A scarce Victorian work on astronomy and cosmology in a superb signed full blue morocco leather binding by Henderson & Bisset of Edinburgh, Bookbinders to Queen Victoria. Of particular interest, another copy of this same 1891 edition was also bound for the Royal Collection by Henderson & Bisset in blue leather with gilt decoration.
A highly attractive conjunction of Victorian science, Scottish publishing, and royal bookbinding.
John Romanes’s Some Thoughts on Subjects Astronomical is an uncommon privately conceived work of late nineteenth-century cosmological speculation, discussing the formation and movement of planets, the Sun and stars, moons and satellites, comets, gravitation, light, and heat.
This copy is greatly elevated by its contemporary signed binding in full deep-blue morocco leather by Henderson & Bisset of Edinburgh, one of the leading Scottish bookbinding firms of the Victorian period and officially recorded as Bookbinders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. University of Edinburgh archival records place the firm at 19 Hill Street during the period in which this volume was produced.
The binding is signed on the lower turn-in:
BOUND BY HENDERSON & BISSET
The binding is unusually bold and architectural in conception.
Both covers are framed by multiple gilt fillets surrounding a large continuous interlaced strapwork design, formed from elongated loops, linked ovals, pointed terminals, and geometric side compartments. Rather than relying on conventional floral corner ornaments, the binder has constructed almost the entire cover design from flowing linear gold tooling, creating an exceptionally clean and modern-looking pattern against the dark blue morocco.
The effect is particularly striking in person and gives the volume considerably more visual presence than its modest size would suggest.
Binding features include:
The University of Edinburgh records Henderson & Bisset as Bookbinders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and notes that the firm remained at 19 Hill Street until 1892, making this 1891 binding a product of its documented royal-warrant-era Edinburgh workshop. The same archival record states that James Henderson was said to have trained under the celebrated London binder Charles Lewis and notes that a circa-1860 specimen book of the firm’s finishing tools survives in the National Library of Scotland.
An especially compelling feature of this copy is the existence of another 1891 second edition of this exact book associated with Henderson & Bisset in the Royal Collection.
The Royal Collection copy is described as being bound in blue full leather with gold tooling and gilt edges by Henderson & Bisset.
No royal provenance is claimed for the present copy, and I am not suggesting that the two bindings are identical.
The parallel is nevertheless remarkable:
Same author
Same title
Same 1891 edition
Same Edinburgh binder
Full blue leather
Gold tooling
Gilt edges
That comparison strongly suggests that this title was considered suitable for a particularly luxurious binding treatment by Henderson & Bisset at precisely the moment the firm was undertaking work for the royal household.
For a collector of Victorian fine bindings, Scottish bookbinding, royal binders, or nineteenth-century astronomy, it is a very unusual survival.
John Romanes. Some Thoughts on Subjects Astronomical.
Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1891.
Second Edition, with Notes.
61 pages.
Stanford University’s Newton Collection records this edition as a 61-page work published by David Douglas in Edinburgh in 1891 and categorizes it under both Astronomy and Cosmogony.
Romanes considers questions including:
The book belongs to an interesting Victorian tradition of serious speculative science produced outside the modern professional scientific establishment: an era in which educated lawyers, clergymen, engineers, physicians, and private scholars regularly proposed broad theories concerning astronomy, geology, physics, and natural history.
Romanes’s ideas should therefore be understood primarily as a document of Victorian cosmological thought, rather than as modern astronomical science.
The author was John Romanes, S.S.C., an Edinburgh legal professional and intellectual.
He should not be confused with the considerably better-known evolutionary biologist George John Romanes, the associate of Charles Darwin.
The distinction is worth emphasizing because nineteenth-century library and bookselling records sometimes blur the two names.
This John Romanes was part of Edinburgh’s educated professional and learned culture, and the publication of this little treatise by David Douglas appears to have been an attempt to place his cosmological theories before a wider scientific readership.
The book is genuinely uncommon.
The 1891 second edition appears in major research collections including Stanford’s Newton Collection, where it is retained in Special Collections.
Copies of the text itself are not frequently encountered in the antiquarian trade, but the much greater distinction of the present example is the signed Henderson & Bisset full morocco binding.
Most surviving copies of obscure late-Victorian scientific pamphlets and short monographs are found in ordinary cloth or library bindings. A lavish signed full-morocco binding by a documented royal bookbinding firm is a materially different object.
Very Good overall.
The binding remains firm, attractive, and highly displayable.
The deep-blue morocco retains strong color. The elaborate gilt interlace decoration remains substantially complete and bright.
There is age-appropriate rubbing and wear, including:
The spine lettering remains clear and the gilt decoration is well preserved.
The gilt-decorated turn-ins remain particularly attractive.
The pale-blue doublures and endleaves show some minor toning and scattered age-related marks.
All edges gilt.
Internally, the text is generally clean and well preserved, with only light toning and occasional minor spotting or handling marks consistent with age.
Please examine all photographs carefully, as they form an important part of the condition description.
Author: John Romanes, S.S.C.
Title: Some Thoughts on Subjects Astronomical
Place: Edinburgh
Publisher: David Douglas
Date: 1891
Edition: Second Edition, with Notes
Pagination: 61 pages
Printer: T. & A. Constable, Edinburgh University Press
Binding: Full blue morocco leather
Binder: Henderson & Bisset, Edinburgh
Binder's signature: BOUND BY HENDERSON & BISSET
Decoration: Elaborate gilt interlace / strapwork tooling
Edges: All edges gilt
Condition: Very Good
a scarce work of speculative astronomy, published in Edinburgh, preserved in a signed full-morocco binding by Queen Victoria’s Edinburgh bookbinders, with a strikingly close binding parallel for the same edition represented in the Royal Collection.