Bookbindings, Old and New: Notes of a Book-lover, with an Account of the Grolier Club, New York

12mo (19.5 cm), frontispiece, XIII, 342 pp., 52 plates. Publisher's dark green cloth, upper board and spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt; title page printed in red and black (binding slightly rubbed and sunned, foxing to frontispiece, some age-toning of paper, but a good, sound copy). First English edition, simultaneously published in New York, of this influential collection of essays by Brander Matthews (1852-1929), American author, critic, and bibliophile, dedicated to the Grolier Club of New York, "that compact body of American bibliophiles." A wide-ranging survey of the history and contemporary practice of bookbinding, the work combines historical essays on Renaissance and later European bindings with discussions of the technical craft and the state of contemporary binding at the end of the nineteenth century. The first part, "Bookbindings of the Past," examines Grolier and Renaissance bindings, the library of Jacques-Auguste de Thou and the style associated with "Le Gascon," and the work of Padeloup and Derome; the later sections discuss contemporary binders, commercial and edition binding, stamped leather bindings, decorative publishers' wrappers, and the influence of poster design on modern book decoration. The concluding essay, "The Grolier Club of New York," provides one of the earliest printed accounts of the club's foundation, its aims, publications, and relationship to the wider movement of American bibliophily. Illustrated with 52 plates and numerous text illustrations, including reproductions of celebrated historical bindings associated with Grolier, Bessarion, Francis I, Clovis Ève, Nicolas Ève, "Le Gascon," Henry II, and Diana of Poitiers, together with examples of contemporary decorative design by Stanford White, Walter Crane, Will H. Low, Maurice Boutet de Monvel, W. H. Drake, and Howard Pyle. A handsomely produced and important early American contribution to the literature of bookbinding, combining a survey of European fine bindings with a valuable contemporary record of the emergence of organized bibliophily in the United States. …