Alan Clodd

Self-effacing book collector and dealer who founded the Enitharmon Press

Harold Alexander (Alan) Clodd, publisher, book collector and dealer: born Dublin 22 May 1918; Director, Enitharmon Press 1967-87; died London 24 December 2002.

Alan Clodd was perhaps the last surviving example of a bookman in the 19th-century mould whose abilities and accomplishments extended into every area of the literary world – collecting, dealing, publishing and bibliographical research.

He was no dilettante, however. His professionalism was absolute and was evinced when in 1967 he founded the Enitharmon Press, one of the most distinctive of English private presses, which he was to run single-handedly until his retirement from publishing in 1987. In an age of conglomerates he represented a vanishing breed of publishers whose care with the text and dedication to their authors was more important than the balance sheet. His insistence on quality in every area of book production was central to his operation, and in his dealings with authors he was gentlemanly, discreet and encouraging.

At the same time, he was known for his discernment as a book collector and dealer. His knowledge of 19th- and 20th-century English literature was phenomenal, and with that expertise went an equally scholarly familiarity with variant editions, differentiations in bindings, curiosities and "ghosts".

In his appreciation of literature Clodd emulated his grandfather the Victorian rationalist, banker and writer Edward Clodd, a close friend of George Meredith, George Gissing and particularly Thomas Hardy, who frequently stayed with the Clodds at their Suffolk retreat, Strafford House in Aldeburgh. Clodd's memories of this remarkable patriarch centred on visits to his seafront house, where the astonishing collection of inscribed books and manuscripts made a lasting impression and helped to define the course of his life.

Alan Clodd was born in Dublin, where his mother's family, the Alexanders, kept a shop in Blackrock. His father was a rubber broker who had spent some years in the Malay States, returning in 1918 to seek work first in Ireland and then in England. The family settled in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire and Alan and his elder brother Denis were educated at Bishop's Stortford College.

After leaving school, Clodd started working for the insurance company Scottish Widows. During the Second World War he was a conscientious objector, serving with the Friends' Ambulance Unit in Egypt and with Unrra in Italy. Back in London he worked for an Oxford Street bookshop and then for five years on the issue desk at the London Library, where he was answerable to the irascible Mr Cox. He regarded his time at the library as an invaluable education and regretted giving in his notice, all the more so as it led to a series of unsuitable clerical jobs with firms exporting luxury cars.

By the 1960s Clodd had decided to take the plunge and to become a full-time publisher and bookseller – the latter activity supporting the former. The dealing grew naturally out of his collecting, which had begun in the 1950s with volumes by Christopher Isherwood, the first of many celebrated writers with whom he corresponded.

At the beginning of the 21st century it is hard to appreciate what finds and bargains were possible in the post-war period, particularly of books by the unfashionable and the neglected. Clodd's personal collection was breathtaking. It was especially strong in the Victorian and Edwardian authors who were contemporaries of his grandfather, in First World War poets (he was passionate about Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney, Siegfried Sassoon and David Jones), and in writers who came to prominence in the 1930s, principally W.H. Auden, Isherwood, Edward Upward and Evelyn Waugh. Almost every publication of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound graced his bookshelves. James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney were among his favourites and were comprehensively represented. Many books were inscribed or were intriguing association copies and the collection also included fascinating ephemera, manuscripts and an extensive correspondence.

Clodd was a generous source of information for researchers and curators and readily lent to exhibitions, most recently to Richard Hamilton's "Imaging Ulysses" at the British Museum. He became a much-respected figure at book fairs, auction houses and bookshops. Well into his eighties he could be seen on the Charing Cross Road in his chequered overcoat making for the Tube with another cache of his finds. He had the keenest of eyes, though with typical modesty he ascribed his greatest discoveries to luck. An Ezra Pound rarity was plucked from a Farringdon barrow; other gems were discovered in mixed lots at auctions. His own catalogues, irregularly produced and enticingly varied, were models of accuracy.

It seemed natural that Clodd, with his bibliographical knowledge and love of fine printing, should venture into publishing. In the 1950s and early 1960s he tested the water by issuing poem pamphlets by Christopher Logue, Ronald Firbank and Kathleen Raine. In 1967, with Raine's encouragement, he established the Enitharmon Press. It was significant that he should take its name from William Blake's prophetic works, for he was always to regard the truest poetry as romantic and visionary.

Enitharmon became known for its fine-quality editions. Its first printers were Caspar and Juliet Standing of the Dedalus Press. From 1974 to 1987 Christopher Skelton, Eric Gill's nephew, designed and printed many of the publications. He described Clodd as the ideal customer: copy was meticulously presented, a typeface and size suggested, and then Skelton was given free rein to produce the book in whatever format and design he thought appropriate. Clodd's good taste and the creativity of his printers account for the variations in size, shape, papers, cladding and design which were to make Enitharmon's products so admired and now themselves collectable.

The Enitharmon books were not only well produced. They also brought to readers a remarkable series of texts by poets and novelists who in many cases were overlooked by more commercial houses. Side by side with the familiar names of Beckett, Borges, Lorca, Pinter, Raine and Vernon Watkins were newcomers such as Frances Horovitz, Jeremy Hooker and Jeremy Reed. Clodd delighted in finding new talent but he was also dedicated to writers he felt were ignored by the literary establishment. He began the renaissance of interest in Frances Bellerby and Hugo Manning and with the publication in 1973 of Artorius, one of the greatest long poems of the century, revived the reputation of John Heath-Stubbs.

Above all he was the champion and close friend of David Gascoyne, publishing his sequence of aphorisms The Sun at Midnight and two 1930s journals, as well as co-editing his Collected Verse Translations for Oxford University Press and, after his retirement from publishing, helping Roger Scott to compile Gascoyne's monumental Selected Prose 1934-1996 (1998).

By the mid-1980s Clodd, with almost 150 titles behind him, had grown weary of balancing the books – not only financially but also physically, since his home doubled as an office and warehouse. For some years he had received Arts Council backing, but this ceased in 1985 and at around that time he asked me if I would be his successor. He was endlessly encouraging and supportive, though he never interfered in the subsequent running of the press and only occasionally and with great diffidence offered advice.

Diffidence and discretion defined him. Only his closest friends knew of his 33-year partnership with George McLean, whose death in 1989 was a severe blow. He was extraordinarily self-effacing, with a kind-heartedness which often led to quiet philanthropy. He regarded it as much a duty as a pleasure to subscribe to literary societies and appeals, and his was a familiar name in subscription lists and on acknowledgements pages. Infinitely polite, he was rarely moved to indignation unless discussing social injustices, the deterioration in the book trade or the antics of "artocrats" in the Eighties.

His speech, rather measured, had fin de siècle inflections that seemed curiously to connect him to a vanished world of literary salons. For any bibliophile, conversations with him were a many-layered education.

Stephen Stuart-Smith