A Short and Beautiful Life

Rita Ricketts

ISBN 10: 191139729X / ISBN 13: 9781911397298

Published by Unicorn Publishing Group, GB, 2023

About this Item

Few have heard of the Shakespeare Head Press, although it ranks alongside William Morris's Kelmscott, Emery Walker and Cobden-Sanderson's Doves, Eric Gill's Golden Cockerel and St John Hornby's 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), Bullen's 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.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781911397298

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Short and Beautiful Life
• Publisher: Unicorn Publishing Group, GB
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 191139729X
• ISBN 13: 9781911397298
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Few have heard of the Shakespeare Head Press, although it ranks alongside William Morris’s Kelmscott , Emery Walker and Cobden-Sanderson’s Doves, Eric Gill’s Golden Cockerel and St John Hornby’s 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 his the press in 1904 in an old Tudor house, where Shakespeare would have been a guest.

There are many backstories associated with the SHP, and of the perennial dashed hopes of small presses’, which plagued Bullen. When the Press passed to Basil Blackwell (1921), Bullen’s 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 commodifi cation of literature, and the metamorphoses of books from handcraft ed works of art to manufactured objects.

This book reconstructs the lives of Bernard Newdigate and A.H. Bullen, and that of the SHP. 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

About the Author

Rita Rickett s gives prominence in her writing and research to neglected stories. She has published in the UK, New Zealand, and the US, and is a regular commentator in the New Zealand media. Currently the visiting Bodleian Blackwell Fellow, she was one of the recipients of the 2022 European Women’s Leadership Award.