Book

a collection of written or printed sheets bound together. The name is derived from beech, having a reference to the white beech tablets on which the English monks wrote their books. Our bookmaking is developed from the art of the Egyptians, who, in turn, derived their notions from the Babylonians. The Egyptian book was written on squares of papyrus, glued into long sheets. A book was preserved by rolling it up on a staff, and inclosing it possibly in a case. The title was written on a tag dangling from one end of the staff. If a work were long, it was written in two or more rolls or volumes. The use of papyrus was succeeded by that of parchment or the tanned skins of beasts. Charlemagne had been dead a hundred years before cotton paper was invented. Linen paper was introduced about the beginning of the twelfth century.

Paper was made at first on hand frames about as wide as could be held in the outstretched hands. A sheet made on such a frame as this was called a folio, if folded once; if folded again into four leaves, it became a quarto; into eight leaves, an octavo; into twelve, a duodecimo, etc. Now that machinery is in use and the sheet has no fixed or even approximated size, it is customary to give the size of books in inches. Books were formerly much larger than they are now. An atlas of the fifteenth century in the British Museum is over seven feet high. When standing on end, it readily conceals a man between its pages. Other old books in European libraries are almost as large.

So far as known, the first book printed from metal type is the so-called Mazarin Bible. It bears no date, but is supposed to have been issued between 1450 and 1455. There are twenty copies in various libraries. The oldest dated book was printed at Mentz in 1457. In the earlier days of printing fifty or one hundred copies were an ordinary edition. A printer took great chances in printing three hundred copies. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the American publisher of the old blue-back Webster's spelling book printed over a million copies annually to supply the demand.

The earliest booksellers were the scribes who copied manuscripts and offered them for sale. One who was well established in business not infrequently kept a number of scribes at work in his shop. A list of rolls prepared by them was to be found posted up on his door. A business of this sort could be carried on only in a city like Rome, or in the vicinity of a university. The earlier printers of books offered their own publications for sale, and later appointed agents at the various institutions of learning. The university authorities of the Middle Ages found it advisable, so they thought, to license booksellers in order that books might not be sold to irresponsible persons and carried away from the university into distant regions, where they would be inaccessible.

It would be difficult to form a trustworthy estimate of the number of books now published annually. In the United States alone, new books, including new editions, are published to the number of perhaps 10,000 a year. The exact number for 1901 is given at 8,141. As to classification,--fiction, law, theology, education, and juvenile books rank in the order named. The American people pay out $50,000,000 a year for books. This is considered unprecedented, but, after all, it is less than one dollar per inhabitant.