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| Frank Brooks, 'Portrait of Alfred William Pollard' [© British Library] |
In December 1899, he mentioned Ricketts's A Defence of the Revival of Printing (published June 1899) in The Library, the magazine of the Bibliographical Society:
The revival of printing is hardly in need of a defender, and Mr. Ricketts' "defence" is indeed chiefly directed against certain criticisms on his own share in it. Incidentally, however, he makes some excellent observations on the lines on which all sound printing and type-cutting must proceed, and his pamphlet is one of the pleasantest of the "Vale" books.
('Notes on Books and Work: Bibliography, Literary History, and Collecting', The Library, 1 December 1899, p. 111).
He had apparently received the book soon after its publication, because in July he gave it to the bibliographer Robert G.C. Proctor (1868-1903) to read. Proctor had become an assistant to the same department at the British Museum in 1893. He was an expert on incunabula. In his diary, Proctor wrote (without enthusiasm):
He had apparently received the book soon after its publication, because in July he gave it to the bibliographer Robert G.C. Proctor (1868-1903) to read. Proctor had become an assistant to the same department at the British Museum in 1893. He was an expert on incunabula. In his diary, Proctor wrote (without enthusiasm):
Got Ricketts on printing from Pollard – badly written, & not well printed – he breaks his own rules.
(diary entry for 31 July 1899).
[For Proctor, see also blog 220].
Three years later, Pollard wrote about 'Recent English Experiments in Artistic Printing' for an American magazine, The Literary Collector (March, 1902):
[The Vale Press books] have many excellencies, but they cannot stand the test of comparison with those of Morris. Their highest success seems to me to lie in some of their borders, which are quite original and have a lighter and gayer touch well in keeping with the lyrics they surround. [...] It could not help working on the same lines [as The Kelmscott Press], and yet it strove to be different; and in the effort to be different fell back at times on mere eccentricity, as in the ugly intermixture of large and small letters in one or two of its colophons, and the staring form adopted for &. Nevertheless the fount is a fine one, and with tolerable initials and the occasional excellence of its borders the books are pleasant possessions.
Five months later, he welcomed the new edition of the works of Thomas Browne:
The only new publication of any interest which I have to record is a really fine edition of the chief works of Sir Thomas Browne, in the Vale Press series, uniform with the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. Of all the amateur of semi-amateur experiments in printing now being made those of the Vale Press seem to me the most worthy of encouragement from the literary point of view, for its managers show both enterprise and originality in the books they select to print, and appeal not merely to collectors , or the rather speculative individuals who will buy any book from a private press if the issue is small enough, but to such lovers of literature as care to have their book well printed at a reasonable price. Good printing is an admirable thing, and specimens of good printing are well worth buying for their own sake. But one does not want to multiply them indefinitely, while there is hardly any limit to the number of good books which it would be a pleasure to welcome if the charm of good printing were added to them. The distinction is an important one and the Vale Press seems more alive to it than most of its rivals.
(Alfred W. Pollard, 'Recent English Experiments in Artistic Printing', The Literary Collector (August, 1902), p. 125-126.
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| The King's Fount in The Kingis Quair (vale Press, 1903) |
In 1912, Pollard published Fine Books (Methuen & Co.) in which he criticised the Vale Type and King's Fount:
Foremost among these [the followers of Morris] must be placed Mr. Charles Ricketts, whose Vale type, despite a few blemishes, is not very far behind the Golden type of the Kelmscott Press, and whose ornament at its best is graceful, and that with a lighter and gayer grace than Morris's, though it cannot compare with his for dignity or richness of effect. In a later type, called the Kinge's Fount from its use in an edition of The Kingis Quair (1903), Mr. Ricketts’s good genius deserted him, for the mixture of majuscule and minuscule forms is most unpleasing.
(Fine Books, p. 307-308).
Pollard wavered somewhat in his opinion of The Vale Press, showing more appreciation for the borders and choice of text than for the typefaces and typesetting.
