The Aldine Edition of Plato's Works

How was it put together? Is everything there? Questions for anyone who studies an early printed book, even an online digital copy. If you like puzzles, early printed books may be for you.

Over centuries of use, misuse, vandalism, repair, and re-binding, leaves can go missing. New leaves may be added, others may go out of order. The book may have been bound out of order to begin with. Binders, who often could not read the texts, followed letters and numbers on the fronts of the first half of every gathering of leaves (quire), figures called folio marks, or foliation. In quire of eight leaves, each of the first four may have printed on its front (recto) a succession of folio marks, e.g., A Aii Aiii Aiiii. There will be no marks on the back (verso) of these leaves. The last four leaves in this gathering of eight will have no folio marks at all. Leaves Av-Aviii are implied but not marked.

Page numbers were uncommon before 1600. Page numbers and signature order do not always match (put your money on the signatures).

A register, printed at the end of some books, indicates the order in which the binder should assemble the quires. The first photo shows the register for the two-volume work in the second photo, the Aldine edition of Plato’s works, printed in Venice, in 1513. Notice that the two volumes are different sizes. They come from different sets, cropped and bound differently. Along the way, Volume I lost its cover. Puzzles!