Finding Aid to the Thomas Perry Stricker Papers, 1917-1945
Processed by Lori Chin; machine-readable finding aid created by
Caroline Cubé
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
2520 Cimarron Street
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90018
Phone: (323) 731-8529
Fax: (323) 731-8617
Email: rfenning@humnet.ucla.edu
URL: http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/clarklib/
© 1998
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Descriptive Summary
Title: The Thomas Perry Stricker papers,
Date (inclusive): 1917-1945
Shelfmark: Press coll.
Archives Stricker
Creator: Stricker, Thomas Perry, 1898-1945.
Extent: 14 boxes: 7 linear ft.; 2 scrapbooks; 2 oversize folders
Repository:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Location: Clark Library.
Language:
English.
Administrative Information
Source of Acquisition/Provenance
Gift, Lawrence Clark Powell, 1945.
Gift, Ethel Eaton Stricker, Lawrence Clark Powell, Leo Linder, Donal Charnoek, Gordon Ray
Young, Paul Jordon Smith, Jake Zeitlin, Will Cheney, and Eunice (?) Stricker, 1946.
Preferred Citation
[identification of item], Thomas Perry Stricker Papers. William Andrews Clark
Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Biography
Thomas Perry Stricker was born in 1898. Before he became actively interested in printing,
Stricker had been an usher in a small-town movie theater, infantryman in World War I,
student at a business college, salesman of canned meats, order-desk man for a North
Dakota wholesale food company, restaurant operator, employee in a circulating library,
and a bookseller (under the guidance of "Doc" Wells) in the book department of Powers
Mercantile Company in Minneapolis. In 1928 he moved to Los Angeles and became night
manager of Marchetti's Restaurant, simultaneously acting as advertising manager of the
American Dancer magazine and, later, assistant publisher of
Daily Screen World, while writing for both publications. In
1930, Stricker bought a proof press and taught himself how to set type and run sheets
through the press. From 1930 to 1935, Stricker obtained better printing equipment and
more foundry types and did some printing and publishing of private editions. During the
years 1935 to 1938, he was in New York, freelancing, preparing exhibition catalogs for
the American Institute of Graphic Arts and setting up another private press. In 1938
Stricker returned to Los Angeles to work on promotion for the motion picture,
Marie Antoinette, but continued to print private editions. In 1939
he fell ill, and in 1940, he sold his printing equipment to Ward Ritchie and joined the
Historical Records Survey as state editor. He remained in California until 1943, and then
returned to New York where he died in 1945.
Scope and Content
This collection consists of correspondence, ephemera, original drawings, designs,
broadsides, and photographs related to Thomas Perry Stricker and his activities as a
printer in Los Angeles and New York.
Access Points
Catalogs, Booksellers'--United States.
Printing.
Container List
Correspondence, Manuscripts, Biographical Notes
Box 1, Folder 1.
Manuscripts:
Recognition Builds, Competition Destroys; "A Voyage to the Islands of the Et Cetereans and Ampersandians";
Elizabeth's Merlin, 1945;
The Hollywood Bowl
Box 1, Folder 2.
Stricker memorial: correspondence, 1945
Scope and Content Note
Certified photostat of Stricker's death certificate
Box 1, Folder 3.
Drawings by Thomas Perry Stricker
Box 1, Folder 4.
Biography, notes on Stricker memorial
Box 1, Folder 5.
Thomas Perry Stricker to A.G. Beaman, 1935
Box 1, Folder 6.
Stricker to Will Cheney
Scope and Content Note
Cheney to Lawrence Clark Powell and H. Richard Archer
Box 1, Folder 7.
Stricker to Ralph Howey, 1936-37
Box 1, Folder 8.
Stricker to Paul Jordan Smith, 1936-1937
Box 1, Folder 9.
Stricker to Jane Zeitlin, 1936
Box 1, Folder 10.
Stricker to Lawrence Clark Powell, 1937-1944
Box 1, Folder 11.
Stricker to Gordon Ray Young, 1937
Box 1, Folder 12.
Thomas Perry Stricker's copy
Box 1, Folder 13.
Synopsis of a Suggested Treatment for Home, Sweet Home
Based on the Story of John Howard Payne (Jake Zeitlin and Thomas Perry Stricker)
Box 1, Folder 14.
Mr. Big of the Boulevard (Anthony Hillyer)
Box 1, Folder 15.
Old Fitz's Rubaiyat (Thomas Perry Stricker and Jake Zeitlin)
Files on the American Institute of Graphic Arts and Other Organizations
Box 2, Folder 1.
American Institute of Graphic Arts
Box 2, Folder 3.
Miscellaneous reference material
Box 2, Folder 4.
Invitations, exhibits
Scope and Content Note
(includes Ampersand Dinner, Caxton Club, Grolier Club)
Box 3, Folder 1.
KECA: Concert Programs 1936 (January, April, May, June, July, August)
Box 3, Folder 2.
Booklets
Scope and Content Note
(
Type Design for the Scholarly Book [Frederic Goudy];
Some Presses You Will Be Glad to Know About, Protest of an Old
Timer,
1930 [John Bennett];
John Fiske, Bookman
[Lawrence Powell];
Program for the New York Times National Book
Fair; Five Centuries of Book Design; The Regeneration of the Book; Five Hundred Years of
Printing 1440-1940; The Philosophy of Limited Editions
[Richard Le Gallienne];
Five Hundred Years of the Printed Book, William Edwin Rudge,
1937)
Box 3, Folder 3.
Booklets
Scope and Content Note
(
The 50 Books; Exhibition, 1935; Summary Report on the Hastings
Manuscripts; Linotype's Shining Lines,
1937;
American
Anderson News
, 1935;
The New York Times National Book
Fair,
1936;
Great Books in Great Editions, 1940;
In Behalf of Easy Reading; The Beginnings of the American Cities;
An Exhibition of Fifty Books,
1935;
Bookbinding and Book
Production; Manuscripts: Clark Library
)
Box 4, Folder 1.
The Private Press of Thomas Perry Stricker (broadside)
Box 4, Folder 5.
Booklets
Scope and Content Note
(Excess Gaggage, 1937;
A Confidential Source of Fresh Ideas and
Treatments; Enfin: A Poem Hitherto Unpublished
by Sir Edwin Arnold, 1936;
Lawrence of Arabia, 1935;
Conference
Process; Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Disorders of Martinus Scriblerus;
Strephon and Chloe with Other Poems Selected from the Works of Jonathan Swift; The Path
of Culture; One Man's Family
)
Box 4, Folder 6.
Booklets
Scope and Content Note
(
Human Touch, 1937;
In Praise of
Bacchus Ducal Wine and Brandies
[2 copies];
Harlequinade, 1931;
Some Advertising Ideas
for "Wings Cigarets" suggested by T.P.S.
)
Box 5, Folder 1.
Letterheads printed by Thomas Perry Stricker
Box 5, Folder 2.
Gift of Emma P. Stricker
Scope and Content Note
(ephemera, correspondence, photograph)
Box 5, Folder 3.
Christmas card 1937 (Bauer Type Foundry)
Box 5, Folder 6.
Ephemera: ex Libris, business cards, small designs
Box 6, Folder 1.
American Institute of Graphic Arts
Box 6, Folder 2.
Paul A. Bennett (13 letters), A.G. Beaman (6 letters), Lewis Alliger (7 letters)
Box 6, Folder 3.
Paul Jordan Smith (12 letters), Paul Standard (4 letters)
Box 6, Folder 4.
Miscellaneous correspondence
Scope and Content Note
(includes Huntington Library, Thomas Fairbanks Co., Frederic Main, Frederic Goudy, Bruce
Rogers, William Reydel, Babel Gillis)
Box 7, Folder 1.
Ephemera: Gift of Leo Linder, February 1946
Scope and Content Note
(Another Erewhonian Memento; An Erwhonian Memento, & Cetera Symbol of Oblivion; A Voyage of Mr. Gulliver's to the Island of
the Et Cetereans and Ampersandians; Enter the Black Art; Four Poems in Prose; Wines and Liquors Imported and Domestic Horton
and Converse; Typophiles; Lawrence of Arabia; Symbols of God; Oh me A--e!!!; The Flowing Bowl)
Box 7, Folder 2.
Manuscripts.
Scope and Content Note
(List of the Letters and Manuscripts of Musicians in the Clark Library; Inventory of the Bixby Records Collection in the Palos
Verdes Library and Art Gallery; Identification of the Persons Mentioned in the Bixby Records Collection; Supplement to the
Manual of Procedure: American Imprints Inventory, the Southern California Historical Records Survey, 1941; The Care and Cataloguing
of Manuscripts, Key to the Manuscripts Collection in the Huntington Library)
Box 7, Folder 3.
Individual manuscript forms
Box 8, Folder 1.
Booklets
Scope and Content Note
(Canis Libido Lascira; Books and Bindings [4 copies];
Foxhole Fancy; A Prayer [2 copies]; 50 Books of the Year, 1934 [3 copies];
To Ethel My Love, November 1934;
Four Poems in Prose; Wine of Sun; World Court of Wisdom).
Box 8, Folder 5.
Ephemera
Scope and Content Note
(History of St. James Church Chicago, 1934 [Massey Hamilton
Shepherd Jr.];
Wines and Liquors Imported and Domestic Horton and
Converse,
1934;
One Man's Family 1932-1939).
Box 9, Folder 1.
1944-45 Christmas Keepsake
Box 9, Folder 3.
& Cetera: Symbol of Oblivion, 1936 (Lewis Alliger)
Box 9, Folder 4.
Book Design (Thomas Perry Stricker)
Box 9, Folder 6.
Four Poems in Prose, 1938 (Gordon Ray Young)
Box 9, Folder 9.
Science in Religion, 1936;
A Note by Dr. C. Charles Waller; A Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais, 1932 (Thomas Perry Stricker);
Season's Greetings, 1945;
Louis Epstein's Bookshop
Box 9, Folder 11.
A Song to David (Christopher Smart)
Box 9, Folder 12.
Notes on Printing History Series (Richard Ellis)
Box 10, Folder 1.
Left to Their Own Devices: A Postscript, 1938
Box 10, Folder 2.
Another Erewhonian Memento, A Letter Hitherto Unpublished from Samuel Butler to Richard Garnett and Christmas Greetings from
the Paul Jordan Smiths of Erewhon III,
1938 (6 copies)
Box 10, Folder 3.
A Voyage of
Mr. Gulliver's to the Island of the Et Cetereans and Ampersandians, 1936 [5 copies]
Box 10, Folder 4.
An Erewhonian Memento, 1935 [2 copies]
Box 10, Folder 5.
A Prayer, Season's Greetings, 1945 [2 copies]
Box 10, Folder 6.
An Excerpt from Sir Thomas Browne's Christian Morals, 1939 [4 copies]
Box 10, Folder 7.
Midsummer Festival, Jungberg Rancho, 1938 [5 copies]
Box 10, Folder 8.
Some Notes on the Making of Grimy Gertrude, Better Known as Dirty Gertie from Bizerte, 1944 (proofs and copy)
Box 10, Folder 9.
Enter the Black Art, 1939 [2 copies]
Box 10, Folder 10.
Pro Patria, 1940 [7 copies]
Box 10, Folder 11.
Elizabeth's Irregular Humorist, 1943 (Sir John Falstaffe)
Box 10, Folder 12.
Lawrence of Arabia, 1935 (Julian Biddulph Arnold) [2 copies]
Box 10, Folder 13.
Symbols of God, 1932 (Ethel Eaton) [2 copies]
Box 10, Folder 14.
3 Tudor Grotesques : Elizabeth's Privy Councillor, 1936 [2 copies]
Box 10, Folder 15.
Her Faust and His Goose Flesh, 1940 [5 copies]
Box 10, Folder 16.
World Court of Wisdom, 1940 [2 copies]
Box 11, Folder 1.
& Ceteras, A Parcel of Notes on Books, Old and New (Number 1, July 1934)
Box 11, Folder 2.
The Typophiles Whodunit (proofs)
Box 11, Folder 3.
Marginalia to Life, Being Notes from the Private Papers of Anthony Hillyer, 1931 (proofs)
Box 11, Folder 4.
A Note, The Printer to the Reader
Box 11, Folder 5.
Ephemera
Scope and Content Note
(includes
Sir Edwin Arnold Poet, Orientalist; Journalist,
Diplomat
[3 copies];
The Officina Bodoni, 1936;
Prospectus for Typophiles; A Sonnet Written by the Noble Knight Sir
Philip Sidney and Now Reprinted from the 11th Edition of his Work, "The Countess of
Pembroke's Arcadia" London,
1622;
A New Voice; The Drama;
Announcements and Descriptions for One Man's Family; A Catalog of First Editions and Rare
Books Including a First Issue of the First Edition of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
,
Louis Epstein's Bookshop, July 1931)
Box 12, Folder 1.
Prospectuses
Scope and Content Note
(includes A
History of the Printed Book (Limited Editions
Club);
At the Birth of an Age; Peter Pauper Press Mount Vernon
Summer and Fall
1936;
Typography by Clifford P. Anderson;
Holborn House: Reveries of a Bachelor or A Book of the Heart,
1931;
Typologia: Studies in Type Design and Type Making; The Alphabet and
Elements of Lettering; The New Book Illustration in France; Journal of a Voyage Between
China and the Northwestern Coast of America Made in 1804 by William Shaler; Prospectus of
a Hitherto Unpublished Work by Herman Melville: Journal up the Straits, now to be
published by the
Colophon;
The Boar and Shibboleth with
Other Poems; Solstice and Other Poems by Robinson Jeffers,
1935).
Box 12, Folder 2.
A Papermaking Pilgrimage to Japan, Korea, and China, prospectus, 1936 (Dard Hunter)
Box 12, Folder 3.
Ephemera
Scope and Content Note
(includes
The Merrymount Press, Boston; We Hired Us a Good
Printer
[William Rudge],
The Dolphin prospectus;
Contemporary Books, 1935).
Box 12, Folder 4.
Reader's Digest, March 1947 (story by Ethel Eaton)
Box 12, Folder 5.
Prospectuses
Scope and Content Note
(includes
Life Among the Indians or The Captivity of the Oatman
Girls Among the Apache and Mohave Indians
, 1935;
Prospectus
for Third Year of Signature; Plutarch's Lives; Die Doves Press; The Southworth-Anthoensen
Press, Worcester Square Looking Towards the City Hospital, Boston
)
Box 12, Folder 6.
Ephemera
Scope and Content Note
(includes Stefan Zweig,
Aldine Bembo: A Type Face (Argus Press);
Ave Caesar; Ins Handelsregister wurde eingetragen: Buchdruckerei Erich Norberg; Prevzacneho Pisarskeho Umeni; Organization
and Publicity Counsel; Egmont Typeface
).
Box 12, Folder 7.
Ephemera (Hawthorn House)
Box 12, Folder 8.
Prospectuses
Scope and Content Note
(includes
Candide, 1928 (Voltaire); The Boar's Head Press).
Manuscripts and Miscellaneous
Box 13, Folder 1.
The Printer to the Reader (A. Hillyer) (Ms.)
Box 13, Folder 2.
Manuscripts
Scope and Content Note
(
True to Type, Family Tree of Letter Forms, Microscopic Types,
Some Random Thoughts Regarding the Tradition of Mother Tongue, California
Chronology
, sketches)
Box 13, Folder 3.
Manuscripts
Scope and Content Note
(
The Human Touch, Notes on Techniques in Book Publishing, The Physique of the American Textbook, A Brief Chronicle of the Black
Art 1436-1936, A Typographical Wardrobe
)
Box 13, Folder 4.
Words and Men / Book and Men (Ms.)
Box 13, Folder 6.
Correspondence
Scope and Content Note
(includes Mabel Gillis, L.B. Siegfried)
Box 13, Folder 7.
Hollywood Spectacle (Ms.)
Box 13, Folder 8.
Newspaper and magazine clippings
Box 13, Folder 11.
Lists of works published by Thomas Perry Stricker
Box 13, Folder 13.
Copies of articles by Thomas Perry Stricker
Box 13, Folder 15.
Irregular Humorist, Privy Councillor, Elizabeth's Merlin (Ms.)
Ephemera, Gifts from Ralph T. Howey July 1948
Box 14
Ephemera and Gifts
Scope and Content Note
Includes
Elizabeth's Privy Councillor [2 copies]; newspaper
clippings;
A Voyage of Mr. Gulliver's to the Island of the Et
Cetereans and Ampersandians; & Cetera Symbol of Oblivion; Enter the Black Art; A
Story for the Children; The Hollywood Bowl; An Excerpt from Sir Thomas Browne's
Christian Morals.
Box 14
Ephemera and Gifts
Scope and Content Note
The Town Pump: An American Comedy (Charley Grapewin in
collaboration with Anthony Hillyer): two linocuts and woodblock for title page
Three oversized proofs in "S" Map Drawer
Scope and Content Note
The Ethel Eaton Private School of Costume Design (broadside)
A Conspective Bibliography of Trade Marks, 1938 (galley
proofs)
Spinach from Many Gardens, 1935 (galley proofs)
Engraver's and Photographer's Proportion Calculator
8 x 10 b/w photograph and poem in leather folder: gift of Ethel Eaton
Photograph/scrapbook album from 1917-1919 while a member of the AES in France
Scrapbook of ephemera printed by Thomas Perry Stricker
