The Printer’s Devil and Other Rabbit Holes

One of the hazards of writing historical fiction is the research rabbit hole. These detours can last minutes or entire days, and they pull you away from the story you are supposed to be writing. Worse, they often yield fascinating material that never finds a place in your book.

That happened to me recently while working on a chapter of Songs in the Night in which D.R. Anthony was speaking with a young apprentice at his newspaper.

The Printer’s Devil

What hooked me was the term for that youngest employee. According to Wikipedia, “a printer’s devil was a young apprentice in a printing establishment who performed a number of tasks, such as melting broken type into the furnace and occasionally setting type.” The term first appeared in English in 1716, referring to these errand boys who were often covered in black ink from their duties.

The life of a printer’s devil was no picnic. It usually involved long hours of arduous labor for little more than room and board, with only small hope of advancement. Apprenticeship, at least until the middle of the 19th century, meant a multi-year iron-clad contract of indentured servitude.

Yet the position offered something more valuable than wages: a view of the whole operation of a successful newspaper from the ground up. For boys of a bookish bent, work in the printing trades offered opportunities to read, write, and mix with the educated. For a few “likely lads,” apprenticeship was a springboard toward a literary career.

Famous Men Who Started at the Bottom

Writers including Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, Bret Harte, Sherwood Anderson, and Mark Twain served as printer’s devils in their youth. Walt Whitman entered the printing trade at age 12 in a New York City shop around 1831, performing tasks like mixing ink and fetching type for weekly newspapers, including the Long Island Star. Whitman later credited this formative period with sparking his literary ambitions, as it allowed him to engage deeply with language while operating the presses.

Titivillus: The Devil Behind the Errors

Then there is the matter of who to blame when things went wrong. One theory holds that a devil haunted every printing press, ready to invert letters, misspell words, or drop a line or paragraph whenever the printer’s back was turned. This demon even has a name: Titivillus. His origins predate the printing press; he was the “patron demon of scribes,” responsible for errors in handwritten transcriptions.

Printers and typesetters claimed that Titivillus executed his pranks by influencing the young apprentices as they set up type, or by causing errors to occur during the actual casting of metal type.

One of his most notorious triumphs came in 1631. The Wicked Bible, a 1631 edition of the King James Version, printed in London by royal printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, carried an infamous typographical error in Exodus 20:14 that omitted the word “not,” changing the Seventh Commandment from “Thou shalt not commit adultery” to “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

You may also recognize Titivillus as the inspiration behind the phrase “the devil is in the details”—and perhaps, less directly, behind “the devil made me do it.”

Cranky Dan and the Scapegoat

Little of this research found its way into the chapter I was writing. But it set me thinking.

D.R. Anthony, in his later years, was known for his overbearing nature that earned him the nickname “Cranky Dan.” Once I read about how a newspaper’s youngest apprentice could easily become a scapegoat for anything that went wrong in the shop, I began to imagine how a man with D.R.’s gift for insults could reduce a young lad to tears—and what or who might intervene to make him reconsider.

When Power Hides Its Reasons

Like many of you, both my husband I have suffered from a boss’s unfairness. In his first job after college, Jon was assigned a particular desk in a manufacturing facility. Shortly afterward, a coworker warned him that the boss eventually fired everyone who sat at that desk. Sure enough, within a few weeks, his boss trumped up unjust charges against Jon. He later learned that she felt threatened by all the college-educated new hires (who sat at that location) because she lacked such credentials herself.

That injustice became a blessing in disguise. Jon was so discouraged by the whole experience that he pulled up stakes and moved to Rochester for a fresh start. That’s where we met and fell in love.

I had my own version of this story. Shortly after landing my first editor job, a new boss arrived—the graduate of a noted journalism school. Within a few months of coming onboard, he replaced most of the writers on staff with writers from his own school. My school, equally prestigious, didn’t cut it. With a new baby at home, I had no desire to wait around to be fired, so I quit.

The silver lining: leaving that job led me to start a freelance writing business, and one of the pieces I wrote during that season led directly to the publication of my first children’s book.

In real life, we seldom know what sets someone against us. It is a privilege of the fiction writer to bring that invisible dynamic into the light—and to give it a name and a face.

New Cover Born of this Fire Edition Is Now Available!

I’m pleased to announce that both published books in the Dauntless Series now have lovely new cover editions available in paperback and hardcover wherever good books are sold.

Get Secrets to the Wind on Amazon   |   Get Born of this Fire on Amazon

Or search your favorite retailer.

Please also consider requesting them at your local library—I would deeply appreciate it.