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The Victorian gift book was a major phenomenon in nineteenth-century publishing culture. Huge numbers were produced, usually copiously illustrated and bound in decorative cloth, often destined for the Christmas and New Year gift market. This is an excellent and representative collection, formed over many years, exhibiting a wide range of decorative styles ―usually with elaborate stamping in gilt, blind and black, onlays and inlays of contrasting cloth printed in a variety of techniques and gauffered edges. There are several examples of copies of the same edition in variant cloth colours. The work of Edmund King examining the Victorian decorated trade bindings 1830-1880 in the British Library (many from the unsurpassed collection of Robin de Beaumont) has highlighted their huge variety and identified a large number of artists and designers involved. King concentrated on attributable bindings and others with similar or striking designs and he identified key figures such as Henry Noel Humphreys, John Leighton and William Harry Rogers as major contributors. The present collection contains many examples noted by King, but also, rather more than half the total ‘not in King’, usually with unsigned bindings, but often as striking as King’s examples, which only serve to emphasise the variety of the material and the potential number of unnamed designers engaged in book production of the period.
Peter Rose (d. 2020) and Albert Gallichan (d. 2001) were pioneer Victorianists, beginning their collections of decorative arts in the 1950s and 60s when most antiques of this period were overlooked by serious collectors. They were founder members of the British Decorative Arts Society and inspired a generation of collectors. They bought pictures, ceramics, furniture over several decades and filled their large Brighton house in exuberant style. (it was featured in the September 2021 issue of The World of Interiors) exuberant style. Books were a backdrop in almost every room, with a large reference collection and another collection devoted to Victorian gift books, from which we have chosen the 100 best.
References are to Edmund M.B. King, Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003). Condition is generally good or better, with specific flaws noted. As usual, the covers and sides are in brighter condition than the exposed spines, which exhibit typical fading, darkening and sometimes chipping. Additional photographs can be supplied on request (pictures here are only roughly to scale). The collection occupies roughly ten linear feet (circa 3 metres). View the complete illustrated list at: https://www.justincroft.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/RG100.pdf

A spectacular separately-issued print in the style of a facsimile of an original medieval roll, listing the names of all those who crossed the Channel at the Norman Conquest a fought at the Battle of Hastings. Said to have been preserved in the later Battle Abbey, in fact no such single document existed r survived. Nonetheless the notion of a definitive list of the Norman conquerors was popular, not least among those seeking to trace direct lineage with the French medieval aristocracy. The print is undated but was advertised by Chatto and Windus in 1879.

First edition. The Gin Act (or ‘Tippling Act’) of 1751 was designed to reduce consumption of raw spirits — regarded by contemporaries as one of the main causes of crime in London. By prohibiting gin distillers from selling to unlicensed merchants and increasing fees charged to merchants, it eliminated small gin shops, thereby restricting the distribution of gin to larger distillers and retailers. It was widely supported, not least by William Hogarth, who issued his famous Beer Street and Gin Lane prints in the same year. ‘Hogarth's illustration of the evils of gin-drinking was published as a pair with ‘Beer Street’, as part of a campaign against the uncontrolled production and sale of cheap gin. It culminated in the Gin Act of 1751, through which the number of gin shops was greatly reduced’ (Tate Gallery).

Though separately published with a general title for a complete sitting of Parliament, individual Acts of Parliament were paginated to be bound together in yearly volumes hence the pagination 975-995 here. ESTC N52491 (NLS, New College Oxford, UCLA Clark and Kansas only, though copies are under-recorded since they are often catalogued within volumes and sets of the Acts of Parliament.).

First edition. A series of measures of prison reform at Winchester, resolved by the Justices of the Peace ‘for the prevention, as far as may be found practicable, of abuses and grievances of every description’ through a system of prison visiting by the Justices. The rules make provision for the appointment of a governor at an annual salary of £400 and outline a system of governance. Welfare is in the care of a chaplain and a surgeon (the latter also acting as apothecary); debtors are subject to a lighter regime than other prisoners (convicts, felons and ‘other criminals’). Nine articles are devoted particularly to women prisoners who are under the authority of a matron.

William Prowting (d. 1821) was a Winchester Justice of the Peace — a near neighbour and friend of Jane Austen’s family at Chawton. Austen mentions the Prowtings several times in her letters and it appears that the families visited each other frequently; she apparently sent a copy of the three volumes of Emma to William’s daughter, Catherine Anne in 1816 (Letters, 136). Jisc/LibraryHub lists the BL copy only, Worldcat adds copies at Cornell and Rutgers.

A superb survey of turn-of-the century British domestic architecture by an important French photographer who used cyanotype to notable effect. These examples of seaside ‘cottages’ in East Kent and Sussex depicts an array of then recently constructed high quality houses, a good number of which survive. Broadly within the Arts and Crafts tradition, the houses fuse a variety of older English vernacular styles with modern innovations, notably in the range of moulded and cut bricks and tiles.

Albert Lévy (1847-1931) was both a pioneering and prolific architectural photographer, unusual for his time in working on both sides of the Atlantic, with studios in Paris and New York. Characteristically, his collections were issued as cyanotypes printed directly from the original glass negatives. His collections included numerous sequences of French, British and American buildings of the Gilded Age, but are now very rare indeed. Jisc locates no UK copies. FirstSearch locates US copies at Columbia, Princeton and Lawrence Technological University only.

First edition. ‘During the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Jews had shown particular loyalty to the government. Their chief financier, Sampson Gideon, had strengthened the stock market, and several of the younger members had volunteered in the corps raised to defend London. Possibly as a reward, Henry Pelham in 1753 brought in the Jew Bill of 1753, which allowed Jews to become naturalised by application to Parliament. It passed the Lords without much opposition, but on being brought down to the House of Commons, the Tories made protest against what they deemed an “abandonment of Christianity.” The Whigs, however, persisted in carrying out at least one part of their general policy of religious toleration, and the bill was passed and received royal assent (26 Geo. II., cap. 26). The public reacted with an enormous outburst of antisemitism, and the Bill was repealed in the next sitting of Parliament, in 1754. (Wikipedia).

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘A Winter’s Tale’, Act IV, scene 3:

‘the fairest
flowers o' the season
Are our Carnations and streak’d Gillyflowers’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘As you like it’, Act II, Scene 7:

‘Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly.
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Richard III’, Act IV, scene 3:

‘Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which in their summer beauty kiss’d each other’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Henry V’, Act I, scene 1:

‘The Strawberry grows underneath the Nettle
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the Summer-Grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Henry V’, Act V, scene 2:

‘The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled Cowslip, Burnet and green Clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness and nothing teems
But hateful Docks, rough Thistles, Kecksies, Burs,
Losing both beauty and utility’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Hamlet’, Act IV, scene 7:

‘There is a Willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of Crow-flowers, Nettles, Daisies, and Long purples’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Primroses illustrating ‘Twelfth Night’, Act 3, scene 1:

‘Cesario, by the Roses of the Spring,
By maidenhood, honour, truth and every thing,
I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph, from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Twelfth Night’, Act I, scene 1:

‘That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of Violets,
Stealing and giving odour!’

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Titus Andronicus’ Act II, Scene 3:

‘The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with Moss and baleful Mistletoe...
But straight they told me they would bind me here
Unto the body of a dismal Yew,
And leave me to this miserable death’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating Ophelia’s ‘mad speech’ in Hamlet:

‘There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love,
remember. And there is Pansies, that’s for thoughts.
... There’s Fennel for you, and Columbines. There’s Rue for you,
and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays.
O, you must wear your Rue with a difference! There’s a Daisy. I
would give you some Violets, but they wither’d all when my father
died’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph, the title-page from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating roses, honeysuckle and thistles with the quotation:

‘And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything’ (’As You Like It’, Act II, scene 1, the Duke in the Forest of Arden).

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘The Winter’s Tale’:

‘Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; Violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale Primeroses...
... bold oxlips and
The Crown Imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The Flower-de-luce being one’.

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Illustrating ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Act II, scene 1 (she incorrectly gives ‘scene 2’), Titania’s speech:

The seasons alter; hoary headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the Crimson Rose,
And on old Hyems' chin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet Summer Buds
Is, as in mockery, set.’

An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

Honeysuckle illustrating ‘Much ado about Nothing’, Act III, scene 1, in Leonato’s garden:

‘Bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where Honeysuckles, ripen’d by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter, like favourites,
Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against that power that bred it.’