William Addison Dwiggins

In the years before he cemented his relationship with Knopf, Dwiggins designed a series of limited-edition books for private presses that showed his versatility as an illustrator and decorative artist. The best of these books are Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1929) and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1931) for Random House, Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1930) for Lakeside Press, Droll Stories by Honoré Balzac (1932) and Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (1936) for the Limited Editions Club, The Travels of Marco Polo (1933) for The Printing House of Leo Hart, One More Spring by Robert Nathan (1935) for The Overbrook Press, and The Treasure in the Forest by H.G. Wells (1936) for The Press of the Woolly Whale. Dwiggins own Towards a Reform of the Paper Currency, Particularly in Point of Its Design (1932), an amusing but serious critique of American currency and stamp design, also belongs on this list.



Fig. 1: Lettering for use in Gargantua and Pantagruel (The Limited Editions Club, 1936) designed by William Addison Dwiggins.
Fig. 2: Illustration of Chinese junk created from acetate stencil elements. From The Travels of Marco Polo (The Printing House of Leo Hart, 1933) designed by William Addison Dwiggins.
Fig. 3: Stencil illustration by William Addison Dwiggins from One More Spring by Robert Nathan (Overbrook Press, 1935).
Fig. 4: William Addison Dwiggins sitting in front of his stove late 1930s. Photograph by Robert Yarnall Richie.