Press News February 2025

A NOTE TO THE READER: This edition of Press News is unusually long. It includes, in addition to the more usual items about our work, an overview of the private press revival and In Memoriam essays for three friends of the press. For those who, like us, hate reading screens, we recommend its being printed out in hard copy. Verbum sat sapienti. ¶ We have been told, usually by young men who wear baseball caps back to front, that our website is ‘text heavy’. My response to that is far too salty to be set down here, but I hope this lengthy chapter of Press News will be acceptable to the tutored mind. Many thanks, CE

1. Vanishing Crafts

First, a discomfiting note. Heritage Crafts is a British UNESCO sponsored and associated charity which advocates to the British government and internationally in support of crafts considered to be in the category of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The organization publishes and keeps updated a ‘Red List’ of crafts considered to be endangered [‘serious concern about ongoing viability’], critically endangered [‘with a serious risk of no longer being practised’], or extinct [‘no longer practised’] in Britain.

In the current Red List, note the following, all with reference to fine press printing and bookwork:

Endangered – Letterpress printing, Type Founding and manufacture, Stone Lithography, and Paper Marbling;

Critically Endangered – Commercial Handmade Papermaking & Vellum and Parchment making;

Extinct – Mould & Deckle making (for the production of handmade paper) and Gold Beating (the creation of gold leaf used in fine leather bindings).

For more information on these and other crafts (some of them astonishingly interesting) see the Heritage Craft site here: www.heritagecrafts.org.uk

Note that these notifications are peculiar to Britain, and that there may be more hope in other countries. Nevertheless, none of these skills is likely to guarantee a comfortable living without much hard work, or indeed at all; however, they may very well provide the satisfaction and pleasure found in good work for those suitably minded. But to anyone who cares about fine artisanship in any area these are serious warnings. In mitigation, it should be said that there are many fine press printers active (q.v.), and that papermaking and type founding are both being pursued as I write by enthusiasts who have acquired disused equipment and learned the skills involved.

I have no wish to cast a pall, but these cautions are relevant in contrast to the optimism, the delighted discovery, and the relative availability of materials, encouragement, and advice that were present at the beginning of the private press revival of the mid-20th century.

2. The Private Press Revival

The ‘new’ letterpress and private press movement that took fire in the 1960s marked a revival of interest in the skills of hand-work in book printing and publishing, and an endeavour to preserve the traditions of a craft that stretched back more than 500 years in the western world. Skills like type-casting, hand composition, letterpress printing, and all the associated crafts of hand papermaking, book binding, blockmaking, wood engraving and other methods of illustration for books were all newly celebrated and revived in the 1960s by a post-war generation who learned what they could from practitioners nearing, or past, retirement, or found whatever instruction was available in books or from the study of examples. They rescued presses ranging from 19th century iron handpresses like Albions, Washingtons, Columbians, and Stanhopes to vertical platen presses, cylinder proof presses, and high speed production presses like Heidelbergs and Wharfedales, all of which might otherwise have been broken up for scrap. They salvaged type, casting equipment, and other machinery and materials in danger of being discarded as ‘no longer practical’, often able to buy them for a song, and sought out and procured tools and equipment for hand composition, binding, papermaking and other crafts from artisans who had retained them without imagining they would ever be used again, and who were more than happy to provide them, knowing that the crafts would be carried on.

Of course letterpress printing, hand-setting and the like never completely disappeared, but these techniques gradually vanished from commercial printing, being replaced by photo typesetting, offset lithography, and other developments, and eventually by digital printing. The postwar letterpress revival – what has come to be called the ‘fine press’ movement – was most notable for re-establishing letterpress and handwork as a functioning element in the printing of books, generally published as limited editions.

To speak only of such presses publishing in English in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States – and only because I have less knowledge of others – hundreds, if not thousands of artisan presses of all shapes and sizes, ranging from large operations publishing major books to tiny presses producing pamphlets, chapbooks, and broadsides, have at various times been active in this printing revival for more than 60 years now. Interested book dealers have developed expertise about the books made by these presses, have provided a market for their sale, and in many cases have published catalogues which have preserved excellent bibliographical information. It has been a heady time, and it continues to be so. A community of artisans and artists has coalesced around the production of books of staggering variety, proving to be a vital, exciting, and hugely productive movement in many countries around the world.

The story of this private press revival, the new artisan presses of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, has yet to be written, although its time is overdue. However, it has been well but sporadically documented not only by the thousands of books these presses have produced, but in several journals devoted to what is now more usually called the ‘fine press book’, among them Fine Print [1975-90], Amphora [1967- and continuing; the journal of the Alcuin Society of Canada], Northwest Book Arts Review [1981-82], Bookways [1991-95], The Devil’s Artisan (later DA) [1980-2023], and now Parentheses, the journal of the Fine Press Book Association which was established in 1997 and continues to publish today. Fine Print, the first of these devoted entirely to artisan printing, and its editor, the late Sandra Kirschenbaum, quickly made an immensely significant contribution in drawing these presses together into an international community, making them aware of one another and allowing them access to one another’s work with all the exchanges of ideas and technical support such communities facilitate. (Parenthesis 9 includes Linnea Gentry’s obituary of Sandra Kirschenbaum with a brief account of her life.)

I should also mention Private Press Books, an annual voluntary survey of presses published by the Private Libraries Association from 1959 to 2010. It provides an invaluable overview of the movement. Many other journals, newsletters, and magazines have come and gone.

Standing above all of them has been Matrix, comprising thirty-six substantial volumes published almost annually from 1981 to 2020 by John and Rosalind Randle at Whittington Press, a magisterial journal which deals not only with contemporary presses in Britain, North America, and Europe, but reaches back into the historical private press movement that began with William Morris’s Kelmscott Press in 1889 and was the antecedent to a movement which carried through the 20th century, lost momentum during and after the Second World War, and then revived in the 1950s and ’60s, as we have said, to continue today.

3. In Memoriam

The fine press movement flourishes, but of course many presses have come and gone over the years, some because of an inability to survive through recessions or the strictures of the pandemic; others through a natural feeling that their press had accomplished what was planned, and retirement seemed a good idea; and some, inevitably and very sadly, through the toll of human mortality. Jan and I especially remember and celebrate friends and colleagues we have known who have been important parts of this printing life.

Recently one of the most important British presses, Fleece Press, has closed – happily as a planned retirement – after forty years of producing more than a hundred books. Simon Lawrence clearly felt that the time was right. Fleece Press has published a generous range of books documenting British wood engraving and individual engravers, painting, and graphic design, and Simon closed up shop with a flourish. His last book, All Around the Block, is a magnificent bibliography of the press’s work from start to finish.

In Canada, Will Reuter at the Aliquando Press also closed his press in 2022. Will established the press in 1962, and in more than sixty years produced over 120 books and innumerable broadsides. His work is instantly identifiable, and offers a wide range of poetry, essays, studies of typography, and writings about the private press. A major Aliquando title is Majesty, Order and Beauty, an edition of the journals of T J Cobden Sanderson, binder, proprietor of the Doves Press, and a close associate of William Morris.

Unavoidably, however, in the last ten or fifteen years some of those who had been a part of this movement are beginning to disappear from our lives. Remaining in Canada for the moment, I think particularly of two. In 2010, Jim Rimmer died at 75. Widely known in Canada and the US as a type designer, Jim designed and cast a number of proprietary faces for use at his own Pie Tree Press, among them several text types such as Amethyst, Juliana and Nephi Medieval, and Duensing Titling, created as a 50th birthday present for American type designer Paul Hayden Duensing. (Parenthesis 9 includes a feature article on Jim Rimmer and his work, and the entire issue is set in Amethyst.) Many of his types are now digitally available from Canada Type. Jim engraved flat mats for his types and cast them on a range of machines including Monotype, ‘Orphan Annie’, and Thompson casters. His extraordinary generosity resulted in many printers being given large founts of some of his types: our edition of The Play of Pericles made extensive use of his Duensing Titling in various sizes. From Pie Tree Press he published several substantial books, including A Christmas Carol and Tom Sawyer, illustrated with his characterful colour linocuts, hand set and printed from type he cast, and bound by hand.

In 2011 Glenn Goluska, proprietor of Imprimerie Dromedaire and Nightshade Editions, died. From these two imprints Glenn produced some of the most remarkably inventive printing I have ever seen. His bookwork was serene and welcoming; his broadsides and cover designs exhilarating and fascinating. He had an unerring and original understanding of the ‘geography’ of the page. (Parenthesis 21 features a gallery of some of his work on pages 42–43.) Glenn was a brilliant typographer, wedded to linotype (unlike most private press typographers) and wood type, and particularly devoted to the types of W A Dwiggins, although these affections were balanced by a profound interest in the typographical writings and design of Stanley Morison and Harry Carter. His death at 64 was a severe loss.

Nicholas and Mary Parry’s Tern Press in Market Drayton, Shropshire, began publishing in 1973 and issued a large number of books of poetry and prose, all of them illustrated in various media – linocut, woodcut, wood engraving, and etching – by both Nick and Mary. The enthusiasm and joy they took in their work is manifest in their books, which are boisterous, heartfelt, and sometimes substantial, ranging from a newly illustrated Alice in Wonderland, a Middle English translation of the Gospel of Mark, and new translations of Dante to work by Thomas Hardy, Dylan Thomas, Dafyd ap Gwilym, and John Clare.

Nick Parry died in 2012, and Mary soon afterwards. As well as some of their books, we have a treasured example of their generosity: during a visit to them about twenty years ago, Nick took me on a day-long tour of Shropshire, during which we visited the village of Clun, the subject of a poem by A E Housman which I love and that had been a favourite of my father. I explained this connection to Nick – the last music my father listened to was Vaughan William’s On Wenlock Edge, a song cycle of settings of Housman’s poems which concludes with ‘Clun’ – and some months later a package arrived in the post. It contained sheets of a beautiful large- scale unique copy of ‘Clun’ on hand-made paper containing the text of Housman’s poem, stanza by stanza, handwritten in ink and illustrated with watercolours by Nicholas Parry, dedicated to me.

Old Stile Press, the imprint of Nicolas and Frances McDowall, ceased producing new work with the deaths of both the proprietors, Frances in 2019 and Nicolas in 2021. Their books, elegantly accomplished, colourful, and graphically ebullient, remain a wonderful tonic for readers of poetry, and are illustrated by a range of exceptional artists. Following their deaths, their considerable backlist of books was taken over as a limited company by their children, Cressida and Daniel, and some of their books are still available.

The death of Kathy Whalen in April 2020 was a sharp, sorrowful realization that time was passing quickly. Kathy was a great joy to know, even only slightly, as we did. She and Graham Moss ran the Incline Press in Oldham, Lancashire together for more than 20 years, and the more than 100 books the press has produced, with Graham continuing the work to this day in a spirit of great joy, is an example to us all.

Graham’s energy and enthusiasm are notable in his present project – to move Incline Press and all its equipment from Oldham, Lancashire to rural Scotland. The mere thought of moving several presses, multiple frames containing scores of cases of type, piles of paper stock, and masses of other equipment and supplies, not to mention the packing, sorting, and all the rest, makes me weary – to say nothing of the reverse procedures at the destination. But Graham will do it, and thrive.

Of course it would be possible to list many more such losses of printers whom we didn’t know. Our point is not to bemoan loss, but to celebrate lives by remembering the work and dedication of these and others whose work is finished, seeing it as a recognition of the turn into new generations of artisans who will carry on the work of the fine and private press. Now, in January 2025, after the recent deaths of three other friends and colleagues of many years whose losses are very hard to bear, we look back with mixed thanks and sorrow.

ROSALIND RANDLE born 8 September 1947; died 1 September 2024

We knew about Whittington Press when we lived in England and were first learning to print. John and Rosalind Randle had started their press in 1972, four years earlier, and we might have asked to visit had we not been somewhat in awe of their work. But over the years we bought a great many of their books, including Matrix as it grew, and John and Rose became friends – although we did not meet often, and then always at book fairs where we were all frantically busy much of the time.

I first met Rose, in fact, in Vancouver in the late 1970s, when I dropped in to visit Ann Yandle in the Special Collections department of the UBC Library while Rose was visiting on a selling trip. She gave me our first Whittington item, Signs of the Zodiac, with engravings by Hellmuth Weissenborn. The photograph here shows Rose much as I remember her then.

As time went by we corresponded with Whittington several times a year about one thing or another, and it was usually Rose who replied. Rose was the managerial spine of the press, looking after subscriptions and orders, keeping in touch with subscribers, answering questions, and generally being the touchstone for their clients. She had a deliciously dry sense of humour, shared our love of animals (especially cats), and could always be depended on for necessary reassurances and information. Sometimes I rang her instead of writing, so that I could enjoy her conversation and her affectionately wry view of our shared life and work in this slightly odd but beguiling vocation.

I don’t know to what extent Rose worked in the press in later years, as managing the business must have become an increasingly large task, but in the early days I’m sure she did, and she was always named with John as an editor of Matrix. Whatever she did she did very well, and quietly, without fuss. Her more hilarious side came out in social situations, especially when she was joined by her twin sister Maggie: I have a joyous memory of helping the two of them and Miriam MacGregor many years ago in the kitchen at Whittington, preparing food for an open day at the press. The amount and quality of laughter during that morning, particularly considering the number of sharp objects in play, might have been dangerous in a group less determined to contribute to success. It was a good time.

After Matrix 36 was announced as the final volume in the series it seemed to become generally known that Whittington Press would close before long, and it did. There was no public announcement, only a quiet ‘closing down of blinds’. Now Rose is gone, and with that has gone her unique sense of dignity, amity, responsibility, and caring about the work and the people who contributed to it, and who pursued and love its results. There is also, among all this, the echoes of delight and laughter. We will miss her.

MICHAEL BIXLER born 24 November 1946; died 1 September 2024

On the same day that Rose Randle left us, so did Michael Bixler – type- founder, typographer, designer, printer, and fount of typographical knowledge. We never met Michael in person, nor have we met his wife and partner Winnie: never taken their hands, or hugged them, or shared a meal. But for all that they are dear friends. I have spent many hours on the phone with both of them over the past twenty-five years or so since they have supplied us with all our type, much of that time with Michael. Like all great enthusiasts, Michael combined expertise with passionate interest, both backed by the conviction that anyone, given the chance, would develop as strong an interest in his subject as he had – and of course, many did. Through the years I have encountered several people who met Michael and were taught the elements of typecasting by him at one of the workshops he and Winnie provided, and they all spoke of their kindness, his gentleness, his patience, and his ability to persuade whoever he was talking to of the great allure of type – of great typefaces, the processes of casting, and of the resulting newborn sorts, smooth and delicate in the hand, ready to produce pages of rich beauty. He could explain the most complex workings of a Monotype caster to a mechanical moron like myself, even over the telephone, with a clarity and logic that was astounding.

Always he understood and took the time to mention and celebrate the place in the culture which the work of printing occupies, how essential it is, and he said to me many times how fortunate he felt to be able to do the work he did. His pride and humility in the craft he and Winnie maintained, furthered, and always aimed to perfect was a principal element that drew me to him.

Another was his kindness. He worried sometimes about us, he said, up there in the Canadian ‘wilderness’ making books, and so there came to be a standing joke between us when, as we were signing off after a conversation, Michael would say, ‘Just let me know and we’ll send you a case of canned tuna to see you through.’

An important enthusiasm all four of us share is our love of animals. Winnie and Michael raise Cairn terriers, whose comments on life can often be heard in the background during our calls. They are also careful stewards of the large piece of wooded property in upstate New York where their shop stands, and usually as a part of every chat one or both of them (especially Winnie) will offer us a running account of the other creatures living on it. (We do talk about type as well.) Michael once said that he wasn’t sure whether he and Winnie were the tenants, and the birds and animals the landlords, or whether it switched back and forth. Whichever was the case, everyone is looked after. A colony of woodchucks appears annually. There are deer, and squirrels, and chipmunks. Birds are everywhere: a census showed more than seventy species on their property, all provided with food and shelter by the trees, the soil, the creek, and the ‘tenants’ who live in the big brick building. For a few years Michael was accompanied regularly by a gander called Bob, and it was a bad day when Bob died.

The cases in our shop are full of Michael’s work, and it has furnished virtually every book we have published since the turn of the century. We have asked much of him: when we were able to buy matrices for Jan van Krimpen’s Antigone [Greek], we had them sent directly to Michael and Winnie. Michael had no wedge for casting it. So he acquired a piece of steel bar of the right proportions, worked out the placement for the scaled grooves required, and machined and refined by hand a wedge for Antigone so that each sort would be cast on the proper width of body. Anyone who knows about casters will understand the skill involved in such work. Michael and Winnie then set to and cast large founts of the type, including the nearly 250 variant characters with accents, breathing marks, subscripts and so on, over and above the central upper and lower case letters of the Greek alphabet. A few years later, casting from our matrices of Pastonchi, there were even more ligatures, swash characters, and accents, since Pastonchi is a pan-European fount with accents for many more than the usual four or five languages. Early in our relationship Michael gladly accepted a trade of flat mats which I had found for Castellar, John Peters’ classic engraved titling face, and in exchange provided us with large quantities of Castellar from 24 to 72 point, much more than would pay for the mats – but as he said, he loved the look of the type as it came off the caster, so he just kept going.

Michael is never far from my mind when I am setting his type. He was, he is, a fine friend and a warm and caring companion, and he leaves a gap in the world of real type which providentially Winnie is stepping up to fill. As I write, Winnie is casting Bembo for us. She is also feeding a red fox tod who is visiting the property so that he will not feel the need to eat the wild rabbits. Michael’s example, his work, his type, and his fellowship remain with Winnie, and with his friends. We are so honoured to have known him.

SIMON BRETT born 27 May 1943; died 29 December 2024

‘When Simon Brett illustrates a book he is a chorus guiding the reader toward understanding. He is both a perceptive and sympathetic commentator and an artist setting the story to glorious visual music. His insights inhabit the texts he illustrates, and whether reading an unfamiliar text such as Michael Justin Davis’s suite of poems To the Cross, or a more familiar one like Jane Eyre or Pericles Prince of Tyre, Simon’s illustrations show the words brought forward into understanding and mutual humanity. In fact, what distinguishes Simon Brett from most other illustrators is the extraordinary grasp of human frailty, greatness, and purpose which he demonstrates at every page.’

I wrote these reflections as a Foreword to a monograph on Simon’s work we published in 2013, Endgrain Editions Four: Simon Brett – an Engraver’s Progress. Everything I said there seems to me still to sum up the authority and grace of his work – in the fullest sense of both words. Simon himself had said of his work, much more simply, ‘My engravings seem either to show what is or to tell stories,’ making clear that the two areas he chose to celebrate and pursue in his work were representation and illustration. Considered without much thought, this statement might seem to display a deliberate avoidance of the many other approaches to visual art which have held sway in the last 150 years: impressionism, cubism, surrealism, abstract impressionism, high realism, and ‘all the other -isms’, as the saying goes. But such a judgement overlooks two essential points: first, that the medium of wood engraving holds within itself certain persuasions; and second, that representation can also include symbols, offer implications, give us psychological insights, or indeed represent the fantastic, as surrealism often does in a more obvious way by juxtaposing two recognizable elements to create an impossibility. But those considerations aside, representative images also give pleasure, draw out recognition, confirm realities, and clear the shapes and shadows of things which we have seen only dimly and may now see clearly by their means. And engraving can indeed be abstract: some of Peter Lazarov’s work shows this, and Simon wrote of Lazarov in Multiples: Newsletter of the Society of Wood Engravers: ‘In our field he is the great virtuoso of the age’. The same, however, can certainly be said of Simon Brett.

Simon Brett died suddenly on 29 December 2024. Despite the Parkinson’s with which he had been living for some years, in the days before his death he had started a new, large block, one of a series of eight he had planned. I said that Simon had been ‘living with’ Parkinson’s, rather than the usual phrase, ‘battling’ the disease, for it was clear that Simon had sought and found some accord with the condition, and had discerned a way of continuing to work on engraving despite its interference. It seemed almost to be a kind of enforced but accepted collaboration: in a zoom call in 2024 Simon showed us some new engraved portraits he had made, and pointed out the changes in style he had discovered because of his condition. His nature was to consider and understand the nature of things affecting him and requiring knowledge, and while this new working method was certainly challenging, it was in no sense despairing as far as we could tell. That would not have been Simon’s way. It has been said that to despair is to turn your back on God. Not Simon – although I can imagine there were many probing but courteous conversations with God along the way.

Our own experiences of collaborating with Simon were blessings, especially in the case of Pericles, which the three of us – Jan, Simon, and I – worked on for ten years before its publication in 2011. He and I, with reference to his beautifully drawn page spaces with the lines of the entire text accounted for on each page, debated and settled on every element of the text matter and the engravings. Simon’s sketches for most of the images (in fact quite clear drawings) were so defined that I could fit long lines of the verse into gaps which appeared naturally in the edges of the accompanying image, and reappeared in the engraved blocks in precisely the same position. Sometimes the tolerances were no more than 2 points. He also left plenty of room for typographical experiment and improvisation, especially in the two big set pieces of the Tournament and the Storm, neither of which were actually staged, but were always accounted for by being spoken of later by characters, or suggested by backstage noise. In our edition, as Simon said, we were able to ‘stage the play on the page’. In the case of the storm, we simply determined where the text on the verso of the spread would begin, and where the page turn on the recto would come, and then I was left to fill the spread with typographical rage, terror, and noise, including Pericles’ imprecations against the elements, while Simon’s wonderful engravings, showing what was and telling the story, tucked themselves into the syntax of the language. Every designer/compositor should have so soul-stirring an experience.

Having written this much about his work, I may seem to have forgotten to write about Simon. That is far harder. His leaving is a matter of deep sorrow. He is missed, will be missed, and leaves a place we can only remember. Those of us who were fortunate enough to have known him will remember his great kindness, his warm subtle wit, his enthusiasm about work and friendship, his love for life, his revealing, generous intelligence, and his gifted way of imparting knowledge as a companion and friend, for the fascination of it. Yet all this is in his engravings, for all to see.

In the end, in losing Simon, what we feel is grief. Simon once wrote, in describing his difficulty in portraying a character, ‘the word the author uses is ardour, and it is hard to draw’ – and as ardour is hard to draw, grief is hard to write. There is a line from Pericles which Simon loved and often quoted: ‘These borrowed passions stand for true old woe.’ That is true. But gratitude is more easily written, and it stands for his work, and his life. We are grateful.

4. Current News from the Barbarians

It seems impossible that our grandson Michael is already 14 months old, but to coin a phrase, the proof of the cake is in the eating . . .

You will note the firm grip the lad has on his cake, which disappeared with dispatch. His birthday was noted by a number of guests of varied ages who filled the house and brought many fine gifts as well. Michael is now walking with the intent, slightly militaristic, purpose of the toddler, and so must be carried and held while visiting the pressroom. He is showing a keen interest in his books, one of which, Behowl the Moon, we are pleased to say takes its text from here and there in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – although in honesty we must admit that Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham still carries away the prize as far as Michael is concerned – and why not?

Anyone who has spent any time on this website will be familiar with photographs of Jan and me, respectively aging gracefully and doggedly. However, our daughter Apollonia has now become a partner in the press, and over the past year and a half Lea Sánchez Milde has also become a regular part of the work. It seemed high time that we showed them in the pressroom.

Apollonia distributing type from ‘Loose Canons One’

Of course she has another occupation which occupies most of her time these days, as shown here:

Michael explaining his first stick to his mother

Lea Sánchez Milde working on a run of ‘Loose Canons Two’

With Apollonia and Lea working on ‘Loose Canons’, we find ourselves to our surprise right on schedule with the first two numbers, both of which will be ready to send out by mid-February 2025. I am now preparing the next two issues in the series, which will appear later in the year. In the meantime, Apollonia and Lea will be working on Weathers, a sizeable selection of poems by Thomas Hardy for which Jan and I are preparing the text. See more information in the introductory page to Books Forthcoming.

Work is about to begin on a new translation of Chekhov’s short story ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’, a collaboration with Alex Sizov. Alex is a fluent Russian speaker and an avid reader, although this story was new to him. He is excited about the project, and we are both looking forward to the work, realizing that Chekhov’s quiet, opalescent prose, shifting deftly from major to minor, will require very careful attention to tone and diction. While this work is going on, the first story in the Well Told Tales series, Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Garden Party’, is being prepared and we are actively seeking appropriate illustrators for both pieces.

The work on our most recent book, An Eye Made Quiet, printed to celebrate Michael’s arrival in the family, became a comprehensively family affair. His grandmother conceived the book, chose the texts, composed and printed the ornamental flowers, printed the text, and wrote an Afterword; his grandfather designed the book; his mother set the type, and his godmother, Lea, distributed the type and assisted with the folding and collating of the pages. The Deluxe issue is already sold out, and there are only a few copies of the Regular state left. [See Books in Print for details and pictures.]

Jan and I continue to focus on the mammoth Curwen project, Bordering on the Sublime, anticipating that the completed book will be off to our binder, Alanna Simenson, before the end of the year. As the work continues, the preparation of a general index for the book looms as a necessary and interesting prospect, and just the sort of work I enjoy – somewhat to Jan’s and others’ bemusement – but there is no point in pretending that it will be a ‘quick fix’.

I have acquired one well-recommended book on the process of indexing – Nancy C Mulvany’s Indexing Books – and I am resisting all temptations to buy any others, as I have no need to be confused by watching two or more experts in what is apparently a contentious field squabbling with one another. I have, however, picked up a delightful book by Dennis Duncan, Index, a History of the, which implicitly puts Google Search in its place once and for all and allows me to feel that I am attempting to follow in a proud tradition. If further justification is needed, here is Conrad Gessner, Swiss bibliophile, naturalist, and philologist, writing in his Pandectae (1548):

It is now generally accepted that copious and strictly Alphabetically arranged indexes must be compiled, especially for large, complex volumes, and that they are the greatest convenience to scholars, second only to the truly divine invention of printing books by movable type . . .

Information on further projects, such as our book on Eric Bergman, our selection of sonnets by Donne and Hopkins, A Scanty Plot of Ground (which seems to be exciting considerable interest in prospect) with portraits of both poets by Abbie Rorer, John Clare’s The Shepherd’s Calendar, with engravings in situ by Andy English, together with Wayzgoose Pamphlets, Loose Canons, and Well Told Tales along the way, are all dealt with in the Books Forthcoming section of the website.

And of course if you have particular enquiries, please do feel free to contact the press by e.mail [barbarianpresspublishers@gmail.com], or by mail at the address given on our Home Page. Telephone calls are less likely to be successful, although you are welcome to leave a message for us there.

Thank you all very much indeed for your continued attention and interest in our work, not to mention your forbearance at our sometimes elusive schedules. We are aware that this is a fraught time for all of us on our beleaguered but precious planet, but warmth and congeniality are always good treatments against anxiety, anger, and inhumanity. Be kind to one another, and please be in touch, if only to say hello.

Blessings to you all, from all of us,

Crispin, Jan, Apollonia, and Lea February 2025