Series XII: Bookplates, mid 18th century - 1929

Series

Staff Only

Dates

mid 18th century - 1929

Access:

All series and subseries within this collection are open for research, with the exception of a few files within the Academia series that are restricted. The Academia series contains financial and sensitive institutional records from Wilkes College, and financial report records from Princeton University that will remain restricted for 80 years upon creation.

Extent

From the Collection: 17 Cubic Feet

Language of Materials

From the Collection: English

Additional Description

Series XII: Bookplates, mid 18th century-1929

Series XII: Bookplates, mid-18th century-1929, is arranged in alphabetical order by title and contains 127 bookplates from a variety of academic libraries and clubs, historical societies, and wealthy individuals who commissioned artists to create bookplates for them from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century.

Many bookplates within our Gilbert Stuart McClintock collection come from academic libraries such as Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, St. John’s University Library in Shanghai in Shanghai, China, University of California Berkeley in Berkeley, California, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Carnegie Library of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Rochester University in Rochester, New York. The Princeton University bookplates originate from various clubs and organizations on their campus such as the Colonial Club, the Campus Club, The Charter Club, the Ivy Club, and the Library.

There are also some bookplates from public libraries and bookstores such as the Carver Memorial Library in Seasport, Maine, Bishop’s Library in South Florida, the Apprentice’s Library, and Elizabeth Jones Memorial Library in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Historical society bookplates are also represented in this series such as California Bookplate Society, the first Society of Farmington, and the International Buyers’ Club.

Some well known bookplate collectors that can be found within our bookplate series are Charles Dexter Allen, Sheldon Warren Cheney, William Edgar Fisher, and Edward Welles, Cameron Mann Fisher, Georges Goury, Holmes Beckwith, among others. William Edgar Fisher who was both a bookplate collector and designer was acknowledged as “highly meritorious by the best American masters of bookplate design” (Ebook Book-plates of Today, p.4).

These bookplate collectors held a variety of professions such as lawyers (Henry D. Gilpin, Charles Ewing Green, Robert H. McCarter, Andrew T. McClintock, Gilbert Stuart McClintock), professors of social and moral sciences, such as Henry Webster Parker, doctors (Roland Gideon Curtain, Joseph Debie, William Oliver, Samuel Miller Breckenridge), educators (Roger H. Dennett, Georges Goury, Charles Francis Richardson, C. Kirby Valentine, John Watkins), historians (Edward Griffith Miner), religious figures (Henry Ward Beecher, William A. Brodie, Lila L. Williams, Carlo Rossetti, George S. Goodrich, Charles H. Hart, George Herbert, Tobias Wagner, Edward Welles, John William Whittaker), businessmen (William A. Brodie, Louis J. Goldsmith, Andrew Smith Halladie, William R.A. Hays, Louis Lion, George Xavier McLanahan, Moses Taylor Pyne, Robert Heysham Sayre, John Diedrich Spreckles, John Skelton Williams, William Windus Knight, Robert Buist), authors (Katherine Lee Bates, George Fox, Edmund Henry Garrett, Thomas Sturge Moore and Arthur Newton Pack, writers (Charles Eliot Goodspeed, Kate Meldram Buss, Arthur Newton Pack, Isaac Butts, and Karl Weinhold). The earliest plate in the collection, circa early 1700s, belonged to an earl, William Howard, who was the son to the 11th Earl of Suffolk. Amongst these collectors, there were a number of poets that collected bookplates in their leisure time.

Many of these collectors were also well-known artists such as Thomas Sturge Moore, Herman Frederick Hager, Franz Von Bayros, Leon Pousthomis, John Cleghorn, Cephas Grier Childs, Frank Bowman Siegrist, Albert Robida, Mark Lambert, William B. Pell, Alexander Anderson, Alfred Roller, William Fowler Hopson and Angus Peter MacDonall.

Bookplate artists and engravers that can be found within the series Edmund Henry Garrett, Anton Aure, Edwin Davis French, Sylvester Rosa Koehler, Joseph Winfred Spenceley, Albertine Randall Wheelan, Henri Daragon, Theodore Brown Hapgood, Edwin Davis French, and Thomas Joseph Dowling.

International bookplate collectors and artists are also represented in this series such as Carlo Rossetti, Franc Anderle, Henri Daragon, John Watkins, Kirkman Daniel Hodgson, Georges Goury, Frederic Drechsel and Anton Aure.

The bookplates represented within this series have a variety of themes to them such as heraldry and coat of arms who were associated with people such as Isaac Barre, Benjamin H. Brewster, Alexander James Dixon, Henry Harrison Harvey, and Charles H. Hart, musical annotation such as Piano Sonata No. 28 by Beethoven, landscapes, Greek myths and legends such as Kastila, Aristotle, religious figures, historical figures such as Paul Revere and William Darling, poems, monuments such as the Wyoming Monument, signatures, landscapes, famous historical events and locations, such as the Wyoming Massacre and the Boston Massacre and other artistic renderings that relate to personal libraries and books.

Processed By:

Ayden Clisham, Archive work-study, Fall 2023-Spring 2024, and Jessica Van Orden, Archive work-study, Spring 2024, supervised and edited by Suzanna Calev, Archivist, Fall 2023-Spring 2024.