Book-Plates

By
W. J. Hardy, F.S.A.

SECOND EDITION

London
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.
MDCCCXCVII

[iv]

First Edition published 1893 as Vol. II. of 'Books about Books.'

[v]

Preface

Having vindicated in my introductory chapterthe practice of collecting book-plates from thecharge of flagrant immorality, I do not think itnecessary to spend many words in demonstratingthat it is in every way a worthy and reasonablepursuit, and one which fully deserves to be madethe subject of a special treatise in a series of Booksabout Books. If need were, the Editor of the series,who asked me to write this little hand-book, wouldperhaps kindly accept his share of responsibility,but in the face of the existence of a flourishing 'ExLibris' Society, the importance of the book-plateas an object of collection may almost be taken asaxiomatic. My own interest in this particular hobbyis of long standing, and happily the appearance, whenmy manuscript was already at the printer's, of Mr.Egerton Castle's pleasantly written and profuselyillustrated work on English Book-Plates has relievedme of the dreaded necessity of writing an additionalchapter on those modern examples, in treating of[vi]which neither my knowledge nor my enthusiasmwould have equalled his.

The desire to possess a book-plate of one's own isin itself commendable enough, for in fixing the firstcopy into the first book the owner may surely beassumed to have registered a vow that he or she atleast will not join the great army of book-persecutors—menand women who cannot touch a volumewithout maltreating it, and who, though they areoften ready to describe the removal of a book-plate,even from a worthless volume, as an act ofvandalism, do infinitely more harm to books ingeneral by their ruthless handling of them. Nodoubt, also, the decay of interest in heraldry, whichis mainly responsible for the eccentricities of modern'fancy' examples, has taken from us the temptationto commit certain sins which were at one time attractive.Our ancestors, for instance, may sometimeshave outraged the susceptibilities of the heralds byusing as book-plates coats-of-arms to which theyhad no title. Yet their offence against the Collegeof Arms was trivial when compared with the outrageupon common-sense committed by the mysticalyoung man of to-day, who designs, or has designedfor him, an 'emblematic' book-plate, or a 'symbolic'book-plate, or a 'theoretic' book-plate, in which theemblem, or the symbol, or the theory, is far too~~...~~

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