HPB Press
HPB Press was established in London by the American brothers James Morgan Pryse and John Morgan Pryse at the request of Madame Blavatsky in 1889. Major products of the press included the periodicals Lucifer and The Vahan. In the General Report for 1894, G. R. S. Mead wrote:
The H. P. B. Press has, among much else, printed 11,000 books, 32,000 pamphlets, 10,000 leaflets, 12,000 Lucifers, 19,000 Vahans and 5,000 Oriental Department pamphlets, in the year between the 1893 and 1894 Conventions.[1]
The Press closed in January, 1895:
In January a telegram from Mrs. Besant and Mr. B. Keightley from India ordered that the Press be closed. This was at once done, and of course all the employees were discharged. James M. Pryse, who went from the Aryan Press in New York, which he started with his brother John, to London where he organized the H.P.B. Press with an American outfit purchased in New York and on which Lucifer has been so beautifully printed, has passed from that station because of the closure of the plant. He may go to Dublin to help in similar work there, if started. But if there is no need for him at that spot, he may again add his talents and devotion to the staff of printers in New York.[2]
Pryse wrote,
In 1895 by advice of Mr. Judge and Dr. Keightley, I shipped the original H.P.B. Press, which belonged to Dr. Keightley, to Dublin, joined the lodge there, and for over a year helped Russell and the others to get out the Irish Theosophist.[3]
Notes
- ↑ G. R. S. Mead, "Report of the European Section T.S." General Report of the Nineteenth Anniversary of the Theosophical Society (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1895), 21.
- ↑ "Closing of H.P.B. Press" The Path 9.11 (February, 1895), 408.
- ↑ James Morgan Pryse, "George William Russell, Poet of the Inner Life," The Canadian Theosophist 16.6 (August 15, 1935). Available at KatinkaHesselink.net.