The Message in the Medium

Summary

Middlemarch demanded extra effort from me as a reader. The difficulty wasn’t in the reading, but rather the mechanics of turning each page. And that’s on me — I accepted the challenge when I bought it.Like most book collectors, I approach my purchases with neurotic fastidiousness. I had recently read and loved three of Eliot’s other novels, so it was a good bet I’d love what is universally acknowledged as her masterpiece. And so, to heighten and consecrate my experience of the book, I hunted for a special edition. As with a well-chosen picture frame, the physical form should elevate the content, and I also wanted it to evoke Eliot’s time period. Eventually I found the ideal copy: a three volume illustrated octavo edition, beautifully bound in maroon half-leather. It had kaleidoscopic marbled endpapers and gilt rose motifs on the spine. But the real coup wasn’t the binding. As the bookseller had specified at the end of the listing, the pages of this copy were unopened. That’s where the extra effort came in. When this particular book was made, individual pages were first printed on larger sheets. A single sheet would have had eight pages printed on each side. The binder then folded and gathered these sheets into what is called a signature. The signatures were then stacked and sewn together at the spine. You can still see these gathered signatures in many new books if you tilt a closed book towards you to look where the pages meet the spine. To understand why pages might be inserted unopened, an image is helpful: With a folio, the fold rests against the spine, so the edge of the book will have no unopened pages. In a quarto, the pages are fused at the top, while in an octavo, some will be fused both on top and on the fore-edge. (You can see this yourself if you fold a piece of paper in half widthwise, and then twice lengthwise.) The pages remain fused until and unless the binder cuts them with a “guillotine” or a “plough.” As late as 1920, books could be purchased with...