Daniel Berkeley Updike: Birthday Anniversary
On February 24, 1860, Daniel Berkeley Updike was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He was an only child who supplemented his private school education by visiting libraries. Due to financial constraints, he was unable to attend college but instead went to work at Houghton, Mifflin & Company. He went from errand boy to having substantial responsibilities within the company over the course of twelve years. During this time, he absorbed the details of fine printing.
In 1893, after spending a couple of years at the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Updike started his own printing business and in 1896 began to publish under the name Merrymount Press.
In the Fleuron No. 3 published in London 1924, there is a piece written by W. A. Dwiggins titled “D. B. Updike and the Merrymount Press.” In this essay Dwiggins talks about his first encounter with Updike at a dinner of the Society of Printers of Boston in 1905.
“He made his enterprise after a pattern of his own. He came into the game unhampered by any great knowledge of how it should be played.”
Updike had, it seems, from the start an inherent knowledge of what good printing and typography were. He would not compromise the work he did. No matter if it was a book, pamphlet, or a label he sought to “do common work well.”
“To be either artist or man of business is not particularly difficult. To be both at one time is complicated. Updike is both.”
The output from Merrymount Press was substantial; however Updike kept the business small.
“It has been kept small with the purpose that all of it should be directly under the eye of one person.”
The period of the early 20th century saw changes occurring in the world of print. Updike sometimes had to steer clients away from the “artistic atrocity” of flourishes and scrolls toward more simple designs. One can recognize good typography and good press work without knowing about the process or the art. The work of Merrymount Press exemplifies this aesthetic. It just looks right.
Dwiggins sums up Daniel Berkeley Updike like this
“A connoisseur of life, a good judge of men, a wit, a retailer of anecdotes, a social creature. An accomplished performer in that lost art, conversation; but timid withal, when forced to speak formally before an audience. A man of no school, graduate of no major academy; but a finished scholar, with an adequate technique of research and criticism… Citizen of that vivid world of scholars and gentlemen that we call the Renaissance; citizen not quite so easily, perhaps, of this world of machines and wrecked idealisms; quite willing citizen of all the country that stretches between. Citizen of the world, in any event.”
Updike’s work on the history of print and typography continue to be studied. We celebrate the man and his work today with images from his collaboration with Dwiggins The Poetical Works of John Milton: With a Life of the Author and Illustrations published by R. H. Hinkley Company in Boston in 1908. It was printed by D. B. Updike and designed by W. A. Dwiggins. The image of the portrait is from The Work of the Merrymount Press and its Founder, Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860-1941) an Exhibition Prepared by Gregg Anderson published by the Huntington Library in 1942.
