SA1220 | “TYPE” Letterpress Broadside | Arthur Desmond


Ragnar Redbeard, Stand Alone / Thursday, December 2nd, 2021

TYPE is a lost Nineteenth Century poem by antipodean radical Arthur Desmond, praising the power of the printed word to rally downtrodden men to rise up against their oppressors. Stabbed in dark crimson with the leaden slugs of an infernal machine onto heavy aged-ivory stock, courtesy of an anarchist printer in the Twenty-first Century.


Available exclusively from Underworld Amusements


In 1890, Desmond launched The Tribune in New Zealand as a national newspaper of liberation for all. It was in that journal he published this verse. As a polemicist and publisher, Desmond was a thorn in the side of the government of wherever he lived. His “little blocks and leaden” would eventually force him to flee the country ahead of charges of sedition. He landed in Chicago in 1896, where, as Ragnar Redbeard, he wrote Might is Right.

Broadside measures seven by seven inches, numbered in an edition of sixty-six and released as part of the Stand Alone journal project of the Union of Egoists. Printed with hot metal type on an 1930s Linotype letterpress by Michael E. Coughlin, editor publisher of the anarchist journal the dandelion and co-editor of Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty (1987).

Stand Alone is a mixed medium and format journal produced at irregular intervals. The focus is Egoism and the individuals associated with it. Produced by the Union Of Egoists with individual issues published by different sources.

Become a patron at Patreon!