262. Dust-Jackets on Ricketts's books (5): Poems Dramatic and Lyrical, Second series

In last week's blog a copy of Lord de Tabley's Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (1893) and its dust-jacket were shown. De Tabley's book was such a success (reprinted twice) that a second series of poems was published with the same title, Poems Dramatic and Lyrical. Second Series (February 1895). The book was advertised as being 'Uniform in binding with the first series'.

For this copy another dust-jacket was used than for copies of the first series. (By the way, whether there were any dust-jackets for the second and third editions of the first series has not been determined.) The dust-jacket was a plain semi transparent paper wrapper.

Dust-jacket for Lord De Tabley's Poems Dramatic and Lyrical. Second Series (1895)

Parts of the dust-jacket were cut out to show the title and author's name. This was regular practice in bookshops. The binding was (largely) protected, and the green cloth was not affected by light, and still the buyers could easily recognize the book.

Examples of torn and cut jackets can be found in Mark R. Godburn's recent book Nineteenth-Century Dust-Jackets (2016) (see pp. 118-121). In some cases jackets were torn in the bindery to assist packing of multi volume sets of books, in other cases it was done by sales assistants.

Dust-jacket for Lord De Tabley's Poems Dramatic and Lyrical. Second Series (1895) [detail]

The jacket for the second series of poems by De Tabley is an example of the second type, that was cut in the shop. A copy is now in a private collection.