Kelmscott Press

“ They were done in the days of ignorance, before the Kelmscott Press was, though hard on the time when it began.
"You see as to all these matters I do the books mainly for you and one or two others; the public does not really care about them a damn—which is stale. But I tell you I want you to have them, and finally you shall.
"Yours affectionately,
"William Morris."
The autumn at Kelmscott was unusually quiet and happy. A certain degree of physical feebleness had now become his normal condition; he was seldom able to take long walks, or to spend whole days fishing ”

“ Among other Scottish firms who are doing [Pg 311] excellent work mention may be made also of Messrs. R. and R. Clark of Edinburgh, who tread very closely on the heels of the Clarendon Press, and Messrs. Maclehose, the printers to the University of Glasgow. In America also there is much good work being done, that of Mr. De Vinne and of the Riverside Press, Cambridge, being of the very highest excellence.
In the history of English printing, the close of the nineteenth century will always be memorable for the brilliant but short-lived career of the Kelmscott Press. ”

“ The first idea was to produce the complete work in one folio volume, with woodcuts from designs by Burne-Jones. Of these there were to be no less than five hundred. The greatest achievements of the Kelmscott Press were more than anticipated in this project; but it was a generation too soon. The art of producing books had sunk to a deplorable condition, and it became evident that the proposed work was impossible without the organized labour of years. ”

“ The genealogical and heraldic imprints of Sir Thomas Phillipps, at the Middle Hill press, 1819-59, numbering some hundreds of different works, were mostly confined to twenty copies each, and some to only six copies. Some of them are as rare as many manuscripts, of which several copies have been made, and sell at prices dictated by their scarcity. Most of them are in the Library of Congress. The Kelmscott press of William Morris printed in sumptuous style, improved upon the finest models of antique typography, a number of literary works, which now bring enhanced prices. ”

“ There was also a gramophone, but it was enclosed in a superb case of genuine old black-and-gold lacquer. The very books in their shelves carried on this contrast of business with recreation. For while one set of shelves contained row upon row of technical works, company reports, and all manner of business reference books bound in leather, on another were to be found the vellum-bound volumes of the Kelmscott Press.
A sober note of grey or mole colour was the colour scheme of the room. ”

“ But whether he used his roman or his gothic type the exquisite craftsmanship which he put into all his books enabled Morris to attain his aim, and his wonderful borders and capitals crown them with the delight which this king of designers took in his work. No other printer since printing began has ever produced such a series of books as the fifty-three which poured from the Kelmscott Press during those wonderful seven years, and no book that has ever been printed can be compared for richness of effect with the Chaucer which was the crowning achievement of the Press. ”

“ William Morris for their grant of the very exceptional privilege of reproducing, with the skilful aid of Mr. Emery Walker, two pages of books printed at the Kelmscott Press.
That the illustrations are profuse at the beginning and end of the book and scanty in the middle must be laid to the charge of the printers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in whose work good ornament finds no place. It was due to Caslon and Baskerville to insert their portraits, though they can hardly [Pg xii] be called works of art. ”

“ The activities of the movement were at first more directly concerned with the art of good book-making, which fructified in the famous Kelmscott Press (an institution which, while necessarily undemocratic, has exerted a tremendous influence on modern printing) , and to-day there is scarcely any sphere of industrial art which has not been influenced by the Arts and Crafts impetus. ”

“ This block and the blocks for the three ornaments on page 7 are not included among those mentioned on page 12 as having been sent to the British Museum.
VARIOUS LISTS, LEAFLETS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS PRINTED AT THE KELMSCOTT PRESS.
Eighteen lists of the books printed or in preparation at the Kelmscott Press were issued to booksellers and subscribers. The dates of these are May, July, and Dec., 1892; March 9, May 20, May 27, Aug. 1, and Dec. 1, 1893; March 31, April 21, July 2, Oct. 1 (a leaflet) , and Dec. 1, 1894; July 1, and Nov. 26, 1895; June 1, 1896; Feb. ”

“ A better known, if older, instance is the holiday edition of Longfellow's "Skeleton in Armor." Who would not rather read the poem in this Old English type than in any Roman type in which it has ever been printed? The work of the Kelmscott Press obviously falls within this class.
The truth is, there is a large body of favorite literature which we are glad to be made to linger over, to have, in its perusal, a brake put upon the speed of our reading; and in no way can this be done so agreeably as by a typography that possesses a charm of its own to arrest the eye. ”

“ But it is a case of a fortiori in modern printing: because we have no contractions, few tied letters, and we cannot break a word with the same frankness as they could: I mean we can't put whi on one side and ch on the other. This makes the spacing difficult, and a wide page desirable.
"Would you kindly give me the Initial letters of the first few sheets of our copy; I mean state whether they are A's B's and what not; I want this for our 'blooming-letters,' so that I may get ready those which are most wanted."
With the beginning of 1891 the Kelmscott Press actually started working. ”

“ When Morris published his first volume in the Kelmscott Press, he sent Mr. Watts-Dunton a presentation copy of the book. He also sent him a presentation copy of the second and third. But knowing how small was the profit at this time from the books issued by the Kelmscott Press, Mr. Watts-Dunton felt a little delicacy in taking these presentation copies, and told Mrs. Morris that she should gently protest against such extravagance. Mrs. Morris assured him that it would be perfectly useless to do so. p. 180But when the edition of Keats was coming out, Mr. ”

“ It is obvious that the Kelmscott books, whatever fault may be found with them, could not be other than remarkable creations with Morris and Burne-Jones uniting their gifts to make each of them such a picture-book as Morris declared at the height of his ardour was “one of the very worthiest things toward the production of which reasonable men should strive.”
The list of works selected to be issued from the Press is interesting, indicating as it does a line of taste somewhat narrow and tangential to the popular taste of the time. ”

“ The history of English printing shows one more epoch-making figure. It is that of William Morris, poet, socialist, idealist, and craftsman. Morris is in many ways one of the most picturesque figures of the nineteenth century. Interested in many kinds of craftsmanship, he was particularly interested in printing and in 1891 he set up the Kelmscott Press in order to express his idea of what a book should be. Morris was above all things a man of the Middle Ages. ”

“ The more immediate and intimate—one might occasionally say imitative—influence of the Kelmscott press may be seen in the extremely interesting work of a group of young artists who own their training to the Birmingham School of Art, as developed under the taste and ability of Mr. ”

“ W. M. Rossetti.
[Pg 277] 24. The Poems of John Keats. Edited by F. S. Ellis. 8vo. Golden type. In black and red. Borders 10a and 10, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at thirty shillings, 7 on vellum at nine guineas. Dated March 7, issued May 8, 1894. Published by William Morris. Bound in limp vellum.
This is now (January, 1898) the most sought after of all the smaller Kelmscott Press books. It was announced as in preparation in the lists of May 27 and August 1, 1893, and as in the press in that of March 31, 1894, when the woodcut title still remained to be printed. [16]
25. ”

“ Mr. Slater says that an uncut copy has been sold by auction for £86.
Meredith.—A fine uncut copy of George Meredith’s Poems, 1851, sold at a sale of Rare Books and Manuscripts (Sotheby, March 1897) for £17, 10s. Another copy with alterations in the author’s autograph (Sotheby, June 1897) sold for £25.
Morris.—The beautiful issues of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press advanced in price in many instances before publication, and are likely, now that the supply has ceased, to advance still more; but they vary very much according to the literary rank of the books. ”

“ In it the aims of Morris in founding the Press are given in his own words. 'I began printing books,' he writes, 'with the hope of producing some which would have a definite [Pg 425] claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read, and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters.' Mr. Morris, who died at Kelmscott House on the 3rd of October 1896, collected a fine and extensive library, which passed into the hands of a Manchester collector for, it is said, the sum of twenty thousand pounds. ”

“ He himself had recently acquired a copy of the edition of 1527 printed by Wynkyn de Worde. The Kelmscott "Golden Legend" was, however, set up, not from this, but from Caxton's own first edition of 1483. The almost priceless original was borrowed, under a heavy bond in case of loss or injury, from the Cambridge University Library for this purpose. It was transcribed for the press—a work of such laborious magnitude, and one executed so patiently and carefully as to deserve commemoration—by Miss Phillis M. Ellis, the daughter of his old friend and collaborator. ”

“ White is the enemy of the printer. Black, rich, fat, even black, without gray patches, is, or should be, his pride. Leads and quads and displays of different kinds of type should be reserved for insurance prospectuses and advertisements of lost dogs....”
His enthusiasm for William Morris’ leaf ornaments is not shared by all booklovers. Glance at any of the Kelmscott volumes, and you will find these glorified oak leaves scattered over the type page in absolutely unrelated fashion,—a greater blemish, to some eyes, than occasional variation in spacing. ”

“ Such, in the romance of a new Arcadia into which the social revolution might at last lead mankind, is the account Morris gives of his return to the loved place which he could not wish or fancy but unchanged upon a changed and happier earth. The pictures of the house and its surroundings which follow are taken from a more unimpassioned description, which is nevertheless no less lovingly and characteristically worded, in an account of Kelmscott which he wrote in the last year of his life for a magazine conducted by members of the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft. ”

“ The paper, too, hand-made, rough-surfaced, and tough, is in equally strong contrast to the shiny hot-pressed machine-made paper, hitherto so much in vogue for the finer kinds of printing, and by which it alone became possible. The two kinds—the two ideals of printing—are as far apart as the poles. Those who like the smooth and thin, will not like the bold and rough; but it looks as if the Kelmscott standard had marked the turn of the tide, and that, judging from the signs of its influence upon printers and publishers generally, the feeling is running strongly in that direction. ”

“ The enterprise was one involving labour, time and cost vastly beyond his expectations, and his correspondence with his manager at Kehl presents an almost pathetic picture of his efforts to grapple with the difficulties that beset his task. “How can we promise,” he wrote in 1780, “in the early months of {286} 1782 an edition which has neither hearth nor home in March 1780? The paper-mills have to be made, the type to be founded, the printing press to be put up, and the establishment to be formed.” ”

“ Colonel Kelmscott looked across at him with a very red face. “Not some girl who’ll bring disgrace upon your mother, I hope?” he said, with a half-pang of remorse, remembering Lucy. “Not some young woman beneath your own station in life. For to that, you may be sure, I’ll never consent under any circumstances.”
Granville drew himself up proudly, with a haughty smile. He was a Kelmscott, too, as arrogant as the best of them. ”

“ Kelmscott is NOT his father’s eldest son; he’s NOT, and never was, the heir of Tilgate. More than that, nobody knows these facts but myself. And I know the true heirs, and I can prove their title. Well, now, Miss Gildersleeve—if it’s to be Miss Gildersleeve still—this is the circumstance that alters the case as regards Granville Kelmscott. I have it in my hands to ruin Kelmscott. And what I’ve taken the trouble to come down and say to you to-day is simply this for your own advantage; beware, at least, how you throw yourself away upon a penniless man, with neither name nor fortune! ”

“ W.F. Adams, Vicar of Little Faringdon, Morris's schoolfellow at Marlborough, and the friend and neighbour of later years at Kelmscott, read the funeral service. With the family and friends were mingled workmen from Merton Abbey and Oxford Street, comrades of the Socialist League, pupils of the Art Workers' Guild, and Kelmscott villagers in their daily working dress. ”