"I got so carried away that I forgot to leave room for a dedication page."

The Pequod Press was the decades-long small press project of John Ruyle, who worked as an editor and then manager of the publications office at UC Berkeley, as well as a sometime casual scout for Peter Howard of Serendipity Books. He adapted the lowest level of his multi-story house into a pressroom, where he kept multiple presses and fonts. According to OCLC, his earliest publication dates to 1970 and his latest to 2001, with approximately 129 titles issued over its lifetime (as well as further ephemera). The collection gathered here contains 192 individual copies of 99 titles, about 77% of his total output, with most copies represented in both their wrappers and cloth-bound issues. It was acquired by noted Sherlockian, BSI member since 1973, and retired US magistrate judge Andrew Peck, who patronized the press for nearly three decades, and to whom nearly every copy is inscribed by Ruyle.

The vast majority of Pequod Press productions were Ruyle's own writings, which tended to the parodic. A self-published John Kendrick Bangs, Ruyle's work was rough and tumble but undeniably distinctive. Oddly sized according to the limitations of his small presses (and often oblong), filled with tales and verse that betrayed a love for obsolete words, absurd situations, and coy bawdiness, they sometimes ring with echos of Edward Gorey. The vast majority are of a Sherlockian nature, verses filled with references to The Great Detective or the adventures of Ruyle's own Holmesian hero, Turlock Loams.

According to the inscriptions in this collection, Ruyle clearly found Peck's support meaningful. In addition to more conventional notes of appreciation, Ruyle wrote his regulars into his works: the inscription in THE ADVENTURE OF THE FERAL BARONET records, "Your note prompted the inclusion of 'Peck's Mad Boy' in this yarn," a cheeky homage to Peck. In fact, from a book history perspective, the inscriptions are far richer than typical. Ruyle would use inscriptions to explain why he chose a certain binding cloth, complain when an experiment didn't work, or mark design changes: "I sometimes wonder if anyone notices my minor design changes in this now 'uniform' series. For example, no 'running heads,' as with the 'Six Nixons' too, to accommodate more text" (ALUMINUM CROTCH inscription).

The presswork is consistently crisp and clean. Ruyle's bookbinding skills were far inferior, but their folk simplicity is an especially compelling case study for book design at the amateur level: how did an untrained guy bind books in his basement in Berkeley in the '70s? For instance, he often used what he called "allusive" cloth for his bindings when opportunity arose: "Andy: sorry about the slight glue 'seep-through' on the cloth, but I had trouble binding with the loose weave of the batik, which I had to use because of its allusive gastropodal design!" (GASTROPODS inscription). In some cases, the choice of cloth inspired content in the books, as in WATSON FURIOSO's poem "Purple Leopards," which Ruyle notes in his inscription was inspired by the cloth pattern of the binding with... purple leopards. The amateur nature of the press led to a rich idiosyncrasy of bibliographical traits, reflecting the personality of the man behind it.

Institutional holdings are exceptionally uncommon, with most of the titles represented at only three institutions (the two Conan Doyle / Sherlockian collections at Toronto Public Library and University of Minnesota, and Ruyle's alma mater, Berkeley). While individual titles appear regularly on the market, there are few opportunities to acquire a single collection of this size. A quirky, vibrant dialogue, via the book arts, with one of the great characters of English literature.