I am old enough to have actually worked a little, when I first started in my career (such as it is) in publishing, with lead type from a Linotype. This was of course metal bars for each line, not letter-press, but I thought it was pretty cool.
If you want to read a really great account of what this process involved, search out the introduction to the Dover Books reprint of the penny-dreadful Varney the Vampire, which has a long and vivid account of how such a book was composed. (I can't find the Dover edition on amazon.com, and I don't know whether any of the other reprints available contain this same intro, but perhaps your local library has it.)
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Date: May 19th, 2007 12:06 am (UTC)If you want to read a really great account of what this process involved, search out the introduction to the Dover Books reprint of the penny-dreadful Varney the Vampire, which has a long and vivid account of how such a book was composed. (I can't find the Dover edition on amazon.com, and I don't know whether any of the other reprints available contain this same intro, but perhaps your local library has it.)