that these sketches also attribute
“devilish” qualities to the print trade. The old association of print with the devil
was thus exploited by nineteenth-century journalists who regarded the satirical
devil of eighteenth-century moralists as their ancestor. But in what ways could the
nineteenth-century print trade still be associated with transgression and subversiveness? First of all, Parisian printers, which includes typesetters, were known for
their radical leanings. One of the sketches in the Livre’s first volume, by the critic
Philarète Chasles, tells of the author’s imprisonment in 1815 when barely sixteen
years old, on suspicion that he, as a printer’s apprentice, was involved in a plot
against the monarchy.13 In 1830 printers and compositors led the popular uprising
against the government’s decrees restricting the liberty of the press, which resulted
in the July Revolution. Honoré Daumier’s famous cartoon from La Caricature, depicting a printer with his paper hat defending the liberty of the press, reminds us of
the close connection of the print trade with revolutionary popular power (image 5).
5. Honoré Daumier, ‘« Ne vous y frottez pas! »’ (La Liberté de la presse).
Supplement to La Caricature, March 1834. Lithograph.
From: Raymond Escholier, Daumier. Peintre et lithographe, Paris, Floury, 1923, after 36.
No wonder the sketches depicting the Parisian typesetter make plenty of reference to the profession’s left-wing inclinations. But apart from the political aspect, the
connotations of ambiguity and subversiveness with which the sketches of compositors are imbued have a more subtle, let’s say, a “medial” dimension. Jules Ladimir
in Les Français peints par eux-mêmes portrays compositors as supreme satirists.14 Not
13. See Philarète Chasles, “La Conciergerie”, in: Paris, ou Le Livre des Cent-et-Un, i, 147-190.
14. See Jules Ladimir, “Le Compositeur typographe”, 268-9.
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Martina Lauster
only do they excel at inventing epigrams and puns, which they throw at each other
during their working hours, thus competing with the witty writers whose work they
are typesetting. They also see through every vanity and pretence, particularly in the
publishing industry, and even a Balzac cannot hide anything from his typesetter. If
they work for a journal or newspaper, they have full knowledge of the latest news
before anyone else has. In short, their penetrating insight puts them on a par with the
journalistic writers who analyse contemporary mores. But compositors can undermine even journalism. Their desire to take revenge on a society which forces them to
exist in a literary limbo makes them slip errors into their lines; even the change of a
single letter may have extremely subversive effects. By putting deliberate errors into
their composition, typesetters perform the misdeeds that printer’s lore ascribes to the
“printer’s devil”, a gremlin who haunts the workshop and botches up the most carefully composed lines. But as a meditated act of revenge, the typoes of typesetters are
extremely clever as they tend to ridicule those who deserve it. The critics who depict
the compositor therefore see in him, despite their own social difference, a cognate
mind, a mind which has fully grasped the potential of print to undermine existing
orders. And it is this ethos of affinity between intellectual and manual producers of
printed works that is behind the illustrated serials of sketches which appeared from
the end of the 1830s.
The ornate first letter of the compositor’s portrait in Les Français peints par euxmêmes (image 6a) depicts the artisan, mischievously looking out of the image and
directly at the beholder. He handles a huge letter A which marks the beginning of the
text about him, but it is of course also the first letter of the alphabet. The letter thus
represents “beginning”, not only of the text, but also of printing, the point in history
where handwritten letters changed to type. To mark the historical magnitude of this
change, the letter A, as an “upper-case type”, is depicted in gigantic size. Thus the
printed, i.e. type-set page that follows is set in a self-referential context.
6a. Gagniet, ‘Lettre’. Engraved on wood by Loiseau.
In: Jules Ladimir, ‘Le Compositeur typographe’, in: Les Français peints par eux-mêmes II (1840), 265.
The fact that the print on the page we see before us has a beginning, i.e. that
it has been produced at the printer’s workshop, is made clear by the illustration at
the top of the page (image 6b). And the compositors are in turn shown to be at
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Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
the beginning of this process, as we “read” the image from left to right. The type
they handle is the figurative “alpha”, the opening of the printing process. Even the
illustration that opens the text itself is to be understood as “type”, since the ornate
A serves both as a letter and as an image.
6b. As in 6a, with the addition of: Henry Emy, ‘Tête de page’.
Engraved on wood by Prosper-Adolphe-Léon Cherrier.
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Martina Lauster
In fact, nineteenth-century mass-produced vignettes were printed from
wood-engraved blocks, following the tradition of wood cuts which saw their heyday
during the Reformation. Unlike engravings on metal plates, engravings on wood
were the graphic equivalent of type as they could be printed together with it and
therefore be inserted directly into the text page. Our vignette of the letter A indicates a new text-image partnership, made possible through the development of nineteenth-century print. And it is significant that this vignette should be attached to
the portrait of the contemporary typesetter. Condemned to an existence between
artisanship, literary ambition and manual labour, threatened by mechanisation, slave
to those whose manuscripts he sets, yet full of penetrating insight, the unrecognised
medium of communication between the literate and ignorant parts of the nation,15
the typesetter serves as a human cipher for the sneaking progress of enlightenment
through industrial print. In Ladimir’s view, the typesetter should expose his precarious existence as an “obscure dispenser of light”; he should reproach the century by
showing his “emblematic” smock on the pavements of Paris once more, as he did in
the July Revolution when defending the liberty of the press.16 This kind of exposure
and moral appeal are of course precisely what the sketch achieves, and what is more,
readers are made aware of the fact that what they are reading has been typeset by one
of the profession and has thus been able to be published and purchased in the first
place. The ethos of nineteenth-century “black art”, as formulated by the literati, is
one of communication, not only between literacy and ignorance, but, as we have
seen, between text and reader as well as text and image.
To return to the affinity sketches point out between professional writers
and the print trade, I would like to discuss an English example. In the serial Heads
of the People, on which Les Français peints par eux-mêmes was modelled, the editor
Douglas Jerrold – who became one of the chief collaborators of Punch in the
1840s – published a portrait of “The Printer’s Devil”. In this case the expression
attaches to a person, not a misprint, in other words, to the young boy employed
by a printer as a jack of all trades, who is traditionally called “Printer’s Devil”. By
devoting a sketch to this little drudge, Jerrold explores a particularly obscure link
in the publishing process. He gives an amusing account of the presumed origins of
the name, “Printer’s Devil”, in fifteenth-century superstition, not without conflating
Gutenberg’s companion Fust and the alchemist Faust for good effect: “That [the
Printer’s Devil] gained his name as a reproach, in an age of darkness, is incontrovertible; [...] the Devil and Doctor Faustus became household words: and the Printer’s
Devil, though now philosophically received as a creature of light, survives to these
times.”17 Besides serving as a factotum in the printer’s office, the “Devil” acts as “a
go-between of author and the press”,18 endlessly rushing backwards and forwards
to deliver proofs and pick up fresh manuscripts or “copy” at one end, and to drop
15. “Placé comme un trucheman [sic] et un messager entre la nation lettrée et la nation ignorante, le typographe a été quinze ans le précepteur du peuple.” (Bert, “Le Compositeur typographe”,
286).
16. “Enfant d’une race malheureuse et sacrifiée, poëte de la borne, tribun du carrefour, obscur
dispensateur de la lumière, esclave de la pensée des autres, va, montre encore sur le pavé de nos rues
ta blouse emblématique! Étale ta misère comme un reproche à la face du siècle!” (Jules Ladimir, “Le
Compositeur typographe”, 276).
17. ���������
Douglas Jerrold, “The Printer’s Devil’, in: Heads of the People: or, Portraits of the English.
Drawn by Kenny Meadows. With Original Essays by Distinguished Writers, Douglas Jerrold (ed.), 2 vols,
London, Tyas, 1840-1, i, 394-5.
18. �Ibid., 396.
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Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
off copy and collect new proofs at the other. Jerrold’s “Devil”, by the name of Peter
Trampington, is portrayed as a boy employed by a newspaper printer, so his journeys
back and forth have to be even swifter than those of ordinary “Devils”. Similar to
(Parisian) typesetters who work for newspaper printers and therefore constitute the
elite of the trade,19 the “Devil” employed in the service of the press is seen as a distinguished representative of his class. What his pockets are “loaded with” as he shuttles
to and fro is the sort of stuff that might topple a ministry. Typically, the reader is
asked to review his or her common perception of the filthy little errand boy:
Jostled in the street, or, it may be, triflingly bespattered by mud from his mercurial heels, how little do you dream that the offending urchin, the hurrying
Devil, has about him “something dangerous.” You know it not; but, innocent,
mirthful as he seems, he is loaded with copy. He may be rushing, gambolling,
jumping like a young satyr, and is withal the Devil to a newspaper. His looks
are the looks of merriment; yet the pockets of his corduroy trowsers may be
charged with thunderbolts.20
Jerrold thus plays on the old demonic connotations of the “Printer’s Devil”. The
graphic portrait of this “urchin”, drawn by Kenny Meadows and engraved on wood
by John Orrin Smith, also clearly brings out the demonic traits of the “satyr” (image 7).
7. Kenny Meadows, ‘The Printer’s Devil’. Engraved on wood by John Orrin Smith.
Head page of: Douglas Jerrold, ‘The Printer’s Devil’, Heads of the People, or: Portraits of the English.
Drawn by Kenny Meadows. With Original Essays by Distinguished Writers [ed. by Douglas Jerrold], London,
Tyas, 1840-1, I (1840), before 393.
19. �����������
See Jules Ladimir, “Le Compositeur typographe”, 270.
20. ���������
Douglas Jerrold, “The Printer’s Devil”, 397.
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Martina Lauster
The lovely irony of this visual-verbal portrait is that it returns to the scruffy
nineteenth-century urchin, aged nine and earning five or six shillings a week “at
the office of Willoughby and Co.”, something of the devilish aura surrounding his
counterparts in the early days of print. Not in order to demonise the profession, of
course, but in order to underscore the vital importance of this humblest of links
in the production line of print. What would happen if one day all the Printer’s Devils
of London simultaneously destroyed their “copy”? Quite simply, the world would be
engulfed in darkness on a much more dramatic scale than if the gas-men conspired
to withdraw their labour. Today’s “Devils” are, however, not (or perhaps not yet)
aware of their role as messengers in the service of enlightenment.
The sketch ends, how could it be otherwise, with a self-referential illustration
(image 8). This illuminates the meaning of “Printer’s Devil” in the sense of gremlin,
one that the text itself does not deal with. We see a portrait of Douglas Jerrold
(unmistakeably him!) having finished his manuscript, his “copy”, of “The Printer’s
Devil”.
8. Kenny Meadows, Portrait of Douglas Jerrold. Wood engraving.
In: Douglas Jerrold, ‘The Printer’s Devil’ (as in 7), 400.
From the tip of his quill, a tiny devil dances forth, swinging two big bottles
of printer’s ink. This can be interpreted in various ways: Jerrold’s written portrait
is a sketch, a drawing in words, so the illustration again comments on the textimage relationships in serial print, i.e. on the fact that the text draws an image and
the illustration is a kind of illuminating text. Moreover, it suggests that the writer’s
manuscript, once finished, takes on a life of its own, running away to end up as the
very print we see before us. As soon as it becomes “copy” the text is out of the
writer’s hands, and in this respect, the two meanings of “Printer’s Devil” overlap, as
both the errand boy and the gremlin signify the transformation of manuscript into
print, with all its losses of “authenticity” and with all its gains of “publicity”. Finally
the illustration could be seen as a minimalist graphic comment on “black art”. The
devil and his bottles of printer’s ink are reduced to the size of a printed cipher.
Tiny illustrations of this kind, the so-called “inkies”, abound in Punch, where they
often illustrate puns. So the minute image of the “Printer’s Devil” at the end of
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Portraits of the nineteenth-century print trade
the sketch seems like a condensed, punning summary of what nineteenth-century
printing is all about. It is, in Jerrold’s words, supplying “the daily food of a reading generation”,21 and this intellectual food comes in the form of inked letters. Ink
flows from the writer’s pen to the characters on the page, via the printing process.
To conclude, the media I have considered in this contribution, Paris, ou Le
Livre des Cent-et-Un, Les Français peints par eux-mêmes and Heads of the People, represent
the publishing revolution of the nineteenth century in more respects than one. As
serialised works, they are hybrids between book and journal, bought by subscription and therefore enabling publishers to make more money than by volume publications. At the same time, a greater number of readers can afford the relatively
inexpensive individual instalments. As collaborative works, they place renowned
authors side by side with a great number of other writing contemporaries so that
serial publication becomes a common occupation and “journalistic” writing in the
wider sense a business everybody shares. As illustrated works, they explore the use
of the printed image as a mass medium. This had been pioneered by the Penny
publications of the early 1830s and was continued by cartoon magazines such as
Le Charivari in Paris, Punch in London and Kladderadatsch in Berlin, as well as by illustrated newsprint in the Illustrated London News and its Continental equivalents.
The illustrated serials are situated right in the middle of this evolution, but I would
argue that the subtlety of their text-image relationships is unsurpassed. This could
also be said about the quality of their effort to produce a print medium that did
justice to printing as an art while acknowledging, even taking full advantage of, the
new possibilities of print in the industrial age.
Martina Lauster
University of Exeter
21. �Ibid., 398.
© Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties 2012