Decorating the Cloth: Publishers' Edition Bindings
Decorating the Cloth: Publishers' Edition Bindings
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Pictorial bindings served a practical purpose: publishers used them to market their titles. The cover designs informed bookshops, libraries, and the public of the subject or content within. In addition, they were attractive and noticeable to the book buyer.
Ballantyne’s adventure stories for boys, popular even with adults, demonstrates the height of pictorial bindings vividly. (1860-1871) [114, 109, 107]
Often the lively illustrations were not colored, but stamped in gold, as are the monkey and crocodile on the cover of Martin Rattler or Fighting the Flames.
Ballantyne’s Martin Rattler, or, A boy’s adventures in the forests of Brazil.
Note the firefighter climbing the ladder on the spine of Ballantyne’s Fighting the Flames [108].
Especially cut brass type replaced ordinary type for lettering the spine, as seen in Marryat’s Petronel [1569], published by Bentley in 1870. Sadleir regards this unconventional central placement of the title, author and volume number an anomaly—normally they appeared near the head of the spine, the same position occupied by the old paper labels.
Marryat’s Petronel [1569] with cut brass type lettering.
Extravagant commercial bindings reached their peak in the 1870s and 1880s.
Bentley applied lavish amounts of gold leaf to the binding of Wood’s Pomeroy Abbey [3356] in 1878.
In 1880 Bentley brought out Broughton’s Second Thoughts [376] in bright floral chintz.
Another unusual binding from Bentley is Merriman’s Violet Moses [1712] in blue linen with marbled edges (1891).
Four years later, Bentley published Reade’s Perilous Secret [2012] in sateen-damask cloth. The jacquard floral design of the red cloth makes an especially elegant cover.
The commercial appearance of Manchester Rebels [20] in 1874 contrasts with the artistic binding of Lyster’s Riding out the Gale [1463] in 1877, both published by Tinsley.
Meanwhile, the technique of using colored inks, often combined with gold, on cloth was perfected by the early 1870s.
When Strahan published Princess & the Goblin [1481] in 1883, the judicious choice of illustration resulted in a stunning spine design of a child on a staircase. The picture, taken directly from the text, was the artistry of Arthur Hughes whose sensitive interpretation of MacDonald’s tales led to several collaborations.
Strahan effectively combines black ink and gold for the cover of MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind [1474, 1474a, 1474b, 1474c]. Sadleir managed to locate four different bindings of the first edition (1871).
In 1888 Vizetelly published a set of French translations in morocco paper boards with various colors blocked with gold with the series title, Boulevard Novels. Sadleir calls them “the richest absurdities of their kind,” and they ably demonstrated the successful blending of colored inks and gold.
Three examples of cloth deeply embossed before ink or gold is applied are:
Merriman’s Prisoners & Captives [1725] in 1891
Longman’s illustrated edition of Ada Bayly’s Autobiography of a Slander [1454a] in 1892, the cover of which Sadleir praised for its crisp, clean design
A new edition of Le Fanu’s Cock and the Anchor [1373c] illustrated by his son and published by Downey in 1895
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