UK Book Cover Designs 1840-1880

‘Handsomely bound in cloth’: UK Book Cover Designs 1840-1880 Edmund M. B. King Introduction and background Fig. 1. Lithograph image of the interior of the British bookbinding establishment of Westleys & Clark issued by the Philadelphia lithographer P. S. Duval some time between 1842 and 1850. The contribution of decorated cloth designs to the history of the book in the mid-Victorian period is real. The catch phrase in my title ‘Handsomely bound in cloth’ was used endlessly in the publishers’ lists, which were frequently bound at the back of their books. The focus of this article is primarily upon UK designs blocked onto cloth, or those using papier mâché. Despite the temptation, the lure of straying into describing the designs on cloth of other countries, of the same period, particularly America, has been resisted.1 Excluded also are designs printed, engraved, or lithographed onto paper, which was then pasted onto boards. There is plenty of merit in such designs, but it is not possible to This paper is an expanded version of the Homee and Phiroze Randeria lecture, given to the Bibliographical Society on 19 May 2015. I am grateful to the Bibliographical Society for inviting me to give this lecture. I owe thanks to Mirjam Foot, who encouraged me to undertake the work of describing Victorian designs on cloth, and also to Paul Goldman, and Robin de Beaumont, who were similarly supportive as the research progressed. I am also most grateful to Philippa Marks, Curator of Bookbindings at the British Library, for her support over many years, and particularly with regard to the use of the Library’s online Database of Bookbindings. She has also read this paper in its draft form, and made suggestions for its improvement. 1 Two works on American book covers are: Sue Allen and Charles Gullans, Decorated Cloth in America. Publishers’ bindings, 1840-1910 ([Los Angeles], 1994); Richard Minsky, The Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930 (New York, 2010). 1 eBLJ 2016, Article 2 ‘Handsomely bound in cloth’: UK Book Cover Designs 1840-1880 dwell on this aspect of trade binding. The development of edition binding in the 19th century, and the impetus to bind large runs of Bibles and Annuals is described by Esther Potter.2 The history of book cloth and the development of its use throughout this period is well documented elsewhere.3 The method of imparting grain patterns to the dyed cloth was described in contemporary sources.4 The matter of the identification of cloth grain types is also enumerated by others, and will not be detailed here.5 The listing of bookbinder’s tickets, and a discussion of the possible link between publisher, printer and binder, also awaits further exposition.6 Nor will this article give much detail about machine blocking of book covers, as this process is described in several contemporary accounts.7 However, what hopefully will strike the reader is the great skill of the die engravers, who created from artists’ drawings so many varying effects of line, and so many subtle contrasts between blocking on cloth, either as an impression or as relievo, which leaves the cloth proud of the blocked or impressed surface. In the 1890s, Gleeson White, in an article entitled: ‘The Artistic Decoration of Cloth Book Covers’ in The Studio, October 1894, stated six points for the design of an appropriate book cover: 1. Fitness of the design to the contents of the book. 2. The size and style of lettering. 3. The proportion of the details of the decoration to the character of the surface of the fabric to be decorated. 4. The larger symmetry of the whole design in relation to the cover. 5. The cost of carrying out the design. 6. The skill of the firm who will undertake the production of the design.8 As we shall see, the book covers with designs by various artists will show us that these points remain most relevant. What impelled my research was the need to identify a specific copy of these designs, primarily those in the British Library, and, where possible, in other UK libraries.9 This was because many of 2 Esther Potter, ‘The London Bookbinding Trade: from Craft to Industry’, The Library, 6th ser., xv (1993), pp. 259-80. 3 See William Tomlinson and Richard Masters, Bookcloth 1823-1980. A study of early use and the rise of manufacture, Winterbottom’s dominance of the trade in Britain and America, production methods and costs and the identification of qualities and designs(Stockport, 1996). 4 See George Dodd, Days at the Factories (London, 1843), p. 381. 5 Lists of cloth grains are detailed in Thomas Tanselle, ‘The Bibliographical Description of Patterns’, Studies in Bibliography, xxiii (1970), pp. 71-102; Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1972), Table 9, pp. 240-4, ‘The Classification of Book-cloth Grains’; Douglas Ball, Victorian Publishers’ Bindings (London, 1985), pp. 171ff.; Andrea Krupp, Book Cloth in England and America 1823-1850 ( Newcastle, DE, 2008). 6 Bookbinder’s tickets are listed in Douglas Ball, Victorian Publishers’ Bindings, pp. 113-20; addresses and other details are listed in Maurice Packer, Bookbinders of Victorian London (London, 1991); Robert Milevski’s essay is a recent history and appraisal of signed bindings: ‘A Primer on Signed Bindings’, in Suave Mechanicals: Essays on the History of Bookbinding, vol. i, ed. Julia Miller (Ann Arbor, 2013). 7 The Penny Magazine of 24 September 1842 has an article on pp. 377-84, which a description of the binding operations at Westleys and Clark: https://archive.org/stream/ThePennyMagazineOfTheSocietyForTheDiffusionOfUseful Knowledge/ThePennyMagazineOfTheSocietyForTheDiffusionOfUsefulKnowledge1842_djvu.txt Cyclopaedia of useful arts, ed. Charles Tomlinson (London, [1852-1854]), pp. 152-62, describes bookbinding in the premises of Remnant, Edmonds and Remnant. By the 1850s, the process of machine blocking was described: ‘Great pressure was required for this process, for the mill board is required to yield to the force, as well as the cloth itself. The case is placed down flat on an iron bed heated with gas from beneath; above is a press, to the lower end of which is attached to the stamping die or device, face downwards. Great mechanical power is then brought to bear on it, and the press descends with force sufficient to impart the pattern to the cover, gilt or not, according to the circumstances of the case.’ The English Cyclopaedia. Arts and sciences, 8 vols (London, 1854), vol. i, p. 270. 8 Gleeson White. ‘The Artistic Decoration of Cloth Book Covers’, The Studio (October 1894), p. 20. 9 I started finding and cataloguing Victorian decorated books in 1994. My bibliography of these,Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 1830-1880, was published by the British Library in 2003. 2 eBLJ 2016, Article 2 ‘Handsomely bound in cloth’: UK Book Cover Designs 1840-1880 the prior publications, such as Ruari McLean’s works,10 lacked a shelfmark of a copy in a public library, which the interested user could consult. In addition to his fine work of 1985, Victorian Publishers’ Bindings, Douglas Ball had catalogued earlier a collection of publishers’ bindings in Wales, so these books were in theory available, but the catalogue itself was not fully published, as far as I am aware.11 The gift in 1992 of the Robin de Beaumont Collection to the Department of Prints & Drawings, British Museum, brought nearly 600 books and individual prints into the public domain, and the collection was listed in 1994 by Paul Goldman.12 However, the cover designs have yet to be fully described, and cataloguing these is work in progress.13 The significant exhibition by Morris and Levin of 254 books at the Grolier Club in 2000 cited books then in private hands.14 Their catalogue provided good descriptions of the designs: however, this was a private collection. There are now many websites, especially those based in North America, which list UK cover designs of this period, and these will be cited below. I published a brief survey of UK designs of the period in 1996.15 In 2003, the British Library published my bibliography of the books and designs which I had found in the preceding ten years. There are 752 entries in this book, and it amounted to a small census of work in progress, reflecting the discovery and description of designs, primarily held at the British Library.16 Since 2012, the uploading has been done of these descriptions, together with scans of the book covers, into the British Library’s online database of book bindings, so that these are available to a wider audience.17 As this is a relational database, users can search and start to explore relationships between the publisher, cover designer, the printer and the bookbinder. The early research work also concentrated upon the artists who made designs for covers, and who caused their names, initials or monograms to be incorporated into the cover designs. This article does focus upon these artists, for when taken together, they do provide a window into the forms of decoration and designs applied to book covers during this period. Of the identified designers, John Leighton18 provided the most designs, over the longest period, from the mid- 1840s to 1902.19 Fig. 2. BL, 8235.bb.87.(4.) 10 Ruari McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing, 2nd edn ([London, 1972]); id., Victorian Publishers’ Book-Bindings in Cloth and Leather (London, 1974); id., Victorian Publishers’ Bookbindings in Paper (London, 1983). 11 Douglas Ball, A Catalogue of the Appleton Collection of Victorian Colour Printing and Signed Bindings (Aberystwyth, 1979). 12 Paul Goldman, Victorian Illustrated Books 1850-1870. The heyday of wood-engraving.

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