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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

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Students under Susan Otis Thompson

ADVISEES:
- Frederick Andrew Lerner - Columbia University (1981)
- Sharyl Gay Smith - Columbia University (1985)
- Louis John Pisha - Columbia University (1991)
- Judith Segal - Columbia University (1991)

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- Joyce Helene Brodowski - Columbia University (1973)
- John Neal Waddell - Columbia University (1973)
- David Walker Mallison - Columbia University (1976)
- Harold Edward Holland - Columbia University (1976)
- Philip John Weimerskirch - Columbia University (1977)
- Doris Uku Oritsewenyimi Bozimo - Columbia University (1979)
- Sarah Jordan Miller - Columbia University (1979)
- Thomas Frederick O'Connor - Columbia University (1983)
- Ellen D. Gilbert - Columbia University (1992)
- Catherine Shanley - Columbia University (1992)