A Short and Beautiful Life

The Books, Writers and Artists who made the Shakespeare Head Press

Rita Ricketts

• Publisher: Unicorn
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781911397298
• eBook ISBN: 9781911397809
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Few have heard of the Shakespeare Head Press, although it ranks alongside William Morris's Kelmscott, Emery Walker and Cobden-Sanderson's Doves, Eric Gill's Golden Cockerel and St John Hornby's Ashendene. Its origins date to the 1860s, when a young Arthur Henry Bullen, dreamt of printing the whole of Shakespeare. Making his dream a reality, Bullen founded the Shakespeare Head Press in 1904 in an old Tudor house, where Shakespeare would have been a guest.There are many backstories associated with the Shakespeare Head Press and of the perennial dashed hopes of small presses', which plagued Bullen. When the Press passed to Basil Blackwell (1921), Bullen's mantle was assumed by the scholar-printer Bernard Newdigate. For twenty years, he produced a series of finely printed books, yet these were not commercially successful. Blackwell blamed the commodification of literature, and the metamorphoses of books from handcrafted works of art to manufactured objects.A Short and Beautiful Life reconstructs the lives of Bernard Newdigate and A.H. Bullen, and that of the Shakespeare Head Press. For Sir Basil Blackwell, 'the exact record of events was secondary to the universal truths it served to illustrate.' And there is something remarkably contemporary about them.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword – Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian
• Preface – Rita Ricketts
• Section 1: A.H. Bullen: His life and early works
• Section 2: Bullen’s Shakespeare Head Press in Shakespeare’s Birthplace
• Section 3: From Avon to Isis, the Shakespeare Head Press goes to Blackwell’s of Oxford
• A Bibliographic guide to SHP publications
• Sources and Notes
• Endnotes
• Index
• Image Credits
• Copyright