When I wrote about the dwarsligger® format a couple of weeks ago I received a comment from Gordon Johnson pointing out that Cambridge University Press had in fact published a dwarsligger edition of the Bible in 2011, the 400th anniversary of the King James translation. They gave this book as a keepsake at a feast held in the Stationers’ Company’s Hall in London on 25 May that year. The edition is still available for sale, and Gordon has now arranged for a copy to be sent to me, so now I can better see how the books are engineered.

The book is 1824 pages long, with the pages counted in the conventional way — i.e. each spread is actually counted as two pages. The only folios printed are those on the recto page, and are thus odd numbers throughout the volume. The book consists of nineteen 96-page signatures, and measures 3¼” x 4¾”, x 1-3/16″ thick. It is set in 7 on 8pt Karmina Sans, and is actually surprisingly readable.

 

The binding is not Ota-Bind as I speculated. I hadn’t appreciated that the little books are hardback, using a case made of a thin (non-flexible) board covered by a preprinted case. The book block, trimmed to almost the same dimensions as the case, is secured to the back board only leaving the spine and front board free to fold away from the pages. This does make reading the pages much easier, as the internal book block, with the pages held in an almost conventional notch-bound paperback binding can flex easily on the tape spine. The book is printed in two colors on a 27gsm thin paper (c.18 pound basis weight), made by Bolloré Thin Papers*. This company was founded in France in 1822, and has grown by acquisition, including Paperteries Braunstein, the company which supplied the 14# paper I referred to in my post on Bible manufacturing. The rep for Braunstein, Patrick Creuzet, was a good friend, cut down all too soon in a small plane accident.

Cambridge tells us “The dwarsligger® is a book concept developed by Jongbloed bv, Heerenveen, The Netherlands” and adds “Patent pending: EP 07 768892.” This presumably knocks on the head my suggestion in the first post that printers in America would be able to print dwarsliggers domestically.

CUP refers to their dwarsligger as the Transetto Text Edition, as does Amazon. Not sure where this term comes from; nor does it appear to have gone anywhere. Maybe it was an attempt to render dwarsligger into “English” — transverse setting? the “o” at the end though pulls the word right next to the Italian word for transept; ecclesiastical perhaps but not really helpful.

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* The CUP Bible says the paper used is called Indolux, but I wonder if it is actually Indopaque. Indolux appears to be a cast-coated cover board, not I think made by Bolloré. The fact that there’s a spelling error in their reference to the paper manufacturer raises suspicion about everything else! That’s really the problem with typos: not that the reader misunderstands the word misspelled, but that one error raises doubts about the reliability of all the rest of the information.