The Gehenna Press

Yesterday I spent the morning and early afternoon at the Friends Historical Library continuing my explorations of the Tolles Papers - the archive of the papers of Ellen's father, Frederick Barnes Tolles. I again made a discovery and opened up another little mystery.

In 1942, an artist and sculptor by the name of Leonard Baskin formed The Gehenna Press in Northampton, MA. It became what is today considered one of the  - and perhaps the - premier "fine presses" in the history of printing and publishing. In fifty years of existence it produced only 100 books, but they were all of the highest standard in every respect - content, editing, typeface, paper, binding, artwork, etc. In 1970, it printed, in a limited edition of 250 copies, John Woolman's Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, the classic  anti-slavery tract written in 1754 by the Philadelphia Quaker, commemorating the bicentennial of his death. It included a drawing of Woolman by Leonard Baskin and an "Afterward" -  an essay on the historical context of  Woolman's work - by - yes - Frederick Barnes Tolles. I had had no knowledge of its existence until now, and knew next to nothing about The Gehenna Press and Leonard Baskin. But in the archives at Swarthmore are carbon copies of the entire MS for this book - Woolman's work and Frederick Tolles' Afterward, which strongly suggests that Tolles prepared the entire MS from which this book was typeset and printed. 1970 is late in his illness - he entered a nursing home only two years later - and this is certainly the last major work of his life.  It is fitting in many ways because Woolman was certainly his ideal Quaker, he had earlier edited and had published Woolman's Journal, and the quality of this publication befits his legacy. But how did he come to be the person who prepared this MS and wrote the Afterward for this very special edition? There is no correspondence accompanying the MS, so we don't know. Maybe there is a Gehenna Press archive in Northampton.

The book

The Title Page and Baskin's drawing of Woolman

The colophon