Dissertation Information for Susan Otis Thompson NAME: - Susan Otis Thompson
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science
SCHOOL:
- Columbia University (USA) (1972)
ADVISORS: - Allen T. Hazen
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Phyllis Dain - Oliver L. Lilley
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: KELMSCOTT INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN BOOK DESIGN
Abstract: Typographical literature contains many references to a "Revival of Fine Printing" at the end of the last century, inspired by the Kelmscott Press of the English writer, decorator, and Socialist, William Morris. This study is a detailed examination of the "Revival" in the United States, from 1891, the year of the founding of the Kelmacott Press, until the fading out of the movement in the years preceding the First World War. Attention is also given to earlier nineteenth century developments in the book world that paved the way for the "Revival" and to its long-lasting effects in the twentieth century. After an examination of contemporary press comment about Morris and his Kelmscott books, the study is organized geographically, with chapters on teh three major publishing centers of Boston, Chicago, and New York, and another chapter on activity elsewhere, including Thomas Bird Kosher in Portland, Maine; John Henry Nash In San Francisco; and the many private presses in Philadelphia and smaller towns allover the nation. There is also a chapter on the so-called "American William Morris," Elbert Hubbard of East Aurora, New York. Morrisian influence is examined in general trade publishing, in the production of the small "literary publishers" that were a phenomenon of the nineties, in commercial printing, in the efflorescence of private printing, and in the inspiration given to a whole generation of American typographic leaders, men who were to raise American printing for the first time to the level of the best European work: Bruce Rogers, Daniel Berkeley Updike, Frederic W, Goudy, Carl Purington Rollins, and others. For precise documentation of Horrisian influence, the Morrisian, or Arts & Crafts, style of bookmaking is carefully delineated, and its relationship to other styles of printing pointed out, particularly the Aesthetic, named for the movement led by Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. The Arts & Crafts style, based on early incunabula that in turn harked back to Gothic manuscripts, and the Aesthetic, based on sixteenth century. Renaissance models, were the two major formats for finely produced books at the turn of the century, with Art Nouveau ornament sometimes applied to either of them. The study points out that the popularity of the medievalistic Arts & Crafts style just at the time mechanization was taking over all processes of bookmaking may have represented a desire to return to the values of handicraft associated with the Middle Ages and a protest against the
dehumanizing of books by machine production.
| |
MPACT Scores for Susan Otis Thompson A = 4
C = 10
A+C = 14
T = 4
G = 1
W = 4
TD = 4
TA = 0
calculated 2008-04-07 21:08:22
Advisors and Advisees Graph
generating graph, please reload |