Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Persistence of Myth
- 2 Scandal, Libel and Satire
- 3 The Roxburghe Club and the Politics of Class
- 4 Politics, Religion, Money
- 5 Club Members and Their Book Collections
- 6 The Passion for Print
- 7 The Literary Works of the Roxburghe Club Members
- 8 The Club Editions
- 9 The Legacies of the Club
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 The Club Membership 1812–1835
- Appendix 2 Roxburghe Club Editions 1812–1835
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Passion for Print
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Persistence of Myth
- 2 Scandal, Libel and Satire
- 3 The Roxburghe Club and the Politics of Class
- 4 Politics, Religion, Money
- 5 Club Members and Their Book Collections
- 6 The Passion for Print
- 7 The Literary Works of the Roxburghe Club Members
- 8 The Club Editions
- 9 The Legacies of the Club
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 The Club Membership 1812–1835
- Appendix 2 Roxburghe Club Editions 1812–1835
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The possession of a private printing- press is, no doubt, a very appalling type of bibliomania. Much, as has been told us of the awful scale in which drunkards consume their favored poison, one is not accustomed to hear of their setting up private stills for their own individual consumption. There is a Sardanapalitan excess in this bibliographical luxuriousness which refuses to partake with other vulgar mortals in the common harvest of the public press, but must itself minister to its own tastes and demands.
When John Hill Burton made this tongue- in- cheek observation, he swiftly followed it up with a number of bibliophilic names to illustrate his point, including those of Sir Alexander Boswell and Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges. In fact the early Roxburghe Club contained among its members three men who were drawn to the ownership of a private printing press and the freedom that it gave them to pursue their own literary interests, both in terms of printing their own original work and of reproducing rare, largely forgotten works of early literature. As Hill Burton pointed out, the ownership of a private press perhaps indicates an interest in books that extends beyond the mere dilettante concern with novelty or the collector's obsession with fine bindings and auction prices; it certainly goes beyond a taste for the classics or any literature that could be termed mainstream as such tastes have long been amply catered for by the standard printing houses with their business eye on the requirements of the average consumer. While each owner will have his unique reasons for entering the printing world, it often indicates a deeper- than- average interest in unrepresented literature and in the art of typography, a desire to create, reproduce and broadcast literature – an aspiration to control the means of print production which goes beyond even that of employing a printer to work under the patronage of the customer at the printer's own establishment. These undertakings wholeheartedly fulfilled the description coined by Will Ransom when he wrote that ‘freed from the confining strictures of details, a private press may be defined as the typographic expression of a personal ideal, conceived in freedom and maintained in independence’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Early Roxburghe Club 1812–1835Book Club Pioneers and the Advancement of English Literature, pp. 87 - 100Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2017