Gaberbocchus Press | Exhibition | The Taylor Institution | 21 October – 12 November 2024
TRANSNATIONAL GENEALOGIES OF THE AVANT-GARDE: THE GABERBOCCHUS PRESS COLLECTION
The Taylor Institution Library is hosting an exhibition of the Gaberbocchus Press, from 21st October to 12th November 2024. Over 20 pieces are on display, featuring some of the most critically acclaimed titles and other ephemera from the groundbreaking publisher founded by the Themerson’s in 1948.
Curated by Ola Sidorkiewicz, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford & Nick Hearn, Subject Librarian for French and Slavonic Languages, Bodlein Libraries. Assisted by Robert Devcic of GV Art, and Jasia Reichardt.
The display shall culminate in an online panel discussion on the 12th November 2024:
Transnational Genealogies of the Avant-Garde. The Gaberbocchus Press Collection. Online Panel Discussion with Professor Rod Mengham (Cambridge) and Dr Dennis Duncan (UCL).
5.15pm - 6.30pm, Room 2, Taylor Institute Library, Oxford - Hosted online via “Teams”
To Sign up for the online discussion please follow this link
“However, I would like to add that if you happen to know about a MS so daring in its artistic expression that it cannot find freedom to be swallowed by more established publishing houses, Gaberbocchus Press Ltd., for which I am partly responsible, will be glad to see it, notwithstanding whether it is by a nomad or a sedentary, male or female, soldier, sailor, tinker or tailor”
“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”
Why Gaberbocchus?
‘Our friends thought the Gaberbocchus might well be a fine Latin rendering of Jabberwocky, but that as the name of a publishing house it just wouldn’t do! Indeed, it does look rather difficult to pronounce. And yet the strange thing about it is that no-one who had once got it straight, can ever forget it again […] We have proved that this strange animal cannot go on living without publishing what is very near to his manxome heart’.
Stefan Themerson in Herbert Spencer, ‘Publications of Gaberbocchus Press’, Typographica, no. 14, 1958.
Aesop, The Eagle & the Fox & the Fox & the Eagle: two semantically symmetrical versions and a symmetrical application
London, 1949
The second book printed by the Gaberbocchus Press on a hand press.
Limited edition of 400 copies.
Select copies signed by Aesop himself.
Aesop’s classic fable is complemented by its reverse version, where the fox robs a young eagle.
Stefan Themerson expands the fable’s ethical considerations and proposes a new moral.
Stefan Themerson, Kurt Schwitters in England: 1940-1948
London, 1958
The first edition of Kurt Schwitters’ English poems.
Preceded by Stefan Themerson’s essay on Kurt Schwitters, whom he met in the 1940s at a PEN Club conference in London:
‘The conference was held on the occasion of the third centenary of John Milton’s Aeropagitica, a defense of free speech and the freedom of expression in every sense of the word. Schwitters entered the room with a piece of contorted iron wire that he had found in the rubble of a recently bombed building on his way to the conference. During his lecture on the Aeropagitica, Schwitters set about bending the wire into a space-sculpture. Themerson describes the meeting between Schwitters and Milton as a collage that spans three centuries’.
From Walter van Der Star, Biography of a Publishing House, Huis Clos, Rimburg 2017.
Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi. Drama in Five acts followed by The Song of the Dismembering
London, 1951
The first English translation of the play and preface by Barbara Wright – a life-long collaborator of the Themersons.
Originally printed in black and red on grey and yellow paper.
For their contributions to the dissemination of Jarry’s work, Stefan and Franciszka Themerson were both introduced into the ranks of the Collège de’Pataphysique.
Location:
Taylor Institution Library, Voltaire Room, St Giles', Oxford OX1 3NA