Lucifer in the Printing-machine

Publishing History of Nyugtalanság völgye

Abstract

This article summarizes the publishing history of Mihály Babits’s volume, Nyugtalanság völgye [The Valley of Unrest]. In doing so, it covers the publishing background of the book and briefly introduces the history of Táltos Kiadó [Taltos Publishing House]. During my work on the critical edition of Babits’s poems, I noticed the problem of the typographic workmanship. In the different copies of the volume, I have found countless printer’s errors, but these errors cannot be discovered in all copies. In order to understand the problem, I checked more copies of the volume and I described the inordinately perceptible printer’s errors. This peculiarity of publishing entails several textological questions. While searching for the answers, I tried to reveal the potential technical causes of printer’s errors, and in doing so I introduced an interesting episode of the history of Apostol Press (they performed the print jobs) of February 1919 which may have had something to do with the printer’s errors in the volume.