An exhibition on colour is on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until 18 February: Colour Revolution. Victorian Art, Fashion & Design. The catalogue features John Addington Symonds's In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays (designed by Charles Ricketts) accompanying an essay by Stefano Evangelista on the possible 'queerness' of the colours green, blue and yellow.
 |
| Charles Ricketts, cover design for In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays (1893): version in cream cloth |
The front cover of a copy in blue cloth illustrates this article that states: 'The first edition included a number of copies bound in blue cloth, now extremely rare, [...]' (page 200). A search in ViaLibri immediately produces a number of results: which copies are currently for sale and what does that say about their supposed rarity?
1. A copy in full vellum, one of fifty large paper copies (price c. €4500);
2. Four copies in cream cloth (prices range from €115 to €285)
3. Two rebound copies (priced €90 and €100)
Additionally, there are some copies of which the colour of the cover goes unmentioned, and there are several reprints for sale.
 |
| Charles Ricketts, cover design for In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays (1893): version in blue cloth |
For now, no copies in blue cloth are for sale. However, if we consider just what has been on offer over the last quarter of a century - at a time when ordinary copies figure considerably less in catalogues than special ones - we see that the range is rather uniform in numbers. I counted (roughly) seven copies in cream cloth, seven in blue cloth and nine large paper copies in vellum.
Since Symonds's bibliography identifies the blue covers as rare, it is not surprising that antiquarian bookdealers like to sell copies in blue cloth rather than those of the cream version. According to bibliographer P.L. Babington, one of the publishers, Elkin Mathews remembered that Ricketts preferred the cream version to the blue one because the colour blue could lead to jokes about Ricketts's Blue (there was a laundry powder called Reckitt's Blue). But in a 1930 letter, Ricketts contradicted this and stated that it was the booksellers who found the cream version too liable to soiling and therefore preferred to sell the blue ones. He was convinced that the cream version was rare. Interestingly, the second printing was issued in blue cloth and, as yet, no copies in cream of this edition have turned up, while the third edition was issued exclusively in cream cloth.
 |
| Colour Revolution, Ashmolean Museum, 2024 (case with In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays) |
The label in the exhibition is confusing. It states that only 150 copies of the edition were bound in blue cloth. As a source for this statement is lacking, I assume this may have been a wild guess by an antiquarian bookseller trying to convince a customer to buy a copy.
