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Hogarth Press
Printing press founded by Leonard and Virginia Woolf
Location(s)
London
WC1N 2AF
United Kingdom 52 Tavistock Square
London
WC1H 9HB
United Kingdom Hogarth House
Paradise Road
Richmond
SW9 1SA
United Kingdom
About
The Hogarth Press was founded by Leonard and Virginia Woolf in March 1917 in their house (Hogarth House) in Richmond, London. They published their first pamphlet in July of that year. It consisted of two short stories, Virginia's 'The Mark on the Wall' and Leonard's 'Three Jews'. The pamphlet was sold by subscription only, a practice that continued until 1923. Soon the Press went on to publish Katherine Mansfield's 'Prelude', Virginia's Kew Gardens and T. S. Eliot's Poems; James Joyce's Ulysses, however, was turned down. In 1922 the Woolfs published their first full-length book, Virginia's Jacob's Room, and in 1923 T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, before moving the Press to the basement of their house in Tavistock Square. In 1924, at the suggestion of their friend James Strachey, the Press agreed to publish Freud's collected papers.
In 1929 Hogarth published G. S. Dutt's A Woman of India: Being the Life of Saroj Nalini (Founder of the Women's Institute Movement in India), with a foreword by Rabindranath Tagore. During the 1930s, the Press grew immensely popular and assistants were brought in. Among them was John Lehmann, who edited the anthology New Signatures (1932), which included poems by W. H. Auden, Julian Bell, C. Day Lewis, Richard Eberhart, William Empson and Stephen Spender. In 1938 Lehmann edited the collection New Series, to which the writer Mulk Raj Anand contributed in autumn 1938. Also that year, Hogarth published Rajani Palme Dutt's The Political and Social Doctrine of Communism. In 1940 Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi was published, and Lehmann edited the Folios of New Writing, which also contained writing by Ali.
The Hogarth Press continued to grow under Lehmann, who became a partner after Virginia's death in 1941. Disagreements between Leonard Woolf and John Lehmann eventually led to Woolf buying Lehmann out by selling Lehmann's half-share to Chatto & Windus. The Hogarth Press then became a subsidiary of Chatto & Windus and was eventually bought by Random House UK.
Below is a selection of published works by South Asians:
Dutt, G. S., A Woman of India: Being the Life of Saroj Nalini (Founder of the Women's Institute Movement in India) (1929)
Dutt, Rajani Palme, The Political and Social Doctrine of Communism (1938)
Anand, Mulk Raj, 'Duty', in New Writing, New Series, ed. by John Lehmann (1938), pp. 208–12
Ali, Ahmed, 'Morning in Delhi', in Folios of New Writing, ed. by John Lehmann (1940), pp. 137–51
Ali, Ahmed, Twilight in Delhi (1940)
Hsiao Ch'ien, 'The New China Turns to Ibsen', in Daylight: European Arts and Letters Yesterday: Today: Tomorrow (1941), pp. 167–74
Kennedy, Richard, A Boy at the Hogarth Press (London: The Whittington Press, 1972)
Lehmann, John, Thrown to the Woolfs (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978)
Rhein, Donna E., The Handprinted Books of Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1917–1932 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research, 1985)
Rosenbaum, S. P., Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press (Austin, Texas: College of Liberal Arts, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1995)
Spater, George and Parsons, Ian, A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (London: Cape; Hogarth Press, 1977)
Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press: From the Collection of William Beekman, Exhibited at the Grolier Club (New York: Grolier Club, 2004)
Willis, John H., Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917–41 (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1992)
Woolf, Leonard, Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911–1918 (London: Hogarth Press, 1964)
Woolf, Leonard, Downhill all the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919–1939 (London: Hogarth Press, 1967)
Woolf, Leonard, The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939–1969 (London: Hogarth Press, 1969)
Woolf, Leonard, Letters of Leonard Woolf, ed. by Frederic Spotts (San Diego: Brace Harcourt Jovanovich, 1989)
Woolf, Virginia, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols, ed. by Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1977–84)
Woolf, Virginia, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols, ed. by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (London: Hogarth Press, 1975–80)
Woolmer, James Howard, A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917–1938 (London: Hogarth Press, 1976)
Woolmer, James Howard, A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917–1946 (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1986)
Papers, University of Reading
Papers, University of Sussex
Correspondence between Leonard Woolf and John Lehmann, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
Correspondence between Leonard Woolf and John Lehmann, Victoria College Library, University of Toronto
Image credit
Blue plaque for Leonard and Virginia Woolf, founders of Hogarth Press in Richmond, London, UK. Taken by Mark Barker, 2006. Creative Commons via Wikipedia, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
