Ger­ald W. Cloud, author of John Rodker’s Ovid Press: A Bib­li­o­graph­i­cal His­to­ry, is an inves­ti­ga­tor with a bent for nar­ra­tive writ­ing about books. A good biography—in this case a bio­graph­ic bibliography—takes inven­to­ry of dis­crete bits of col­lect­ed evi­dence and sorts it to reveal a his­toric nar­ra­tive oth­er­wise unseen. Cloud does this very well, which prob­a­bly has some­thing to do with his lec­tur­ing at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty on Bib­li­og­ra­phy and the His­to­ry of the Book.

John Rod­ker (1894–1955) ran Ovid Press from 1919 to 1922 and pro­duced a total of sev­en­teen items. Why a bib­li­og­ra­phy on a press that pro­duced just sev­en­teen known projects? Well, Ovid Press clients includ­ed sev­er­al cen­tral fig­ures of mod­ernist lit­er­a­ture and art: T.S. Eliot, Hen­ri Gaudi­er-Brzes­ka, James Joyce, Wyn­d­ham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Edward Wadsworth.

The book is in two parts:

(1) John Rod­ker: Life and Writ­ing

Biogra­phies about artists with com­mer­cial endeav­ors are always inter­est­ing. Many times there is an ele­ment of eco­nom­ic strug­gle but an inter­est­ing bit about this sto­ry is Rodker’s con­stant pur­suit of qual­i­ty work along­side mon­ey strug­gles and the work­ing rela­tion­ships of peo­ple. Rod­ker was both a print­er and writer, which explains his pur­suit for per­fec­tion and the rela­tion­ships with his lit­er­ary clients. His then wife, British nov­el­ist Mary Butts (1890–1937), also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the busi­ness at times. This bio­graph­ic part of the book relies heav­i­ly on archival sources such as Rodker’s per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al papers and diary. Among oth­er things, Cloud dis­cov­ers Rodker’s role in the pro­duc­tion of Ezra Pound’s “Bel Esprit” and erra­ta (error cor­rec­tion) sheets for James Joyce’s Ulysses.

(2) Descrip­tive Bib­li­og­ra­phy of the Ovid Press

Cloud’s bib­li­og­ra­phy shows some of the raw ingre­di­ents of the first bio­graph­i­cal part of the book with minute details of Ovid Press’s work. Minute is per­haps an under­state­ment. Cloud stud­ied spec­i­mens at Yale, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, the British Library, and oth­er col­lec­tions. The descrip­tions of the works include paper stock, col­la­tion, and oth­er details such as paste­down fea­tures, spac­ing of chain­lines, and the exis­tence of tale-tell water­marks.

John Rodker’s Ovid Press: A Bib­li­o­graph­i­cal His­to­ry
By Ger­ald W. Cloud
Pub­lished 2010 by Oak Knoll Press, New Cas­tle, Delaware
7 x 10 inch­es
Type­set­ting by Kat Ran Press
Set in 11.25/15 Caslon 540 with Ele­phant
Print­ed and bound by Sheri­dan Books
Hard­cov­er with dust jack­et
152 pages
ISBN 9781584562863

$55.00