JACK RITTENHOUSE: A WESTERN LITERARY LIFE author David R. Farmer in Conversation with Tom Leech

Join us Saturday, May 2nd at 4:30pm at Garcia Street Books for a discussion of the new biography Jack Rittenhouse: A Western Literary Importance by author David R. Farmer. He will be in conversation with award-winning printer and book arts expert Tom Leech.

The first biography of Jack D. Rittenhouse, the pioneering twentieth-century writer, printer, publisher, Western historian, antiquarian bookman, advertising executive, and chronicler of the golden age of Route 66.

Jack Rittenhouse was a multi-dimensional individual for whom books were a way of life. He helped establish and elevate printing arts, writing, editing, and publishing in the emerging field of Western history. A founding member of the Western History Association, he is recognized annually by the Independent Book Publishers Association with their Jack Rittenhouse Award, “given in memory of the West’s legendary bookman.”

Dropping out of college amid the Depression for lack of funds, Rittenhouse rode the rails to New York, where he picked up a job in the mail room at Alfred A. Knopf. At Knopf he would open all the incoming correspondence before delivering it to the offices upstairs, and in the evenings he would make notes on what he had learned about book publishing from reading the morning mail, which included correspondence from Willa Cather, H. L. Mencken, and many others. When he learned he could not advance in the publishing world without a college degree, he entered the advertising business and ultimately became a senior partner at a major firm. He collected books, vintage type, and printing presses and read widely on the history of the American West. Early in his career Jack quietly started his own bookselling business on the side. In 1946 he launched his own award-winning publishing venture, Stagecoach Press, with A Guide Book to Highway 66 and soon became known as an authority on The Main Street of America. Subsequently, he printed and published fifty Stagecoach Press books over the next twenty-one years.

Jack Rittenhouse tells the story of a man recognized for his knowledge, scholarship, and devotion to the history of the West and to the books that brought it to life.

Books will be on sale at the event

David R. Farmer is the former director of DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University, with previous positions at the University of Tulsa, the University of Houston, and the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. He holds BA and MA degrees from Trinity University and PhD and MLS degrees from the University of Texas at Austin.

Tom Leech has nearly 50 years’ experience in printing, papermaking, and book arts. From 2001 through 2021 he was the curator of the Press at the Palace of the Governors. He received the 2013 Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the 2014 Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design, and the 2015 Edgar Lee Hewett Award. Several of Tom’s marbled and handmade papers are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.