KEATS, John.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Sonnets. A consummate example of British provincial fine binding: this elegantly printed selection of Keats's verse was bound by the renowned Staffordshire firm of Bagguley. The bindery employed some of the generation's best finishers; the quality of their work is clear here from the filigree-like medallions, carefully built up with many different tools.The bookseller George Thomas Bagguley (b.1860) established himself in Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1890. Some of the top finishers in Britain moved from urban centres to practise in the bindery arm of the business, which, unusually, hired external designers. It flourished briefly but spectacularly around the turn of the century. "Quite how a small market-town... could support a bindery producing a work of this quality is not clear" but, as it was, Bagguley bindings featured in some of the 20th century's finest collections (The Wormsley Library catalogue, p. 87). This binding has the bookplates of W. A. Foyle (1885-1963), the founder of the famous Charing Cross Road bookshop, and the distinguished bookseller and collector Robin de Beaumont (1926-2023).The volume bears no imprint or date, but the endpapers are watermarked 1900. We have traced another copy of this edition in a Bagguley binding.

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