Hilary Douglas Clark Pepler

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Harry Douglas Clark Pepler (1878–1951), known as Hilary Pepler, was an English printer, writer and poet. He was an associate of both Eric Gill and G. K. Chesterton, working on publications in which they had an interest. He was also a founder with Gill and Desmond Chute in 1920 of a Catholic community of craftsment at Ditchling, Sussex, that took the name The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic.

His background was Quaker.^[1] He was born at Eastbourne and educated at Bootham School.^[2] He met Gill in Hammersmith, London, during World War I, through the Hampshire House Workshops. At that time Pepler was a social worker. Pepler and Gill were together mostly responsible for the Ditchling house magazine, The Game.

He founded in 1915 or 1916 the St. Dominic's Press. It published, amongst other books, important editions for the Ulysses Bookshop in High Holborn, London owned by Jacob Schwartz, to 1937. These included works of James Joyce (in fact pirate editions)^[3], but also George Bernard Shaw, John Drinkwater, Augustus John, Chesterton and John Collier.

He became a Roman Catholic convert in 1916; and joined the Dominicans as a lay member in 1918. At that time he changed his name to Hilary. Financial quarrels between Pepler and Gill were instrumental in breaking up the Ditchling group in 1924.^[4] Pepler was forced to leave the Guild in 1934.^[5]

After Chesterton's death in 1936 , Pepler assisted Reginald Jebb in running The Weekly Review, the successor distributist publication to G. K.'s Weekly. Stephen Dorril's Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (2006) mentions Pepler in passing, as a member of the British People's Party in 1945.

Pepler's son, Fr. Conrad Pepler, O.P., ran the Dominican conference centre at Spode House, Staffordshire, for many years, and founded Spode Music Week.

[edit] Works

The Care Committee. The Child & the Parent (1914)
The Devil's Devices or, Control versus Service. With Woodcuts by Eric Gill (1915)
Three Poems (St. Dominic's Press, 1918)
Nisi Dominus (1919)
Concerning Dragons (St. Dominic's Press, 1921)
The Law the Lawyers Know About (Saint Dominic's Press, 1923)
The Service for the Burial of the Dead according to the use of the Orthodox Greek Church in London. The Greek Text with a rendering in English (1922)
In Petra. Being a Sequel to 'Nisi Dominus' (Saint Dominic's Press, 1923)
Libellus lapidum (1924) with David Jones
Judas or the betrayal: a play in one act (St. Dominic's Press 1926)
Pilate - A Passion Play (St Dominic's Press, 1928)
Plays For Puppets (St. Dominic's Press, 1929)
A Nativity Play: The Three Wise Men (1929)
Le Boeuf et L'Ane et deux autres pieces pour marionettes (St. Dominic's Press 1930)
St. George and the Dragon: A One Act Play (1932)
Mimes Sacred & Profane (St. Dominic's Press, 1932)
The Hand Press: An Essay Written and Printed by Hand for the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago (1934)
The Field Is Won (1935) play
The Four Minstrels of Bremen and "The Two Robbers", being more Plays for Puppets (St. Dominic's Press)
A Letter About Eric Gill (1950)