New For 2020: Pegana Press Podcast

Several years back, we tried doing a Storycast, where we read rare stories.  We tried posting them on our blog and website, but didn’t really have the proper platform to do it.

Over time this idea has been resurrected in two ways.  One is where Mike Tortorello in partnership with Daven Tillinghast creates audio stories with music.  You can find out more about that on Dreamer’s Tales on Patreon .

The second evolution of Storycast comes in the form of a podcast on anchor . fm.  We’ve just put out our first episode.  You can listen on Pegana Press Podcast 

We hope to make this a regular thing and plan to release two episodes a month for now.

We invite you to join us.

Designing Paris

Paris, A Poem by Hope Mirrlees was the first book printed at Pegana Press. and it was released in 2010, well before I became involved as the binder and general dogsbody for the press.  I wanted to find out more about those early days back when Mike was still working a day job and setting type in the middle of the night, and to hear what went into the making of Paris.

The following post is a discussion between Mike and Rita and is presented as an interview...



Let's talk a little bit about this first book project.  Why did you choose this particular work?

I was intrigued by the fact that Lud-in-the Mist, considered to be a classic work, appeared to be the only fantasy written by Hope Mirrlees, I started looking around to see if she'd written anything similar that I could print and found Erin Kissane's website, Hope Mirrlees on the Web, where she talked extensively about "Paris".

The poem itself was a travelogue of the city within a 24 hour period from sun up to sun up.  It is layered with double meanings and puzzles intentionally written into it, reinforced visually by the typography. The poem touches on the history and nuances of Paris, current politics and religion, and the exotic life of the City of Light. Capturing its essence captivated me as well.

"Paris" had become a forgotten work and hadn't been reprinted in its original form since 1919,  so I felt that it was a worthy work to print and share with the world. The work itself is so complex and beautiful in its use of language to describe the city of Paris in a slice of Time. "Paris" was also the the first to absorb and reflect French Modernism literature and had a profound influence on  poets like T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound, shaping Western Modernist literature as we know it. So it also had an historical relevance that I felt should be captured on paper.

Why didn't Paris remain in print?

Paris became an inspiration to modernist poetry, but through her own preference she chose to suppress it.  Michael Swanwick covers her personal life and her motives in his book Hope-In-The-Mist The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees available from Temporary Culture 2009.

Can you say a little about the printing process?

I copied the typography exactly, working from a scan of the original I found on Erin's website. This book is so rare, that it's difficult to find a copy anywhere, unless you know which collection it resides in.  There were also detailed instructions written by Hope for the typesetting of this book.  She really had a vision of what she wanted to convey through the typography.

I know you always put a lot of thought into choosing elements like paper, type, and ink...

I tried to match the original typeface from the scan.  I matched it as closely as possible and cataloged what I would need.  Italics, bold, different sizes and French diacritics.  I spent a lot of time finding the right font to reproduce it as close to the original as possible because of the historical importance of the typography.  Hope and Virginia Woolf spent a long time working on the typography and I tried to replicate that knowing how important it was to be visually laid out correctly to Hope's specifications.

I wanted to use a French paper and chose an art paper because it's an art poem.  The paper I chose is normally used for watercolor painting, but I chose the paper by how it felt.  It was a "feel" thing with the paper.

The ink I used is blue because the flag for the city of Paris is predominantly Blue and Red, and the blue seemed appropriate.
  
I want to ask you about the design you chose for this book.  Although you replicated the original typography, you weren't going for an exact copy of the original put out by Virginia and Leonard Woolf at the Hogarth Press.  The exterior of this book is different from the original and you also chose to add a section in the back of the book with images.  Can you talk about that?

The text is very visual.  The typography is a visual of what she was writing about.  She even made notes of how the signs looked to her and then had it set that way at Hogarth.  It was like a word version of a vacation travelogue.  I had a vision of an old travel journal.  Blue is one of the two dominant colors in the Paris flag, so I chose to continue with the blue as the cover.

Hope's notes make it a scholarly book and the images seemed to support that.  I included the notes and some images from Paris in that era to continue the travelogue feel.  I had Owosso Graphics make laser etched magnesium plates for each image and then they were letterpress printed using the same blue ink I used for the text.

Recently someone on Instagram tagged our Paris as cyanotype, because of the blue images.  That's a different process, but they do kind of resemble that look.

I imagine between the attention to replicating the type, and setting it meticulously by hand, this book took longer than most to print.  Can you remember how long it took you to print the whole thing?

I think it took me about a year and a half to finish.  I really came to appreciate this work through the process of setting the type for it.


If you would like to learn more about Paris A Poem by Hope Mirrlees from Pegana Press please visit our website 

Pegana Press - Since 2009

This month, we celebrate 9 years in business.  It was in July of 2009 that Mike acquired the Vandercook sp15 and Pegana Press came into being.

Since then Mike has printed 13 books and 3 broadsides.  Book number 14 is currently in the works.

To celebrate our 9th anniversary, we are offering A discount on selected books.

Paris, A Poem by Hope Mirrlees was the first book printed and released at Pegana Press.

The Men of Baldfolk by Lord Dunsany

Zothique Prism 1 and 2 by Clark Ashton Smith

These books are specially priced at 20% off the regular price through the month of July.  You can find them on our website.

A Fold In Sime

I've just completed the next to last step for my part of the work on The Men of Baldfolk and Other Fanciful Tales by Lord Dunsany.  While listening to baseball on the Grundig windup radio I've been preparing the Sime watercolour illustration for the edition.  This entailed measuring six inches and then scoring each with a bone folder.  The sheet is then folded in half and smoothed down with the bone folder with wax paper over it, otherwise the paper gets marks on it. From there each sheet is trimmed to about 6 3/8 inches.  This leaves a small tab which allows it to be sewn into the book signature.  I then trimmed the eighty signatures to a nice even edge.  Whew!
The only thing left for me to do now is print the spine titles.
This deluxe limited edition is available for preorder and can
be viewed on our website.  We invite you to visit and look
around.

A Journey Through Paris

Paris  A Poem  by Hope Mirrlees.

Paris  A Poem   by Hope Mirrlees/Pegana Press 2010

This was the very first book published at Pegana Press.

Mike had just acquired the Vandercook SP 15 press, and had printed a poem as broadside by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett (later known as Lord Dunsany).  The poem titled Rhymes From A Suburb, first appeared in Pall Mall Magazine in 1897.

But the goal of Pegana Press was to create books for collectors.  The kind of book that Mike as a collector and lover of books, would want to have in his own library.

One such book in Mike's collection is Lud-In-The-Mist by Hope Mirrlees.  I remember the first time I read it on Mike's recommendation.  I was entranced.

In researching Hope Mirrlees, Mike ran across a scan of the original version of Paris A Poem.  Here was a work with an interesting history.  What's more, The original typography of Paris had never been duplicated before, which is an important part of the poem.  Those copies of Paris were printed by Virginia and Leonard Woolf at the Hogarth Press.  A search for a Hogarth copy yielded no results, when Mike first undertook printing the poem, although later he found one copy on line for sale.  They wanted $12,000.  A rare book indeed.

Mike contacted the estate and was given permission to print Paris.  Because Mike was still working a day job, he worked on the poem at night and on his days off.  Hope Mirrlees used the layout of typography to enhance the poem as she takes us on a journey through Paris in 1919.  Mike worked diligently to recreate that design, so as to be as true to the author's vision as possible.

This book is quite striking.  Printed in blue ink on white french paper.  Bound in Seattle at Ars Obscura by master binder Joel Radcliffe.  Paris is currently on sale through the end of October at Pegana Press Books.  If you've been curious about Paris, don't miss your opportunity to own a copy of this important and beautiful work of modernist poetry.

"Mirrlees was a genius and it showed in Lud-In-The-Mist and in everything she wrote.  Reading Paris is like solving a Chinese puzzle."  --Mike Tortorello

To get a real feel for this book, please listen to our audio introduction.  Our recommendation is that you listen with head phones or good speakers so as to fully experience the journey.

Paris A Poem at Pegana Press Books

The Harvest of the Blade

The parent sheets of light green paper being cut down for the "Old Man of the Sea" illustration page from The Golden Key by George MacDonald.  Every page of our books are cut by hand with this nifty german guillotine whacker.  Once I get the metal dies back they'll get locked into the press and the pen and ink illustrations will be printed.  More information about this limited letterpress edition of The Golden Key and how to pre-order can be found here.

A sheaf  of Lord Dunsany material I've been reading through in consideration for the next Lost Tales edition. All will be unpublished or uncollected.  It's hard to choose because Dunsany's writing is all so enjoyable. Even his reviews of stage productions from the early 1900's have a lyrical quality and depth that is hypnotic.
More information about the Lost Tales series can be found here.

Origami Dreams

I've been folding the finished pages of The Golden Key.  Approximately 1200 pages get folded by hand (no machines here) and then they will be gathered into their signatures and trimmed (one at a time as well) laborious but strangely soothing work.  From there Rita will begin sewing the signatures together to prepare them for binding.  We've got some samples of endpaper we are looking at and they are quite spectacular.

Here is the prelude for The Golden Key which I printed yesterday morning before it was too hot to work in the pressroom.  Macdonald originally used this quote as a chapter heading in Phantastes and I found it appropriate for the new book and for life in general.  More information about this limited edition and how to place a preorder can be found here.

I've begun recording the narration for an audiobook version of the Lost Tales series by Lord Dunsany.  We hope to release this before the end of the year.  Working with a local musician to provide atmospheric color behind the stories.  This will provide fans of the stories to hear them dramatized and to view them from a different perspective or be their companions at work or on a journey.

Been reading more unpublished Dunsany stories for the next book which I will begin in the fall.  Lots of really good material as candidates and I will of course try to bring out something special for you patient Dunsany collectors out there.  That's all for now, back to work for us.  We wish you well.

Paris A Poem

Mike first acquired his press in 2009, and while researching forgotten material to bring back to print, he found Paris A Poem, which became the first book project for Pegana Press.

The history of this work is fascinating.  Written by Hope Mirrlees in 1919 who is best known for her book  Lud-In-The-Mist, the poem has been cited as a lost masterpiece of Modernism, pivotal and influential to those poets of fame to follow.  Mirrlees becomes our eyes and ears for a journey through the wonders of the metropolis.

It was first published at the Hogarth Press by Leonard & Virginia Woolf, and typeset to exact specifications as directed by Hope Mirrlees.  Movement becomes personified by typographic layout, guiding us through the city.  The gardens of Tuileries are laid out on the page to represent their exact spacings; Lilies of the valley become one on the page.

Portions of Paris A Poem were later suppressed by Mirrlees herself, and the originals have now become virtually unobtainable, locked away in museums and private libraries.  After reading the poem and its history, it seemed important to bring this work back to publication in as close to the original typography as possible.

Working from a scan of the original, the spacing and typography were laboriously reproduced by hand for the Pegana Press edition by Mike.  This process took about a year working in the middle of the night and on his days off, while also employed full time at a local business in town.

In 2010 Pegana Press finished printing Paris A Poem by Hope Mirrlees.  Fifty copies were sent to Ars Obscura in Seattle to be bound by master binder Joel Radcliffe, who provided us with the beautiful blue cloth binding with gold lettering and inset cover image designed for this edition by artist Brian Dunning.

But what became of the unbound copies?  Recently Mike decided to offer them in an alternate binding with newly printed paper covers in gray French Canson heavy stock paper with the original cover image printed in reflex blue ink.

I am hand sewing each with white linen thread using a Coptic stitch.  Then adding a touch of glue to add durability to the stitching.

You may find both editions of Paris A Poem by Hope Mirrlees, published by Pegana Press on our website.  We invite you to take a look.

Now I'll leave you with a quote from Paris A Poem.


The Seine, old egotist, meanders imperturbably to-
                                                          wards the sea,
Ruminating on weeds and rain...
   If through his sluggish watery sleep come dreams
      They are the blue ghosts of king-fishers.

--Hope Mirrlees