The Private Press

From the book flap: "In this thoroughly documented, authoritative book, Roderick Cave surveys the history of the private press, the printers and theri products, from the dawn of printing to the present day. Cave examines the earlier presses as well, from those set up by penurious scholars to print their own books, to those of aristocrats like Horace Walpole or Frederick the Great, who had presses as playthings; from the presses which have operated secretly to avoid censorship to those which regarded printing as a fine art. He describes representative presses of these various types, examining the equipment the used and the books they produced."