A small press collection (1)

1  KIT CAT PRESS  [1958-1992]  A collection of pamphlets, broadsides and other ephemera, with some TLs and ALs from the printer, Kenneth Hardacre. Bushey, [later] Hunton Bridge, Herts. 1960-79. C. 45 pieces. A few duplicates. Various formats. £225

Principal contents:

INTERNATIONAL SMALL PRINTERS ASSOCIATION  Ispaventure. A joint publication by members of the publishing group. 1960. Sm. 8vo. 25 leaves of contributions by different presses. Printed card covers. Plastic comb back. Hardacre’s contribution is a characteristically elegant and perceptive, brief account of the work of Will Carter and the Rampant Lions Press.

   Octavo pamphlets, various sizes:

RIEU (E. V.) Three tortoise poems. 1964. With TLs.

HARDACRE (Kenneth) The private press in Hertfordshire. 2^nd ed. 1971. One of 120 copies.

ROBSON (Jeremy) Travelling. 1972. 160 copies. One of 60 signed and numbered.

MARVELL (Andrew) Damon the mower. Four poems. 1975. 200 copies. With TLs.

LEWIS (Roy) Even Caxton had his troubles with the pickets. 1976. 180 copies.

MARVELL (Andrew) The garden. 1976. 200 copies. With ALs.

PULSFORD (Doris) Inner persuasions, 1977. 120 copies.

NOALL (Carrie) The daffodil, 1978. 180 copies.

PRIESTLEY (J. B.) Out of the ivory gate, 1978. 200 copies. With TLs.

MARVELL (Andrew) To his coy mistress, & other love poems. 1978. 185 copies.

 

   Comment

Four-page leaflets, small octavo, mostly typographical notes addressed to the Publishing Group of the International Small Printers Association or (later) the British Printing Society. Nos. 1-13, mostly undated but early 1960s to late 1970s. With an accompanying short ALs: ‘Apart from my own file – this must be the only complete set in existence, for I can’t think anyone who has been in the BPS that long will have bothered to keep them.’

 

   Christopher Cat’s Commentary

The Hardacre family newsletter, similar in format and typographic approach to Comment. Nos. 11, 14 (pp. [19], wrappers, a holiday memoir), 15, 18, 19-26, 28, 30. One unnumbered. Many undated but 1965-76.

 

   Broadsheets, all 30 x 21 cm

Undated. ? late 1970s. Quotations on the nature of books and printing, and two poems:

LEWIS (John)  The successful practice of typography… [from Typography: design and practice]. Three colours. Two copies.

HESSE (Hermann)  Of the many worlds... Black and red.

ALDUS MANUTIUS  To a friend. I am hampered in my work… Black and green on light green paper.

WOOTTON (Sir Henry) The character of a happy man [poem].

MILTON (John) I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue…[from Areopagitica]. Black and red on cream paper.

HERRICK (Robert) To daffadills [poem]. Black and green on Conqueror laid paper.

Together with: three Xmas cards, three further TLs, various keepsakes, flyers, etc.

A most attractive collection, put together by one individual in the mid- to late 1970s, and including something of Kenneth Hardacre's voice in correspondence and printed commentary, as well as a broad representation of his typographic style.

Educated at Keighley Grammar School where he won a scholarship to Oxford, Kenneth Hardacre (1920-2000) was for most of his professional career Head of English at Bushey Grammar School. He founded the Kit-Cat Press in 1958. He developed an excellent typographic eye, learning from the best (see the first item listed above), and ever a reflective practitioner, he wrote about printing and other matters with wit and precision (he was a regular contributor to Roger Burford Mason’s Albion). He began with an Adana 8 x 5, later acquiring a Vicobold ‘art’ platen. He is an exemplary figure in the small press movement of the second half of the twentieth century. His printing archive is now in the John Johnson collection, Oxford.

2  SHOESTRING PRESS  the tragical death of a. apple pie, who was cut in pieces, and eaten by twenty-six little villains. Whitstable, 1966. 127/225 copies signed by the artist, Ben Sands. 28 linocuts in various colours. Crown 8vo. 7 ½ x 5 1/8 ins. Pp. [28]. Concertina-style folded sheets. Some inner margin show-through from the adhesive linen tape used to join the seven sheets, each consisting of 4pp. Loose in orig. wrapper, with a copy of the prospectus, all in the orig. mailing carton. £60

‘As far back as 1743, children were learning their ABC by reciting “A. Apple Pie”. This rhyme has now been designed as a block book of 27 original lino-cut characters, who are all “humanly” engaged in the activities which the rhyme describes.’ From the Prospectus.

Ben Sands (1920-2016). His son Matt has created a website dedicated to his father’s work, www.bensandsprints.com

3  SYCAMORE PRESS  Broadsheets, nos.1-30 [all published], Oxford, 1968-83. Landscape small folio with two inward vertical folds making a triptych, approx. 207 x 110 mm. 30 vols, each pp. [6]. Nos. 1-12 and 13-24 presented as sets in the original printed envelopes. V.g. Roberts, B1-30, B31-32. S4. £210

The Sycamore Press was the private press of the writer and academic John Fuller and his partner Prue Fuller and was active between 1968 and 1992. As well as publishing work by established authors such as W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin (his ‘Femmes Damnées’ is printed here for the first time), it also promoted many younger poets, including James Fenton and Craig Raine, who went on to achieve great success.

The poets printed here are, in order of publication, Roy Fuller, David Lehman, Harold Massingham, Peter Porter, Glyn Hughes, Thom Gunn, Alan Brownjohn, James Fenton, David Harsent, Gregory Rose, Bernard Bergonzi, Peter Levi, Michael Schmidt, Gavin Ewart, Peter Redgrove, Peter Scupham, John Mole, Nancy K. Sandars, John Cotton, Roger Mitchell, Douglas Dunn, Alan Hollinghurst, W.H. Auden, Andrew Motion, Michael Vince, Edward Larrissy, Philip Larkin, Craig Raine, Richard Freeman and Ted Burford.

Although most of the Broadsheets were printed in quite large numbers, typically between 350 and 400 copies, the two sets in printed envelopes, put together in 1970 and 1977, were published in only a handful of copies, perhaps no more than 30 of Broadsheets 1-12, and 48 of Broadsheets 13-24. In the late 1980s six complete sets were assembled in boxes made by the Oxford binders Maltby’s. See Robert Ryan, John Fuller and the Sycamore Press, a bibliographic history, 2010, pp. 118-19.

4  WORDS PRESS  Broadsheets, nos. 11-20. Bramley, 1975. These copies hors de commerce of a limited edition of 150 copies. 10 vols. 8vo. Pp. [4] printed one side of a broadsheet folded twice. V.g. in orig. printed paper band. £35

This unbroken run includes all five of the Denton Welch special numbers, together with Denton Welch: The Afterword by J. L. Chevalier who edited the material in Broadsheets 11-15, published here for the first time, from the Denton Welch holdings of the Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas.

The other broadsheets contain work by i.a. Michael Hamburger, Anne Beresford, Ruth Fainlight, Alan Sillitoe, Michael Horovitz and Frances Horovitz.