quire

One-twentieth of a ream of paper; a collection of twenty-four or twenty-five sheets of paper of the same size and quality, unfolded or having a single fold.

Under the year 1533 we are told that the ream contained twenty quires.

[…] and we must accept the fact that all those good novels, Villette, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a clergyman; written too in the common sitting-room of that respectable house and by women so poor that they could not afford to buy more than a few quires of paper at a time upon which to write Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre.

A set of leaves which are stitched together, originally a set of four pieces of paper (eight leaves, sixteen pages). This is most often a single signature (i.e. group of four), but may be several nested signatures.

A book, poem, or pamphlet.

To prepare quires by stitching together leaves of paper.

Now, in the first folio volume of 1616, the paging, signatures, and quiring are continuous and regular throughout.

This is a natural point at which to ask why quiring went out of fashion.

Archaic spelling of choir (“one quarter of a cruciform church, or the architectural area of a church, generally used by the choir; often near the apse.”)

Archaic spelling of choir (“group of people who sing together”).

Madam, myself have lim'd a bush for her, And plac'd a quire of such enticing birds, That she will light to listen to the lays, And never mount to trouble you again.

1597–1598, Joseph Hall, Virgidemiarum Yea, and the prophet of the heav'nly lyre, / Great Solomon sings in the English quire […]