Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Acknowledgments & Sources

A HEARTFELT THANKS to the many people who have helped me with this book. Where it shines, it is due to their diligence and help. Where it fails, it is because of my own stubborn bull-headedness. I especially want to thank Michele Palmer who read and re-read the story in different drafts and corrected my spelling, grammar, and treatment of women. A second valuable aide was Jason Black, the book doctor, who read the first draft and told me exactly what was wrong, then read it again in time for me to enter it in competition. Should you ever need an editor or book doctor, visit http://www.plottopunctuation.com.

I owe a special thank you to book arts instructor Dan Shafer of Cornish College of the Arts and a member of the Seattle Center for Book Arts for helping with the setup and printing of the original cover art for this book.

Getting input from people who just like to read this kind of book was extremely valuable, and I’d like to thank Jason, Michele, Janet, Nancy, Cary, Steve, Richard, and all those who were pressed into listening to a paragraph or two (or a chapter) to help me get through a difficult spot. Thank you to Gayle Lynds for offering encouragement and taking both my writing and publishing ventures seriously.

There is a lot of information available about Johannes Gutenberg and some of it is apparently accurate. Ferreting out what part is history and what part is legend is beyond my simple endeavors. I took most of my factual information from The Catholic Encyclopedia at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07090a.htm as it seemed the most reliable and seemed often to be the source quoted by other sites.

The printers’ marks that adorn the beginning of each chapter are authentic marks of 15th-18th century printers. The source is the book Printers’ Marks: A Chapter in the History of Typography by W. Roberts, published by George Bell and Sons in 1893. I found an electronic copy of the work at Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25663. Project Gutenberg is a repository of over 33,000 free electronic books created by volunteers from public domain works, many going back centuries. This edition was produced by Louise Hope, Stephen Hope and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Another book that was an invaluable resource from University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center was Forty Centuries of Ink by David Nunes Carvalho, Published by Lenox Hill Pub. & Dist. Co. 1904 and scanned by Charles Keller (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CarFort.html). There is more information in this book on the changes in ink composition over the past 4,000 years than you will ever want to know!

My historical information on the Library of Alexandria was greatly enhanced by the book The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World by Luciano Canfora, published in 1989 by Hutchinson Radius. As rich in texture as this book is, however, it is also a great lesson in not believing everything you read—even in print. Several points in Canfora’s book are disputed as to historical accuracy, but it’s a great story. Sorting out which pieces a rare books historian would accept and which would be subject to skepticism was a monumental task.

If I could choose one place to visit today, it would be Nemrud Dagi in southeastern Turkey. Most websites regarding the location have used the same source material, so there is very little difference in what they say. Most enlightening was the documentary film Mount Nemrut: The Throne of the Gods, directed by Tolga Ornek in 2001. You may have to wait your turn to get the DVD from Netflix, but the views and history are worth the wait.

Of course, there are many other resources I’ve used, and since this is a work of fiction and not a thesis, I won’t do an exhaustive bibliography. The same is true of the people who have helped to make this project come to fruition, including The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, my wife and daughter, the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and Book Publishers Northwest. Heartfelt thanks to all of you!

Comments

Please feel free to send comments to the author at nathan@nathaneverett.com.