BOOK BINDING, the art of stitching or otherwise fastening together and cov ering the sheets of paper or similar mate rial composing a book. The edge of a modern book constituted by the margin of the paper composing it is called the binding edge.
When books were literal volumes, or rolls, the way of binding them, if it could, be so called, or at least of keeping them together, was to unroll them from one cylinder and roll each again, as it was perused, on another. When books be came separate folios the first method of dealing with them seems to have been the tying them together by a string passed through a hole at the margin of the pile. This is still done in the south of India and Ceylon with writings on talipot or other palm leaves. The holding together of folios of a literary man's manuscript by a small clasp at one edge is an essen tially similar device. The present method of binding seems to have been invented by or under Attalus, King of Pergantus, or his son, Eumenes, about 200 B. C. The oldest bound book known—the binding was ornamental—is the volume of St. Cuthbert, about A. n. 650. Ivory was used for book covers in the 8th century; oak in the 9th. The "Book of Evangel ists," on which the English kihgs took their coronation oath, was bound in oak boards, A. D. 1100. Velvet, silk, hog-skin and leather were used as early as the 15th century; needlework binding began in 1471; vellum, stamped and orna mented, about 1510; leather about the same date, and calf in 1550. Cloth bind
ing superseded the paper known as boards in 1823; india rubber backs were introduced in 1841, tortoise-shell sides in 1856.
The chief processes of bookbinding are the following: Folding the sheets; gath ering the consecutive signatures; rolling the packs of folded sheets; sewing, after saw cutting the backs for the cords; rounding the backs and gluing them; edge cutting; binding, securing the book to the sides; covering the sides and back with leather, muslin, or paper, as the case may be; tooling and lettering; and, finally, edge gilding. Books may be full bound, i. e., with the back and sides leather; or half bound, that is, with the back leather and the sides paper or cloth.
Bookbinding may be divided into two classes—viz., case binding or cloth work, and leather or bound work. The former was introduced by Pickering, the pub lisher, and Leighton, the binder, in 1822. Before that time books were issued by the publishers bound in millboards covered with colored paper. In both France and Germany most books, even the finest, are originally issued in paper covers; where as, in England, the whole edition often appears in cloth binding.