colophon:
2013
III
In early printed books the colophon, when present, was a brief description of the printing and publication of the book, giving some or all of the following data: the date of publication, the place of publication/ printing (sometimes including the address as well as the city name), the name(s) of the printer(s), and the name(s) of the publisher(s), if different. Sometimes additional information, such as the name of a proofreader or editor, or other more-or-less relevant details, might be added. The normal position for a colophon was after the explicit, at the end of the text (and often right at the end of the book, after any index or register). After around 1500 these data were often transferred to the title page, which sometimes existed in parallel with a colophon. In Great Britain colophons grew generally less common in the 16th century. The statements of printing which appeared (under the terms of the Unlawful Societies Act 1799) on the verso of the title-leaf and final page of each book printed in Britain in the 19th century are not, strictly speaking, colophons, and are better referred to as “printers’ imprints” or “printer statements”.With the development of the private press movement from around 1890, colophons became conventional in private press books, and often included a good deal of additional information.