Joseph Ishill

Joseph Ishill (February 11, 1888 – March 14, 1966) was a Romanian-born Jewish anarchist typesetter and bookbinder who worked with The Modern School. A commercial typesetter for most of his life, Ishill is most well known for his work with The Oriole Press, which he and his wife, Rose Florence Freeman founded in 1926.

Biography Oriole Press colophon, from Manifesto (A Rare and Interesting Document), by Josiah Warren. Introductory Note by Joseph Ishill. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Oriole Press, 1952. Joseph Ishill, born Joseph Ishileanu, grew up in a Jewish farming family in Cristești, Botoșani County in the Western Moldavia province of Romania on February 11, 1888. At age fourteen, Ishill was apprenticed to a typesetter in Botoșani. In 1907 he began his first printed periodical, The Wandering Jew, followed by his autobiographical Balkan Episodes, about his youth.

Ishill met his wife and collaborator, the poet Rose Florence Freeman-Ishill, at a Thanksgiving ball fundraiser for the Modern School in New York in 1916. They married in 1917, and moved briefly to Bronx, New York in 1918, where their first child was born. The family eventually settled in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey in 1919, and continued their relationship with the Ferrer Modern School until 1927. Together they had three children: a son, Anatole, and two daughters, Crystal and Oriole.

Throughout his life, Ishill worked as a commercial typesetter in New York City, making a daily commute from his rural home. He spent his evenings working on his own printing projects, focusing later in his life on producing small, private editions of work by accomplished radical authors. Because he rarely sold the books and pamphlets for which he later became known, Ishill and his family subsisted entirely on his typesetter’s wage.

Joseph Ishill and Rose Florence Freeman-Ishill founded The Oriole Press, essentially renaming their prior endeavor, Free Spirit Press, in 1926. Although Joseph Ishill is singularly credited with running The Oriole Press, Rose Freeman-Ishill regularly worked as translator, and copyedited most or all of his work prior to print.

Ishill also kept up regular correspondence with many prominent international anarchist writers and activists of his era. He filed these letters meticulously, and later sold the collection to Harvard University. Much of his other collected correspondence was donated by his daughter Crystal (Ishill) Mendelsohn to the University of Florida.