angelica’s unusual laputai stumbled across a sweet edition of part three from jonathan swift&r

angelica’s unusual laputai stumbled across a sweet edition of part three from jonathan swift’s 1726 Gulliver’s Travels : A Voyage to Laputa, the angelica press, nyc, 1976; designed & illustrated by warren chappell. the angelica press is new to me, but i much admire warren chappell’s work so acquired a copy. this book includes a preface & an afterword on swift, both by house proprietor, dennis j. grastorf. in his introduction, grastorf describes chappell’s method for creation of the illustrations—clever combination of letterpress, pen & ink, and photography (1st illustration frontispiece & 2nd illustration): grastorf dubs this two-color chiaroscuro. i presume grastorf may also have been editor, & author of the colophon (3rd illustration).  perceiving the text set comfortably large i felt immediately attracted to a read; but was mystified to learn in the colophon that the text is set 12pt times new roman: upon analysis i make it 13/14, but it feels larger. admittedly, the 1970’s were the height of mini-computer driven film composition for offset litho: i expect chappell’s 12pt specification was subjected to optical scaling (distortion) by the compositor—but who can say. in any event, i applaud the admixture of times & perpetua; however, i am amazed the perpetua roman uppercase is not aesthetically balanced (letterspaced)—i have not previously noticed absence of this in chappell’s work. perhaps the compositor had yet to unravel all the mysteries of his machine. during the read i became increasingly aware that the editor may have altered swift’s punctuation. i first noticed quotation of statements, i.e. within inverted commas (e.g. 4th illustration); but these are reported statements, not direct speech—the editor not so daring as to recast the clauses. then, i began to notice colon & semicolon where simple comma is expected. checking several instances against the bona fide text my observations were confirmed: the editor embarked upon a bold new logic for punctuating swift. perhaps, overwhelmed by swift’s descriptions of the academicians of Lagado he felt an urge to up his game, & be adventurous.  -- source link

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