William Edwin Rudge
William Edwin Rudge refers to three generations of printers and the family business they built in New York and Vermont.
The first William Edwin Rudge (1835–1910) ran a small commercial print shop in New York City.
William Edwin Rudge II (1876–1931) was born in Brooklyn. He started in his father’s shop at age 13 and took over in 1899 when his father became ill. In 1920 the company entered more than 100 works in the National Arts Club Exhibition; six of the 39 medals went to Rudge, with book designs by Frederic W. Goudy, Bruce Rogers, and Elmer Adler. In 1921 the plant moved to Mount Vernon, New York, and for about ten years the firm produced some of the finest printing in America, led by Bruce Rogers, who designed eighty books for the firm through 1931. Frederic Warde also worked for Rudge during two periods.
William Edwin Rudge III, known as Edwin, learned printing from his father. After his father’s death, he and his brother Fred ran the shop as William E. Rudge’s Sons, Inc. until 1945. Edwin founded Print, A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts in 1940. In 1942 he bought Elm Tree Press and moved the business to Woodstock, Vermont. In 1946 he bought The Print Collector’s Quarterly, restarted it in 1948, and absorbed it into Print in 1951. In 1946 two others joined the Woodstock operation, and the fine printing work continued. Elm Tree Press filed for bankruptcy in 1950. During the 1950s Edwin worked as an agent for the Lane Press.
Edwin married Abigail Hazen in 1934. They had a daughter, Joanna, and a son, William Edwin Rudge IV. The Rudge papers are housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Vermont.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 03:28 (CET).