“[Robert] McAlmon’s friend [McAlmon’s publishing house was Contact Editions] was fellow-publisher William Bird. Bill Bird was a prominent member of the press in Paris, who spent his spare money and time on the little, entirely personal, editions of the Three Mountains Press. He had heard from a fellow-writer of a bargain hand press that was available, and installed it in a tiny office on the île Saint Louis. He was engaged in printing a book when I went to see him one day. He had come out onto the sidewalk to see me because, as he explained, in his “office” there was room only for the hand press and the printer-editor. Bill Bird knew all about rare editions. He was a bibliophile, and his publications were everything a collector could wish–they were printed in handsome type on large pages of fine paper, and the editions were limited. Bird brought out Pound’s Cantos and Indiscretions, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, and F.M. Ford’s Women and Men, among others. Bill was a great connoisseur of wines, too; the only one of his publications that was not on large paper was a booklet called French Wines. The author was William Bird.” — from Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach.
Oh, how I can identify with old Bill Bird! I think we could have been pals. I learned about Bill today at — of all places, Twitter. I refuse to call it X. It’s one of the things I love about that platform: watch a ridiculous video of Trump’s incoherent ramblings in the same place I can learn a little bit about old Bill Bird and his Three Mountains Press.
