BOOK, liber, the composition of a man of wit and learning, designed to commu nicate somewhat he has invented, experi enced, or collected, to the public, and thence to posterity ; being withal of a com petent length to make a volume.
In this sense, a book is distinguished from a pamphlet, by its greater length : and from a tome or volume, by its con taining the whole writing. According to the ancients, a book differed from an epis tle, not only in hulk, but in that the latter was folded, and the former rolled up : not but that there are divers ancient books now extant, under the names of epistles.
By 8 Anne, c. 19, the author of any book, and his assigns, shall have the sole liberty of printing and reprinting the same for fourteen years, to commence from the day of the first publication there of, and no longer ; except that, if the au thor be living at the expirhtion of the said term, the sole copy right shall return to him for other fourteen years ; and if any other person shall print, or import, or shall sell or expose it to sale, he shall forfeit the same, and also one penny for every sheet thereof found in his posses sion. But this shall not expose any per son to the said forfeitures, unless the ti tle thereof shall be entered in the regis ter book of the Company of Stationers.
By statute, eleven copies of each book, on the best paper, shall, before publica tion, he delivered to the warehouse-keep er of the Company of Stationers, for the use of the Royal Library, the libraries of the two universities in England, the four uni versities in Scotland, the library of Sion College, the library belonging to the Col lege of Advocates in Edinburgh, the libra ry of Trinity College, Dublin, and the King's Inn, Dublin, on pain of forfeiting the value thereof, and also five pounds.
By Stat. 34 Geo. III. c. 20, and 41 Geo. III. c. 107, persons importing, for sale, books first printed within the united king dom, and reprinted in any other, such books shall be seized and forfeited ; and every person so exposing such books to sale, for every such offence, shall forfeit the sum of ten pounds. The penalties not to extend to books not having been printed for twenty years.
By the act of union, 40 Geo. III. c. 67, all prohibitions and bounties on the ex port of articles (the produce and ma nufacture of either country) to the other shall cease ; and a countervailing duty of two-pence for every pound weight avoir dupois of books, bound or unbound, and of maps or prints, imported into Great Britain directly from Ireland, or which shall be imported into Ireland from Great Britain, is substituted.
Boors, materials of. Several sorts of materials were used formerly in making books : plates of lead and copper, the bark of trees, bricks, stone, and wood, were the first materials employed to en grave such things upon, as men were willing to have transmitted to posterity. Josephus speaks of two columns, the one of stone, the other of brick, on which the children of Seth wrote their inventions and astronomical discoveries : Porphyry makes mention of some pillars, preserved in Crete, on which the ceremonies prac tised by the Corybantes in their sacrifices were recorded : Ilesiod's works were originally written upon tables of lead, and deposited in the temple of the Mu ses, in Bceotia ; the ten commandments, delivered to Moses, were written upon stone ; and Solon's laws upon wooden planks. Tables of wood, box, and ivory, were common among the ancients : when of wood, they were frequently covered with wax, that people might write on them with more ease, or blot out what they had written The leaves of the palm-tree were afterwards used instead of wooden planks, and the finest and thin nest part of the bark of such trees, as the lime, the ash, the maple, and the elm ; from hence comes the word fiber, which signifies the inner bark of the trees; and as these barks were rolled up, in order to be removed with greater ease, these rolls were called volumes, a volume ; a name afterwards given to the like rolls of paper or parchment.
This we find books were first written on stones, so the decalogue given to Moses: then on the parts of plants, as leaves, chiefly of the palm tree ; the rind and bark, especially of the tilia, or phi. lyrea, and the Egyptian papyrus. By de grees,wax, then leather, were introduced, especially the skins of goats and sheep, of which, at length, parchment was pre pared': then lead came into use ; also linen, silk, horn, and lastly, paper itself.