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Guide to the Untide Press Records, 1943-1954
BANC MSS 72/213 c
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Table of contents
Collection Title: Untide Press Records,
Date (inclusive): 1943-1954
Collection Number: BANC MSS 72/213 c
Creator:
Untide Press
Extent:
Numbers of containers: 5 boxes
Repository: The
Bancroft Library
Berkeley, California 94720-6000
Physical Location: For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Abstract: Correspondence with contributors and subscribers, manuscripts, mock-ups for pamphlets, accounts, clippings of reviews, mailing
lists, etc., relating to the publication of The Illiterati and of books of poems.
Languages Represented:
English
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts
must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft
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 by the reader.
[Identification of item], Untide Press records, BANC MSS 72/213 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
The Untide Press was founded by William Everson, Kemper Nomland, Kermit Sheets and William R. Eshelman, in a camp of conscientious
objectors in Waldport, Oregon in 1943, as an expression of protest against World War II. Vladimir Dupré was active in Untide
after it was founded. The name originated in opposition to the camp weekly called
The Tide, the slogan of the press being "What is not Tide is Untide". Moving later to Cascade Locks, Oregon, in December 1945 and,
after the War, to Pasadena, the press produced a little magazine entitled The
Illiterati, and small books of poems, many of them by the poets and writers who were later to form the nucleus of the San Francisco literary
renaissance.
Attempting to bring poetry to the public in an inexpensive and attractive format, the press carefully selected materials and
design, and set all the work by hand. It was a part-time non-profit operation; its contributors were unpaid; and its organ,
The
Illiterati, appeared only occasionally, whenever enough material was assembled for an issue.
The little press garnered Western Books' awards for excellence in printing and design with William Everson's
War Elegies (1944), Jacob Sloan's
Generation of a Journey (1945) and John Walker's
Arma Virumque Cano (1950).
The records of the press, purchased from John B. Nomland, May 23, 1972, have been kept in the order established by the press.
They include correspondence with contributors and subscribers from 1943 to 1954, manuscripts of poems and of numbers 4 and
5 of The
Illiterati, mock-ups for some of the special pamphlets, a few examples of completed printing, some fairly detailed accounts, a bibliography
and promotional material. The Key to Arrangement describes the collection in greater detail.