Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
Another venture in which a high literary standard was combined with much
care for typography was _The Hobby-Horse_, a quarterly magazine edited
by Herbert P. Horne and Selwyn Image between 1886 and 1892, after which
it appeared fitfully and flickered out. The change in the type, the
setting it close instead of spaced, and the new initials and tailpieces
which may be noted at the beginning of Vol. III (1888), constituted a
landmark in the history of modern printing of an importance similar to
that of the return to old-faced type in _Lady Willoughby's Diary_. The
progress of the movement can be followed (i) in the catalogue of the
Exhibition of Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, held at the New
Gallery in the autumn of 1888, with an article on printing by Mr. Emery
Walker; (ii) in three books by William Morris, viz. _The House of the
Wolfings_, _The Roots of the Mountains_, and the _Gunnlaug Saga_,
printed under the superintendence of the author and Mr. Walker at the
Chiswick Press in 1889 and 1890. In 1891 William Morris gave an immense
impetus to the revival of fine printing by setting up a press at No. 16
Upper Mall, Hammersmith, close to his own residence, Kelmscott House.
"It was the essence of my undertaking," he wrote subsequently, "to
produce books which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of
printing and arrangement of type," and no one will be inclined to deny
that the Kelmscott Press books fulfil this aim. The gothic type, whether
in its larger or smaller size (the Troy type designed for the reprint of
Caxton's _Recuyell of the Histories of Troy_, and the Chaucer type
designed for the great _Chaucer_), will hold its own against any gothic
type of the fifteenth century. The Golden type (designed for the reprint
of Caxton's _Golden Legend_) cannot be praised as highly as this. "By
instinct rather than by conscious thinking it over," Morris confessed,
"I began by getting myself a fount of Roman type," and it is no unfair
criticism of it to say that it betrays the hand of a man whose natural
expression was in gothic letter forcing roman into yielding some of the
characteristic gothic charm. The _Golden Legend_ would have been a far
finer book if it had been printed in the Chaucer type, and the Shelley,
Keats, Herrick and other books which Morris printed in it to please F.
S. Ellis or other friends cannot stand the test of comparison with _The
Wood Beyond the World_ and the other romances which he printed entirely
to please himself. 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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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