Sometimes serious publications make you wonder: where do collectors get their information from?
Inadequate research results in silly mistakes or peculiar errors.
I recently came across the three-volume catalogue of a huge Rubáiyát collection of over 7000 editions: Edward Fitzgerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Related Materials. The John Roger Paas Collection (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2023). The Vale Press edition of Fitzgerald's poems is included as number 4262 (Text, part II, pages 542-543).
The description begins with an introduction about the publisher:
Charles Ricketts (1866-1931) was known in his lifetime as an illustrator, book designer, typographer, and theatrical designer. Although also a painter, his strength was in wood engraving, and after working as a commercial artist he and his lifelong companion, Charles Shannon, set up a small press in Chelsea (London), where Ricketts exercised complete control over all aspects of production. Gaining the financial backing of William Llewellyn Hacon, in 1896 Ricketts and Shannon established The Vale Press, which soon gained a reputation as one of the leading private presses at the time. Following a devastating fire at the printer's in 1904, which destroyed all of Ricketts's woodblocks, the partners decided to close the firm.
Halfway through the second line, the text begins to derail: Ricketts and Shannon did not 'set up a small press in Chelsea'. Although they lived in Chelsea, at The Vale, and used this name in their publications, the press at their home was Shannon's lithographic press, not a typographic press. The texts for their art portfolios, books and their magazine The Dial were printed elsewhere, and since 1890 they preferred to have them printed at the Ballantyne Press in Tavistock Street (Covent Garden).
Although the first books appeared in 1896, the firm was founded two years earlier, in 1894. Ricketts and Shannon did not establish The Vale Press. Officially the publishing firm was called Hacon & Ricketts, while the papers were signed by Ricketts and Hacon.
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| Publisher's mark in Milton's Early Poems (1896) |
Milton's Early Poems, the first book printed at the 'private press' (a definition they did not use), was decorated with a publisher's mark that included the first letters of the names Ricketts and Hacon, while earlier they had used one that included the initials 'R' and 'S' (see the colophon of Hero and Leander, 1894). Although it has been said that Shannon was involved in the design of the frontispiece of the Milton edition, it is impossible to say what his contribution consisted of, if any.
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| Publisher's mark in Hero and Leander (1894) |
The last line of the introduction consists only of false claims:
Following a devastating fire at the printer's in 1904, which destroyed all of Ricketts's woodblocks, the partners decided to close the firm.
The fire was in December 1899, it destroyed a part of his blocks (mostly those for a planned 39-volume Shakespeare edition), and it was Ricketts's decision to close The Vale Press, which happened in 1903, after which he privately published the press's bibliography.
From these errors in a 113-word introduction, we can infer that no major study on The Vale Press was consulted, the words must have been cobbled together on the Internet without fact-checking.
