A service will be held next month in America to celebrate the life of a printer and historian who lived in Oxford for 50 years.

Hester Jenkins, founder of the TruexPress, an innovative printing press, was 82 when she died on October 26.

Mrs Jenkins, came from an American Quaker family and studied for her first degree in languages in Canada.

After the Second World War, she came to Europe to do relief work for the American Friends, when she met her husband, an English lawyer.

When her marriage ended she studied at St Hilda's College, Oxford, before becoming assistant editor on the Victoria County History of Oxfordshire.

In 1959 she won an Oxford University prize for an essay on the Norman architecture of Sicily, and used the money to set up the TruexPress.

It was Oxford's first off-set litho printing press and was innovative in the way it handled mathematical work and old texts. It was first based in Hythe Bridge Street and later moved to Little Clarendon Street and Summertown.

Her funeral took place at Oxford Crematorium.

The commemorative service will take place at State College, Pennsylvania, on December 14.

She is survived by her partner of 45 years, Fergus O'Mahoney, of Freelands Road, Oxford.