“Edition de Luxe”, containing 50 mounted photographic plates not included in the trade issue View larger
“Edition de Luxe”, containing 50 mounted photographic plates not included in the trade issue
Goldschmidt (Ernst Philip), 1887-1954

Gothic and Renaissance bookbindings exemplified and illustrated from the author's collection

London, Boston & New York, Ernest Benn Ltd / Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928
Two volumes (29 cm), I: (10) 369 (1) pp., frontispiece (in colour), 2 black & white plates (lettered A-B). II (Plates): x [pp.ix-x: List of Photographs], 112 plates, numbered 1-10, 10a, 11-12, 12a, 13-110 (plate 17 folding; plates 68, 85-86 in colour), and 50 mounted photographs. Uniform publisher’s brown cloth. - First edition, limited to 750 copies. This is one of 50 copies of the “Edition de Luxe”, containing 50 mounted photographic plates not included in the trade issue, and a presentation copy, inscribed by E.P. Goldschmidt to Stephen Gaselee, Pepys Librarian (1908-1919) and Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge (1909-1943). In a tipped-in letter from Goldschmidt to Gaselee (dated 9 December 1927), Goldschmidt declares this to be “the very first copy that comes from the binder”. Two other presentation copies of the book are known to the writer: one was inscribed by Goldschmidt to Hugh William Davies, cataloguer for the London booksellers W.J. Leighton, “with best thanks for help and advice from the author” (with Jonathan Hill, Catalogue 8, 1982, item 145); the other to Alice Parsons Millard, collector and proprietor of George M. Millard Rare & Fine Imported Books, Los Angeles (in 1984-1985 with Jennifer S. Larson, Yerba Buena Books, San Francisco). “A catalogue raisonné of the author’s own Collection, with a preface of 126 pages on fifteenth and sixteenth-century bindings generally… The descriptions of the individual books are models of their kind. Goldschmidt indeed deserves to be called the Robert Proctor of bookbindings. He has done far more than anybody else… to put the study of the subject on the right lines” (G.D. Hobson, “Books on Bookbinding” in The Book-collector’s Quarterly, volume 7, July-September 1932, p.71). “One of the classics on the subject, extremely readable and based on the author’s immense knowledge of the book-trade in the 16th century” (Anthony R.A. Hobson, The Literature of bookbinding, London: National Book League, 1954, p.10); “A work of immense learning which has had a lasting influence on binding studies” (B.H. Breslauer, The Uses of Bookbinding Literature, New York 1986, p.27). ¶ Exlibris of Harry Richardson Creswick (1902-1988), Cambridge University Librarian (1949-1967). Superb copy.

£ 2,400

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