This year marks the centenary of Francis Meynell’s Nonesuch Press, an endeavour which should be celebrated by any lover of fine book design. The centenary provides an opportunity not only to be reminded of the beauty and variety Nonesuch produced, but also offers the chance to reflect on Meynell’s unique and progressive approach to applying modern technology within the traditional world of fine press publishing.
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Francis Meynell was born in 1891, the same year William Morris started the Kelmscott Press. Just as socially principled as Morris – whose politics informed Meynell’s own – he believed that bringing together the best modern artists and harnessing commercial printing technology would allow high quality books to become affordable to a wider audience. He was an optimistic socialist who tried to provide public benefit in every venture he undertook. He passionately supported the Suffragettes’ struggles and during the First World War had been a conscientious objector – he was imprisoned and went on a hunger and thirst strike. He was never afraid of the ‘right’ fight. He championed and gave greater public awareness to worker’s rights, but unlike William Morris, believed that there was great skill and craft being employed within the modern factories.
Francis Meynell’s approach to life was a product of his progressive and influential family. Steeped in the arts and literature, the ‘Clan Meynell’ were considered important enough to be ‘blasted’ in Wyndham Lewis’ Vorticist publication Blast (along with The Post-Office, cod-liver oil, and the British Academy). His mother Alice was a well noted poet and essayist; his father Wilfred was an editor, designer and typophile. This instilled in Meynell, not only a love of words and design but also a vision for how to use them. From an early age he followed his father into publishing, and his socialist leanings led him to become a director of the labour movement newspaper the Daily Herald and editor of The Communist newspaper.
He recognised that the world had changed, and – possibly to Lewis’ surprise – believed that mechanisation would not necessarily lead to poor quality. It needed to be controlled and mastered, and part of that control was pushing for improved conditions for workers and building respect for their newly acquired skills. He believed, if used correctly, it could be the means to bring fine publishing to a wider audience and show that craft had a future in the modern world. His love of art and typography became an important focus, and his mix of socialist ideals and aesthetic sensibility stood him in good stead for his future career. Bertrand Russell once told him “I like you because you have much of the gutter-snipe about you – in spite of your spats.”
Meynell founded Nonesuch Press in 1923 to move beyond the exclusive nature of private press publishing that had been flourishing since Kelmscott’s first releases. He wanted Nonesuch to experiment and embrace variety rather than inhabit what he increasingly came to view as the staid world of fine printing. As Meynell put it, “I did not want people to be able to say at the first sight of our books, ‘Oh yes that must be a Nonesuch book’. I wanted them to say, ‘That's not a bad looking book’, and then to find that it was ours.” He set up the Press with his partner Vera Mendel and bookseller friend David Garnett from the basement of Garnett’s bookshop in Soho. He set out to achieve private press results within existing industrialised printing methods. Meynell wrote that “mechanical means could be made to serve fine ends; that the machine in printing was a controllable tool.” This enabled Nonesuch to be “the first to cater for a large, growing and unsatisfied interest in ‘fine books’ at less than the fine prices required by the great ‘private presses’.”
Colin Franklin, in his introduction to the 1969 book The Private Presses, wrote “the work of the Nonesuch Press is only briefly described in this book, because it may be regarded as the extension and practical application to commercial publishing ideas which had developed from work in the private presses.” He went on to say, “the point has been made that according to arts-and-crafts ideas a book should artistically be the work of one man. To draw a frontier, the printing press should be owned by that man or in his control. Beyond that, it is not a private press, so the Nonesuch books are not described here – which is of course no judgement upon their design”. Commercial production aside, was Meynell’s artistic vision, overall control and use of illustrators, typesetting and binding wildly different from Robert Gibbings? At a similar time, Philip John Schwarz in a piece for The Journal of Library History wrote, “the search for a universally accepted definition of private presses has gone on virtually since the time Gutenberg began his experiments with movable type. It is a question that has plagued the collector, bibliographer and historian alike.”
Definitions continue to shift and abound, but one certainty is that Francis Meynell’s Nonesuch Press managed to capture the visual essence of fine press quality while also innovating to create variety and volume. He wanted to produce books where readability was paramount and, as with all the best art directors, he used his skill to transport the reader into the world of the text. A J A Symons wrote in the book The Nonesuch Century – itself a Nonesuch triumph – “It was because Kelmscott was Morris’ Press, not because it was a Press, that it made fine things. Francis Meynell, who directs every detail of the production of Nonesuch books, and used printing firms as printing tools, is as much a press-master as Morris, even if not so precisely master of a Press.”
Today, many of the processes employed by Nonesuch to produce their books are seen as legitimate fine press methods. The technology of the time was still reliant on letterpress, although mechanically undertaken on an industrial scale, and further innovation came in the form of Monotype casting and the wider opportunity this gave for introducing variety. Francis Meynell and Stanley Morison had known each other since they were young men through Meynell’s father’s directorship of the publisher’s Burns and Oates. They developed a bond over their love and knowledge of type and, significantly, what could be developed and achieved. Meynell was suggesting a different approach to fine press publishing, one where he saw himself as an “architect of books rather than a builder” and he chose to use a range of not only typefaces, but printers, papers and artists to get the best results for the editorially well-chosen subjects explored. The Press was called Nonesuch because it set out to be like no other.
Meynell sourced an array of talented and influential artists who gave the press varying visual ‘voices’ and exposed the wider public to quality design in line with that being encountered on Frank Pick’s contemporary London Underground posters – and like Pick, Meynell was a firm patron of modern art and design. Copperplate etching artists like Stephen Gooden, wood engravers of the calibre of Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious and pen and ink illustrators such as the celebrated American commercial artist Edward McKnight Kauffer brought a vision and freedom to book decoration that had rarely been seen. The artists who worked with Meynell appreciated his passion and patronage. The work that they produced for the Press count amongst some of the best of their careers; from Nash’s Genesis, to Kauffer’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, to Ravilious’ The Natural History of Selborne. In fact, the Nonesuch Press once released a prospectus comprised only of its iconic printer’s device (a regal couple standing in front of a palace) in different styles and techniques by different artists and printers on different papers. No book to sell, just the visual quality and variety on offer.
A hundred years on, it is also important to remember that many of these artists were themselves at the forefront of innovation. They were part of a developing British Modernism, and if they looked back it was for inspiration rather than direction. As artists they were employing new techniques in illustration and printmaking under the same spirit in which Meynell was harnessing modern print production. This progressive mindset pushed the limits of what could be achieved. Today, Monotype operators and letterpress printers are seen as skilled people engaging in craft; and that’s not due to there being fewer of them. In 1923, these processes were as progressive as when Gutenberg first trialled his press, and they created possibilities that the fine presses now embrace as their own. The artists’ differing techniques and styles required a range of printing methods to compliment them. Printing firms like the Curwen Press, Oxford and Cambridge University presses and the Westminster Press (run by Francis’ cousin Gerald, publisher of the influential magazine The Imprint) were pushed to the limits of their skill and craftsmanship. Commercial printmaking techniques were employed to reproduce intaglio, relief and lithographic artworks – including the use of pochoir for a number of titles and autolithography for Marion Dorn’s wonderfully illustrated Vathek.
The progressive approach to fine press publishing that the Nonesuch Press set out to achieve is also interesting in light of the current challenges we face with artificial intelligence, particularly within the creative arts. The same issues around obsolescence and social change that disheartened William Morris and emboldened Francis Meynell are being debated and are rightly cause for concern. Once again, the question is not ‘what if’ but ‘what now’. Morris wanted society to reconnect with craft and simplicity in a world that was changing beyond recognition. Meynell wanted to embrace progress and show that craft could still exist within new forms of application. He approached production from a modernist perspective and saw that there could be opportunities through controlling it.
In 1901, the influential American architect Frank Lloyd Wright delivered a lecture titled ‘The Art and Craft of the Machine’. In it he set out the principles of the Modernist movement and his belief that progress and technology would lead to new art and craft. The danger he felt, lay in the machine not being controlled. It needed to be a tool for an artist’s creativity. Wright wrote, “the machine is a marvellous simplifier; the emancipator of the creative mind, and in time the regenerator of the creative conscience”. He thought it would lead to “the poor as well as the rich” having access to beautiful art and design. It is interesting to also see the parallels that were happening in the Bauhaus in the 1920s and the approach of the Ulm School of Design in the 1950s. The Bauhaus, of which Morris was an inspiration, also aimed to place craft at the heart of society. Its successor, the just as influential Ulm School of Design, moved further towards integrating industrialisation and design to produce craft in volume and variety – ultimately aiming to expose more people to its benefits. The development from Arts and Crafts socialism into a socialist approach to Modernism becomes clear, but the tension between mass production – which Morris supported – and social equality is ever present.
As both socialists and businessmen, William Morris and Francis Meynell possessed many contradictions, perhaps best summed up by Virginia Woolf’s infamous comment to Meynell, “The Hogarth Press may not make any money – but at least we did not publish The Week-end Book.” Meynell for his part said that Nonesuch “will make these books for money, and has no shame in that. We're not ‘Gentlemen Farmers’ but workers at our trade”. As with most fine press pursuits almost all the money made went back into financing the next book. William Morris wanted an approach to craft modelled on the medieval guilds whose workshops produced items of quality, but those items – like Morris’ wallpapers and books – were exclusively decorating the most well-off homes. Both men cared deeply about the social impact of their pursuits and to simplify the significance of their output to servicing commerce and fine taste, would miss the point.
The Nonesuch Press experienced all the same trials and tribulations as many fine presses. When the depression hit in 1929, the Press found the going tough. The same ethos that had brought success – inexpensive and accessible books of fine quality – led to leaner times. By 1936, the financial situation had worsened to the extent that Meynell needed to sell off most of Nonesuch to the Limited Editions Club of New York – although he retained a small number of shares and remained in charge of design. Nonesuch Press continued throughout the period of the Second World War by remaining editorially nimble, keeping overheads minimal and offering full scale discounts. In 1951, Meynell was handed back control of Nonesuch Press and released several significant, but less regular works, including the four volume Shakespeare ‘Coronation’ edition and the Nonesuch Bible. Meynell was knighted in 1946 for his services to trade, and his influence on art and design within the United Kingdom was significant. He advised on a wide number of art and design committees, including being President of the Society of Typographic Designers, and was a Royal Designer for Industry. Francis Meynell died in 1975, and fittingly the last book under the Nonesuch imprint was John Dreyfus’ 1981 biography A History of the Nonesuch Press. Over his illustrious and multifaceted career, he considered the Nonesuch Press to be his finest achievement.
The social and philosophical arguments around ‘man v machine’ and ‘tradition v technology’ will always exist, and in the same way mechanisation doesn’t necessarily mean repetition, humanisation doesn’t necessarily ensure quality. It could be argued, that to keep an artform relevant it needs to adapt, but tradition needs to be preserved and passed on; refined and reappraised. Interest in craft and the social and artistic principles associated with Morris’ Arts and Crafts methods resonate just as much today. The permanence and tactile nature of beautiful print will never become obsolete. In the same way that Nonesuch approached craft a hundred years ago, new processes like Risograph printing for example, or the application of photopolymer plates in letterpress have divided opinion – and will continue to. What is important, is that well-crafted books continue to be made and championed, and the appreciation of their design and beauty is passed on to the next generation so they can experience the same pleasure and excitement from art and craft as Nonesuch Press readers experienced a century ago.
Sarah Alford, ‘Ellen Gates Starr and Frank Lloyd Wright at Hull House’ in the Journal of Design History, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 282-299, 2017
Judith Bradfield, An Introduction to the Nonesuch Press, 1986
Colin Franklin, The Private Presses, 1969
Pat Gilmour, Artists at Curwen, 1977
Francis Meynell, ‘An appreciation by Sir Francis Meynell’ in E. McKnight Kauffer: memorial exhibition, 1955
Ashley Montagu, ‘The Nonesuch Press’ in The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol.44, No.2, 1983
Alan Powers, Art and Print: The Curwen Story, 2008
Hans Schmoller, ‘A History of the Nonesuch Press’ in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol.130, No.5316, 1982
Philip John Schwarz, ‘The Contemporary Private Press’ in The Journal of Library History (1966-1972), Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 297-322, 1970
A J A Symons, The Nonesuch Century. An Appraisal, a Personal Note and a Bibliography of the First Hundred Books Issues by the Press, 1923-1934, 1936
Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘The Art and Craft of the Machine’ in Brush and Pencil, May 1901, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 77-81, 83-85, 87-90, 1901
Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections, Colour and Autolithography in the 20th Century: Exhibition Guide, 2005