In 2022, the British Library obtained a collection of uncommon books and manuscripts from the Honresfield Library, initially collected by industrialist William Law (1836–1901). This assortment was bought by the Friends of the National Libraries and shared throughout numerous UK establishments. The Honresfield Library comprises a number of gadgets of great historic and literary significance.
The life and loss of life of Jenny Wren, for the usage of younger girls and gents, Hon.129.(12) Many chapbooks had been adorned with easy woodcuts, typically colored, both by the vendor or the proprietor.
Among the gadgets that had been allotted to the British Library are a group of curiously small volumes in uniform brown watered silk bindings with inexperienced backbone labels betraying their contents: “Chap Books”. This assortment contains of 764 particular person pamphlets, certain collectively in seventy components. The volumes are numbered on their spines, and counsel three distinct collection: 1-48, 1-19, and 4 un-numbered. This division is mirrored, and expounded, within the 1891 Sotheby gross sales catalogue itemizing them:
“48. Chap Books. A collection of numerous small popular work for children, with woodcuts arranged in 20 vol. uncut, v. y. – An extensive collection of chap-books, garlands, children’s books, &c. with woodcuts arranged in 49 vol. 12mo, uncut, v.y. – Manuscript catalogues of both series by W. Maskell. 70 vol.”[1]
Comparing the present British Library holdings with the 1891 catalogue entry reveals a number of discrepancies. Notably, one quantity is lacking from every numbered collection: neither no. 49 nor no. 20 function within the current British Library holdings. Furthermore, the remaining 4 unnumbered volumes will not be accounted for right here. However, merchandise 49 within the gross sales catalogue features a additional eight volumes of “Chap and Toy Books”, offered to Maggs, which can counsel the origin of those further 4 volumes.
The Sotheby entry additionally mentions a manuscript catalogue, which is dated 1872 and survives within the current assortment. It additional introduces us to the unique compiler of the gathering, the Rev. William Maskell (1814?-1890). Maskell was a liturgical scholar and collector who was within the behavior of build up collections of books and artistic endeavors and promoting them to public establishments[2]. The British Museum Library acquired a lot of liturgical works from Maskell inside his lifetime, with a serious portion of his assortment being offered to the Museum for £2,240 in 1847[3]. However, these chapbooks remained in Maskell’s non-public assortment till his loss of life in 1890 and had been offered by Sotheby within the following 12 months. Contemporary annotations within the gross sales catalogue counsel the volumes had been bought at public sale by Bain (presumably the London booksellers James Bain) and had been seemingly acquired by William Law not lengthy after this.
Manuscript catalogue of chapbooks, kids’s books, garlands; &c. &c., Hon.112.(1) William Maskell stored an in depth manuscript catalogue of his chapbook assortment. The catalogue is organised alphabetically, with entries referring to the numbers which will be discovered on the spines of the certain volumes. For every entry, Maskell offers the amount quantity, quick title, format, place and 12 months of publication (the place out there).
The gross sales catalogue additionally attests to the spectacular scale of the gathering: “so complete a collection of chap-books would occupy many years even if possible to procure them in the different towns of England and Scotland in which they were printed.” The assortment represents examples of printing from 53 totally different cities and cities in England, Scotland and Ireland, spanning c.1770-1865. These imprints embrace the names of printers whose physique of labor is basically absent from analysis library catalogues.
The misfortunes of a nasty boy, Hon.134.(5) Some chapmen, akin to W. Davison of Alnwick, produced a number of collection of well-liked tales to be collected. This printing of The misfortunes of a nasty boy was no. 21 in a collection of halfpenny chapbooks produced by Davison within the early nineteenth century.
The assortment additionally varies enormously within the nature of its content material. ‘Chapbook’ is an infamously slippery time period used to explain abridgements, alphabets, ballads, cries, dreadfuls, fables, garlands, histories, rhymes, songsters and morals, amongst different issues. Their bodily look and low-cost, typically crude, manufacturing are additionally defining marks. Chapbooks of this era had been typically illustrated with woodcut blocks, which had been sometimes re-used throughout publications, typically even being shared by totally different printers[4]. The indeterminate standing of the chapbook is properly illustrated by the sheer number of dimension, form, theme, and tone of the pamphlets represented in Maskell’s assortment. Most of the gathering is in remarkably pristine situation, with solely a small choice bearing markings of former house owners[5]. Some volumes embrace pencil inscriptions, presumably by William Law, typically commenting on their contents. In addition, there’s one chapbook titled, “A pleasant and delightful dialogue between honest John and loving Kate. Part the first.” (1791) which has been loosely inserted alongside a replica of the second a part of the identical story[6]. This title doesn’t seem within the 1872 manuscript catalogue.
The great benefits of drunkenness; to which is added, Protest towards whisky, Hon.163.(11) Chapbooks had been produced on numerous topics, from well-liked kids’s tales, to extra critical ethical works. This early nineteenth century Scottish chapbook was a pamphlet decrying the risks of extreme ingesting.
The Maskell assortment offers a helpful useful resource for research into the manufacturing of British and Irish chapbooks within the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It can be an attention-grabbing instance of chapbooks being collected, somewhat than used, and offers the chance for additional research of Maskell and Law as collectors of low-cost printed supplies. This assortment enhances substantial holdings of chapbooks and low-cost print already within the British Library collections. The Maskell assortment has been totally catalogued on-line and will be discovered inside shelfmark vary Hon.112.(1) – Hon.183.(14).
[1] Sotheby’s, Sales Catalogue for the Late William Maskell, 26 February 1891.
[2] de Ricci, S.M.R.R., English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts 1530-1930 and Their Marks of Ownership, 1930, p.143.
[3] Harris, P. R. “The development of the collections of the Department of Printed Books, 1846-1875.” The British Library Journal 10, no. 2 (1984): 114–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42554204.
[4] Dutta, A., Bergel, G., and Zisserman, A., ‘Visual Analysis of Chapbooks Printed in Scotland’. In The sixth International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing (HIP ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, (2021) 67–72. https://doi.org/10.1145/3476887.3476893
[5] See Hon.119.(2), Hon.121.(8), Hon.124.(4), Hon.129.(5), Hon.129.(11), Hon.129.(12), Hon.138.(4), Hon.138.(5), Hon.140.(6) and Hon.169.(6).
[6] See Hon.156.(6).