Let’s face it: in the field of old books, money alone will grant you access to books of exception. But it’s not a problem. The old book world is so vast and so varied that some treasures are almost worth nothing—so I realized the other day while unpacking two beautiful volumes from 1764.
I bought them on eBay.fr for almost nothing. I wasn’t especially expecting them, but when they came, it was love at first sight. We’re talking here about a 2-volume set of Mme Deshoulières’ poems (Paris, Libraires associés—1764). This is a nice and common edition of one of the best French poets of the late 17th century. Our copy is complete, and it comes with a frontispiece portrait. Even when properly bound and in good condition, this is quite an affordable book. And our copy isn’t even bound. It is “as issued”, or “tel que paru”. For some, it might make it less valuable, for others it makes it special. Booksellers didn’t have the right to bind books at the time—it was the bookbinders’ privilege. You’d buy books unbound, then take them to a bookbinder before you’d get a finished product—I guess booksellers would find a binder for you most of the time. Not being bound means they’ve never known the book press, so they are thick, and loose. Their pages haven’t been cut or gilded either—so the margins are wide, and the edges of the pages deliciously uneven. And they come with cover papers.
Trying to make books look as attractive as possible despite the rules and regulations, booksellers would cover them with paperboards, or “couvertures d’attente” (temporary covers). They are quite irresistible. Our copy is wrapped in a gorgeous a deep blue paper ornamented with white geometrical forms—the latter are duplicated in black and juxtaposed to create some depth. In a word, it looks like a summer starry sky. The back labels, made of morocco leather in bound books, are here made of regular paper—an unknown hand from the 18th century wrote “Deshoulieres 1/Deshoulieres 2” on them, before dropping them on some shelf. Can you get closer to the people who first manipulated these books?
Cover papers are not to be mistaken with endpapers—the specialists rather refer to them as brocade papers, or block-printed papers (see article: www.rarebookhub.com/articles/2457. Once printed, they weren’t bound or attached to the body of the book but simply glued, as shown by the partly detached backs of our volumes. It gives access to an intimate part of the books. We can see that the entire book body is bound thanks to two thin threads. We can also see that the covers were reinforced with layers of various papers, usually taken from the surplus of other books. This part wasn’t designed to stay, so they didn’t bother hiding them. Thanks to Google, I found out that the detached pages used to thicken the covers of our copy were taken from Robert-Martin Lesuire’s Charmansage (Paris, 1792)—Lesuire is a pioneer in the field of detective novels. So, this copy remained “naked” for almost 30 years before someone decided to... wrap it in a temporary cover!
Many will say this is a modest copy— and so it is; but Man seeks voluptuousness in remote places. Not only are cover papers gorgeous, but these books also are in their untouched condition. You can see that the small reliefs left in the thick paper around each letter! The bulky volumes feel so light and yet so dense in the palm of your hands. A reader rated this copy enough to brand it with his or her name; and you can tell by the exquisite, small and neat handwriting that it was a long time ago. Unfortunately, some bookworm has made the name impossible to read. Who was this reader then? We’ll never know—and it’s all right. Modest and “as issued” copies tell the silent stories of silent people who have disappeared in the stream of time. And isn’t it voluptuous to hear their remote whisper while leafing through a book? I bought this one for 40 bucks. That’s what it’s worth—and yet, I’ll treasure it, just like this anonymous reader did, whose “footprint in the sand” was erased long ago... by a modest bookworm.
Thibault Ehrengardt
