​The 21st century has been referred to as “the Chinese century”, a reflection of Beijing’s increasing political, economic, and cultural influence.

China’s rising prominence is making waves in the antiquarian book world, as more people become interested in collecting works which can speak to China’s fascinating and complex history. Where once the rare book trade focused on a select group of famous antiquarian titles, dealers are now offering collectors access to an extraordinary range of materials.

The market has taken off in the past two decades both in China and worldwide with some astonishing results. In 2020, two surviving manuscript volumes of the famous 15th-century Yongle Encyclopaedia achieved 1,000 times their estimate at auction in France. Later the same year, the diaries of the renowned intellectual Hu Shih, written while he was studying abroad in America in the 1920s, fetched $20.9 million at auction in Beijing, the most expensive hammer price for a set of journals ever recorded.

 

A Golden Age of Travel

The possibilities for collectors divide into two overlapping fields: books published about China and books published in Chinese.

While traditional entry points into collecting Chinese rare books range from interest in long-established core works such as the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687), the book which first introduced Europeans to Confucianism, and early encounter narratives and embassy accounts, dealers sourcing and creating a market for previously uncatalogued niche books have opened up fascinating opportunities for collectors of more unusual and nuanced subject-matter.

Of the many genres now being explored by collectors, China’s popularity today as a tourist destination is translating into increased interest in tourist guides from the Golden Age of travel.

The opening up of the treaty ports, combined with improved long-distance transportation, eventually put cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Hong Kong within reach of the wealthy from the West. These cities were mysterious and enticing, even to the most experienced global wanderer.

 

Serving the Independent and Intellectual Adventurer

To cater to these adventurers, between 1870 and 1930 there appeared a plethora of guidebooks and other remarkable tourist literature. For foreign travellers, these were both indispensable sources of information, to be kept on one’s person at all times, and treasured souvenirs of their journeys. For today’s collectors interested in the history of travel and East Asia, they are highly prized for their detailed maps and plans, as well as photographs and distinctive period adverts.

The origins of these tourist guidebooks can be found in the narratives written by early travellers to China which enthralled curious European audiences and exoticized China in the Western imagination. The most famous example is Gonzales de Mendoza’s La Historia de las Cosas más Notables, Ritos y Costumbres del Gran Reyno de China, published in 1585 and translated into English in 1588, which galvanized others to travel eastwards for centuries to come. It also containing the first Chinese characters ever printed in a European book.

Later works such as George Staunton’s account of the first official British embassy to China, first published at the close of the 18th century, were frequently embellished with views, plans, and maps to create compelling reading experiences for Western audiences.

Early guidebooks from the second half of the 19th century – now some of the rarest on the market – were straightforward affairs, catering to an audience imagined to be sophisticated and intellectually astute.

For example, the second edition of Frank Warrington Eastlake’s A Guide to Hongkong with a Short Account of Canton & Macao, published around 1890, offers discussion of flora and fauna, geology, dialects, and slang. Discussing the wildlife of the colony, Eastlake thought it appropriate to offer information on migration patterns and an exhaustive list of observable butterfly species. Absent are the maps and illustrations which became a feature of travel guides – for Eastlake, the discerning visitor did not need such niceties because travel was a form of intellectual nourishment: “thus travel becomes a means of knowledge and an incontestably superior method of instruction and improvement” (p. i). Elite anxieties about ending up in a bad part of town abound, with visitors advised that “there are not many Chinese restaurants of any great respectability in Victoria, the ‘Hung Fa Low’ being the only one patronised by visitors of the better class” (p. 23).

Unlike the cheap pamphlets found in the typical lobby today, Golden Age hotels provided visitors with guidebooks to help them make the most of their time in bustling destinations such as Beijing and Shanghai. One of the earliest known guidebooks to Shanghai is that provided by guests at the city’s famous Hotel Metropole which demonstrates the emergence of the familiar Golden Age guidebook form: period adverts for shops and services of interest to visitors, a large folding map of the location, and a warm, courteous tone. The guide presents the Metropole as a safe haven for Europeans who might venture out into the unknown in the day but yearn for an escape “from the bustle and din of the City, and more particularly from the weirdly unpleasant noises and antique odours” (p. 17). It advertises the services of a resident barber, a bar stocked with champagne, beer, and cocktails, 75 bedrooms, and livery stables.

Collectors prize travel guides for the light they shed on the concerns of visitors, and this guide suggests that, for early 20th-century visitors to Shanghai, obtaining clean water was a major preoccupation. Besides advertisements for such businesses as the Shanghai Horse Bazaar, Robinson Pianos, and the Italian goods importer F. Venturi, it devotes significant space to promoting assorted brands of bottled water – “Tansan natural tonic table water – you all want it!” – to help visitors survive the notoriously hot Shanghai summer.

Above all other forms of transport, railways opened up the world to Golden Age travelers, and attractive pamphlets and small booklets were on hand at stations and major hotels. This particular copy of Imperial Railways of North China: Peking-Mukden Line, a guide to the first Chinese railway enterprise, was used by a foreign tourist adventuring across China at the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Its array of information on fares, baggage allowances, on board facilities, timetables, and connections allows us to piece together the complex infrastructure which facilitated elite travel. By now, illustrations and a map are almost an obligatory presence, with the large number of in-text visuals showcasing tourist hotspots such as the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the summer resort at Shanhaiguan, all accessible along the railway route. Guides made great souvenirs for those back home and examples with inscriptions are especially desirable. This copy is pleasingly inscribed on the inside front cover, “10 June 1912. Here I am at Leichuang railway station – a very little place. Nothing doing but I have a roof over my head. Please forward to E. Love WSB”.

The now-fare first edition of Emil Sigmund Fischer’s Guide to Peking and its Environs (1909) is an outstanding example of the visual appeal of Golden Age tourist guides. In addition to its 31 plates, it contains no less than three detailed maps and plans of Beijing and its surroundings. Fischer took the idea of the fold-out map to a new level. The city is represented to a granular level, with dozens of places of interest – not just the most popular sights – identified in both English and Chinese. The fold-out plan of the city’s famous Legation Quarter is equally impressive, and also demonstrates the complex network of businesses that sprung up in major Chinese cities in the late 19th century to provide foreign visitors with every conceivable comfort. Like other examples in the genre, Guide to Peking and its Environs is full of the kind of pointed observation that still make for charming reading today: “it is hoped that when visiting tombs and places of interest in and about Peking, or in China generally, visitors will refrain from writing or in any way defacing the buildings and other places of interest” (p. 8).

Written by Dr Matthew Wills, Asia Specialist

BROWSE ASIA BROWSE TRAVEL

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In January 1788, after an eight-month voyage from Plymouth, England, a fleet of ships reached Botany Bay, on the east coast of New South Wales. The flotilla of two Royal Navy ships, six convict transports, and three store ships eventually found safe harbour at Port Jackson, some twelve miles to the north.

Their task was to conduct an unprecedented experiment in both penal and colonial history. They were there to establish a new community using convict labour, the first step in Britain’s colonization of Australia.

Since the seventeenth century, the Admiralty had been keen to publish accurate records of all important naval expeditions. The impressive quarto and atlas volumes recording Captain Cook’s three voyages round the world offered one model for publications that give us the first sights of Australia through European eyes. They combine the habits of accuracy cultivated by hydrographers and keepers of naval logbooks with more personal observations, as well as illustrations by artists taken along to record events.

The First Fleet generated six major accounts published within a decade. These mean that Australians, uniquely, have detailed written records of the history of their nation from the first day of settlement. Scholars regard these six books as the founding accounts of any collection of Australiana.

Captain Watkin Tench entered the marine corps in 1776 and fought in the American War of Independence. Hearing of the proposed settlement in New South Wales, he volunteered for a tour of service and sailed aboard the Charlotte. His first book, A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay (1789) is the earliest authentic account of the colony. An octavo volume without illustrations, it lacks the heft of the Cook model, but Tench captures the rush of events in an eminently readable style. It was an immediate success and went through three editions in the year. The first edition is the rarest of the First Fleet journals.

 

Tench’s account competed in the London bookshops with An Authentic Journal of the Expedition under Commodore Phillips to Botany Bay (1789), attributed to “an Officer”, a journalistic compilation of various materials, much of it originally printed in the London Chronicle newspaper. Another relatively inexpensive octavo, it lacks authority by comparison with Tench’s authentic, coherent, and detailed account, though it was probably published two days earlier, winning the race to be the first book on the settlement in New South Wales.

 

The surgeon general to the new colony was John White. His account was published as Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales (1790), a handsome quarto with an engraved title page and 65 fine engraved plates, most made in England from specimens sent back by White. The flora and fauna depicted in the plates are described on the engraved title as “nondescript”, meaning not that they were unremarkable, but that they had never been described.

 

The journal of Governor Phillip’s successor, Captain John Hunter, was published as An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island (1793), another large quarto, with an attractive engraved title page and sixteen plates and maps, including a frontispiece portrait of Hunter. The book is found in two forms: the standard issue on thick laid paper, the special issue on superfine wove paper of the same size.

 

Watkin Tench’s second book, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, was published in the same year as Hunter’s Journal. It is a grander production than his first, in quarto format, with a folding map giving details of the early expeditions of discovery to the south and to the west, some of which Tench himself had led.

 

 

 

 

The last of the six First Fleet journals is the most detailed. Like Tench, David Collins had seen action in the American War of Independence. He travelled with the First Fleet as deputy Judge Advocate of the marine detachment and of the colony. When the Second Fleet arrived with instructions that the marine detachment should return to England or join the New South Wales Corps, he stayed out of loyalty to Governor Phillip, not departing New South Wales until 1796. His first chronicle of events in the new colony was published as An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1798), another quarto in the classic Admiralty manner, with two charts, eighteen plates, and four in-text engravings.

 

These six books are the foundation of Australiana, though there are many contemporary pamphlets, periodicals, and pirated accounts from the period that collectors also seek out. Anyone on that quest is well-advised to arm themselves with a copy of Jonathan Wantrup’s Australian Rare Books (2nd ed., 2 vols, Australian Book Auctions), the most thorough book on the subject and a delight to read.

BROWSE MELBOURNE CATALOGUE

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Ben Houston has enjoyed a rewarding career in the rare book trade for over twenty years. Since joining Peter Harrington over ten years ago, he has witnessed the company grow from its fledgling beginnings to celebrating a decade at its flagship store on Dover Street. Ben’s tenure at Dover Street has been marked by numerous memorable moments and significant contributions in his role as Sales Director. Here, he shares some of the highlights from his journey.

Can you tell us a little about your journey into the rare book trade and how your responsibilities have evolved over time?

Around twenty years ago I had recently graduated, and took what I suppose would now be called a ‘zero hours contract’ at the (in)famous second-hand bookshop, Notting Hill Book & Comic Exchange (MVE).

There I found myself surrounded by the most incredible mix of artists, writers, intellectuals, scholars, dropouts and eccentrics, all of whom were deeply passionate in their varied interests and fields, and it was there I realised that the world of books was for me.

I wasn’t at MVE long, but it taught me the beginnings of what makes a book more interesting than just the words on the page and, perhaps more importantly, introduced me to a fascinating group of collectors, experts and the odd book dealer.

At the time I had a friend working at the rare book dealer consortium Biblion in Gray’s Antique Market. Biblion acting as a London ‘shop front’ for many book dealers throughout the UK, renting cabinet space and exhibiting a rotating stock in a central London location. I started working there doing, what I came to understand was the role of everyone entering the trade, everything that needed doing!

It was invaluable experience, I learnt the running of a small shop, was able to handle, and sell, rare books that I had only heard of at that point (and many I hadn’t!) and was exposed to huge swathes of the rare book trade, from some of the best dealers to some of the world’s largest collectors. When the longstanding manager Stephen Poole left to open his own shop, I took over as shop manager and spent the next few years immersing myself further in the complex and fascinating world of rare books.

When the time came to leave Biblion I packed up my bags and moved one street down to Simon Finch and Oliver Wood’s Brook Street shop. Simon was the first to show me what the rare book world looked like at the very top end, the books were exceptional, the clients were world renowned, and the lengths one had to go to to get both were enormous. At Simon’s I experienced the extraordinary ingenuity, bravery, passion and knowledge required to work with the rarest books and the best collectors.

For where I moved next, I am forever grateful to the esteemed rare book dealer, and wonderful human, Paul Foster who, 14 years ago, advised me to approach Pom Harrington to work for him at Peter Harrington. We were 12 people when I joined in 2010 and I feel extremely privileged to have witnessed the company grow over that time and to have handled some jaw-droppingly exceptional books along the way!

After being at Peter Harrington for over a decade you must have some memorable moments to share. Can you recall any that are particularly fond? 

Too many to mention! But the opening of our Dover Street shop will always be a very fond memory. The opening party saw many friends, dealers, collectors and colleagues all celebrating together in the freshly painted, decorated and stocked shop. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the air, we felt welcomed by the trade around us, several of whom had sent flowers and plants to welcome us, and there was the feeling of not only a new exciting venture for Peter Harrington but also an important signal of the vitality of a psychical shop in the face of what many saw as the threat of the online market place.

This year marks 10 years since the opening of our Dover Street bookshop. After experiencing its fledgling beginnings, do you look back and think that a lot has been achieved over the years?

The promise of that opening night was wonderfully realised in the years that followed. Of course, opening a rare book shop in Mayfair at a time when the high street was reportedly on death’s door was a risk, but Dover Street quickly become a stop on the central London rare book shop circuit and a convenient location for our overseas clients to visit us when in London. The friendly, family atmosphere so familiar to all our regulars at the Fulham Road shop was vividly apparent in Dover Street from the very beginning and, as our ‘Dover Street regulars’ grew, that feeling of family went grew with them. As the manager in those early years and now as a regular feature on our cosy back table I’m immensely proud to have been a part of that.

If you can narrow it down, is there a book on our shelves at the moment that you’d most like to keep for yourself? 

I insist to anyone who will listen that ‘I am not a collector’, although my groaning bookshelves may suggest otherwise! But, if a caretaker were required, I would loving care for our complete collection of View magazine. A stunning primary record of the vast avant-garde art and literary world in those vital years between 1940 and 1947, recording the art world as it relocated from its traditional home in Paris to the bubbling new world of New York. Each issue contains stunning revelations of those epoch changing explorations as they happened and, despite its modest production techniques, each issue is a glorious artwork.

Being Sales Director, you must speak to so many different customers about a plethora of subjects. Whether it be counterculture or travel & exploration, is there a subject that particularly absorbs you? 

I’m a proud generalist and passionate about a diverse range of subjects and I’m very fortunate that my job allows me to engage with collectors across a wide range of fields, it means I’m always learning and always finding something new to be excited about. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time in regions of the Arab world which has led to a passionate interest in Arab history and culture, I’m fortunate to work closely with our travel, science and literature specialists, as well as important collectors in the field, to expand my knowledge through their expertise. This hands-on, immersive, approach has been vital to understanding the books we handle within their ‘real world’ context, and I have found it enormously beneficial in bridging the gap between the academic understanding of a rare book and its more elusive properties as an object of cultural heft.

One particular interest of mine over the past year or so has been researching the historical effect of new technology on how culture (in its many forms) has been disseminated.  It’s a fascinating area and has led to some superb acquisitions across a number of subject areas. I’ll say no more and leave that to a catalogue we will be launching at the end of the year!

CONTACT US

Interview by Winifred Hewitt-Wright

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Classical literature has been reinterpreted for millennia. Different generations have made these works their own by translating the original Greek or Latin into their vernacular, and every translation brings fresh perspectives. While the earliest appearances of these texts are unattainable, the history of printing is peppered with remarkable Classical firsts from a wide array of translators. Each new version, vying to distinguish itself from its predecessors, re-introduced ancient authors to contemporary readers and influenced English literature.

 

In recent years, a landmark moment occurred when Emily Wilson published the first female translation of the Odyssey into English in 2017. Her word choices were scrutinized and compared, marking her entry into the illustrious tradition of Homeric translation. However, the first translation of Homer by a woman appeared three centuries earlier with Anne Lefèvre Dacier’s French prose Iliad (1711) and L’Odyséé (1716). Dacier emphasized accurate translation over artistic license. When Alexander Pope produced his own verse versions of the epics (1715-1726), he referred to Dacier’s, though his more liberal approach was decried by Dacier as being unfaithful to the original. This difference in style highlighted a long-standing academic debate, the querelle des anciens et des modernes, about the merits of classical versus contemporary literary tastes. Dacier argued that the ancients’ work need not be adapted in translation to suit the modern era.

 

 

 

Prior to her Homeric efforts, Dacier was also the first female translator of Sappho: her 1681 edition paired Sappho’s poetry with that of Anacreon. Translating Sappho has always been complicated by the homoerotic nature of her work. While the 18th and 19th centuries saw the pronouns of the beloved figure in the “Hymn to Aphrodite” switched from feminine to masculine, in 1885 Henry Thornton Wharton restored them in line with the original Greek, though his portrayal of Sappho remained asexual, presenting her as a schoolmistress for female pupils.

 

 

 

 

It was not until 1903 that the first overtly lesbian translation of Sappho’s poetry appeared, by the British-born, Paris-based Renée Vivien. Vivien and her partner Natalie Clifford Barney were both Greek scholars who emulated Sappho by founding a female school of poetry on Lesbos. Vivien’s edition included both the Aeolic lyrics, a literal translation into French, and a versification – bridging the conflict between faithfulness to the original and artistic licence.

 

 

 

 

 

Presenting the original text alongside the new translation is nicely handled in Edmund Hill Stanley’s Metrical Version of the Odes of Horace (1889). Here, only the first line of each ode is in Latin before the English version begins, an inspired choice for poems with striking openings; that of Ode I. 37, nunc est bibendum, has entered English common usage. The thoughtfully produced edition, privately printed by Caxton scholar William Blades, features attractive presswork. The attention to typography is particularly apparent in the private press editions, such as the Nonesuch translations of Homer and Herodotus. The 1935 edition of Herodotus was produced with the express intention of being “handsome but not unwieldy, readable for those who are concerned only with the text, convenient for those who wish to use the notes in conjunction with the text” (Nonesuch Press). Using a revised version of George Rawlinson’s acclaimed 19th-century translation, it was supplemented by annotations surrounding the text in the manner of early printed books.

 

 

Updating an existing translation with notes for the modern reader and presenting it in a self-consciously archaic way testifies to how each edition must position itself in the long history of Classical publication. In this crowded sphere spanning centuries, a translation must make its mark. Regardless of a translator’s intentions, a sense of rivalry is inherent in their work, as each composes in the context of others’ efforts. This remains very much in the spirit of ancient literature, which thrived on writers creating clever variations on a theme. Each new take on a myth or a genre developed upon that of its predecessors. Ovid arguably perfected this appropriation of familiar material for surprising ends in his œuvre. Appropriately, when the first translations of Ovid emerged in the Elizabethan period, his work was adopted and adapted by English authors. The latter half of the 16th century saw complete translations into English of much of Ovid’s verse, such as George Tubervile’s Heroides (The Heroycall Epistles, 1567). The most famous was Arthur Golding’s 1567 edition of the monumental epic Metamorphoses, influencing works such as Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Shakespearean drama. Clear echoes of Golding’s verse are detectable in Shakespeare’s most enduringly popular plays, including The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This influence led to its reissue in 1904 under the title Shakespeare’s Ovid.

 

 

Such a distinguished afterlife for a translation of the Metamorphoses is only fair for a work which triumphantly prophesies its own immortality at its close (in Golding’s words):

And all the world shall never

Be able for too quench my name. For looke how farre so ever

The Romane Empyre by the ryght of conquest shall extend,

So farre shall all folke reade this woork. And tyme without all end

(If Poets as by prophesie about the truth may ame)

My lyfe shall everlastingly bee lengthened still by fame.

The work of Ovid and his peers continues to be read all worldwide long after the fall of Rome. Our enjoyment of this rich legacy is thanks in no small part to the efforts of their translators past and present.

Written by Lily Bayntun-Coward, bookseller and cataloguer

BROWSE CLASSICS

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“When I worked in a second-hand bookshop — so easily pictured, if you don’t work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios — the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people.” So opens George Orwell’s essay, Bookshop Memories, reminiscing on his time working as an assistant at Booklover’s Corner in Hampstead from October 1934. One of Orwell’s many careers, this role offered him the opportunity to job share with the journalist Jon Kimchee, allowing him the mornings free to write: at the time he was working on Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

The essay first appeared in the November 1936 issue of The Fortnightly Review, and since publication has been voraciously read by both booksellers (recognising perennial experiences such as the customer who “doesn’t remember the title or the author’s name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover”), as well as those who love to browse in such shops, who hope as they read that they fit none of Orwell’s gently condescending stereotypes.

Orwell’s own books have undoubtedly become part and parcel of life in a second-hand or rare book shop, and this is no different at Peter Harrington. First editions of Orwell’s books continue to be amongst the most desirable in a modern library, both due to their literary influence and their place in the history of book publishing. Here, we look over some of the key titles one might find while haunting such a shop and inhaling the “sweet smell of decaying paper”.

Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) was Orwell’s first full-length work, a two part memoir of his life among the poor and destitute in and around the two cities. It was published by Victor Gollancz in an initial printing of 1,500 copies. The first US edition was published just six months later in a print run of 1,750. Despite good reviews, the US edition sold poorly, and 383 copies were remaindered, making copies of the book hard to obtain even in Orwell’s own lifetime. Indeed, he was unable to furnish Henry Miller with a copy, writing to him in 1936: “I haven’t one left and it is out of print” (Life in Letters, p. 64).

 

 

Gollancz was one of the most important left-wing publishers of the 20th century and would become a key player in Orwell’s career as his first publisher. Peter Harrington is lucky to have handled Gollancz’s publishing archive, including Orwell’s often fraught correspondence with Gollancz regarding A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), and Inside the Whale (1940).

 

 

Down and Out in Paris and London was followed by Burmese Days (1934), Orwell’s first novel. This was an examination of the effect of empire on both the occupied and the occupier and drew on Orwell’s own time as an imperial policeman in 1920s Burma. It was first published in the US by Harper & Brothers in a run of 2,000, having been initially rejected by Gollancz amid concerns that the caustic critique of colonialism might be considered libellous to those portrayed. In 1935, Gollancz went on to publish 2,500 copies of the work, with names changed, and it was well received. Copies of both the US and the UK first editions, especially in their scarce dust jackets, are highly prized amongst collectors.

 

 

 

A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935) was Orwell’s second novel and one with, in his own words, “some experiments in it that were useful to me” (Fenwick, p. 31). It was published in 1935 in a run of 2,000 copies, again by Victor Gollancz. It is now considered one of the hardest of Orwell’s books to find in the dust jacket, with Orwell’s bibliographer, Gillian Fenwick, tracing only one institutional example. A US issue followed in 1936, consisting of sheets bought by Harper from Gollancz.

 

 

 

 

Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), one of Orwell’s most recognizable titles, was published by Gollancz in 1936. It was published in a run of 3,000 copies, with 2,500 of those bound. Of these, Fenwick reports that 219 copies were destroyed in a bombing during the Second World War.

 

 

 

 

The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) was published for Gollancz’s Left Book Club as a choice for the March 1937 list. The work was consequently bound in the Left Book Club’s familiar limp orange cloth and was ensured a large edition of 44,150 copies. Its selection, however, was precarious, as the latter half of the book – in which Orwell condemns British socialist intellectuals and their adherence to the Soviet Union – dismayed Gollancz and the Left Book Club committee. Gollancz consequently published the book with the insertion of his own preface, essentially repudiating the author (although a reported 200 copies got through the net without the inserted preface, including the copy held at the British Library). A case-bound trade issue of 2,150 copies, bound in blue cloth and preferred by collectors, was also released. Additionally, an elusive bowlderised reissue, consisting of just the first half of the text, was printed in 890 copies in May of the same year.

 

Homage to Catalonia (1938) was not published by Gollancz. Instead, Orwell’s account of his activities during the Spanish Civil War was printed in a run of 1,500 copies in 1938 by Secker and Warburg. Gollancz had turned down the book due to Orwell’s continued criticism of Soviet communism, which had only grown stronger during his time in Spain fighting for the POUM, an anti-Stalinist communist party from late 1936. Frederick Warburg, “was known as the Trotskyite publisher simply because he took left-wing books that were critical of Stalin” (ODNB).

 

 

 

Coming Up for Air (1939), written in 1938 and published in 1939, was considered by Orwell to be his best novel and by collectors to be distinctly tricky to find in the original jacket. The work signalled a return to Gollancz, despite Gollancz’s disapproval at some of the politics within. It was consequently printed in a run of 2,000 copies, without, to Orwell’s surprise, any major changes.

 

 

 

 

 

Inside the Whale (1940) was Orwell’s first collection of essays and includes the title essay on Henry Miller, alongside Orwell’s studies of Charles Dickens and boys’ weeklies. It was printed by Gollancz in a run of 1,000 copies. Both the smaller print run and the reported destruction of several copies during an air raid have made this one of the most desirable works for a collector to have in the original jacket in sharp condition.

 

 

 

 

The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) followed as a second collection of essays. It was the first of the Searchlight Books, a series co-edited by Orwell that was produced to war-time standards and attempted to deal with war-time problems. It was published by Secker and Warburg in an initial run of 5,000 copies. The type, kept in Plymouth, was destroyed in an air raid on the city.

 

 

 

 

Animal Farm (1945) was written between 1943 and 1944 and faced a series of publisher’s rejections, with Gollancz, T. S. Eliot for Faber, Jonathan Cape, and Collins turning it down due to the inopportune timing of its criticism of Russia. It was Secker & Warburg who stepped up to publish it, printing a first impression of 4,500 copies. The imprint of this first impression reads “May 1945”; however, they were not issued until August due to wartime paper shortages. The work has never been out of print since; indeed, the second impression was printed in the same month as the first to keep up with demand. A first edition, first impression, in a bright copy of the jacket (crucially with the verso printed in red with advertisements for Orwell’s Searchlight Books) is one of the most desirable books for a modern British literature collection.

 

 

The first Russian edition was printed just 5 years later in 1950, within Stalin’s lifetime. Orwell was always clear that Animal Farm was an allegorical representation of Russia’s transformation between the Revolution and the Stalinist era, making the Russian translation, done into Russian by the married couple Mary Kriger and Gleb Struve with the author’s backing, a particularly fascinating and collectable item.

 

 

 

The English People (1947) was commissioned by Collins’s general editor W. J. Turner in September 1943 for its Britain in Pictures series. The brainchild of the Ministry of Information’s Hilda Matheson (1888-1940), the propaganda series presented “the most eloquent case for Britain as a free society” during, and in the aftermath of, the Second World War (Windeatt). Orwell, however, refused to amend the negative aspects of his radical text, almost preventing its publication. The work was eventually published in an initial run of 26,000 copies. It has become highly collectable both for those who favour the works of Orwell and those piecing together a complete run of the Britain in Pictures series.

 

 

 

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) is undoubtedly one of the most impactful books of the 20th century. It was published by Secker & Warburg in June 1949 in a run of 25,575 copies and released with both a green and a red dust jacket variant simultaneously. Bookseller lore states that the red variant is scarcer, with surviving examples suggesting they were printed in proportions of about two green to one red. The work was immediately popular, and by the end of October 1949 22,700 copies had sold.

 

 

 

In 1984 several reissues were published to mark the date. These include a facsimile manuscript edition of the work released by Secker & Warburg in collaboration with the M&S Press of Weston, Massachusetts. The press printed a photographic facsimile of all that survives of the preliminary draft versions of Nineteen Eight-Four, alongside a full transcript of the manuscript. In addition to the trade issue, a deluxe printing of 330 copies was divided into two issues: 275 copies with morocco-backed marbled boards and 55 “special copies” bound in full morocco with party slogans incorporated into the binding.

 

 

 

 

The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters was published in 1968 by Secker and Warbug and included Orwell’s non-fictional writings, containing much material that had never previously been published. The text was edited by Orwell’s widow Sonia, and by Ian Angus, who helped set up the Orwell Archive at University College, London. Scholars marked the edition as a watershed moment for the author’s reputation.

Written by Suzanna Beaupré, Rare Book Specialist

BROWSE GEORGE ORWELL BROWSE LITERATURE

Bibliography
Gillian Fenwick, George Orwell: A Bibliography, 1998.
Peter Davison, George Orwell: A Life in Letters, 2013.
Barry Windeatt, “Rare Book Series: ‘Britain in Pictures’ (1941-1950)”, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, accessible online.

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​Marginalia have always been subjects of curiosity and fascination.

This term refers to all the handwritten notes, marks, and symbols that can be found in the margins of books. The word comes from the Medieval Latin adjective marginalis, meaning “on the periphery”, which in turn derives from margo (“border” or “edge”).

When we open an old volume, we often find messages from previous readers. But what sort of things were people in the past writing in their books? Discover some of the most interesting and unusual marginalia we have encountered.

Index Notes

The most common type of marginalia is index notes: key words transcribed from the text into the margin for easy look-up. To mark a relevant passage, readers would also underline it and add signs of attention next to it, such as a line running vertically down the margin, the Latin word nota (“note”), or a manicula, a small drawing of a hand pointing to the text.

Especially in the post-incunable period, index notes were often already printed in the margins, but readers kept adding their own based on specific interests. Some would also compile a personalised list of contents and transcribe it on a blank page, usually an endpaper, with page numbers.

Copying Words of Wisdom

Another common way of annotating a book was to transcribe maxims from it or from other relevant sources. Erasmus recommended this practice to students as a means of forming judgement: “You will carefully observe when reading writers whether any striking word occurs … worth committing to memory … You will write some brief but pithy sayings such as aphorisms, proverbs, and maxims at the beginning and end of your books”.

A striking example is our copy of the second edition of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1624), where an early reader has filled the endpapers and pastedowns (including the leather turn-ins!) with quotes. One of them is: Sapientes portant cornua in pectore, stulti in fronte (“wise men bear their horns in their heart, fools on their forehead”).

Scholarly Annotations

The most fascinating cases are books that ended up in the hands of exceptionally knowledgeable readers who decided to expand, clarify, and correct the printed text.

We recently had a remarkable copy of Apianus’s Cosmographicus liber (1533), a treatise on geography and astronomy. Its value lies in the extensive annotations, especially in the one on leaf XXXIV, shown below. The note corrects the text by adding the name of Columbus as one of America’s discoverers alongside Vespucci, and reports a learned tradition that America was known to Augustan Rome by quoting two lines from the Aeneid.

This edition is usually collected for the astronomical contents, but with these marginalia, it becomes a rare and fascinating “Americanum”: an early witness of the discovery of the New World.

Marginalia by scholars or students also include explanations of unfamiliar terms (glosses), references to literary sources (scholia), and paraphrases. Our copy of the 1532 collected comedies of Aristophanes shows how classical texts were studied: Latin translations of Greek terms are added in between the lines, and occasionally the infinitive form of Greek verbs is written the margins, also with one or two Latin translations. This information was dictated by professors during lectures, similarly as it happens today.

Personal Comments

Readers who were particularly invested with the topic at hand didn’t hesitate to write their own opinions into the margins. These are often expressed as simple symbols indicating approval or disapproval (e.g. an exclamation mark, a cross, a question mark). Elaborate comments are not unusual, and, especially when manifesting disagreement, they can be very entertaining.

The contemporary owner of our copy of Facchinei’s Note ed osservazioni (1765) filled the margins with insults to the author, page after page. In the treatise, Facchinei criticises Beccaria’s Dei delitti e delle pene and argues in favour of the death penalty – the anonymous annotator replies with comments such as: “Taci, ignorante” (“Shut up, you ignoramus”, p. 96) or “Questa è una filosofia da sciocchi” (“This is a philosophy for fools”, p. 119).

“I just needed a piece of paper”

At a time when paper was expensive, any blank space in a printed book (endpapers, margins, even the covers of vellum bindings) was a great alternative to buying new sheets. And so, in these places we sometimes find personal notes: calculations, doodles, pen trials, extracts from other texts, and more. In cookery books, we often see additional recipes:

Five blank leaves at the end our copy of Mendoza’s history of China (1589) contain a quite extensive manuscript transcription of passages from Zacharias Ursinus’s Catechismus (concerning the Communion). The relationship between these two works is difficult to grasp; we wonder if the reader used these blanks because he didn’t have a notebook at hand, or if the connection between the texts is related to something too personal to him for us to know.

These examples show only a few of the many different ways in which readers in the past interacted with their books, and perhaps inspire us, if gifted the latest novel of our favourite author, to write our own thoughts in the margins.

Every mark left whispers a story of its own. More than just ink on paper, these annotations bridge the gap between past and present, reader and author, forging a dialogue that transcends the boundaries of time and space.

Written by Alessia Colombo, Bookseller and Cataloguer

BROWSE ALL MANUSCRIPTS

Further information on this topic can be found in:

H. J. Jackson, Marginalia. Readers Writing in Books, 2001.

Patrick Spedding & Paul Tankard, eds, Marginal Notes. Social Reading and the Literal Margins, 2021

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