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Introduction to Catalog 11 - Books about Books :
Approximately one half of the books in this catalog come from two sources: the library of John and Jean Michael, proprietors of the Acorn Press, and the joint library of Elizabeth Mongan and her sister Agnes. These two libraries have one particular thing in common: the wide interests of their owners brought them in intimate touch with an unusually broad circle revealed both in the variety of the books and the many copies with special association interest. The Michaels began their printing career in Oak Park, Illinois, issuing a first type specimen book in 1954 and beginning to print commercially in 1955. In 1969 they moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where their Acorn Press won over 150 awards for design and printing before it closed in 1993. Many of their own productions were included in two recent lists issued by the Mathesons and available on our website. The present catalog features the work of other printers, calligraphers, designers, and illustrators whose work particularly appealed to the Michaels, Bruce Rogers clearly being their first choice. They assembled nineteen of the thirty books commonly called Rogers' "favorites" on the basis of a comment reprinted in Paragraphs on Printing. The catalog includes one of the rarest of Rogers' books, Maurice de Guérin's The Centaur, an excessively fragile and rare (135 copies) production, in which Rogers first used his great Centaur type. Of the fifteen books in this catalog included in A Century for the Century, the catalog derived from a Grolier Club exhibition of 100 of the most beautiful books produced in the twentieth century, the Michael Collection provided fourteen, three of them designed by Bruce Rogers: The Odyssey of Homer, Fra Luca de Pacioli, and Bernard's Geoffroy Tory, Painter and Engraver. Their six Allen Press books included the splendid bibliography of the press printed in an edition of 140 copies. They had, as well, C. H. St. John Hornby's imposing bibliography of the Ashendene Press; a variety of nineteenth and twentieth century editions of Thomas Bewick printed from the original blocks; many W. A. Dwiggins titles including books in the rare "Athalinthia" series; special copies of the work of Edward M. Catich and Hermann Zapf; three of the four Officina Bodoni titles in this catalog, including The Holy Gospel; the work of a number of calligraphers, among them Raymond DaBoll who designed the handsome small calligraphic book label found in a number of the books (its presence noted in the description of individual titles); the Doves Press edition of Ruskin's Unto This Last, in a Doves Press binding designed by Cobden-Sanderson; and Moby Dick designed and illustrated by Rockwell Kent, to name a few of the fine books in the collection. The portion of the Mongan sisters’ library described in this catalog presents a sharp contrast in content. Elizabeth Mongan (1910-2002) was Lessing J. Rosenwald's first curator, devoting her time entirely to him from 1937 to 1943 and jointly with the National Gallery of Art from 1943 to 1963, when she resigned, recognizing that the great days of the collection's growth were over. Agnes Morgan (1905-1996) served in a number of positions in the Fogg Museum, eventually becoming its director. The sisters acquired an extensive library in support of their interests and through the gifts of friends. The Mathesons acquired the portion of their joint library relating to books, prints, and manuscript studies. At the time Elizabeth Mongan was hired by Rosenwald his books and prints were stored in his office in Sears, Roebuck in Philadelphia. She soon became involved in the elaborate preparations for the Alverthorpe Gallery in which the collections were housed until the collector's death in 1979. One of her early assignments was the preparation, jointly with Edwin Wolf 2nd, of a major William Blake exhibition, its catalog called by G. E. Bentley, Jr. in his Blake Books, "one of the most important Blake exhibitions." The Mongan collection contains three copies of this catalog, one specially bound in full morocco with a fine presentation inscription by Rosenwald; Elizabeth Mongan's personal copy in half cloth and decorated paper boards, with the original wrappers bound in; and a third copy, her corrected copy (so indicated by her in pencil on the front endpaper), heavily annotated, some of the notes taking up the entire inner and outer margins. There are two equally interesting copies of a second major exhibition for which she jointly prepared the catalog, The First Century of Printmaking, 1450-1500. During her tenure Rosenwald made available to Arnold Fawcus a number of his Blake manuscripts for reproduction by the Trianon Press. The Mongan collection contains three of these handsome and important productions inscribed to her by the collector. He gave her, but did not inscribe, a copy of Three Erfurt Tales, the first substantial production of Bird & Bull Press, based on a book in his collection. Late in his life Rosenwald inscribed to her a copy of his privately printed memoirs, Recollections of a Collector. Her friend and co-author, Edwin Wolf 2nd inscribed a number of his publications to her, as did H. P. Kraus and Dr. Rosenbach in single examples in her collection. There is not space to comment on the inter-connections revealed in the Agnes Mongan portion of the library but they shed equal light on an important career. The catalog as a whole – the two libraries and the individually acquired books – offers multiple avenues for investigation into subjects familiar to readers of our eight previous books about books / bibliography catalogs. Return to HomePage |
