468 Dramatis Personae. Robert DOVES PRESS / Browning.
Dramatis Personae
Dramatis Personae
Dramatis Personae
Dramatis Personae

Dramatis Personae

London: Doves Press, 1910. Limited Edition. Small 4to, 9 1/8 x 6 3/8 in. (230 x 160 mm); 203 + [7] pp.; one of 250 copies, with an additional 15 on vellum, faint spotting on endpapers. Printed on Doves 2B paper watermarked with circle enclosing two doves over T. J. Cobden-Sanderson initials over the date, 1910—a watermark recently redesigned after the partnership between Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker dissolved in 1909. Title page initial printed in red, along with half title, titles of poems in margins, passages on p. 74, 102–105, 116, 191–192, title on p.193, last two lines of p. 202. Contemporary green morocco, bound by "Hatchards Picadilly", gold stamped on front turn-in, in Doves Bindery style, with gilt title, fillets and decorations on covers and spine; 5 raised bands, a.e.g.; inside front hinge cracked and small chips to outside upper hinge, but binding tight and pages in pristine condition; spine slightly sunned.

[Ransom, p. 252, no. 23; Tomkinson p. 56, no. 23; Cobden-Sanderson, Cosmic Vision, p. 140; Cobden-Sanderson, The Journals of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, 1879-1922, p. 435].

A lush limited edition of Browning's Dramatis Personae, from the text of the 1864 first edition (as stated on the title page), beautifully printed by Doves Press and bound by Hatchards. In his fundamental book Private Presses and Their Books, Will Ransom writes «...if we follow the momentum of the Nineties over the turn of the century we find 1900 ushering in an outstanding figure and a famous achievement, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and the Doves Press.» (p.35)
During the 16 years that The Doves Press was in business, Cobden-Sanderson managed to produce 40 books bound in 45 volumes. Perfectionism and dedication lead to the creation of some of the most simply elegant books of the 20th century. His version of the ideal book in which the design did not get in the way of the reader’s ability to see the author’s message proved to be terribly popular, especially after The Doves Press closed in 1916.

Based in Hammersmith, London, the Dove Press was founded by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson who was a friend of William Morris and a staunch supporter of Arts and Crafts ideology. The press was established with funds from Cobden-Sanderson's wife Anne and by 1900, Emery Walker was asked to join as a partner. A distinguishing feature of the Dove Press books was a specially-devised typeface, known variously as the Doves Roman, the Doves Press Fount of Type, or simply the Doves Type. Cobden-Sanderson and Walker were in a protracted and bitter dispute involving the rights to the Doves Type in the dissolution of their partnership around 1909. All rights to the Doves Type were to pass to Walker upon the death of Cobden-Sanderson. Instead, as recorded in his Journals, Cobden-Sanderson destroyed all the matrices by throwing them into the Thames River off Hammersmith Bridge in London, a short walk from the Press. His Journals record 170 trips to the Thames, always after dusk, from August 1916 through January 1917. «Yes; yesterday, and the day before, and Tuesday I stood on the bridge at Hammersmith, and, looking towards the Press and the sun setting, threw into the Thames below me the matrices from which had been cast the Doves Press Fount of Type.» [The Journals of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, 1879-1922, p. 214]
After Cobden-Sanderson's death, Walker sued his widow and received payment for the loss of the rights to the type. Since the beginning of digital type, several designers have reproduced the typeface. In 2013, the designer Robert Green began to create a more polished digital version of the Doves type and in 2015, after searching the riverbed of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge with help from the Port of London Authority, Green managed to recover 150 pieces of the original type, which helped him to refine the font. [The fight over the Doves: A legendary typeface gets a second life. The Economist, December 19, 2013.].

Condition: Near fine.

Item number: 468

Price: $2,000.00

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