Fulcrum Press (1965 – 1974)
quoting Rathna Ramanathan, "English little presses, book design and production. A Study of five London publishers, 1945-1979", Doctoral dissertation, University of Reading, Dept of Typography & Graphic Communication, October 2006. was founded in London in the mid-1960s by medical student Stuart Montgomery (born 1938, in Rhodesia) and his wife Deirdre. Montgomery later became an eminent psychiatrist and expert in depression. Earning a reputation as the premier small press of the late 1960s to early '70s, Fulcrum published major American and British poets in the modernist and the ''avant-garde'' traditions in carefully designed books on good paper. The Fulcrum Press made a significant contribution to the

British Poetry Revival The British Poetry Revival is the general name now given to a loose list of poetry groups and movements, movement in the United Kingdom that took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. The term was a neologism first used in 1964, postulating a New Br ...

and was one of the best known little presses of the period, recognized for publishing the works of Modernist poets including

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

, Basil Bunting, Allen Ginsberg and Roy Fisher. Montgomery published Basil Bunting's ''Loquitur'' (1965), ''First Book of Odes'' (1965), ''Ode II/2'' (1965), his landmark '' Briggflatts: An Autobiography'' (1966) and the same poet's ''Collected Poems'' (1968). It produced about forty books by more than twenty poets, including Pete Brown, Ed Dorn (''Gunslinger 1 & 2'', 1970), Robert Duncan, Larry Eigner, Paul Evans, Roy Fisher, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Donald Gardner (born 1938, ''For the flames'', 1974), Allen Ginsberg, Michael Hamburger, Lee Harwood, Spike Hawkins, Alan Jackson, David Jones, Christopher Middleton, Lorine Niedecker, Jeff Nuttall, George Oppen, Tom Pickard (with a preface by Bunting), Omar S. Pound, F. T. Prince, Tom Raworth, Jerome Rothenberg and Gary Snyder. Stuart Montgomery published two books of his own poems, ''Circe'' (1969) and ''Shabby Sunshine'' (1973), and his medical study ''Measures of Depression'' (1978). Fulcrum Press had much of their printing done by Villiers Press in London, which in the words of Alastair Johnston "was serviceable though typographically uninspired (like the City Lights books they also printed)....However, Montgomery frequently had exceptional cover art from Tom Phillips, Barnett Newman, Patrick Caulfield, Ian Dury, Ron Kitaj or Richard Hamilton." The demise of Fulcrum came about as the consequence of a lengthy legal dispute with Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay over the mistaken description of his collection ''The Dancers Inherit the Party'' as a first edition when it was published by Montgomery, who was unable to meet the costs of losing the case.Peter Barry, "The Fall of Fulcrum", 2007.
/ref> When Fulcrum Press folded in the 1970s most of the stock was pulped.

References

External links

"Beautiful Outsiders: Opening Reception - Black Sparrow Press, Burning Deck Press, and Fulcrum Press", Poetry Foundation, November 16 2011.
{{Authority control Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom British Poetry Revival Publishing companies established in 1965 Small press publishing companies British companies established in 1965