THE OLD SCHOOL PRESS

The making of Henry James Sat Here

By the middle of May, the materials for the first 50 copies had gone today to Woolnough Bookbinding. I had been to see Brian Settle to discuss the binding and in particular to talk about the Japanese-style binding that I wanted: essentially a four-sided box with fold-down sides.

Given that I wanted to restrict the zigzag to just the poems and images, it left the question of where the title and colophon pages (if pages they are to be) would go. When I got the dummy of the box from Brian it confirmed my hope that I could have them pasted down on the insides of the two big flaps, with a third sheet between them. Then I must wait for the final copies to arrive - oh, and I changed the cloth colour at the last minute too!

You rarely see the entire edition. This is half. It arrived during the heat-wave in July 2006 and by the next day all these copies were gone to customers, poet, and artist.