A Short and Beautiful Life (Hardcover)

Hardcover. Few have heard of the Shakespeare Head Press, although it ranks alongside William Morriss Kelmscott, Emery Walker and Cobden-Sandersons Doves, Eric Gills Golden Cockerel and St John Hornbys Ashendene. Its origins date to the 1860s, when a young Arthur Henry Bullen, dreamt of printing the whole of Shakespeare. Making his dream a reality, Bullen founded the Shakespeare Head Press in 1904 in an old Tudor house, where Shakespeare would have been a guest.There are many backstories associated with the Shakespeare Head Press and of the perennial dashed hopes of small presses, which plagued Bullen. When the Press passed to Basil Blackwell (1921), Bullens mantle was assumed by the scholar-printer Bernard Newdigate. For twenty years, he produced a series of finely printed books, yet these were not commercially successful. Blackwell blamed the commodification of literature, and the metamorphoses of books from handcrafted works of art to manufactured objects.A Short and Beautiful Life reconstructs the lives of Bernard Newdigate and A.H. Bullen, and that of the Shakespeare Head Press. For Sir Basil Blackwell, the exact record of events was secondary to the universal truths it served to illustrate. And there is something remarkably contemporary about them. Halting the dead hand of mechanisationBooks are not for the rich men, but for allDeath by 'carping indolent reviewers'Publish and be dammed (to poverty)Escape to paradise Levelling up - reskilling for equality Everyone involved in a book should be counted Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.…