Title-Pages Through Time.

Shane MacDonald at The Catholic University of America’s Archivist’s Nook has a post called Title-Pages Through Time – A History of One Page: When opening a book, typically the first page one encounters is the title page – a separate page that offers several pieces of information about the work, including the title, author name, and publisher information. The presence of a title page seems rather intuitive, but that assumption underlies how common the title page has become in our expectations on the structure of the book. However, the title page’s story is one of centuries of experimentation, often reflecting the commercial and intellectual trends of the time. Prior to the era of the printed book, manuscripts did not have title pages. The original rationale behind printing a title on the lead page has often been explained by two key reasons tied to the printing of books. The first is that the printed book was a commercial object, and the presence of a title indicating the book’s…