UTOPIA

Chelsea: Ashendene Press, 1906. ONE OF 100 COPIES on paper, of which 80 were for sale (and 20 on vellum, 15 for sale). 287 x 195 mm. (11 1/4 x 7 3/4"). 161, [1] pp.
Publisher's holland-backed blue paper boards with black printed titling on spine. Initials designed by Eric Gill. Printed in red and black in Subiaco type. Front pastedown with bookplate of James Curle. Hornby 22; Tomkinson, p. 6. ◆A couple of corners a little bumped, but A VERY FINE COPY, the text clean, fresh, and bright, with only the most trivial imperfections, and the original binding with few signs of wear.

This is a just-as-it-should-be copy of an especially handsome Ashendene production, with elegant initials that constitute one of Eric Gill's earliest commissions. Calling it "a marvellous book," Franklin includes the "Utopia" in a group of five Ashendene productions of medium proportions (mostly small folio) "which in scope and skill have as much appeal as any Ashendene books." This is the first Ashendene with marginal notes in red, and the Subiaco type used here was the first to be produced especially for the Ashendene Press. Our printer C. H. St John Hornby, in consultation with Sidney Cockerell and Emery Walker, decided to create a typeface based on that employed by Sweynheym and Pannartz, who had printed the first books in Italy at a monastery in Subiaco (which inspired the type's name). Walker and Cockerell took photographs of the British Museum's copy of their Cicero "De Oratore," and used that as a model for the design. The punches were cut by E. P. Prince, and the fount cast in Edinburgh. The fee charged by Walker and Cockerell for creating one of the foremost types of the private press movement was £100--a considerable bargain, as Hornby was the first to acknowledge. It is becoming harder and harder to find Ashendene books in holland-backed boards that are so well preserved as seen here, with no significant wear or fraying to the cloth, and with virtually pristine text..