Exploring the ways that Victorians made books into beautiful objects gives us insight into their cultural values, particularly their changing constructions of gender. With a focus on experiments in format, illustration, and illumination, “Trophies and Treasures: The Victorian Luxury Book” examines the use of developing technologies to produce the feminised Victorian luxury book. Books made and designed by women are featured throughout the exhibition, including Victorian albums and annuals; publications by Emily Faithfull’s Victoria Press and the Yeats Sisters’ Cuala Press; and books featuring women artists, including Phoebe Anna Traquair, Jessie M. King, Florence Harrison, and HRH Princess Beatrice. Highlights of this exhibition include the 1857 Moxon Tennyson, with Pre Raphaelite wood engravings ; two manuscripts illuminated by Alberto Sangorski; the elephant folio edition of Henry Noel Humphreys’s guide to The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (1849); Tennyson’s Welcome to Princess Alexandra, illuminated by Owen Jones (1863); decadent Belles Lettres limited editions; and the Kelmscott Chaucer (1896), widely agreed to be the most beautiful book ever printed in English. Focused on British publications, the scope of the exhibition extends from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the onset of the First World War.
This exhibition is being curated by Holly Forsythe Paul, the Hilary Nicholls Fellow at the Fisher Library.