RA Collection: People and Organisations
The Ovid Press was a short-lived modernist small private press founded in 1919 by John Rodker, an Anglo-Jewish poet and prose writer associated with the Imagist circle around Ezra Pound and the magazine The Egoist. The Ovid Press was Rodker’s first publishing venture and its titles included poetry by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Rodker himself as well as graphic work by Henri Gaudier-Breszka, Wyndham Lewis and Edward Wadsworth, all hand-printed by Rodker on a Columbian hand press and issued in limited editions of 40 to 500 copies. Rodker operated the press from the house he shared with his wife, the novelist Mary Butts, at 43 Belsize Park Gardens in Hampstead, North London. Butts raised most of the starting capital for the press and was also involved in the printing of at least one Ovid Press title, Rodker’s poetry collection Hymns. Additional funds for the press were provided by friends and colleagues, including May Sinclair and Ezra Pound. Eight books of modern drawings and poetry were published, but by 1921 Rodker found public interest too limited to warrant continuation and turned to general publication. Sources: Modernist Archives Publishing Project website and Ransom, W. Private Presses and their books. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1929 p.108