The Press was initially run from the basement of Will’s family home in Chesterton Road, Cambridge, but in due course some of the operation was transferred to a workshop in Sebastian’s house nearby. Finally, in 1990, the Press moved to a specially designed workshop converted from an old Victorian stable next to Swan House in Over, north of Cambridge, to which Sebastian and his family moved in 1990, shortly before Will’s retirement. The workshop continued there until Sebastian’s retirement in 2008.
The Rampant Lions Press produced books for a number of other publishers, which can be explored in this section. However, from its beginnings, the Press regularly produced significant works under its own imprint. Samples of its work and experimental displays appeared in the three Portfolios (1967–82), and continued with two Miscellanies (1988–98). Extended experimental work was shown in Samuel Beckett’s As the Story was Told (1987), and A Printer’s Dozen (1993) explored further the creative possibilities of complex textual setting.
An example of unadorned design in the grand manner was T S Eliot’s Four Quartets (1996).
Work with artists included three portfolios of Michael Rothenstein’s prints, Suns and Moons (1972), Seven Colours(1974) and The Song of Songs (1979).
The very rich Hours of Le Boulvé followed in 1980, written and illustrated with 26 etchings and intaglio engravings by Anthony Gross.
There were two books with colour linocut illustrations by Clare Melinsky, The Putney Debates (1983) and John Carey’s Vegetable Gardening in 1989. In 1997, the Press published a new translation by Peter Raby of Balzac’s Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu: The Unknown Masterpiece was illustrated with aquatints by Thomas Newbolt, the special copies with original impressions printed in the artist’s studio.
As the final closing of the Press approached, Sebastian produced two books, Five Poems by Wilfred Owen (2003) and in the beginning (2006), with his own images hand-cut in coloured paper and screen-printed with further colours, sewn in cahiers and collected in clamshell boxes. These were in tiny editions, 20 and 25 copies respectively, reflecting the amount of labour involved.
Two books were conceived at the Press, but published by Deighton Bell: Milton’s Areopagitica (1973) was an exploration of textual complexity, while The Psalms of David (1977) was a homage to the great age of the British private presses, hand set in Eric Gill’s Golden Cockerel Roman.
Rampant Lions Press 