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A title from The Old School Press The Phoenix A translation by Eddie Flintoff, from the Latin of Lactantius, with pochoir by Peter Allen | |
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One of Peter Allen's pochoir illustrations
About the book When he sent me the manuscript for Punting to Islip which I published in 1994, Eddie Flintoff enclosed his translation – the first for almost a century – of the poem De Ave Phoenice by Lactantius. The Phoenix is an early indicator of the kind of religious revolution that was going on in the time of Constantine, the very era that saw Christianity's ascent as a major world religion. Roman religious feeling was searching its way towards a philosophical reinterpretation of the old myths and legends, hoping to stabilise ancestral ways of thought that were looking increasingly threadbare, by reinterpreting them as moral allegories. Lactantius was an early Christian theologian and professional rhetor, who attempted to align Christian symbolic teaching with aspects of the old culture, claiming that the church would be the inheritor of the best of classical culture. His claim that Christianity was the true heir of Roman civilised ideals must have seemed no more than bare-faced cheek in the fourth century when he was writing. He offers the symbol of the Phoenix and its mythical rebirth from the ashes of its own death as a symbol of Christ – and thereby as a symbol of the soul's rebirth into immortality. The poem is vivid and colourful and provides a splendid opportunity to bring together a number of media – and contributors – in presenting Eddie's translation. Calligrapher Alun Briggs has written the text in a hand based on a mid fifth-century Italian manuscript, and it is from blocks made from his writing that the text has been printed. The poem demands coloured illustrations and Peter Allen has designed and pochoired five very striking three-colour full-page illustrations to accompany the text. Finally, to provide context to the poem, its subject matter, and its author, Dr John McGuckin, Reader in Patristic and Byzantine Theology at the University of Leeds, has provided a new introductory essay. The Press is following a long tradition: Aldus's heirs published a Lactantius edition including De Ave Phoenice in 1535, as did Claude Garamont in 1545. Another of Peter Allen's pochoir illustrations
About the edition The edition
consists of 150 copies. 135 copies have been bound in full black cloth by The
Fine Bindery, and a further fifteen sets of sheets were reserved for binders. The standard edition of the book is 213mm by 240mm on Zerkall mould-made paper.
The introductory essay is printed in 12pt Monotype
Perpetua italic, and supporting material in foundry Perpetua italic. 37pp. Ordinaries £63. | |
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What others have said about the book |
'A very attractive book, printed with blocks made from Alun Briggs's original calligraphy and with vibrantly coloured hand-stencilled illustrations', 'a wonderfully attractive book' |
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The story At the same time that he passed over the text of Punting to Islip, Simon Brett gave me a translation by Eddie Flintoff of De Ave Phoenice by the early Christian poet Lactantius. My first impression was that it was rather twee and hence I got on with Islip first, but I came back to The Phoenix and recognised its possibilities. I attended a lecture at the Holburn Museum in Bath on calligraphy and was impressed by one slide which showed a book that had been written in its entirety by a calligrapher – the idea struck me at the time that one could print a book from blocks made from a written text, but it was some time before I saw the potential of doing The Phoenix in that way. The next step was to contact a calligrapher. Through Ros Pritchard, I approached Jen Lindsay at the Roehampton Institute where the only Diploma in Calligraphy was still to be had. She passed me on to Alun Briggs who had done the Diploma course and who agreed to do a trial setting of one page for me in a hand of his choosing. He chose as his model a fifth century Italian manuscript, which looked very fine and we agreed that the whole text and the half title should be done that way. A couple of small corrections were subsequently made but the whole worked well and blocks were made after some work in the darkroom to get the density right so that his lines would not be thickened or thinned unacceptably when the blocks were made. I got a trial block made in polymer, but decided that it was too thick and so went for a magnesium block in the event. I had thought of printing the original Latin as a parallel text but decided that it would not be worth the effort, but I was keen to get some form of introduction to the poem and the poet. David Burnett suggested Dr John McGuckin, Reader in Patristic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Leeds, and I contacted him. It turned out that he knew Eddie quite well and was happy to draft a text. We agreed on 1,200 words which was about the limit of what I was happy to hand-set given the time – I had set my sights and plans on having a copy at the Whittington Open Day on the first day of the coming September. In the event I received a 3,500 word scholarly essay complete with footnotes and it was only after a while and a conversation that I decided that the essay should be kept as it stood and not edited down. This meant however getting the text machine-set. My collection of Perpetua founts suggested that I should use a small Perpetua and in the event I went for the 10pt Monotype italic in a double column (modelling it slightly on Simon Lawrence’s Agnes Miller Parker). Peter Sanderson at Whittington keyboarded and cast the text of the introduction, all the rest being hand-set in Stephenson Blake foundry type, except for the Monotype 30pt used here and there. The final element was the illustration. At the 1994 Whittington Press Open Day I had chatted to Peter Allen as he pochoired the poster for the day and I was keen to use pochoir in a book. My concern with The Phoenix was that the colours should be clear and pure and that there should be no hint of Tolkein in them. Peter agreed to do some sketches and when the six drafts arrived I was very struck by the way he had kept to the brief and produced something original and fun. The deal was struck for five of the six – the sixth, of the phoenix in her nest, didn’t work as well as the rest. Once I had printed the text on the relevant sheets they were packed and sent to Peter in Epinal in France for the pochoiring and then returned – intact fortunately. A trial of the title page looked rather elaborate and the final version was as simple as I could make it, giving in to a desire to do an all-caps title some time. The page rejected for the book looked fine for a prospectus and that is what was finally used. In John McGuckin’s original text there were a few headings and sub-headings which left the knotty problem of how to set them. I finally decided that they were so few that they would break the flow of text uncomfortably and, assuming that their precise position was not essential to the reading of the text, I chose to adopt them as shoulder headings on each page. This allowed an even page layout and gave a little texture to the otherwise unadorned page – I had already decided that folios would serve no purpose. Printing was completed in August 1995. First showing was at the Whittington Press Open Day on September 2nd 1995 – two years to the day after the date of Eddie’s translation. |
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