Month: January 2020

Categories
Fine Press

Gargoyles and Tattie-Bogles

Gargoyles & Tattie-Bogles: The Lives & Work of Douglas Percy Bliss & Phyllis Dodd
£272.00

While Douglas Percy Bliss wrote kindly and perceptively several decades ago about his friend Edward Bawden (for a book published by the Pendomer Press), and earlier in his career took up the pen to write about Eric Ravilious and the emerging engravers of the 1920s, no-one has written comprehensively about Bliss himself, who was a notable engraver, teacher and – especially – landscape painter; the same applies to his wife Phyllis Dodd.
This title includes tipped-in prints made from four of Douglas’ wood-engraved blocks, and one by Rosalind Bliss.

Categories
Antiquarian

Thomas Gent’s Ripon

Thomas Gent was born to parents of ordinary background. His father was an Englishman, and he was baptised a Presbyterian. His parents ensured he educated himself during his childhold, and in 1707 he began an apprenticeship with Stephen Powell, a printer of Dublin.

Gent’s apprenticeship was an unhappy one, and in 1710 he absconded, and stowed way on a ship, arriving in Wirral, England, then travelled to London where he took up apprenticeship under Edward Midwinter. After completing his apprenticeship in 1713, he worked briefly for a Mrs. Bradford, and then for a printer named Mears, who involved him in a humiliating initiation rite, discharging him soon after, following which he subsisted by labouring. After arriving in York he obtained a post with John White in April 1714, King’s printer for York, at a rate of £18 a year, plus board and lodging. There he met Alice Guy who became the object of his affections and whom he would later marry.

Portrait of Thomas Gent by Nathan Drake
Categories
Antiquarian Book News

Joy of a Library

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Categories
Fine Press T. E. Lawrence

Shy Bird

Published by The Fleece Press, Denby Dale, 2018.
This is a stunning production contains full details of the elusive US copyright edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Illustrated throughout with the fascinating characters involved in the production and images of the various bindings. A book not to be missed by the bibliophile and T. E. collector. Some seven Fleece Press books on T.E. Lawrence have been published since 1985, here is an eighth. For bibliophiles and collectors his interest in fine printing and the story of the making of his magnum opus, Seven Pillars of Wisdom are fascinating. In the run-up to publication of Seven Pillars in Britain in 1926, Lawrence felt the urgent need to avoid being pirated in the USA and so arranged to have the text printed there in an edition of just 22 copies, in order to register the book for copyright protection. Two books were sent to the Library of Congress and copies nominally offered on the publisher’s list – to deter purchase- at just $20,000 each. In fact 28 were made – none of them sold – and the author tells the complex and intriguing story of the publication, whilst also throwing light on the individuals involved and tracing the history of each surviving copy. This is an impressive, well written and beautifully researched volume by Charles Eilers, his work complemented by 42 illustrations. 180pp. Limited to just 250 copies (225 for sale). Bound in quarter cloth and paper over boards replicating the original US binding. Twenty copies (only 17 for sale) in a solander box include an original page from the 1925 Second State Prospectus for the English subscribers’ edition (this edition has now sold out). Limited numbers of the standard edition now in stock.