INTRODUCTION

There is a madness about various Gaberbocchus books which is the spice of life, an ingredient somewhat lacking in the world of impeccable book production

(Ruari McLean in Quarterly News Letter of the Book Club of California, Summer 1956)

Stefan and Franciszka Themerson founded Gaberbocchus Press in 1948 in London. It was the product of an artistic collaboration that had begun in Warsaw, where they worked together as experimental film-makers, and wrote and illustrated children's books. With Franciszka as artistic director and Stefan as editor, the Press published fifty-nine titles, in thirty-one years, of which the National Art Library owns twenty. They began, in the private press tradition, by hand-printing their first two books on a hand-press on hand-made paper in their home in Maida Vale. These were Jankel Adler, or an Artist seen from one and many possible angles (1948) and Aesop: the eagle and the fox and the fox and the eagle (1949). Later they used professional printers, for editions of between 1000 and 2000 copies. Initially, the business address of the Press was in King's Road, Chelsea, but in 1957, it moved to permanent premises in Formosa Street. Apart from the Themersons, there were two other directors: the painter, Gwen Barnard, and the translator, Barbara Wright, who were also responsible for some of the Gaberbocchus publications.

From the start, Gaberbocchus was "a vehicle for introducing new ideas", and specialized in intellectual avant-garde texts. These ranged from poetry and philosophical novels to unclassifiable combinations of text and pictures. The authors chosen included Stefan Themerson himself, Hugo Manning, Bertrand Russell, C.H. Sisson and Stevie Smith. The Press also introduced important first English translations of Alfred Jarry, Heinrich Heine, Raymond Queneau, and Anatol Stern, introducing English-speaking audiences to the culture of European avant-gardes. In some books, such as Ubu Roi, text and illustration were combined in ways that had never been attempted before in English publishing.

The name ‘Gaberbocchus’ was taken from the Latinised version of Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘Jabberwocky’, a source which already points to a surreal and often absurdist sensibility running through the publications. Both the choice of text and the illustrations reflect a keen concern for ethics. There is good and evil mixed with subversive humour, as well as a sense of the ridiculousness of human beings. One common characteristic of the publications is the intimate relationship between image and text as an expression of content.

A key objective was to produce "best lookers rather than best sellers", and indeed the Themersons felt little sympathy for mainstream taste and publicity, with Stefan once identifying ‘refusal to conform’ as both the primary strength and primary weakness of the Press. Gaberbocchus attracted curiosity from critics, who saw it as odd and yet appealing, observing in the words of one that the books manifest "a pleasing and intelligent originality in presentation, which makes them quite different from anything else appearing in London".

Gaberbocchus Press had very little in common with the other British private presses of the 1940s and 1950s, such as the Golden Cockerel Press, who were largely influenced by the Arts and Crafts approach of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press. Even so, Sir Francis Maynell of the Nonesuch Press, was an admirer. It is telling that when Gaberbocchus produced an edition of an Aesop fable, such as might have been favoured by the more conventional presses, it was accompanied by a reversed version, thus becoming Aesop: the eagle and the fox and the fox and the eagle, turning convention on its head in a characteristic Gaberbocchus fashion. The aim was to produce inexpensive yet original and imaginatively designed books rather than luxury, finely printed collectors’ items.

The Themersons died in 1988, just six weeks apart, after a lifetime of collaboration. Nine years earlier, in 1979, the Themersons transferred the running of the Press to the Amsterdam publishers, Uitgeverij De Harmonie.

The press continues to attact attention. Recent retrospective exhibitions of Gaberbocchus Press were held at La Boetie in New York, 1993/4, and at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1996.

This exhibition focuses on three Gaberbocchus publications from the Library’s collections: Ubu Roi (1951), The Good Citizen’s Alphabet (1953), and Kurt Schwitters in England : 1940-1948 (1958). Each book is presented in a separate display case, with related material on loan from the Themerson Archive. This material includes original artwork for book cover designs, illustrations, private correspondence, manuscripts and printing plates. Each display relates the story of the development of the book from initial ideas, through artwork and drafts to proofs, sometimes culminating in several editions. The three books illustrate the range of different approaches to book design, and the interplay between text and image.

The items on display are on temporary loan from the Themerson Archive, although the National Art Library has a copy of each of the three books in its collections. They are available through the issue desk, with pressmarks as follows:

Alfred Jarry Ubu Roi : drama in 5 acts

NAL pressmark : 802.AC.0084 (Special collections)

Bertrand Russell, The Good Citizen’s Alphabet

NAL pressmark : G.29.W.80

Stefan Themerson, Kurt Schwitters in England : 1940-1948

NAL pressmark : 22.H.112