National Library News January/February 2000 Vol. 32, nos. 1-2

From the Rare Book Collection... Reconstruction or Forgery?

In 1980, a British book-dealer offered the Rare Book Division of the National Library a fine copy, in contemporary binding, of André Thevet’s Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique, published in Paris in 1558. Another copy of this rare and important work had entered the Rare Book Collection from an unknown source many years earlier. The copy offered was certainly in superior condition to the Library’s copy and had the advantage of being in a contemporary binding.

Comparing the two copies of the Singularitez soon became quite fascinating. The last page of the British copy had the contemporary ownership signature of an Angoulême pharmacist. This rang a bell with the curators, and a comparison with the National Library of Canada (NLC) copy showed that the same signature appeared in both copies! The NLC copy, at least that leaf, was obviously a facsimile, reunited by some coincidence with its original. Further examination showed that more leaves looked suspicious. In light of this discovery, the British copy was purchased with the financial assistance of the Secretary of State and now rests next to the "facsimile copy".

At first glance, nothing seems to be wrong with the so-called "facsimile copy". Early books always show variations in paper thickness, quality of impression, as well as printing faults and a certain amount of conservation work. Leafing through quickly, nothing strikes the eye as odd. The simple red morocco binding signed by French binder Godillot gives it an air of respectability, and one presumes that it came from the collection of a French bibliophile. A number of original leaves show repairs made to tears, which adds to the general genuine appearance. The paper, without being exactly consistent throughout, is certainly contemporary or close to it. Once it had been established that the last leaf was a facsimile, the task was to determine which leaves were genuine and which were not. There are two characteristics to examine: the printing and the paper. Examining the appearance of the type on each leaf is a very difficult and time-consuming exercise.

Let us look at the paper first. The format of the Singularitez is quarto, the work being made up of gatherings of four leaves (eight pages). It is printed on laid paper which, when held to the light, shows a series of widely spaced parallel lines made by the wire mesh of the paper mould during the papermaking process. These are called chain lines. In a quarto, the chain lines are horizontal, parallel to the printed lines on the page. A survey of chain-line orientation for each leaf showed that some were oriented vertically, demonstrating that these were produced separately from the other leaves of the gatherings. These would be the facsimile leaves, a total of 34 out of the book’s 176 leaves.

A closer look at the appearance of the type on these leaves showed, for some at least, the characteristic of a photo-lithographic facsimile, a flatness caused by the ink resting on the paper rather than being pushed into it by type. In one case, the page was "printed" a second time, completely off-register, producing a garbled mess. Not all the facsimile leaves were copied from the Angoulême pharmacist’s copy; some showed faint ruled lines in the margins, suggesting a ruled copy as a parent. Unconventional repairs were also done on this copy. In one case, where the corner of an original leaf had been torn, with significant loss of text, a restorer had reconstructed the corner, and the missing text had been added in pencil in a hand imitating the typeface with an amazing amount of accuracy.

It has always been a custom – as it is with antiques – to add the missing elements to an incomplete copy, especially in the case of a rare or very early book. This is done to allow the use of a complete text. The best facsimile is as close to the original as possible, while being easily recognizable as a copy by the untrained person. A note usually accompanies the book, listing the elements – leaves, maps, plates – which are not original. With the passage of time and the loss or removal of certain evidence, a good facsimile can become difficult to detect and can easily be mistaken for an original.

In this copy of the Singularitez, the intention was to reproduce the missing leaves as cleverly as possible on old paper. Dispersed in a sea of originals, the facsimile leaves could easily deceive an untrained eye or even an unsuspecting trained one. In fact, they did. In the early 1960s, this copy was listed in the catalogue of an eminent American antiquarian bookseller and described as a complete and original copy. Had the "restorer" wanted to create a forgery, he or she would have made sure the chain-line orientation had been consistent. It is difficult to guess what the "restorer’s" intentions might have been — was it to create an excellent partial facsimile easily detected only by the experts or one clever enough to fool most people? Had the copy from the Angoulême pharmacist not been accidentally reunited with its offspring, the integrity of the National Library copy might not have been questioned for quite some time. Thanks to this happy coincidence, the National Library of Canada now has a complete original and a partial original copy of the Singularitez in its Rare Book Collection.