Front cover
Black morocco cathedral binding stamped in gold
16.5 x 10.6 cm.
Beckwith, Victorian Bibliomania catalogue no. 24
Source: Sir Walter Scott's Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field
Collection: Collection of Ellen K. Morris.
Walter Scott's Marmion, first published in 1808, is one of the books which set the scene for the Gothic Revival in its early stages. Jousting knights, runaway nuns, noble abbesses, holy pilgrims, and faithful lovers separated by villainy fill Scott's imagined world. [continued below]
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Commentary by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith
Marmion is a prototypical melodrama, in which good is rewarded and evil punished in the end. Historical and ecclesiastical associations are merged in both the poem and its binding, and this indeed was Scott's intent. He and later Gothic Revivalists such as A. W. N. Pugin (cats. 41-43) and John Ruskin believed they could improve their own times by portraying honorable people from the past living by what they perceived as Christian ethics. Scott set his story in the years just before the 1515 Battle of Flodden from which he took the poem's title.
The full black morocco cathedral binding stamped in gold on the front, back, and spine captures the spirit and Tudor Gothic setting of the poem. Cathedral bindings, employed during the 1830s, were the immediate predecessors of the medievalizing leather relievo bindings designed by Owen Jones (cats. 4,5,26).
Three heat-stamped covers designed by Owen Jones. [Click on these images for larger pictures.]
Use of the fly embossing press and the Imperial arming press (cat. 4) allowed the creation of large quantities of identical book covers which could be used on all or part of a publisher's run of a particular book (Ball 19). These inventions were important in allowing wide diffusion of Gothic Revival themes and forms.Cathedral bindings take their name from the use of a Gothic architectural unit as the main feature of the design, underlining the relationship between the design of books and buildings. Here the Gothic aedicule functions as a window into the poem and the past it recreates. Scott's arms surmount his motto "Watch Weel" (sic) in the center of the diamond diaper-patterned middle arches. The popularity of Scott's medievalizing tales continued into the Victorian period, and Charles Tilt brought out this illustrated version two years after Victoria ascended to the throne. Although Marmion is the only book in this exhibition which is not illuminated, the design of the cover and the content of the text are important antecedents of the fascination with the medieval era that fueled the Gothic Revival and the reinvestigation of illumination during the Victorian age.
Related Material
- Charles Eastlake (1872) on Scott's influence on the Gothic Revival
- Why Did The Victorians Love Sir Walter Scott's Writings?
- Sir Walter Scott and British Book Illustration
References
Beckwith, Alice H. R. H. Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Exhibition catalogue. Providence. Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.
Scott, Sir Walter. Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field. London: Charles Tilt, 1839. Printer: E. B. & G. Clarke.
Last modified 29 December 2013