Roxburghe Club Publications
Readers in the Palaeography Room have access to a near-complete set of Roxburghe Club volumes, ranging from their first publication of 1814 to the most recent.
The Club was formed by way of celebration at the strength of the antiquarian book market by Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776-1847), author of Bibliomania (1809), in 1812 after the sale of Boccaccio's Decamerone, printed by Christofer Valdarfer (Venice, 1471), in the auctions of the 3rd Duke of Roxburghe’s library. This being the only complete copy extant it fetched the remarkable price of £2,260 in a sale Dibdin later described as a “Waterloo of book-battles”. On its glorious field – in fact, at Waterloo Place – eighteen bibliophiles met in the St Alban’s Tavern to eat, drink and encourage bibliomania. The Roxburghe Club’s aims were simple. Each member contributed a book to the Club, not more than one hundred copies of each being printed. Any member elevated to the peerage, advancing within it, or taking a wife needed to present the Club with a subsequent volume. Subscription was five guineas and a dinner was to be held on annually on the 17th of June, if a Saturday, or the first Saturday thereafter, the anniversary of the sale of the Valdarfer Boccaccio.
The Club is now known for its facsimiles but its earliest volumes were editions of literary and historical texts. Perhaps the most well-known volumes are those prepared by the scholar and ghost-story writer, M. R. James (1862–1936). Between 1909 – the year in which he joined the Club – and his death in 1936, James contributed nine facsimiles, edited a text for the Club, and co-edited two further facsimiles. The facsimiles included The Trinity College Apocalypse (1909), The Douce Apocalypse (1922), The Marvels of the East (1929), two important volumes on the bestiary and one on the manuscripts made for the Bohun family.
The Club continues to produce books and the Palaeography Collection continues to acquire them. As well as providing facsimile copies of manuscripts, some of which are in private hands, the collection constitutes an important case study for the development of printing techniques and bibliographical – and bibliomaniacal – scholarship.
For further information see:
shl.specialcollections@london.ac.uk 
020 7862 8470
