Wilkie Collins in Smith, Elder Boards 1865–66

In the mid 1860s the firm Smith, Elder published novels by Wilkie Collins (including The Woman in White) in a distinctive uniform binding aimed at the railway bookstalls. The binding is in a very unusual style for its time but has apparently escaped (in print at least) any detailed description or special notice hitherto, and indeed it may have avoided oblivion only by virtue of three examples held in the United States. Full details of this binding and its background are now given below, with a checklist of applicable Collins items. A feature of the checklist is the incorporation of figures from the Smith, Elder records. An afterword surveys the bookstall dress adopted for works of Collins (and others) by Smith, Elder from 1869 and by Chatto & Windus from 1877, with a comparison of the two firms as publishers of railway fiction.

In the summer of 1865 Smith, Elder acquired from Sampson Low the copyrights (and stock in hand) of seven Wilkie Collins novels.¹ Smith, Elder probably thought of adding these titles to their Cheap Editions of Standard Works series; this originated in 1857 with Jane Eyre and already included Collins’s After Dark, which was added in 1859.² Volumes in the series were bound in smooth cloth (usually orange) printed in black from type or stereotype, and were mostly priced at 2s.6d. each; the front cover featured a representation (reset) of the title page, in an added triple-rule frame with an ornament at the corners and “PRICE HALF-A-CROWN” between the bottom inner rules, and was clearly intended for bookstall display.³ By 1865, however, a binding of pictorial boards with images derived from the text had become an established dress for cheap one-volume impressions of successful novels (railway fiction).⁴ These were printed in color on the front cover and spine from woodblocks and furnished all over with a colored ground (usually a shade of yellow).⁵ Volumes in this style were mostly priced at 2s. each.⁶ Sampson Low himself, prior to parting with the copyrights, had accorded this style to The Woman in White in 1864 and to The Queen of Hearts and Antonina in 1865, though his price per volume was 2s.6d.⁷ Smith, Elder had in fact made no additions to their printed cloth series since the beginning of 1864,⁸ but they had not yet ventured into pictorial boards. A further option was the 1s. paperback, and in 1865 Smith, Elder themselves were publishing a Monthly Volume of Standard Authors series at 1s. (originally the Shilling Series of Standard Works of Fiction) in text-derived pictorial wrappers printed in black on orange.⁹ But this venture seems to have been geared for the shorter novel,¹⁰ and none of the contributing authors (except perhaps George Meredith) stood in the same rank as Collins.

Nevertheless there must have been considerable surprise around the bookstalls when, in the autumn of 1865, Collins volumes began appearing from Smith, Elder at 2s.6d. in a binding of decorated boards printed in black on brownish red. There seem to be no published details of this binding so far available. Identically on both covers¹¹ a wide rectangular ornamental frame encloses the title and author lettered in black (slightly ornamented roman caps, with outlining in main words of title); the frame, which contains criss-cross and foliage work and has a four-petal design in each corner,¹² incorporates the price (“HALF A CROWN”) at the top and the publishers at the bottom lettered in brownish red (sans serif roman caps formed by unprinted ground); the panel carrying the title and author has a spray ornament in each corner, a small five-point star above the title, a swelled rule between title and author, and a triple-loop ornament below the author. On the spine the decoration consists of interlinked oval, rectangular, and triangular designs; and the lettering (style as covers, according to color) comprises the title in black, the author in brownish red, and at the foot, below the price...