Books about Books: A History of Oak Knoll Press, Part 7: Some early publications

By Bob Fleck

Paul got down to work in earnest, and 1991 saw six new Oak Knoll Press publications, including our first joint venture with The British Library (The Doves Bindery by Marianne Tidcombe, #29 in the bibliography). David Way, the Publications Director at The British Library, was a friend of Robert Cross, the owner of St. Paul’s Bibliographies, and quickly became a friend of mine. To this day, we still co-publish many of our titles with The British Library. For about half of these joint publications, David’s staff sees the book through the press, and we buy part of the print run and the North American sales territory (and the opposite for the other half). This way, we can do twice as many books with the small staff that we each have, which is a very efficient way of doing business! David has access to one of the finest image collections in the world with The British Library at his command and also has many excellent readers for the manuscripts that are submitted.

Another special project that year was the re-issue of Percy Muir’s Minding My Own Business (Bib. #32) with a new foreword by Barbara Kaye Muir, Percy’s widow. This wonderful bookselling memoir is one of the best glimpses at bookselling in England during the twentieth century and should be required reading for anyone aspiring to be a bookseller. I travelled to the little village of Blakeney on the west coast of England to meet Barbara (on the smallest train I have ever seen outside an amusement park). She was an author in her own right with many books to her credit, including two more memoirs devoted to bookselling that we published. She hosted a charming lunch full of book talk and good wine, and poured me back on the train for its short ride to Ipswich on the way back to London.

The next landmark in Oak Knoll Press’s history was in 1992 when we finally got the rights to John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors. This book had been substantially revised by Nicolas Barker, who had managed to keep Carter’s humour while revising and adding new terms. It had grown considerably from its 1952 first edition. If you only have one book about books in your library, this is the one I continue to recommend. I lusted after having this book as part of our publishing program but the rights situation was very complicated. Carter had willed his estate to Eton College with Nicolas Barker as Executor. Somehow, we had to get Eton College to see the need for a new publisher and a new edition. Nicolas used his intimate knowledge of all involved to get the rights back from Harper Collins and Knopf (previous publishers) and award them to Oak Knoll. We reprinted the sixth edition, and it became a best seller for us with a seventh edition appearing in 1995 (co-published with Werner Shaw) and an eighth edition in 2004 (co-published with The British Library), each going through multiple reprints (all carefully documented on the copyright page).

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 in 2008). The excerpts are also presented on ILAB.org. Thank you very much to Bob Fleck for giving us permission.

>>> Read the whole story on ILAB.org

>>> 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

>>> More about Bob Fleck on ILAB.org

>>> Barbara Kaye Muir about the early days of the League, Excerpts from "Second Impression"

>>> ABC for Book Collectors