Books and Manuscripts

White, Diana
The Descent of Ishtar
(Hammersmith, London: Eragny Press, 1903). First edition (one of only 226 copies). 12mo. 30, (2) pp. From the library of historian and bibliographer of the fine press movement, Will Ransom, and with his library label on rear paste-down. Text printed in red and in black. Illustrated with a wood-engraved frontispiece by Esther Pissarro after Diana White, and green wood-engraved border and red wood-engraved initials by Esther Pissarro after Lucien Pissarro. Publisher's quarter pale green paper over patterned paper-covered boards, printed cover label, corners lightly worn; top edge trimmed, other edges untrimmed; in quarter green morocco fall-down-back box. Ransom, p. 263

A superb association, Will Ransom's copy of this finely printed work from the Eragny Press. Ransom (1878-1955) is considered the first historian and bibliographer of the fine press movement. Born in St. Louis, Michigan, Ransom at a young age developed a passion for the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1903 he enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but soon left to work with Frederic and Bertha Goudy at their Village Press. In 1911, he began working for commercial clients, music groups, and Lawrence Woodworth’s Brothers of the Book, and in 1918, designed the Parsons typeface for the Carson Pirie Scott department store. In 1921 he founded his private press, “Will Ransom, Maker of Books,” and in 1930 left Chicago to join Leo Hart's Printing House. By the early 1940s he served as executive secretary to the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ Gutenberg centennial project and worked for a short time with the Limited Editions Club. From 1941 to 1955 he was art director of the University of Oklahoma Press, and wrote extensively about the fine press movement. A series of articles he published for Publisher's Weekly in the 1920s eventually became his Private Presses and Their Books (1929), a standard reference on the subject for many years, extended by a series of Selective Checklists of Press Books (1945-1950).