Cummington Press

The Cummington Press was founded as a part of the Cummington School of the Arts, a summer program emphasizing collaborations across the fine arts, directed by musician Katharine Frazier in Cummington, Massachusetts. In 1939, Harry Duncan (1916-1997) joined the school and began printing with other students. In the year of Frazier's passing (1941), Duncan met Paul Wightman Williams, Jr., a poet and illustrator, who began to participate in book production, providing woodcut illustrations for several volumes. At this time, the Cummington Press published works by Wallace Stevens and R.P. Blackmur, as well as works by Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and Marianne Moore. The press also published translations of Rainer Maria Rilke and works by earlier authors, including Daniel Defoe and Charles Dickens. In the following years Harry Duncan balanced printing with academic appointments at the University of Iowa (1957-1972) and the University of Nebraska (1972-1985). Duncan continued book production until his death in 1997.