Labelled With Love

When fetching, shelving or shifting books in the stacks, the keen-eyed stack sleuth's attention is occasionally caught by the bookplates attached to the boards of the inner covers. These can offer valuable clues as to the history of the book in question and of the collection as a whole. The pre-stack shelf life of particular volumes, as it were. The above plate bears testament to the fact that Exeter's first public library (as opposed to the Devon and Exeter Institute library, which required an annual subscription for access) was a part of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (now popularly referred to by its dynamic acronym RAMM). The foundation date on the plate, designed by GP Denham, is 1869, a year after the museum itself was opened. The library existed alongside the museum collection and lectures, classes and courses in art and science. These would form the nascent seeds for the future establishment of the University of Exeter.   

The library collection fairly swiftly began to outgrow the space limitations of a building with such multiple functions. By the early twentieth century, plans began to be mooted for a dedicated library building. These were given a boost by the promise of a substantial grant from the Carnegie Trust. Andrew Carnegie was a Scotsman who made a vast fortune in America from the steel industry. He ploughed significant funds into the establishment of libraries both in the US and in Britain, beginning in Pittsburgh, one of the major centres of his steel empire. He was one of a number of Victorian and Edwardian philanthropists who played a key role in the foundation of a public library system. Another was Cornishman John Passmore Edwards, who made his fortune in the newspaper business and used some of his wealth to build libraries. This included nine in Cornwall plus the Passmore Edwards library in Newton Abbot (now the Passmore Edwards Centre). Administrative faffing meant that the actual opening of a new library building wouldn't happen until October 1930, however. This was the premises which, once the current library was opened in 1965, housed the local studies library and then the registry office. It's now student flats, confusingly named Library Lofts. The bookplate on these rather splendidly psychedelic boards makes no reference to RAMM, and the lettering is fin-de-siecle art nouveau in style, which suggets it dates from this period.

One bookplate which turns up on quite a few books in the stacks is this one for Torquay library, opened, as a humbly discreet date beneath the crest indicates, in 1907. As the banner script proclaims, this was another library which benefitted from the philanthropically minded Mr Carnegie's munificence. This library was a particularly grand building, a baroque palace of books. In 1933, it was decided by the council to move the library to a new site, and a building was duly built and opened in 1938 (said council moving into the old site). Perhaps it was at this time that a number of the books migrated. 

Some books have come into the collection from other country libraries, such as this copy of Somerset Maugham's Books and You. This was published in 1940, and the Shropshire bookplate, designed by KH Pullan, certainly shows the influence of 30s modernism in its design. This is somewhat at odds with the traditional county crest, which is reluctantly retained but shoved into the top left corner. 

Some people wish their donations to be recognised, achieving an immortality of sorts. Mr Carnegie's name can still be seen above many of the library buildings he endowed, carved in stone and abiding down the years. Other people simply add their name to a bookplate to acknowledge their literary bequest. It seems that there was a variant of the Exeter City Library bookplate designed for just such a purpose. It was used in the example depicted above by a Miss A.Ruth Fry. Thankyou, Miss Fry. Others designed their own personalised bookplates to mark their donations. Such was the case with J Brooking Rowe of Plympton who, in 1908, bequeathed his copy of an 1868 reprint of Roger Ascham's 1545 treatise Toxophilus; the first guide to the techniques of longbow archery, apparently. It occupies the strange borderland of the late 700s in the Dewey Decimal system, an area where books on shooting and fishing abut musings on poetry in the beginnings of the literary 800s.

One major bequest of books is kept in the hallowed environs of the special collections 'cage'. These are the glorious Kelmscott Press books produced in the 1890s by William Morris and his small band of arts and crafts cohorts. A small pasted in label at the top of the inside cover of a copy of The Well At the World's End by Morris himself indicates that these were given by Mrs William Morris in memory of her husband. This would by Jane Morris (Janey to William and close friends), the model for so many pre-Raphaelite and symbolist paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (to whom she was particularly close). This copy also has a poem by Walter Crane pasted into the cover, which again sounds a valedictory note. Crane was another friend, an arts and crafts artist, writer and illustrator and a fellow socialist. A recent visit by the author of these words to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow affirmed that Jane donated a number of copies of Kelmscott Press books to public libraries across the country after William's death. We shall definitely return to these wonderful books (which are works of art in themselves) at a later date. 

Some books evidently come from personal collections, with touchingly personal bookplates serving as inadvertent memorials to their previous owners. William Maxwell's, affixed within a novel by RA Delafield, is a lovely woodcut design. The 'maccus well' pun is a nice play on his surname and suggests he is of northern origin. Sophy Edmonds' (?) plate, included in a book of Sappho poems, commemorates what was evidently a much-loved white mog. Cats and books somehow go together just perfectly (or should that be purrfectly).

Some books are scarred with the notorious library perforation punch. I recall from an old RAMM exhibition that this even extends to some Constable prints. J Brooking Rowe's Toxophilus volume is thus marked (and marred) as are, shockingly enough, some of the Kelmscott Press books. Tut tut!

Finally, some of the books still have their old issue cards in the little brown envelope pouches stuck in the inside cover, which hint at the history of their usage. In pre-computer days, these would be transferred to a similar envelope corresponding to the borrower, filed away in card index trays .The card above is for Joseph Conrad's Mirror of the Sea, and we can see that the first borrower was a Mrs Ibbensen, who took it out on what looks like the 21st November 1930 and returned it on the 5th of December. I wonder whether she enjoyed it.