When John Hill Burton made this tongue- in- cheek observation, he swiftly followed it up with a number of bibliophilic names to illustrate his point, including those of Sir Alexander Boswell and Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges. In fact the early Roxburghe Club contained among its members three men who were drawn to the ownership of a private printing press and the freedom that it gave them to pursue their own literary interests, both in terms of printing their own original work and of reproducing rare, largely forgotten works of early literature. As Hill Burton pointed out, the ownership of a private press perhaps indicates an interest in books that extends beyond the mere dilettante concern with novelty or the collector's obsession with fine bindings and auction prices; it certainly goes beyond a taste for the classics or any literature that could be termed mainstream as such tastes have long been amply catered for by the standard printing houses with their business eye on the requirements of the average consumer. While each owner will have his unique reasons for entering the printing world, it often indicates a deeper- than- average interest in unrepresented literature and in the art of typography, a desire to create, reproduce and broadcast literature – an aspiration to control the means of print production which goes beyond even that of employing a printer to work under the patronage of the customer at the printer's own establishment. These undertakings wholeheartedly fulfilled the description coined by Will Ransom when he wrote that ‘freed from the confining strictures of details, a private press may be defined as the typographic expression of a personal ideal, conceived in freedom and maintained in independence’.