A Phial: [a poem]

John GRAY

Published by [Edinburgh]: Tragara Press, 1954

About this Item

Pale grey-green wrappers. Spine slightly faded. Edition limited to 25 numbered copies "for private distribution". The first publication of the Tragara Press. "My interest in printing," wrote Alan Anderson in an introduction to The Tragara Press 1954-1979: a bibliography (1979), "developed after some years of book-collecting, mainly in the fields of modern literature and Press Books; work as an antiquarian bookseller no doubt contributed its share. The rudiments of the craft were learned at Edinburgh College of Art under the guidance of J. Kingsley Cook, and in October 1953 I acquired an imperial octavo 'Peerless' treadle platen press . . . The first type-faces acquired by the Press were Stephenson Blake Perpetua and Monotype Bembo and Baskerville. Later, Centaur and Romulus were added. In general the work is hand-set, but a few of the lengthier texts have been machine-set and re-arranged by hand where necessary. For me, textual content is all-important, and the publications of the Press reflect my own interest: as will be seen from the bibliography, something approaching a third of my output relates to the Nineties period." Alan Anderson (1922-2016) was a draper's son from Dunfermline who served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, falling in love with the island of Capri (hence "Tragara") while on leave in Naples; he forsook the family drapers' firm for a bookselling job in Edinburgh after his father's death in 1951. John Gray (1866-1934) was a civil servant in London when his first book of poems, Silverpoints (1893), was published, that quintessential example of 1890s bookmaking. By the time "A Phial" was first printed, in The Venture, 1903, he had been ordained a priest (he moved to Edinburgh in 1907). "This precious bubble of the antique world, / As light as lifted foam, as frail as breath, / Endured when empires died a desperate death, / When heaven on earth, when tower on tower was hurled . . .". Seller Inventory # E100053

Bibliographic Details

Title: A Phial: [a poem]

Publisher: [Edinburgh]: Tragara Press

Publication Date: 1954

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition