Autobiography, Chocolate Creams and Letterpress Printing

In response to the call for printed works on paper to recognise the creative contribution made by the Woolfs and the Hogarth Press to printing, art, literature and book culture as part of the 27th annual international conference Virginia Woolf and the World of Books (June 29-July 3 2017), at the University of Reading, UK, this article describes the collaborative process between an academic and artist in response to the theme author as publisher. The first part describes the steps from idea development, design, locating and accessing a working printing press in Ireland; the second part, based on direct observation, describes the technical aspects of typesetting and letterpress printing, design in relation to the artistic process in adding an image to the letterpress text as well as providing a brief history of Ponc Press. The third part reflects on the possible meanings of chocolate creams to Leonard Woolf, why they book-end his autobiography Beginning Again and how the work of visualizing chocolate creams, re-representing autobiography, touches on Leonards Jewish and English identity.