Beelzebub Complains About Taxes In 1763

by Stephen J. Gertz

A scarce satirical hieroglyphic epistle dated April 1, 1763 and written by Beelzebub, one of the seven princes of Hell, has recently come to market. It was surely hell on the mail-carrier. Within, the Evil One complains about an excise duty on wines and spirits. People were going postal.

The letter, addressed to John Stuart, 3d Earl of Bute and Prime Minister of Great Britain (May 26, 1762- April 8, 1763),  mocks the 1763 cider tax of four shillings per hogshead  (a large wine cask holding approx. 300 liters) on apple cider or perry (pear cider), to be paid by the grower. It was imposed by the  rake, politician, and founder of the notorious Hellfire Club, Francis Dashwood - later Baron Le Despencer - who owed his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer to his dependence upon Lord Bute.

The tax was levied to pay down debts that the British government had accrued to finance the Seven Years War aka the French and Indian War. The tax was greeted with riots in the streets of London and Lord Bute's windows were smashed. The commotion led to Bute's resignation on April 8, 1763, a week after this engraved broadside was published. Highly unpopular, the new tax was eventually repealed in 1767.

The need for debt reduction an ongoing imperative after the War, in 1765 the British levied the American colonies with the Stamp Act, which required that printed material used in America be produced using British paper bearing a revenue stamp. That did not go over well and the reaction in the Colonies became the first instance of organized resistance to British rule, which ultimately led to the American revolution. 

In the letter Beelzebub suggests that the Earl might think of taxing other commodities such as bread, milk, beer and water, "for wh[eye] should the Vulgar (who are no more than Brutes in [ewer] Opinion) have any thing to Eat above Gr[ass] without paying Tribute [toe] their Superiors."

Hieroglyphic epistles, with emblematic figures substituting for words  as in the Hieroglyphic Bibles first seen in Germany in 1687 and later published in England and the United States to great popularity in the late 18th through 19th centuries, were a minor craze in Britain during the late eighteenth century. I'm aware of another example written by Beelzebub, from 1779.

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BEELZEBUB. Excise A Comical Hieroglyphical Epistle. London, Sold by I. Williams next the Mitre Tavern Fleet Street, April 1st, 1763. Engraved broadside, 13 3/4 x 10 1/4 inches (350 x 260mm).

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Image courtesy of Shapero Rare Books, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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A Checklist Of Goliard Press (London 1965–7)

by Alastair Johnston

Tom Raworth Working Bibliography Part II. 

Tom Raworth by Barry Flanagan (from ACT, Trigram Press, 1973)

If Matrix Press can be considered Raworth's incunabular period, the Renaissance flowering of his career as a printer began when he started collaborating with artist Barry Hall at Goliard Press in 1965. 

For those old enough to remember, the "Summer of Love" was a transformative time. As a teenager in England I divided my non-school time between marching with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, rehearsing with my rock band, protesting the Vietnam War and attending poetry readings. They converged occasionally, as when there were benefit readings in support of striking coal miners or teachers -- big rallies featuring poets (Tony Harrison, Tom Pickard, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Barry MacSweeney, Adrian Mitchell, Bob Cobbing, Tony Jackson, et al.) instead of agit-prop rhetoricians. Swinging England was turned on to poetry, and these poets were working class. If they went to college it was art school. If they listened to music it was rock on Radio Luxembourg, late at night. In 1965 the Wholly Communion event at the Royal Albert Hall featured Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti from the USA, and many European poets reading their poetry to a packed house. Christopher Logue, Adrian Mitchell and the Scots novelist Alex Trocchi also read, showing that Britain was producing powerful performance poets. I was most impressed with Mitchell and the Austrian concrete poet Ernst Jandl.

Within a few years the younger generation of British poets had infiltrated the establishment, so regulars on the poetry circuit like Logue, Patten, Pickard and Spike Hawkins stood up alongside Basil Bunting, Hugh MacDiarmid, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and William Plomer to read the poetry of Ezra Pound at the gala anniversary of the Poetry Society in 1969. I think it was at the Royal Festival Hall. Pound was too frail to attend but sent a note and then his works were delivered by the superb performers on stage including Bunting, Logue, Smith and Pickard.

More Americans came through Britain to read and some stayed: Jack Hirschman and David Meltzer because they were friends with expatriate printer Asa Benveniste at Trigram Press (established in London in 1965 and publisher of many of the same writers as Raworth, including Hirschman, Heliczer, Hollo, Meltzer and Raworth himself); others like the young Tom Clark to attend university (Raworth recalls, "I think he was a student of Jeremy [Prynne]'s at Cambridge, as Andrew Crozier was. They were at Essex probably doing their postgraduate stuff and almost certainly because of Donald Davie whose intention was to make the Essex literature department more interesting than Cambridge."). Clark stayed to ridicule the establishment of George MacBeth, Edward Lucie Smith, Peter Porter and Ted Hughes (in his 1979 roman à clef, Who is Sylvia?). Anselm Hollo was actively involved in the scene in London, bringing manuscripts to the press. He and Raworth would be joined with John Esam in the Trigram Press book Haiku, 1968.

So Outburst had set in motion a whole trans-Atlantic migration, not only of writing, but of writers. Charles Olson came through: Raworth found it hard to take the endless monologue. Ginsberg and Corso were caught smoking hash on a train to Newcastle and told the guard they were smoking Turkish cigarettes (at the time Turkish cigarettes contained 1% hashish, as I discovered in Istanbul). Through the American publisher of Jargon, Jonathan Williams (who had come to England for a year), Raworth met Barry Hall. The meeting of Raworth and Hall brought the work to a new artistic level.

Announcement for a show of Barry Hall's paintings at the Batman Gallery, San Francisco, 1961

Raworth's partner, Barry Hall (born in Westminster, 1933), was a commercial engraver (having served a 7-year apprenticeship to learn the trade) and an artist. When he died in 1995, Raworth wrote his obituary for The Independent. He had studied at St Martin's School of Art in London, before going to San Francisco in 1961 for a year, where he exhibited at Batman Gallery and met the poets & painters of the San Francisco renaissance (Batman's publicity was printed by Dave Haselwood at Auerhahn Press). He returned to England, and, as Raworth wrote, "we co-founded the Goliard Press in 1964 in a ramshackle stable in West Hampstead, and hand-set, printed and published books by Elaine Feinstein, Charles Olson, Aram Saroyan and others: many for the first time in Britain. Other small presses benefited from our skills: we printed the first edition of Basil Bunting's Briggflatts for Fulcrum, and produced many volumes for Bernard Stone's Turret Books.

"Goliard was so successful that in 1967, through the efforts of Nathaniel Tarn and Tom Maschler, it came under the Jonathan Cape umbrella as Cape Goliard. Hall continued working, producing a list that included Neruda, Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn, J .H. Prynne, Gael Turnbull and Ted Berrigan, until one day, bored, he left the rollers halfway across a page of type, walked out, and went to America.

"For many years he was on the move. Breeding quarter-horses and making movies in New Mexico. Writing scripts in London. Filming Dale Herd's Dreamland Court in Los Angeles. Recovering from a severe illness in Newport, Rhode Island. Making a television film on Kerouac. Working again (briefly) as an engraver in London. Then he visited Africa, fell in love with Kenya, and moved there."

Elsewhere, Raworth wrote about the beginnings of Goliard: "In 1964 I met Barry Hall, one of the only two people I've ever been able to work with, and we decided to start Goliard. We got a larger press, a guillotine, a variety of type and set up in a cobble-floored stable off the Finchley Road. We worked together for a few years, then when Jonathan Cape wanted to get involved, I left."

Goliard Press books, London, 1965-7

Further light was shed on Goliard (and the difficulty of making a living as a small press) in a discussion about British poet Jeff Nuttall, when Raworth recalled, "Val, Barry and Jackie Hall and I ran into Jeff forty years ago at a party (home-grown marijuana, laboratory-made drink, candles and Dylan Thomas records). He asked us if we knew anything about a William Burroughs someone had told him of. We met a few times, he began to do My Own Mag, we were evicted, stayed for a while with the Hollos, then in December 1964 moved to High Barnet (a flat, strangely, in the street where the party had been). Jeff and Jane (and those four Calder-invisible children) lived a few streets away, and as Jeff passed our flat twice a day to and from his teaching job we spent quite a lot of time together. He got involved with Trocchi and the Sigma stuff, Barry and I struggled with Goliard. I wonder if anyone else remembers Priscilla and The Woolies. We saw one another less frequently after I left Goliard and we moved to Colchester: but we stayed in touch then, and through our years in the USA."

When I wrote commenting on the prolific output of Goliard during this time, Raworth replied: "How it mounts up. I'd really forgotten the amount of stuff we did in those basically couple of years before the Cape. I wonder we had time to drink and take drugs."

Goliard Press Checklist

1965 Broadside

Tom Raworth
Weapon Man
15 copies. Light olive green paper printed in black on front of folded sheet.
Notes: the image was reused from the cover of Outburst 2 where it was credited to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (It is a reversed image from Hans von Gersdorff, Fieldbook of Wound Surgery, Strasburg, 1519).

TR: The first item ever printed by Goliard was the small broadside Weapon Man, a thing of mine I wrote in the stick...

1966 Broadside
Tom Raworth
Continuation
Illustration by Barry Hall. 15 3/4 x 9 1/8" Cochin type
Handset, printed and published ... in an edition of 150, 25 copies numbered and signed, plus 15 copies printed on handmade Japanese paper.

Books

September 1965

Michael Horovitz
Nude Lines for Larking in Present Night Soho
7 3/4 x 6 1/5" 8 pp bond paper, stapled into flesh-colored (Caucasian) textured card stock. 36' Verona type on cover, four different text types.
Colophon:
Designed and printed by Barry Hall and Tom Raworth
Published in an edition of 160 copies in September 1965
Copyright Goliard Press  10a Fairhazel Gardens  London NW6
Note: (first book of the press).

TR: The first little booklet was Michael Horovitz' "Nude Lines for Larking in Present Night Soho". Nude was from mis-reading his writing and should have been "Rude". As far as I remember I did all the setting and it was all letterpress.

1965
Anselm Hollo
The Claim
10 1/4 x 5 1/8" 8 pages, sewn into plain beige covers with a printed dustjacket on speckled Japanese paper; yellow tissue endpapers.
Set in 12 point Goudy Old Face. Much better typesetting and printing than the preceding work. 150 copies of which 50 signed & numbered. Cover display in 36' Verona type. The image is a reproduction of a medieval woodblock from the Rosarium Philosophorum (1550) repeated 5 times in red.

Note:
 T.R. There was probably some nice japanese paper from time to time..
A.J. yes, cover of the claim by anselm. my copy signed "to Barry & Jacqui from Anselm" with a poem added, $8 thanks to peter [howard]
T.R.:  i think I have a rare unsigned one somewhere

1966 July
Charles Olson
West
9 7/8 x 6 1/2" 18 pp laid paper, sewn into coated paper with glassine frontispiece portrait and Japanese paper overlay, glued-on wrappers of brown Japanese paper. Title in 36' Verona type, text in 12' Caslon with Cochin italic.
Colophon: "This book has been set in Caslon Old | Face and printed by hand on Glastonbury | antique laid paper at the Goliard Press, | 10a Fairhazel Gardens, London NW6 | in July 1966. This edition consists of | 500 copies in japanese Nagaragawa | wrappers and 25 copies hard-bound, | numbered and signed by the author."

Notes: The frontispiece portrait of Red Cloud (supplied by Ken Irby), printed on glassine, has a guard sheet of translucent Japanese paper which seems to have its own "red cloud" in the paper.
Slight notes, with Duncan & Blaser manifestations intercut into scribblings from the Report of the Board of Indian Commissions (1870) etc., as the Big O says in the preface: "So I have here a much larger story than would appear."

TR: Olson bombarded us with letters about West: move this here, move that there, do this, do that -- until we stopped opening the mail, did the book the way we thought, and on publication received an ecstatic telegram of thanks.
(Second printing 1969)

1966
Elaine Feinstein
In a Green Eye
Photographs by Al Vandenberg
9 3/4 x 6 1/2" Cover title in Westminster type, perfectbound in coated wrappers. 36 pp of wove paper. Text in Caslon O. S. with headings in Verona.
500 copies on chromo; 30 numbered & signed.

Note: Today, Feinstein is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature: this was her first book. She began writing poetry influenced by Pound, Williams and the Objectivists, and was one of the first women to attend Cambridge University. Olson wrote her a letter defining "breath prosody" in which he famously addressed her as "Dear Mister Feinstein." Subsequently she wrote numerous poems, novels and five biographies, as well as plays and translations from the Russian. Vandenberg was a successful London photographer.

Not seen: Broadside prospectus, "For the baiting children in my son's school class..." 150 copies, of which 25 numbered and signed. Drawings by Johannes de Cuba. Pale tan paper printed in grey, browns, yellow-green and black.

Christopher Logue
Selections from a Correspondence between an Irishman and a Rat
3 3/4 x 6 1/2" 16 pp Glastonbury paper sewn into tan covers with a green wrapper printed in green and black. Poem set in 30' Placard Condensed (Monotype 1958). Cover drawing of rat & potato (?) by Hall(?)
150 copies*

*most destroyed by Barry Hall after a dispute with Logue. One of the worst situations a publisher can be in is to have a falling-out with the author after the book is printed. This happened famously with Jonathan Williams and Asa Benveniste over Imaginary Postcards at Trigram Press, and with Jack Spicer's circle over his Heads of the Town up to the Aether published by Auerhahn Press.

1966 broadside
Bill Butler
Twenty-four Names of God
large poster, tan paper printed in black and orange. Limitation unknown.



1966 broadside
Ron Padgett
Sky
white cardstock, folded to 9 x 4 1/8". A prose poem. Cochin type with a square of blue tissue paper glued on. 325 copies, of which 25 numbered and signed.

1966 Christmas
Aram Saroyan
Sled Hill Voices: 13 poems
4 7/8 x 6 1/2" Drawings by R. G. Dienst
30 pp wove paper sewn into plain card covers with a Japanese paper wrapper. Set in 24' Cochin italic, printed in multi colors. Imprint in 11' Engravers Roman. Drawings printed on tipped-in colored papers. 450 copies. Note: Minimalist pantheism from the minimalist poet. The author's first book.

1967 January
Tom Raworth
The Relation Ship
Illustrated by Barry Hall.

10 x 6 1/2" Set in Goudy Old Face
60 pp (unpaginated) of Glastonbury laid paper includes 3 illustrations and 3 additional leaves tipped in. (These tip-ins might have been conceived as tissue guards except they come after the images.) The images were offset-printed, then blind-embossed and hand-coloured. 450 hardbound of which 50 signed & numbered, plus 6 specially bound. Cover title printed in gold Westminster type on glassine wrapper.

Note: The major work of the press. Raworth's first book, and winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize from the Poetry Society of London. Second edition, without monoprints, Cape Goliard/ Grossman 1969

1967 February
Tom Clark
The Emperor of the Animals. A play.
6 3/8 x 4 3/4"
16 pp of wove paper sewn into yellow cover stock printed in brown and green with Ultra Bodoni caps. Set in Cochin italic, Goudy Old Face and Westminster (for stage directions). Colophon: 300 copies of which the first 35 are numbered and signed by the author and all other members of the original production, and contain two illustrations of the sets.

Note: This play was first performed privately in London on January 14th, 1967, with the following cast:
Edward -- Edward Dorn
Benedict -- Robert Creeley
Howard -- Charles Olson
Helga -- Panna Grady
Janet -- Helene Dorn
Norma -- Valarie Raworth
Sets & costumes by Barry & Jackie Hall
Music by Tom Raworth
Directed by Tom Clark

Note: Clark doesn't recall whether there were signed copies or not. He adds, "As to the details of production, that remains a secret between me and Tom R."

1967 March
Zoltan Farkas
The Baltimore Poems
7 1/4 x 6 1/4"
20 pp of laid paper with tan Glastonbury laid endpapers, sewn into white card covers with Japanese paper wrappers. Printed cover title. 500 copies of which 35 are signed & numbered. Set in Goudy Old Face. Illustrations by Richard O. Tyler.

Sheet of coated stock bound in with sepia photo of the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe (in Baltimore). Note: Anselm Hollo brought the manuscript to the press.

1967 broadside
Jack Hirschman
Wasn't It Like This?
12 1/2 x 7 1/2" 100 copies printed, 25 numbered & signed. 3 colours. Westminster type. The famous Flammarion engraving (from 1888) used here, was also used by the UFO club and for the spring 1967 benefit for International Times in London, that featured Pink Floyd, Lennon & Ono, Soft Machine and other bands. The event known as the 14-hour Technicolour Dream was held at the Alexandra Palace.

1967
Jack Hirschman
London Seen Directly
4 x 6 1/2" 16 pp sewn into yellow card cover with green Japanese paper wrapper, title printed in red. Text set in large Westminster printed in brown with yellow ornaments on each page. Re-uses Hall's rose from "Continuation" broadside.
150 copies of which 50 signed & numbered.

Note: The design shows the art nouveau influence which was big in the Swinging London/ Carnaby Street era.

1967
Various
"before your very eyes!" (cover title)
12 x 8"
Images lithographed in brown ink, printed on white card stock and stapled. Handset in Cochin and 24' Westminster Old Style.
Price: 7s 6d     $1     5 NF   "Unsolicited manuscripts will be burned without ceremony."

A magazine anthology, larger and more ambitious graphically than Outburst. Back cover reprints Corso's drawing of Nelson's column from Hollo's History. Hall's image of rat & potato overprinted to create abstract glyph with another splatter-like illustration. Contributions from Olson, Aram Saroyan, Hollo, Hirschman, Raworth, Ron Padgett (on his Max Jacob kick), & James Koller. "The pictures are from Rose Birth by William Jahrmarkt." (Billy Jahrmarkt was the proprietor of the Batman Gallery in San Francisco, which had shown Hall's work, and was the key location for the artists of the Beat Generation in North Beach and the Fillmore district. Unfortunately he was a heroin addict.)

(Note: Part III will contain Goliard Press jobwork).
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Tom Raworth Working Bibliography Part I: A Checklist Of Matrix Press (London 1961-4).
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A Checklist of Matrix Press (London 1961-4)

by Alastair Johnston

Tom Raworth Printing Bibliography Part I
 

Two hundred years ago when people were reading Shenstone, Bloomfield, Cowper and Collins (I am sure you know their works by heart), Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads to great public indifference.

Tom Raworth is known (in literary circles) as the pre-eminent English poet writing today. If you've never heard of him, that is the fate of artists who are ahead of their time. Raworth and his wife Valarie live on the south coast of England. He writes and publishes his work from small presses and sometimes slightly larger presses put out compilations of his writing (Collected Poems, Carcanet Press, 2003). He has also written a prose work, Serial Biography (Fulcrum Press, 1969), and recorded an LP of his reading, Little Trace Remains of Emmett Miller (Stream Records, 1970). Carcanet has also issued CDs of two of his works: Ace (1974) and Writing (1982).

The purpose of this post is to document his early work as a printer and publisher, a little-known aspect of his career, but central to his own interests as an editor and author.

Raworth is of Irish descent (his middle name is Moore and Thomas Moore is one of Ireland's most beloved lyric poets), but he grew up in London and is every bit a Londoner. As a printer too he can claim a pedigree. There was a Ruth Raworth who printed Milton's poems. The widow of John Raworth, she printed and published in Paul's Wharf, in the Parish of St Bennet, London from 1643 until 1655, then remarried Thomas Newcomb. John Raworth and his father Robert Raworth were also printers and members of the Stationers' Company in the early seventeenth century. 

Tom Raworth started Matrix Press in 1961. His first book was a tiny edition of poems by Pete Brown. He then issued three numbers of a magazine called Outburst. One, in collaboration with the Finnish poet Anselm Hollo and the American Gregory Corso was Outburst: The Minicab War, a humorous salvo in the class war. (The British satirical magazine Private Eye was launched in 1961.) Outburst became part of a network of avant-garde writers and aired the trans-Atlantic voices of Creeley, Dorn, Levertov, Fee Dawson, and Olson for the first time in Britain.

In an interview with Andy Spragg, Raworth explained his reason for starting his own press:


TR: I was following threads of people I liked in the Allen anthology [The New American Poetry, edited by Don Allen, Grove Press, 1960] ... Dorn, O'Hara, Creeley, Ginsberg and so on ... hard to do then in London (though Better Books and Zwemmers in Charing Cross Road were occasional sources) and I got used to having to write to the US for books. It crossed my mind that if I liked this stuff there might be a few others who would too. Around then, late 1959 early 1960, my father-in-law gave us a delayed wedding present of £100. I can't remember how I'd got interested in letterpress printing: it might be genetic ... years later I discovered my father had wanted to be a printer, and that an ancestor, Ruth Raworth, had printed one of Milton's early books in the 17th C. Anyway, I got a small Adana press first and then a larger treadle press. Offset printing was slowly taking over and letterpress equipment and type was not too expensive then. By late 1960/early 1961 I was in correspondence with Dorn, Creeley and others in the US and had met Anselm Hollo, Michael Horovitz, Pete Brown and others here. I printed the first small booklet (a couple of tiny poems by Pete Brown) on the Adana. I was working then in the Euston Road, at Burroughs Wellcome, the manufacturing pharmacists, and a photographer friend there, Steve Fletcher, had a brother who was an engraver and shared a workshop just off Oxford Street with a letterpress printer. They let me move the treadle press there so they could use it for small jobs and in return I could have access whenever I wanted. I'd met, and become good friends with, David Ball and Piero Heliczer (also a letterpress printer with his Dead Language in Paris). So I did small books of Dorn, Ball and Heliczer. And two and a half issues of the magazine Outburst. I had to set two pages at a time (only enough type for that) on the floor at night after work, carry it into town the next day, print the pages on the press with whatever colour ink was in use, go home, sort the type back into the case and start again.

BOOKS

1961

The first book of the press was Pete Brown Sample Pack. According to Raworth about 6 copies were printed. The poems were collected in Let Em Roll Kafka, Brown's book from Fulcrum Press (London, 1969). Best-known today as the lyricist for the rock band Cream, Pete Brown was Britain's first performance poet who earned his living giving readings. He was the first reader at the Morden Tower in Newcastle, one of the most important poetry venues in England in the 60s. "When John Lennon was still in art college Pete was turning on Liverpool with his synthesis of Beat poetry, Bop jazz, and British humour."-- Stuart Montgomery

1961
Outburst 1 

"published in the basement of 167 Amhurst Road * London E 8" 2s 6d
8 x 5", 52 pp, plus wrappers, stapled. Handset by Raworth in Gill Sans, Perpetua, Times Bold, Ultra Bodoni. Printed by Richard Moore and Sons. Cover photo (& 2 more inside) by Steve Fletcher.
Contributors include Anselm Hollo, Tram Combs, Robert Creeley, Fielding Dawson, Denise Levertov, Ed Dorn, Christopher Logue, Gary Snyder, Charles Olson, Michael Horovitz, Piero Heliczer, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Pete Brown, Gregory Corso, "Six Poems of Tu Fu" by Chao Tze-Chiang, et al. The advertisements for other little magazines, like Migrant, Yugen and New Departures, show how closely networked the avant-garde was in the 1960s. Gael Turnbull (1928-2004) was a key figure in the literary small press movement. A Scottish doctor he started Migrant Press in 1957 and continued operating it (with a mimeograph machine) after he moved to Ventura, California. He published many of the same poets as Raworth, including Dorn, Hollo and Ian Hamilton Finlay, whose The Dancers Inherit the Party is reviewed in this issue of Outburst. My copy has a blown-in newsprint ad for The Outsider published by Loujon Press in New Orleans.

Gregory Corso, Anselm Hollo, Tom Raworth
THE MINICAB WAR: the gotla world -- interview with minicab driver and cabbie
16 pp., unpaginated. 8.25 x 5".
Wrappers (white or blue wrappers). Staple bound, each page in a different color of ink.
Photo: Steve Fletcher. "This issue was done with the hope that it might give a benevolent lift to the satirists of the Establishment, who want very much to destroy a possibly REAL revolution by making entertainment of it, and England's future darker -- The Minicab War is the Synthesis of Class War."
Cover title: OUTBURST: THE MINICAB WAR | ELIOT BETJEMAN MACMILLAN | BARKER RUSSELL BORMANN | MINICAB DRIVER & CABBIE GOTLA
Signed: de la rue sykes o'moore

Notes: In June 1961 Michael Gotla of Welbeck launched a fleet of 400 minicabs on the streets of London, that carried advertising and undercut the well-established black cabs. Soon things turned nasty with hundreds of bogus phone calls to the minicab companies ordering cabs, black taxis hemming in the smaller vehicles, even vandalism as the situation escalated. In an editorial in August, under the headline “What the Public Wants,” The Times wrote: “It is fairly obvious that for many people in London finding a taxi has become too chancy and paying for it too stiff.” Minicab War contains spurious interviews with T. S. Eliot, John Betjeman, (Prime Minister) Harold MacMillan, George Barker, Bertrand Russell, Martin Bormann, & various cabbies. The perpetrators were Tom Raworth (O'Moore), Gregory Corso (De la Rue) & Anselm Hollo (Sykes). Martin Bormann was Hitler's personal secretary. It was believed he had escaped Germany after the War and fled to South America so he remained alive in British popular culture, resurfacing on the beach in Brazil with Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs in the Sex Pistols' movie The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir: Julian Temple, 1980).

   It's hard to date this undated pamphlet from 60 years ago. A rare book dealer described it as the first work of the press. Raworth thought it was a sort of Outburst 2 and a half, but the current of events suggests the end of 1961 rather than 1963. Also Corso was in London then, as Raworth recalls: "As I remember it, Allen and Gregory were in London on their way from Tangier. I remember that because they asked me if I could get a Minox film developed privately for them, which I did via Steve Fletcher and the Wellcome Foundation photo lab... The film was those naked images of them all in Tangier which Allen thought would cause a scandal if Boots Photos did the job. I have somewhere a clear memory and a photo of Gregory outside our basement flat in Amhurst Road, Hackney....  And we were well out of there by 1965. So it is quite possible the 1961 date is accurate though it certainly was after Outburst 1.  Maybe winter 1961 as Peter Cook's The Establishment club opened in October that year and is referenced in the text.

 "I remember in one of those 10,000 word biographies for Gale Research I did mine by addresses lived at, so there are some parameters there. For Minicab War I remember Anselm Gregory and myself sitting around in Anselm and Josie's flat in Cornwall Gardens, which was also where we made some reel to reel tapes of poems and distorted music. Those are decomposing somewhere in our stored stuff."

1963

Outburst 2 
8 x 5", unpaginated, 48 pp, plus wrappers, stapled. Some pages printed in colored ink.

Contributors include Douglas Woolf "Notes for an Autobituary," Paul Blackburn "Ritual IV," Leroi Jones (2 Poems), Fielding Dawson, Allen Ginsberg "To an Old Poet in Peru," Gregory Corso "Moroccan Writings," Larry Eigner (2 poems), Ruth Weiss (2 poems), Ed Dorn, David Meltzer "Heroes," Alan Sillitoe, Carol Bergé, Piero Heliczer, poems of Klee & Pentti Saarikoski translated by Anselm Hollo, "Irregular Ode" by Philip Whalen, "Four Poems of Tu Fu" by Chao Tze-Chiang et al. Artwork by Barry Hall, and photos by Irving Penn & Edward Steichen. Also contains 4 pp of book reviews and pointed commentary by Anselm Hollo.

1963
Piero Heliczer
& I DREAMT I SHOT ARROWS IN MY AMAZON BRA


Brighton: Dead Language & London: Matrix Press


11 x 4.5", 20 pp. Second edition, stapled illustrated wrappers, cover photo by Ph Mechanicus, Amsterdam. The image is reused from the last page of Outburst 2. 2 shillings 6 pence or 50 cents.

Notes: & I DREAMT I SHOT ARROWS IN MY AMAZON BRA is "a poem in eleven takes". "An earlier edition was dittoed by Anselm Hollo... My earlier inspiration little frogs and clay dams in the sound of leaves theres no need to worry about fulfilling a sign as signs necessarily fulfull themselves just as every thing has a pot dimension ie that emittor sends pot signals to pot man it is not necessary to the manifestation whether the emittor is under the influence".-- Author

  "Piero was living with us; he and I printed in on my treadle press which was off Oxford Street in Richard Moore's print-shop..." --TR

Spread from Piero Heliczer's & I Dreamt I Shot Arrows in my Amazon Bra

   Ambitious design using the gutter as a focal point. Each page has a black bar printed in the gutter which then continues across the fold. Large condensed Gill Sans headers make striking compositions. The text is in Perpetua with Times Bold. One leaf is printed on lavender paper.

1963
Anselm Hollo
History
24 pp., 6 1/4 x 5 1/4"; stapled in card cover, in yellow printed wraps, with images on yellow paper bound in. Set in Linotype Times, printed on Brookleigh Bond wove paper; price 3 shillings. Colophon:
This book has been set in Times Roman type. The two drawings are by Ken Lansdowne. Nelson is by Gregory Corso. A photograph of the cover illustration was supplied by Steve Fletcher.
All blocks were made by Barry Hall. 350 copies were printed.
Designed and printed by Tom Raworth

Note: AJ: History by Anselm seems like the transitional book from matrix to goliard, since barry made the blocks. i guess you met him at this point and decided to collaborate from then on? it looks like a really light impression, or else some of it is offset, and it says typeset and printed by you, so what press were you using?

TR:  It was done on my treadle press, the Adana, smaller than the later Goliard press one, which was stored at the print shop of Richard Moore, three floors up off Oxford Street where the deal was that he could use it for small jobs (his main press was a large Heidelberg). That came about because one of the other two craftsmen in the shop, the engraver (there was also a diestamper and process engraver) was the brother of my friend Steve Fletcher a photographer, who took the photo on the front of the second issue of Outburst.

   I must, if it says plates by Barry Hall, have known Barry and he did them at his work to save me money. If it doesn't specifically say that, then they were made commercially via Richard Moore. There were very few copies of History stapled and Anselm never includes it (I think) in bibliographies. Somewhere I have a box of pages and covers.

March 1964
Edward Dorn
From Gloucester Out
drawing by Barry Hall
12 pp., 8 3/4 x 6 1/2"

Colophon:
This book is set in Times Roman. There are 350 copies
Designed and printed by Tom Raworth, Flat 3, Stanley House, Finchley Rd, London NW11 20.3.64

Spread from Ed Dorn's From Gloucester Out, with illustration by Barry Hall

Green wove paper, stapled in white wrappers, with Hall's image in black and gold on coated stock, printed over a brown tint. Asymmetric design with large margins and running heads set off to the left of the text block.

Notes: Dorn visited England to teach at the University of Essex. He and Raworth became lifelong friends and collaborated later at Zephyrus Image, when both were living in San Francisco in the mid to late 70s.

August 1964
David Ball
Two Poems
9 x 5 3/4", 8 pp.
Drawing by Gene Mahon
Blue paper, stapled into brown wrappers
This book is set in Baskerville and Times Roman (cover title in Verona). Matrix Press, 3 Stanley Hse., Finchley Rd., N.W. 11.
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Tom Raworth Working Bibliography Part II: A Checklist of the Goliard Press, London 1965-7.
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Some Very Special Bindings From Gwasg Gregynog Press

by Stephen J. Gertz

THOMAS. R.S. Laboratories of the Spirit.
Newtown: Gwasg Gregynog, 1976

Number 5 of 15 copies signed by the author
and specially bound by Sally Lou Smith.

Crushed blue levant morocco (signed "S.L.S."), with morocco
onlays and gilt tooling, t.e.g., publisher's morocco solander box.

Esslemont and Hughes 01.

A rare cache of specially-bound books published by Gregynog Press/Gwasg Gregynog Press is coming to auction at Bonham's, March 27, 2012. 

THOMAS, Dylan. Deaths and Entrances.
Newtown: Gwasg Gregynog, 1984.

Number 14 OF 18 specially bound by James Brockman.  

Morocco with an abstract landscape design of brown morocco with
blue, grey, green, and yellow inlays with gilt blocked decoration, g.e.
Preserved in publisher's velvetine-lined morocco-backed solander box.

Esslemont and Hughes 9.

The  nine lots  include bindings by masters James Brockman, Sally  Lou  Smith, Alan  Wood,  and Desmond  Shaw.

WILLIAMS, Kyffin (illus.), ROBERTS, Kate.
Two Old Men and Other Stories.
Newtown, Gregynog Press, 1981

Number 12 of 15 specially bound copies by Desmond Shaw
with the frontispiece hand-colored by the artist.

Red morocco (signed "D.S."), in a Welsh landscape design
with cottage and stone wall after Williams.
In original velvetine-lined book box.

Esslemont and Hughes 5.

The Gregynog Press was established in 1922, the brainchild of two sisters, Gwendoline and Margaret Davies. Located at their house, Gregynog Hall, in rural mid-Wales, during the next eighteen years the Press gained a reputation for producing limited edition books of the highest order and ranked alongside the leading Private Presses of the day.

WHITMAN, Walt. Wrenching Times.
Newtown: Gwasg Gregynog, 1991

Number 6 of 30 specially bound copies.

Publisher's full calf, with an all design of mountains beneath
a blue sky made up of coloured morocco onlays.
Publisher's fabric-lined solander box.

Re-established in 1978 under the Welsh title Gwasg Gregynog, the Press continues the traditions of its founders, and in January of 2002 was registered as a charity.

REES, Joan Bowen (ed.). The Mountains of Wales.
Newtown: Gwasg Gregynog, 1987.

Number 6 OF 20 copies specially bound by James Brockman.

Transparent vellum boards with abstract design of colored morocco overlays,
preserved in original velvetine-lined quarter morocco solander box.

Esslemont and Hughes 16.

Gwasg Gregynog integrates the traditional crafts of hot-metal typesetting, letterpress printing and hand-binding by the finest craftsmen, into books featuring illustrations by leading contemporary artists, printing on handmade and mould-made papers, and the finest binding materials.

TAYLOR, Armold. Four Great Castles. Caernarfon. Conwy. Harlech. Beaumaris.
Newtown: Gwasg Gregynog, 1983.

Number 11 OF 15 copies specially bound by James Brockman.

Morocco gilt by James Brockman, with all-over design of castle battlements
in gilt and coloured morocco inlays, t.e.g. In original velvetine-lined quarter
morocco book box.

Esslemont and Hughes 7.

The private press books of Gwasg Gregynog are amongst the finest currently produced. While the intricate bindings of the specially-bound copies present a  visual feast, the books themselves display beauty and harmony and are designed not only to be read but to delight the senses, as well.

PARRY, Robert Williams. Cerddi,
Newtown: Gwasg Gregynog, 1980.

Number 14 of 15 copies specially bound by Sydney Cockerell
after a design by Joan Rix Tebbutt.

Green crushed morocco (signed "J.S."), the upper cover with a flower
pattern tooled in blind and gold, t.e.g., publisher's felt-lined book box.

Esslemont and Hughes 4.

The goals of the original Gregynog Press, as declared by the Founders, were:

• To introduce and encourage fine printing in Wales.
• To print certain literature, in both English and Welsh, which relates to Wales and  the Welsh, and which has been hitherto unavailable except in rare volumes.
• To print editions of the English Classics.
• To bind all work at the Press Bindery.

WILLIAMS, Kyffin. Cutting Images.
A Selection of Linocuts by Kyffin Williams.
Newtown, Gwasg Gregynog, 2002.

Number 14 of 20 copies specially bound by Alan Wood
after a design by Williams.

With an additional suite of 9 linocuts all numbered and signed by the artist,
preserved in publisher's solandar box case designed by Williams.

As for  the  Press's  resurrection, "the  moving  force  in  recreating  Gwasg Gregynog  was  Glyn Tegai Hughes…In 1969, with  encouragement  from  the  Welsh  Arts  Council, a  Gregynog  Fellowship was established…Subsequent  Gwasg  Gegynog  books,  produced  under the  direction  of  Eric  Gee,  with assistance of Daivd Vickers, have also included attractive work…" (Cave, R. The Private Press, p. 242, 2d ed.).

ESCHENBACH, Wolffram von.
The Romance of Parzival and the Holy Grail.
Newtown: Gwasg Gregynog, 1990

Number 10 OF 15 copies specially bound by James Brockman.

Limp calf suede with covers interlaced with stained vellum straps
laced through the covers with tablets of wood, bone and enamelled metal
 on spine.

Preserved in publisher's silk-lined solander box.

Esslemont and Hughes 21.

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Images courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.

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The Oral Respirator of 1851: C'mon, Peeps, Let's Breathe Right!

by Stephen J. Gertz

Clockwise, from upper left: The Hand Oral Respirator, held in the hand and applied to the mouth; The Orinasal Respirator
for the Mouth and Nostrils, chiefly used at night to remove cough
and promote sleep; The Fixed Oral Respirator for the mouth only;
The Nasal Respirator for the Nose only, of especial value for use at
night and in sleep. This instrument sits with much comfort on the Nose.

For the mid-19th century huddled masses yearning to breathe free (at nominal cost) this scarce and slim pamphlet advertises Mr. Jeffreys several respiration devices to be worn or held against the mouth. Though this leaflet appears to be a typical “quack” cure promotion, the device invented by Jeffreys was a legitimate medical instrument patented in Great Britain in 1836 (No. 10,287) and was the prototype for respirators still manufactured today.

Jeffreys’ respirators were “constructed on scientific principles, and designed to facilitate respiration by supplying to the air passages and lungs, when in a delicate or irritable state, air fresh and pure, but rendered so genial as to be soothing to them, however cold, foggy, and irritating the atmosphere might be,” thus providing relief to sufferers of a variety of respiratory ailments.

Within its pages are reprints of favorable notices for the Jeffrey respirators from standard medical journals, including Lancet (1851) and Medico-Chirurgical Review (1840). A price list at the back mentions lower-priced models for the Working Classes (less air, less filling?) and availability at no charge to the indigent (no air; the poor inhale the wealthy class's exhalations and make do).

Julius Jeffreys (1801-1877) was raised in India, studied medicine in Edinburgh and London and served as surgeon for the British East India Company in India. 

When he originally arrived in England from India in 1835, "Julius was distressed to find his now-widowed sister, Harriett, suffering from tuberculosis, and he was shocked by the general prevalence of lung diseases in England. In a time before there were medications to treat these ailments, mortality data from the period shows that, except during epidemics, the most common cause of death was lung afflictions.

"Julius invented a mask, which he called a 'Respirator." The mask worked by capturing moisture and warmth in exhaled air in a grid of fine metal wires. Inhaled air then was warmed and moistened as it passed through the same metal grid, providing relief to sufferers of lung diseases. The invention was patented and received patent number 10287, in 1836. The Respirator became very popular, and was mentioned in the literature of the day, including in the writings of Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens" (Wikipedia, in a well-referenced article).

Jeffreys was much interested in the relationship between climate and health and developed an early air conditioning system as well as heat-resistant clothing and headgear; he contributed to development of the Pith helmet widely used by British troops in tropical climes. 

Pith helmets were later used by American film comedians on the Road to Zanzibar. Readers will recognize the alluring anthropomorphic plant at center from L'Empire des légumes (The Empire of the Vegetables) by Amédée Varin, recently discussed here on Booktryst).

For the record, a pithy factoid: the helmets were made of the cork-like pith from the sola, Aeschynomene aspera, an Indian swamp plant, or A. paludosa, or a similar plant).

Jeffreys brought his ideas together in an 1858 book, The British Army in India: Its Preservation by an Appropriate Clothing, Housing, Locating, Recreative Employment, and Hopeful Encouragement of the Troops. Jeffreys was elected to various learned societies and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

The OED dates the word “respirator” from 1836, the year of Jeffreys’ patent.

OCLC/KVK locate only copy, at the Wellcome Library.

Better snap up this little rarity lickety-split in time for the next SARS outbreak or the End of Days (recently postponed but sure to be rescheduled, TBA). Then we can all walk around (or sleep) wearing one of the modern variations, what appears to be a terrestrial snorkel for sidewalk skin-diving - or a very weird sex-toy:

Image courtesy of MedSupplies101.

Want to get through the next avian flu epidemic, catarrh crisis, or HAZMAT hell fashionably but not all by yourself? Try his n' hers respirators. After all, the couple that resides together respires together.

Image courtesy of Deutsch-iStockPhoto.

Mr. Jeffreys is now rolling in his grave, wishing he'd thought of it.
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The Respirator for All Affections Attended With Irritation in the Air Passages as Colds, Cough, Sore Throat, Asthma, Consumption &c. [London]: J. & I. Tirebuck, Machine Printers and Lithographers, [1851?]. Quarto. 8 pp. Caption title, illustrations of the devices, including “the oral respirator as worn by Ladies and Gentlemen.” Modern cloth.

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Book image courtesy of James Eaton of Alastor Rare Books, with our thanks.
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