Our Story

Located in Baltimore, Maryland, Saint Dunstan's Press was founded in 2015 on the street named for this sainted metal worker. Dunstan, an erstwhile blacksmith and Archbishop of Canterbury, was said to have tricked the devil in numerous ways, the most famous involving a set of blacksmith's tongs and the devil disguised as a woman.

St Dunstan, as the story goes,
Once pull'd the devil by the nose
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.

Or so the legend was told around the anvil as blacksmiths plied their trade across the English countryside. That image of Saint Dunstan's tongs clasping the Devil's nose reminds of the struggle that almost every writer faces when trying to stain paper with the stories that occupy their wild imaginings.

We approach the creation of books founded on such stories with the same focus, humbleness, and artistry of that sainted metalworker.