College and Research Libraries


Book Design 
Victorian Book Design & Colour Printing. 

By Ruari McLean. New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1963. 182p. $ 10. 

Ruari McLean's standard handbook on 
Modern Book Design , published by Essen-
tial Books in 1959 is well known. Mr. Mc-
Lean began that volume with the founding 
of the Kelmscott Press in 1890, which now 
serves as well as the terminal point of his 
present study of the Victorian period in 
book design. 

This new volume will be welcomed bv 
bibliographers, art historians, librarians, and 
collectors as the first attempt to treat com-
prehensively the several separate factors that 
were interworked by nineteenth-century ar-
tists and craftsmen to effect the totality of 
impression that comprised the design of 
their books. Although typography, binding, 
paper, and illustration are all discussed, it is 
the last of these that receives most of Mr. 
McLean's attention; this is perhaps as it 
should be, since illustration and illustrators 
of the period-especially early workers in 
color-have perhaps received less than their 
due of attention in the past. Despite this 
emphasis, however, the total impact of the 
book is one of balance and appropriate per-
tinence to its title. 

It is difficult for any book of 182 pages 
to discuss successively 459 titles-as the pres-
ent volume does-without at times reading 
a bit like a catalog, and Victorian Book De-
sign cannot wholly disclaim this criticism. 
Yet it does well to minimize it through its 
good organization, which is adequate to sus-
tain a not unpleasant continuity throughout. 

There is no doubt in this reviewer's mind 
but that its excellent illustrations also do 
much to lend a cohesiveness to this book. 

Review Articles 

There are eight color plates, sixty-four half-
tones, and nine line illustrations of title 
pages, openings, bindings, and devices. All 
are carefully chosen, well reproduced, and 
conscientiously keyed to the text. Despite 
their major role in this volume, however, 
the fine illustrations in no case overpower 
the work, but rather remain always appro-
priately subdued to the text. 

Mr. McLean begins his monograph, as he 
should, with the work of the Whittinghams, 
especially the younger, and of William Pick-
ering, through the Chiswick Press. The ex-
cellent design and ingenious inventiveness 
that went into the fine volumes issued dur-
ing a quarter century over this imprint 
make them of outstanding importance in 
the history of the book arts. The author dis-
cusses new illustrative techniques as both 
cause and effect of gift book printing. The 
use of lithography-especially of chromo-
lithography-for book work is described in 
some detail, as well as color printing from 
woodcuts. 

Among the persons singled to figure prom-
inently in this book are George Baxter, 
Charles Knight, Henry Shaw, Owen Jones, 
Henry Noel Humphreys, Joseph Cundall, 
Henry Vizetelly, and Edmund Evans, and 
their several contributions are well de-
scribed. Topics included for special discus-
sion are the illustration of yellow-backs, the 
developing styles of bookbindings, nine-
teenth-century illuminations, and the illus-
trating of children's books. 

In collecting his data for this book, Mr. 
McLean has consulted not only secondary 
sources, but also such primary documents as 
newspaper files , patent records, and pub-
lishing house archives. His workmanship 
has been thorough, and the resulting study 
is a valuable one.-D. K. 

522 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES