The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #159967   Message #3791866
Posted By: Steve Gardham
24-May-16 - 10:31 AM
Thread Name: DTStudy: Molly Bawn (Polly Vaughn)
Subject: RE: DTStudy: Molly Bawn (Polly Vaughn)
I can't emphasise too strongly the importance of the erratic usage of long s, and f, by printers and their compositors. For instance, look at the Andrews NY printing. The word actually says 'sawn'. In other words some of Andrews fs are actually fs but others are the old-fashioned long s and this was in the 1850s.

In normal correct usage the long s lingered on until about 1810, but both the short and long s were both in use together right from the 17th century. Remember we are talking about the very bottom of the printing trade here and they weren't too fussy. The very nadir was arguably attained by Brereton of Dublin.