Introduction
Dent-Beardsley
Malory
King
Arthur
Books
for Children
Fine
Press
William
Morris & Kelmscott Press
References
Links
Credits
|
|
. |
Fine Press
|
William Morris’s Kelmscott Press
is undoubtedly the most famous of the fine presses of the 19th century,
and Morris’s interest in the Middle Ages meant that many of his books have
medieval subject matter. But there were other important presses at work
in Britain during the century, some of which foreshadowed Morris’s later
work, and some of which were influenced by his ideas. For these presses
too, medieval texts and or book design inspired by the manuscript books
of the Middle Ages were important. |
|
This page includes pieces by
the publisher William Pickering (1796 - 1854), whose attractive books,
many of them printed by Charles Whittingham the Younger (1795 - 1876) of
the Chiswick Press, were of particular interest to Norman Colbeck. These
books were not the product of the private press tradition, as the Kelmscott
books were, but they show the same concern for design and careful production.
|
 |
Pickering and Whittingham shared
an interest in 15th- and 16th-century book design, and the Chiswick Press
owned a large stock of woodcut initials and devices inspired by the early
days of print. It also revived older type fonts, among them William Caslon’s
18th-century Roman types.
We also display
here books by The Ashendene Press (see
an example of their Lo inferno, Lo purgatorio, Lo paradiso)
and the Shakespeare Head Press, both, like Kelmscott, true “private presses.”
The Ashendene Press was the work of C.H. St. John Hornby (1867 - 1946),
managing director of W.H. Smith, whose press was his (consuming) hobby,
growing from a small concern in the summer-house of his father’s home,
to a more ambitious business.
|
. |
