The Keepsake for MDCCCXXXI. REYNOLDS (Frederic Mansel) – editor.

SUPER DE LUXE BINDING

Two engraved frontispieces, additional engraved title and 15 plates by C. Heath, Thomson, J. Edwards, C. Rolls, Brandard, Miller, R. Wallis, W. Wallis, Wilmore, Mitchell and F. Bacon after various artists.

8vo. [190 x 121 x 30 mm]. viii, 320 pp. Contemporary binding of blue goatskin, the covers with a border of a gilt thick and thin fillet, a gilt roll and three blind fillets, enclosing a panel of onlaid red goatskin framed by gilt and blind fillets and a blind roll, with arabesque ornaments in the corners and a lozenge shaped centre of burgundy goatskin outlined with gilt and blind fillets and containing gilt arabesque and scroll ornaments. The spine divided into six panels with gilt tooled bands, lettered in the second panel and dated at the foot, the others tooled with a gilt lyre within a compartment, the edges of the boards tooled with gilt roll, ivory coloured goatskin doublures and free endleaves tooled in gilt and blind to match the covers, blue silk flyleaves, gilt edges.

London: [by Thomas Davison] for the Proprietor, by Hurst, Chance and Co, and Jennings and Chaplin, [1830].

The binding is super-de-luxe. I had assumed that the covers, doublures and endleaves were decorated with one or more blocks, but a close examination reveals that they are each made up from individual tools and rolls.

The Keepsake was published annually from 1828, and the last volume in the British Library set is 1857. The edition for 1830 was issued in a scarlet moiré silk binding by Francis Westley (see Morris and Levin: The Art of Publishers' Bookbindings 1815-1915, no.15) and later editions were bound in red cloth blocked in gilt to a design by John Leighton (Morris and Levin, no.38).

Stock no. ebc4705