Happy Birthday Lord Dunsany

Happy Birthday Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett 18th Baron of Dunsany.

Born July 24, 1878

We celebrate your extraordinary creative life.

And the wonders of Elfland, Shadow Valley, Pegana and the Billiards Club.

We're grateful you shared your vision of these things with us.

"And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thoughts for the wonder of later years, and tell of happenings that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills."  --Lord Dunsany

Pegana Press StoryCast: The Ghost of the Valley

Mike took a little time off from printing Lord Dunsany: Lost Tales Volume 3 to record a new StoryCast.

We are doing The Ghost of the Valley, because it was one we had hoped to put in Volume 3.  Fortunately, just before setting type for this story, Mike found it had already appeared in The Ghosts Of The Heaviside Layer and Other Fantasms.

Although we were disappointed to lose such a wonderful story, we were grateful that Mike discovered it before investing the time to typeset, and even more importantly, before it became part of the book.

It's such a great story that we wanted to do a reading for our PeganaPress StoryCast series.  We have a copy of the typewritten manuscript and found as we were reading from both the book and the manuscript that there were one or two variances.  

If you don't already have a copy of The Ghosts Of The Heaviside Layer, then find a copy.  And if you do have one, read along with us. Headphones are highly recommended as the ghost voice may be hard to distinguish on laptop/computer speakers.

We hope you enjoy our newest StoryCast, The Ghost of the Valley.

Last Call for Poseidonis Cycle 1: The Age of Malygris

Pegana Press is pleased to announce that our most current book is about to sell out.  I am currently binding 8 copies for a customer.  And will be binding the last 10 copies in mid July.

If you want a copy of this hand bound letter press edition of Clark Ashton Smith stories (limited to 55 copies), please don't miss your opportunity.

The Real Reason Behind The Name Pegana Press

If you spend long enough collecting Dunsany titles in different editions as I have, you can run into curious differences between these editions.  Different illustrations between U.S and UK releases, changes in story order, names of illustrations, etc.  When I knew very little about publishing and the art of printing books these differences seemed magical and mysterious.  They also spurred on my desire to collect alternate versions of books I already had because of the hidden treasures, even small, I might find in them.

After acquiring the 1st American Luce edition of The Gods of Pegana I began to look at other editions.  The first English edition of 1905 by Elkin Mathews would of course have to be purchased.  Unfortunately the $500 plus pricetag prevented me from buying it even to this day.

But I stumbled upon listings for a 2nd edition released by Pegana Press in 1911 that appeared to be identical in construction and covers to the Elkin Mathews books I was familiar with.  The title page showed a different address for Pegana Press as the publisher than Elkin Mathews used.  I've never found another title ever released under the Pegana Press imprint and was very intrigued.  Why this one edition?  Why the difference when they appeared to be made by the same people?  There seemed to be an unusual story behind this book.

I decided then I would revive the mysterious Pegana Press to release new material when I was ready.

It seemed appropriate to give its Spirit more work to glue and mutter over.

I suspect now it had to do with a copyright issue of some kind as most of the differences between editions can be traced to .  But really, there's no mystery in that answer, and I prefer the enigma to the answer.

I still don't know the answer even though the curator probably knows and would tell me but somehow we're always busy with other matters when we communicate. I hope to ask him over a pint in a Dublin pub some day. 

As for us, the mystery and shadow of that Spirit ,we hope, will continue to imbue our books and breathe life into them for a time.

Mike Tortorello

Pegana Press 

(the younger)

The Gods Of Pegana 2nd edition pictured.

(we don't actually own this lovely book)

Roy A Squires

I picked up the copy of Lost Worlds from the library table where Mike had recently lain it.  I was hoping to get inspiration for a quote to pass on for the day.

Inside, I found this card, which got me thinking about Roy A. Squires, and how much his work has inspired the work of Pegana Press.

When I read the words on the card, I am taken back 25 years. In those days we were very young, newly married and Mike was working in a recording studio which no longer exists, but which at the time hosted it's share of well known musicians and producers like Steve Miller, Randy Meisner, Queensrÿche, and Terry Brown.

The card included with the sale of the book was a nice touch, which  is appreciated even more now, when I see it tucked away like a snapshot in time.  I like the line which reads, Cordial regards and Good hunting, Roy.  It reminds me of how it used to be for collectors without the resource of the internet.

In the 1980s and 90s, it was amazing to walk into a book store, and know that you were on the brink of pure potential.  Books you had been seeking for years, might suddenly pop out from the shelf.  And every town had at least one used book store. Everywhere we went, the first priority was to find the local bookstore.

 Soon after we were married in 1984, and while we were still in college, we began dreaming about our library.

Mike bought a used copy of Bookman's Weekly which had an article written by Roy A. Squires. After reading it, he wrote for a catalog.

Mike recalls that a lot of what Mr. Squires sold came from personal collections of authors and friends that he knew so even the catalog is filled with little gems, insights and background of the people associated with these books.

More from Mike:

We have a fair amount of his chapbooks--tidy clean work.











And this book...

Clark Ashton Smith - The Hill Of Dionysus - Pacific Grove 1962

While my personal design tendencies are more ornate than Squires, he inspired me with his dedication to publishing lost works resting forgotten in boxes and filing cabinets and his desire to keep the hand-craftsmanship of the book arts alive.  The absolute precision of his printing is something to aspire to but takes many years to realize; and which I am still far from achieving.

I am astounded years later remembering how cordial and willing he was to help build my young library even with (at the time) fairly inexpensive copies of books. I had no idea then of the world he lived in and the people he knew and had collaborated with over the years.  He was a living repository for us that will always be missed but never forgotten.

This Week At Pegana Press

We are happy to report "The Age of Malygris" has reached the halfway point of its press run and we expect it to sell out before long.  If you are interested in a fine press edition featuring our favorite magian Malygris don't wait too long to secure your copy.

More information is available on our website Pegana Press.

Our thanks to the collectors around the world who have helped support this edition.  We hope to complete the Poseidonis stories later this year in a companion volume "The Age of Ending".

In other press news, things are progressing nicely on Lord Dunsany Lost Tales Volume 3.

And we were honored to read in Michael Swanwick's Flogging Babel that he and Marianne were enjoying Poseidonis Cycle 1 - The Age of Malygris.

Our thanks for all the customer feed back we've gotten on our books.  If you'd like to write a customer review there are two ways to do it.

You can click on the Customer Reviews tab on the blog, and leave your review in the comments (where we will retrieve it and post it to our review page).

Or you can email Pegana Press through the contact form in the sidebar of this blog or on our website.


Have a great week-end

Mike & Rita
Pegana Press

Pegana Lost

Dunsany Study Magazine  Pegana Lost Vol 14  May 2014 Edited by Oto Mitani

We just received the current publication from Pegana Lost, a wonderful Dunsany scholarly appreciation group based in Japan.  They have been active since the 1990's translating the work of Dunsany to share in Japanese.

It is a beautiful magazine, which includes scholarly articles discussing the work of Lord Dunsany and stories translated by Hiroshi Inagaki.

Their love of Dunsany's work is profound. Moments after Rita tweeted the release of The Emperor's Crystal orders began flooding in from Japan and kept me busy filling out customs forms! 

Dunsany helps us to embrace the Wonders of this journey we are all on together and Pegana Lost is doing noble work.

Our thanks to Mitani Oto (Editor of Pegana Lost) and Hiroshi Inagaki (Translator from English) for sharing the work of Pegana Lost and Lord Dunsany.

Our collection of Pegana Lost on the shelf