The touch of words

Leonard Woolf thought setting and dissing type would be good for Virginia’s nerves, which is one of the reasons why they started a press. It probably was, for a while, but I noticed when reading both of their biographies that after about five years they contracted out the setting to a professional compositor, then printed the set text themselves. Wise man, that Woolf.

I’m obviously playing the right music, all the students have taken their iPod earplugs out to listen.

Gee this type makes my fingers dirty.

Ahem. Of course, once set, the text can be printed out numerous times, thus making it more accessible than handwritten text, but not as quickly as computer printed text. And digital printing is faster again. But that’s the history of typesetting in a nutshell, isn’t it? And somehow the slowness of the production, the time taken to make this text appear, is something that works for me. I get to ingest the words, letter by letter. It brings the poems to life.

Whether it does so for the reader at the other end is another story altogether.