The John Bennett Shaw bookplate - 1969

I've previously posted about some John Bennett Shaw items I have, which included some of his later Holiday greeting cards from the 1980s and 1990s.

As a continuation, I recently purchased a few items and among them was this gem. It's a Holiday card from 1969, and it launches Shaw's bookplate. Included inside is a pasted-in copy of Shaw's new bookplate. The primary content of the 'card' is an excerpt from the book "The Anatomy of Bibliomania" by Holbrook Jackson. 

The cover title is "On Choosing a Library for a Desert Island" and states "The shelf of the best books: books for pleasure, books for reference, books for mental expansion, books for peace of mind, What books would you choose?"

Inside is the excerpt:

Excerpt from an essay upon this subject taken from "The Anatomy of Bibliomania" by Holbrook Jackson

ON CHOOSING A LIBRARY FOR A DESERT ISLAND

Many have speculated upon which are the best books, and it is no easy matter to come to a conclusion where there are so many claimants ; especially is it difficult to decide upon what books, or book, were we confined to one, we would choose for an imprisonment, or of marooned on a desert island. Since this is a matter of familiar curiosity, what some of them have said upon it I shall briefly recount. The most fortunate of readers who may be forced to bring their libraries down to an irreducible minimum are these one-book-men whom I have discussed in an earlier chapter, for they have made a choice for all occasions. To make an enforced choice has innumerable problems not readily solved. Yet some have adventured, in theory at all events, to that end. Schopenhauer declared that if the Almighty had to stint him to a single book he would choose Helvetius, Mr. Justice McKinnon has put it on record, says Lewis Hind, that if he were cast on a desert island, he would find it difficult to decide between 'Pickwick' and 'Pride and Prejudice'. Compelled to limit himself to the reading of one book, Walter Jerrold would unhesitatingly decide upon Southey's Select Works of the British Poets, which he well class a library in a single volume. Leigh Hunt is divided, among poets, between Shakespeare and Spenser. Were I to sell me library, Diderot wrote, I would keep back Homer, Moses, and Richardson. Those two great Cambridge scholars, Henry Jackson and Henry Sidgwick, if limited to three books would have Shakespeare, Plato, and Aristotle.

Some, as I have shown in my dissertation on Readers of Books, have practised what they preached or preferred, and read one book over and over; but most claim a vaiety, even though it be within prescribed lmiits, as Rovert Southey, whose hypothetical library of twelve English authors contained Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton; Lord Clarendon; Jackson, Jeremy Taylor, and South; Izaac Walton, Sydney's Arcadia, Fuller's Church History, and Sir Thomas Browne, his Hydriotaphia. Such a collection, he claims would prove an inexhaustible reservoir, a Bank of England, to its possessor. John Ruskin stoutly claimed that every reader who would keep out of the salt swamps of literature in these days of book deluge must seek to live on a little rock island of his own, with a spring and a lake in it, pure and good. Whatever other books would compose that pure and good lake, Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Dante, Shakespeare, and Spenser would be there. If all the books in the world were in a blaze, the first twelve, Archdeacon Farrer would snatch out of the flames are, the Bible, the Imitatio Christi, Homer, Aeschylus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Virgil, Marcus Aurelious, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth; of living authors he would have rescued first Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin. Edward Fitzgerald claims that in a library there should be only what is enduring and original, for, as Washington Irving puts out in his Sketch Book, when all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. Arnold Bennett would not include more than one novel in a list of twenty books for a Desert Island, it would be either The Brothers Karamazov, The Charterhouse of Parma, or The Woodlanders; but he says, Andre Gide, who as a youth made out such a list every quarter, would include no novels. At a banquet given to celebrate the completion of the Oxford Dictionary, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, then Prime Minister, told Professor Craigie that he chose that great work for his desert island reading; I could live with your Dictionary, he said; and he recalled that Lord Oxford not long since had said that if he were cast on a desert island, and could only have one work, he would have the forty volumes of Balzac.

After this, Shaw adds in his own hand:

I have made my choice and here it is pictured on my new Bookplate

 

And now let's itemise John Bennett Shaw BSI's Library for a desert island:

• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
• The Dachshund Book 
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes
• The Holy Bible
• The Atlas of the World
• His Last Bow
• The World Alamanac
• The Valley of Fear
• Cookery
• Shakespeare
• The English Dictionary
• The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
• The SIgn of Four
• The Constitution of USA
• Where to Eat and Sleep in America
• A Study in Scarlet
• The Hound of the Baskervilles

Distributed as a Holiday Greeting to the Friends of John Bennett Shaw and Sherlock Holmes. Tulsa, Oklahoma, December, a1969

And now for a Sherlockian bibliophile question: 

has anyone ever recreated Shaw's bookplate on a library shelf?

I'll post photos I receive here.

The Lost World and its journey

Recently I picked up a copy of The Lost World. It's a battered copy, but it's still one I love very much. 

It has the wonderful tan cover with donosaur prints across the cover. The publisher is listed as 'Henry Frowde. Hodder & Stoughton'. I can find surprisingly little about this 'large paper edition'. Frowde was known as a publisher of Bibles. Some bookseller copies state that  "1,000 copies were printed, of which 190 were bound in blue cloth (First State) in 1912 and the remaining 810 were issued in tan/brown cloth (Second State)". It appears the second state may have been published in 1914. The edition has thirteen illustration plates. Reviewing British newspapers does not show articles specifically referring to the release of this beautiful edition. How did it come to be? And why did it come to be? 

One of the interesting aspects of these editions are the meta 'cosplay' pictures of Professor Challenger, with the photograph being of Doyle himself dressed as Challenger. 

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This particular book was given as a prize to Herbert Charles Stevens, a student at Waller Road School in London. At the time his teacher was William J Langridge and the award was in 1921. Tipped into the book I found another certificate, from the 'Royal Ordnance Factories' to H.C. Stevens 'for diligence & proficiency whilst serving as an apprentice engineer' for 1925-26. 

It's wonderful to think this prize book was well-loved (which is why it's a little battered), and hopefully was treasured. What did the book do between around 1914 and when it was awarded in 1921? Did it sit new on a shelf waiting to be awarded for six years?

The awardee was Herbert Charles Stevens. He lived in London, and it's not easy to track Herbert in 1911 and 1921 censuses because many didn't list their middle names. In the 1939 register (created at the start of World War 2) Herbert was living on Southwood Rd, New Eltham in London - a single 'Chartered Engineer' who was born on 27 May 1908. With Herbert were his parents Charles and Hilda Olive. The career, location (London) and age of Herbert in this register match with someone who would have been attending Waller Road School at the time - so we can guess that my copy of 'Lost World' was sitting on a shelf in Southwood Rd in 1939, and thankfully survived the London Blitz. Thankfully, Herbert also survived the blitz, and he died in the Greater London area in 1992 aged about 84 (Bexley, 11, 434). Who knows what happened to my 'Lost World' copy from that point on till it came into my hands this year (2025, from a bookstore in Preston).

1939 Register

Let's go further in this deep dive!! What about the teach who awarded the book? Well, William Langridge should be easier to track down as we know he was a teacher in 1921 - the year of a census. In 1921, William J Langridge was living at 111 Howson Rd, Lewisham, London - a 50 year-old London native and 'Schoolmaster' at the London County Council Waller Road School (very tidy!). With William was his wife Emma R, a retired Schoolmistress, and their daughter Gwyneth aged 13. William was still living with his daughter in 1939.

1921 Census

Well, maybe I did go a little too far with this deep diving into the awarder and awardee of this copy of the Lost World, but it shows what you can learn about the journey of a book and its bookplate!