BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

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We are pleased to present the peroration of William Lyon Phelps’s landmark address, The Pleasure of Books. There has rarely been a more immediate or succinct rundown on the importance of books. Book-friends (as opposed to human-friends, says Phelps) provide a second reality of sorts – one in which we are less tethered by age or circumstance or wealth or ability. The pleasure of books is, in fact, so obvious, that Phelps seems to say (as Emerson put it) “with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we [are] forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

This rousing summation of why we love books not only speaks a deep truth but is a statement of purpose. It reminds us what our books are for.

The address is printed alongside two-toned deco ornamentation.

EDITION NOTES

• Limited to 200, numbered 1 through 200

• The twelfth broadside of No Reply Press, Autumn 2022.

• Broadside measures 5 ¾ by 11 inches.

• Printed by hand on Zerkall-bütten, mould-made in Germany, using a Vandercook Universal I cylinder press.

• Typeset in Weiss, designed by Emil Rudolf Weiß.

HAND-MADE FRAMING

• We offer museum-quality gallery frames, made specially for our broadsides. Each frame is made by hand with sustainably harvested poplar hardwood.

• The broadside is mounted to create a slight shadow which accents and exhibits the deckle edges of the papers we use.