During the past academic year—my sabbatical—I began an apprenticeship of sorts, taking courses in letterpress printing and bookbinding at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, a course of study that made me curious about Virginia Woolf's own initiation into print culture in the years 1915-1920. Before my handson introduction to letterpress, I thought studies of the Hogarth Press valuable because of the authors, the publications, and the opportunities for literary networking the press provided. Now, rather, I find myself fascinated by questions about the power dynamics of a private press, choices of typeface and typesetting options—and the whole conceptual play of type and composing. The initiation into the perils and pleasures of letterpress led me to devour accounts of Leonard and Virginia's chutzpah taking on a press of their own—and to regale myself with their tales of glee and catastrophe. At times I laughed with fresh insight; reading a 1918 diary entry about Lottie's misadventures spilling type, I groaned with recognition and commiseration:

Such press stories drew me to one of Woolf's earliest encounters with printing, one which she initiated and for which she did a good deal of typesetting: Katherine Mansfield's “Prelude.” That encounter affected both writers and led to yet another small press, the Heron Press, as we shall see.

Hogarth Press and Heron Press: Stories and Studies

The amateur little press and periodical scene of the first two decades of the twentieth century was enthusiastic, seductive and—for the most part—ephemeral. Into this vibrant mélange entered Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, along with their partners, Leonard Woolf and John Middleton Murry.