The year 2002 marks the thirty-seventh anniversary of The Press of the Nightowl, but the story really begins over 50 years ago. As a ten-year-old boy, I became fascinated with a toy printing press in the Sears & Roebuck catalog, which duly appeared under the Christmas tree. It used rubber type and stamp-pad ink, and was inadequate for serious printing, but my odyssey was launched nonetheless. I progressed through a mimeograph and hectograph, until finally, at age 14, I acquired my first real printing press, some metal type, and associated paraphernalia.

I produced some small magazines and a couple books under the imprint of The Centaur Press in Ohio, and then sold the equipment when I went away to study at Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Printing. After graduation, marriage, and the birth of our first child, we moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I began thinking of printing again. It didn’t take long to find a small used handpress, after which I bought a small amount of new type. The Press of the Nightowl was officially launched in May of 1965 with the publication of An Introduction to The Press of the Nightowl.

The main purpose of the Press was to print and publish books, a focus which has remained central throughout its history. Quoting from the introductory booklet:

In recognition of the fact that the most carefully-printed piece is all but worthless if it has nothing to say, although the poorest of printing will be read if it is of interest, I will endeavor to make intrinsic merit a prime consideration in the selection of material for production at the Press. Thus it is to be hoped that at least some of the items of the Press will have some lasting value, and most will take the form of books.

I have always felt that typography and printing are essentially utilitarian crafts. Beginning with a manuscript which I feel needs to find readers, my objective is to use my skills in design and printing to enhance an author's work and make it appealing both as a text and as a visual object.

The Press’ first hardcover book, Seven Scintillations by Richard Overall, was published later in 1965. It was a book of poetry, as are many of the other publications of the Press. This is somewhat odd, as I am not really a reader of poetry. It may occasionally conflict with my goal of publishing books of “intrinsic merit,” since I am certainly not qualified to judge poetic merit. But The Press of the Nightowl’s poetry books have been published simply because I liked the work—on the premise that even if it is not great poetry, it does have appeal to people who might otherwise not read poems. [My conscience insists that I also point out that poetry is the easiest text to print, since the line breaks are predetermined, there are no problems of hyphenation or word spacing to contend with, and each poem usually starts on a new page and the number of lines is known at the outset. Therefore it is very easy to plan in advance the exact number of pages in the book and the makeup of the signatures.]

Another appealing subject area for the Press, not surprisingly, has been typography and printing history. At RIT's School of Printing, Professor Alexander Lawson had introduced me to the work of William Addison Dwiggins, an extremely talented calligrapher, type designer, artist, graphic designer, writer, and marionette maker who had died a few years earlier. After graduation I began collecting information about the books that Dwiggins had designed (and the books themselves, when I could afford them). Eventually I had assembled a nearly complete checklist of his book design work, and decided to publish it at The Press of the Nightowl. The project was several times as large as any other book I had done, and the production took about two years. But when The Books of WAD was finally published in 1974, it was honored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts as one of its Fifty Books of the Year. It has since become the standard bibliographic reference for Dwiggins’ book designs.

Over the years the equipment at the Press has grown to include a Vandercook hand-operated cylinder press (much more suitable for printing books than the original small Golding platen press I started with), a paper cutter, and of course more type. Type is the primary means by which a private press achieves its individual character; in particular, choosing a text typeface for letterpress printing deserves careful thought. It is usually a significant investment, and as I wrote in The Nightowl at Ten in 1975, it

must be adaptable enough to serve a variety of purposes and still possess a degree of distinctiveness. The Press of the Nightowl began with DeRoos. . . . It is a beautiful penbased letter designed by S.H. DeRoos of Holland; very adaptable, yet distinctive, and uncommon among private presses. The Press now has a second body type, resulting from a desire for a more contemporary face for The Books of WAD. The choice was Eric Gill's Joanna. It is somewhat monotone in weight, possibly less versatile than DeRoos, but seldom used by private presses.

In the intervening twenty-five years, the Nightowl’s typographic repertoire has been expanded to include a few sizes of Walbaum and a limited range of Bulmer, which was used to set The Compositor in 1990. In addition, I have purchased a number of fonts of display type for particular projects, or because I liked the face.

The Press and its proprietor moved to Athens, Georgia in 1979. Memories of moving the print shop have done much to encourage us to stay in Athens. Along with the expanded type and equipment, I brought a work in process—Call It Living by Martha Lacy Hall. I am proud to have published this first collection of stories by Ms. Hall, who has since had subsequent collections published in the real world. It has also been a pleasure to publish the work of several local authors over the years, including Stephen Corey (Gentle Iron Lace), Paul Zimmer (The American Zimmer), and Mary Ann Coleman (Recognizing the Angel ), all of whom have also had works published by larger presses. Although they are not Nightowl publications, several books by local author Michael Erlanger have been produced at the Press for private distribution. A significant publication of typographic interest was made possible by Alexander Lawson, who wrote the text for The Compositor as Artist, Craftsman, and Tradesman, which the Press published in 1990.

In 1995, I published a fitting title for The Press of the Nightowl’s thirtieth year. In Fine Printing in Georgia, 1950s–1990: Six Prizewinning Private Presses, Dr. Martha Jane K. Zachert has written engaging essays and compiled bibliographies of six Georgia private presses, including The Press of the Nightowl. In addition to its scholarly importance, this book is unusual in that it is only the second book published by the Press that was not printed at the Press. Because of its size (over 150 pages), the actual printing was done by a commercial book printer. Typesetting and page makeup were done at the Press however, with the aid of a computer.

Looking ahead, it seems likely that the computer will continue to have a place in the operation of The Press of the Nightowl. I have been frustrated for many years by a lack of “free time” and the resulting infrequency of Nightowl publications. Using the computer for typesetting and page makeup can dramatically reduce the time involved in producing a book, and makes possible the publication of larger works, such as Fine Printing in Georgia. I do not feel that this necessarily compromises the quality of the typography, for by applying the same careful attention to details that I do when handsetting type, I can produce work which is at least equal to—if not better than—hand typesetting.

The biggest disadvantage to setting type by computer at present is the need to rely on an outside source for printing. This seriously diminishes my control over the finished work, and is of course expensive. I am experimenting with the use of photopolymer plates for letterpress printing, made from a phototypeset negative. The plates can be exposed and processed at the Press with a minimum of equipment, and may provide a valuable link between the computer and the letterpress process.

When The Press of the Nightowl began in 1965, it was a small, personal reflection of equipment and processes used in many commercial print shops across the country. Offset printing was dominant, but many shops still had letterpress equipment and most type was still set in metal. Today, metal type and letterpress printing are a rarity in the commercial world, and many private printers have become either aficionados of a quaint old-fashioned craft or artists with only casual ties to the historical aspects of printing. At the same time, many new “private presses” and “small publishers” are springing up with a computer and a laser printer as their printshop, and little knowledge of or interest in what has gone before.

At the midpoint of The Press of the Nightowl’s fourth decade, I hope that it will find a middle ground between these extremes of methods and equipment. I expect that the focus will remain on books, and on the importance of the text. Many of the books will be produced with the modern technology described above. “Real type”—metal type, hand or machineset—will continue to be important, although its use may more often be for smaller projects.