Victorian publisher's bookbindings: Nineteenth century publishers' bindings. Work in Progress

19^th century UK publishers’ bindings – work in progress

Edmund M B King (Ed King) has worked since 1994 to create a corpus of 19^th century publishers’ bindings. The aim has been to identify and describe designs blocked or printed onto covers of publishers/ edition bindings for the Victorian period. There was a conservation objective in carrying out this work, as many of the books in the British Library were in a poor state of repair. His 2003 descriptive bibliography, Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings, 1830-1880, marked one stage of this process. (The copies identified were normally those held in the British Library.) Another objective of the work was to enable other libraries to properly identify designs on their copies, with descriptive notes of the designs being added to the appropriate catalogue. .

The development of the British Library database of Bookbindings made is possible to place online the entries in the 2003 bibliography, to reach a wider audience. From 2012, work began, to transfer into the BL database, the entries in the 2003 bibliography. Some 730 entries were transferred, together with scans of the bindings. Searches may be started at:

https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/bookbindings/

Also listed in the BL database of bookbindings are: authors, titles, illustrators, engravers, editors, photographers, binder’s name, binders’ tickets/ stamps, cloth dye, cloth grain, publisher, printer, previous owner, prize label name. Researchers can identify those names/ elements relevant to their research. Additionally, some 300 bindings not in the 2003 Bibliography have been identified and added to the BL Database of Bookbindings, some of which are Arts and Crafts designs. Further entries will be added to the BL database from time to time.

Work is in progress to upload all of the cover designs into the following Pinterest Board:

19th Century Publishers Bindings

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/edmundking/19th-century-publishers-bindings-british-library/

For Bindings with paper covers, images of the covers are added to the Boards:

Decorated Paper Covers UK 1825 to 1879

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/edmundking/decorated-paper-covers-uk-1825-to-1879/

Decorated Paper Covers 1880 to 1920

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/edmundking/decorated-paper-covers-uk-1880-to-1920/

British Museum de Beaumont Collection

Robin de Beaumont gifted some 400 books and magazines to the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings in 1992 and in 1996. A checklist of the collection can be found in Paul Goldman Victorian Illustrated Books 1850-1870 (British Museum Press, 1994), pp. 126-142. The checklist cites a register number for each item. Between 2013 and 2018, cataloguing took place for this collection of books and magazines. This work resulted in some 400 descriptive entries being made for book covers (and their designs), with the results available via the BM Explore the collection portal, at

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection

Once the BM Prints & Drawings register number is known, (e.g. 1992,0406.230) this can be entered in the BM portal to find the full descriptive entry for each book of magazine and the scans made of the binding and of selected illustrations. For this collection, at least one scan of an illustration per book was made, with more scans made of illustrations for magazines.

A summary of the cataloguing and scanning work on this collection done is available at:

http://victorianbookbindings.blogspot.com/2019/

A number of Pinterest Boards relating to the de Beaumont Collection were created to allow viewing of bindings and of illustrations.

de Beaumont collection book covers

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/edmundking/de-beaumont-collection-book-covers/

de Beaumont collection bookplates

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/edmundking/de-beaumont-collection-bookplates/

de Beaumont collection prize labels

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/edmundking/de-beaumont-collection-prize-labels/

de Beaumont collection - illustrations

These are combined with those scans of illustrations in British Library books, in the Pinterest Board:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/edmundking/victorian-book-and-magazine-illustrators-1/