James Boswell. The Life of Samuel Johnson. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd., 1907; extra-illustrated by A.H. Reed. 10 volumes, Vol. 1 displayed.
In the 1930s, Reed began to extra-illustrate a copy of Forster’s Dickens – a practice that involved inserting material relating to the text between the pages. At that time, Reed regularly had been purchasing £5 bundles of about 100 letters from Maggs Brothers of London. In these, Reed found letters by people in the Dickens circle, or by people referred to in Forster’s biography.
Reed’s original gift included his grangerized edition of Forster’s Dickens, extended to ten volumes. It was later extended by Reed to twenty volumes in spring-form bindings, containing hundreds of letters, portraits and clippings including letters by Dickens and his family.
Prior to this, in the late 1920s, Reed had extra-illustrated an edition of Boswell’s Johnson, extending it to ten volumes in maroon spring-form bindings. This was first loaned to the Library for display in 1928.
Extra-illustrated books are traditionally bound in morocco leather, and Reed’s use of spring-form bindings may indicate that he considered his grangerized volumes incomplete. His concurrent interest in autograph letters meant that he could easily open the binding and insert any newly acquired item of interest.
This case features an example of the maroon spring-form bindings – the work of the Dunedin Public Library bindery - which Reed used for his extra-illustrated edition of Boswell’s Johnson.
James Boswell. The Life of Samuel Johnson. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd., 1907; extra-illustrated by A.H. Reed. 10 volumes, Vol. 1 displayed.
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