About this Item
Privately printed for Donald and Mary Hyde, Four Oaks Farm, Somerville, NJ, 1967; two volumes, 8vo, 160 x 240mm in a custom slip case, the books bound with fine black cloth spines, titled gilt, grey sides, the slipcase in gold, back and grey pseudo-marbled boards, all in fine condition; pp [xi], 113 and xxii, 135; frontispiece and numerous photographs in each volume; colophon to each volume reading - '1000** copies of this volume were completed in November, 1967. The text, in English Monotype Baskerville, was printed on Curtis Rag paper by Clarke & Way at The Thistle Press, with illustrations printed by the Meriden Gravure Company and binding by the Russell-Rutter Company, the entire work having been designed by P.J. Conkwright.' ** The Library volume has a limitation of 1250 copies. . . . . The Farm volume carries on the front fly the holograph inscription 'For Michael Harvey - now a part of the Four Oaks story Mary Hyde April 1981' . . . . The Hydes' house, Four Oaks Farm, is a large estate in Somerville and soon after their marriage in 1939 the couple began on what was to become a major private library part of which became the greatest collection of Samuel Johnson in private hands; this is now in the Houghton Library at Harvard. Other sections of the library include the Oscar Wilde Collection, the Henry Fielding Collection, the English Drama Collection, a Japanese Collection, an Architecture Collection, a Forgery Collection, a Collection of Fine Bindings, a Sporting Books Collections, and many other books which didn't fit neatly into such categories. Some of these discrete collections were sold to benefit other libraries, others themselves ended up in academic and reference libraries including the British Library. . . . . Donald Hyde died in 1966, before the publication of these volumes, although he had played a large part in their genesis and had contributed in anticipation. For more details check, among other sources, the LibraryThing site under the member reference DonaldandMaryHyde. . . . The recipient of these volumes, Michael Harvey, was a noted typeface designer, lettering artist and writer and lecturer who began his commercial career as an assistant to Reynolds Stone, working near Bridport, Dorset, who over his life produced some 1,500 book jacket designs for major publishers. . . . . See also item 001087 for a related item.
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