Octavo Poem by gershon hepner

To Manutius I say “Bravo! ”
He invented the octavo,
eight pages from a single sheet,
enabling you to be discreet
by causing books to be downsized
for convenience, and be prized
as much as inches, five to eight,
are prized by ladies in their mate.

Robert Smith writes about an exhibition of bookbindings at the Morgan Library (“Savoring the Cover as Well as the Book, ” NYT, December 19,2008) :
Venice, Rome, Restoration London and prerevolutionary Paris all had their bookbinding breakthroughs, styles and stars. Printing on both sides of the page ranks high. One star was the Englishman Roger Bartlett, represented here by a large Bible from 1678 with a mosaic binding in red and black leather richly tooled in gold. And of utmost importance was Aldus Manutius, the Venetian credited with inventing the octavo book in 1501. The name comes from eight, the number of pages made from a single folio or sheet of standard-size paper. The books were small (about 5 by 8 inches) and easy to carry. Italy’s benign climate, which invited reading outdoors, encouraged portability. Aldus’s invention, represented here by a book of Greek poetry bound in red goatskin, reverberates throughout the show. Also on view is Napoleon’s traveling library, designed to hold many octavos and to look like a large book.

12/19/08