The Paper Cuts blog, on The New York Times, discusses some handsome chapbooks; Christmas "cards" sent out as holiday greetings by the Spiral Press in limited release from 1929 to 1962.
From the piece...
Joseph Blumenthal, who headed the small but renowned printing press from 1926 to 1971, first decided to make a letterpress chapbook of Frost’s poem “Christmas Trees” in 1929 for his wife and a small group of colleagues. He had been working on an edition of Frost’s poetry, but the chapbook — of which 250 copies were printed — was made without Frost’s knowledge. As Blumenthal recounts in a short pamphlet published in 1963, after the last of the Christmas cards, Frost saw the card the following February and immediately requested copies for his own family. He wrote to Blumenthal, “my sympathies have been enlisted on the side of small presses and hand setting. My heart will be with you in your work.”
Photo by Jennifer Chen; courtesy of Poets House
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