Collection Guide
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Cheney (William M.) Papers
Press coll. Archives Cheney
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Title: William M. Cheney Papers
Creator:
Cheney, William M., William Murray, 1907-2002
Identifier/Call Number: Press coll. Archives Cheney
Physical Description:
20 Linear Feet
(35 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1828-1981
Language of Material:
English
.
Collection is open for research.
William Cheney was born in 1907 in Los Angeles to Harvey D. Cheney and Emma Patton Cheney, and attended Los Angeles High School
and USC (though he dropped out before earning his degree). He married Elizabeth Schuler in 1929; they divorced in 1936. From
1929 to 1932, He worked as a shipping clerk for Dawson's Bookshop, and then went to work for printer Thomas Perry Stricker,
under whose tutelage he learned to print. Cheney's first printed book was
A Voyage to Trolland (1933). Cheney briefly owned his own press which he operated until he went to work in mechanical drafting for Douglas Aircraft
from 1941 to 1946. In 1941, he married Elnora McClennan in 1941 (she died in 1979). From 1946 to 1947, Cheney worked for the
Artesia News, and in 1948 he briefly worked for Muir and Watts, and for Saul and Lillian Marks' Plantin Press, before buying his own printing
press and starting to print commercially. From 1962 to 1974, Cheney printed materials for the William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library and for Lawrence Clark Powell while working in the gatehouse on the Clark Library grounds. Cheney stopped most of
his printing work in 1983, and died in 2002. He was a member of the Rounce and Coffin Club, a Los Angeles-area printing and
bibliophilic club, and was at least acquainted with many of the other central figures in LA printing and bookish culture from
the 1950s to the 1970s, including H. Richard Archer, Grant Dahlstrom, Jake Zeitlin, and Edwin Carpenter.
Sources:
-The natural history of a Los Angeles typesticker [oral history transcript] / William Murray Cheney, interviewee. 1982. Clark
Library call no. Z232 C518 C5
- Ancestry.com census and vital records
- Newspapers.com obituaries
Source of Acquisition/Provenance
Purchase, 1949-1985, Dawson's Bookshop.
Gift, 1945-64 from Lawrence Clark Powell.
Gift, 1956 from Muir Dawson.
Gift, 1958 from William M. Cheney.
Gift, 1958 from Richard Zumwinkle.
Gift, 1966-67 from Grant Dahlstrom.
Gift, 1977 from William Tapia.
Gift, 1988 from Josephine Zeitlin.
Gift, 1988 from Glen Dawson.
[Identification of item], William M. Cheney Papers, Press coll. Archives Cheney, UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
Portions of this collection were first processed around 1990 by Philip M. Douglas. Further work was performed in the 1990s
and around 2002 by Clark Library staff and student workers. The original paper-based finding aid produced in the late 1990s
was converted to an EAD-encoded finding aid by Caroline Cube.
In 2021, many printed miniature books were removed from this collection and cataloged separately in the Clark Library's print
collections.
In 2024, the entire collection was fully physically reprocessed and described by Rebecca Fenning Marschall, adding an additional
15 boxes of previously uncataloged materials.
This collection consists of printed books and pamphlets, correspondence, ephemera, and broadsides related to William M. Cheney
and his activities as a printer in Los Angeles. It also includes materials related to other Los Angeles area printers, presses,
and bibliophiles such as Grant Dahlstrom, H. Richard Archer, The Rounce and Coffin Club, and the Hippogryph Press.
Series 4 of this collection contains a substantial amount of Cheney family history material, including correspondence, textiles,
embroidery and photographs dating from approximately 1828-1940.
Copyright has not been assigned to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA. All requests for permission to publish
or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of
the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission
of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Printers -- California -- 20th century
Correspondence -- California -- 20th century
Ephemera -- California -- 20th century
Miniature books -- California -- 20th century
Broadsides -- California -- 20th century