As director of the Riverside Press at Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bruce Rogers took an active interest in the Typographic Library and Museum of the American Type Founders Company (ATF), founded in 1908 in Jersey City, New Jersey; he provided the Library with copies of the books he designed and advised the librarian, Henry L. Bullen, on de­veloping the printing collection. Rogers and Bullen corresponded fre­quently, and they met whenever Rogers was in New York; so it was only natural that Bullen should think of Rogers when he decided to have a bookplate designed for the growing collection. They were in corre­spondence about the design as early as June 1911, and it is evident from Rogers's letters (copies of Bullen's letters do not survive in the collection) that Bullen had rather specific ideas as to the style and content of the bookplate. Because of the press of other work, it was not until 30 March 1914 that Rogers sent the final design with the query, ''Will this suit your purpose? . . . It seems to contain about all you want for the seal." In the April 1915 issue of the American Bulletin, published by ATF, the bookplate was printed for the first time. Rogers prepared an elaborate design, depicting a wooden press, printer's tools, and renaissance figures representing the printing arts and the spread of knowledge, all linked together with putti, drapery, and stylized foliage. For Library use, the bookplate was printed in two sizes, the larger, 4 1/2" x 2 1/2" (image size) on a sheet measuring 5" x 3 1/8", and the smaller, 3 1/4" x 1 3/4" on a sheet measuring 3 3/4" x 2 1/2".

A printer from Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, Henry Lewis Bullen had emigrated from this gold-mining district to New York early in 1875, returning only once to Australia for a three-year stay. After working for various manufacturers and supplies of printing machinery and equip­ment, Bullen in October 1891 became manager of the New York office of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company, a printing supplier based in Wisconsin. When that firm, along with nearly two dozen other type foundries, was taken over by ATF early in 1892. Bullen came along, serving in various capacities, and more importantly meeting Robert Wickham Nelson, the Company's general manager, who was to play an important role as the major supporter in Bullen's plans for a typo­graphic library. Many of the companies amalgamated by the formation of ATF had libraries, which were brought together by Bullen and placed in storage. Bullen left ATF in 1899 but returned in 1908 and remained with the firm until his death in 1938. When ATF erected a new building in Jersey City in 1908, Nelson reserved space for the Library, persuaded the board of directors to give official sanction to the project, and ap­pointed Bullen as librarian and curator.

Bullen immediately retrieved the books from storage, and they, along with 300 volumes from his own private library, formed the nucleus of the collection. Almost immediately, gifts began to enrich the Library with the arrival of 300 volumes from the Inland Typographic Company and the account books of Archibald Binney and James Ronaldson do­nated by their descendants. Funds were also put at Bullen's disposal, and he searched the book markets of New York and Boston, as well as London, Paris, and The Hague; he purchased the libraries, or portions of the libraries, of Theodore Low De Vinne, David W. Bruce, the Typothetae of the City of New York, and the Franklin Typographical Society. Bullen interpreted his collecting mandate broadly to include examples of fine printing from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries; books and periodicals about printing; landmark books in the history of printing, such as first editions; curiosities (chained books, books printed on unusual substances, silver or tortoise shell bindings, etc.); works on the history of paper; type specimen books; publications relating to the freedom of the press; bibliographies and textbooks on printing; trade catalogues; manuscripts and documents relating to printing and publishing; prints and commemorative medals relating to printers and printing anniver­saries; and printing equipment.

Not only was Bullen able to assemble one of the largest libraries in the field, but he also had the requisite taste and knowledge to acquire the notable rarities. The most renowned is doubtless the Canon Missae, printed in Mainz by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer in 1458, one of three known copies and the only one in America. Other representative rarities include monumental works printed or illustrated by Nicolaus Jenson, Aldus Manutius, Albrecht Dürer, Geofroy Tory, Christopher Plantin, Typographia Regia and Imprimerie Royale, Joannes Blaeu, John Baskerville, Joaquín Ibarra, Pierre Didot l'Aîné, William Morris, and C. H. St. John Hornby, among numerous others. One of the strongest features of the Library is the collection of type specimen books, num­bering more than one thousand, issued by typefounders and printers in the United States, Great Britain and its colonies, various European countries, China, Japan, and mission presses in Hawaii and the Philippines. The earliest specimen book, Indice de Caratteri, published by the Vatican Printing Office in 1628, is present in the collection, as well as Binney and Ronaldson's specimen books of 1809 and 1812, the earliest issued by an American firm.

By the mid-1920s Bullen had amassed approximately 16,600 items, including 6,500 books, 3,500 volumes of periodicals, 5,000 pamphlets, 200 scrapbooks of manuscripts and ephemera, 500 portfolios and boxes of leaflets and broadsides, and at least 1,000 miscellaneous items such as papyri, palm-leaf manuscripts, photographs and portraits, and printing presses and equipment. Bullen's accomplishment was impressive, for almost single-handedly he assembled the most comprehensive collection on printing in the United States, and probably the world, at the time. However, by his late sixties, when he himself began to suffer from failing health, he encountered a series of difficulties beyond his control: Robert Nelson died in 1926, thus removing from the scene his greatest supporter; the ATF Company began to experience economic pressures that started during the Depression and culminated in 1933 when the firm filed for bankruptcy; and the Library's growing internal problems, arising from the need for preservation of the resources, the necessity to modernize the administration to accommodate research requests, the inadequacy of its catalogue, and the proliferation of published material in the field, the acquisition of which could not be sustained to maintain the Library's high level of usefulness.

Although forced to sell duplicates from the collection in 1934 and 1936, Bullen hoped to keep the Library intact and to find a suitable home for it, a hope made more imperative by the reorganization of the ATF Company in 1934/35 and plans for the impending move to a new home. Largely through Bullen's friendship with Helmut Lehmann-Haupt, curator of rare books at Columbia University, the University accepted the Library on deposit in 1936 while it sought the necessary funds for purchase. The University, firmly supported by President Nicholas Murray Butler, officially sanctioned the purchase on 25 April 1941; income was mortgaged from University Library book funds for two years until the necessary goal was reached. Beginning in the late 1940s, the ATF Library was dispersed among several libraries at Columbia, primarily the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the School of Library Service Library, to facilitate cataloguing and to make the collection more accessible to users. Finally, Bullen's original card catalogue, with its useful added entries, its practical but often idiosyncratic subject approaches, and its commentary and notes, reached an even wider audience through its publication in 1980 by G. K. Hall in four stout volumes. 

Kenneth A. Lohf

Librarian for Rare Books and Manuscripts

Columbia University  

[Originally published in Journal of Library History, vol. 21, no. 4 (Fall 1986): 764-767.]