With the death of Ronald Holloway, New Zealand loses one of its last living links with the literary generation of Robin Hyde and R.A.K. Mason, Frank Sargeson and A.R.D. Fairburn.
English-born Ronald Holloway was a master printer, known for his craftsmanship and perfectionism. Withhis sometime business-partner Bob Lowry, he set up in print Sargeson's first collection of stories, Conversation With My Uncle, at the Unicorn Press in Auckland in 1936.
Later, he established his own Griffin Press.
His printery was for years a converted Army hut next to his Panmure home.
Here, Ron designed and handset nearly all the works of his friend Roderick Finlayson, and printed the first editions of much poetry and many works of fiction and scholarship.
For more than half a century, his home was the regular meeting place of writers, craft printers and people who shared his interest in books of all sorts.
Not surprisingly, he figures in a large number of Auckland-based literary biographies.
He had strong links with the University of Auckland.
When he grew too old to be actively printing, he was happy to see Peter Simpson and Alan Loney set up the Holloway Press on the university's Tamaki campus, to produce small editions of literary works.
Ron is remembered as a gentle, tolerant and broad-minded man, but a man with a nice, ironical wit and definite opinions of his own.
He loved cats, and in later life tended to receive guests with a cat curled up on his lap.
He had a passion for anything medieval and was a longtime member of the Heraldry Society.
He enjoyed ceremonial and was a member of the Order of St Lazarus. Bibliophilia made him a regular at booklovers' groups such as Slightly Foxed and the Ex Libris Society.
Ron and his late wife, Kay, were both converts to Catholicism but Ron, with his love of ritual and the Latin language, was not entirely happy with the changes to the Church since the Second Vatican Council.
Fittingly, his requiem in St Patrick's Cathedral on November 4 was largely celebrated in Latin.
He is survived by many grandchildren, by his sister Anne, and by five of his eight children.
