Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Tables
- Note on the Text
- 1 Economics and the Flowering of the British Short Story
- 2 The Business of Authorship
- 3 How Much Money Does an Author Need?
- 4 Publishing Conditions in England, 1880–1950
- 5 Authors’ Careers: The Development of the Short Story in Britain, 1880–1914
- 6 Short Stories and the Magazines
- 7 Magazines’ Restraints on Art in the Service of Commerce
- 8 Short Stories in Book Form
- 9 Sales of Short Story Collections and Novels
- 10 First Editions, Limited Editions and Manuscripts
- 11 The British Short Story and its Reviewers
- 12 Vitality and Variety in the British Short Story, 1915–50
- 13 Art and Commerce in the British Short Story
- Chronology
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
10 - First Editions, Limited Editions and Manuscripts
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Tables
- Note on the Text
- 1 Economics and the Flowering of the British Short Story
- 2 The Business of Authorship
- 3 How Much Money Does an Author Need?
- 4 Publishing Conditions in England, 1880–1950
- 5 Authors’ Careers: The Development of the Short Story in Britain, 1880–1914
- 6 Short Stories and the Magazines
- 7 Magazines’ Restraints on Art in the Service of Commerce
- 8 Short Stories in Book Form
- 9 Sales of Short Story Collections and Novels
- 10 First Editions, Limited Editions and Manuscripts
- 11 The British Short Story and its Reviewers
- 12 Vitality and Variety in the British Short Story, 1915–50
- 13 Art and Commerce in the British Short Story
- Chronology
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
My Hundredth Tale is a longish short story which I am going to write for the Golden Cockerel Press. It will be published by them in the autumn, 750 copies at a guinea. The entire edition was sold out within a week of the announcement – and I have not yet written a word of the tale.
A. E. Coppard.It may be said of human affairs, as well as of physical objects, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The manufacture of books in mass quantities for ordinary readers set off not only a literary reaction against philistine taste but also a printers’ and consumers’ revolt against mass-market books of low price and equally low aesthetic quality. The chief perpetuator of quality design in books was and remains to this day the private press movement, which can be traced at least as far back as Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill experiments of the late eighteenth century. The most famous proponent of ‘fine printing’, however, is undoubtedly William Morris, whose Kelmscott Press may be re garded either as typical of the folly of the 1890s handicraft fad or as the progenitor of the private press movement that remained popular until after World War II.
In ways that are difficult to appreciate now, the private press movement transcended the interests of wealthy aesthetes and pretentious bohemians and became quite a popular one. Hugh Kenner comments on it rather sarcastically in the following passage:
The over-decorated William Morris book may remind us how obsolete processes claim survival as Art. As TV has turned old movies into ‘cinema’, so the rotary press and the monotype (an 1887 patent) has made hand presswork an art form. It needed much ornateness to prove it was done by hand … And once Art had consecrated the ornate, people who couldn't afford the Kelmscott prices were apt to want ornate books of their own. In 1892 … J. M. Dent, spotter of trends, envisaged the possibilities in a pseudo-Kelmscott, to be made on steam presses for issue to the ‘general reader’ in monthly parts at 2s.6d., with a Large Paper edition on Dutch handmade sheets for cognoscenti.
The text would be Malory's Morte d'Arthur …
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- Art and Commerce in the British Short Story, 1880–1950 , pp. 117 - 126Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014