The mention of any size, folio, quarto, octavo, Twelvemo, sixteenmo, calls up at once a distinct mental picture of an ideal book for each dimension, and the series is marked by a decreasing thickness of paper and size of type as it progresses downward from the folio.
"The Booklover and His Books"
Harry Lyman Koopman
Says George Haven Putnam in his "Books and their Makers during the Middle Ages": "The Elzevirs, following the example set a century and a half earlier by Aldus, but since that time very generally lost sight of by the later publishers, initiated a number of series of books in small and convenient forms, Twelvemo and sixteenmo, which were offered to book buyers at prices considerably lower than those they had been in the habit of paying for similar material printed in folio, quarto, or octavo....
"The Booklover and His Books"
Harry Lyman Koopman
Charles Henry Webb-"John Paul," who wrote the burlesques, "St. Twelvemo" and "Liffith Lank"-proposed to take up on his own account Mr. Warlock's contention that the novelist has no right to use any man's surname in a novel, and make breezy fun of it by writing a novelette upon those lines.
"Recollections of a Varied Life"
George Cary Eggleston