Fine Belfast Bindings ca. 1835

[LYTTON, Edward Bulwer, Sir]

[BINDINGS - BELFAST]. Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes

London: Saunders and Otley, 1835. First Edition. 8vo. In three volumes. [5], xiii, [1], 302; [2], 364; [2], 356pp. With tipped-in errata slips but without half-titles. BOUND BY JOHN TATE OF BELFAST in contemporary half-calf, marbled boards, tooled in gilt and blind, marbled edges (trifle rubbed, some gatherings inexplicably proud), with Tate's tickets and recent bookplates of Robert J. Hayhurst to all FEPs, scattered foxing. Item #3839

First edition of this fantastical historical novel which "turns on the moral distinction between socially induced criminality and socially induced vice." Our copy is very handsomely bound in the Romantique style by John Tate (1802-1841), a little-known BELFAST binder and stationer. Tate was clearly talented, especially for a young nineteenth-century provincial artisan; nonetheless, we can find zero information beyond a brief entry in Ramsden's "Bookbinders of the United Kingdom (Outside London) 1780-1840" (p. 247) which references only the Belfast directories of 1831, 1835, and 1842. Tate's tickets in our bindings give the address as "13 High Street" which dates the bindings to 1835.

Five other bindings (or sets of bindings) by Tate are known to us, NONE of which as artistically successful as ours (none are in the Romantique style either), namely: 1) Sheridan's Works 1821 + Moore's Memoirs 1826 (together five volumes), formerly with Messrs. Bayntun of Bath; 2) Wright's China 1843 (2 volumes), Forum Auctions 25 Jan 2018; 3) Andrews's Journey from Buenos Ayres 1827 (2 volumes), Dominic Winter 20 Jan 2021; 3) Miss Owenson's Wild Irish Girl 1808, De Burca Catalogue 113; 4) Teeling's Personal Narrative of the Irish Rebellion 1828, ex-Mariga Guinness, Fonsie Mealy 2015; 5) Gait's Last of the Lairds (!) 1826, Sotheby's 14 April 1969. John Tate, bookbinder, is buried in the Shankhill Graveyard, Belfast.

This is the first edition of "RIENZI," Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's historical novel which later inspired Wagner's extremely melodramatic opera of the same name. "Rienzi" is an amalgam of careful scholarship along with wilful invention: it describes the rise and fall of the demagogue who briefly seized power from the warring factions in Rome ca. 1313-1354. According to ODNB, the novel "turns on the moral distinction between socially induced criminality and socially induced vice."

Provenance: Robert J. Hayhurst, with his nautical bookplate in vol. 1. Hayhurst inherited the John Hayhurst & Son pharmacy chain and spent a fortune on building a library of naval history and fine historic bookbindings, as here.

Wolff 956. Sadlier 438.

Price: $1,200.00