Some Bookplates in Special Collections

Dr. Arthur Sherbo
Professor Emeritus, English
Michigan State University

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DIVISION
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

     Thanks largely to the industry of Mrs. Anne Tracy, there are two file drawers in Special Collections containing alphabetical lists of bookplates of former owners of volumes housed therein. A number of the owners bear names that will be immediately recognized by many; others will be known to few because of variouscircumstances. Thus, to anticipate, Frederick Whiley Hilles, whose bookplate is in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, would be known to students of eighteenthcentury English literature. A Professor at Yale University, he was of considerable assistance (acknowledged) to me in my edition of  Johnson on Shakespeare. At the other extreme, is the bookplate of Charles Dickens in his copy of Peter Cunningham's A Handbook for London, Past and Present, a presentation copy. Dickens thanked his good friend Cunningham for the book in a letter of June 18, 1849: "My Dear Cunningham. Let me thank you, very heartily, for the present of your book," and, upon publication of a second volume of the Handbook, in a letter of January 5. 1854: "Your seasonable letters and book has [sic] already given me the greatest pleasure and will give me more." Occasionally a bookplate is accompanied by manuscript notes. Dr. G. C. Williamson, author of Stories of an Elephant did not present a copy of his book to his friend "Charles W. Berry, 3 St James's Street London SW" (so reads the bookplate) and regretted the omission in writing on the page opposite that bearing the bookplate.  

   Williamson wrote this nine years after the publication of his book, hence it is possible some one other than Berry was the friend.

     While I have wide-ranging interests my chief preoccupation has been with English literature, as will already have been seen in my discussion of the Hilles, Dickens, and Williamson bookplates. I proceed with the names of others connected to English literature, copies of whose books with their bookplates we own. Augustine Birrell (1850-1933) was not only Chief Secretary for Ireland, but also author of two volumes of essays and three literary biographies. His bookplate was on the first edition of Robert Browning's Dramatic Idylls. Second Series ( 1880).

      Birrell delivered "An Address" on Browning "At the Browning Hall Settlement, Walworth" on December 12, 1897, beginning by saying, "To meet together to do honour to the memory and extol the genius of a great poet is so becoming, so proper, and so seemly a thing to do that it need neither apology or explanation." The entire address can be read in Birrell's Essays and Addresses (1901).

     Harry Buxton Forman (1842-1917), author and editor of a number of works on English literature, favored a rhyming bookplate picturing a man writing with a quill pen in a study dominated by a bust of Shelley. Appropriately enough, the book so adorned is Shelley's Review of Hogg's "Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff", edited by Thomas J. Wise. The rhyming verses bear Buxton's name and that of the engraver, W. Bell Scott. Buxton Forman edited Shelley's poems in 1876 and his prose in 1880, the two editions coming to eight volumes.

       We have eight books with the modest bookplate or signature of Arthur Noel Latimer Munby (1913-1974), bibliographer par excellence and one-time librarian of King's College, Cambridge, England, the chapel of which appears on the bookplate. We have a number of books written or edited by him. Another writer with Cambridge links, one of whose books we have (with bookplate) is Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (1863-1944). a prolific author and the second Professor of English Literature at Cambridge. He owned William Barnes's Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect (1847). Sir Arthur, affectionately known as "Q", lectured on William Barnes, whose poetry he admired and whom he defended as a writer of dialect poetry. The lecture can be read in his The Poet citizen and Other Papers (1935).

     No one interested in the history of the English drama will forget the comedies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), The Rivals and The School for Scandal, to mention but two. His bookplate appears in the two volumes of Oeuvres Diverses de J. Barthelemy (1798). Sheridan's signature appears at the top of the title-page, and he wrote, on the verso of the preceding (blank) page, "L'Abbe J. J. Barthelemy, savant archeologue ne en 1716 a Calais pres d' Aubargue en Province, mort 1795. R.B.S." I have not been able to determine what use, if any, Sheridan made of this work. Nor will anyone knowledgeable about biographical writing in England be ignorant of the work of Giles Lytton Strachey (1880-1932).,author, among other works, of Eminent Victorians ( 1918). His bookplate is on Martin Sherlock's Letters from an English Traveller ( 1780).

     The Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) owned copies of John Bernard's Retrospections of the Stage (1830) and of George Rooper's Flood, Field, and Forest ( 1869), the latter of which is inscribed "With the authors compliments" and bears the words "Reviewed in fortnightly June 1869" in Trollope's hand. Trollope had reviewed Rooper's book in The Fortnightly Review, N.S. 5 (lune, 1869) pp. 748-50. and had been generous in his praise. Here is a bit of biographical-bibliographical information derivable from a bookplate. The Bernard book also bears the signature of Alfred Sutro (1863-1913). Sutro was the translator of the works of Maurice Maeterlinck and a popular prolific playwright himself. And there is also Sir Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), author of a number of novels, whose bookplate appears on A Tennyson Dictionary (n.d.) and on Sir Henry Wotton's Reliquiae Wottonianae (1672).

     To stay with matters English: Thomas Bewick (1753-1828), famous wood-engraver, gave his daughter Jane (1787-l881), so inscribed, Robert John Thornton's A New Family Herbal ( 1810). A better-known name is that of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield. Prime Minister of England (1804-1881) and novelist, whose bookplate appears in England and France ( 1832). A. E. W. Mason's Konigsmark has a bookplate and the inscription "Marion Disraeli O. B. E. Lady of Grace of S. John of Jerusalem in England. Her book." Sir Robert Arundell Hudson (1864-1927), English politician. owned a copy of the unfortunate Reverend Mr. William Dodd's Beauties of Shakespeare (1752).,unfortunate because Dodd was hanged for forgery, despite all attempts to save him from the gallows.

     Oliver Huckel, a name unknown to fame, was the proud owner of R. B. Wheler's History and Antiquities of Slratford-Upon-Avon, the first four lines of a 17-line title. "Proud," because in the Xerox copy of a blank page after the title-page, there is the manuscript instruction to "See p. 20 for collateral ancestors Mayors of Stratford-on-Avon (Shakespeare's town)." Recourse to p. 20 of Wheler's book reveals that three Huckills [sic] had been Mayors of "Shakespeare's town." Not content with this information on page 20. the twentieth-century Oliver Huckel added this "Biographical Note" .

      Herbert John Gladstone, Viscount Gladstone (1854-1930). English statesman, son of William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of England, owned the one copy of Sir Francis Carruthers Gould's W. E. Gladstone: cartoons and sketches: from the Westminster gazette, 1893-1898, a self-explanatory title. Further, there is this information printed on the title-page: "Edition limited to One Copy, Printed and Published for Presentation to the Rt. Hon. H. J. Gladstone, M.P. on his marriage, Nov 2, 1901". and with the inscription "to H. J. Gladstone from J. A. Spender". John Alfred Spender (1862-1942) was the editor of the Westminster Gazette. Ours is, then, the unique copy, handsomely bound and worth the book-lover's inspection.

     William Lawrence, author of a number of works on the English stage, would appear to have bought or have given him, Jean Bourget's The History of the Royal Abbey of Bec...Translated from the French (1779) for the work not only bears his bookplate but that of the previous owner, "The Right Honorable Sir John Trollope, Bart. M. P." Sir Joseph Radcliff, Bart.'s bookplate adorns his copy of An Accurate Account of llte Fall of the Republic of Venice, a much abbreviated title, "Translated from the original Italian" [by John Hinckley], (1804). The author is Vittorio Barzoni. Sir Joseph was the brother of Cyril John. Viscount Radcliffe (1899-1972), eminent lawyer and public servant.

     There is no particular order in what follows, and it must be realized that I have selected the bookplates of the men and women whose names I recognize for one reason or another, usually because I expect others to be familiar with all or some of them. Thus, while many readers will remember the musical South Pacific, not all will know that the librettist for it and other musicals was Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960). His bookplate appears on his copy of The Wave, a novel by Evelyn Scott that deserves to be better known. Harry Houdini, the great escape artist (1874-1926), owned a copy of How and why I became a spiritualist, by Washington A. Danskin (1895-1960). Houdini was much involved in spiritualism and lectured on the falseness of the alleged revelations by mediums. Benjamin N. Cardoza's bookplate consists of his head in profile with his name and the dates 1870-1938. The book it is on is For My Grandson. Remembrances of an Ancient Victorian by the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Pollock, Bt. K.C. Cardoza was a lawyer and legal writer who served on the Supreme Court from 1932-1938. Sir Frederick was also a judge. Jean Hersholt, well-known actor who died in 1956, aged 69, donated his copy of Dr. Allen Roy Dafoe's "guide book for mothers" to "The Motion Picture Country Home." His signature appears below the bookplate. His bookplate also appears on a copy of Johann Caspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy . . ., 3 vols., 1789-98, a curious juxtaposition. George Barr McCutcheon, (1866-1928), a prolific playwright (40 titles in the MSU Libraries) owned a copy of Don Jeremy Savonarola's Facts and Figures from Italy (1847).

     Charles Schmitter, for many years fencing coach at MSU, gave his library of works on the art of fencing to the Library. An example of one of these works is La Theorie de L'Escrime, a shortened title (1845), which bears the bookplate of Prince Roland Bonaparte. Was it the very young Henry Koch who read The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur, by Howard Pyle (1927)? The book, given to the MSU library, bears his bookplate, with his manuscript signature. Henry needs no qualifying introduction, nor is this by far the only book he has given to the library. There are a number of early-printed books with the bookplates of their owners. Many are books owned by what the English call antiquaries, i.e. students of the minutiae of the past. Here are two. Charles Chauncey, MD. (1706-1777), owned Miscellaneous poems and translations. By several hands. Publish'd by Richard Savage, son of the late Earl Rivers (1726). Savage claimed, unsuccessfully, that he was the bastard son of Earl Rivers and is best remembered by virtue of Samuel Johnson's biography of him. Chauncy's copy of the Miscellaneous poems and translations ended up in the possession of Cyril Hackett Wilkenson twentieth-century editor of the poems of Richard Lovelace, before coming to rest in Special Collections. "Sir Thos. Brand Knt. Gentleman Usher of the Green Rod and Gentleman Usher Daily Waitr to his Majesty Anno 1735" owned a copy of the antiquary, Francis Peck's, Academia tertia Anglicana (1727).

     Australia is represented by the first and second series of The Stately Homes of England by C. F. W. Hewitt, owned by the Australian novelist Guy Newell Boothby (1867-1905). whose bookplate it bears. And also by the historian Philip Stanhope, fifth Earl Stanhope, Governor-General of the Australian Commonwealth (1805-1875), the two volumes of whose copy of The history of the wars of Alexander the Great, translated from Quintus Curtius (1747), bear his bookplate. Those who desire to know more about bookplates may wish to start by consulting A Bibliography of Bookplate Lilerature in Fine Arts Reference and English Bookplates, Ancient and Modern, by Egerton Castle, in Special Collections, for mine is a fairly random and incomplete treatment of a fascinating subject.

ADDENDA

     John Upton's edition of Roger Ascham's The Schoolmaster, (1789) in Special Collections has, in manuscript on the title page, "Ex libris Gabrielis Maturin." Charles Maturin (1782-1824), novelist and dramatist, was born in Dublin, but the family was of French extraction. His grandfather, Gabriel James Maturin, died in 1746 and cannot be the Gabriel of the title-page of The Schoolmaster, but one of Charles's brothers was also named Gabriel, and he must be the "Gabrielis" who numbered The Schoolmaster among his books.

     Our copy of Sir Thomas Browne's Christian Morals, second edition (1743) has the bookplate of Archibald Utterson, the father of Edward Vernon Utterson (1776?-1856), literary antiquary (see Dictionary of National Biography.)