The First Flowering: Bruce Rogers at the Riverside Press, 1896-1912

by Jerry Kelly

Probably no book designer of the twentieth century has had more written about him, his work, or his life than Bruce Rogers. He was, as his primary biographer Joseph Blumenthal observed, the ultimate "artificer of the book." His career as a working designer spanned six decades, but arguably his finest (and certainly his happiest) years were spent at Cambridge's Riverside Press where he took over from D. B. Updike in 1896 and where he remained until 1912, overseeing his own department and designing at least sixty titles for Houghton Mifflin's list of Riverside Press Editions.
This small and elegantly produced volume contains an essay by Jerry Kelly outlining Rogers’s tenure at Riverside, a checklist of all the work he executed there (for Houghton Mifflin as well as others), and twenty pages of reproductions displaying the full range of BR titles, specimens of printing that―as he later wistfully remarked―“give me a definite satisfaction.”

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2008

Reviews

[Marc Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jerry Kelley's scholarly book on the noted book designer Bruce Roger's early work at the Riverside Press is both well-researched and easy-to-read. While Mr. Rogers early work was groundbreaking at the time, he would later disavow much of the work as being (to paraphrase a bit) more of student type exercises. It was the foundation, however, of one of the finest book designers of the twentieth century and thus a worthy topic for this dissertation. Mr. Kelley's overview of Mr. Rogers early work takes up the first 39 pages of the book, followed by a bibliography of the books and ephemera produced from 1900 through 1914 (although by then Mr. Rogers had left the Riverside Press) taking up pages 41-54. Lastly the book has illustrations of many of the title pages or text pages of the books mentioned in the treatise, taking up pages 55-95 (including the acknowledgement and colophon). A terrific book, in this edition as a limited edition of 323 copies, but available in a trade edition by Godine, which is on sale at the date of this writing direct from the publisher for $ 17.50 plus shipping. If you have any interest in Bruce Rogers or fine book design in the twentieth century, this book should surely be on your list.