In Quest of the Perfect Book: Reminiscences and Reflections of a Bookman

Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown & Company, 1926. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8x6x1. Third printing. Minor chips and minor tears to jacket edges, front jacket flap price-clipped. Bookplate on front paste-down endpaper. 1926 Hard Cover. 316 pp. Brown boards with gilt titles and decor, top edge gilt. Color frontispiece, black-and-white illustrations throughout. William Dana Orcutt (1870-1953) was an American book designer, typeface designer, historian, and author. William Dana Orcutt was an important book and typeface designer in Boston, an important printing and bookmaking center, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Orcutt graduated from Harvard University in 1892, and subsequently worked for John Wilson, proprietor of The University Press of Cambridge, Massachusetts (a forerunner of the Harvard University Press). Through his role at the University Press, Orcutt made contact with prominent authors such as Mary Baker Eddy, whose books he continued to publish throughout her career. Along with several other important designers and printers such as Daniel Berkeley Updike and Bruce Rogers, Orcutt helped found the Boston Society of Printers in 1905. Orcutt was elected the first president of the Society, an organization inspired by the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1910, Orcutt left the University Press to join The Plimpton Press in Norwood, Massachusetts. During Orcutt's tenure at the press, he worked to change the nature of printing "from a contracting to a manufacturing business", believing that this "rais[ed] the quality of the so-called 'trade' volumes". The Plimpton Press centralized the three divisions of bookmaking - typesetting, printing, and binding. Based on his experience at The University Press and his reputation as a designer and printer, Orcutt was personally sought out by authors to print their works. For example, the Victorian nutritionist and dietician Horace Fletcher bequeathed Orcutt his library so that Orcutt would publish Fletcher's manuscripts. Orcutt also published several works of his own on writing, book making and book arts and remained active in professional societies related to printing and typography. A self-described "bookman," Orcutt wrote, reviewed, and translated for a variety of publications based in the Boston area including The Atlantic Monthly, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Boston Globe. In an important review article first published in a special issue of the International Studio magazine and then republished in 1914 in a book-length collection, Orcutt surveyed the recent history of "The Art of the Book in America". He praised work by important designers and printers such as Updike, Rogers, and Theodore Low De Vinne. In Orcutt's account, American printing had reached a pinnacle of excellence during the 1860s but had fallen into decline—technically and artistically—until a revival of interest spurred by the work of William Morris in the 1890s.