13001i COLLECTORS' NOTES.
THE PRIVATE PRESS.
(This is the fourth of a series of monthly articles intended to interest book 'collectors and having special reference to the work of the First Edition Club.)
WHAT is a private press ? And what modern press deserves the word ? To most people the Kelmscott Press seems essentially a private one, but should the term " private "
be applied to a press which issued its books for the purpose of sale ? It is true that when compared to such presses as the Chiswick or Curwen, the Kelmscott was private in its nature ; but if compared to other presses (that once owned by Mr. Ralph Straus, for instance), it is equally clear that the Kelmscott Press was in reality only semi-private. It may be said that there are four classes of presses—private, semi-private, public and semi-public.
Of the truly private press, Sir George Sitwell's at Scar- borough is a good example. At his press were printed books of a special nature, in limited editions, which had no " pub- lished price," and of which copies were neither sold nor presented to museums. The semi-private press resembles the private press in this, that the selection of subjects for printing is arbitrarily controlled by the founder or worker of the press, and is usually made to express a particular purpose, either typographical or literary, but differs in that its works are prepared for sale to a public circle of subscribers, or set of individuals. The Kelmscott Press can fairly be said to be semi-private, but as its books were intended for sale to the public, it is clearly not in the same class as Sir George Sitwell's press. A public press exists to print for its customers ; it may have high typographical standards (the influence of the Chiswick Press on modern printing is well known), but exercises no selective judgment on the material sent to it for printing. A semi-public press, while prepared to print for payment, does, nevertheless, give preference to a particular type of work, and though it will print for anybody, will not print anything. The Golden Cockerel Press may be taken as an example of a semi-public press. The private press prints special works in editions not for sale ; the semi-private press prints special works for purposes of sale ; the public press will print anything consistent with its material ; and the semi-private press prints (for anybody) those works which accord with its programme.
The foundation of the Kelmscott Press by William Morris in 1891 was the starting point of a new " collectors' subject," and the catalogues issued by Mr. Frank Hollings and Messrs. Maggs Bros. give evidence of the keen interest taken in books printed at modern presses, and the high value set on good specimens.
It is not easy to realize that the revival of the private press is so modern and so recent, and that (literally) hundreds of presses have been founded in the thirty-five years since Morris began to print. The most notable are well known— the Kelmscott, Ashendene, Vale, Eragny—but though there are bibliographies of these, it is very difficult for the late corner to this field of collection to obtain information con- cerning the less important, but not necessarily less interesting, presses. The only bibliographical volume in which there is any attempt to survey the whole field of work—Mr. R. Steele's Revival of Printing—is now ten years out of date, and deals with but few presses. Concerning such presses as the Beaumcnt, Caradoc, Cuala, Old Bourne, or Orpheus, there is at present very little printed information ; the books of a press are not indexed under the name of that press at the British Museum, and the only help available to the collector is the hand list of publications issued by the press itself, and such lists are seldom complete or exact in detail.
Mr. Geoffrey S. Tomkinson, whose father, the late Michael Tomkinson, was well known as a collector of books and of Japanese antiquities, is now workink on a volume which, when complete, should solve most of the collector's difficulties, which will fill in the gaps in existing bibliographies and break a great deal of fresh ground. The book is to be called A Select History and Bibliography of the Principal Modern Presses, Public and Private, in Great Britain and Ireland, and the author's aim is to provide collectors with a work which shall, in effect, be an encyclopaedia of presses, con- taining details of the founding of each press, the objects which the founders had in mind when starting their presses, notes of the type, paper and binding used, and a complete list of books publiche I, giving title, author, date of publication, number of copies printed, price, number of pages and size. Mr. Tomkinson is anxious to get into touch with those who have private presses or collections of press books, and will be very grateful if any interested readers will write to him at Broomfield Lodge, Kidderminster.
A. J. A. SYMONS.
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