Holywell St, Oxford OX1 3BN, United Kingdom
Hornby was educated at New College, Oxford, where he received a bachelor's degree in classics.
Holywell St, Oxford OX1 3BN, United Kingdom
Hornby was educated at New College, Oxford, where he received a bachelor's degree in classics.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/descriptive-bibliography-printed-Ashendene-MDCCCXCV-MCMXXXV/dp/0915346117/?tag=prabook0b-20
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hand-List-Books-Printed-Ashendene-Mdcccxcv-Mcmxxv/dp/B00087TBLY/?tag=prabook0b-20
https://www.amazon.co.uk/life-Thomas-Bodley-written-himself/dp/B003XMBQNM/?tag=prabook0b-20
Charles Harold St John Hornby was born on June 25, 1867, at Much Dewchurch, Herefordshire, the eldest son of the Reverend Charles Edward Hornby, then a curate, and his wife, Harriet, daughter of Henry Turton, who was the vicar of Betley, Staffordshire.
Hornby was educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford, where he received a bachelor's degree in classics.
In 1892, Hornby was called to the bar, but his friend Freddy Smith (they had spent a year together in 1890-91 traveling the world) offered him a partnership in WH Smith, the family business.
In 1900, Hornby met Emery Walker and Sydney Cockerell (then William Morris’ secretary at the Kelmscott Press). Together, they encouraged and instructed Hornby and helped in devising two typefaces for his own use, Subiaco and Ptolemy.
Hornby was a collector, author, and a printer. From the manuscripts he collected, Hornby gained inspiration for his own creations at his press called Ashendene Press. Hornby did not pursue his personal printing as a means for existence. Instead, he was a partner in another printing business, W. H. Smith and Son. Hornby looked at his own achievements as a printer as a way to fulfill his desire for making exceptional-looking books. He succeeded at his goal and, according to Isaac Gewirtz of Dictionary of Literary Biography, became one of the "great British private presses established at the end of the nineteenth century." Hornby took the name for his press from his birthplace, Ashendene, Hertfordshire. It was in this location that Hornby started the press in 1894; he moved it to Chelsea five years later.
The works that Hornby authored himself focus primarily on his work at Ashendene and his experiences as a book collector and printer. For example, the foreword to A Descriptive Bibliography reveals Hornby's opinion that Ashendene "has been the hobby of my leisure hours." In his essay, "Books and Printing," which appeared in Reports on the Present Position and Tendencies of the Industrial Arts, Hornby discusses his adherence to traditional bookmaking methods. Beginning with a mediocre printing of a diary by Hornby's grandfather, The Journal of Joseph Hornby, Ashendene Press would go on to be known for "the sturdy elegance of their Subiaco and Ptolemy types, the classical restraint of their design, and their immaculate press work," maintains Gewirtz, on forty titles. It is thought that Hornby applied himself wholeheartedly to his personal printing, even forsaking political prominence in order to manage Ashendene Press. Of the forty books that Hornby printed, seven were classical pieces and several were from medieval and Renaissance Italy, such as Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and Opere (which Gewirtz describes as "one of the most impressive Ashendene books") at Ashendene. For his personal copies, Hornby had bindings made to his own specifications. His preference in typography and design tended to be simple and, like his choice in manuscripts, influenced by the fifteenth century. With the help of others knowledgeable in typography, he would devise the typeface Subiaco, based on a typeface that originated in the fifteenth century.
The genres Hornby chose to print also reflect his interests as a collector. In his collection, which he began in 1903 with Petrarch's Rime and Trionfi and ended in 1946, Hornby acquired Greek and Latin classics and Italian humanist writings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He also obtained liturgical and religious works, as well as some modern pieces and works from other private presses. It would be the titles that most reflect Hornby's passion, those of the fifteenth century Italian medieval and Renaissance, that would garner the most praise.
Quotes from others about the person
In his essay on Hornby's book collecting and printing, Gewirtz summarizes, "Though Hornby had a highly developed taste for elegant formality in the books he collected and printed, it was always balanced by an appreciation of liveliness in design and vigor, even eccentricity, in letter forms, as can be seen in many of his Renaissance manuscripts."
Hornby married Cicely Barclay in 1898. They had five children: three sons, two daughters.
