Self-Published [And] Proud
Support, Criticism & Indifference
What was a vanity,
A no-no, self-indulgent,
Now a cause for those whose poetry
Needs simply to come out, lived in,
In ways it never could: no coterie
Of dilettantes the following,
Awaiting compliments from Woolf and company.
Sometimes for family –
Handy, cheap, available;
Purchasing ten copies.
Sometimes for sale,
Remuneration goal,
Originating mostly
Unalloyed by money,
Where identity is bared
To teach, to share in fantasy, its intimacy.
No longer out of reach,
The times are good for the creative batch [of]
Souls
Who need to paint the whole
Darned world with syllable.
Virginia Stephen (better known by her married name Virginia Woolf) took up book-binding as a hobby at 19, in 1901, soon after she began writing professionally, and married Leonard Woolf in 1912. In 1915 they moved to Hogarth House in in the London section known as Richmond, and her 1/2 brother Gerald Duckworth published her 1sr novel, "The Voyage Out." After learning that they were not eligible to enroll in the St Bride School of Printing, in 1917 they bought a hand press, taught themselves how to operate it, and set up Hogarth Press in in their dining room. Their 1st production was a pamphlet with 1 story apiece. By 1946, when the private press was taken over by Chatto & Windus, Hogarth published 527 titles, including most of her own her novels and his political tracts; Hogarth also put out the 1st edition of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" in 1922.
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