Just received rheims new testament 1633 facsimile

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IamLeon

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anyone know anything about this edition ? the papers looks too white and clean for it to be a facsimile of the 1633 . looks more like a reproduction , what do you all think ?(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
Are you wondering if it’s actually from the 1600s? I agree, it looks like it’s too pristine.
 
Aren’t you the person who had the Douay-OT facsimiles printed into codex form via Google, or something like that, a few months back? I just want to say how cool I find these projects of yours. Where do I buy?
 
If you remember, before the Industrial Revolution, it was common for paper to have a very high rag content. So the fibers in that paper were long and flexible, and it would stay white for a long time.

Once you get to the Industrial Revolution, however, paper became much more cheaply made, and rags were in short supply to keep up with production. So things like wood pulp and other things with shorter fibers were used in a higher proportion. That led to a paper that wouldn’t age as gracefully— it would start getting yellow, and the paper itself would become brittle and break easily, as time passed.

So the color of paper— like an original 1633 Bible— would hinge more on the quality of its fibers (and its cotton/rag content) rather than its age.

So this one has a publication date of 1599, although it’s not actually a 1599 Bible. (Big long story there. It’s old— but it’s probably 17th century.)

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It’s got some spotting to the paper, but you see the coloration is way better than, say, a paperback from 1970, even though it’s probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 years old.

This one is a 1600 printing of a 1582 Rheims Bible.

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So you can see it’s got a little deterioration going on, but overall, it’s in pretty good shape.

Having trouble figuring this one out— I don’t know enough to know if it’s 1609 (the date on the page) or 1810 (a reference to an inscription by a previous owner).

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Anyhow, its paper is pretty clean.

This one is 1632. The paper is pretty clean here as well.

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  1. The paper’s pretty good.
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So, I think your paper compares pretty well to some of the actual antique Bibles.

I’d probably look closely at the type itself, rather than the tint of the paper. The worst reproductions are the ones that just look like a bad fifth-generation Xerox, especially when it comes to the engravings or woodcuts. If it’s got pretty decent clarity and sharpness to its line, I’d be happy. If it was blurred and difficult to read, then I’d probably save up and buy myself a copy of the real thing.
 
That’s obviously a facsimile edition of the 1632/1635 Cousturier Douay Rheims Bible. I am curious to know where it can be obtained though.
 
they pop up on ebay once in a while, very rare when it comes up.
 
theres this number on the front page 6-lb452627790-890. not too sure.
 
yeah ive seen that one. its the same as mine but better condition. yes a facsimile is the exact copy of the original.
 
All facsimiles are going to be reproductions, by their nature— but generally, in common usage, people try to reserve the term to distinguish a good and faithful reproduction from a sloppy/careless/cheap reproduction.

So, for example, you can have a facsimile of the Visconti Hours that costs $11k…

or you can have a facsimile of the Visconti Hours that runs $10.

Both of them are facsimile reproductions; I don’t think either of them is complete?; and both of them are full of pretty pictures.

You also have OCR (Optical Character Recognition) facsimiles. You run into those with old books that aren’t so visual, where the content is the thing that’s important. So, for example-- (here I’m grabbing a random book from my shelf) --I have the Kessinger Publishing’s Legacy Reprints edition of “A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen, Or the Servingman’s Comfort: With Other Things Not Impertinent to the Premisies” from 1598 by Gervase Markham. (Or, as they’ve chosen to dub him, Markham I.M. Gervase. Hahaha, I only just noticed they got his name backwards…) Anyhow, the interior of the book isn’t much better… it’s like a third-generation Xerox of a 16th c book that’s set in a thick blackletter type. Yeah… it’s a facsimile… but I wouldn’t call it a facsimile in casual conversation. I call it a clunky book, and you need to have great eyes and great patience to make your way through it.

In contrast, I have the 1969 De Capo Press facsimile edition of Markham’s Cheape and Goode Husbandry (1614), which is very clear to read. I don’t know the mechanics of how it was reproduced-- it has the quiremarks at the bottom and the notes to the typesetter at the bottom of the pages, and other things like that-- so it gives the impression of being a clear, photographic copy, even if you can’t tell where the edge of the photograph is.

I’ll see if I can throw some photos up of the internal qualities of the different books… although I admit I haven’t spent $11k on my copy of the Visconti Hours. 😛 But the general thing is-- if you’re buying a facsimile edition of a mostly-text book, be very cautious about buying it if you don’t see scans depicting its internal quality, because the OCR technology over the last 20 years isn’t as clear as what they were doing 50 or 60 years ago.
 
midori said:
You also have OCR (Optical Character Recognition) facsimiles.
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I’ll have to argue with you there. I believe that if the book uses OCR it has been retypeset and constitutes a true reprint at the very least, or more likely, a new edition. There is nothing fast or easy about OCR. Even a photographic reproduction (if done with care and finesse) can be very beautiful and worthwhile. However with a photographic reproduction/facsimile, other than cleaning up the image as much as possible, each page can only be enlarged or reduced. But an OCR reprint on the other hand is retypeset, so the font can be changed, the page layout can be changed, IOW, everything can be edited exactly the same as a new book. In fact, the very reason for using OCR would be to have the ability to change the format in some way. If a facsimile edition was the goal, than photographic reproduction would be the most authentic way to go.

However your point of being wary about OCR reprints is fair. There are for example some reprints of old books online which used OCR, and was never carefully corrected. I have seen e-books like that too. However that is just sloppy work, but still constitutes a new typeset, however erroneous. I have also seen brand new books with lots of errors of one kind or another. Quality doesn’t just happen! 😀
 
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Here’s three of my OCR reprints that I decided to risk buying sight-unseen.

The first one is by Ralph Adam Cram. If you’ve seen the original, you’ll know the photographic plates are very nice, and the original book is much larger. So I bought an OCR reprint-- and this is how it came out-- shrunk down, and stark b&w contrast.

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Pretty useless for a picture book. 🙂

Then I tried this one from Kessinger Publishing’s Legacy Reprints.

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Blackletter is always a bit of an adjustment to try and process, but this one was pretty atrocious.

Lastly, there was a series of volumes I’d enjoyed back at my old undergrad library. I thought I’d get an OCR reprint-- but it was pretty sloppy as well. The books I’d read had been of a more substantial size, but not all of its awkwardness is just a matter of scaling it down. Haven’t quite figure it out. The pen-and-ink drawings came out okay, and the text is readable… but the book itself is pretty miserable.

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About that time, I gave up holding my breath for a decent OCR reprint, and I try to buy actual vintage copies whenever possible. If it’s more than I want to spend… I save my money, rather than wasting it on something unsatisfying that takes up shelf space.

I’m sure there are others who do an actual good job with OCR technology… but the ones I keep running into are just a waste. 😦 Any recommended publishers who do a good job with the POD for out-of-print public domain books business model?
 
I am still unsure as to what you are calling an “OCR reprint.”

It sounds like you are having trouble dealing with photographic reproduction reprints which are reduced, or not cleaned up enough.

If it is an OCR reprint, then, that means the IMAGE of the text was READ and CONVERTED to a digital TEXT usable in something like MS-Word etc.

for example:
I am currently working on an OCR reprint myself for an e-book. I am taking large, almost folio size sheets, from an original 19th century book, and scanning them on a large format A3 scanner. The output image is “read” by the OCR software, and then the newly created text is transferred to MS-WORD. I have to MANUALLY correct all of the OCR’s incorrect “readings” of characters, punctuation etc in WORD. I then copy THAT page as pure text (no formatting etc.) into the Epub software, where I am creating the E-book. In that software I have to continue the correction process, since there are still problems that occur during the transfer, and html markup that has to be corrected as well. Once this is finished I have to convert the “epub” file into a “mobi” file for upload to my Amazon account for my Kindle Fire. Then I can view it as an e-book, with all of the ebook’s abilities: audio reading, resizing, changing the font etc. etc. (Eventually I will publish it as a complete E-book, but not for some time yet.)

As you can see from my description, the original look is entirely lost, unless it is recreated from scratch with the correct fonts, point size, layout and so forth in some sort of publishing software.

The black letter pages you show appear to be poorly digitized photographic reproductions. But depending on what the original looked like, it may represent sensational work in actuality. Based on the look, I would say it has had its contrast maximized to eliminate page discoloration and other defects. This causes the bleeding together of the characters.
 
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