Today I looked at The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History, by Patricia Simons (Cambridge, 2011), in which the Acknowledgements conclude:

‘Kelly has been a constant and beloved companion during the writing of this book, most recently in her makeshift feline hospice on my desk. I provide the room service, she walks over the keyboard on occasion to leave her mark. If any typos remain in this book, say hello to Kelly’ (xv).

It’s almost standard now, in scholarly monographs, to include such a prefatory apology for any mistakes, although it’s not always the cat who gets the blame! Upon reading this, I was reminded of this week’s Things seminar at CRASSH on ‘Printed Things’. One of the participants, Adam Smyth, spoke about error and early modern print, and showed us some of the intriguing bibliographical moments produced by and in response to error – a seventeenth-century title-page with a ‘1939’ colophon, Robert Barker’s infamous seventh commandment, and lots of lovely pasted-in and fold-out errata lists. Such instances of error, and attempts to acknowledge and correct error, remind us just how messy the collaborative business of printing books actually is. They take us back very tangibly to the sites of production, making us think more about the significance of the environments in which writers and printers work – whether it’s an early modern print shop, or a desk occupied by a cat as well as a computer keyboard.