Victorian Bookbinding

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Extravagant Binding Styles

Below are examples of “extravagant” Victorian design, including colorful cloth, pictorial scenes, heavy gold designs, and glistening silver.

Bryant, William Cullen. The Song of the Sower. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1871.

Green sand-grained cloth blocked in gold and black on front, gold on spine, and in blind on back, with beveled boards.

The Song of the Sower

 


 

Farm Ballads

Carleton, Will. Farm Ballads. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1873.

Green cloth blocked in gold and black on front and spine, black on back.

 


 

Carleton, Will. City Ballads. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886.

Blue cloth blocked in gold, black and brown on front, gold on spine, and in blind on back.

 

City Ballads

 


 

Wanderings of a War Artist

Montagu, Irving. Wanderings of a War Artist. London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1889.

Green cloth blocked in gold, black, red, pink, and white on front and spine, gold on back.

 


 

Evenings at Home, or Fireside Reading. Chicago: J. A. Ruth, 1889.

Green cloth blocked in gold, silver, and black on front, gold and black on spine, and blind on back.

Evenings at Home

 


 

Droll Stories

Balzac. Droll Stories Collected from the Abbeys of Touraine. London: William Mitchell and Company, ca.1880.

Red cloth blocked in gold and black on the front and spine. Cover design after the illustrations by Gustave Doré.

 

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