The Ashendene Press was founded in 1895 by Charles St John Hornby and, apart from a brief interruption caused by the First World War, continued operating until 1935. The Press is particularly associated with the Subiaco typeface, which was designed for Hornby by Emery Walker and Sidney Cockerell. This typeface, which blends both Gothic and Roman elements, is based on that used by Sweynheim and Pannartz, two German printers who set up the first press in Italy, in the town of Subiaco.

Special Collections has the following items printed at or published by the Ashendene Press:

• Berners, Juliana. A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle. Chelsea: 1903. SH431 .B52 1903
• Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene Disposed into Twelue Bookes Fashioning XII Morall Vertues. Chelsea: 1923. PR2358.A3 S6
• Spenser, Edmund. Spenser’s Minor Poems, Containing the Shepheardes Calender, Complaints, Daphnaida, Colin Clovts Come Home Again, Amoretti, Hymnes, Epithalamion, Prothalamion, Sonnets and Svndrie Other Verses. Chelsea: 1925. PR2352 .A8
• Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Chelsea: 1930. DF229.T5 J6 1930
• Verino, Ugolino. Vita di Santa Chiara Vergine, Reprinted from the Original Manuscript, with an Introd. and Notes. Chelsea: 1921. BX4700.C6 V4 1921

Special Collections has the following secondary resources relating to the Ashendene Press:

• Ashendene Press. A Descriptive Bibliography of the Books Printed at the Ashendene Press, MDCCCXCV-MCMXXXV. San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1976. Z232 .A82 1935A
• Franklin, Colin. The Ashendene Press. Dallas: Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, 1986. Z232.A82 F72 1986
• Hornby, Charles. The Ashendene Press: C. H. St. J. Hornby’s Foreword to His Descriptive Bibliography, with a Note on the Press by Will Ransom, and a Check List of Its Books. Meriden: The Domesday Press, 1939. Z232.A82 H6
• Ransom, Will. Kelmscott, Doves and Ashendene: The Private Press Credos. Los Angeles: The Typophiles, 1952. Z231 .R35 1952