Victorian Publishers' Book-Bindings in Cloth and Leather

Gordon Fraser Gallery, London, first edition, 1974. Cloth, cover illustration, 4to, 31 cm,. 160 pp, ills (some colour),. From the blurb: "One of the most attractive features of book production in the Victorian period was the elaborate care with which the bindings of even cheap and ordinary books were manufactured. Pictorial and decorative designs were blocked in gold all over the front, spine and back, on brightly-coloured and often elaborately patterned cloth ; and gift books for the Christmas market often had polychromatic bindings, involving hand-cut coloured paper or leather onlays. Ruari McLean, whose Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing is the standard work on its subject, has here assembled photographs of over 150 of the finest examples of publishers' bindings in cloth and leather, of which twenty-four are reproduced in full colour. He traces the evolution of publishers' bindings from the printed paper wrappers which were normal at the beginning of the nineteenth century (when most purchasers of books had them bound by their own bookbinder), through the introduction of cloth by Pickering in about 1820, and on through the heyday of gold and coloured blocking down to the end of the Victorian period. This book will be invaluable to book collectors, bibliophiles, and dealers in rare books throughout the world. Booklabel on front pastedown endpaper, a trifle bumped at head of spine, otherwise near Very Good in a used and edgeworn dustwrapper.