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Katherine Mansfield – Prelude

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

Katherine Mansfield - Prelude - first edition

Katherine Mansfield, Prelude (1918)

This was the second publication of the Hogarth Press. It was a re-write of her long short story The Aloe which she had begun in 1915. 300 copies were printed.

“It is a sixty-eight-page book and we printed and bound it entirely with our own hands. The edition must have consisted of nearly 300 copies for, when it went out of print, we had sold 257 copies. Virginia did most of the setting and I did all the machining.”

Leonard Woolf, An Autobiography

“Prelude was published by the Hogarth Press in July 1918, an edition of 300 copies selling at 3s. 6d. It was a book of 68 pages, 19 X 14.5 cm, set in Caslon and bearing the dedication “To L.H.B. and J.M.M.” The early pages had been set by Barbara Hiles, a former student at the Slade who now worked for the Press, then mostly by Virginia Woolf, who recorded that her top speed at hand-setting was one page in an hour and a quarter. The book finally was not run off on the hand press at Hogarth House, but at a jobbing printer’s in Richmond, with Leonard himself working the machine.

The book was clearly the work of amateurs, but cleanly done and unpretentious. The Woolfs misnamed the story The Prelude in both the heading preceding section I, and in the running head as far as p.19. After the first few copies, they removed from the front of the dark blue paper jacket the line block of a woman’s head, surrounded by the spiky leaves and the flowers of the aloe and from the back cover another head, with the leaves now fallen into rather a Medusa-like severity, which had been designed by Mansfield’s friend, the Scottish painter J.D.Fergusson.”

Aloe - colophon

Vincent O’Sullivan (ed), The Aloe

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

L.B.Perkin – Darwin

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

L.B.Perkin - Darwin - first edition

 
L.B. Pekin, Darwin (1934) World-Makers and World-Shakers: a series of short biographies.

“L.B. Pekin was the pseudonym of Reginald Snell, who wrote “two Hogarth pamphlets expanding on subjects he had introduced in [earlier] books: The Military Training of Youth: An Enquiry into the Aims and Effects of the O.T.C. (1937) and Co-education (1939). As the titles of his books and pamphlets suggest, Pekin was an innovative educator, highly critical of public schools (the British private boarding school) and in favour of progressive educational reform, including the efforts to broaden the curriculum with more science and mathematics and to introduce sex education and manual training. He strongly opposed the Officer Training Corps and supported coeducation enthusiastically.

The newly formed pacifist organization the Peace Pledge Union (with luminaries Canon Dick Sheppard, Julian Huxley, Rose Macaulay, Arthur Ponsonby, Bertrand Russell, and Vera Brittain among the early sponsors) was so impressed by Pekin’s OTC pamphlet that it ordered several hundred copies from Leonard Woolf for distribution to its members.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

Leonard & Virginia Woolf – Two Stories

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Hogarth Press bibliographic designs

Two Stories

 
Leonard and Viginia Woolf, Two Stories (1917)

This was the first publication of the Hogarth Press. It contains the story Three Jews by Leonard Woolf and the essay The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf, with four small woodcuts by Dora Carrington. 150 copies were printed. It had 34 pages and sold for 1s. 6d.

We decided to print a paper-covered pamphlet containing a story by each of us and try to sell it by subscription to a limited number of people … We set to work and printed a thirty-two page pamphlet, demy octavo … We bound it ourselves by stitching it into paper covers.

The total number finally sold was 134, and all but five or six of them were friends or acquaintances … The total cost of production was £3 7s. 0d., which included the noble sum of 15s to Carrington for the woodcuts, 12s. 6d. for paper, and 10s. for the cover paper. The two authors were not paid any royalty. The total receipts turned out to be £10 8s. 0d., so that the net profit was £7 1s. 0d.

Leonard Woolf, An Autobiography

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

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© Roy Johnson 2005

Leonard Woolf – Fear and Politics

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

Fear and Politics - first edition

 
Leonard Woolf, Fear and Politics (1925) Cover design by Vanessa Bell

This is number 7 in the first series of Hogarth Essays, which began in 1924. It was the first of Leonard Woolf’s political contributions to the press. Cover design by Vanessa Bell. In his essay, Leonard writes from the point of view of the animals in a zoo:

“Human beings delude themselves that a League of Nations or Protection or armies and navies are going to give them security and civilization in their jungle.” According to the narrator, who is an elephant, humans “are the savagest race of carnivora known in the jungle, and they will never be happy and civilized, and the world will never be safe for democracy or for any other animal, until each human animal is confined in a separate cage.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

Leonard Woolf – Quack! Quack!

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

Quack! Quack! - first edition
Leonard Woolf, Quack, Quack! (May, 1935) 2,000 copies, Printed by R & R Clark, 7s.6d.

“In his next two Hogarth Press books after the disappointment of After the Deluge (1931), Leonard Woolf published what he thought about Mussolini and his Fascist ambitions in Quack, Quack! (1935) and The League and Abyssinia (1936). The title of Quack, Quack! suggests the barnyard sounds of the orating Hitler and MUssolini. With devastating effect, Woolf matched photographs of the eye-bulging Hawaiian war god Kukailimoku to those of the gesticulating bellicose dictators. Woolf’s two-hundred page attack on fascism concentrated on the savage quackery of modern totalitarianism but also discussed the intellectual sources he found in Carlyle, Nietzsche, and Spengler. Woolf’s list of heroes who battled against the totalitarians for the light of civilization began with Erasmus and Montaigne and included Thomas More, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

The striking, boldly-coloured dust jacket for this book was designed by E.McKnight Kauffer. A cheap edition of the book was published in 1936, priced at 2s.6d; it was reprinted again in 1937.

Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Woolf’s-head Publishing: The Highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

Leonard Woolf – Stories of the East

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

Stories of the East - first edition

Leonard Woolf, Stories of the East (1919)

This publication contained three short stories – ‘Pearls and Swine’, ‘A Tale Told by Midnight’, and ‘The Two Brahmans’, with a cover illustration by Dora Carrington.

These three pieces are of vital importance in understanding Leonard Woolf’s mistrust of and dislike for colonialism. The stories provide disturbing commentaries about the disintegration of the colonial process and the uncomfortable moral ground occupied by the servants of the British Government in Ceylon prior to the Great War.

“Stories of the East was published in April 1921 in 300 copies and very nearly sold out. At the end of the first year, the Hogarth Press had sold over 230 copies, to realise a profit of £6 11s. 5d. When Leonard Woolf closed the account in January 1924, Stories of the East had sold 267 copies. Of the six books published by Hogarth in 1925, Leonard’s stories outsold all but Gorky’s second book, The Notebooks of Tchekhov and Virginia’s Monday or Tuesday, and in the scale of press operations it was a successful venture.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

 

This book had a yapp binding, as does Prelude, and Eliot’s Poems. Dating from the nineteenth century, the yapp binding is limp, with “overlapping flaps or edges on three sides” and was originally used for binding Bibles meant to be carried in the pocket.

Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Woolf’s-head Publishing: The Highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

Maurice Dobb – Russia To-day and To-morrow

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

Russia Today and Tomorrow - first edition

 
Maurice Dobb, Russia Today and Tomorrow (1930) Hogarth Day to Day pamphlets, Number 1.

The colophon design was by the American artist E.McKnight Kauffer. It was used on many other Hogarth publications as an alternative to the original dog’s head design by Vanessa Bell. Price 1s. 6d.

“Reporting on his second trip to Russia in 1929, Dobb provided in six chapters a perceptive, generally approving, but not uncritical survey of Soviet history, politics, economics, industrial development, and cultural revolution. His visit came just after the relaxed and stimulating New Economic Policy period (1921—28) had been controverted by the Five Year Plan and the Russian Association of Proletarian writers. While Dobb recognised the increasing pressure for conformity to Marxist ideology, he still reported finding tolerance for experimentation in the arts.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

On Being Ill

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

On Being Ill cover - first edition

 
Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill (1930) Cover design by Vanessa Bell.

“Not until 1930 did [Virginia and Leonard Woolf] hand print another of Virginia’s works, a small essay On Being Ill. To possible critics of the slightly botched printing of On Being Ill Virginia composed a tongue-in-cheek form letter which she never sent. Such a charming disclaimer could well serve as a summing up of the Woolf’s hand printing over the years. Beginning “Dear Madam,” Virginia agreed that “the colour is uneven, the letters not always clear, the spacing inaccurate, and the word ‘campion’ should read ‘companion””. Her defense was that she and Leonard were amateur printers without formal training, who fit in their hobby amid busy lives. But, she added, the volume was already worth more than it cost because of over-subscription, so that although “we have not satisfied your taste, we hope that we have not robbed your purse”.

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

One of the last books hand printed by the Woolfs, On Being Ill is a fairly short essay by Woolf that explores not only illness, but also solitude, sympathy, and reading. Woolf writes, for example, that in illness “It is to the poets that we turn. Illness makes us disinclined for the long campaigns that prose exacts” The words of On Being Ill are both written and printed by Woolf. The book shows a greater sophistication than some of the earlier books, though there are still some errors that remind one that humans rather than machines created the book.

Elizabeth Willson Gordon, Woolf’s-head Publishing: The Highlights and New Lights of the Hogarth Press

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

R.C.Trevelyan – Beelzebub

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

Beelzebub - first edition

 
R.C. Trevelyan, Beelzebub and other poems, Hogarth Living Poets, second series, Number 3.

“R.C. Trevelyan, member of a distinguished Victorian family and brother of the Cambridge historian G.M. Trelyan, had been an Apostle at Trinity College, friend of the Woolfs for years, and by the 1920s was a classical scholar, a translator (Sophocles, Aeschylus, Lucretius, Theocritus), and a poet. He would eventually publish over twenty volumes of poetry.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

Rebecca West – A Letter to a Grandfather

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Hogarth Press first edition book jacket designs

 

A Letter to a Grandfather - first edition

Rebecca West, A Letter to a Grandfather (1933) Hogarth Letters, Number 7. Cover design by John Banting.

“In spite of his financially cautious recruitment of Margaret West for Hogarth manager in February 1933 and his by-now-familiar claim that he did not want to publish books merely because they might be profitable, Leonard Woolf did not neglect to pump up the press income when he could. In that very month he tried to rescue the Hogarth Letters series after twelve titles by binding together eleven of the letters into a single volume with a new title page as The Hogarth Letters. The effort was not successful, and he terminated the series after publishing the last one in March, Rebecca West’s Letter to a Grandfather.”

J.H. Willis Jr, Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press 1917-1941

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Hogarth Press studies

Woolf's-head Publishing Woolf’s-head Publishing is a wonderful collection of cover designs, book jackets, and illustrations – but also a beautiful example of book production in its own right. It was produced as an exhibition catalogue and has quite rightly gone on to enjoy an independent life of its own. This book is a genuine collector’s item, and only months after its first publication it started to win awards for its design and production values. Anyone with the slightest interest in book production, graphic design, typography, or Bloomsbury will want to own a copy the minute they clap eyes on it.

Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon UK
Woolf's-head Publishing Buy the book at Amazon US

The Hogarth Press Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: Hogarth Press, 1917-41 John Willis brings the remarkable story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s success as publishers to life. He generates interesting thumbnail sketches of all the Hogarth Press authors, which brings both them and the books they wrote into sharp focus. He also follows the development of many of its best-selling titles, and there’s a full account of the social and cultural development of the press. This is a scholarly work with extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and suggestions for further reading – but most of all it is a very readable study in cultural history.

The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Hogarth Press Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

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