Wednesday, 3 September 2025

Books published by T. N. Foulis in the Robin de Beaumont Collection

 

@02092025

Books published by T. N. Foulis in the Robin de Beaumont Collection

Robin de Beaumont was a pre-eminent collector and bookseller of Victorian books. He died in 2023 aged 97. Details of his life and collecting are available via the Sheila Markham interview https://www.sheila-markham.com/interviews/robin-de-beaumont.html

His collection of Victorian publications was one of the finest, as the condition of a book was paramount – always the copy in best condition was sought and retained, whilst copies in a lesser condition were sold. Books with provenance he frequently purchased. I had become familiar with some of the publishers’ bindings in his collection, having provided an essay and descriptive entries for the four hundred books that he gifted to the British Museum in 1994, entitled: “Prints, Provenance and decorated book covers. Cataloguing The British Museum Robin de Beaumont Collection.” https://victorianbookbindings.blogspot.com/2019 /

His family put up his collection for auction, via Bonhams. Consequently, an online sale of the collection was held on 31 January 2024. Purchases of Lots 188 (grouped together under the heading paper wrappers) and 189 (yellowbacks) at the online auction were acquired by the British Library, with generous support from the BL Collections Trust.  Some ninety works published by T. N. Foulis were sold as Lot 53 of the Bonhams sale, and these were acquired by The British Library.

My first acquaintance with books published by T. N. Foulis was on a visit to de Beaumont’s house in the 1990s. In showing me some of these, he commented: ‘There was not much activity collecting books published by T N Foulis; so I decided to see what I could acquire….’ It seems likely that his interest was aroused by his purchase for £30 in September 1967 of a scarce work: “A Descriptive Catalogue of the Books Issued by T. N. Foulis” (as of 2025, two other copies exist in the LSE library and in the National Library of Scotland).

The shelfmarks for Foulis books acquired by the British Library are: C188a717 to C188a805. The British Library decided to make images and descriptions for each of these Foulis books, using Wikimedia Commons. Detailed pictures and descriptions are available in Wikimedia commons at:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Formerly_Robin_de_Beaumont_Collection

(If this link does not work, then keying into the Wikimedia Commons search box, the category             Formerly Robin de Beaumont collection         This enables all the books to be viewed together. Click on an individual thumbnail image, to retrieve a full-size image, and also the full descriptive entry. Alternatively, you can key into the Wiki search box, the BL shelf mark and a running number for an individual book. For example C188a573 01; C188a569 01)

For each de Beaumont book entry, images were normally made of: the covers and the spine; the title page; the frontispiece, if present; the notes, the bookplate, endpapers and pastedowns. In the notes field of each Wikimedia entry, there a full description of the work, and its book covers. de Beaumont routinely wrote notes regarding where and when the book was purchased and price paid. As far as possible, these are transcribed. There is plenty of information about Foulis publications, such as:

TN Foulis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._N._Foulis 

Glasgow life:  https://libcat.csglasgow.org/web/arena/foulis

https://www.jonkers.co.uk/blog/the-envelope-booklets-of-t-n-foulis

The most useful accompaniment to the descriptions was the work of: Ian Elfick and Paul Harris, T.N. Foulis. The History and Bibliography of an Edinburgh Publishing House. London: Werner Shaw Ltd, 1998. Both were collectors of Foulis publications. As they explain (p. vii): “The hallmarks of a Foulis book - the buckram binding, tipped-in colour plates, elegant Auriol typeface, rose-watermarked paper – were elegant enough in their day. Today, such features are virtually unheard of in a world of generally uniform book production, and once handled, any true bibliophile would find it difficult to put down a Foulis book”.  This bibliography cites four hundred and nine entries. Robin de Beaumont was acknowledged for his assistance in the compilation of the bibliography (p.vi).   The copies collected by de Beaumont number some ninety entries, whose acquisition spanned some forty years from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. … Matching the de Beaumont copy with the Elfick & Harris descriptive entry was rendered straightforward, as they provide full details for each work.  

Grouping the entries relating to copies once owned by de Beaumont is done by creating a category in Wiki Commons. This means that you, the user, can readily see images online of the books that Robin de Beaumont owned. Simply key into the wiki search box     formerly Robin de Beaumont collection         and you will view thumbnail images for each book. Each wiki entry needs to be unique, so a running number was created for each image (e.g. C188a770 01; C188a770 02; C188a770 03    etc.), and there are normally several images per book.

Some features of the collection

Many volumes had grey paper used as backing sheets upon which the illustrations were mounted. Paper used for pastedowns and endpapers at times had chain lines. There was frequent use of gilt top edges, deckled foredges and deckled tails. The paper wrappers and dust jackets often had yapp edges. Foulis systematically included one (or more) pages bound in at the end, detailing other titles newly published, or titles in a series. The use of illustrations mounted on backing sheets was also much deployed. As will be seen below, the mounting of an illustration was also common for the front covers of the wrappers and dustjackets.

Jessie M King cover designs/ artwork

Elfick & Harris listed (pp. 251-252) those artists commissioned by T. N. Foulis to provide decorative or illustrative designs. There are twenty-three publications with designs by Jessie M. King. Robin de Beaumont collected nine works; with repeats or the text bound in variant bindings, the number rises to seventeen. He acquired three copies of Grey Old Gardens C188a731; C188a732; C188a733;


Covers by J M King for C188a731
     

                                                       

                                                                dust jacket for C188a731

 

        

Covers by J M King for C188a732                        C188a733

 

For C188a734, the dust jacket has been separated from its host book. However, it is the same jacket as for C188a731.

There are three copies of D. G. Rossetti The Blessed Damozel

C188a764 (paper), has a cover design signed by Jessie King. There are five batik bindings attributed to Jessie King: C188a764(paper); C188a765(Silk); C188a766(silk); C188a776; C188a777. Elfick & Harris noted on page 156 of their bibliography: “The silk [cover] was available in five different designs…the silk bindings may be batiks designed by Jessie M. King. All the silk [bindings] have the title blocked in a gilt plate in the top centre.” 

 

 

There are two copies of Frederick Myers St. Paul, which Elfick and Harris suggest may have silk binding designs after Jessie M. King (C188a776; C188a767)

 

                     

C188a741 dust jacket                                                    C188a741 covers and spine

There are two copies of The Book of Old Sundials (C188a741; C188a742). C188a741 has its dust jacket. The covers and spine have essentially the same design by Jessie M. King, as are on copies C188a731 and C188a732 – Corners of grey old gardens, with the cover design being “all over”, after Jessie M. King. On the upper cover of C188a731, there is a pair of garden gates, with a small tree between the gates and more plants beyond them. For this design – C188a741 - a large sundial is placed between the garden gates.

There is a rare work in this Foulis collection:   A whip at the mast. Edited by Rev. J. J. Macaulay, Hon. Chaplain R. N. V. R. (Clyde Division). The work was published with the imprint of Greenock: James McKelvie & Sons [1911]. The grey wrappers/dust jacket have yapp edges, with a mounted illustration by Jessie M. King on the front cover; acquired by de Beaumont in 1997 for £55. Searching online via Library Hub Discover shows only one other copy in the UK, in the National Library of Scotland shelf mark APS.1.82.53

 

The Cities series

Elfick and Harris list (p. 213) eleven titles in this series. Of these, de Beaumont acquired seven titles. Conspicuous are those books with evocative photogravures by Joseph Pennell.

Venice (C188a718). This copy was acquired in June 1968 from Frognal Bookshop. The frontispiece mounted illustration on the dust jacket is of: “The narrow canal”. The term used by T N Foulis for this type of binding was “Japanese vellum”.


C188a718 dust jacket               

                                                                       

                                                      C188a718 both covers and spine

New York (C188a720). On the upper cover of the dust jacket, there is an evocative illustration of New York skyscrapers, all lit up in darkness – this is a larger version of plate X: “Courtland Street Ferry”. Another copy of this illustration is mounted on the upper over of C188a721

 


C188a720 dust jacket 

                                               

                                                           C188a721 upper cover

 

A little book of London may have sold well; C188a723 has a London street scene blocked on the upper in black. This is repeated for C188a724, with the blocking in gold on the upper cover. The copy at C188a725 has a copy of plate XXII – The Monument, pasted onto the upper cover.

 

The volumes for Boston (C188a740), San Francisco (C188a727), Glasgow (C188a726) - all have dust jackets. The volume for Edinburgh C188a728 has grey paper wrappers.

A number of books had bindings described in advertisements of the day as ‘Japanese Vellum’. Examples are:

   

C188a741 design by Jessie M King                            C188a754a decoration kept fresh by dust jacket

Other books with  ‘Japanese vellum’ bindings are: C188a755; C188a756; C188a718; C188a721; C188a727.

There are some five books with velvet/ suede bindings. The lower covers of these have no blocking/ printing. The spine titles are in gilt. The upper covers are blocked fully.

   

C188a747 black blocking on upper cover                               C188a758 Aucassin & Nicolette

Other examples of velvet/ suede bindings are: C188a749; C188a758; C188a771.

Dust jackets: paper and glassine

There are a few dozen dust jackets accompanying books owned by de Beaumont. Many were of grey paper and most had some printing (author/ title or lists of other titles), plus a mounted illustration on the front cover. The glassine dust jackets were mostly plain, with The Great New York (C188a720, shown above) being an exception.

         

C188a757 printed with mounted illustration                C188a770 glassine no printing…

Maxims of Life Series

The artist Frederick Carter designed the cover decoration for number 1 and 2 in the series. The simplicity of the colours is striking, as are the larger than life depictions of Napoleon and Madame de Sevigne.


       


On occasion, biographies elicited striking portraits for the covers. Joseph Simpson provided a strong profile portrait for Haldane Macall’s Irving.   Emily Handasyde Buchanan’s Sir Walter Scott & his Country has Scott looking to his right.

   

               C188a730 both covers                                        C188a752 both covers

 Envelope books

Elfick and Harris list seventeen works in the ‘envelope books’ series. Of these, de Beaumont acquired four. He acquired number two, Browning, Rhyme of the Duchess May in February 1968 for 8/6d (C188a738). Thirty-eight years later, September 2006, he acquired number nine, Tennyson, Lady of Shalott, for £20 (C188a794).  Number three, Keats, Isabella or the pot of Basil, has both the the dust jacket and the original covers complete with the gummed lower edge of the dust jacket, used for sealing and posting (C188a787). 

  

C188a787 dust jacket, envelope flap and upper cover             C188a787 gummed lower flap of jacket

Envelope book number five was the work:  Aucassin et Nicolette. It has a silk binding of ‘japanese’ style (C188a758). This is the only book in this collection with this ‘frame’ style, and the mounted illustration on the upper cover sits rather awkwardly on the design.


                                                    C188a758 both covers and spine

Conclusion

For some twenty-five years after 1900, T N Foulis produced over four hundred works, of which some ninety were collected y Robin de Beaumont. Distinctiveness sums up this activity. There was a great variety of illustrations, of covers and dust jackets, and a large number of series, into which the output could be placed. All combine to leave a lasting impression of a company determined to produce originality, at affordable prices. Robin de Beaumont used his discernment to build up a representative number of these works for us to enjoy.

Edmund M B King

St Albans

September 2025

 

 

Further reading

Ian Elfick and Paul Harris, T.N. Foulis. The History and Bibliography of an Edinburgh Publishing House. London: Werner Shaw Ltd, 1998.

TN Foulis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._N._Foulis

Godburn, Mark R. Nineteenth Century Dust Jackets. Pinner: Private Libraries Association, 2016.

Jonkers Rare Books https://www.jonkers.co.uk/blog/the-envelope-booklets-of-t-n-foulis

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