Bookbindings Old and New; Notes of a Book-Lover, with an Account of the Grolier Club of New York (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1895. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... BOOKS IN PAPER-COVERS. I. THE SUMMER CLOTHES OF FICTION. When the soliloquizer in the Spanish Cloister wished to consign Brother Laurence, his soul's abhorrence, to sudden and certain damnation, he determined to place within his enemy's reach his "scrofulous French novel," to look at which is the ruin of the soul. Although the poet does not so declare it in as many words, I have always believed that this scrofulous French novel was loosely clad in a cover of yellow paper, flimsy beyond question, and as easily destroyable as the soul of Brother Laurence. Whether it be due to the French fiction which the British bard declared to be afflicted with the king's evil, or whether it be due to our American stories, sentimental and adventurous, of the kind familiar since the war as "dime novels," or whether it be due to some more recondite cause, there is no denying the fact that "yellow-covered literature" is not in good odour with book-lovers. Even the collector who nowadays despises nothing, be it never so humble, treats with contempt volumes stitched into paper-covers -- mere brochures, as the French call them. So far as I know, not any book-lover is now gathering the books of all sorts which go forth, to swift oblivion guarded against hard usage only by a wrapper of paper. There are collectors of book-plates, of postagestamps, of pictorial posters, but I have never heard of a collector of paper-covers. And yet, as the paper-cover must needs be the work of a typographer or of a colour-printer, of a lithographer or of a designer in black and white, there seems to be no reason why it should be scorned when all else is cherished. The reasons for this neglect are not easy to declare when we consider the many wrappers prepared for magazines, for catalogues, for novels, and...