In 1917 Virginia and Leonard Woolf invested in a printing press and set up the Hogarth Press. When the first difficulties occurred, Leonard lamented the purchase. To Virginia’s great relief he qualified his remark, which was caused not so much by the problems, but because he could see he would never do anything else.

And so it proved. The Hogarth Press became a major publishing house and from 1921 all Virginia’s novels and essays were published with the Hogarth imprint. This independence was critical to her development as a writer, giving her the confidence to experiment and eventually help redefine the face of English literature.

The wordcurves press has been set up with similar objectives, to be open to experimental developments and to publish work by new and established authors. Two Stories, written by Leonard and Virginia and accompanied by Dora Carrington’s woodcuts, was the Hogarth Press’s first publication. This attention to both the visual and verbal content of the Hogarth books is a fundamental quality the wordcurves press will seek to emulate.

See December 2009 >>