Kate Greenaway Talks Almanack Layout

by Stephen J. Gertz

Sometime in late 1891, Kate Greenaway wrote the following note to her printer/publisher, Edmund Evans.

Dear Mr Evans

I think it will be best to fill the months oblong with colour. I don't think all the page tinted as the oblong left white will look well - I have finished 4 months - only if you agree with me in this. I will add some snow to one - before I send them to you.

Yours sincerely, KG

I enclose 6 stamps for postage. Many thanks for books.

Opposite the letter's text, on page three, is the layout she suggests: a tall oblong black ink drawing at left of a woman in hat and cloak with left arm raised, with text to its right and below. The design is clearly for one of her almanacks.

It's a very special note: A) It is written to Evans, the most accomplished and celebrated color printer of his era and the man who published Greenaway's first book and developed her professional career; B) It refers to work in progress, always prized in an ALs; C) It contains a sketch in Kate Greenaway's hand.

But there's something even more compelling about the note. That sketch came to life.

January 1892. Snow Added.

The sketch was developed, finished, and is found in Kate Greenaway's Almanack for 1892 as the illustration for January - the woman in red cloak and hat - with snow added, per Greenaway's declaration in the note. This puts a huge dot on the "i," as in Ai! Ai! Ai!

This note possesses all that one could hope for in a signed autograph letter. The only thing that could have improved its content would have been if Greenaway had referred to John Ruskin, celebrated art critic, her mentor and close confidant:

"Not content with his own madness, Ruskin is driving me nuts. 'Love the little girls!" He's beginning to creep me out."

"Working for the printer and publisher Edmund Evans, Kate Greenaway's books and various designs soon became enormously popular in Britain and the United States and, with [John] Ruskin acting as champion and her advisor, her fame and stature rapidly increased" (Chris Beetles, The British Art of Illustration 1800-1991, p. 43) (1846-1901)

Edmund Evans (1826-1905) was the foremost publisher of color-printed books of his era. "In the 1860s Evans established himself as the leading and the best woodblock colour printer in London...The next big development in commercial colour printing in Britain came with the publication of the Toy Books...The demand for Toy Books became so great that - like other printers - Evans turned publisher, and commissioned the artists himself...Evans's...protégé was Kate Greenaway...In 1877 she took a book of her own verses and drawings to Evans, who immediately accepted them and obtained...agreement to publish them in a 6-shilling book to be called Under the Window. He printed 20,000 copies, which soon sold out, and he had great difficulty in keeping up with demand: Under the Window was still in print in 1972. Greenaway never allowed anyone other than Evans to engrave and print her illustrations, clearly recognizing how much Evans's interpretative skills and ability to match medium to style contributed to the final appearance of her work" (Oxford DNB).

"By the 1870s [Edmund] Evans' firm had a high reputation. 'No firm in London could come near the result that Edmund Evans could get with as few, say, as three colour-blocks, so wonderful was his ingenuity, so great was his artistic taste and so accurate his eye' [Spielmann and Layard, p. 41]...[Greenaway] was not a shrewd businesswoman but in dealing with Evans she did manage to achieve considerable success" (Engen, p. 52).


“The beginning of 1883 had seen the publication of Kate Greenaway’s first Almanack. Published at one shilling by George Routledge & Sons, and of course engraved and printed in colours by Mr. Edmund Evans, it achieved an enormous success, some 90,000 copies being sold in England, America, France, and Germany. It was succeeded by an almanack every year (with but one exception, 1896) until 1897, the last being published by Mr. Dent. The illustrations were printed on sheets with blank spaces for the letterpress, in which English, French, or German was inserted as the market demanded. There are various little conceits about these charming productions which are calculated to appeal to the ‘licquorish chapman of such wares’; so that complete sets of them already fetch respectable sums from the collectors of beautiful books, especially when they have not been divested of the paper envelopes or wrappers in which they were originally issued” (Spielmann and Layard (1905), p. 122).

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GREENAWAY, Kate. EVANS, Edmund. Signed Autograph Letter From Kate Greenaway to Her Publisher/Printer, Edmund Evans. N.p. [London], n.d. [1892]. 3 pp, including ink drawing. 4 1/2 x 7 inches (114 x 176 mm); 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (114 x 88 mm), as folded.  

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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The $65,000 Binding, Bound To Be Great

by Stephen J. Gertz

TENNYSON, Alfred Lord. The Princess.
London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1880.
One of 50 Large Paper Copies signed by the printer
and dated October 23, 1880 (this being copy #41.
Bound by Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson.

The great Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson bound this lavishly gilt apple green morocco masterpiece of art, craft, taste and restrained splendor with his own hands. A key work in the history of bookbinding - this is a superstar binding in all ways - it is being offered for $65,000.

Its covers are diapered in gilt with Tudor roses on leafy vines (Cobden--Sanderson Design No. 20), each compartment formed by roses containing an "M," the center cruciform panel on the upper cover with the name "MITFORD" tooled in gilt, and a "B" above it and a "C" below it. The rear cover possesses the date "24 February 1886" in the center compartment. Raised bands, a guttered (i.e., concave) spine (as intended), spine panels with central Tudor rose surrounded by leafy vines and much stippling, gilt turn-ins. All edges gilt and gauffered finish the work.

 

The front pastedown endpaper has the engraved bookplate of Bertram Freeman-Mitford. The rear pastedown has Cobden-Sanderson's handwritten receipt for £ 6.6.0 affixed, and  the rear free endpaper has manuscript letter from Cobden-Sanderson to Lady Clementine Mitford tipped-in. 

This is an important, early specimen of the work of Cobden-Sanderson, the central figure in the history of English bookbinding and the father of modern binding. Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922) did not produce many bindings with his own hands, but he did nothing short of change the entire course of bookbinding in England. 

Tidcombe's detailed and exhaustive catalogue records just 167 examples of bindings produced by him, all of them executed between July of 1884 and March of 1893. Through this small corpus of work, Cobden-Sanderson "rejuvenated English binding" with his theories of design "and set it on a new course of development" (Adams, Morgan Library Exhibition catalog). Howard M. Nixon calls Cobden-Sanderson a "pre-eminent figure . . . both as a designer of great originality, who rescued the craft from half a century of purely imitative work, and as a craftsman of outstanding ability" (Styles and Designs of Bookbinding From the Twelfth Through Twentieth Centuries. London, 1906).

Produced during the first twenty months of his career, the present binding heralds two milestones: the first use of the new Tudor rose and rose leaves (C-S tools 2a, 6a, 6n), and the first employment of an important and improved method of preparing the leather for its gilt decoration).

Rear endpaper with Cobden-Sanderson's holograph receipt.
Note his stamped-signature in gilt to lower turn-in.

Insight into the personal and business side of this volume can be found in Cobden-Sanderson's journal entry for December 22, 1885, which records that "on Saturday [19 December] Mitford and Lady Clementine came and were exceedingly polite. Mitford brought me a large paper (Kegan Paul) 'Princess' to bind by the 24th February, mode and finish to be left entirely to myself." The binder's notes observe that "the design of back-side varies from front. The 'M' is inverted in the lower half [of the back]. This, an accident, [is] a great improvement. Time 54 3/4 hours. Undercharged."

From the letter tipped into the volume we further learn that the book was delivered on 23rd February 1886 "by a sure hand," arriving just in time, as it was to be Lady Clementine's gift to her husband on his 49th birthday, the next day. Cobden-Sanderson visited the Mitfords in April and was pleased to find Bertram Mitford thrilled with the binding, even though his "Philistine friends" had thought the (intentionally) concave spine a flaw. Cobden-Sanderson records in his journal on 2 April 1886: "I advised him to stand by the gutter [i.e., defend the spine design], for it was most beautiful." 

Mitford (1837-1916), the diplomat and author, was created first Baron Redesdale in 1902; he is best remembered as the grandfather of the brilliant and scandalous Mitford sisters, including noted writers Nancy and Jessica, Nazi sympathizers Diana and Unity, and the current dowager duchess of Devonshire.

Artist, bookbinder, and fine press publisher, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. It was during a dinner party held by his friend, William Morris, that the idea of becoming a bookbinder was suggested to him by Morris' wife, Jane Burden. 

"He told her about how anxious he was to use his hands, and she replied, 'Then why don't you learn bookbinding? That would add art to our little community, and we could work together.' Ten days later he was taking his first lesson in bookbinding from De Coverly, and within a year he was working independently" (op cit, Adams).

Opening a shop in 1884, by 1886, the date of this binding, he seems to have hit his stride; the binding, from February, is the first from that key year.

In 1900 he founded, in partnership with Emery Walker, the Doves Press (and bindery), located in Hammersmith, London.

Born Thomas Sanderson, upon his marriage he added the surname of his wife, Anne Cobden, to his own.

"Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was a small man, intellectual, an unsocial socialist, proud, neurotic, and a genius. His bookbinding and his printing, largely concentrated in the quarter century  from 1885 to 1910, have a timeless beauty of style and come close almost to perfection in execution as can be expected from the hand of man. With a minimum stock of binder's tools of his own design…he achieved 'infinite riches in a small room.' He was anti-mechanical, anti-commonplace, and anti-dogmatic with respect to other people's dogmas. John Ruskin was his infallible master, William Morris his fallible mentor" (op cit, Adams).

Remember the name Thomas Cobden-Sanderson. Or, as he's known throughout the English-speaking world's Rap community, T-Cob. In Tokyo, T-Cob-San.

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Tidcombe 33.

Marianne Tidcombe's The Bookbindings of T.J. Cobden-Sanderson: A Study of His Work 1884-1893, Based on His TIme Book (London: The British Library, 1984) is the key reference to T.J. Cobden-Sanderson's bindings.

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Bound To Be Great Week continues:

Monday: Magnificent Bindings, Bound To Be Great.
Tuesday: The Guild of Women Binders, Bound To Be Great.
Wednesday: More Magnificent Bindings, Bound To Be Great.
Thursday: The $65,000 Binding, Bound To Be Great.
Friday: Drop-Dead Gorgeous Bindings, Bound To Be Great.__________

Unless otherwise indicated, all images courtesy of Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books, currently offering these books through their just published Catalog 61: Historically Significant and Decorative Bindings 1536-2010, a magnificent production, and an instant and important reference source.

This post impossible without the assistance of Pirages' head cataloger and Booktryst contributor, Cokie G. Anderson.

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Of related interest:

Five Great 20th Century Bindings.

Five Must-See Modern French Bindings.

A Royal (Roger) Payne in the Binding.

Three Must-See Bindings.

Three More Must-See Bindings.

Search our archives under "bindings" to find more fascinating and visually stunning posts on the subject.
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Radical Pre-Raphaelites Invade Delaware

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Lady Lilith, 1866-68 (altered 1872-73)
Oil on canvas. Delaware Art Museum,
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.
Lilith, the subject of this painting, is described in Judaic literature as the first wife of Adam.
She is associated with the seduction of men and the murder of children.
Note opium poppy in lower right corner.
(All Images Courtesy Of The University of Delaware.)

Before you hear about it on Fox News, we're breaking this story on Booktryst: The University of Delaware is holding a major conference about a bunch of free thinking, free loving, socialist-feminist radicals who wanted to end capitalism, imperialism, and racism. One more attempt on the part of effete, intellectual snobs to hijack American culture. This revolutionary bunch may even have invaded the sanctity of your own home. Their leader, one William Morris, said this: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." If that isn't code for "Quit shopping at Wal-Mart," I don't know what is. And the loose confederation of Delaware museums, libraries, and social (socialist?) organizations sponsoring this figures nobody will make a stink about it just because these ultra-liberals got together a few years ago. Well I'm giving you the straight dope here. Draw your own conclusions.

William Morris (1834-1896)
Design for Cover of "The Earthly Paradise," 1890.
Pen and ink drawing, Delaware Art Musuem.
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935.
Twenty -four tales in verse tell of Scandinavian wanderers
who seek everlasting life with a group of Pagan Greeks.

Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, focuses on the British poet, designer and socialist William Morris and on the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements of the late 19th century. It examines the philosophical and artistic connections between American and British artists in two radical (italics mine) movements, Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism. So right off the top we've got the University using that "r-word."

The Anglo-Saxon Review: A Quarterly Miscellany,
edited by Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill, March 1900.
This short-lived magazine of literature, art, and politics,
was conceived by American-born Jennie Jerome,
who married a member of the British aristocracy and acquired a title.
She perfectly embodied the English stereotype of an American Girl:
willful, glamorous, and free-living.
(One of her lovers was no less a personage than
the future king, Edward VII.)

These movements, which championed the cause of "Beauty," flourished in both the fine arts and decorative arts. A conference and related exhibitions will be held October 7 to 9, 2010, at the University of Delaware and at the Delaware Art Museum and the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. Organized with the assistance of the William Morris Society of the United States, the conference will highlight the strengths of the University of Delaware Library's rare books, art, and manuscripts collections; Winterthur’s important holdings in American decorative arts; and the Delaware Art Museum’s superlative Pre-Raphaelite collection, the largest outside Britain. It doesn't sound so subversive, until you dig a bit deeper.

Elbert Green Hubbard (1856-1915)
Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors: William Morris.
East Aurora, N.Y.: The Roycrofters, 1900.
Elbert Hubbard, an Indiana-born socialist,
founded an upstate New York state commune based on Morris's ideals.

Pre-Raphaelites and Aesthetes to be featured here include: John Ruskin, art critic, poet and sexual deviant; Dante Gabriel Rossetti painter, poet, and chloral hydrate addict; Oscar Wilde author, playwright, and homosexual; and William Morris, designer, book artist, and socialist. Their art was linked thematically and stylistically, and they have been called the first avant-garde movement in art. So essentially these guys started the whole leftist culture war on family values about 120 years ago. And they managed to infiltrate even the works of some All-American good eggs like Mark Twain and Bret Harte. (See the University of Delaware Library's exhibit: London Bound: American Writers in Britain, 1870-1916.)

Bret Harte (1836-1902) The Queen of the Pirate Isle:
Illustrated by Kate Greenaway,
Engraved and Printed by Edmund Evans.
London: Chatto and Windus, [1886].
John Ruskin told artist Kate Greenaway her illustrations
for this All-American work were "the best thing you've ever done."

There's even an exhibit focusing on the way in which the designs of William Morris and his partners in crime have invaded our everyday culture. The Morris Kitsch Archive is an installation created by British artist David Mabb that contains over 720 images of commercially produced objects decorated with the textile and wallpaper designs of William Morris. According to the collection's website: "Morris was the founder of the Socialist League and a standard-bearer of Socialism; he maintained a fierce hatred of capitalism and likely would be shocked to see the many money-making projects that his designs have inspired since his death." Says David Mabb, "The archive illustrates how Morris’ designs have been appropriated for a mass consumer society. The designs have become widely available at the expense of the qualities and values inherent to Morris’ original Utopian project, which offered in its vision of the fecundity of nature the hope of alternative ways of living in the world." So some us of probably have these things in our homes, and don't even know it...

Daisy Print Wellington Boot
Detail from The Morris Kitsch Archive,
2009 Laminated digital print.
(Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Tamara Henriques.)

Is a pair of these hiding in YOUR daughter's closet?

Joann Browning, associate dean for the arts in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Delaware, says the conference "provides a wonderful opportunity to draw upon the rich array of resources within the arts, humanities and social sciences at the University and to engage with our community partners" in multidisciplinary discussions. "From poster art of the 1890s to bookmaking to stained glass to fashion and Oscar Wilde, the menu of events, presentations, exhibits and live performances offers something to pique everyone's interest," Browning said. "We're also thrilled that the conference will include an exhibition and gallery talk in the newly renovated Old College Gallery, as well as a live performance of Wilde's classic comedy of manners The Importance of Being Earnest." Clearly, the idea is to spread these revolutionary ideas to as many of the ordinary folk of Delaware as possible.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882.
La Bella Mano, 1875, Oil on canvas.
Delaware Art Museum,
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
The painting represents Venus assisted by her winged attendants.
The effect of a halo(!) is created by the convex mirror showing the bed,
which entices a present or future lover.

Ann Ardis, senior associate dean for the humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center at the University of Delaware, said the conference will bring worldwide attention to Delaware. Maybe she just never anticipated getting negative attention from everyday, God-fearing Americans who've had enough of this sort of thing. But here at Booktryst we always do our best to be fair and balanced, so you can be the judge. Do your homework, feel free to leave your comments here, and when you see it on the O'Reilly Factor or Glenn Beck, remember we had it here first.

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Previously On Booktryst: Down With Industrialism! William Morris And The Private Press Revolt.

Down With Industrialism! William Morris and the Private Press Revolt

Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (Kelmscott Press, 1892)

The Industrial Revolution had a profound effect on the world of books: mechanization made it possible to produce thousands of copies of a work quickly and inexpensively. The upside of mass production was the increased availability and affordability of books; the downside was shoddy materials and workmanship. When I first came to work in the rare book business, I was astonished to find that many of the incunables (printed before 1500) in our inventory had brighter, fresher leaves than those in 19th century books. The reason was simple: the early books were printed on a higher quality paper than the mass-produced books.

John Ruskin (Portrait Courtesy of Project Gutenberg)

The Industrial Revolution caused a backlash against mass production in many areas of British society. In the influential essay "The Nature of Gothic," John Ruskin warned, "the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this—that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages." Rusking saw the separation of intellectual and manual activity as a reinforcement of class distinctions: "gentlemen" believed manual labor was beneath them, and working men, turned into automatons by the factories, had no ownership of or pride in their work.

William Morris by G. F. Watts (1870). Portrait courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

One of Ruskin's dispciples was William Morris (1834-96),who, among many other accomplishments, was the most important figure in the revival of printing in England at the end of the 19th century. As Feather says, "Morris was a remarkable man in many ways; at Oxford, he had been under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, and had carried this influence into his subsequent work as an architect and designer." Morris "looked back to the Middle Ages as a period when free craftsmen, untrammeled by capitalism, pursued their avocations and produced objects which were both useful and esthetically worthwhile. He became involved with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which sought to promote guild socialism to revive this lost world. The Kelmscott Press was a product of this ethos, the immediate influence being Emery Walker's famous lecture on typography to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in November 1888."

Morris' Love is Enough (Kelmscott Press, 1897)

Seeking to revive what he considered to be the purity of printing's first century, Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891, marking the beginning of the modern private press movement. In his "Note" about the press, which took the form of the final Kelmscott book, Morris explains that he "began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters." This was an understatement of the first order: his press produced 53 titles in 66 volumes, all of them notable in some way, along with three memorable typefaces: Golden, Troy, and Chaucer.

Syr Perecyvelle of Gales (Kelmscott Press, 1895)

Many of the Kelmscott Press books were decorated with woodcut "white vine" borders designed by Morris, and were sometimes illustrated by his dear firend, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones. The type was cut and set by hand, the paper made by hand, and the leaves printed by hand. One of the Kelmscott books, a printing of Morris' Gothic Architecture: A Lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, was printed in public as a "moving exhibit" during the 1893 Arts and Crafts Exhibition held in the New Gallery, becoming one of the exposition's most popular attractions. It was also the Kelmscott book of which the most copies (1,500) were printed. The labor intensive printing process limited the run of most books to between 250 to 500 copies on paper, with perhaps another dozen or so "deluxe" copies printed on vellum.

Syr Ysambrace (Kelmscott Press, 1897)

Kelmscott focused on printing the work of contemporary poets like Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Tennyson, English classics, and medieval literature. The great work of the press was the Kelmscott Chaucer, a reprinting of the works by the author of the Canterbury Tales, lavishly illustrated with 87 engravings by Burne-Jones and borders by Morris.

The Kelmscott Chaucer (1896). Photo courtesy of the Queen's College Library

A pigskin binding in the medieval style was crafted by Douglas Cockerell. Four years in the making, it remains one of the three greatest productions of the modern private press movement. Morris not only left a legacy of some of the most beautiful books ever printed, he sparked a movement that prospered in the first quarter of the 20th century and that lingers on today, as we will discover in upsoming weeks.
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Except where otherwise noted, all images courtesy of Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books & Manuscripts.
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