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Thomas Edwards's Sales Catalogues
As a provincial bookseller and publisher, Thomas Edwards is an altogether more shadowy figure than his brother James in London. He was, however, a bookseller of some importance, as his dozen or so sales catalogues demonstrate.
Of the first two, a shop-catalogue of books in April 1812 and another in May 1812 of prints, drawings, and pictures, we know only from a manuscript letter. The third is a shop-catalogue of August 1815 specializing in law and jurisprudence (516 lots) and medicine (918 lots). Much more ambitious was his general catalogue in 1815 of "Books, in Most Languages, and Every Branch of Literature", Part I. The reference to "Unique and Splendid Articles, collected from various Parts of Europe . . . many in elegant Bindings", makes it sound like the stock of his brother James; certainly it listed many publications by James and Richard Edwards and books superbly bound [by Edwards of Halifax] in Etruscan calf (e.g., No. 1,285). Part II, the Appendix and Supplement, appeared in 1816 "Containing all the rarest Articles from the Cabinet of an Eminent Collector", unfortunately unnamed. The titlepage stressed French books, emblem books, incunabula, and illuminated missals,
It cannot have been easy to sell bibliographical treasures in Halifax, and most of the rest of Thomas Edwards's catalogues were of auctions in London and Manchester. The first of these was the anonymous sale by Saunders in London on 30 March-16 April 1818 of some of the more remarkable books in his stock—2,232 lots in all, over sixteen days. The title-page described it as "one of the most rich and splendid Collections ever submitted to the Public", singling out particularly the bindings of unusual taste and splendour. Some of these were in the Edwards of Halifax Etruscan style.
Thomas Edwards's last shop-catalogue was issued in 1821, but it is so fugitive that only one copy has been traced.[47] It listed over three thousand works, including at least ten with Edwards fore-edge paintings, and the 537 drawings (£300) which William Blake had made for the edition of Young's Night Thoughts published by Thomas's brother Richard Edwards in 1797. But the Blakes were unsaleable at £300 or anything like it, and this and others of Thomas Edwards's best works proved to be too good for his market.
Five years later Thomas Edwards had determined on retiring from business, and he printed in Halifax two catalogues of selections from his stock in trade which were sold at auction by Thomas Winstanley & Co. in Manchester, the first of books on 1-2 May 1826 and the second of art works on 15-16 May. The first covered the standard antiquarian bookseller's range of "The Best Works in Divinity, Poetry, . . . Belles Lettres, . . . History, Biography, Topography, Antiquities, Voyages and Travels, . . . Natural History and Botany, . . . Encyclopedias, . . . Books of Prints, and . . . Illuminated Missals", plus the best recent works, especially those "Richly Illustrated with Plates". These modern works included many publications by James, Richard, and Thomas Edwards. The text drew attention particularly to the "splendid, costly" bindings in which "The greater part" of the collection of 1,465 lots were bound-an extraordinary claim: "In the superintendance of this department [Etruscan bindings, . . . with matchless and unique Drawings on the leaves], the utmost care and expence has been lavished on the part of Mr. Edwards. . . . it is seldom that a collection is seen altogether, displaying, in its binding, . . . such general excellence and perfection of the Art" (p. iv). Among the rest was the set of Blake's Night Thoughts drawings (No. 1,076), which had not sold at £300 in 1821 and which did not meet its reserve of £50 in 1826. The sale was a failure, and most of the items were withdrawn and placed in private sale. A notice was circulated about the
SALE OF MR EDWARDS'S STOCK, EXCHANGE ROOMS.
Mr Edwards having been disappointed in his endeavours to effect a Sale by Auction, of his Stock of Books, which disappointment he attributes to the unforeseen and unpropitious state of the times, respectfully announces that he has given
Mr Edwards, with a view of meeting the wishes of the public, adopted the above measures; and as he is about to retire from Business, he is prepared to make considerable sacrifices to effect the purpose of disposing of his Stock.
A Catalogue is left in the hands of Messrs Winstanley & Co. at the Rooms, in which is marked the lowest price that will be taken for each Book. Manchester, 5th May, 1826.[48]
Winstanley seems to have provided a shop sale for the books Thomas Edwards had brought to Manchester and been unable to sell at auction.
The art sale of 15-16 May 1826 consisted of engravings, drawings, oil paintings, painted glass, and carvings on ivory; the extensive title-page drew attention particularly to works of the modern English school of engravers and to the modern English drawings, and one suspects that at least some of them had passed to Thomas Edwards in Halifax from his brothers James Edwards and Richard Edwards in London, as Blake's Night Thoughts drawings had.
By 1828 Thomas Edwards had left Halifax, and what appears to be the last of his shop-stock was sold in London by Stewart, Wheatley, & Adlard on 15-24 May 1828.[49] It was described as "One of the most magnificent Assemblages of Missals, Illuminated Manuscripts, and Illustrated Books ever offered for public Sale", being especially strong in English and classical literature and fine bindings, including Etruscan bindings. It realized £4,640.6.6, but Blake's Night Thoughts drawings were bought in at £52.10.0—and apparently have not since been offered at public sale.[50]
Finally Thomas Edwards's personal library, along with that of the late John Bowden, was sold by Southgate & Son, London, on 9-16 March 1835. Unfortunately the catalogue does not indicate which books belonged to Thomas Edwards and which to Bowden. This is the last catalogue in which books from the family of Edwards of Halifax were gathered for sale.
The shop- and auction-catalogues of the various branches of the firm of Edwards of Halifax span almost a hundred years (1749-1835) and indicate the growth and resources of a remarkable family book business. Through them we can also glimpse the development from provincial to metropolitan standards and the development of the antiquarian book-trade from casual adolescence into responsible maturity. Just as book-publishers developed from being socially negligible shopmen in the seventeenth century to patrons of literature in the eighteenth, antiquarian booksellers grew from being dealers in dusty used books before about 1760 to being the acquaintances and the friends of the rich and the great thereafter. The development from Pope's scurrilous Curll in the 1720s to Dr Johnson's patron Edward Cave in the 1740s to Cowper's friend and Mary Wollstonecraft's mentor Joseph Johnson in the 1780s is paralleled by the development from William Edwards as a provincial bookseller in the 1750s, none of whose catalogues seems to survive, to his son James Edwards in the 1780s, who outbid his king for books, who bought and sold libraries which were the envy of all Europe, who was the friend of Lord Orford (Horace Walpole) and of Earl Spencer, and who declined payment in gold for secret services to his country. It is a long road from Edmund Curll grovelling in Pope's mire to James Edwards, cultivated by noblemen and thanked by Government. The mapping of much of the end of this route is made possible by the Edwards of Halifax catalogues.
These catalogues are the chief means we have of knowing about some of the most enterprising and successful antiquarian booksellers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and they also throw valuable light upon their activities as bookbinders, fore-edge-painters, and publishers. They have been treasured by specialist collectors and scholars for two hundred years and more—and yet it is remarkable that, of the thirty-seven catalogues of which we have record, only twenty-four have survived, or at least have come to my attention. Of thirteen catalogues, there is now no trace,[51] yet some at least of these missing catalogues were considered by contemporaries to be of major importance. Book-sale catalogues are of great interest to historians of the book-trade, and only recently have a few enlightened libraries besides Bodley and the British Library actively searched out and eagerly welcomed such works. Their riches may have been too tardily recognized. Something at least of the riches of the catalogues of Edwards of Halifax has been mooted here.
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