A curious case, unique in its way, of what may be characterised as perverted ingenuity, occurred at a public sale in November 1897 at Sotheby's rooms. It was, in the words of the catalogue, "A Remarkable Collection of Magnificent Modern Bindings, Formed by an Amateur;" but the salient feature was--in fact, the ruling one, with one exception--that the whole of the specimens represented imitations of ancient work and of historical copies of early books. The interiors were authentic; they had simply served as the medium for carrying out a rather whimsical, not to say foolish, project, and the hundred and ten lots, destitute of any conspicuous or genuine interest, probably yielded very much less than the cost of their counterfeit liveries.
The present volume is not a treatise on Binding, and we can merely indicate the general bearings of this branch and aspect of Book-Collecting, on which several useful, and some very sumptuous and beautiful, monographs have appeared of recent years. An amateur cannot do better, for purposes of reference, than secure a copy of Mr. Quaritch's _Catalogue of Bindings_, 1888, which includes particulars of all the principal works on the subject, English and foreign, and one of Zaehnsdorf's _Short History of Bookbinding_, 1895, with illustrations of processes, and a glossary of styles and terms used in the art. Mr. Wheatley and Mr. Brassington have also produced monographs upon it.
In America, during many years past, there has been a laudable effort to establish a national taste and feeling in this direction; for collectors in the States formerly made a general rule of sending their books either to London or to Paris for treatment. The institution of the Grolier Club of New York nearly twenty years since was a step in the direction of independence, and its _Transactions_ form an interesting and creditable series. The Club printed a catalogue of its library of early typographical examples in 1895, with facsimiles of bindings.
The modern French school of literary architecture unites in the type, the paper, the illustrations such a remarkable degree of taste and feeling, combined with economy of production, that in England there is no present approach to what may be termed the _ensemble_ of a volume placed in the market by our neighbours. This style of book-making asks of course age to mellow it, and perchance the materials employed may not bear the test of time and manipulation by successive owners, like the old eighteenth-century work. But as they emerge from the workshop, and stand upon the shelves or in the case, their aspect is decidedly agreeable, while half a roomful of them are to be had for the price of a Clovis Eve or even a first-rate Padeloup. Very much, on the contrary, we are apt to conceive a dislike for that unwieldy imperial _format_ which some of the Parisian _libraires editeurs_ affect, and which perhaps occupy the same place in French literature of the day as our detestable English _editions de luxe_.