Books about Books: A History of Oak Knoll Press, Part 5: The Start of the Wakeman Years

By Bob Fleck

Bookselling continued 1985 to 1988 with almost all sales occurring in the antiquarian side of the business and only three publishing titles produced. One of these was Dick Huss’s The Printer’s Composition Matrix, the first new manuscript we published for a larger audience. Many an afternoon was spent in Lancaster visiting this fine old gentleman at his printing company. Dick kept his personal collection of books on printing history there and still set type himself and did personal binding. He eventually sold me many of his books on printing history.

We also issued the second book in a series of reprints of important titles relating to printing and binding history (Bib. #12 & 17). In keeping with our theme of adding value to reprints that we published, we asked Paul Koda to write lengthy introductions to each volume, which he did with great skill. Paul was a librarian with a collector’s instinct who often guided us with his astute opinions.

As you can see by this chronology, Oak Knoll Press, with its 18 titles, wasn’t exactly exploding on the publishing scene up to 1988.

The Wakeman Years (1988-1996)

The fall of 1988 was a decisive time for the business. Our sales were good but needed to be better. I had to reach a decision on how to grow the business. Should I stay in the books about books field with its relatively limited number of expensive books, branch out into other fields which contained more expensive books, or capitalize on our reputation in this specialized field of books about books and increase the publishing program? History shows that I chose the latter.

In August of 1977, I had reached out to a very fine private press in Loughborough, England, called the Plough Press. Geoffrey Wakeman had been taught letterpress by Philip Gaskell at The College Press in Glasgow. He was an expert in the field of changing printing and illustration technology and issued privately printed books in this field often illustrated with special leaves demonstrating the techniques he was describing. His wife Frances partnered in the press and operated a rare book business under the name Frances Wakeman, Bookseller. I first wrote to them asking if I could buy some of their limited edition books. This letter led to wonderful visits with the Wakemans, first in Loughborough and then in Oxford.

Their youngest son Paul, following in his father’s and mother’s love of the book business, got a degree at Watford College of Technology with a specialty in publishing in 1986. I got to know this young son and much admired his book knowledge and his personality. After obtaining his degree, Paul worked for Macmillan Publishers in London, but upon his father’s death in 1987, he resigned from Macmillan and the London life and went back to Oxford to help his mother during this troubling time. On my next trip to England, I visited Oxford to discuss the possibility of having Paul come to Delaware to work at Oak Knoll to help move the publishing program forward. We worked out the terms, and both of us were ready to start on an exciting new beginning.


Bob Fleck founded Oak Knoll Books in 1976 to fill a void in the booksellers world. Today Oak Knoll Books maintains an inventory of about 20,000 titles on books about books and a rapidly growing backlist of over 950 titles published and distributed under its imprint, Oak Knoll Press. Bob Fleck is ILAB President of Honour. He was ILAB President from 2002 to 2006. Each Friday the Oak Knoll Biblio-Blog publishes an excerpt from Bob Fleck’s autobiography (“Books about Books“, published 2008). The excerpts are also presented on ILAB.org. Thank you very much to Bob Fleck for giving us permission.

>>> The Oak Knoll Biblio-Blog

>>> Oak Knoll Books / Oak Knoll Press

>>> Robert D. Fleck, Books about Books. A History and Bibliography of Oak Knoll Press 1978-2008

>>> Video interview with Bob Fleck on ILAB.org

To be continued …