A piquant bit of anarcho-typographical history from Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist:
We started our printing-office in a tiny room, and our compositor was a man from Little Russia, who undertook to put our paper in type for the very modest sum of sixty francs a month. If he could only have his modest dinner every day, and the possibility of going occasionally to the opera, he cared for nothing more. “Going to the Turkish bath, John? “I asked him once as I met him at Geneva in the street, with a brown-paper parcel under his arm. “No, removing to a new lodging,” he replied, in his usual melodious voice, and with his customary smile.
Unfortunately, he knew no French. I used to write my manuscript in the best of my handwriting,—often thinking with regret of the time I had wasted in the classes of our good Ebert at school,—but John could read French only indifferently well, and instead of “immédiatement” he would read “immidiotermut” or “inmuidiatmunt,” and set up in type such wonderful words as these; but as he “kept the space,” and the length of the line did not have to be altered in making the corrections, there were only four or five letters to be corrected in such uncouth words as the above, and but one or two in each of the shorter ones; thus we managed pretty well. We were on the best possible terms with him, and I soon learned a little typesetting under his direction. The composition was always finished in time to take the proofs to a Swiss comrade who was the responsible editor, and to whom we submitted them before going to press, and then one of us carted all the forms to a printing-office. Our “Imprimerie Jurassienne” soon became widely known for its publications, especially for its pamphlets, which Dumartheray would never allow to be sold at more than one penny.
I’m reminded of the story of a compositor who set texts in some Near Eastern language flawlessly until he got curious and started trying to learn a bit of the language, after which he started making errors.
one of us carted all the forms to a printing-office
I hadn’t thought of it. So publishers would have the typesetting equipment, tons of lead and all, but the printers were a separate business? That makes sense, but it sure seems like a pain in the <press>.
I used to know someone who was a proofreader for (Literary) Welsh texts, who couldn’t actually speak Welsh.
When I first came across Kropotkin he was often referred to as Prince Kropotkin, which I found amusing for an anarchist potentate (oxymoron?). Also,according to the biographical details I was reading, he spent much of the last part of his life in Surbiton, a suburb of London, of which the mere name is redolent of middle-class system-conforming stockbroker types. Wikipedia mentions Harrow, however, but which is also scarcely working class London.
His geological work is valued highly, I think, and he seems to have been a basically humane type, and to have quickly perceived when he went back to Russia after the revolution what Leninism was all about.
Prince Kropotkin, which I found amusing for an anarchist potentate
cf the famous Irish republicans, Count Plunkett and Countess Markievicz.
Does being against the monarchy (and perhaps only in a specific time and place due to the particular circumstances) logically require being against hereditary peerage as well? I should think not. Presbyterians, for example, were traditionally very much against the authority of bishops while being very much in favor of the authority of presbyters.
Separately here’s a fascinating grammatical anecdote (historicity not independently verified by me …) from the post-Kropotkin era of the periodical under discussion in the OP’s blockquote. “The last issue of _Le Révolté_ was 14 March 1885. In 1887 the journal became _La Révolte_. The switch to _La Révolte_ resulted from a desperate and ineffective effort to avoid legal responsibility for a fine assessed the journal for participating in an illegal lottery in support of military desertion.”
@Y
> So publishers would have the typesetting equipment, tons of lead and all, but the printers were a separate business?
Broadly speaking, they would simply be in different locations, but owned by the same person. Ex. a literally vertically integrated newspaper would have composition, proofing, and pressing all on different floors. Some presses (the OUP, if I’m recalling correctly, being a major example) had those in different buildings. Assuming that Kropotkin’s compositor was unrelated to the printer, he would certainly have a proofing press (such as an Albion, Colombian, etc.), but by the late 1800s and with a likely desire to distribute many pamphlets, they would have gone to a printer that had a treadle or motorized press to increase production.