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Typophile Chap Books: 30

Will Bradley
His Chap Book

AN ACCOUNT, IN THE WORDS OF THE
DEAN OF AMERICAN TYPOGRAPHERS, OF
HIS GRAPHIC ARTS ADVENTURES: AS BOY
PRINTER IN ISHPEMING; ART STUDENT
IN CHICAGO; DESIGNER, PRINTER AND
PUBLISHER AT THE WAYSIDE PRESS; THE
YEARS AS ART DIRECTOR IN PERIODICAL
PUBLISHING, AND THE INTERLUDES OF
STAGE, CINEMA AND AUTHORSHIP

New York: The Typophiles
1955

The special contents
of this edition are
copyright 1955
by Paul A. Bennett
for the Typophiles

*  *  *

Printed in the
United States of America

[iii]

AN INTRODUCTION

This is a difficult task. I agreed towrite an introduction to Will Bradley,His Chap Book before I had seen thebook’s text itself. Now I have encounteredhere the gaiety, courage, vitalityof this man who romped like a breezethrough American graphic arts for severaldecades—and I feel that my partshould be little more than the openingof a door to this perennial springtimefreshness.

But still there is something to talkabout that he, modest man, hasn’t evenmentioned. And that is the impact ofhis work on his time. It should betalked about, because it is hard to realize[iv]today, in our state of emancipation,what a closed and stuffy roomBradley entered—and opened to thesun and air.

Across the Atlantic, the NineteenthCentury was bursting its seams: Morrisfailing to revive medievalism but startlinghis world with a revival of finecraftsmanship; Beardsley, the YellowBook and their avant garde galaxystartling their world in quite a differentway; Toulouse-Lautrec spreadingmodern art in the kiosks of Paris whenonly a handful knew anything aboutCezanne, Van Gogh, Seurat; barriersbeing demolished eve