I am pleased to announce the completion of my most recent binding, a copy of “Lines: Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a tour: July 13th 1798″, or, in short, “Lines”. The book is a 2002 publication by The Old Stile Press of a poem written by William Wordsworth which is often abbreviated to, “Tintern Abbey” although the building doesn’t actually appear within the poem. It was written by Wordsworth after a walking tour with his sister in this section of the Welsh Borders on the banks of the River Wye. The abbey fell into ruin after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century.
Frances and Nicolas McDowall from The Old Stile Press actually live on the banks of ‘the Sylvan Wye’, about two miles upstream from (‘above’) Tintern Abbey. Taken from The Old Stile Press website:
“Having lived for more than fifteen years amidst ‘these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape’, we felt the time had come to tackle the work that we have come to regard as ‘our’ poem.
We can almost see William Wordsworth’s footprints on our riverbank. Even before we came to live here we felt a deep affinity with this poem. Wordsworth helped us to understand and to accept the 'sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused’ of which we have always been aware. The images involved Nicolas editing photographs which had been taken on our stretch of the river but Frances too spent long hours at the vat to make paper for the entire project text, endpapers and binding.
Spring water on its way to the Wye is an essential part of this paper making process and plants grown beside that stream were used in the endpapers. Altogether a very personal project!”
