126 x 6 cm
Henry Morris
The Bird and Bull Press
North Hills, Pennsylvania
Notes: Produced as a scroll but initially intended as a miniature book, topic being the Gift of the Magi by O'Henry. Henry in the title likely refers to Henry Morris himself.
Transcription of Preface:
AN O. HENRY GIFT FROM HENRY
This thing you are unravelling (I guess you'd have to call it a scroll?) was originally meant to be a miniature book. I have always disliked miniature books, but did one early in 1978 for Bromer Booksellers, because,
(a) At the moment I had nothing better to do.
(b) I had this great little article about the Miehle Vertical, that I just had to get into print.
(c) I thought it would be an interesting challenge to see if I could get one of these nit-picky things to come out right the first time around.
(d) It is hard to say no to Anne Bromer.
Some months later, I was asked by a well known collector, to do another miniature. I still disliked (hated?) them, but didn't want to refuse this man, so I accepted.
I had a pretty good title page and binding design worked out, and the book would probably have been fine except that,
(a) I couldn't find a suitable binder who wanted to do a miniature book.
(b) O. Henry has an awful lot of one-liners.
(c) It came to me that I really did not want to do another miniature book.
One binder I spoke to in July, said she would do it, but the price was about double what I had allowed, and she "couldn't touch it until January." (She didn't say which January.) The others were no more enthused.
The trouble with one-line quotes is that in a short measure you tend to get clusters of broken lines, and to start a page with a broken line looks lousy. I had noticed this problem in the mss. before setting it, but assumed I could work it out somehow. I couldn't. The problem is minimal in a normal size book—you can move things around, or make short or long pages and get rid of them. But in this particular text there were so many that it was hopeless. The amount of short pages which were necessary would have looked terrible in a miniature book.
So, even though I had time and money invested, I decided to give it up as a bad job. However, "The Gift of the Magi" is a nice Christmas story and since I can't stand to see this type go to waste,
Season's Greetings
from Bird & Bull Press
and Henry Morris