Blog posts of '2015' 'September'

Today's offering in BookAddiction's beautiful books stakes a contemporary one.  Every year, for each of those novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, a special, unique binding is commissioned from a leading bookbinder.  The resulting small collection of beautifully bound volumes is usually exhibited at some point in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is Darkmans by Nicola Barker (published by Fourth Estate, 2007) which was on the Man Booker shortlist in 2007. This one caught my eye for its boldness, striking use of strong colours and the absence of any titles on the cover.  It is brazen and in that is in keeping with Barker's novel, itself an epic and outspoken (and very good) novel set in Ashford, with the action taking place over just a few short days.  The beautiful binding is by Rachel Ward-Sale, founder of Bookbinders of Lewes and a fellow of Designer Bookbinders.

A couple of years ago I put together a few notes on the history of Wimbledon's Eagle House - one of the few and among the finest of Jacobean manor houses which have survived into 21st century London. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="747"] Eagle House, Wimbledon Village, A 1899 sketch by T R Way. This is the Internet Archive’s version of a sketch in Boston Public Library’s collection.[/caption] At the time, I noted that in 1877 Eagle House had been purchased by one Thomas Graham Jackson (shortly before the sketch above was made) and that he put much effort into restoring Eagle House to its former glory as a home after many years in which it had been used as a school.  So I was delighted today to stumble across further information about Thomas Jackson which connects him both more deeply to Wimbledon's history but also the main theme of this blog - books! [caption id="attachment_962" align="alignright" width="228"] Sir Thomas Jackson, aged about 60[/caption] Thomas Graham Jackson is perhaps better known as Sir Thomas Jackson (after he was awarded the baronetcy of Eagle House, Wimbledon, in the County of Surrey in February 1913). After studying at Oxford, at the age of 23 he was apprenticed to leading Victorian Gothic revival architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott, before founding his own practice in 1862 and going to become one of the foremost architects of his generation in his own right.  Architect Jackson is best remembered for his work in Oxford at Oxford Military College and Oxford University (including the famous Bridge of Sighs over New College Lane and much of Brasenose college).  His work and style of architecture so came to dominate Oxford that Jackson acquired the nickname Oxford Jackson and even Nickolaus Pevenser, who for the most part unsurprisingly found Jackson's work not to his taste, conceded that once he"had set his elephantine feet" on the city it "would never be the same again" (J Sherwood and N Pevenser, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, London, 1974, p. 59).  Jackson didn't just bestride Oxford's architecture though - he also worked extensively in Cambridge and on other clerical and educational buildings and the 'Anglo-Jackson' style became typical of many public buildings of the era. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Bridge of Sighs over New College Lane, Oxford University (photo credit: M Stone)[/caption] Jackson published prolifically, producing detailed and well-researched works on architecture which often included his own sketches made during his extensive travels and a number of travelogues and memoirs.  His books include one co-authored which his fellow architect, Norman Shaw, entitled Architecture - a Profession or Art (John Murray, 1892), which comprised 13 short essays on training and qualifications for architects and triggered a short retort publication by another fellow architecture, William H White, The Architect and his Artists, an Essay to Assist the Public in Considering the Question is Architecture a Profession or an Art (Spottiswoode & Company, 1892).  These two publications laid the foundations for a public policy debate which was to culminate some forty years later with the passage of the Architects Registration Acts between 1931 and 1938. The Acts, which remained in force until 1997, established a statutory register of architects and  restricted vernacular use of the word 'architect'. What sings to the hearts of both book collectors and local historians however is that later in life Jackson also penned a handful of ghost stories primarily, it is thought, to entertain his friends and family.  Six (I do not know whether or not there were more) were gathered together and published in 1919 by John Murray, the same publisher who had issued some of his architectural works.  The stories range in setting from 18th century London to contemporary Italy and feature both benevolent and malevolent ghosts.  In 'The Lady of Rosemount' Jackson tells of a ghost from the past intruding into the present.  'The Eve of St. John' has a similar theme.  'The Ring'  features an overly-curious traveller in Italy who is afflicted by an ancient curse and 'Pepina'  has a restless spirit returning to haunt those responsible for its death.  In 'Romance of the Piccadilly Tube' Jackson created one of the earliest stories of hauntings on the London Underground. It is, though, the last story in the collection that appeals most: the eponymous 'Red House', like Pepina featuring a returning restless spirit, is thought to be based on Eagle House, which by that time had long been Jackson's home, and the action takes place within its confines.  Jackson clearly had a deep interest in the area in which he made his home: not only did he set one of his stories in the heart of Wimbledon but he was also one of the founding members of the Wimbledon Society (then known as the John Evelyn Club).  Six Ghost Stories was the only work of fiction which Jackson published but in his Recollections: The Life and Travels of a Victorian Architect he tells of a small room, an attic, in Eagle House, having  “sort of hidden chamber in the hollow of the roof which in the days of the school was known as the ‘murder chamber'."  According to an anonymous article in a newsletter produced by the Wimbledon Society in 2008, 'The Red House' "makes great use of an identical hiding place - “a small chamber artfully hidden in the hollow of the roof'." At least four of these supernatural tales follow the conventions set out by the master of the genre, M R James.  Indeed, Jackson acknowledges James'  mastery and influence in his preface, endorsing James' two 'golden rules' of the good ghost story - that the setting must be in ordinary life, and that the ghost should be malevolent.  Jackson isn't another James but Neil Wilson, in his guide to supernatural fiction 1820-1950, Shadows in the Attic says "While Jackson's work does not have the originality of James' own, it does manage to combine an authentic sense of place together with a well-handled development of ghostly atmosphere and fully repays the attention of the supernatural enthusiast" (British Library, 2000, p. 278). [caption id="attachment_958" align="alignright" width="198"] Dust Jacket Illustration on Ashtree Press's 1999 edition of Six Ghost Stories, by Jason Eckhardt[/caption] My inner reader yearns to devour these stories, especially The Red House, set as it is just a few yards from where I live.  And the book collector in me yearns to read from an original 1919 Murray edition of Jackson's Six Ghost Stories.  They are not hard to find but are seriously and, for me prohibitively, pricey. It's fortunate then that, although Six Ghost Stories was for decades out of print, later editions have been produced by Ashtree Press in 1999 and Leonaur in 2009 (the first with a detailed introduction by Richard Dalby and a seriously creepy dust jacket illustration by Jason Eckhardt, although even second hand either version is likely to set you back the best part of £20 (unless of course you order via your local bookshop). At the time of writing copies of a later paperback edition, with a new foreword by the well-known fantasy and science fiction writer John Grant, are available from the Museum of Wimbledon for £7.99 plus £1.25 p&p.  Incidentally, the Museum's website claims that this is the only paperback edition ever produced. I don't believe that is entirely correct - it would seem that the 2009 Leonaur edition is available both in paperback and as a 'collectors' edition' hardback.  Myself? I'm going to pop along the road on Saturday afternoon and get a paperback copy from the museum while I save up for a Murray copy! Does anyone else see some similarity between the top-hatted gentleman featured on the Ashtree dust jacket and Jackson himself? Co-incidence or design?

This beautifully bound book, Proverbes, Ecclesiastes or Preacher, was bound by Richard Jugge in London in about 1550.  Its leather boards have been decorated with gold tooling, a technique invented two hundred years earlier in the Arab world which arrived in Europe via Italy's trading ports, in the middle of the 15th century.   Richard Jugge (1531-77)  was an English printer and bookseller who kept a shop 'at the sign of the Bible' close to the north door of old St Paul's Cathedral in London. Educated at Eton, he went up to King's College, Cambridge but left without taking a degree.  It is thought he began to print books around 1548.  Two years later he was granted a licence to print the New Testament in English and subsequently a seven-year patent to print all common law books. He was one of the first printers to join the Stationer's Company (founded in 1403, the Guild of Stationers was originally a fraternity of booksellers who copied and sold manuscript books), serving annual terms as a company warden on several occasions in the early to mid 1560s and as its master into the 1570s.  He was appointed Queen's Printer (along with John Carwood, who had been printed to Queen Mary) shortly after Elizabeth I ascended the throne. Jugge (sometimes recorded as Judge, or Gugge) is thought to have printed around 70 books over his career.  As typified the times, most of these were devotional and religious texts and his editions of the Bible and the New Testament displayed fine typography: Jugge was 'unrivalled for the richness of his initial letters, and for the handsome disposition of the text' (Dictionary of National Biography).  It seems however that Jugge struggled to keep up with the volume of work that came his way and at one point he was ordered to produce only small Bibles, leaving larger and more time-consuming Bible printing to others.  Jugge died in 1577 and for a few years his business was continued by John Jugge, probably his son. John himself died around 1579 when Richard's widow, Joan, took on the business  and continued to print books until 1587 although at a much diminished rate. The National Library of New Zealand, which holds the volume, describes the binding as "16th century calfskin with gilt arabesque panel stamped on front and back boards, spine bands raised, spine stamped with gilt fleurons, cloth ties". Panel stamping involves using a rectangular tool with a pictorial or abstract designs to press gold-leaf onto the cover of a book.  A time-saving measure, and cheaper to do that the labour-intensive alternative of building up a pattern by repeated stamping with smaller, individual tools, the technique was frequently used on smaller books. The book contains an inscription in Latin: ""Margarett Willoughby me possidett. Donum Elizabethe Beaumonte q[ui] obiit apud Coombe ... de Gittesham die veneris 4to die Martii ... 1613 ..." which translates to something like 'Margarett Willoughby owns this, the gift of Elizabeth Beaumonte who died at Coombe, Gittesham, 4 March... 1613".   Combe, the local manor house near the village of Gittisham in Devon was around that time occupied by Thomas Beaumont MP and his wife, Elizabeth.  It found its way into the collection of Sir Robert Harmsworth (1st Baron Harmsworth, a renowned book and manuscript collector, as well as an MP and businessman).  Harmsworth died in 1937 and this volume and was included as lot 2466 in the catalogue when his collection was sold in 1946.  It was donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library by Sir Arthur Howard (another English book and bible collector and MP, the son-in-law of British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin) in 1973; the Alexander Turnbull Library has been held by the National Library of Zealand since 1918 when Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull gifted his collection to the nation.