Don't understand. Please explain.

With French books, especially in the period 1890-1960, and especially though not only with French books containing illustrations (Bonnard, Braque, Maillol),�publishers long ago got into the practice of printing, on finer paper (e.g., papier velin pur fil Lafuma) limited runs of the�same text, numbered (say,�1 to 20) or lettered (say, A to G), and these limited runs would in turn be distinguished from each other as well as from�what might be called the plain-paper copy, unnumbered and unlettered, and much, much cheaper.�

In England� editions of a book for bibliophiles (say, members of the Roxburghe Society) �were often�not an alternative to a regular run, but consist entirely of a "limited" edition, with, �say 100 or 500 or a�1000 copies,of ta single work, or of the collected works of a particular writer (possibly with a mss. page of that author�affixed to volume�1 of the 20 or 50),�that is the only edition would be this "limited edition" for an�ntended�clientele of bibliophiles.�

Russian books, or at least those I have seen, continue to have the tirage (tirazh) given, but one rarely sees the limited, for-the-bibliophile only editions. One of the things that impresses is the impressive tirage for books that would, if published in the West, have a far smaller audience: 50,000 or 100,000 copies of a book, say, on Krylov, or 20,000 of such literary critics as Tynanov, or later, Lotman.

In the United States, the size of the print-run -- the tirage -- is ordinarily not given in books, and the French practice (much less commmon now) of having luxe and limited variants of the regular edition seldom is followed here, for practical Yankees are not akin to Frenchmen caressing their esquisitely-bound volumes. Of course there are limited editions -- runs -- of private-press books. And what self-respecting college town -- Cambridge or Northampton or Berkeley, does not have its craftsmen, printing on the most exotic paper that Japanese paper-makers can provide, a single poem -- by Heaney, by Updike, by Allen Tate, by Emily Dickinson or by Anthony Hecht, often signed by the author (if alive), and don't tell me you weren't delighted to receive, for your last birthday, #28 of 100 signed copies, hand-pulled from the press of a hardworking old-fashioned printer, true to his craft, living possibly pony-tailed in Vermont or Northern California.

On the web,� writers don't publish an edition of anything. And consequently, they don't have a tirage to announce, in French or in any other language.

That was the joke. Or was meant to be. Or perhaps at this point allusive revision is nessary: Nor was meant to be.