Harry Duncan was born in
Keokuk, Iowa and earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1938 from
Grinnell College intending to become a poet. He enrolled in the English graduate program at Duke University, but never completed his master's degree. During graduate school he spent summers at
Katherine Frazier's Cummington School of the Arts. While in Massachusetts he began publishing books of contemporary poetry using a hand press. He eventually chose to focus on
letterpress printing instead of a graduate degree. The first Cummington Press book was published in 1939. Duncan became director of the typographical laboratory at the
University of Iowa's School of Journalism and moved the Cummington Press to Iowa City in 1956. In 1972, he moved to the
University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) and began the university's fine arts press, Abattoir Editions, and taught. He retired from teaching in 1985 and returned to printing books full-time under the Cummington Press imprint. Duncan died on April 18, 1997, in
Omaha, Nebraska. == References ==