Books of Scraps

John Bagford, "Of Booke Binding Ancient" and 'Of Booke Binding Modourne" -- illustrated with inserted bits of leather bindings, specimens of title pages, alphabets, printers' and publishers' devices, maps, specimens of paper, many fragments are the only remaining of books destroyed; other scrapbooks concerning manuscripts by Bagford

Kitto's Bible, extra-illustrated with 30,000 prints, now at the Huntington: http://catalog.huntington.org/record=b1606678~S0

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps

Add MS 65170 at British Library; "CHARLES BURNEY COLLECTION. Vol. IX. Sophocles: Testimonia and fragments, extracted from Brunck's edition; 1788, 1789. Printed extracts pasted into a book and lightly annotated. ff. i+277. 242 x 195mm.Richard Franz Philipp Brunck: Sophocles: Testimoni." Creation Date: 1788-1789. See http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/TourBurnMembra.asp

• both Halliwell-Phillips and Charles Burney were book thiefs

early modern printed fragments used to make limp binding at Add MS 57337*, BL

Alexander Shaw, 18th-century catalogue of tapas cloth containing letterpress-printed pages, followed by cloth samples: https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/alexander-shaws-curious-cloth-catalogue/

Otto Frederick Ege, collection at the Reinecke -- broke apart early modern and medieval books and manuscripts to sell the leaves: http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/press/2015/11/yales-beinecke-library-acquires-trove-of-medieval-manuscripts-that-belonged-to-noted-book-breaker.phtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InThePress-FBC+%28In+The+Press+-+Fine+Books+%26+Collections%29; see his essay "I am a biblioclast," Avocations (March 1938)

Philip Hanrott, allowed his three children to cut out decorative elements in medieval manuscripts and paste them into scrapbooks; see Rickert, Reconstructed Carmelite Missal

John Bagford

Bagford's Notes on Bookbinding, by Cyril Davenport

Wanley describes Bagford's collection in Philosophical Transactions; later by A. W. Pollard

1707, Bagford attempts to secure subscriptions to his history of printing (with help of Sloane and Wanley); outline of project printed in Philosophical Transactions 1706-7 and in "Proposals for printing an historical account of that most universally celebrated, as well as useful art of typography," a pamphlet to attract subscribers with life of Caxton attached

"Of booke binding ancient" (Harl. 5910 f 131 a) -- vellum rolls and waxen diptychs; boards, pasteboards, boards made of old ropes, and sewing and headbandings; chained books are condemned

"Of Booke binding modourne" - explains processes of collating, folding, beating the leaves, ruling the books with red; at beginning of Harl 5943 are 20 pgs of thick blue paper, pasted with various speciens of bindings and MS notes; Bagford's handwritten notes on pg 8-9; "some [bindings] may have been added since, but none have been taken away" (126)

John Bagford and His Collections, by W. Y. Fletcher

Bagford -- brought up as a shoemaker; believed to have written "Art of Shoemaking and Historicall Account of Clouthing of ye foot," Harley manuscripts

employed by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Sir Hans Sloane, and John Moore, Bishop of Ely

participated in 1707 in founding of Society of Antiquaries

amassed two great collections: ballads (Bagford Ballads), and collection of title pages, fragments of books, specimens of paper, catalogues, book-plates, drawing, engravings, bindings, advertisements, and various interesting and curious pieces"

was going to write a history of printing; 1707, published "Proposals for printing an Historical Account of that most universally celebrated, as well as useful Art of Typography

this proposal is printed on a half-sheet, with a Life of William Caxton, first printer in the Abbey of Westminster and a list of his books

John Bagford, Bookseller and Antiquary, by Milton McC. Gatch

19c saw Bagford as a biblioclast, "yet balanced scholarship in the present century has found Bagford to be a credible dealer and collector, despite his manifest shortcomings" (150)

despite Dibdin's believe the Wanley must have edited Bagford's proposal for a history of printing, surviving evidence shows that "Bagford was very much in control of the composition and development of this descriptive advertisement for and sample of the history of printing" (161)

Gatch identifies mss of "Proposal"

"Despite all this evidence, it is difficult for a modern scholar to believe that Bagford could ever have produced a satisfactory history of the very difficult subject of the technology and bibliography of printing. Yet it is necessary to respect the opinion of contemporaries of the magnitude of Hearne, Sloane, and Wanley that the collection was an important one and that Bagford himself, despite his manifest limitations, was an impressive and learned figure." (161)

seems strange today to have title-pages as primary source for Bagford's research; but "it should be recalled that B's title-page collection contained some 3,600 items printed in English alone. Of these some 800 items -- 544 of them printed before 1701 -- are not recorded in the short-title catalogues" (164)

autograph memorandum from Bagford on history of printed editions of Chaucer's works; helped stimulate Urry's edition of 1721