Friday 2 November 2012

The Gaberbocchus Press

Individual flavour is the first impact of Gaberbocchus publications. The thing seems almost impertinently impossible. How this Press continued for thirty-one years, and managed to keep out of the rat-race is still a mystery. To quote from an Italian glossy: 'Every Gaberbocchus book is a little intellectual whore capable of doing you a lot of good in times of mental crisis. Men don't borrow Gaberbocchus books, they possess them.'
The first Gaberbocchus publication was Aesop: The Fox and the Eagle and the Eagle and the Fox, which appeared in 1948, and was hand-printed by the directors of the firm, Stefan and Franciszka Thermerson. (Gwen Barnard, the abstract painter, did not become the third co-director until 1953.) From the very start Gaberbocchus were concerned with best books and not best sellers.
Will we ever see the like of Gaberbocchus again? I very much doubt it.

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