Month: May 2020

It has been a difficult week all around: eruptions of racist violence everywhere, and now a racist President of the US saying “start shooting” at Black protesters. Doesn’t he know that the shooting, the killing, started a long, long, time ago now, and never seems to stop? Or that Black lives are more valuable than a Target store? (Those are obviously rhetorical questions.) This week, we’re making copies of Mary Weston Fordham’s Magnolia Leaves, a… read more Magnolia Leaves by Mary Weston Fordham

We’re now in the fifth week of our pandemic book project. To recap, what we’re doing is producing a public domain, open-copyright, or bootleg edition we haven’t done before and don’t plan to do again in a short run each week, selling it for $10 +shipping, and after paying our costs sending whatever money is left over to an organization that serves vulnerable people in our city. This week we are examining the social and… read more Pandemic books week 5: AIDS Conspiracy Theories (update: Sold out!)

This week’s short-run book is a facsimile of Saving the World from Democracy, a publication made by the joint Defense Committee of several labour organizations just one year after the brutal suppression of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. The book contains eyewitness accounts, court transcripts, speeches, and newspaper articles that retell the formation of a coalition of activists, rank and file workers, unemployed soldiers returning from the First World War, and others. Among their demands… read more This week’s book is “Saving the World from Democracy”, documents from the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike

This week’s book is a collection of short prose by Tekahionwake, better known by her English name, E. Pauline Johnson. She is best known for her poetry, and for retelling and publishing a collection of Skwxwu7mesh stories as the book Tales of Vancouver. We have made copies of a 1913 edition of The Moccasin Maker, in burgundy covers, and with black edging. Tekahionwake was born on the Six Nations reserve in Ontario to an English… read more The Moccasin Maker by Tekahionwake E. Pauline Johnson (updated: sadly, sold out)

Last week we said we would be making a short run every week of a title we haven’t made before, and possibly won’t again. We have taken some ends of materials left over from other work to make this week’s selection, Fairy Tales from the French by the Comtesse de Ségur, a copy of an 1859 edition translated by Mrs. Coleman Chapman “and her Daughters”. The Comtesse de Ségur was the daughter of a Russian… read more Fairy Tales by Sophie, Comtesse de Ségur (update: sold out!)