Private Press Books over 30 years

The Private Libraries Association publishes an annual digest of books printed by Private Presses, and the Alembic Press is publishing on-line an analysis of the books printed over the thirty years between 1978 and 2007. With a few exceptions, the digests feature only Presses that printed in English, and only Presses that used letterpress, and printed books of eight or more pages. Furthermore, the digests rely upon Press owners making a return to the editors, and the data analysed is only as good as the information returned by the Presses. Consequently, there will be Presses that are not featured, and there will be gaps in some of the data being summarised. Also the definition of a Private Press can be open to interpretation, but by and large can be taken as a Press whose production is dictated by its own wishes, and for the love of it, rather than pure commercial gain. There is probably a certain amount of 'do-it-yourself' work involved.

The analysis summarises the number and location of the Presses, the make and number of machines (presses) that are used, the size, shape, and quantity of books printed, the typefaces used, the illustration styles, the paper used, the style of bindings, etc. Currently this data is still being collected, and will be added below as each category is completed. In general, it follows much of what the Alembic Press published (as hard copy) in 1980 in respect of the years 1978 and 1979, but with several additional features. (Data for 2008 to 2010 will be added when those digests become available. Earlier than 1978 has not been looked at, as the Alembic Press does not have copies of the earlier digests.)

Categories so far available are:

List of Press names: showing Private Press name, country and span of years of printing
Table of Countries: showing number of Private Presses in each country

The lists and tables are an attempt to see what Presses have been doing, and what the most popular machines, typefaces, paper used, etc. are. The main conclusion from the data is that there is very little, if anything, that is common to all the Presses, but some things stand out as more used than others (as will be noted here when the survey is completed).

Note that information about a specific book printed by a Private Press can be obtained by consulting the relevant Private Press Books digest published by the Private Libraries Association.

Written by David Bolton and last updated 23 December 2012