Friday, February 24, 2012
Hogarth Press
"Though the Hogarth press evolved into a publishing house for Bloomsbury
writers, Leonard also initially purchased the press as a form of therapy
for Virginia - printing would be a “manual occupation [that] would take
her mind completely off her work” (Woolf, Leonard 233). As envisioned
by Leonard, the mechanical and physical nature of letterpress printing
would liberate her imaginative mind. However, the printing press became,
instead of mental therapy, a form of “aesthetic therapy” for
Virginia - it contributed to and changed her work, rather than allowing
her to escape writing.[4]
Moreover, it bridged the gap between language and reality; language no
longer simply conveyed the fictional world, but was composed of real
objects to be physically lifted and moved. Indeed, after Virginia became
acquainted with type composition, the physical placement and
modification of words, required by letterpress printing, is reflected in
her writing. Printing forced her to reevaluate her word choice,
punctuation use, and how she built a sentence. Indeed, printing at the
Hogarth Press marks the beginning of a new direction in Woolf’s writing,
one that playfully experimented with form and composition."
Source: Hogarth Press by Jessica Svendsen, The Modernism Lab at Yale University.
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