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BIBLE. - The Holy Bible Containing the Old Testament and the New, Newly translated out of the Original Tongues and with the former Translations diligently Compared and Revised. By His Majesties Command. Appointed to be Read in Churches.
London: Printed by the Assigns of J. Bill and Chr. Barker..., 1674. Thick 24mo, 113 x 58 x 48, unpaginated, collating [pi] A12 - 3D12, with engraved portrait of Charles II, engraved title-page and engraved "History of the Old and New Testament in Cutts," separate title-page for the New Testament, dated 1673, with 105 engraved leaves, 16 of which have only a single figure, while the remainder have two images on each leaf (engravings not included in collation. BOUND WITH: The Whole Book of Psalms.... London: Printed for the Company of Stationers, 1672., 12mo, unpaginated, collating A12 - D12. 2 volumes bound in 1 in the style of Queen's Binder "B," in dark red morocco, with scrolls, flourishes, and floral decorations, both on covers ad spine; one plate defective and crudely repaired, second engraved title-page almost detached at inner margin and one leaf of plates is detached at inner margin, two leaves stained, lacks clasps, but a rather good copy of this uncommon edition of the Bible, probably bound by Queen's Binder "B," and with 18th century ownership inscriptions: "W: M: Stawell," "Ellen/ Badcock/ July [the] 2th her book/ 1762" on front end-papers; on verso of leaf preceding port, "Elizabeth Prance" and various initials, and on verso of leaf preceding separate title-page for the New Testament, "Eliz. Badcock/ her book given/ to her by her Mother/ Elizd. Badcock/ Aug. 17[?37]." In her Studies in the History of Bookbinding (1993), Mirjam Foot explains that "[t]he vast majority of decorated bindings made all over Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were produced by anonymous craftsmen, and it is rare to find a signed binding of this period or to be able to link a name, known from archival sources, with an actual product. Historians have been compelled to distinguish groups of bindings by the tools that were used to decorate them and by combinations of tools, in order to establish workshops which could then be given a nickname. It is not until the eighteenth century that we can begin to attribute bindings on any scale and with any confidence to real, identifiable people" (p. 177). The binder or "finisher" who did the elaborate decoration on the covers and spine of this bible from the early 1670s may be previously unknown, though the work does show marked similarities with that of the Devotional Binder of the Restoration Period. For many years the so-called Devotional Binder has remained just such an anonymous craftsman as Foot describes above. His work was first identified, and given this nickname, by G. D. Hobson in his survey, Bindings in Cambridge Libraries, published by Cambridge University Press in 1929. Harold M. Nixon then expanded on Hobson's work on the Devotional Binder, giving characterizations and generous illustration of his work in his trailblazing English Restoration Bookbindings: Samuel Mearne and His Contemporaries (1974) (p. 38, plates 85-87). The last four decades of the seventeenth century have long been seen as the golden age of English bookbinding (Nixon, p. 7). The Devotional Binder in particular has been widely admired, being called, for instance, "certainly one of the most accomplished craftsmen working in the reign of Charles II" (Catalogue of the Second Portion of the Famous Library, Principally of Fine Bindings, Rare Engravings, Illustrated Books, and French Literature, Formed by the Late Mortimer L. Schiff, Sotheby's, New York, 1938, item no. 586, p. 158). As to the location, career, and artistry of the Devotional Binder, Nixon writes: "This shop, which possessed an excellent finisher, was active between 1675 and 1685. Hobson suggested it might have been in Oxford, but it now seems more probable that it was in London" (p. 38). The surfacing of the bible on offer is significant for several reasons, though the most outstanding, apart from the binding's intrinsic beauty, is the fact that the binding is clearly signed: in the second and fourth compartments of the spine there are the minute, though wholly legible, initials "E F" in gilt (as shown in the illustrations attached). Nearly all of the acclaimed "nicknamed" binders of the Restoration Era -- the Naval Binder, the Geometrical Compartment Binder, the Devotional Binder, and the Queens' Binders, for instance -- have tenaciously resisted identification for many decades. One conspicuous exception to this rule, however, is the discovery made by Harold Nixon in 1974: he realised an entry in Pepys's diary can be taken to suggest the binder called "Queens' Binder A" was quite possibly William Nott, the well-known London bookseller (Nixon, pp. 33-34). More specifically, Nixon suggests the bookseller William Nott might well have "owned the workshop of Queens' Binder A" (p. 34). But who is the "E F" on the spine of the bible at hand? It is natural to wonder if the initials stand for the binder -- i.e. the "finisher" -- working at the bench, or rather for the stationer in whose shop he or she worked. The latter may be more likely. Surprisingly, Ellic Howe in A List of London Bookbinders, 1648-1815 (1950) has no entry for any binder with a forename beginning with an "E" and a surname beginning with an "F". Casting the net wider for known members or associates of the book trade in the Restoration Period who had the initials E. F. yields a short list of names. These include Edward Farnham, Elizabeth Fenn, Elizabeth Flesher or Fletcher, Emmanuel Ford, Elinor Foster, Edward Forrest the elder, Edward Forrest the younger, and Edward Fowkes or Foulkes. Upon examination, none of these figures stand out as a particularly plausible match except one: Elizabeth Flesher or Fletcher (the two spellings of the surname being widely interchangeable at this time). She was the widow of James Flesher or Fletcher, who died on December 30 in 1670. She continued his business after his death. Harold Nixon observed in 1974 that two shops thought to have done or overseen some of the great bindings of the era were substantial outfits -- those owned by Samuel Mearne and William Nott -- each man being an "important figure in the book trade" (Nixon, p. 34). James Flesher, too, had prominence in the trade. His shop was one of the largest in the kingdom, according to a survey done in 1668, having five presses, two apprentices, and thirteen workmen (Henry R. Plomer, A Short History of English Printing, 1900, p. 225). Both James and Elizabeth Flesher came from bookselling families of high repute. James's father was Miles Flesher or Fletcher, who was Master of the Company of Stationers for several years -- 1652, 1653, 1662, and 1663. Elizabeth's father was the prominent London bookseller Cornelius Bee, who collaborated with Miles more than once. Considerably later, it seems, Elizabeth's stepson Miles Flesher the younger may have been the man of that name who printed, in 1688, the great folio edition of Milton's Paradise Lost. The Fleshers were a dynasty in the London book trade that spanned most of the century. Further, in his Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers Who were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1669 to 1725 (1922), Henry Plomer lists one and only one figure working under the initials "E. F." He conjectures that "[t]hese initials may be those of the widow of James Fletcher or Flesher the printer (died 1670), who was still in business in 1675" (pp. 113-4). Today the online ESTC confirms that multiple books whose imprints state they were "Printed by E. F." were indeed printed by Elizabeth Flesher. The ESTC often, within their transcriptions of title-pages, expands her initials from "E. F." to "E[lizabeth]. F[lesher]." Flesher's full name as "Elizabeth Flesher" and partial name as "Eliz. Flesher" also appear in the ESTC, the latter being found, in the imprint of a Latin work, as late as 1688 (ESTC R40235). If the career of the Devotional Binder spans at least the decade 1675-1685, as Nixon asserts, then the career of Elizabeth Flesher, comprising at least 1671-1688, makes them substantively contemporary. If the bible in question was bound by the Devotional Binder himself, this may be one of his or her earliest surviving works, as the publication dates of the items bound (1672-1674) allow for the possibility that the binding was done as early as 1674, one year prior to the range Nixon gives. Further connections can be found in a late work of Nixon's, his Five Centuries of English Bookbinding (1978), published five years before his death in 1983. In it, he finds several instances of a Flesher or Fletcher being the binder who created, or the shop that issued, some of the great bookbindings of the period, including an edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs sumptuously bound in 1660 to be presented by the Company of Stationers to Charles II (pp. 79-80). It was decided at the Court of the Stationers that this presentation volume to the king would be bound "by Mr Sam: Mearne a member of this Company", though records show that payment was actually made, months later, to "Mr Flesher for bindeing the B. Martyrs for ye King" (p. 79). Ultimately Nixon suggests that in this period there is a discernible "Fletcher or Flesher group" of bindings, with numerous tools in common, though he is uncertain of the forename of this Fletcher or Flesher (p. 82). He then turns to, and illustrates, a striking example from this group of bindings: the lavishly decorated copy of the two-volume Workes of King Charles the Martyr (1662) held by the British Library at shelfmark 195.g.3. He considers the possibility that the binders were the brothers Robert and John Fletcher, but finds Robert not to have been active after 1659, thereby settling on John as more likely the one responsible (p. 82). To his credit, Nixon is circumspect at this juncture, and does not insist that John Fletcher was certainly the binder of that copy of Workes (1662). Strikingly, Nixon also notes that it was a "James Flesher" who printed the two-volume Workes (1662), but Nixon seems not to take him seriously as a candidate for being the binder of the copy in question, since "there is no evidence that he had binders working in his shop" (p. 82). Now, with the discovery of the "E F" binding, there is, at the very least, evidence that the shop Elizabeth Flesher inherited from her husband James Flesher did indeed create or commission bindings in the late seventeenth century. In Nixon's narrative, as he writes further about the bindings of the 1660s, there is one additional detail that may be an important clue, though he mentions it only in passing: he mentions a binding that was "lot 230 at Sotheby's on 20 June 1960, tentatively attributed to Fletcher on the evidence of the initials 'IF' which appeared to have been added to the second panel of the book some time after the book was bound" (p. 84). The capital letter "I" could stand for a "J" or an "I", according to the conventions of the era. Plomer's dictionaries of printers and booksellers for this period, and several other standard sources checked, give no figure named Fletcher or Flesher whose forename begins with an "I", leaving "J." as the more probable fit. It may be no coincidence that among the very few signed bindings of this time there appear (1) the initials "IF" on a book bound circa 1660s, and then (2) a book bound later, likely in the mid to late 1670s, whose binding is signed with the initials "E F", and that these pairs of initials exactly match the time periods in which a single shop, one of the largest in the nation, was headed by James Flesher and then Elizabeth Flesher. There is also the fact of geography. It was difficult to move quickly in the seventeenth century, even across a single city. Proximity meant then more than it does now. Though there is an entry for John Fletcher in the online British Book Trade Index, no address is given for him. Nor does Nixon give an address. In his dictionaries of figures in the trade, Plomer does not have an entry for any man named John Fletcher. There is, however, well-attested evidence as to the addresses of the shop of Samuel Mearne and the shop headed successively by James Flesher and Elizabeth Flesher. They were neighbours. Both shops were in the small neighourhood of Little Britain in London. The location even appears in the imprint of the second title-page of the volume on offer (spelled as "Litle Britain"). Samuel Mearne could have walked a few yards to James Flesher's shop to discuss binding the Book of Martyrs for the king. The clues provided by the volume on offer, seen in historical context, suggest that a good number of the most impressive bookbindings of this period might well have come from not the obscure figure John Fletcher but instead from the shop of -- or otherwise made at the direction of -- James Flesher and Elizabeth Flesher of Little Britain, two of the most active and substantial stationers of their time. There is, however, one other piece of evidence to consider, but it is uncomfortably complex. A man named John Fletcher appears in a published list of 82 bookbinders dating to 1669 (ESTC R224334). The list is given in full by Mirjam Foot in her Studies in the History of Bookbinding (p. 46). No other Fletcher or Flesher appears in that list. The only bookbinder in the list whose forename begins with a "J" and surname begins with an "F" is John Fletcher. A "Samuel Mearn" appears in the list, but William Nott does not, though Nott is believed to have been active at the time, and to have lived till the early 1690s. (Pepys refers to Nott as "the famous bookbinder" in his diary entry of March 12, 1668/9. Why, then, is Nott absent from the 1669 list of bookbinders?) No person matching the initials "E F" appears in the list, though this is unsurprising if "E F" stands for Elizabeth Flesher, since she apparently rose to prominence in the book trade only some months later, after her husband's death in 1670. Perhaps the single most satisfying possibility is this. It is not hard to imagine that John Fletcher and James Flesher or Fletcher were relatives, and also bibliopolic colleagues. John Fletcher may indeed have been one of the finest bookbinders of the era, and James Flesher and Elizabeth Flesher may themselves have been two of the finest bookbinders of the time; but perhaps John was a bookbinder in the sense of being a finisher, the artisan who decorated the bindings with his own hands in the workshop, whereas James and Elizabeth were bookbinders in the sense of being the stationers who owned the workshop in which binding was done and gave directions to the finishers -- e.g., the king's arms in the centre of the upper cover, please, offset by much gilt foliage at the corners. If so, then the volume at hand is a precious clue which, when followed up, points to one of the great collaborations of the golden age of English bookbinding. Darlow & Moule (Rev. 1968), 715. ESTC R170541 locates copies in BL, British and Foreign Bible Society; Chicago and South Carolina. OCLC adds National Library of Ireland, Morgan, NYPL, and Dalhousie
GBP 8250.00 [Appr.: EURO 9642.75 US$ 10342.86 | JP¥ 1622045] Booknumber: 9362
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GBP 8250.00 [Appr.: EURO 9642.75 US$ 10342.86 | JP¥ 1622045] Booknumber: 9362
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Total: GBP 8250.00 [Appr.: EURO 9642.75 US$ 10342.86 | JP¥ 1622045]
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