Blake's Pencil Drawings; Second Series

London: The Nonesuch Press, 1956. Fine/Near fine. 4to, 11 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches (290 x 222 mm); xi [227] pages; 56 collotype illustrations, plus text. Printed on Dutch pannekoek mould-made paper and bound in Holland by J. Brandt & Zoon with terra-cotta buckram over beveled boards with gilt title on spine; black paper jacket with gilt stars and dots, title on white label on spine, edges untrimmed. This is copy no. 33 (in ink on limitation page) of 1440 copies printed.

[Dreyfus 126]. This is the sequel to The Nonesuch Press' first book of Blake's Pencil Drawings, published in 1927. The Max Reinhardt / Nonesuch list 1956 remarked: 'During the twenty-nine years that have elapsed a number of exciting drawings have come to light, several of which are now in the Editor's possession, such as the fine study for the great colour-print of 'Newton' now in the Tate Gallery, and Blake's magnificent version of the Laocoon theme, in which he adapts the groups by Praxiteles to his own mythology.' [John Dreyfus. A History of The Nonesuch Press. London: 1981]

The NONESUCH PRESS was a private press founded in 1922 in London by Francis Meynell, his second wife Vera Mendel, and their mutual friend David Garnett who was a bookseller in Soho's Gerrard Street, in the basement of which the press began. It was unusual among private presses in that it used a small hand press to design books, but had them printed by commercial printers, in order to produce book designs with the quality of a fine-press but available to a wider audience at lower prices. Meynell also wanted to demonstrate that "mechanical means could be made to serve fine ends." He believed that the production of exquisitely designed and produced books was not the preserve of the private press predicated upon the example established by William Morris's Kelmscott Press, which emphasized the primacy of the hand press printed book.