Nigel Beale's Biblio File Podcast

Barbarian Press was established in 1977 in Kent, England where Jan and Crispin Elsted worked with Graham Williams at the Florin Press. With three flatbed hand presses and many cases of type, the couple returned home to Canada in 1978 to set up shop in Mission, British Columbia, about 50 miles east of Vancouver in the Fraser Valley. The press’s publications range from new translations of poetry and...

“PRINTING, ILLUSTRATION, TYPE DESIGN, type-founding, type engraving, bookbinding, graphic design, stone cutting and digital type design are things that have occupied me for over seventy years, and do to this day.  Excepting the bit of letter cutting in stone, these occupations have all put dinner on the table; but it has been my good fortune to have loved the work.” This is how Jim Rimmer (1934-20...

The Alcuin Society’s Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada have been recognizing achievement since 1981. As Marlene Chan put it in the preface to the 2009 winners’catalogue, “The hallmark of the judging process in all of the Alcuin competitions is, and has always been, that each book is considered as a total entity. The discerning judges examine every aspect of each book, including the du...

Monsieur Wikipedia informs us that bill bissett was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, attended Dalhousie University (1956) and the University of British Columbia (1963–1965), and dropped out of both because of a desire 'to live as a free agent, writer and painter unencumbered by any academic constraints.' He moved to Vancouver in 1958 and five years later set up blew ointment magazine . He later launc...

Will Rueter is a private printer, hand binder, instructor and printmaker living in Dundas, Ontario. He founded The Aliquando Press late in 1962. It has, to date, produced more than 100 books, and plenty of broadsides too. Rueter's work has been shown throughout North America and Japan and is held in public and private collections in North America and Europe. I met him recently at his home in Dunda...

According to her website, "Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known writers, and author of eight acclaimed books of literary non-fiction. Born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she began her writing career in England as a magazine editor and newspaper columnist. After coming to Canada in 1979, she worked as a political commentator, boo...

The Cary Collection is one of America’s premier libraries on graphic communication, its history and practices. Located in Rochester on the campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology, the original collection of 2,300 volumes was assembled by New York City businessman Melbert B. Cary, Jr. during the 1920s and 1930s. Cary was director of the Continental Type Founders Association (a type-importin...

Last summer I met with Stan Bevington in Toronto to talk about the history of the Coach House Press and some of the more collectible books that it has published over the years. In this, Part ll of our conversation, we discuss, among many other things, the influence of the Stinehour Press; the adoption, adaptation, and in some cases invention of new printing; photographic and computer technologies,...

It didn't win any prizes; no awards; didn't make many, if any, long or short lists; but David Gilmour's The Perfect Order of Things is a great novel. The best I read last year. In fact, I think it's one of the best Canadian novels ever written. Deceptively easy to read, the book's 300-odd pages are not only crowded with elegantly crafted sentences, they collectively capture and convey levels of in...

I met with Phil Hall, whose latest collection of poems, Killdeer , has just won the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for English Poetry. It's a sensitive, engaging, revealing work that incorporates narrative essay, life philosophy and literary criticism into its stanzas. In sharp contrast to  the arrogant, impenetrable and solipsistic, Hall's poetry is humbly presented, accessible, beaut...

Joseph Malaby Dent (30 August 1849 – 9 May 1926) was the British book publisher who gave the world the Everyman's Library series. After a short, unsuccessful career as an apprentice printer he took up bookbinding, and shortly thereafter founded J. M. Dent and Company, in 1888, publishing the works of Lamb, Goldsmith, Austen, Chaucer, and Tennyson among others. Printed in short runs on handmade pap...

Glenn Gould was a world renowned classical pianist and an 'eccentric genius'— a 'solitary, headstrong, hypochondriac virtuoso.'  Abandoning stage performances in 1964, he concentrated instead on mastering recordings, radio, television, and print. His sudden death at age fifty stunned the world, but his music and legacy continues. Philosopher/critic Mark Kingwell sees Gould as a philosopher of musi...

Douglas Gibson was, for more than 40 years, a noted Canadian editor and publisher whose skills both as writer and salesman put him at the pinnacle of his profession. Douglas Gibson Books, the first editorial imprint of its kind in Canada, has over the years  published much of the best writing that has ever come out of this country. Stories About Storytellers is Gibson's memoir. In a series of shor...

Lester "Mike" Pearson was an extraordinary politician. He was also an extraordinary athlete, diplomat, leader, teacher, writer and student. And yet, despite all of this, and, the fact that during his lifetime he was the world's best known Canadian, many are today unaware of the important role he played in creating modern Canada with its enviable social programs and economic safeguards. Andrew Cohe...

A complicated, fascinating, largely unknown man who did a great deal for American literary publishing, Mitchell Kennerley was born in 1878 in Burslem, England. He arrived in the United States in 1896 to help set up publisher John Lane's U.S. offices. After an unhappy parting, Kennerley set off to publish various small literary magazines, and in 1906 launched his own imprint under which he publishe...

Founded in Minnesota in 1980 by Emilie Buchwald and R.W. Scholes, M ilkweed Editions is one of America's leading independent, nonprofit literary publishers, releasing between fifteen and twenty new books each year in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children's literature. Much of its nonfiction is addresses critical environmental issues and works to expand ecological consciousness. Milkweed’s auth...

Hard not to like Randy Bachman. He's smart, friendly, interested, passionate...and a collector. Why a collector? Because in 1976 his favourite guitar was stolen from a Toronto hotel room, and he wanted to get it back. What? A late-1950s orange Gretsch guitar, the Chet Atkins model. Bachman used it -- "my first real professional guitar" -- on the Guess Who hit Shakin' All Over, and later for Bachma...

Coffee House started out as the Toothpaste Press in Iowa in the early 1970s. Founded by Allan Kornblum after taking a University of Iowa typography course with the famed printer Harry Duncan, this small publishing house dedicated itself to producing poetry pamphlets and letterpress books. After 10 years, Kornblum closed the press, moved to Minneapolis, reopened it as a nonprofit organization, and...

In 1965, Stan Bevington, moved to Toronto from Edmonton, rented an old coach house, installed an antique Challenge Gordon platen press and set up Coach House Press . Over the years his small publishing house introduced the world to the early works of bpNichol, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, George Bowering, Frank Davey, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Anne Michaels and many other important Canadian write...

George Walker is a wood engraver, book artist, author, illustrator and educator who has taught courses at the Ontario College of Art & Design since 1985. For over twenty years he has exhibited his wood engravings and limited edition books internationally. Among many book projects, George has illustrated two hand-printed editions written by Neil Gaiman. He is the author of The Inverted Line (2000 P...

Johanna Skibsrud's debut novel The Sentimentalists won the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2009 Alcuin Award for best designed work of prose fiction, the first book ever to achieve this double win. The Sentimentalists was first published by Gaspereau Press , a highly regarded small press based in Kentiville Nova Scotia, in a print run of 800 copies. The firm had difficulty filling demand for...

Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television. His first work, a collection of short stories, was largely ignored when it was published in 1992. His second book, Missing Kissinger , a collection of fifty very short stories, was a hit. The story "Siren", which deals with paradoxes in modern Israeli society, is included in the...

  Whilst in Texas recently I did what all crazed literary tourists do, I checked around for listings of interesting conferences that were taking place at the time, in the area. The Popular Culture Association was holding one in San Antonio, and this is where I caught up with Cheryl Torsney, (at the time Dean of Hiram College, now Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the State...

  James Keeline liked to take apart radios as a young boy. He was also interested in space technology and computers. While in school he worked for a used bookstore. He ended up managing the place and running its web site and computer network. He also started researching and writing about children's series books. His particular interest and expertise is the Stratemeyer Syndicate and its founder Edw...

Whilst in the Lone Star state, Texas, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Kathy Doyle Thomas , Executive Vice President at Half Price Books'  headquarters in Dallas. The company has been in business now for almost 50 years and has enjoyed considerable success, some say at the expense of independent used bookstores. I met with Doyle, who, incidentally serves as Chairman of the Retail Advert...