by T. S. Eliot, introduced by Christopher Ricks

No Reply is pleased to present its second edition of T. S. Eliot’s Preludes. One of Eliot’s most understated masterpieces, he presents poem/s as pervigilium, relatable to all who have wandered city streets at night wondering after their place in the universe.

I am moved by fancies that are curled

Around these images, and cling:

The notion of some infinitely gentle

Infinitely suffering thing.

To make sense of such an alternately profound and mundane work, we rely on our “sturdy arch,” the towering literary critic Christopher Ricks. His original introduction (or “prelude”) penned for this edition is among his most precise, wondering after the essence of the very word “prelude,” a cryptic and masterful titling choice. He never lectures his reader, but explores literature in tandem with them, asking not “Did you know?” but rather “Did you notice?” His observations often drive to the heart of a work:

Preludes exhibits the relations of literature to three signal components of life: time present, time past, and time future. [Quoting from the poem:] And now. And then. And when.

We are proud to extend our collaboration with Eliot’s foremost reader to this poem.

And this is just the beginning. Preludes is the first text to which the press has returned. The goal of private presswork is always excellence in bookmaking, and we have taken inspiration by the revisitations of some of our guiding lights (e.g. Tallone, Incline, Rampant Lions). Some editions demand revisiting. Almost immediately after our first Preludes was finished in 2020, we began to plan the second. The first was marred by everything from the breakdown of an old proof press to natural disasters (Oregon’s summer wildfires) and even a burglary of the artwork. While we were proud of it, and especially of our collaboration with Frêle Sivinaigre, the second edition is in another league, representing the progress No Reply has made in the intervening years. Marrying far superior printing – damp on gorgeous mouldmade paper – with Ricks’ new contribution and Frêle’s wonderful paste papers which garnered so much attention, we can at last rest our case for Preludes.

Edition Notes

• Limited to 127 copies, numbered 1 through 127.

• The second edition of the eleventh imprint of No Reply Press, Spring 2023.

• 24 pages, including the poem (or four poems) and Christopher Ricks’ original prelude.

• Book measures 5 ¼ by 9 ¾ inches.

• Typeset in Zapfino, designed by Hermann Zapf, and Weiss, designed by Emil Rudolf Weiss.

• Printed damp by hand on untrimmed Hahnemühle Biblio using a Vandercook Universal I proofing press.

• Hand-bound in a German (sometimes called “Bradel”) style using paste paper made specially for the edition.

• Signed by Christopher Ricks.