Roderick Stinehour transformed a small job-printing office on the upper Connecticut River in Lunenburg, Vermont, into a great scholarly press. Since a press, like a college, is a collective enterprise, many people made the Press what it is, today, but one person provided the vision and the leadership. All were earning a living, sometimes precariously, but they were doing something more. The Stinehour Press today is a beacon. In the world of learning, it can be seen afar. . . .
Rocky Stinehour's quiet demeanor hides the energy, determination, and optimism of a builder. To design books and set type and print, to forage for customers, to spread the word of a new enterprise serving the world of learning: in the fifties, the first decade of The Stinehour Press, all had to be done at once. He formed lasting friendships; he found long-standing allies — librarians and editors, collectors and curators, historians, publishers, fellow practitioners of the arts of the book.
What the Stinehours and their compatriots are doing in Lunenburg is fundamentally the same as what Aldus was doing in Venice in 1500. The Stinehour Press receives texts on which scholars have bestowed unstinting labor to transmit ideas, backed by correct and indispensable information. What happens to such texts and their illustrations is crucial. At The Stinehour Press, they receive attention, care, and understanding in a setting which goes back, unmistakably, to the sense of vocation stirred by the invention of printing about 1450.
— from Honoring a Scholar-Printer
— Sinclair Hamilton Hitchings, 1996
