Folio. Bound in beige cloth covered boards, lettered in black to upper cover and spine, brown paper pages. 122 out of 162 pages used. A very good example. Slight foxing to the binding, the pages internally are clean and crisp.
 
PROVENANCE: Charles Harold St John Hornby (1867–1946), founder of the Ashendene Press, annotated by him; Major J. R. Abbey (1894–1969), book collector, his book plate and ownership inscription to front pastedown. Abbey’s ownership inscription reads, ‘This volume belonged to St. Hornby, half the illustrations were inserted by St. J Hornby & the others by J. R. Abbey.’
 
This scrapbook of medieval manuscript facsimiles has been compiled by two of the most significant figures in book history from the late nineteenth century to the twentieth century, C. H. Stj. Hornby (1867–1946) and J. R. Abbey (1894–1969), and it traces the competitive desires for medieval manuscripts.
 
St John Hornby founded the Ashendene Press in 1895, one of the finest private presses, and was a partner in W. H. Smith. One of the great bibliophiles of his age, he also built a fine collection of books and as the present album attests, medieval manuscripts.
 
The first half of this album has been compiled by Hornby. The first pages feel unassuming, with glued cut outs of facsimiles and catalogue pictures, some with catalogue descriptions pasted below. Some light pencil annotations begin to appear, commenting on date, provenance, and where the manuscript was sold, and sometimes price. Then, a new annotation starts to appear, where Hornby states his own purchases in ink. For most, he includes the date of purchase, the lot number, what the sale was, a brief description of the item, and the price. As the frequency of his annotations increases the album moves of being a record of appreciation to acquisition.
 
Part way through the album, the ownership changes to J. R. Abbey’s, and we begin to see his own feverish collecting, often in competition with Hornby. Abbey was a prolific book collector in a variety of different areas such as fine bindings and illustrated books. Abbey was severely dyslexic. Christopher de Hamel, who wrote the most comprehensive account of his life, describes him as ‘almost illiterate’ and that ‘He had virtually no grasp of capitalisation, spelling or punctuation. He knew no language but English.’ However, that did not prevent him from amassing one of the best book collections of the twentieth century, with his collection still being used as a reference for bibliographers and collectors.
 
Abbey’s collections were not shy regarding medieval manuscripts. Following on from Hornby, Abbey states his take-over stating ‘From Here J. R Abbey Takes Over & Inserts Illustrations’.
 
The pasted in pictures that follow each have a small description, price, date and location of purchase all written by Abbey. What is fascinating, many of the items that follow in Abbey’s collection have come from the collection of Hornby. The album includes a typescript letter addressed to Abbey from G.D. Hobson at Sotheby reporting that Hornby was the purchaser of several lots Abbey missed out on. Abbey, like Hornby, also continued to track the sale of manuscripts that he did not buy, as prices dramatically rose following the Second World War. In addition to this, Abbey went through the records compiled by Hornby and noted his own later acquisition of these books and where relevant, adds his own shelfmark.
 
An invaluable record from a golden age of manuscript collecting.