The Themersons & Gaberbocchus Press

About

In 1948 Franciszka (born 1907) and Stefan Themerson (born 1910) founded the Gaberbocchus Press, which over the next 30 years established itself as a leading avant-garde press in London, publishing some 60 titles which achieved a high standard of original book design ('best lookers' rather than 'best sellers', as Stefan once put it). Their dual ambition was to bring major modern continental works to a British audience, as well as contemporary writers and artists who found it difficult to publish work in a form they wanted (including themselves, of course).

They published first English editions of Jarry's Ubu Roi, of Apollinaire's Calligrammes, of Heine, Grabbe, Pol-Dives and Anatol Stern; of their friends Jankel Adler, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann, Raymond Queneau, Henri Chopin, Cozette de Charmoy, Bertrand Russell, Stevie Smith, Ken Tynan, Oswell Blakeston, James Laughlin, C.H.Sisson, George Buchanan and David Miller. The range embraces artists/writers with predilections for wit, satire, whimsy; a concern for ethics; and an imaginative interest in language as form and content.