circle press

...from their website...

CIRCLE PRESS, formed by Ron Kind in 1967, is both part of a tradition and a breaker of tradition. The stages of its life are marked not only by the individual natures of those whose books and prints it has published but also by the differing character of the decades through which it has passed. The Press has been highly productive for over forty years and has had a profound effect, directly and indirectly, on other artists working with books, for it has provided a continuity and a context against which such activity can be measured, even for those whose output and philosophy are utterly different or even opposed.....

The Burning of the Books

Ronald King

George Szirtes (poet)

Artist edition

London, 2008

This powerful sequence of 14 poems is the result of a unique collaboration between writer George Szertis and artist Ronald King.

Its genesis was King’s long fascination with Elias Canetti’s'Auto da Fe', the famously grotesque yet marvelous novel set in pre-war Vienna which contributed to Canetti winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. To accompany his illustrations, King commissioned Szirtes to write a text inspired by and related to Canetti’s great work.

In 2008 the book was published in a limited edition of 35 copies letter-pressed in Walbaum onto 240 lb Barcham Green mouldmade paper with 15 etchings, one double-spread, thirteen full-page and one half-page; a total of 18 unstitched sections 350 x 260 mm, enclosed in a uniquely collaged card wrap-around and placed in a cloth-bound solander box.