“There ought to be a Bibliographical Society in York,” declared Peter Miller, sometime back in 1985. I wavered between encouragement and doubt. My occasional encounters with The Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, in the course of research, had led me to imagine such societies as dry and dusty institutions where the last odours of Victorian pipe-smoke lingered. But perhaps a bibliographical society created by enthusiasm and youth could be entertaining and sociable, as well as informative and scholarly. And so it proved. A committee came together with remarkable speed, members enrolled by the dozen, thus proving that a demand for bibliographical enlightenment existed in York, and enough people were persuaded to talk about their special interests to create a programme. The venue certainly helped. The Black Swan had the right atmosphere: a large open fire, plenty of fine panelling, and no music. It also had that great desideratum of society life, an upstairs room, spacious and historic. Clubs and societies from their beginnings in the seventeenth century, like religious conventicles before them, have always favoured upstairs rooms - for privacy and separateness, away from vulgar eyes. The staircase up to the Wolfe Room is subtly angled so as to throw off-balance anyone who mounts it at more than funeral pace, and this unconventional approach to the Tuesday meetings always suggested to me that the little world one was entering was also at a slightly odd angle to everyday life.
A glance at the list of lectures that have been given to the Society over the last twenty years reveals what a remarkable range of subjects we have been introduced to, very often by speakers who are the leading experts in their field. The level of expertise has often been impressively high, and the topics have been as miscellaneous as the books in a library. One area where we have been particularly well served is that of book illustration. Over the years we have been introduced to George Cruikshank, Thomas Bewick and Benjamin Fawcett, and from the twentieth century, Gwen Raverat, Sturge Moore, Barbara Jones, John Piper and Edward Gorey. These are names that stand out - but we have also encountered dozens of lesser-known engravers, lithographers, and woodblock artists who have given such diversity and distinction to the books of this country. A short intense exposure to a subject one knew next to nothing about can produce a wonderful sense of enlightenment - even a temporary feeling of omniscience - in the course of an hour's talk. It would, I think, be invidious to attempt to single out what I would rate as the finest performances, but I will say which talks I found most amusing: Peter Lock's account of the Edwardian archaeologist whose favourite instrument of excavation was dynamite, and Malcolm Neesam's description of the hydropathic wonderland that was Harrogate Spa in the nineteenth century. On occasions like these, the Bibliographical Society could rival the music hall for entertainment.
Undoubtedly, some of the most memorable passages of the Society's brief history have been the weekend visits to bookish places. These visits are complicated to organise, but immensely rewarding to the participants. Who could forget the party in Heffers bookshop in Cambridge, or the hospitality so profusely offered at Magdalen College, Oxford? Those who survived the forced march around central Glasgow, led by Gavin Stamp, will always remember the architectural splendours revealed in street after street. Edinburgh was no longer a grim grey city after the receptions in the New Town and at Susan Ferrier's house. The real mission of these visits, however, was to look at remarkable libraries, and in this respect our situation as privileged bibliophiles has given us some enviable advantages. We have leafed through the manuscripts of Scott novels in the National Library of Scotland, had the intense pleasure of experiencing the quality of paper, type and woodblock print in a Gutenberg Bible at first hand, in Glasgow, and viewed Carolingian manuscripts in Durham so closely that one could make out the impressions of the scribal quill. To my mind, the opportunity to look through the illustrations of the eleventh-century Canterbury Psalter in Trinity College, Cambridge, stands out as one of the finer moments of our many library visits. To a bibliophile, the locked glass bookcase in some collection, or the wired-off books in a National Trust house arouse sadness and frustration. Books are for use, to be read, consulted and enjoyed; they should not be kept in sterile isolation and revered as objects too valuable to be touched. Part of the appeal of our Society visits is that we are able to get past the conventional restrictions on access to significant books and engage with them at close quarters, under the tolerant eye of the librarian. I think most members would agree that the experience of intimate contact with important books has a most invigorating effect on the imagination!
Another particularly engaging aspect of the Society's activities has been the visits to relatively small private libraries where the owners are present to show us around in person and are willing to share their pleasure in their books. In this area, our visit to Renishaw Hall in the affable company of Reresby Sitwell comes immediately to mind, as do our experiences at Hovingham Hall, Scampston and Winestead. On a smaller scale, some of our own members probably have interesting collections that we have never seen, and I suspect that as we cast around for unfamiliar libraries to visit, we are probably overlooking some that are very close to hand. The Members' Evenings in the summer have provided occasions for the display and discussion of unusual volumes, and it is likely that these items are only a sample of what could be shown, if sufficient encouragement were offered.
Though it is satisfying to look back over the programmes of the last twenty years, the question that always exercises the committee is how we move onward. The bookworld seems in a flourishing condition. Surprisingly in an electronic age more books seem to be sold than ever, and more titles are published. Big bookshops proliferate, Amazon thrives, literary festivals and prizes promote reading, book fairs attract crowds, and the phenomenon of book circles continues to grow. Yet these auspicious conditions do not produce new bibliophiles who yearn to join the Society. Membership holds fairly steady, but it does not increase, and there is a noticeable absence of younger members. Other societies that I belong to have similar problems. Do we accept that societies such as ours do not have a particularly strong appeal in a modish, fast-moving world? Should we radically change our character in order to widen our membership? We can always find new speakers in our established manner, although it becomes more difficult to identify new places to visit, and we may have to return to some of our more successful destinations. How we shall look in ten years' time is not an easy question to answer. York is the centre of the book trade in the north, and there is a large, well-educated population to draw on for membership. Ecologically speaking, the Bibliographical Society should continue to flourish in this habitat, although it may have to adapt itself to changing conditions. Capacity for change is, after all, a feature of living organisms. Books always need commentators, and there is a perpetual curiosity about the making of books, a process, as we know, that has no end. Floreat Societatem!
This page was prepared by Peter M Lee, e-mail math16@york.ac.uk
Revised 24 November 2006