THE DOVES PRESS

Turnbull Library Record, Volume X, 1 January 1953, Page 3

THE DOVES PRESS

In the passages quoted in the following article , which were not only penned by Mr. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson but also printed under his supervision , an attempt is made to convey the effect of the originals , subject of course to differences in type and paper , by retaining their typographical idiosyncrasies—the use of capitals for names of books; of an old-fashioned paragraph-mark , without indenting , for a fresh paragraph; and of capital initials and ampersand in a way which , though it might be wrong to call it arbitrary , is not uniform. To save interrupting the text with footnotes it is convenient here to state that the terms “the Book Beautiful ” and “the Ideal Book ” both refer to The Ideal Book or Book Beautiful A Tract by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, one of the “preliminary publications ” of the Doves Press.

ALTHOUGH the library’s ACQUISITION OF a set of THE publications of the Doves Press was announced in the press and elsewhere when it arrived, it .is desirable to place before students and friends a fuller account. The library’s collection of books notable in the progress of printing has always been impressive, but of recent years a more conscious effort to improve it has given broader representation at quite a high level. In No. 7 of the Record a list of works printed by John Baskerville, the great English printer of Birmingham, was presented. These included newly-added volumes as well as those in the original collection of Mr. Turnbull. In particular the first work from Baskerville’s Press had then just been secured —the Virgil (1757). The famous Paradise Lost (1858), with the printer’s exposition of his ideals in printing and typography, was already in the Milton collection. To these was added recently a fine vellum-bound set of Orlando Furioso , probably John Baskerville’s most admired production. About the same time a long-felt need for a suitable example from the press of Joachim Ibarra of Spain was

realized. This is the handsome four-volume 1780 quarto edition of Cervantes, with the vigorous engravings of Joseph Del Castillo. Good examples of books by Didot of Paris and Bodoni of Parma were already held, so that the continental influence of Baskerville .is sufficiently shown. It has since been possible to extend these and other groups in some measure, but the culmination of this programme came with the acquisition of a set of books of the Doves Press.

It is by no means clear how Turnbull came to miss this series. It .is similarly unknown why he excluded first editions of Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens—matters that have largely been remedied of recent years. His contact with the British book market was close and intimate, and even if it is to be assumed that he was economizing, he is not likely to have spared the few shillings or guineas necessary for a specimen volume or two from the Doves Press. Already he had acquired every book issued by its great predecessor, the Kelmscott Press of William Morris. Whatever the reason, the lack was surprising and has been frequently a matter for regret in a collection otherwise so remarkable.

After the Kelmscott Press perhaps the next great figure among the private presses was the Ashendene Press, notable for its noble folios, and the property of LI. C. St John Hornby. He was naturally an ardent collector of “press” books, and when his full series of the Doves Press came on the market, the library was enabled, through the interested support of the then Under-Secretary for Internal Affairs and the Assistant Under-Secretary, to make the purchase from the great firm of Bernard Quaritch of London. This was doubly a magnificent acquisition: many of the volumes carry MS. letters, inscriptions, or other associations with the printers. They are bound, some most choicely, by the Doves Bindery. They all have the handsome book-plate of St John Hornby.

For the library, it was an event only comparable with Mr. Turnbull’s purchase of the distinguished set of De Bry’s Voyages from the Huth Library in 1913. It evoked some excitement and much satisfaction. It was felt that the library’s repute was sensibly enhanced. In London Sir Janies and -Lady Leigh Wood, brother-in-law and

sister of Alexander Turnbull, viewed the books with Quaritch, and described the transaction as “a noble gesture by the New Zealand Government”.

To appreciate fully how significant are these volumes in the world of printing, one must know the objective of the founders of the Doves Press and their method of its achievement. It is with the name of Thomas J. CobdenSanderson that the press is usually associated, and true it is that the greater part of the planning and programme was his work, but the typographic genius behind both the Doves Press and the Kelmscott Press was Emory (later Sir Emory) Walker. He it was who designed the type based upon the fifteenth-century styles of Nicholas Jenson of Venice (whose handsome edition of Plutarch’s Lives, 1479, is in the library). The name “Doves” derives from that of a nearby inn in Hammersmith.

Walker worked with the press for the first few years, but thereafter Cobden-Sanderson managed it alone, with, of course, his few workmen. From his writing, which is peculiarly characteristic of the man, one can gauge something of his character. Here first is his statement of the objectives of the Doves Press, as stated in his Catalogue Raisonne (19161: —

'V THE DOVES PRESS was founded in 1900 to attack the problem of Typography as presented by ordinary Books in the various forms of Prose, Verse, and Dialogue and, keeping always in view the principles laid down in the Book Beautiful, to attempt its solution by the simple arrangement of the whole Book, as a whole, with due regard to its parts and to the emphasis of its capital divisions rather than by the addition & splendour of applied ornament.

f The Books selected for this purpose have been chosen partly for the sake of the particular typographical problems presented by them, but partly also in view of the second object of the Press, viz., to print in a suitable form some of the great literary achievements of man’s creative or constructive genius. To-day there is an immense reproduction in forms at once admirable & cheap of all books which in any language have stood the test of time. But such reproduction is not a substitute for the more monumental production of the same books, and such a production, expressive of man’s admiration, is a legitimate ambition of the Printing Press & of some Press the imperative duty. if THE ENGLISH BIBLE is a supreme achievement of English Literature, if not of English thought. On the other

hand PARADISE LOST —‘a unique monument of the English language’ —is a sublime attempt of English Puritanism to ‘justifie the wayes of God to men.’ FAUST reopens the eternal debate between the unseen and the seen, the finite & the infinite: and SARTOR RESARTUS, EMERSON’S ESSAYS, and UNTO THIS LAST are attempts to transform the EVERLASTING YEA of affirmation, and amid the inexplicable and enshrouding mysteries of the infinite of God, of Nature, and of the Soul —to set man again at work upon the creation of the Fit, the Seemly, and the Beautiful. MEN & WOMEN and DRAMATIS PERSONAE are poetical presentments of the same positive position. These works together constitute the main argument of the selection. Other like sequences are the POEMS and PLAYS of SHAKESPEARE, preluded by the earlier imagined PERVIGILIUM VENERIS, and the POEMS of GOETHE, WORDSWORTH, SHELLEY & KEATS. . .

This programme put into effect the aims he enumerated in The Ideal Book printed at the Doves Press in 1900. This was a 10-page “tract” which described the inevitable relationship of the various elements that make up a book as a thing of beauty and as the perfect medium. All of it is important, but if one part can be isolated as epitomising the whole, this one may be indicated:

“The whole duty of Typography, as of Calligraphy, is to communicate to the imagination, without loss by the way, the thought or image intended to be communicated by the Author. And the whole duty of beautiful typography is not to substitute for the beauty or interest of the thing thought and intended to be conveyed by the symbol, a beauty or interest of its own, but, on the one hand, to win access for that communication by the clearness and beauty of the vehicle, and on the other hand, to take advantage of every pause or stage in that communication to interpose some characteristic and restful beauty in its own art. We thus have a reason for the clearness and beauty of the text as a whole, for the especial beauty of the first or introductory page and of the title, and for the especial beauty of the headings of chapters, capital or initial letters, and so on, and an opening for the illustrator as we shall see by and by.”

But not yet was this the ultimate in his vision. The creation of the perfect book was something more than his concept of it as an expression of art. The aesthetic might well be achieved, but he could be satisfied only with the more profound implications of the spiritual. To refer

again to the Catalogue Raisonne , we find he dwells upon this, saying: “But beyond the immediate purpose of the Press the solution of typographical problems and the monumental presentment of some of the literary creations of genius there has always been another and a much greater purpose, of which workmanship achieved in the great fields of literary creation and its incorporation in printed forms may, like other objects of craftsmanship, be a Prefatory Note, an Illustration, and an Encouragement the Workmanship of Life in Life itself, and its embodiment in forms of life which shall be as beautiful in life as, in imagination, are the happiest inventions of imaginative genius.”

In addition, Cobden-Sanderson blended his own philosophy with his undoubtedly deep religious convictions. In his dainty little volume Credo , printed in 1906, the following contains something of this same thought: “I believe and see that the brightly illumined to-day, or the shadowed rest of to-night, is but as the turning of a page of the great Book, the Book of life, and that to-morrow and to-morrow, other illumined pages will be turned for other and other races and other generations of mankind, given out by the ever-giving earth for its own astonishment and delight, whilst we of to-day shall have passed into the eternal silence of all that has been, as into the night passes the day, and into winter summer.”

It will therefore be appreciated that CobdenSanderson viewed his press and its purpose in almost a sacred light. Much of what he has written about the Doves Press is highly emotional and frequently moving. Thus when the time came for him to end its activities, it was with infinite grief for him: nay, more, for he was, for his devotion, to pay the price of misunderstanding and condemnation. In 1916 ill-health was besetting him, and the Great War disturbed his outlook and his sense of the future of the world. He had but a vague hope of its

outcome: “And with this New World trembling into life I put-to the shutters and close the doors of the Press, and, turning the key in the lock, bid farewell to THE DOVES PRESS —for ever.” But this was not the end: despite his agreement with Emory Walker that the press and its equipment should remain to the survivor of them, he decided that this he

could not abide. He made no secret of his decision, for in the last pages of the Catalogue Raisonne he wrote: “To the bed of the RIVER THAMES, the River on whose banks I have printed all my printed Books, I,

THE DOVES PRESS bequeath The Doves Press Fount of Type, the punches, matrices, and the type in use at The Doves Press at the time of my death. And may the River, in its tides and flow, pass over them to and from the great sea for ever and ever, or until its tides and flow for ever cease; then may they share the fates of all the worlds and pass from change to change for ever upon the Tides of Time, untouched of other use.”

And this he duly did, in many journeys to the river by night, hurling the punches, matrices and types into the dark waters. The deed evoked a storm of bewildered criticism, and Emory Walker placed the matter, rather vainly, in the hands of his lawyers. Of the resulting exchange of opinions, perhaps this one excerpt from a letter of Cobden-Sanderson, written in the third person, in his formal yet emotive way, says as much as need be said: “ . . . But as time wore on Mr. Cobden-Sanderson was irresistibly returned to his original intention, to consecrate the type solely to the use of the Doves Press. This Mr. Cobden-Sanderson has now done. This fact then Mr. Cobden-Sanderson must premise. Nor can Mr. CobdenSanderson bend or turn his mind to any other goal than that to which he has arrived at, as he now finds, through all the years since first his mind opened to the wonders of the world and to man’s association and companionship with it; ’tis to this goal he has dedicated, finally, what he had of most precious . . . .”

I have said that the Doves Press books represent the culmination of the Library’s activity of collecting fine press books, and the reason will now be sufficiently clear. But as a final word the following opinion summarizes world-wide esteem for the volumes. It is taken from an anonymous review of Catalogue Raisonne (1916) in The Times Literary Supplement of 12th April, 1917, which the material now in the Library shows to have been written by no less an authority than St John Hornby himself:

“Perhaps of all the books The English Bible is the one at which criticism stops short, so perfect is it in the proportion of its page, the sparing and judicious use of red, the admirable arrangement of the poetical portions. It is a noble book which will bear comparison with the great examples of typography of all time. It seems, perhaps, a strange thing to say, but if we have a fault to find with the Doves Press books as a whole it is that they are almost too immaculately perfect in technical execution. . . .”

The following is a list of the full collection in the library: Tacitus Agricola (1900)

Cobden-Sanderson, T. J. The Ideal Book (1901) London (1906) Credo (1909) The City Planned (1910) The City Metropolitan (1910) Shakespearean Punctuation (1912) On Julius Caesar (1913) Amantium Irae (1914) On Anthonie and Cleopatra (1913) The New Science Museum (1914) On Shelley’s Ode to Liberty (1914)

Mackail, J. W. William Morris (1901) Pervigilium Veneris (1911) Tennyson, Alfred Seven Poems (1902)

Milton, John Paradise Lost (1902) Paradise Regained (1905) Areopagitica (1907) The English Bible , 5 volumes (1903-5) Emerson, R. W. Essays (1906)

Goethe, Johan W. Von Faust (1906, 1910) Werther’s Leiden (1911) I phi genie und Taurus (1912) Torquato Tasso (1913) Auserlesene Lieder (1916)

Ruskin, J. Unto This Last (1907) Carlyle, T. Sartor Resartus (1907) Catalogues Raisonnes (1908, 1911, 1916) Browning, R.

Men and Women (1908) Dramatis Personae (1911) Shakespeare, W. Hamlet (1909) Anthonie and Cleopatra (1912) Venus and Adonis (1912) Julius Caesar (1913) Coriolanus (1914) Lucrece (1915) Sonnets (1909) Winship, Geo. P.

William Caxton (1909) St. Francis of Assisi Laudes Creaturarum (1911) Wordsworth, W. A Decade of Years (1911) Cosmic Poetry (1914) The Prelude (1915)

In Principio Genesis (1911) Shelley, P. B. Poems (1914) Keats, J. Poems (1915)