Printing population at the press of the bibliomaniac Sir Thomas Phillipps.

[Sir Thomas Phillipps] / [Population]. The number of Ancestors which every person must have in each generation as far as the 50th. S.l. [Middle Hill]: s.n. [Middle Hill Press], s.a. [1850s?]. [22.0 x 8.0 cm], [1] f. letterpress text on laid paper. Minor wrinkling, minor edge wear and edge toning.
 
 
A rare, separately issued (and quite unusual) letterpress table showing, as its title states, “The number of Ancestors which every person must have in each generation as far as the 50th.” The sheet was printed c. 1850 at the Middle Hill Press of the eccentric bibliomaniac Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872).
 
It is unclear what Phillipps intended this table to do or to mean, but perhaps he was thinking though Malthusian concepts. It is also possible that he had been reading Sir William Blackstone’s influential Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69), which in Book 2, Chapter 14 (“Of Title by Descent”), includes a similar table showing this reckoning for the first 20 generations. 
 
The calculation is, of course, too rigid in its suppositions about how blood relationships work in the lived human world. Phillipps was perhaps showing its absurdity by carrying out the procedure to 50 generations, which would result in more than one quadrillion ancestors. Then again, Phillipps printed this item when concepts about the age of the earth, deep time, and the origin of our species were very much a matter of debate.
 
“Phillipps was one of the greatest (and perhaps the most voracious) of all book and manuscript collectors” (Tanselle, “Preface,” in Holzenberg, p. xi), and, beginning in 1822, his delightful, often bizarre Middle Hill Press produced hundreds of items of true literary, bibliographic, antiquarian, local-historical, and genealogical importance, all the while mixing letterpress with experimental lithographic, anastatic and photographic techniques. Phillipps also used his press to handle the business needs of his estate (e.g., blank forms), to engage in local squabbles and political disputes (often in the form of anti-Catholic invective), and to print items of all sorts in very small batches for his own amusement or for informal distribution to friends (or enemies) of his choosing. He often used his press casually, just as today we might use a photocopy machine, digital scanner, or household printer. 
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate copies at Yale, Grolier Club, British Library, Oxford, and Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
 
*E. Holzenberg, The Middle Hill Press: A Checklist of the Horblit Collection, p. 137, no. 504.