The Mandrake Press was a British small press founded by Edward Goldston and P. R. Stephensen in 1929. In 1930 the company had financial problems and a consortium led by Aleister Crowley formed Mandrake Press Ltd. The new consortium was equally unsuccessful and the company was dissolved in 1930.
In eighteen months The Mandrake Press published over 30 items, including D. H. Lawrence, The Paintings of D H Lawrence together with works by Liam O'Flaherty, Rhys Davies, Giovanni Boccaccio, Peter Warlock under the pseudonym Rab Noolas, S. S. Koteliansky, Aleister Crowley, Thomas Burke, Cecil Roth, Beresford Egan, W. J. Turner, Brinsley MacNamara, Edgell Rickword, Richard Middleton, V. V. Rozanov, Philip Owens, Vernon Knowles, and others.
At the 1985 Cambridge University Exhibition of the works of The Mandrake Press it was believed that no copies of the Book of Tobit, a part of the Catholic bible, had been produced even though the book had been announced and a prospectus issued. Since 1985 three copies have been discovered — one in an Australian library and two in private collections.
Famous quotes containing the words mandrake and/or press:
“Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to her mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)