Pestilential prize … detail from the title page of The First Part of the Treatise of the Late Dreadful Plague in France Compared With That Terrible Plague in London, in the Year 1665 Photograph: ABA/London LibrarPlague, astrology and witchcraft are probably among the last things you might want to find when clearing the house of a relative who has recently died. But a collection of 18th-century tomes on these subjects discovered in Wimbledon by an antiquarian bookseller has been welcomed by the London Library, which will be getting them back more than half a century after they were borrowed from the shelves.
The rare volumes are believed to have been removed from the London Library in the late 1950s. They were found by a book dealer at the back of a locked wardrobe when he was called in by a family to look at the book collection of their deceased relative. Patrick Marrin of Marrin’s Bookshop soon realised that attempts had been made to remove the stamps of the London Library from the volumes.
Title page of A Discourse on Witchcraft. Photograph: London Library/ABA“People will use sandpaper to do this and make holes in the pages, or just tear out the pages – they had been mutilated,” said Marrin. “But one of the volumes consisted of a lot of little pamphlets and single sheets, on which I found one complete stamp. I know the London Library never sells anything, so it was their property.” The discovery in a locked cupboard did suggest some kind of guilt, he continued. “It’s difficult to say how and when [the attempts to remove the stamps] happened, but it’s quite likely the books were going to be sold.”
Marrin will hand over the volumes, which include the 1736 text A Discourse on Witchcraft, the 1680 text The most Sacred and Divine Science of Astrology by JBBD, a Protestant Minister of the True, Antient, Catholick and Apostolick Faith of the Church of England, and the 1722 work The First Part of the Treatise of the Late Dreadful Plague in France Compared With That Terrible Plague in London, in the Year 1665, to the London Library at the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association’s Chelsea book fair on Friday.
“These titles have been missing from the London Library for many decades and, though we never give up on our books, we had little hope that they would ever be seen again,” said Inez Lynn, librarian at the London Library. “Some are clearly of considerable significance and to have them coming back into our collection after such a long period is a rare delight. We are extremely grateful to the members of the ABA whose expertise and alertness uncovered these titles in the first place and have made their return possible.”
A spokesperson for the library confirmed that there would be no fine levied on the family of the person who borrowed and hung on to the books. “We don’t charge fines at all – we’d send out a book bill, but even if it’s 50 years later, if we get the book back then that’s fine,” he said.
Title page of The First Part of the Treatise of the Late Dreadful Plague in France Compared With That Terrible Plague in London, in the Year 1665. Photograph: ABA/London LibraryThe London Library’s recovery of the seven volumes pales in comparison to the more than 1,000 books stolen from Lambeth Palace’s library in the 1970s, and discovered in 2011 in the thief’s attic. “We can’t work out what the thief was thinking,” Declan Kelly, director of libraries for the Church of England said at the time. “If you go to the trouble of trying to remove marks of ownership, it does suggest you are trying to sell them. But on the other hand, the fact they had all been put in the loft suggests differently. You do read about fanatics who just want to have art and own it for themselves – but it’s very strange.”
Antiquarian bookseller Tim Bryars of the ABA said that the association always “does its best to reunite books with their rightful owners, and the important thing is that the books are back where they belong: instead of being stashed at the back of a wardrobe people will be able to use them again”.
“Anyone in similar situation should know that (as with the Lambeth Palace library books) nobody is going to make things difficult for people whose late relatives may have acquired books in ways they ought not to have,” said Bryars.
The books set to be returned on Friday by Marrin also include The Age of the World Collected in All Its Periods by JS, published in 1707, A Collection of Letters by His Excellency General George Monk Relating to the Restoration of the Monarchy, published in 1714, The True-Born English-man. A Satyr, published in 1708, and The Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendom, published in 1696.
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