Today Mike and Rita of Pegana Press are excited to begin offering The Age Of Malygris: Poseidonis Cycle 1 on the website. This collection was inspired by Clark Ashton Smith's stories of the Magian Malygris. It includes two illustrations by the author and a forward by the exquisite Donald Sidney-Fryer.

Made with love and care at Pegana Press, this book was type set, letter press printed and bound all by hand. The dimensions of the book are based on the sacred geometry of the golden rectangle, and for the story titles we used Civilite type, one of the earliest cursive fonts designed. For the end papers we used Lokta paper, hand made in Napal from two varieties of Daphne, one of which is Daphne papyracea, which gives the book a feeling of antiquity.

It is the mission of Pegana Press to offer the multi-sensory experience of reading some of the best authors of the fantasy genre presented in an artisan crafted book. May it meet with your approval.

We invite you to see pictures on our website. We welcome feedback.

What a beautiful book. And it may seem trivial to some, but I appreciate the easy to read, (and handsome) font you chose for the bulk of the text.
BTW, what style is that font?

I normally wouldn't spend the money for a not inexpensive book in which I already have all of the material. But I am reconsidering. I assume you plan on doing other Cycles?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 30 Mar 14 | 02:40AM by Tantalus.

Thank you for the kind words about The Age of Malygris. The font used for the body of the text is Optima, designed by Hermann Zapf for a german foundry in the early 1950's. I chose it because it's cool, detached feel seemed to lend itself to Clark's dispassionate glimpses of a remote age. I think it also allows the ornateness and beauty of the prose to be the focus. When designing the book, I pictured a scribe or monk slowly transferring the text of a crumbling tome that may have come from the chamber of Malygris. The paper is german watermarked with the feel and look of parchment; Hahnemuhle has been making this kind of paper for over 400 years. I really wanted the book to feel OLD. Keeping the craft of true bookmaking alive to pass on is valuable to me as well. The type is distributed(put away) after the print run and will never be done again. It takes about 4 months of painstaking work to create books like this but worth the effort. It also gave me the chance to speak and work with Donald Sidney-Fryer which was incredible.

I too have these stories in my library in several versions; Arkham House, Weird Tales, Ballantine, etc. Other than the late Roy Squires beautiful chapbooks, none of the CAS books were made to truly enhance and convey Clark's work. Their materials and manufacturing were based on cost; and designs were based on standardization.
Don't get me wrong, I love all those versions, but as a CAS lover I would always want a beautiful edition in my collection and I thought it was time to create one.

The inclusion of Clark's original illustrations and DSF's prelude, as well as a poem not published since The Dark Chateau become the setting for the jewellike prose he left for us.

I plan on finishing the Posedionis stories in Cycle II after doing a new Dunsany and then probably the Zothique stories.

cheerio
Mike
Pegana Press Books



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 30 Mar 14 | 09:06AM by pegana.