Useful Work Versus Useless Toil

Details

Date: 1889
Dimensions: 23.8 x 16.4
Object Type: book
Material: ink on paper
Technique: woodblock
Catalogue number: K113
Designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942

Preface and pp.1-2 of periodical. Initium ‘T’ decorated with ivy for following text.A PREFACE. THE ISSUE OF THIS PERIO/ DICAL BY THE PROPRIETORS DIRECTLY/ FROM THE CHISWICK PRESS, SO THAT THEY/ MAY MORE NEARLY CARRY OUT THEIR ORI/ GINAL INTENTION, SEEMS TO PRESENT A FITTING OCCASION ON WHICH TO SUM UP AND/ MAKE CLEAR, WHAT, AS YET, LIES SCATTERED/ THROUGH THE SUCCESSIVE NUMBERS OF/ THE PAPER, NAMELY, ITS PRECISE AIMS AND/ THE VIEW OF ART SET FORTH IN IT. BRIEF/ LY, THEN, AS FAR AS SO WIDE-REACHING A/ SUBJECT CAN BE THUS TREATED IN THE/ SPACE OF A FEW PAGES, THESE CHIEFLY ARE/ THE PRINCIPLES OF WHAT WE HAVE EN/ DEVOURED TO SAY AND DO, IN THE THREE/ YEARS DURING WHICH THIS PERIODICAL HAS BEEN PUBLISHED.

Details

Date: 1903
Dimensions: 17.8 x 22.3
Object Type: book
Material: ink on paper
Technique: woodblock
Catalogue number: K245
Attributed designer: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930

This christmas card was designed by Selwyn image for Harold Hodge. It features a rabbit and tree design on the front and a poem by Emily Brontë printed inside

Details

Date: 1870
Dimensions: 19.7 x 13 x 3
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K531
Translator: Magnusson, Eirikr (1833 - 1913)
Translator: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Publisher: Ellis, Frederick Startridge (1830 - 1901)
Designer: Webb | Philip | 1831 | 1915
Credit notes: Transfer from Walthamstow Central Library, 1951

‘The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs’ is a translation of The Völsunga saga (often referred to in English as the Volsunga Saga or Saga of the Völsungs). This legendary saga is a late 13th-century poetic rendition in Old Norse of the origin and decline of the Völsung clan. It was translated for the first time into English by William Morris and Eirikr Magnusson in 1870. Morris wrote: “This is the great story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks”. This first edition of the Crown octavo book has green cloth binding with stamped gold pattern designed by Philip Webb. Rossetti wrote on 7 May 1870 “His binding for the Volsungs is most lovely- quite perfect”. 750 copies of the book were printed.

Details

Date: 1904
Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 1 cm
Object Type: book
Material: paper in quarter holland binding
Catalogue number: K952
Printer: Dun Emer Press
Publisher: Yeats, Elizabeth (11/03/1868 - 16/01/1940)
Author: Yeats, William Butler (13/06/1865 - 28/01/1939)
Credit notes: Gift of Eleanor Pugh, 1963

This edition of the Stories of Red Hanrahan was published by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats at the Dun Emer Press, the private press founded in 1902 by Yeats and her brother William Butler Yeats in Dundrum, Ireland. Whilst living in London, Elizabeth Yeats had been part of William Morris’s circle and had been inspired by his Kelmscott press. The book has a handwritted inscription from Elizabeth Yeats to Dorothy Walker, wife of Emery Walker, one of the founders of the Kelmscott Press. The book was later given by Emery Walker to the artist, designer, writer and poet Selwyn Image.

Details

Date: 1872
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: J578
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG Purchase, 1956

Leather bound book containing leaves of illuminated manuscripts by William Morris, including trial pages for Horace, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and The Lovers of Gudrun. Facisimle pages are inserted at the back. The pages were given by Jane Morris to Sydney Cockerell. William Morris produced two illuminated manuscripts of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The first manuscript of the ‘Rubaiyat’ was made between spring 1871 and 16 October of the next year as a birthday present for Burne-Jones’s wife Georgiana (British Library, MS Add. 37832). The second (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Don. f. 3), dated 1874, was a gift from May Morris in 1933. 

Details

Date: 1893
Dimensions: 20.3 x 25.4
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K927
Artist: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930
Editor: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Author: Horne, Herbert Percy, 1864, 1916
Publisher: Allen, George
Credit notes: Miss Elinor M. Pugh Bequest, 1963

The Hobby Horse was founded chiefly to publish the aims and ideas of the Century Guild. With the exception of an article by Florence Marshall on a cantata by Henry Holmes, all the articles and poems in the first number were contributed by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, Herbert Horne and Sellwyn Image; the latter was also responsible for the textual illustrations and front cover (repeated as a title page) and the engraved wood block for this is in the Gallery collection (R104).
The magazine received some hostile reviews on its publication most notably in The Academy (1 June 1884 p. 401): “There may reasonably be some difference of opinion as to Mr. Ruskin’s recent utterances. But it has always been possible to gather an idea of that he would be about. There is no imaginable method, however, in the madness of some of his later followers. The affectation of these persons seems to be only commensurate with their ignorance and their conceit with their incapacity.” Having criticised both the content and the appearance of the magazine, the reviewer concluded that ” a long-suffering public could hardly tolerate another instalment of such nonsense.” It was probably largely as a result of such opinions that no further issues appeared until 1886.
The Gallery also has most of the engraved wood blocks and line blocks for printing the headings, tailpieces, initials and other illustrations for this and subsequent issues of the magazine. The majority of these were bequeathed in 1942 by Mackmurdo, the rest being acquired through the bequest of his niece, Miss Pugh in 1963.

Details

Date: 1893
Dimensions: 20.3 x 25.4
Object Type: book
Material: paper
Catalogue number: K92
Artist: Image, Selwyn, 1849, 1930
Editor: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Author: Horne, Herbert Percy, 1864, 1916
Publisher: Allen, George
Credit notes: Miss Elinor M. Pugh Bequest, 1963

Details

Date: 1904
Dimensions: 22 x 15 x 5 cm
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K349
Author: Burne-Jones, Georgiana (1840 - 1920)
Printer: Chiswick Press
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
Photographer: Walker & Cockerell (1900 - 1904)
Credit notes: Transfer from Walthamstow Reference Library, 1951

Details

Date: 1893
Dimensions: 30 x 21.3 x 5 (closed)
Object Type: book
Material: paper with half holland binding
Catalogue number: K1023
Author: Meinhold, William (1797 - 1851)
Translator: Speranza, Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (1821 - 1896)
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Gift of West Ham Public Library

Details

Dimensions: 30 x 23.5 x 3
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K93
Publisher: Century Guild
Printer: Chiswick Press
Credit notes: Frank Brangwyn, 1936

INCOMPLETE. Vol. VI stops at p. 80 and continues in K94, Vol VII.
4to, modern buckram binding, cropped from original dimensions, gilt lettering on spine, twelve plates consisting of woodcut, engraving, facsimile and photogravure illustrations, loose leaf from ‘The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries’, Nov 23, 1893, inserted.

Details

Date: 1896-1897
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K1013
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Publisher: Kelmscott Press | 1891 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1964

Eight volumes of William Morris’s The Earthly Paradise, printed by The Kelmscott Press and bound in white vellum. Taking the form of a compendium of different narratives, The Earthly Paradise is an epic poem structured as a frame story, similar to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It tells the story of a group of Norsemen who have fled a plague in Europe in search of the mythical earthly paradise. Eventually they come to a land where the inhabitants still worship the ancient Greek gods. They decide to stay here and each month the wanderers and the city elders exchange tales. ‘The Earthly Paradise’ contains the tales from a whole year, comprising twenty-four stories. Through this narrative Morris draws both upon Greek myths and Medieval Romance tales, including Icelandic Eddas and Saga.

Printed on medium quarto size paper in Golden type in red and black, woodcut title, borders and initials. Published by the Kelmscott Press, 1896-97. Bound in original limp vellum, with ties, uncut. Bookplate of Herbert S. Squance.

Object Type: book

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