Frontispiece

The word comes from architecture: the frontispiece is the principal façade of a building, and the engraved titles of the seventeenth century, framed by columns, niches and figures, are literally paper façades. A distinction is thus drawn between the title-frontispiece, which bears the title within a decor engraved in copperplate, and the typographic title-page that follows it. In the eighteenth century, the frontispiece became an illustrated plate, allegory or scene, facing the title: the figure-books of Cochin, Gravelot and Eisen made it the foremost ornament of an edition. In the nineteenth century, it was most often a portrait of the author, and the Romantic illustrated book multiplied frontispieces engraved on wood or etched.

The frontispiece counts in the collation: it is out of text, printed separately, and is described by its subject, its engraver, its technique and its condition. For figure-books, the bibliographies — Cohen for the eighteenth century, Carteret for the nineteenth — record it together with the plates, and the presence of a frontispiece in first pull or as a proof before letters distinguishes fine copies. In modern editions, a frontispiece portrait engraved in two states, one of them a proof before letters on China paper, is characteristic of the Limited deluxe edition, as in Gautier's Portraits contemporains.

The frontispiece is sometimes confused with the title vignette, printed on the title-page itself, or with the half-title. A copy described as "complete with frontispiece" must have the one belonging to that edition, not supplied from another copy: frontispieces that have been laid down, washed, or taken from a later edition are common. Finally, an "engraving as frontispiece" is only a frontispiece if it precedes the title; a plate at the head of a chapter is merely a plate.