The Nonesuch Century:

One of 750 copies. This bibliography covers the first hundred books and the first ten years of the Nonesuch Press, which was founded in 1923 by Vera Mendel, David Garnett, and Francis Meynell, with the last being in charge of book production. The Press produced a substantial corpus of fine printing, although the books were not produced exclusively to be collectible objects.

'As a piece of typographical design, The Nonesuch Century was highly original and extremely successful. Francis [Meynell] realized that reproductions of finely printed pages cannot convey either the feel of a carefully chosen paper or the quality of the impression originally made upon it by a skilful printer. He therefore decided to reset a great many text and title-pages (as well as a few book jackets) and to have them reprinted by their original printers, using the same paper, the same colours, and the identical processes (letterpress, offset, collotype, intaglio engraving or hand colouring) which had been used when the books were first produced' (Dreyfus, p96).

Limited edition, number 29 of 750 copies; folio; 6 photogravure plates of bindings, 44 tipped-in specimen leaves mounted on dark grey paper, 25 of these bifolia and many coloured, 52 pages reproducing illustrative text and title pages, and 3 pages of printer's devices; original green cloth, black morocco spine label with gilt lettering, spine faded to brown, fore-edge uncut, light spotting to endpapers.

John Dreyfus, A History of the Nonesuch Press, 1981.