Bruce Rogers

Alfred B. Rogers was born in 1870, in Lafayette, Indiana. He was taught to draw by his father, and encouraged to study art. While still in high school he hand-lettered a single copy of William Cullen Bryant’s "Forest Hymn," with illustrations in watercolors and simulated etchings by his own hand.

Rogers’ first employment was as an illustrator for the Indianapolis News, with assignments that involved pictorial reporting of fires, visits to jail, and even to the local morgue.

In 1893 he was working as general draughtsman for the Indiana Illustrating Company and was taken on by the periodical Modern Art. In 1896 he began work at the Riverside Press, heading the department producing limited-edition books from 1900 through 1912. He produced some notable books, including Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules and Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler. Rogers was eclectic in his choice of type, binding and paper, selecting types suitable to the period and nature of the book. Each of his books was different in size, type, paper, decoration and binding, an escape from the uniform house-style then so prevalent.

In 1915 Rogers produced a translation of Maurice de Geurin’s The Centaur in his own type, known as Centaur, a design based on a type used by Nicolas Jenson. It has become one of the most sought-after of his books. Hand-set by Rogers, it was printed in an edition of 135 copies at the Montague Press in Massachusetts.
Rogers worked for the Cambridge University Press, the Harvard University Press, and William Edwin Rudge.

During a period in Britain from 1928-32 Rogers produced some of his finest books, including the Oxford Lectern Bible and The Odyssey of Homer (1932). After returning to the States, Rogers settled in his home in New Fairfield. He designed some good books for the Limited Editions Club of New York, notably an illustrated, thirty-seven-volume folio Shakespeare, and another Bible. He died in 1957.