It’s Fine Press Friday!
This week we present Dialogues of Creatures Moralised, designed, printed and bound by Lewis and Dorothy Allen at the Allen Press, in Kentfield California in 1967 in an edition of 130 copies. It is based on the book Dialogus creaturarum, first printed in Latin in 1480 by Gerard Leeu. It was reprinted many times, with the first English edition printed in 1535. The illustrations are based on the woodcuts from the 1480 first edition held by the Huntington Library. The typefaces are Goudy Thirty and Solemnis, and the paper is Fabriano Book, hand-made in Italy, and printed damp on an 1830 Acorn-Smith hand press. The cloth for the binding and slipcase is from France. Cott Hobart edited and translated the text from Middle English. The colophon notes that some of the variant spellings of the 1535 first English edition have been retained. It includes a preface by Joseph Haslewood that was written for a reprint of the English edition that was published in 1816.
Haslewood wrote in the preface:
Should the Dialogues of Creatures ever be cleared of the rust of antiquity by a revised text, and the obsolete spelling discarded, it would be found worthy of a place beside, if not classed as a continuation of, the popular work already noticed. Many of the fables are remarkable for their brevity and simplicity, the chief characteristics of this form of composition: the moral disquisitions that follow have been made the vehicle for preserving many instructive aphorisms and witty sayings of the ancients, intermingled with stories yet current and popular.
This book is another generous donation from our friend, Jerry Buff.
View more Fine Press Friday posts.
–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern
