The Book Club of California promotes the interests of discriminating readers, book artisans, collectors, scholars and libraries through the
creation of books of fine design & high quality printing that will be
read with pleasure and owned with pride.

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by ROBERT GREENWOOD
Designed by Jack W. Stauffacher of The Greenwood Press
Edition 350. Price $150

The Account traces the evolution of book-related adventures of Robert Greenwood and Newton Baird, founders of the Press. From publishing a quarterly poetry magazine to discovering a 'ghost' book, to establishing a non-profit arm (Talisman Literary Research), to becoming book dealers, the pair has enjoyed the respect and admiration of the publishing world. Includes a bibliography of books published by the Talisman Press, a bibliography of books published by Talisman Literary Research, Inc., a supplement to California Imprints 1833–1862, and a complete index.

Read review in Fine Books & Collections magazine

2. John Ignatius Bleasdale:
A Friend of Wine in the New Worlds
by THOMAS PNNEY
Printed by Eric Holub of the Hillside Press, San Francisco.
A special offering of a few remaining copies signed by the author.
Edition: 275. Price $70

Noted wine historian Thomas Pinney sketches the life of John Ignatius Bleasdale, a remarkable Jesuit noted for his scientific promotion of grape-growing, wine-making, and beverage marketing in Victoria, Australia, and California from the 1850s to the early 1880s.

3. The Colt Springs High:
A Publishing Memoir of the Colt Press, 1939-1942
by WILLIAM MATSON ROTH
Designed by Andrew Hoyem
and printed by the Arion Press, San Francisco.
Edition: 500. Price $175

William Matson Roth encountered the Grabhorns while he was still a student at Yale, home in California for the summer. This is the story of a collaboration with Jane Grabhorn on the unique publishing venture they called the Colt Press. Mr. Roth’s vivid recollections are supplemented by the dashing letters and memoranda of Mrs. Grabhorn, evoking a pre-war era in San Francisco that was full of literary ferment, printing innovation, and an irrepressible spirit of fun.

5. John DePol:
A Catalogue Raisonné of his Work
Edited by JAMES HOWARD FRASER
AND ELEANOR FRIEDL
with a biographical essay by
CATHERINE TYLER BRODY

Printed by James Wehlage of the Tuscan Press, Novato, California.
Edition: 400. About 10 copies left. Price $150

The career of master wood-engraver John DePol is celebrated in this large, handsome volume, which describes in impressive detail DePol’s large body of illustrative work – books, pamphlets, prints, and keepsakes. The illustrations, many in color, serve to show that although he was essentially self-taught, DePol is indeed the “consummate artist.”

6. Raymond Duncan:
Printer, Expatriate, Eccentric Artist
by ADELA SPINDLER ROATCAP
Designed and printed by Eric Holub of The Hillside Press.
Endpapers, illustrations.
Edition: 400. About 10 copies left. Price $50

The first book devoted to the life and achievements of a famous expatriate (and also dancer Isadora Duncan’s brother). A lively and entertaining account of “San Francisco’s most colorful gift to Paris.”

7. Inscriptions
at the Old San Francisco Public Library
with photographs by DENNIS LETBETTER
and text by JACK W. STAUFFACHER,
GRAY BRECHIN, ANDREA GRIMES, SUMNER STONE,
AND MICHAEL HARVEY
Designed by Jack W. Stauffacher
of The Greenwood Press, San Francisco.
Co-published with the San Francisco Public Library
in an edition of 1,000 copies. Price $55

When the San Francisco Main Library was closed to be transformed into the Asian Art Museum, Jack W. Stauffacher and his photographer friend Dennis Letbetter wished passionately to document the historic building as it was, recording the inscriptions chosen by San Francisco Mayor Edward Robeson Taylor – an early president of The Book Club of California. A rushed tour of a gloomy and closed building resulted in this study, which links it to a long tradition of libraries embellished with inscriptions and sheds a clear light on the cultural and historical context in which the library appeared in 1917.

8. Knights of the Lash:
The Stagecoach Stories of Major Benjamin C. Truman
edited by GARY F. KURUTZ
Designed and printed by The Castle Press, Pasadena.
Edition: 350. Price $85

When Major C. Truman (1835-1916), a Civil War correspondent and noted California Booster, first took the overland stage to the Golden State in 1866 he became fascinated by that daring breed of drivers he dubbed “Knights of the Lash.” As he crisscrossed California and Nevada in elegant six-horse Concord coaches and utilitarian mud wagons, Major Truman recorded their exploits and adventures in ephemeral newspapers, long discontinued magazines, and out-of-print books. Gary Kurutz has gathered Truman’s scattered stories, so flamboyantly told, that modern readers may enjoy the perils and excitement of a vanished mode of public travel.

See item 12, a companion volume, Benjamin C. Truman: California Booster & Bon Vivant.

9. A Memoir of Book Design, 1969-2000
by JOSEPH J. D’AMBROSIO
Designed by D’Ambrosio and printed offset by
Lithotech, Phoenix, Arizona.
Edition: 350. Price $175

A pre-eminent “artist working in the book medium” Joseph J. D’Ambrosio has painstakingly recorded the processes by which he has created his ground-breaking works – noting his false starts and failures as well as his successes. He analyzes his motives behind the inventive structures and designs so highly prized by collectors, museums, and libraries. D’Ambrosio delves honestly and wittily into his own creativity, and the book is a gem, with copious illustrations of his oeuvre.

10. Napa Valley Heyday
by RICHARD H. DILLON
Designed by Jonathan Clark,
the Artichoke Press, Mountain View, California.
Edition: 450. Price $175

Historian Richard H. Dillon, has provided the definitive history of one of the West’s most idyllic agricultural areas. He begins with the dramatic topography and geography of the region, an account of its early residents, the Wappo and Patwin tribes and mountain men George Yount and Caleb Greenwood. In the 1850s, wheat was the bountiful harvest, followed after the Civil War by the planting of vineyards. Many residents played important roles in California history, and their stories are told here. Charles B. Turrill’s photographs, kindly lent from the collection of the Society of California Pioneers, show this still-beautiful region as it was in the late nineteenth century.

11. Charles and Kathleen Norris:
The Courtship Year
edited by RICHARD ALLAN DAVISON
Designed and printed by W. Thomas Taylor.
Edition: 400. Price $85

Charles Norris and his fiancée, Kathleen Thompson, exchanged daily letters during one year of their engagement. The Norrises were to become one of the most acclaimed literary couples of the era, but during the year he ventured to New York while she remained in San Francisco, they coped with a variety of practical problems – as well as with a difficult separation.

12. Benjamin C. Truman:
California Booster & Bon Vivant
by GARY F. KURUTZ
Designed and printed by The Grace Hoper Press.
Edition: 600. Price $27.50

A lively and entertaining biography which recounts the checkered career of one of California’s most articulate and prolific promoters, the author of Semi-Tropical California, Homes and Happiness in the Golden State and numerous florid newspaper articles. This is the first in a projected Book Club series dealing with authors whose contributions to the literary scene of the American West have been significant but largely uncelebrated.

See item 7, a companion volume, Knights of the Lash: The Stagecoach Stories of Major Benjamin C. Truman.

13. WPA Federal Art Project:
Printmaking in California 1935-43
by ELIZABETH G. SEATON
Designed by Patrick Reagh, Sebastopol, California.
Edition: 450. Price $175

Elizabeth Seaton provides a history of the California Federal Art Project printmaking workshops and their participants. California’s printmaking unit was unique among national efforts to diversify (technically and stylistically) and popularize prints. She argues that the workshops encouraged artists’ effort to use the medium for leftist political aims relating to the WPA’s future and other labor concerns. Supporting her analysis are eighty color plates that include artists Grace Clements, Mallette Dean, Edward Hagedorn, John Langley Howard, Sargent Claude Johnson, Reuben Kadish, Paul Landacre, Helen Lundeberg, Clay Spohn, and Herman Volz.