Nicholas Breakspear (Adrian IV.): Englishman and Pope. WITH 2 LETTERS FROM AUTHOR. BOUND BY LUCY GILCHRIST WRIGHTSON

Description

Full crushed terracotta morocco, triple gilt fillets framing boards; title and papal Breakspear device in gilt and blind to front board in gilt frame with leaf and dot motifs. Raised bands to spine, terminating in blind decor with leaf motif on boards. Gilt lettering and numerals to spine, with gilt decor with leaf and dot motifs. Single gilt fillet to board edges; ornate gilt decor to turn-ins. All edges gilt. 4to (20.2 x 26.6cm). Some fading to front board near top edge and spine; spine slightly sunned. Binder’s initials to rear turn-in, surrounded, characteristically, by numerals of the year of binding: ’19L.G.W.04′. Lucy Gilchrist Wrightson (1872-1945) was recorded as a pupil at Sangorski & Sutcliffe in 1904. She won a number of prizes for her binding, and exhibited at Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society exhibitions ‘in 1906 and 1910, at Frankfurt in 1906, and with the Royal Amateur Art Society in 1907’ (Tidcombe, Women Bookbinders 1880-1920, p. 172). Library bookplate of the Jesuit Community at 114 Mount Street to inside front board. Offsetting to endpapers and blank endpages. Cutting from The Times, September 1 1959, tipped in with archive tape to rear blank endpage: a piece by R. W. Southern on ‘Adrian the only English Pope’. Handsomely mounted on trimmed blank front endpages at front of volume are a folded 3pp. handwritten letter from the author, on paper headed ‘Breakspears, Uxbridge’, dated 1904, and a 1p. typescript note, hand-signed by the author, on the origin and history of the ‘device of the broken spear’. The handwritten letter discusses the spelling of the Breakspear name and mentions ‘the Margaret Breakspeare who by marrying brought this property into my family’ (Tarleton inherited the Breakspears estate in 1877 and lived in it until his death; presumably it helped spark his interest in Nicholas Breakspear, although ‘the story that this estate was the original home of Pope Adrian IV appears to have no foundation’ (Reynolds, 1962, A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 3)). Frontis. Title page printed in red and black. Decorated initials and tailpieces. Printed on laid paper. Numerous b/w illustrations. Handsome binding by a significant Arts and Crafts binder. Robust packaging. Tracking is always added to USA orders. It can be added to other overseas orders on request. Used books are exempt from USA tariffs.