Bindings in Cambridge Libraries; seventy-two plates. With notes by … Based on researches by N.F. Barwell, H.M. Davies, and the late Charles E. Sayle.

Folio. (375 x 240 mm). xvi, 179 pp. 72 plates including 27 in chromolithography. Original gilt-stamped turquoise blue cloth, t.e.g., others uncut. Very good copy. Scarce. EDITION LIMITED TO 230 COPIES FOR SALE. The specimens described & shown are chiefly from the Cambridge University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and College libraries. Each binding shown is accompanied by a long description of the binding, information on previous ownership and historical remarks. Hobson gives indices of owners, binders, booksellers, craftsmen, initials and monograms of binders and owners, binding centers and subjects of stamps and panels. Of extra interest are the many other examples that Hobson gives of similar bindings that he knows of in other collections, with information on ownership, pressmark, references to it by other scholars and if any reproductions have occurred. Hobson also describes forty-five other Cambridge bindings that have been reproduced in other books. / "Hobson's method was to make lists of bindings which had the same tools in common; if the binder of one or several was known, he could attribute the others to him; if the workshop was not known, he baptized it with a sobriquet, such as 'Queen's Binder'; all this required an immense amount of historical and archival research, the examination of the holdings of permanent libraries and private collections, and of the illustrations in books on bindings and auction and booksellers' catalogues." — Breslauer, The Uses of Bookbinding Literature, p. 28. / CONTENTS: A. Preliminary, 1190-1450; B. Gothic, 1470-1520; C. Renaissance, 1520-1590; D. Early Stuart, 1605-55; E. Late Stuart and Early Georgian, 1660-1750. / Hobson, Geoffrey Dudley (1882—1949), historian of bookbindings, "Hobson was described as the art of bookbinding's 'finest historian' (TLS). While most writers on bindings in all countries had concentrated upon the work of their own lands, and usually that of a single period, Hobson developed a wide knowledge of western European bindings, although it was strongest on the Romanesque period, on English sixteenth-century panel-stamps, and on the gold-tooled bindings of France in the sixteenth century and of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." / "In Maioli, Canevari and Others (1926) Hobson demonstrated his critical scholarly approach by comprehensively disproving some long accepted myths which had dominated some aspects of the field. The same year he was appointed Sandars reader in bibliography at Cambridge. In 1927 he produced an elaborate study of Romanesque work, published as English Binding before 1500 (1929), although he subsequently modified his views as to the nationality of much of the material studied. He produced the extensive Bindings in Cambridge Libraries in 1929, and English Bindings 1490—1940 in the Library of J. R. Abbey in 1940. Hobson was innovative in his discussions of bindings, often using parallels, particularly in iconography, drawn from other forms of art, to illuminate his points. By his output and newly scientific approach Hobson perhaps did more than anyone else to promote the serious study of bindings as a feature in bibliography." — DNB. See: Appleton p.81, S-K 982. EXTRA POSTAGE WILL APPLY.…