Crotty Shinkwin: A Tale of the Strange Adventure that befell a Butcher of County Clare. The Beauty Spot: A Tale concerning the Chilterns.

1932

Special Collections PR6005 O55 C7 1932. Reproduced by permission of the Robert Gibbings Estate and the Heather Chalcroft Literary Agency

Waltham St Lawrence, Berkshire: The Golden Cockerel Press

In July 1932, the Press published two of A.E. Coppard’s short stories with engravings by Gibbings. Here is a page from the tale of Crotty Shinkwin – a man who fishes up the underside of the island he lives on. At the time, Gibbings’s life was heading into a downward spiral – the GCP had passed the zenith of its success mainly due to the economic depression of the early 1930s; Moira had finally had enough of married life and had taken their three youngest children to live in South Africa; and Gibbings’s financial problems continued to escalate. In August 1933, Gibbings sold the GCP to book designer, Christopher Sandford and his partners. Sandford moved the Press to 10 Staple Inn, London and so ended the ‘golden age’ of printing at the GCP. Gibbings was responsible for producing 71 titles at the Press.