But this jape, and others, were part of a serious and deliberate policy. From the beginning we had a plan and hoped to have a public. In the words of our first (1923) catalogue, we intended to make books "for those among collectors who also use books for reading." We intended to choose our books to suit our tastes, not the imputed taste of a hypothetical public.
Not that we felt ego-centric and exclusive about it, like the Californian millionaire who, I am told, caused a Shakespeare to be printed to suit his own taste and his own library--an edition of one copy. We have made now over a hundred editions to suit our own personal requirements--the author we wanted, the text we wanted, the format we wanted, the decorations we wanted. And if there had been no other profit from the Press, this shelf of my library would have seemed in itself a sufficient recompense for my share of the work. But fortunately, many other people also wanted these books. For our taste proved to be a normal contemporary taste. We did not create the vogue for Donne, for instance--we were ourselves part of that general tendency which has in these days found him afresh.
My previous experience in printing had shown me quite clearly that, in order to avoid monotony and to produce desirable editions at a reasonable cost, one must intelligently exploit the best mechanical equipment and the highest technical skill available. Today there is more fine typographical material to be had than even the largest printing house in the country could possess; and the various commercial presses have developed technical skill and variety along various lines. There was therefore no good reason, we thought, for a new "private press" in the old style, arrogantly self-contained, and with but one type and obsolete "hand" machinery.
Our stock-in-trade has been the theory that mechanical means could be made to serve fine ends; that the machine in printing was a controllable tool. Therefore we set out to be mobilisers of other people's resources; to be designers, specifiers, rather than manufacturers; architects of books rather than builders.
The propriety of our use of the word "Press" was called in question by Arnold Bennett and others. Pedantically it may be wrong; by the spirit it is nearly right. There is no exact word for our function, which was new. Nor for my own part in that function. When I have wanted to "sign" a book, at first I wrote "Typography by." But typography is only a quarter of my battle, and that phrase puts undue emphasis on one department, one only, of a job the essence of which is that it is manifold. A number of books I signed F. M. _Finx_. But "finxit" means "fashioned," and so "made," rather than "designed." I also used the phrase "under the care of," but this is vague and inaccurate, suggesting merely the oversight of someone else's designs. Perhaps "This book was planned by" is the least inaccurate formula, though this again leaves out the whole business of overseeing. Overseeing is no purely typographical matter. It means the planning and coordinating of the whole book--text, editor, and artist, as well as paper-maker, printer and binder. In fact, it involves an editorial as well as a typographical attitude.