Conclusion

In looking at these three books, it is difficult to identify a common style that makes them instantly recognisable as Gaberbocchus publications. They each have strikingly different ‘personalities’. Indeed, the Themersons had always resisted creating a ‘Gaberbocchus style’, as they felt that each book should be treated as a separate individual, to speak for itself. The identity of the Press was its emblem — a Gaberbocchus, seated holding a pen, reclining reading a book, or just facing the reader with an enquiring look.

Stefan Themerson was also concerned, as Nick Wadley has pointed out that newcomers to Gaberbocchus publications, should not regard the Press “from the wrong end of the telescope”, and that their interest should not be of the “Oh,-so-that’s-what-they-were-doing” variety (1). It should rather be in seeing the value of the published material in the present, on its own terms. In which case, perhaps ‘individuality’ is the only connecting feature of Gaberbocchus publications, a characteristic that would certainly be in keeping with the Press and its aims in its ‘refusal to conform’. Its position outside the mainstream of established world of publishing makes Gaberbocchus Press one of the most interesting and original of British small presses of the twentieth century.

1. Wadley, Nicholas, ‘The two ends of the telescope’, in Jan Kubasiewicz and Monica Strauss (eds) The Themersons and the Gaberbocchus Press : an experiment in publishing, 1948-1979, New York : MJS Books & Graphics, 1993, p.62-3.