The Definitive Dwiggins no. 156—Nobodaddy
Cover of the regular edition of Nobodaddy by Archibald MacLeish (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Dunster House, 1926). Decoration by W.A. Dwiggins; design by Elmer Adler; printing by Pynson Printers.
For Nobodaddy: A Play by Archibald MacLeish (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Dunster House, 1926) W.A. Dwiggins designed a cover and a title page. [1] The work is not among his most important, but it is among the best documented. It was also a short assignment. [2] That makes it ideal for a detailed chronological account that reveals the kind of discussions among author, publisher, designer, and printer that are typical of many, if not most, book design projects. [3]
The four principals involved in the production of Nobodaddy were Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), the author; Maurice Firuski (1894-1978), the publisher; Elmer Adler (1884–1962), the printer; and W.A. Dwiggins, the designer. MacLeish was a young poet in the fall of 1923 when he began writing Nobodaddy, a verse play reimagining the stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. Firuski, a Yale classmate of his, was the owner of Dunster House Bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1919 he had been occasionally publishing books as well as selling them. [3] Adler established Pynson Printers in 1922 with Walter Dorwin Teague, David Silve, and Hubert Canfield. By 1925 he was the lone remaining founder. Nobodaddy was the only book that Pynson Printers produced for Dunster House Bookshop. Dwiggins designed a vignette in Colonial style for Firuski in 1919 that was used as a mark for his bookstore’s stationery and for several of the firm’s early books. [4]
CHRONOLOGY [5]
1924
16 August [1924]
Archibald MacLeish to Maurice Firuski (of Dunster House)
“Thanks a lot for your kind word on Nobodaddy.”
[NYPL]
6 October [1924]
MacLeish to Firuski
MacLeish is glad to have Nobodaddy published by Dunster House, “[b]ut I realize quite well that you’re acting at least as much from freindship [sic] for me as from interest in the poem.” He is worried about the financial risk and offers to bear it himself.
[NYPL]
31 October 1924
MacLeish to Firuski
MacLeish repeats his offer to totally underwrite the cost of the publication of Nobodaddy.
[NYPL]
29 December 1924
MacLeish to Firuski
“What do you plan to do—if anything—about Nobodaddy?”
[Winnick]
1925
5 June 1925
MacLeish to Robert N. Linscott (1886–1964) (editor at Houghton Mifflin Company)
MacLeish wants his opinion on Nobodaddy.
[Winnick]
20 July 1925
Elmer Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that he will be in Boston and Cambridge over the weekend [July 25–26].
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
1 August 1925
Firuski to Adler
Firuski likes the joke of changing “Nobodaddy” into “Noble Daddy.” He hopes that he can find Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) to do the title page.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
3 August 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler asks Firuski for his reaction to Adler’s sketch for the title page. Says that he has not heard from Rockwell Kent. “[I] begin to question his presence in America. If he is not in this land of the free, goodness knows where we can find him. So don’t you think we had better call in Dwiggins on this?” Says he is thinking of using Cochin for the text of Nobodaddy. [6]
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
5 August 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that he has discovered Kent is abroad and that he thinks it best to get Dwiggins to make the title page drawing of Nobodaddy.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
5 August 1925
Firuski to Adler
“Since you cannot find Rockwell Kent, I dare say the next step is Dwiggins; although please make a real effort to find Kent. Understand me, however, when I say this, because my admiration for Dwiggins is a good deal higher than you suspect.”
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
6 August 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that he has seen T.M. Cleland who tells him that “it will be practically impossible to get in touch with Rockwell Kent for sometime.”
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
6 August 1925
Firuski to Adler
Firuski gives Adler the go-ahead to use Dwiggins for the title page design. Should he talk directly to Dwiggins or only through Adler?
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
7 August 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski it is ok for him to be directly in touch with Dwiggins, but reminds him that “we are offering him only a hundred dollars for the job and it will require a contribution of a certain amount of good nature on his part to get him to carry it through.”
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
7 August 1925
Adler to W.A. Dwiggins
Adler says he visited Firuski while in Boston and that Firuski asked him to do a little job. He would like Dwiggins to an illustration for the title page of Nobodaddy, “…a little border of fig leaves or what not entwined and the figures of Adam and Eve in the center of the page.” He only has $100 to spend and wants to know if Dwiggins will accept the assignment? [7]
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
10 August 1925
Dwiggins to Adler
Dwiggins tells Adler that he would be delighted to do the Firuski drawing if it is not due before September. He wants to know “if the action of the play comes before or after the Fall. Makes a difference in the costumes.” [8]
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
11 August 1925
Adler to Dwiggins
Adler is delighted that Dwiggins has agreed to do the drawing. And, yes, he can wait until September to get it.
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
11 August 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler says that he has received a letter from Dwiggins in the morning agreeing to do the title page drawing.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
17 August–14 September 1925
Dwiggins is on vacation.
25 August 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler asks Firuski how the meeting with Dwiggins went.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
26 August 1925
Firuski to Adler
Firuski replies that he spoke to Dwiggins some time ago. “His idea was something in the style of William Blake; and of course logically he is quite right.”
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
16 September 1925
Adler to Dwiggins
Adler is waiting for title page drawing.
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
24 September 1925
Dwiggins to Adler
Dwiggins says that he saw Firuski and has agreed to do a layout for the title page.
[Princeton C0262 17:1]
29 September 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that Dwiggins says he will produce something shortly—”so we are hopeful.”
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
30 September 1925
Adler to Dwiggins
Adler tells Dwiggins he is looking forward to seeing the sketch.
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
5 October 1925
Firuski to Adler (telegram)
Firuski asks Adler to send text page of Nobodaddy to Dwiggins.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
5 October 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski he is sending Dwiggins text pages to help him visualize the title page.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
5–7 October 1925
Dwiggins works on design of title page for Nobodaddy.
[BPL]
Original pen-and-ink artwork by W.A. Dwiggins for title page of Nobodaddy by Archibald MacLeish (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Dunster House, 1926). Image courtesy of Princeton University, Firestone Library, Special Collections.
Original pen-and-ink artwork by W.A. Dwiggins for “frame” on title page of Nobodaddy by Archibald MacLeish (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Dunster House, 1926). Image courtesy of Princeton University, Firestone Library, Special Collections.
6 October 1925
Firuski to Adler
Firuski explains to Adler that Dwiggins wanted to judge the title page text matter and asked if it was going to be set in type or if he was to letter it. Firuski told him it would be set in type.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
6 October 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler told Firuski it was only a temporary idea to have the title set in type. “If you prefer to have this all drawn in by Dwiggins, we might have an intaglio plate made from his drawings, and make the title page a print showing plate mark, etc. instead of putting it in with ordinary relief printing.”
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
9 October 1925
Firuski to Adler
Firuski tells Adler that he is sending on Dwiggins’ drawings for the title page. He thinks that Dwiggins did a superb job. “Now as to colors. As he [Dwiggins] says on his little sketch, which I enclose, the colors should be mellow and ‘Blake’. Are you familiar with ‘Songs of Innocence’ and the other colored Blake books? It is the slightly wan and pale color that Dwiggins has in mind, and I think he is correct in his judgment. I should add that MacLeish is here now and has seen the drawings and likes them as well as I do.” [9]
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
10 October 1925
Firuski to Adler
Firuski says he has just telephoned Dwiggins and read him Adler’s letter of October 6. Dwiggins does not like the intaglio plate idea and says to spend the money on color instead.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
15 October 1925
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that he agrees with Dwiggins about using two colors for the title page.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
16 October 1925
Firuski to Adler
“Dwiggins is a great fellow and I don’t see how the job could have been better done.”
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
17 October 1925
Adler to Dwiggins
Adler tells Dwiggins that he is pleased with the drawing for the title page of Nobodaddy.
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
22 October 1925
MacLeish to Firuski
MacLeish says that Linscott and Conrad Aiken (1899–1973) don’t like Nobodaddy. He wants to know if he should revise it?
[Winnick]
1 December 1925
MacLeish to Firuski
MacLeish says that he is revising Acts 1 and 3 and rewriting Act 2 of Nobodaddy following advice from Linscott and Aiken. He says the play is about the Garden of Eden and man becoming self-conscious, the root of all ills. [9]
[Winnick]
22 December 1925
MacLeish to Martha Hillard MacLeish (his mother)
MacLeish says that Firuski had already set up the text when the idea of revising it began.
[Winnick]
1926
7 January 1926
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that Nobodaddy cost $1420 (including $100 for Dwiggins). Firuski had offered to pay $1500 to take care of additional costs.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
18 January 1926
Firuski to Adler
Firuski tells Adler that Dwiggins had visited him and that he showed him Adler’s letter and the proof of the title page. “He [Dwiggins] liked the general scheme very much, but did not like the colors. He suggests that the green should be a paler olive color and the central design should be more of a rose tint.” Dwiggins wants color proofs.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
19 January 1926
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that the colors were not final.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
Paste-up proof of the title page for Nobodaddy by Archibald MacLeish (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Dunster House, 1926). Illustration and by W.A. Dwiggins; typography by Elmer Adler. This is a proof with original maroon ground behind Adam and Eve. Image courtesy of Princeton University, Firestone Library, Special Collections.
23 January 1926
Adler to Dwiggins
Adler tells Dwiggins he is confused about the color he wants for the title page.
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
28 January 1926
Adler to Dwiggins
Adler thanks Dwiggins for instructions on the color for the title page.
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
Title page of Nobodaddy by Archibald MacLeish (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Dunster House, 1926). Illustration by W.A. Dwiggins; typography by Elmer Adler; printing by Pynson Printers. Note that the maroon background instead of becoming rose, is now a soft grayish blue. Image courtesy of Princeton University, Firestone Library, Special Collections.
5 February 1926
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski, “Please bear in mind that there will be no reference to Dwiggins’ contribution unless it would appear in this colophon or on the verso of the title page.”
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
6 February 1926
Firuski to Adler
Firuski asks Adler for a copy of Nobodaddy by March 15 for submission to the AIGA Fifty Books competition.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
8 February 1926
Adler to Dwiggins
Adler asks Dwiggins if he likes the color in the circular for Nobodaddy.
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
n.d. [after 8 February 1926]
Dwiggins to Adler
Dwiggins thanks Adler for the Nobodaddy circulars. He declares the color just right and adds, “Bully use of type, too.”
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
17 February 1926
Working dummy for Nobodaddy with cover paste-up.
[Princeton C0239]
27 February 1926
MacLeish to Firuski
MacLeish asks if Nobodaddy will be published in the spring.
[Winnick]
8 March 1926
Adler to Firuski
Adler sending dummy for cover to Firuski.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
9 March 1926
Firuski to Adler
Firuski tells Adler he does not like how the figures on the cover look.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
31 March 1926
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski he expects the presswork to be done by Friday [April 2].
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
3 April 1926
Adler to Dwiggins
Adler tells Dwiggins that Nobodaddy off the press.
[Princeton C0262 323:2]
5 April 1926
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that the sheets for Nobodaddy are at the binder.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
13 April 1926
Adler to Firuski
Adler says he was not happy with the binding. “[I] have made a few changes and have ended by putting the Adam and Eve figures on the cover in a fairly large medallion.” [11]
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
19 April 1926
Nobodaddy shipped.
May 1926
Official publication date of Nobodaddy. [12]
25 July 1926
MacLeish to Martha Hillard MacLeish
MacLeish tells his mother he expects bad reviews of Nobodaddy. [13]
[Winnick]
1927
3 February 1927
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that the AIGA has included the prospectus for Nobodaddy in its exhibition of Printing for Commerce.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
31 March 1927
Adler to Firuski
Adler tells Firuski that the AIGA has selected Nobodaddy for its Fifty Books of the Year.
[Princeton C0262 323:8]
Dwiggins’ work on Nobodaddy is an important moment in his career because it was the first time he had worked with Elmer Adler and Pynson Printers. As soon as the book was published Adler invited him to design, illustrate, and decorate My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather, the book which inaugurated the long and mutually beneficial relationship between Dwigggins and the New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. The two men subsequently worked together on Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (New York: Random House, 1929).
Nobodaddy was also the beginning of along association between MacLeish and Dwiggins. Immediately following its publication, Dwiggins began work on MacLeish’s Streets in the Moon, a collection of poems published by Houghton Mifflin Company in November 1926. MacLeish must have liked Dwiggins’ work on both books since decades later, during World War II, he requested the designer’s involvement in three projects: the design of new United States stamps in 1941, the design of “The Atlantic Charter” by Franklin D. Roosevelt as a broadside also in 1941, and the design of the United Nations Charter as a broadside in 1945. Only the latter two came to fruition. [14]
Dwiggins’ decision to base his title page design on Blake made sense to Firuski and Adler because the title of MacLeish’s play was derived from Blake’s sardonic name for God. The snake border may have been inspired specifically by Blake’s poem “To Nobodaddy”:
To Nobodaddy
Why art thou silent and invisible,
Father of Jealousy?
Why dost hide thyself in clouds
From every searching eye?Why darkness and obscurity
In all thy words and laws,
That none dare eat the fruit but from
The wily Serpent’s jaws?
Or is it because secrecy gains females’ loud applause? [15]
Dwiggins seems to have had very little say in the overall design of Nobodaddy. The interior typography was by Adler, set in Caslon Old Style not the Cochin he originally considered. Adler art directed the title page; and both he and Firuski, with no input from Dwiggins, orchestrated the binding. Despite his limited participation in the book’s production, it is his contribution that makes its design memorable. It is thus odd that Adler and Firuski deliberately omitted his name from the colophon. If Nobodaddy had been published three years later this would not have happened. By 1929 Dwiggins’ name would have been viewed as a selling point.
Notes
1. Nobodaddy: A Play is item no. 26.03 in The Books of WAD by Dwight Agner (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: The Press of the Nightowl, 1974). It was composed by hand in Caslon Old Style; 700 copies were printed on handmade Tovil paper by Pynson Printers and 50 larger size copies on handmade Eltham paper. (Dwiggins’ title page design looks silly on the larger paper.) The regular edition (originally priced at $6) is dark blue cloth with a design stamped in light blue on a black panel. The special edition (originally priced at $10) is bound in black cloth stamped in green.
2. The detailed correspondence concerning Nobodaddy is not unique within Dwiggins’ oeuvre, but the other books that rival it were multi-year projects, such as Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1930) or Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1936). For the Tales see “The Long and Complicated Saga of W.A. Dwiggins’ Design of The Lakeside Press Edition of Tales by Edgar Allan Poe” by Paul Shaw in Bibliologia 2 (2007), pp. 77–130 and Bibliologia 4 (2009), pp. 60–106. In contrast, there is no correspondence documenting Dwiggins’ work on Streets in the Moon by Archibald MacLeish (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1926), which was carried out soon after the publication of Nobodaddy.
3. Dunster House published fifteen titles between 1919 and 1927, the year that Firuski sold the bookstore and moved to Connecticut. Three of the books were designed by Bruce Rogers: The Red Path by John Freeman (1921), Priapus and the Pool by Conrad Aiken (1922), and The Construction of Roman Letters by Albrecht Dürer (1924). The other pre-Nobodaddy titles were texts by Harvard University faculty. See Private Presses and Their Books by Will Ransom (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1929), pp. 256–257.
4. Although Firuski’s mark is unsigned, The Printing Art credited it to Dwiggins, describing it as a “modernized Colonial letterhead”. See The Printing Art vol. XXXV, no. 3 (May 1920), p. 210. It was used on the title page of Freedom of Speech in War Time by Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (1919), the first Dunster House publication.
5. The chronology has been assembled from several sources: The New York Public Library Berg Collection (Archibald MacLeish Collection) abbreviated NYPL; Letters of Archibald MacLeish 1907 to 1982 edited by R.H. Winnick (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) abbreviated Winnick; Princeton University Special Collections (Elmer Adler Papers C0262), Box 17, Folder 1, abbreviated Princeton Co262 17:1; Princeton University Special Collections (Elmer Adler Papers C0262), Box 323, Folder 2, abbreviated Princeton C0262 323:2; Princeton University Special Collections (Elmer Adler Papers C0262), Box 323, Folder 8, abbreviated Princeton C0262 323:8; and Princeton University Special Collections (Archibald MacLeish Papers C0239), Nobodaddy Box, abbreviated Princeton C0239. For Dwiggins dates of work on Nobodaddy (abbreviated BPL) see his account books at Boston Public Library, 1974 W.A. Dwiggins Collection, Box 81(1), Folder 6: “Oct 5–6–7 [1925] Adler, Firuski, Nobodaddy title.”
6. This is the first time that W.A. Dwiggins and Rockwell Kent crossed paths, but not the last in the years between 1925 and 1930. There is no evidence that the two men ever met or were in contact with each other; or what they thought of each other’s work.
7. As the head of Pynson Printers, Adler did not do any printing or even composition. He was a book designer and sometimes, as with the title page of Nobodaddy, an art director.
8. In early August 1925 Dwiggins was creating headpieces and tailpieces for his redesign of Harper’s Magazine, drawing the September illustration for the Marchbanks calendar, and handling several unspecified jobs for the Lord & Taylor department store via Fred Farrar. He needed to clear his docket and take his annual vacation before working on the Nobodaddy title page.
9. Dwiggins’ title page design for Nobodaddy, with its snake border, is reminiscent of the 26 June 1897 cover of Jugend by Hans Christiansen (see below). The border is not an ouroboros (symbol of eternity) since the snake is not eating its tail.
10. Due to criticism by Aiken and Linscott, MacLeish entirely revised Act 2. See Archibald MacLeish: An American Life by Scott Donaldson with R.H. Winnick (Boston, New York and London: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), p. 165.
11. By “medallion” Adler apparently means the hexagonal frame that Dwiggins had placed around Adam and Eve on the title page. It must have originally been left off of the binding design before Firuski complained.
12. R.H. Winnick says that Dunster House only published Nobodaddy after the verse play had been rejected by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1925. But this is contradicted by the 1924 discussion between MacLeish and Firuski summarized here. See Letters of Archibald MacLeish 1907 to 1982 edited by R.H. Winnick (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983), p. 107, footnote 1 and p. 165, footnote 1.
13. “Nobodaddy was not widely reviewed upon publication,” says Scott Donaldson. The best review appeared in The Independent, edited by MacLeish’s friend Christian Herter. (Dwiggins redesigned The Independent in 1924.) Donaldson does mention any unfavorable reviews. See Archibald MacLeish: An American Life by Scott Donaldson with R.H. Winnick (Boston, New York and London: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), p. 166.
14. MacLeish wa able to hire Dwiggins for these various project through his positions in the Office of Facts and Figures (which became the Office of War Information) and as the Librarian of Congress.
15. From Notebook of William Blake (Rossetti Manuscript), p. 21 (c. 1793). There are other references to Nobodaddy in Blake’s oeuvre.
Cover of Jugend (26 June 1897) by Hans Christiansen.
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