Title: Portrait of a Lady
Publisher: Marlborough College Press
Publication Date: 1941
Binding: Soft cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
LIMITED PRINTING OF FORTY COPIES OF WHICH NONE WAS FOR SALE. 8vo. Eight leaves, unopened and disbound as issued. This copy was unnumbered on the colophon. 14.5 x 21 cm. Publisher's stiff buff wrappers (slightly mottled, spotted and darkened edges with a small crease at the lower corner). The poem was originally printed in 1915; this reprint was by M.S.Howard and was impacted by the Second World war conditions and supplies shortages. The Marlborough College Press was set up as a Guild in 1934 as a co-curricular activity and its founders had the lofty aim of providing an insight into one of the world's most civilising crafts, and many boys went on to careers in printing, publishing and associated trades. A boy would be taken on as an apprentice and, having passed a number of tests, became a printer; after further examinations he could become a master printer with some privileges; and from the master printers were chosen the foreman printers who were responsible for running the press. This hierarchy was headed at Marlborough by a Master of the Chapel. The Press is renowned for some fine pieces of printing, all set and printed by hand on hand-made paper, including The Litany or General Supplication (which His Majesty King George VI saw being printed when he visited Marlborough in 1948), T.S. Eliot's Portrait of a Lady and Edward Fitzgerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Gallup E2dx. WorldCat locates only two copies (Pierpont Morgan and Yale University Libraries). Seller Inventory # 5165