Trade Bookbinding in the British Isles: 1660–1800 by Stuart Bennett (review)

171 Hume of those in the Scottish Shaftesburian tradition insisted on ‘‘an experimental theory of morals based solely on experience and observation of human behaviour .’’ Morality did not seem arduous to Hume. In a world full of ‘‘ill and disorder ,’’ divine benevolence was more incredible than man’s ‘‘misery and wickedness ,’’ founded in ‘‘universal human nature’’ rather than ‘‘original sin.’’ For Hume, virtue consisted in what is pleasant and useful to ourselves and others, vice in the opposite—the disagreeable and harmful that we agree to condemn, and may disagree about. Others adopted more Lockean and more demanding accounts of virtue. For Butler rationality was ‘‘the discernment of what is right, and a disposition to regulate ourselves by it,’’ so vice became irrational. Reid insisted that ‘‘allviceiscontrarytoreason.’’ Although the closeness of the argument is admirable and sometimes thrilling , its hermeticism can mislead. For example , Samuel Clarke is credited with observing in 1706 that natural religion supposes revealed religion, but Dryden had versified that point twenty-four years earlier, ‘‘‘Tis revelation what thou think’st discourse’’(Religio Laici, 1682). Nor does anyone seem to adopt a position as daring as that Pope posits in The Dunciad , ‘‘Make God Man’s Image, Man the final cause.’’ No one is better qualified than Ms. Rivers to explicate that line, and perhaps she will some day. Regina Janes Skidmore College STUART BENNETT. Trade Bookbinding in the British Isles: 1660–1800. New Castle , Delaware and London: OakKnolland The British Library, 2004. Pp. 176. $85. This elegant, profusely illustrated study makes its primary point in the Introduction and demonstrates it with absolute clarity and certainty in subsequent chapters: the notion that most eighteenthcentury books were sold unbound (loose quires, stitched, or in wrappers) so that purchasers could have them privately bound is untrue. This misconception appears to have originated in Michael Sadleir ’s The Evolution of Publishers’Binding Styles (1930) and was subsequently taken as fact, despite what appears to be overwhelming evidence that more than eighty percent of books sold in the century were bound ‘‘for booksellersintrade bindings either before wholesale distribution or retail sale.’’ While the range of such bindings covered a broad spectrum in materials and cost, Mr. Bennett’s primary point, that printers and publishers wereheavily involvedinthebindingbusiness , offers yet another avenue of approach to the book-selling trade during the century, and particularly to the operations of major publishing syndicates. Mr. Bennett provides rich documentary evidence to support his claim, both in the five chapters that constitute his argument , in the hundreds of illustrations that accompany them (hardly a point is made in the text that is not supported by a figure), and in their very extensive and useful legends as well. The extraordinary effort that went into this study is suggested by the many libraries offering examples , and it is noteworthy that most of the examples are literary—Bunyan, Dryden , Pope, Swift, Manly, Parnell, Prior, Fielding, and Sterne, are all represented in the first 50 pages alone. Moreover, for those of us who have puzzled over arcane catalogue terms such as ‘‘tree stained calf,’’ ‘‘grains,’’ ‘‘shagreen,’’ ‘‘gilt edge roll,’’ and the like, Mr. Bennett provides useful definitions, comparisons, and explanations . A fine example of the application of 172 Mr. Bennett’s learning can be garnered from the discussion of the enterprise of the Noble brothers, whose circulating libraries of novels and other popular literature were a primary provincial outlet for such works in the period between 1740 and 1780. There are also discussions of Scottish, Irish, and continental bindings, and a concluding chapter on ‘‘deluxe bindings,’’ once again tending toward the primary argument: not even these expensive bindings were uniformly ‘‘bespoke’’; many were bound prior to sale, and offered as gift books—books designed, one can assume, to ornament many a tea table. One would perhaps have liked some discussion of books printed with subscription lists, whether bindings for subscribers were given any special consideration by printers or book-sellers, separately designed or simply cast with the general sale. That is, however, the only question that came to mind as still unanswered; when a modern work of scholarship can satisfy all but one question , it is a book worthy of purchase...