Dating

How do you date a book?  My writing partner Elizabeth likes old books.  She once asked how you date a book without the usual copyright page (the traditional “n.d.” or “no date” for all those school papers we had to write.

The more I thought about it, the more intriguing the question became.  As a convention, I often say a book was “written in” a certain year.  I can’t know that, of course.  I have written several books. Most of them span at least a year.

A book with a copyright page is a fairly recent development.  The older convention was to print the date on the title page, along with the author and place of publication.  That would tell you when the book was actually produced.

Books, however, can be rebound.  In fact, some of the most unusual findings in the manuscript world have come in books that were rebound together with material not in the original printing.  Paperback binding wasn’t even invented until the 1930s, and rebinding was not uncommon in the days when binders were separate from publishers.

In the early book industry, printers printed books and you bought them as quires or signatures that could be taken to a bindery for a cover.  There were no uniform covers, and printing conventions weren’t the same across all printing houses.

Book producers had no incentive to follow the same standard.  In the days before International Standard Book Numbers (or ISBNs) no uniform means existed for ensuring books gave all the “metadata” to which we’re accustomed.

I have many books in my personal library that predate the ISBN.  I have some with no dates. The date of a book, while very useful to know, might indicate several things: when it was written, printed, published, bound, or copyrighted.  

Copyright, as now understood, protects any original written document.  In many parts of the world you don’t even have to apply for it.  It won’t tell you when a book was written, but it does make it safer for those of us who write down our musings on such things.