COVE

Hodder and Stoughton [Figure 1], the publisher of this edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, was founded in London in 1868 by Matthew Henry Hodder and Thomas Wilberforce Stoughton (“H&S”). After Edmund Dulac’s emigration to England, he became associated with Leicester Galleries, which also sponsored the famous illustrator Arthur Rackham (White 23). Hoping to scoop up Rackham as their house illustrator, Hodder and Stoughton settled for Dulac after Rackham contracted with the competing publisher Heinemann (23). Dulac’s first illustrated gift book with Hodder and Stoughton, Stories from the Arabian Nights (published in 1907), was a major success (25, 28). Hoping to capitalize on Dulac’s popularity, Leicester Galleries contracted Dulac to illustrate one gift book a year, with the Galleries exhibiting the illustrations, and Hodder and Stoughton holding the rights to their publication (29). While this edition of the Rubáiyát is a cloth-bound trade edition—high quality but still affordable for the middle class—Hodder and Stoughton also released deluxe vellum-bound editions of Dulac’s work in limited runs, some of which were even signed by Dulac. The deluxe edition of Dulac’s 1908 The Tempest was so sought after that it “sold out on announcement” (40). Dulac’s partnership with Hodder and Stoughton continued until 1918, with the publication of a gift book edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales (97).

The end colophon [Figure 3] reveals that this edition of the Rubáiyát was printed by “T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press.” Colophons are a remnant of the medieval era and early days of printing, in which the scribe who had copied a manuscript, or the individual printer who had printed the text, would add an inscription identifying themselves and providing other details of the text’s production (“Colophon”). After the mechanization of printing, the convention of the colophon was sometimes preserved in fine press books to indicate, or at least give the appearance of, high quality. T. and A. Constable was a Scottish printing firm founded by Thomas Constable in the 1830s (Brief Notes 5). Constable’s son Archibald later joined as the firm as a partner, and by 1869 they were appointed “Her Majesty’s Printer in Edinburgh” (9). Archibald Constable would not have printed this edition of the Rubáiyát himself, as T. and A. Constable was one of the largest printers in Edinburgh (8, 11-12). Therefore, the colophon in this edition of the Rubáiyát served solely as a marker of status, indicating to its buyer that they were purchasing the best.

The Hodder and Stoughton Rubáiyát’s vivid illustrations and colored borders were printed separately from the leaves by Henry Stone and Son [Figure 2], a combination printer and cabinetmaking firm based in Banbury, England (Tilson 98). The printing division of Henry Stone and Son specialized in fine art prints, of which the Rubáiyát is an impressive example (98). Having been printed separately from the main text, the plates of the Rubáiyát are “tipped in,” mounted to the leaves with glue [Figure 4]. They were printed using chromolithography, a technique patented by Godefroy Engelmann in 1837 (Kalba 443). Prior to the invention of chromolithography, there was no efficient method of printing color illustrations—colored images were a luxury reserved for the wealthy (443). By the late 1860s, chromolithography had become mechanized, allowing for more accurate and detailed prints, and resulting in a cheaper product accessible to a wider market of consumers (443). While the cloth-bound container of this edition of the Rubáiyát is less luxurious than the vellum-wrapped fine press editions, Hodder and Stoughton’s selection of the respected printers T. and A. Constable and Henry Stone and Son suggests that they were committed to providing an excellent trade press edition that any middle-class family would be proud to own.

Works Cited

Brief Notes on the Origins of T. & A. Constable Ltd. T. & A. Constable, Ltd., 1937.

“‘Colophon’: Printmaking, Graphic Design, Typography.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/colophon-visual-arts.

“H&S – About.” Hachette UK, 26 Apr. 2019, https://www.hodder.co.uk/imprint/hodder/page/hs-about/.

Kalba, Laura Anne. “How Media Were Made: Chromolithography in Belle Époque France.” History & Technology, vol. 27, no. 4, Dec. 2011, pp. 441–53. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/07341512.2011.622154.

Tilson, Barbara. “Stones of Banbury (1870—1978): A Casualty of the Recession.” Furniture History, vol. 23, 1987, pp. 98–107. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23406701.

White, Colin. Edmund Dulac, Studio Vista. 1976.