Binding and Provenance
An Ode to Lake Bass
Unfortunately, the white covers of this scarce, self-published volume are quite stained. Nevertheless, the jumping bass and stylized script make for an attractive cover.
Artificial Propagation of Fish
The gilt stamped fish, book title, and author are framed by blind stamped design.
British Fresh-Water Fishes
A variety of designs–some in gilt and some in black–adorn the cover of this book. The boards are quite thick with beveled edges.
Familiar Fish
This decorative publisher’s binding includes fish stamped in white and black.
Fisch-Cultur Norwegens
This little pamphlet is an introduction to fish culture methods in Norway. The pictorial wrappers have several library cancellation stamps from universities in Latvia.
Fresh-Water Fishes of New England
The original publisher's wraps depict only a few of the many species found in New England; however, the book details an impressive number of species of interest to both sportsmen and naturalists.
Histoire Naturelle des Poissons
This original publisher’s portfolio contains the plates for this work.
History of Fish
This small chapbook, also known as a "toy book," was intended for children. It is remarkable that it has survived the years intact! The original publisher's wrappers feature a whale, even though the whale is a mammal and not a fish.
The Angler's Guide and Tourists Gazetteer
This guidebook to the fishing waters of the United States and Canada provides thousands of listings for individual water bodies. As such, it is an important record of the distributions of fish species in the late nineteenth century.
The Book Was Salvaged from the Fire of 1898
My copy of Couch's British Fish has a fascinating history. This image is of the bookplate affixed into the 4 volumes, which were saved from a fire at the Norfolk and Norwich Library on 1 Aug 1898.
Laughing Carp
This gorgeous thirteenth-century leaf was once part of a “Laughing Carp” psalter, named for the charming line fillers drawn as fish with various expressions. This manuscript was broken by biblioclast Otto Ege and was included in his Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts, Western Europe, XII-XVI Century (c. 1950). It is not known if this particular leaf is from a copy of Original Leaves that was broken and sold leaf-by-leaf (an ironic possibility) or if it is a leaf from the manuscript that was never included in a copy of Original Leaves.
Laughing Carp Details
This photo provides a close-up of a few of the fish and some of the illumination work in this circa thirteenth-century leaf from the “Laughing Carp” psalter broken and distributed by Otto Ege. This is the oldest item in my collection.
A Custom Dust Jacket
Children’s books are a fascinating genre to collect, as these books were often heavily used and thus show evidence of how previous owners cared for their books. Elsje bij de Visschen [1892] was fitted with a custom dust jacket bearing an inscription in Dutch dated 1906. Translated into English the inscription reads: “Johhanna Louws / Age 9 years old, born the 15th of June 1896 in Zoutelande, I received this picture book the 6th of February 1906.” The presence of this jacket demonstrates that Johhanna, and all subsequent owners, were keen to keep this lovely little book in fine condition.
Elsje on the Beach
The lovely front wrapper of Elsje bij de Visschen was protected for over 100 years by the custom dust jacket created for the book not long after it was published.
A Binding in Fish Skin
I believe that engaging with the larger community of book artists and craftspeople is an important—and arguably essential—part of being a book collector. I enjoy occasionally commissioning custom bindings for my books. This copy of Hallock’s The Fishing Tourist was recently bound in fish skin by Winnipeg binder and book artist, Debra Frances. The skin is Lake Trout, which Debra caught in a Northwestern Ontario lake and then cleaned and tanned herself before executing the binding. The Fishing Tourist is a significant book, as it was the first to widely publicise the presence of an important gamefish, the Michigan Grayling. Unfortunately, the fish became so popular that overfishing, combined with habitat loss and introduction of other fish species, led to its extinction by the 1930s.
Traces of the Original Binding
I chose this copy of The Fishing Tourist for rebinding as the text block was generally clean but the binding had suffered serious damage. When I received the rebound book from Debra Frances, I was delighted to find a portion of the original binding’s spine and endband pasted to new front free endpaper. Small details such as this that preserve the physical history of a specific copy of a book are one of the things I love about book collecting.
Notice of the Fishes
This is one of the earliest publications by zoologist and explorer, Sir John Richardson. His Notice of the Fishes was included as an appendix in Sir John Franklin’s Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22 (1823). This is the scarce separate printing of Richardson’s report on the fish of this important Arctic expedition and includes his inscription to “Dr. Greville.”
In the Author's Hand
This close-up of the inscription found within Richardson’s Notice of the Fishes is addressed to “Dr. Greville.” This Dr. Greville is likely Robert Kaye Greville (1794–1866), an English natural historian who specialized in mycology and botany. Greville’s herbarium included some specimens from Arctic expeditions, and Richardson and Greville were known correspondents.
An 1880s Dust Jacket
Dust jackets have been used by publishers for at least a few centuries to protect a book’s binding and also to advertise the book’s contents and other works from the publisher. Dust jackets were often discarded, however, to reveal the attractive binding beneath or because readers found them to be a nuisance. As a result, pre-twentieth-century dust jackets are especially scarce. This dust jacket from 1886 simply reproduces the text found on the book’s boards. The book it covers is the only copy of this common title I have seen with its jacket. The jacket is the oldest dust jacket in my collection.
Well-Preserved Boards
A primary purpose of dust jackets has been to preserve and protect the bindings they cover. The jacket has certainly served this purpose, as both the boards and gilding of this copy are bright and clean.
A Japanese Binding
One significant new direction in my collection since A History of Fish debuted is my effort to collect books in less-common languages and from non-Western authors. This set, purchased from a bookseller in Japan, includes the complete fish section of the Wakan Sansai Zue encyclopedia. Including non-Western titles in my collection reveals interesting ways that various cultures have viewed and classified fish. For example, these volumes divide fish into four main classes: “Fish in rivers and lakes with scales,” “Fish in estuaries and seas with scales,” “Fish in rivers and lakes without scales,” and “Fish in estuaries and seas without scales.”
The Beauty of Original Boards
The nineteenth century ushered in an explosion of technical works on the anatomy of fish. Works on comparative anatomy were popular, as were detailed works on single species of fish. Bakker’s contribution to the anatomy of fish, Osteographia piscium (1822), includes a large atlas of plates (shown here) and a small octavo text volume.
In Boards as Issued
It was not uncommon for technical works such as Bakker’s Osteographia piscium (1822) to be issued with a large atlas of plates and a small volume of explanatory text. Over time, it is not uncommon for plate and text volumes to become separated. Although I purchased these two volumes at different times, marrying them to complete the set, both are in their original publisher’s boards and make quite a nice pair. They are now housed together in a custom slipcase.
Original Wrappers Bound In
Sagra’s Historia fisica, politica y natural de la isla de Cuba was a monumental work issued in parts over more than 20 years. Complete copies of the entire work are rare, and the original parts in their wrappers are uncommon. Thus, I was very pleased to add this nice copy of the complete "Peces" section with original front wrapper to my collection.
As Issued in Wrappers
William Harris’s The Fishes of North America That Are Captured on Hook and Line (1898) was a monumental undertaking. Harris reported traveling nearly 30,000 miles across North America with artist John L. Petrie, capturing and painting the “true to life” colours of fish immediately after they were removed from the water. In his advertisements for the book, Harris stated that up to 15 different lithographic stones were used to print the large plates and that the results were indistinguishable from an oil painting at a distance of 10 feet. The work was issued in 20 parts, each in wrappers, over the period of a few years, after which complete copies were available from Harris (who was also the publisher). Pictured here is a wrapper from Part III.
Wrapper and Advertisement
The verso of the front wrapper for Harris’s The Fishes of North America That Are Captured on Hook and Line (1898) includes advertisements for the work and testimonials to its cost and quality, presumably to encourage subscribers to continue their subscriptions. Harris originally planned the work to span 2 volumes with 80 plates but only 1 volume with 40 plates was completed.
Wrappers of Part I
This photo shows the front wrapper from Part 1 of Harris’s The Fishes of North America That Are Captured on Hook and Line (1898). The wrappers for the first part were relatively plain, but later parts (such as Part III shown in this exhibition) featured a more decorative design. My copy of this work includes all 20 original parts in wrappers and is quite uncommon in this original state.