BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY, WITH ARTWORK BY ROCKWELL KENT

Receive a $10 discount by joining our “Broadside Collectors Club” on Patreon!

The first broadside from No Reply Press comes at the end of 2020, a year that saw more of the "bludgeoning of chance" than usual. For the press, the year of Coronavirus was also the year of wildfires, of scarcity, and of burglary. And yet hard times often bring an impulse toward defiance. This is the mood captured best in William Ernest Henley’s famous poem,

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

We are delighted to present the poem alongside Rockwell Kent’s Oarsman, who reminds us that we must “row our own boat.” Still, the figure looks off. Perhaps he is looking to another oarsman, rowing beside him.

EDITION NOTES

• Limited to 200, numbered 1 through 200

• The first broadside of No Reply Press, Autumn 2020.

• Broadside measures 5 by 10 ¾ inches.

• Printed by hand on Zerkall mouldmade paper using a Vandercook Universal I cylinder press at Letterpress PDX in Portland, Oregon.

• Typeset in Perpetua, designed by Eric Gill.

HAND-MADE FRAMING

• We offer museum-quality gallery frames, made specially for our broadsides. Each frame is made by hand with sustainably harvested poplar hardwood.

• The broadside is mounted to create a slight shadow which accents and exhibits the deckle edges of the papers we use.