John Harrison Stonehouse (1864 – 27 August 1937) was an English bookseller and Charles Dickens scholar at long-established London booksellers Sotheran's where he rose from apprentice to managing director through hard work and a strong entrepreneurial instinct. He introduced and popularised the "Cosway" binding and commissioned the opulent edition of Edward FitzGerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that was lost when RMS Titanic sank in 1912. He published a book on the subject in 1933.
He became a specialist in manuscripts and acquired a previously unknown collection of Dickens material relating to a youthful romance between the author and Maria Beadnell, his notes on which were turned into a book published in the United States. He later published a book about Dickens's early life. He also acquired 37 volumes of material relating to the prophetess Joanna Southcott, and a collection of "intimate" letters between the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
He was president of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association in 1936. He died in 1937 and received an obituary from the poet Siegfried Sassoon titled "Adventurer in Bookselling". He left little money, forcing his widow to seek financial assistance from his former employers.
Early life and family
John Stonehouse was born in Wilton, Wiltshire, in 1864. He married Mary Martha. In 1891 they were living in Albert Street, Camden Town, and in 1901, Bramshill Gardens, Dartmouth Park, to the north of Kentish Town. By 1901 they had children Dorothy, Joseph, and Ida. Later, the Stonehouses lived at 19 Grand Avenue in Muswell Hill, north London.
Career
In 1884, Stonehouse joined the London book dealers Sotheran's as an apprentice, ultimately rising to the position of managing director through his skills of literacy, invention, and marketing. There, he worked with figures such as Henry Cecil Sotheran ("Cecil Sotheran" 1861-1928), the last Sotheran to run the firm, the scientific literature specialist and bibliographer Heinrich Zeitlinger, and manager and book scout Alexander Railton. He became a specialist in manuscripts and in 1905 acquired for his employers a previously unknown collection of Dickens material. In 1906 he acquired 37 volumes of material relating to the prophetess Joanna Southcott, and in 1908 purchased the "intimate" letters between Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
When Cecil Sotheran was killed in a motor accident in 1928, it was Stonehouse that prevented the firm from being wound-up by persuading his friend and fellow bookseller Gabriel Wells to buy it and recoup his outlay by selling shares in the firm. One investor was the banker and collector Anthony de Rothschild which ultimately led to the banking firm of that name buying the whole firm in 1957.
In 1933, he began to produce Piccadilly Notes, a continuously paginated publication that combined offers from Sotheran's stock with a column penned by Stonehouse titled "Adventures in Bookselling" featuring romantic recollections from his career and observations on the book world. It continued until his death and then for two more issues, the first being a memorial issue with text by Stonehouse, and the second a simple price list issued in 1938 as No. 23. It was revived in 1989. In 1936, he was president of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association.
Cosway bindings
In 1901 or 1902, Stonehouse introduced what became known as the Cosway binding, a book in a fine binding, in which Sotheran's already specialised, but with the addition of a miniature portrait on the front cover relating to the author or subject of the book. The name came from the 18th-century miniaturist and macaroni Richard Cosway whose work had been the subject of several exhibitions in London in the 1890s.
The books were bound by the Rivière bindery, who already did a lot of work for Sotheran's, and the portraits painted by Miss C. B. Currie (Caroline Billin Curry, died 1940) in oil on ivory. They were protected by a thin glass cover. Currie produced several thousand miniatures during her career with Sotheran's, as well as at least 164 numbered fore-edge paintings for the firm, but her identity was kept secret until 1911 when the success of the books was so great that Stonehouse decided to use her as part of the firm's marketing. Similar bindings had been made in 18th-century France and 19th-century America, and a number of competitors copied Sotheran's success, but it was the Cosways from Sotheran's that popularised that style of binding.
The "Great Omar"