the book collector
the imitation book backs. His ‘entertaining’ list included Drowsy’s Recollections of Nothing , Heavyside’s Conversations with Nobody, Lady Godiva on the Horse and The Quarrelly Review . 22 Occasionally, the choice of spine titles can prove historically significant, as well as humorous. Dummy book blocks in the li- brary commissioned by John Brownlow, 1st Viscount Tyrconnel (1690–1754) at Belton House contain the usual humorous asides ( Paradise Improv’d , Wooden Lectures , Leath’r Works ), and also a clue as to the craftsman’s identity. The punning titles were in place at Belton by the 1740s, when they were commented on by Simon Yorke of Erddig (1696–1767). 23 Two entries stand out amongst the puns and the titles of real works: Bower’s Works and Wightman’s Works . The former links the false books with the work of a binder who, although unknown in the literature, was demonstrably binding books for the family at Belton in the early eighteenth cen- tury. Seven bindings survive at Belton executed for Tyrconnel, on books dated between 1684 and 1728, with one further in another collection, which are stamped with the binder’s mark of ‘Bower’, 24 whilst the reference to Wightman might refer to the Grantchester bookseller Thomas Wightman. 25 It would appear that both left their subtle mark on the false spines at Belton, and if the dates of publication of the books bound by Bower are any indication, sug- gest a date of c.1730 for the false spines. At Mount Stewart House in Northern Ireland survives an ex- 22 . C. Dickens, The Letters of Charles Dickens (London: Chapman and Hall, 1880), vol. 1, pp. 265–66. 23 . See R. Watson, ‘Some Non-textual Uses of Books’, in S. Eliot and J. Rose, eds., A Companion to the History of the Book (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), p. 489. 24 . See books listed in the National Trust Collections Database at NT 3003704, NT 3019743, NT 3019820, NT 3021458, NT 3021459, NT 3023382 and NT 3020793. A copy of the third issue of John Ogilby’s Britannia Depicta , dated on the engraved title page as 1720, but actually produced in 1723 (ESTC N471357), recently discovered at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery in the Hart Collection (HART.13794), is in a Bower binding and is signed: Eliz: Tyrconnel. This identifies it as a book owned by Elizabeth Cartwright (d. 1780), the second wife of Sir John Brownlowe, Viscount Tyrconnel (1690–1754), later passed by her to her Cartwright relations, first Anne Cartwright in 1780, then Frances Cartwright in 1804. 25 . Ex inf . Peter Hoare. See H. R. Plomer, G. H. Bushnell and E. R. McC. Dix, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England Scotland and Ireland from 1726 to 1775 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1932), p. 262.
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