Alan Isaac Rare Books

 Welcome to Alan Isaac Rare Books

Spring is unquestionably with us – longer days and evenings offering ample time for reading, and searching bookshelves, prompting the discovery and realisation of gaps and spaces in collections and the desire to fill them with missing volumes or long wished for gems. To that end, we hope that our Spring Issue: Central & South Asia – Travel and Exploration will lend assistance.

Work has already begun on our Summer Issue, so watch out for our British Topography catalogue which will be uploaded in due course.

Our Legacy Press publication on Oxford’s printer and paper marbler, E.W. Morris, is now available and full details are set out below.

If you would like to place an order for an item in the Spring Issue or enquire about any of the books mentioned in the Spring Issue or below, please send an email to info@aibooks.co.uk.

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‘Morris Marbles’ Oxford’s Paper Marbler, Edward Webster Morris (1842–1919)

by Alan Isaac

When one sees a book covered in a particular paper, the question often arises: Who made that paper? This book helps us recognize certain kinds of marbled-paper decoration created by Edward Webster Morris (1842–1919), an Oxford printer. Morris was adept at the art of marbling, and, as Isaac shows, his papers were considered attractive by knowledgeable critics, contemporary and more recent, and his work was taken up by several well-known bookbinders at the time. One point worth repeating is that often scholarship about a phenomenon is published without any context. What Isaac has done in this book is to put Morris’ papers into the broader contexts of the publishing and the bookbinding worlds. Only by doing this could he interpret the evidence before him with some sense of authority and reliability. Why would Morris produce what he did? The answer lies in the publishing industry and the people inhabiting it – the people who would have used Morris’ papers, and those who would have promoted his work. Isaac’s research here is wide ranging and deep, and as a result, the volume is a substantial contribution to the world of decorated-paper scholarship.     — Sidney E. Berger, Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University

224 pages   •   92 images   •   full color   •   cloth, sewn

10 x 7 in.   •   9781940965215   •   £75.00  (UK carriage £3.50, Mainland Europe £7.50) •   2023

To order a copy please email Alan at info@aibooks.co.uk

 

The Bookbinder (as publisher) and the Humanist thinker

The Dutch lawyer, Hugo Grotius was an influential voice across many disciplines in the first half of the 17th century. An intellectual prodigy in his youth Grotius made formative contributions to the advancement of theology. Fiercely anti-Calvinist – he was arrested for that belief, only to escape imprisonment concealed in a chest – he left his mark on Arminian theology, and movements that were based upon it, such as Methodism.

In this little book (pictured below), ‘ Hugo Grotius’s Defence of Christian Religion.  Against Paganism, Judaism, Mahumetism.’ the author makes the case for theology founded upon the life of Jesus Christ. This is a scarce work, with institutional copies only existing in the collections of the university libraries of Oxford and Cambridge and in the British Library.

 

As the title page indicates the work was ‘newly collected and translated by C. B’. Cambridge University Library attribute their copy to Clement Barksdale (1609 – 1687) an Anglican priest and writer, among whose published works was a Life of Grotius of 1652. Although it cannot be said with certainty it would seem like that he was related to the binder, John Barksdale.  This is a rare example of the binder being named on the title page, it reading ‘Printed for John Barksdale Book-binder next door to the Five Bells in New Street (London) 1678’

I acquired this book disbound and have replaced the spine, but retained the original boards, albeit that they show wear.

CONDITION:- Lacking rfep, Text age toned. Boards rubbed. Re-spined in dark brown sheep.    Size: 14cms, [4], 95, [3], errata [1]. Dark brown sheep.    £325