The story
Founded by Daniel Berkeley Updike in 1893.1
In 1892, after 12 years at Houghton Mifflin and its Riverside Press, Daniel Berkeley Updike was approached to design a new standard version of the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer. The following year, work began on what would become known as the Altar Book, to be funded by Harold Brown. The commencement of Merrymount Press followed. As Updike described the Press's establishment: “In no exact sense was the Press ever founded—it only began.”
Updike derived the name Merrymount from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The May-Pole of Merrymount.” The story centers on Thomas Morton's seventeenth century settlement in present-day Quincy, Massachusetts. Morton's estate was apparently the site of sports, music, and frivolity—set up in the face of his Puritanical neighbors. According to Updike, “The Press took its name from the fancy that one could work hard and have a good time.”
The style of the Press developed quickly in its early years, at first imitating William Morris’s style and the Arts and Crafts movement. But where Morris’s work was decorative and heavy, Updike’s designs soon became clean and practical. By the end of the 19th century Updike had done away with designs inspired by Morris’s Gothic revival. Instead, Merrymount Press became known for its readable type and minimal decoration. This practicality could also be seen in the kinds of jobs that Updike took on, and which ultimately sustained the business. Bookplates, advertisements, concert programs, catalogs, greeting cards, periodicals, government tracts, diplomas, and more made up the bulk of the work done at Merrymount.
From 1915, Updike ran the Press with John Bianchi, who had been a foreman in the workroom since Merrymount’s early days. Bianchi shared many of Updike’s same values and objectives, and was therefore made partner in 1915. Every single item produced by Merrymount was supervised by either Updike or Bianchi. After Updike’s death in 1941, Bianchi carried on the work of the Press with his son Daniel Berkeley Bianchi (named after Updike), but business dwindled and Merrymount Press ceased operations in 1949.
Over the course of 56 years of operation, the Merrymount Press printed more than 20,000 items. Updike, always modest about his achievements, never attributed the Press’s success to any innate talent or instinct of his own, but to hard work and a desire to learn: “Perhaps the reason that I survived, in spite of mistakes, was that a simple idea had got hold of me—to make work better for its purpose than was commonly thought worth while…”
From Wikipedia’s article on Merrymount Press, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4