Here it is: the November challenge

Lavinia Heggs, lucky thing, was awarded a prize by Ibstock Sunday school in 1905. She received 'Struggling upward: A tale of the goldfields' by S J Jones who, the title page informs me, had previously found a modicum of fame as author of 'Downward'. The measure of Lavinia's delight is not recorded, but the book remains remarkably pristine.

At Libre Livre one of our interests is in late nineteenth century prize books. These were churned out in their hundreds of thousands, doubtless all with the best intentions. Brave lads set sail for the colonies to make their fortunes, whilst their long suffering sisters were induced to works of piety and charity. Reviewers recorded their admiration in terms such as 'no manly boy could fail to be inspired by this tale of courage and adventure'; 'every girl will find pleasure in this quaint story of adversity overcome'. Echoes of a lost world.

This month we invite our readers to send us a review of a prize book, real or imaginary, in not more than 50 words. As usual, entries can be submitted by email, snail mail or blog-comment to reach us by 30 November. The lucky winner will receive a token of appreciation.

Prize giving

As announced last week, the winner of our October competition was PR of Surbiton. We thought readers might be interested to see a picture of the prize giving at which lucky PR received her prize from our Head Marbler in person.

As you will see from the picture, a small crowd had assembled to watch the award, and doubtless many will be entering for the November competition - details of which will be announced in the next day or so. Anybody is free to enter. Entries can be made by blog comment, email or snail-mail, and once again Libre Livre will be offering a sumptuous prize. Watch out though - we expect some stiff competition - PR has already told us she will be throwing her hat into the ring.

The elephant

I recently stumbled across some short clips on the subject of Medieval documents. A particularly interesting one is a short talk by Christopher De Hamel talking about some of the documents held in the Parker library. In the course of his talk, he shows 12th century pictures of an elephant included in a bestiary, although the artist had never actually seen one. This is contrasted by a picture by the famous medieval scribe Matthew Paris, of Saint Albans, just 100 years later. By that time an elephant had been brought to England and was kept at the Tower of London, although its life was short and uncomfortable. the contrast between the two images could hardly be greater. If you are interested in taking a look, click Here (but do make sure your volume setting is not too high before you click).

Antiquarian Bookfair

On Saturday, whilst the HM was attending a conference on the writings of George Eliot, I dropped into the Antiquarian Bookfair in Chelsea town hall.

I had hardly been there five minutes when Ed C of Cambridge appeared loping over the horizon. After demolishing a couple of baked potatoes, we hit the stalls. And plenty of delights we found. There were around 70 stalls, from all over England and the Continent and some splendid tomes were on offer. I was taken with some small alum-tawed volumes from the early 16th century offered by a dealer from Berlin at a mere 600 euros or so. Ed found a copy of an interesting little limp binding, 'The Book of Trade Secrets, Receipts and Instructions for Renovation, Repairing, Improving and Preserving Old Books and Prints' - that recommended the use of cyanide of potassium for the removal of certain stains, which we both thought rather extreme.

I was rather taken by the Alembic Bibliography, which gives the early history of one of the finest private presses I have come across, and from whom we bought some of our letter-press equipment. Sadly, it was outside my budget, but it was very gratifying to know that David and Claire who ran the press started, as we did, using an Adana table-top press.

Another item of particular interest was a tiny volume, around 7mm square, which contained the Lord's Prayer printed in several languages, once on each page. The book - of which there were several copies on offer - was housed in a tiny clear box which served as a magnifying glass; so I can confirm that the pages were actually legible should anybody wish toread them. At £48 it too was over my budget for an item for which I could discern no conceivable use.

A grand old man

One of the great men of British book conservation is Chris Clarkson, who trained under Roger Powell and the Cockerells (who are, incidently, the family who gave us the hovercraft).

Earlier this week I was delighted to be able to attend a talk by Chris on medieval book structures, a subject in which he is an acknowledged expert. One of the interesting things he told us was that the standard of Anglo-Saxon carpentry, was markedly higher than during the later Romanesque period. Early books were sewn onto cords and/or leather thongs and these were channeled through tunnels in the edges of the boards (generally of oak in England), which allowed the boards to fit snuggly around the pages and to open easily. These tunnels were cleanly cut and well fitted to the cords, which raises the question of how they were made. The short answer is, nobody knows. Chris suggested that they might have used twist drills, perhaps made by wrapping wire around a steel shaft and then sharpening it.

For anybody interested, click here for a link to Chris Clarkson's website

Congratulations to...

We had a pleasing number of entries for our October competition. It obviously presented a quite a challenge, as, sadly, only around 30% of entries contained the correct solution: Tom, where John had had ‘had,’ had had ‘had had,’ ‘had had’ had had the examiner's approval.

As promised, the draw was made on 31 October, and I am delighted to announce that the winner is.....PR of Surbiton, whose prize is on its way.

We commiserate with those who didn't win this time, but cheer up; November's competition will be announced in the next few days.

And the winner is.....

Wait for it, wait for it....

The winner of the Libre Livre October competition will be announced within the next couple of days.