I buy old books – sometimes pretty old ones.
I’m currently reading a copy of Jules Verne’s “In Search of the Castaways”. It was printed in 1911, went to a library in New Hampshire, then was sold to a used book dealer, from whom I bought it. I’ve been reading it, and I’m evidently the first person in almost a century to do so. I know this because nobody has bothered to “cut” the pages.
Books are printed with several pages printed simultaneusly, not only on both sides, but several pages at once. These are then folded together and bound, and the edges sliced off to make the book as you have it. Only in some cases they only cut along one edge, or else they inadequately cut the others. My copy has the top surface cut only – all pages have the same top edge, but the other two are ragged. many of these are uncut, and if you try to read the book, you find that you can’t open the page because it and the following page are joined at the bottom or at the side.
I’ve been going through as I read and using my pocket knife to slit the still-bound edges.
But I’ve been wondering – should I do this? I’m changing the state of the book, and possibly reducing its value. On the other hand, it seems to me a shame that a book a century old still hasn’t be read (and can’t be) without cut pages.
The value isn’t a big deal with these books – the covers are faded and they’re part of an incomplete set. But what abouyt my more valuable books (like my complete set of Burton’s Arabian Nights)?
Is there accepted book collector Wisdom regarding the cutting of pages?
When I worked in a used book store, the owner (who was a collector of old books) cautioned all the employees not to mess with “uncut” books, since some collectors will pay a premium for books which have the appearance of being unread. If you have the intent of offering a book for sale in the future, it’s generally good to maintain it in its original form if possible (the exception being autographed or inscribed books, which may gain value by the alteration). If the book is something that you are unlikely to sell, of course, anything goes.
As this is not a first US edition (that was 1873) and is an ex-library book, I would not hesitate to cut the pages to make it more readable. I have cut pages before, and it is amazing how much it bothered me. Kind of goes with the whole “getting rid of books” theme that has cropped up with several recent threads.
Of course, I do have some first editions (not overly valuable) with uncut pages that I’ve left for future owners to decide.
Sounds like you want to read it, and having bought it from a used book dealer, I’d cut them and enjoy the thriss of reading those pages for the first time. Like others have said if you find that you want to sell it andnot read it don’t cut them…*
I had the same problem with a T. H. Huxley book from around the same period. I cut the pages, since I wanted to read it. If I could have read the book from the library or someplace else, I might not have.
But it is cool to think the book had been sitting around with some pages unread for 90 years or so.
Let me guess – the book is not all that good, right?
I say cut. I’ve had to do the same myself, and it’s a nuisance – so much of a nuisance, in fact, that I gave up on reading the book. It’s hard for me to imagine how such a practice came about, anyway – like the idea of cutting the pages for the convenience of the reader didn’t occur to them? I’m sure I’m missing something about the original motivation.
Sal, the way this comes about is due to the way books are made. (Or at least were made. I don’t know if this technique is still current.) You take the first 16 pages of the book. The 8 even numbered pages are printed on one side of a big sheet of paper. But, the pattern is strange with the various pages scattered around the large sheet and some are upside down. The odd numbered pages are printed on the back side, arranged so that they are printed opposite their corresponding (numerically adjacent) number. Then the large sheet is folded down to 1/8th the size. This is called a signature. Once folded, if you look at the pages, they are in order and all right side up although you can’t read much because the paper is not cut and you can’t open the pages freely.
The next 16 pages are treated in a similar manner for the second signature, and so on. The signatures are gathered in order, bound together and the top, outside and bottom edges are cut. The result is a book where you only have to print 1/8th the number of individual pages when compared to printing each page separately.
The big original sheet is supposed to be large enough that you can trim off some of the edge resulting in the desired finished margin. Sometimes the cut was bad or the folding didn’t happen properly and some pages remained uncut. Modern techniques reduce or eliminate this possibility.
Hmm? No, it’s quite good. It’s Verne, and I’m a big Verne fan. There’s been a Verne revival of late, with first-time-ever translations of books like “The Invasion of the Sea” and “The Kip Brothers” and “The Mighty Orinoco” coming out in the past couple of years. Now I think there’s only one book of his that hasn’t been translated into English. And New and improved translations of his other books have been coming out as well (such as “The Mysterious Island”).
But I’d never read “In Search of the Castaways”, although I’d seen the Disney film (there is apparently a much better Russian film from 1935, and more recent Russian TV miniseries. Russians apparently Love ISotC).
This explanation makes sense, but only up to a point. I can’t believe that uncut pages are, in effect, a manufacturing error. I think it was a deliberate choice by the publisher, but as I say, I can’t really understand why. Maybe some readers liked uncut books that they got to deflower, as it were.
My daughter is reading Voyage to the Center of the Earth right now, and she related to me today how Verne was not really intent on producing fine literature, but on meeting the demand for the market in serials. I can well believe that. I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea recently, and was kind of disapointed – both by the carelessness about details, and by the obvious padding.
Having worked with book publishers…yes, it’s a manufacturing error. It’s not done on purpose, but it’s more common than you’d expect.
The reason is simple economics: you want to get the largest number of pages possible on the least amount of paper, and waste the least paper with the discards. So the cuts (which are made by trimming perpendicular to, not along, the flat axes of the book) are made as small as possible – and there’s some error involved. It doesn’t take much misalignment of the finishing (binding) equipment to miss some of the fold – usually on modern books it will only be a partial miss, because the book was ever-so-slightly diagonal with respect to the knife.
I vote for cut the pages and read it. What are you saving it for, some future descendent to sell for a few groats on the market? I would be so cool with reading the old words that no one had ever seen before. I sometimes go to the rare book section of my U and sit and read random bits of old books and wonder who looked at them last.
Carelessness about details? I’m reading the Naval Instite Press translation now, and I’m impressed by the care he took with details.
Have a look at Walter James Miller’s The Annotated 20,000 Leagues – he points out how appallingly bad the "standard Mercier Lewis ttranslation is – it cuts out 1/3 f the book, and garbles the scientific and engineering details unmercifully. Miller defends Verne against the critics who said that he skipped vital details, showing that Verne DID include those details – but Mercier Lewis left them out. That’s the reason for the Naval Institute translation, which Miller was co-author of. well worth the read.
You want to see padding? Read Pel Torro/Richard Fanthorpe’s books.
I’m thinking of particular details of the story, like the rescue of the Ceylonese pearl diver after he’s attacked by the shark. Somehow or other, Captain Nemo and his companions are able to swim to the surface carrying the guy, in spite of their leaden shoes and copper helmets.
But anyway, I’m just quibbling. It’s an adventure story, after all, and if strict verisimilitude were to be observed, there would be no story.
And as to the idea that uncut pages are a manufacturing error, I just don’t think that’s the case. I think it was the standard format for certain editions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Because it’s not just the odd volume, the one-in-a-hundred manufacturer’s error, that you see – it’s a very widespread phenomenon. While it’s rare nowadays to come across a book with its pages uncut, it’s not the least bit rare to come across a book the pages of which have been cut. In fact, a knife to cut the pages of a book used to be an accessory in genteel households. And books themselves are replete with references to cutting the pages of a book. It was a standard format, in other words. That’s my strong impression and I could be wrong, but I don’t think so in this case.
I’m resurrecting this recently-dead zombie because of what I’ve just read. Some time back Aal Ammoniac said of Verne:
…to which I replied:
And Sal responded:
I just read that part of the book, and it’s not careless or inconsistent at all. Nemo and company are diving , not from the Nautilus in this case, but from their launch, and have to climb in and out over the side of their ship’s boat. Clearly, they’re not heavily weighted down as if they’re on the bottom of the sea, and must be carrying just enough to counteract their buoyancy. Moreover, the water is definitely shallow – the pearl diver’s boat is described as floating “just a few feet above his head”, so Nemo and company aren’t like deep-sea divers weighted heavily down to the bottom, but are more like lightly-weight scuba divers in shallow water. Pretty easy to believe that they could, especially working together, lift a man.
It’s hard to read this edition or the earlier Annotated edition and not be impressed by Verne’s attention to detail, not lack of it. Miller points out nuances frequently, and is particularly incensed by a 1961 Galaxy magazine article accusing Verne of being ignorant of details of the diving apparatus, not paying attention to the construction and use of batteriesm, and other important background material, when it’s demonstrable that those details are present in the French text, but were excised by Lewis Mercier in his translation, which cut out about 1/4 (not 1/3 as I said earluier) of the text, and frequently butchered the rest.