COLLABORATION OF GREAT TYPOGRAPHERS

(ROGERS, Bruce) ALLEN, Hervey. Christmas Epithalamium. New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1925. Slim octavo, contemporary full crushed red morocco gilt, watered-silk doublures, top edge gilt, uncut. Housed in original slipcase. $450.

Limited private-press edition of Allen’s Christmas poem, one of only 350 copies, designed by Bruce Rogers and printed by William Rudge.

William Edwin Rudge provided “headquarters” for typographer Bruce Rogers (and later Frederic Warde) in his Mount Vernon pressrooms. On the wall of the room was the motto, “Types, to they that be of the Craft, are as things that be Alive.” Rogers gained early fame as a type-designer (Metropolitan, Montaigne, Centaur) and later fame as a designer of books. “Even in the very few of his books that might be called experimental rather than definitive, the touch of magic is always present” (Ransom, 145). Allen’s Christmas poem was first published in 1923, in an edition of only 20 copies.

Book fine, backstrip of slipcase split but holding firmly. An extremely attractive copy.