he Gehenna Press was founded by the sculptor, printmaker and wood engraver Leonard Baskin in 1942 while he was a student at Yale University, with the frirst book printed being a collection of his own poems. The press moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1956, where it enjoyed close relations with the Metcalf Printing and Publishing Company; the firm’s resources provided an invaluable adjunct to the skills of Harold McGrath, Gehenna’s full-time pressman. A notable feature of the output of the Gehenna Press has been Baskin’s collaboration with Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate from 1984 to 1998, whom he met at Smith College. This lasted from Pike: a poem in 1959 to the Oresteia of 2001. Other collaborators included Anthony Hecht, James Baldwin and Richard Michelson.
he Gehenna Press was founded by the sculptor, printmaker and wood engraver Leonard Baskin in 1942 while he was a student at Yale University, with the frirst book printed being a collection of his own poems. The press moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1956, where it enjoyed close relations with the Metcalf Printing and Publishing Company; the firm’s resources provided an invaluable adjunct to the skills of Harold McGrath, Gehenna’s full-time pressman. A notable feature of the output of the Gehenna Press has been Baskin’s collaboration with Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate from 1984 to 1998, whom he met at Smith College. This lasted from Pike: a poem in 1959 to the Oresteia of 2001. Other collaborators included Anthony Hecht, James Baldwin and Richard Michelson.