“The Kelmscott Chaucer (Geoffrey Chaucer The Works Now Newly Imprinted) is the greatest and most influential book never to have been read.” So begins Nicolas Barker’s opening commentary on the materials contained in one of Octavo Press’s already‐celebrated CD‐ROMs. The statement refers to the fact that this particular edition of Chaucer’s works, originally produced by the great craftman, artist, poet, printer, socialist and businessman, William Morris, and pre‐Raphaelite painter, Edward Burne‐Jones, and published in 1896, is such a monumentally beautiful object that it almost paralyses the beholder. Its designs and pictures are to book illustration what the Sistine Chapel is to church ceilings. Awed by the masterly perfection of its execution, the reader can do little but celebrate its existence and leave the mere reading of the text to lesser beings chained to the academic treadmill.
This Chaucer work quickly sold out, and became a rare and expensive artefact ‐ one more testament to the glory of great, illustrated books inked on the varieties of paper. Today, if you want to read it, it is hard to find and very expensive. Its handlers need security clearance in libraries, from which it can never be copied or moved. Groups of people can rarely study it together. Some might say printed books reached their zenith in the Kelmscott Chaucer; others might say this edition represented the early virtualization of text, if, by virtual, we mean something whose mediation gives its potentiality a presence as powerful as its embodiment. Both would be correct. One wonders if Octavo’s digital Kelmscott ‐ an essential, affordable purchase for any library or lover of books and art ‐ is also destined to be owned but never opened.
Octavo’s William Shakespeare Poems, however ‐ a digital reproduction of the famous 1640 octavo (pocket‐sized) edition, the first collection of Shakespeare’s verse ‐ is less a work of art and more a conventional, though appealing, rarity. Besides text, it contains some attractive engravings and decorations. It belongs more to the history of literature than printing and, as such, is both less well and better served than the Kelmscott Chaucer by its availability in a projectable, electronic format ‐ less, because there is simply less to examine and because printed reproductions serve nearly as well; and more because, unlike the Chaucer, its text is searchable, it is easier to read (Morris’s font bearing as it does a mild resemblance to cuneiform), and it looks like an old book is supposed to look.
These two CD‐ROMs are part of a collection of rare books mainly in the sciences ‐ or science as we knew it in the age of the humanities ‐ digitized by Octavo Press, the offspring of Adobe Systems. Several dozen titles have already been issued and all so far cost between $25 and $75. The two titles under review are among the very few non‐science works reproduced. The others are, or are expected to be, uncontested classics like Milton’s Areopagitica or Joseph Smith’s The Book of Mormon. A lot of promotion has issued from this project which I first learned about in the pages of Biblio, the slick, illustrated magazine for book collectors. It boasts many well‐placed reviewers’ blurbs; and nothing that I could see has been exaggerated, except perhaps the ultimate question librarians and teachers must never ask too seriously: will it be used to the maximum?
These CD‐ROMs offer extremely high‐resolution digital pictures of the actual pages and covers of the old books. This includes all views of the cover and spine, unnumbered pages and inserts, title pages, frontispieces, all illustrations and the text as it was published. The material is meant to be displayed on Adobe Acrobat’s Reader 3.0, a copy of which comes with every CD‐ROM, along with voluminous instructions. From Acrobat, though, text and image can be printed, as well as cut and pasted to other applications.
The Chaucer includes several copies of the poems in different resolutions ‐ for “examining,” for printing, for browsing. The Kelmscott Chaucer, however, cannot be searched using the Acrobat Reader, probably because the font is too difficult for a scanner to convert into readable text, and because a “live,” (accompanying) invisible translation was not cut into the database. However, Chaucer’s texts have been cross‐referenced to perfection elsewhere for centuries, so it’s no great loss. In a word, the visual display on both CD‐ROMs is magnificent, as one would expect from the developer of Adobe systems. Having a fast CPU, at least a 17in. monitor and high RAM does not hurt. I have not seen the images projected, either directly or from an image captured in, say, Powerpoint; but I would wager that in a pitch black room, you will feel quite close to the print. It is so good that Octavo warns the user not to even try printing from the examination datafile, because no average user’s printer could come close to what was available to Adobe when it scanned. Fair enough, since one can print impressive pages from the lower resolution files. Why anyone would want to print out these pages is anyone’s guess ‐ Adobe/Octavo does not seem concerned that someone may create fabulous greeting cards, stationery, or wedding invitations from them. To prove its point Octavo also sells poster‐sized pictures of many of the engravings from these books, at $30‐$50 unframed ‐ the Kelmscott title page is one ‐ and they are posters to be reckoned with. “I dare you to print out something that good,” is what they seem to say.
The Kelmscott Chaucer contains far more than the Canterbury Tales. It also includes The Romance of the Rose, The Parliament of Fowls, The Complaint of Mars, The House of Fame, and virtually every other major poem of Chaucer. Likewise, the Shakespeare offers much more than the Sonnets (of which eight are omitted, including perhaps the most famous one, Sonnet 18): dozens of his other non‐dramatic poems are included and can be located in a table of contents or searched by title. All images can be zoomed in on; and all take a few moments to load. Almost nothing loads instantly; and when you switch between Acrobat and another application, images must reload. An 800 per cent zoomed examination image is crystal clear; when it is not, it is because the original was not crystal clear.
On the left side of the Acrobat screen are various guides to usage: tables of contents or links to the text, to the Octavo edition itself, to using the Acrobat Reader, which is easy. Mastering the search, previous page, previous result, text selection and other tools may require patient diligence. The materials I saw did not include any printed guides, other than the jacket copy. This can be very irritating when serious guidance is needed and when most of it is supplied online. The user is prompted to print out some of the guides, like the introductory “Octavo digital guide”, which tells much but not all about the basics of using the CD‐ROM edition.
Introductory essays on the particular work by a noted scholar are very readable and helpful. Aside from that, thanks to Octavo, there are no footnotes, bibliographies, critical notes or essays, or sound and light shows to challenge the reader’s attention. But even though online help abounds, the sheer quantity of it ‐ where to begin, which files to open after setup, setting preferences, and what the table of contents titles actually refer to ‐ is a little overwhelming. One literally might not know where to begin. This could discourage the unassisted user and is clearly something the devoted reader of non‐digital books will remember, if not resent. These and similar problems ‐ have you ever seen a “help file” in a printed book of poetry? ‐ will no doubt cease to exist as the medium develops; so we must remain aware that this particular virtual rarity may become as unwelcome someday as microfilm is today. Like Morris’s work, its existence celebrates the reach of current technology more than it does literature.
Octavo Press is the brainchild of John Warnock, the software engineer and CEO of Adobe Systems, which specializes in graphic display and desktop publishing. Adobe was so successful that it enabled Warnock, a pioneer of digital display, to become a collector of old and rare books, a passion that took him by surprise after his business flourished. On a pleasure trip to an antique fair in the UK, Warnock was transfixed by a 1570 edition of Euclid’s Elements, especially by its illustrations and stand‐up cutouts; and he bought it. His passion for the technology of graphic reproduction had suddenly caught him from behind. When he realized that old, illustrated, scientific works were every bit as visually arresting and ingenious ‐ though much harder to share ‐ as the images he had made possible on a good computer screen, he decided to digitize much of his collection and share it. For a minimal price, libraries, scholars and book lovers, most of whom cannot afford the “real thing”, can now depend on one of the forms of virtual reality Warnock invented to appease their appetites. Several dozen titles are now available, among them Sir Isaac Newton’s Optics (1704), Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665), Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), and Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (1610). Dozens more are planned or in production.
Are these CD‐ROMs as good as rare books? Virtually, yes. But it may be more than an academic question. Librarians like to redefine the obvious. Few collectors or libraries would so readily lend their rarities to digitization; so it may be said that this is indeed a “special collection” ‐ a portfolio, as it were, of John Warnock’s rare books, available to all. Traditional scholars in search of all the sensory and magical data of rare books not digitized by Octavo may still have to visit the British Library, the University of Texas, the Huntington, or the Frick museums. I know of at least one major university library that is planning to house these discs in its Special Collections Department, though the decision may arise from wishful thinking, a desire to instruct users in the proper attitude to assume.
Although libraries are notoriously poor predictors of how their resources will be used, there can be no doubt that the ability to scan and digitize rare books will bring great benefits to anyone who consults these CD‐ROMs. Artefacts once removed from Morris’s Chaucer, mysterious as the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey, their existence itself is fascinating. Rare books of historic and aesthetic interest will continue to be collected and will increase in value. For at least another half century, readers and scholars will know that rare books had a physical entity. But the ability to digitize books works in ways photography or engraving never could. Someday soon, a publisher may issue digitized images of the year’s Sports Illustrated, USA Today, or the latest John Grisham novel as it might have appeared on paper and boards in the print and ink of Shakespeare’s day. Graphics programs can produce wonders. On a monitor, it will have a rare and ancient look. Maybe we will turn the pages of its hologram. A pulldown “help” menu will explain to the viewer that content is all that matters and that “books” are best left to the imagination.
