'Merlin' and 'Lancelot' by Edwin Arlington Robinson
This is the first full book I've typeset and bound that is not fanfiction—which means I finally have something to show off to the normies in my life LMAO!
'Twas a Christmas gift for my lovely Misery (@whoawhataconcept), who has dragged me right after her into a fascination with Arthuriana ❤️
✨ Details below the cut! ✨
🤍 NEW METHODS 🤍
Printing at home: In the past, I've sent my typeset PDFs off to a local print shop to be printed, but with access to a home printer for the first time, I battled the fucking thing to print it entirely at home. I had a lot of trouble getting my printer to do the whole thing (I think it was so long that the printer's memory started giving up), so I eventually ended up sending the PDF to print in smaller signature groups at a time. Due to misprinting, I ended up with many good glue sheets & pages to protect drying boards and such
Leather-core for endbands: I finally splurged and bought some leather jewellery cord to use as the core in my sewn endbands and it was FANTASTIC!
Ribbon bookmark: 🤍🤍🤍
Backed papers: I purchased two large sheets of artisan paper for the endpages and the cover material. Both were too flimsy for my comfort, so on the advice of some folks at @renegadeguild, I backed some cut-down sheets with regular printer paper using a mix of 50/50 PVA and rice paste. I pressed them flat between protective sheets and they came out perfect!
Paste mix: I enjoyed working with the PVA-paste mix so much that I used it for the rest of the project for pretty much all of my gluing :)
Using an actual book press: Not much to say here except that I finally have an actual press and it made everything 100% easier haha!
Cricut stencil: My sister donated her time and cricut to help me title my cover and spine (under the dust jacket). We cut out stencils with cricut's stencil material & with stick-on vinyl (when we ran out of stencil material LOL). The spine turned out lovely but with some bleed; the cover was a bit of a mess since the stencil material started peeling up the fibres of the cover paper (which I had somehow not thought to seal). But live and learn!
🤍 BOOK INTERIOR 🤍
Copy-editing: Done by they lifesaving and gracious @highlynerdy, who saved me from agonizing over if the raw text source I took from had typos or mistakes. Thank you again, Gracie 💛
Typeset: I was inspired by the original typesets from when these poems were first published, updated to my own aesthetic sensibilities (as much as I had patience for)! The main body-text font is 'Lancelot' which seemed the only appropriate font to use for this project <3
Art: (Not pictured) I included some art by Edward Burne-Jones, "The Beguiling of Merlin", and "The Failure of Sir Lancelot"
🤍 EXTERIOR DESIGN 🤍
Cover: I originally wanted to do this book in blue, but when I went to the paper store, I could not find any marbled blue paper that wasn't wildly over-budget, so I ended up doing another red book. I tried to stick to a colour scheme of white-heavy monochrome + red + metallics.
Dust jacket: Much to my dismay, I realized that I've been lucky in the past, with access to a small nonprofit print shop where their ordering process involves emailing them and describing what you need. To print a dust jacket, one needs access to a print service with "large format" printing, and as I've discovered, that usually means an industrial printing service. Sorely missing my usual nonprofit print shop, I ended up going with a custom photo printing service, requesting a large photo print on their thinnest paper. Due to my special instructions, the cover came back almost-perfect. The edges were jagged, and the paper was a bit too thick, but it is perfectly serviceable and I'm overall happy with how it came out.