“The story of a book-making life.”—New York Times
“The lovely colors, tasteful art and elegant typography are an abiding reminder to a hurried world that some gifts of grace endure. That promise is realized in Godine’s books, the gold standard of commercial bookmaking.”—Wall Street Journal
David R. Godine, the retired founder of the press, conducts a personal tour of the most memorable books he published during his 50-year career. From his earliest days as a letterpress printer to the present digital era, Godine managed to survive, and sporadically thrive, against all odds and challenges.
For more than fifty years, this publishing house tried to make good on the founder’s claim to “Publish books that matter for people who care.” Books that might, and often did, make a difference. In fiction and nonfiction, biography, photography, art and architecture, the graphic arts, children’s books, and more, the company maintained an open door policy, attempting to discover and nurture new talent, rediscovering and reprinting older and unjustly neglected classics. Its program includes first American editions of such acclaimed authors as John Banville, Richard Rodriguez, Noel Perrin, Andre Dubus, Janet Malcolm, and Georges Perec. Its photographers have included Sally Mann, Paul Caponigro, Yousuf Karsh, Nicholas Nixon, George Tice, Rosamond Purcell, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and Julia Margaret Cameron, among others. Its list of children’s books, with authors and illustrators as diverse as Mary Azarian, Dylan Thomas, Barbara McClintock, Andrea Wisnewski, Edward Ardizzone, William Steig, Daniel C. Beard, Saki, and Frances Hodgson Burnett, have been embraced by reviewers, bookstores, and the public for two generations. Among many others, the Nonpareil list has reprinted the work of Edmund Wilson, George Orwell, Donald Hall, Iris Origo, Paul Horgan, William Gass, Will Cuppy, Ludwig Bemelmans, William Maxwell, Wright Morris, and Paula Fox. The Verba Mundi series introduced American readers to classics of foreign literature by Aharon Appelfeld, Dino Buzzati, Robert Musil, José Donoso, and two Nobel Laureates, J.M.G. Le Clézio and Patrick Modiano.
As publishing history, Godine at Fifty presents a record of an era that began in 1970 as the reign of hot metal type that had endured for almost 500 years was coming to an end, when retailers were mostly brick-and-mortar stores, when small publishers thrived, when library purchases were primarily books, and when correspondence was carried on through letters and the telephone. It was an industry that had not substantially changed for a century. So this is, as well, the story of a sea change—in publishing practices, in technology, in retailing, and in corporate structures. Divided into twenty-four chapters and describing almost 300 titles, it remains primarily a personal story—the record, told through the books themselves, of a staunchly independent publisher who pursued his own interests, expanded on his own passions, and took the unconventional position that somewhere out there were probably enough readers that shared his peculiar obsessions to insure his survival. It is also the back story of books and authors, some famous, some little known, who had a story to tell, and what was required to bring that story, through the many and complex dimensions of the publishing process, to the attention of the world.
Excerpt from Introduction & Brief History of the Press
In most ways, it was Harold McGrath at Leonard Baskin’s Gehenna Press in Northampton who was the godfather of the company. After I had graduated Dartmouth, served in the Army, and gotten a one year “advanced” degree in education at Harvard, I decided to follow my first love, printing. And the best printing being executed within driving distance, or perhaps anywhere in the country, was in Baskin’s little shop with its oriental rugs on Railroad Street in Northampton, Massachusetts, the undisputed domain of Harold. For reasons, I still cannot explain, Baskin took a liking to me and hired me as an “apprentice” for four days a week at the rate of $125/week (which he couldn’t afford then or ever). It was an act of unspeakable generosity, for he needed an “apprentice” like a Buick needed a fifth hole. Harold was probably not consulted about this, but took the appointment of someone who knew next to nothing about serious printing gracefully and spent the next month’s showing me the ropes–how to insert paper into the jaws of the Thomson Laureate without losing a finger, how to create the make readies for Leonard’s engravings, which were detailed and exquisite, but required endless fussing with thin strips of India paper (at which Harold was a genius) and how to run the big Kelly Two 30” cylinder press which was pretty much held together with bailing wire and gum, and which Harold would periodically kick and swear at.
Into this mix came Lance Hidy, who had begun printing at Jonathan Edwards College at Yale where he had, from what I can tell ex nihilo, produced some superb work. Baskin must have recognized Lance’s talents immediately, for he took him on as a “student” at once and Lance moved to Northampton that year and began showing up at the press. Martha Rockwell, the third member of the founding team and a student at Bennington College, I had known her from her days at the Putney School. She was an excellent “comp,” devoted and careful, but was hampered by being selected for the 1970 Olympics in cross country skiing. She took this very seriously.
Two years earlier, I had found an abandoned cow barn on the property of James Lawrence in Brookline, Massachusetts. This was the last “working farm” left in the county, if not the entire eastern half of the Commonwealth, and James, a very formal but very liberal Democrat, gave me permission to use it for ten years at the rent of one book a year. It needed everything—new windows, a furnace, floors, electricity, a cesspool and plumbing. But my family had recently sold Market Forge, the old family business to Beatrice Foods and I was left with a small legacy or, as we say, a trust fund. I went through this very quickly over time, but both my father and the trustee, Paul Siskind, were enormously indulgent, perhaps far too indulgent, as we slowly worked our way through the challenges of bringing in enough electricity to run a press, a furnace big enough to heat an uninsulated barn, wooden floors, doors, and finally, a working bathroom. We were plowing through capital pretty quickly too, but since we did most of this workourselves and my father had plenty of “friends in the trade” willing to help us out, we were more or less readyto print by 1970.
