Yellow Barn Press titles available
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A Year at the Sorbonne: A Proustian Life by Oliver B. Pollak with wood engravings by Sandy Connors |
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This is a biography of the printer's brother, Elmo, based on Elmo Shaver's sixty-three-volume diary which he began in 1932 at age 15 and continued "to within three days of his death in his 79th year in 1995." Neil Shaver designed and printed the Monotype Garamond set by Michael and Winifred Bixler. Sandy Connors created two wood engravings for illustration and for the patterned paper cover. The Frankfurt white sheets were bound by Campbell-Logan Bindery. 150 copies. 2002. 9 1/2 x 6 1/4 inches. 127 pages. $149.
from Pollak's conclusion:
"Words, reading, and writing are the building blocks of communication. . . . Why did Elmo keep his diary in several languages? Perhaps for practice, perhaps, as he wrote in a 1988 memoir, "These alien tongues pepper my prose as my private reward for the effort these pages cost me," perhaps because he could. . . .
From where came his admiration for Jewish intellect" . . . Whether drawn toward Jews consciously, through empathy, or as in a magnetic field, he had traveled far from the youthful influences and prejudices of Edna Blackwood and his aunt, accepting Christian Science, and appreciating Catholicism and Judaism.
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The Yellow Barn Press: A History and Bibliography compiled by Jack Walsdorf with history and comments by Neil Shaver |
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12 3/4 x 9 inches, I40 pages with an additional 22 color plates (printed offset). There are fifty-eight illustrations, many of them John DePol's wood engravings. The text has been carefully composed by Michael and Winifred Bixler in 14 point Perpetua, an Eric Gill design. The book has been printed by Neil Shaver on Zerkall paper. Quarter bound at Campbell Logan Bindery in black Oasis goat skin with a DePol pattern paper over boards and a leather spine label, all in a cloth covered clamshell box. The edition is limited to 175 copies. $400 plus $15 insured domestic shipping.
"an essential volume" -- The Book Club of California Quarterly News-Letter, Winter 2001
"This handsome and well-documented bibliography is typical of Yellow Barn's output: beautifully machined, well constructed, generously margined, typographically restrained but never dull, with (in this case) satisfying calligraphy by Jerry Kelly on the title-and half-title pages. ... This bibliography and history is an apt celebration of a distinguished series of thirty-three books from Yellow Barn. It is generously illustrated with wood-engravings (one in two colours_ and halftones, and lithographic reproductions of text and title-pages, announcements and ephemera, and beautifully bound in quarter leather and a DePol printed paper by Campbell-Logan Bindery. 'What can possess a man to have life-long avocation and then after many years, turn it into a vocation?' asks Neil in his foreword. Maybe the answer is a talent for design and a sure yee for a well-printed sheet that he never realised he had." -- John Randle, Matrix
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Return of a Private Out of Print
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This story first appeared in 1891 in a collection of Garland's short stories that were about life on the prairie. He wrote, "The ugliness, the endless drudgery, and the loneliness of the farmer's lot smote me with a stern insistence." The stories are full of grim, gaunt, sordid, pathetic, ferocious figures. The Return of a Private relates well to the modern reader because it is about a Civil War soldier returning to his home in rural Wisconsin. William Dean Howells felt it was "a satire of the keenest edge, as well as a tender and mournful idyl of the unknown soldier who comes back . . . with no blare of welcoming trumpets or flash of streaming flags." Does that sound familiar?
Illustrated with three two-color wood engravings by the Wisconsin artist, Gaylord Schanilec. Printed from Monotype Perpetua on Zerkall paper and case bound: cloth spine with Nepal paper over boards. 10 x 7 inches. 30 pages. 1998. $59.00
This title is now out of print
Not Barn Again
wood engravings by John DePol
Four wood engravings of barns made for a book that was never written. Printed now by Neil and Joe Shaver on Zerkall mouldmade paper. Preface and display types are Poliphilus. Sewn into paper covers of Fabriano Ingres. 10 3/4 x 8 inches. 14 pages. 150 copies. 1997.
$35.00 out
of print
Julian Symons Remembered: Tributes from Friends
collected by Jack Walsdorf & Kathleen Symons
frontispiece portrait by Rosemary Vamosi
wood engraving by Sandy Conners
The death of Julian Symons in November, 1994 marked the passing
of one of England's most respected men of letters. This collection
of tributes was printed from Perpetua on Rives, a French mouldmade
paper and bound by Campbell-Logan Binders into cloth and marble
paper cases. 24 pp. 225 numbered copies. $60.00
