772. Not To Be Taken Away

From 14 to 17 May, Firsts: London’s Rare Book Fair was held in London, for which various antiquarian bookshops published colourful catalogues, such as Sims Reed, and Sophie Schneideman, and highlights including a copy of the signed limited edition of The Ballad of Reading Gaol (offered by Peter Harrington) were published on the Firsts website.

Schneideman's catalogue includes among a large group of Eragny Press editions two books that were shown to clients in the Hacon & Ricketts shop, At the Sign of the Dial. Usually, these copies of Vale and Eragny Press books have the prospectus pasted in at the front. To prevent these file copies, which had likely been handled by many people, from being sold, an instruction was written in ink on the front cover:

File Copy
Not to be taken away

File copies of Eragny Press books:
Gustave Flaubert, Un Coeur simple and
La Légende de St. Julien l'Hospitalier (both 1900)

These two Eragny volumes contained stories by Gustave Flaubert: Un Coeur simple and La Légende de St. Julien l'Hospitalier (both 1900). The third Flaubert volume issued by the Eragny Press, Hérodias (1901), not a file copy like the other two, was equally available for purchase at the fair. 

These handwritten notes on Vale and Eragny Press copies were added in various hands over a number of years as office boys came and went. After the press was closed down in 1903, these copies initially remained in the possession of Charles Ricketts, who in due course gave several of them away to friends, such as Gordon Bottomley. These two ended up in the collection of his Italian friend Antonio Cippico, to whom he would later dedicate his 'Victorian masterpiece' Beyond the Threshold.

771. Published Online: The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts

On 8 May, the three volumes of The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts, edited by John Aplin and myself, have been published as an E-Book (PDF) by Brill (Leiden/Boston). The hardback copies will be available in June.

The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts
(volume III). Brill, 2026

The preliminary matter - Introduction, A Charles Ricketts Chronology, Editorial Principles, Sources and Acknowledgements, Abbreviations, and the List of Figures are freely accessible on the Brill website. See the notice on Volume I on the Brill website. 

Volume III contains the Index of Books, Bookplates, Posters and Ephemera Designed or Illustrated by Ricketts, the Index of Letters by Recipient, and the General Index. These are also freely accessible, see the notice on Volume III on the Brill website.

For volume II, see also Brill's website. All in all, 2,147 letters by Charles Ricketts have been made available to scholars, students, and the general audience.

770. Another Charles Ricketts

The name Charles Ricketts is not uncommon. In the nineteenth century for example there was an Assistant Surgeon Charles Ricketts who during the Crimean War wrote a letter to The Times, reporting that the Russians killed their prisoners, there was a Charles Ricketts, officer at the Royal Fusilliers who acted in a play at the regimental theatre at Aldershott, another Charles Ricketts was accused of stealing peas and half-a-sack of bran and a bucket and brush (he pleaded guilty), and yet another Charles Ricketts, a beerhouse keeper, sold beer at 'improper hours on Sunday'. Other men called Charles Ricketts were labourers, bakers, plasterers, captains, butcher's boys, inn keepers, land owners or brick layers. Some people with this name won prizes for 'the best yearling bull'.

Website Liverpool Geological Society

On 11 February 1868, Dr. Ricketts, F.G.S. was in the chair for the monthly meeting of the Liverpool Geological Society. He also read one of the papers: 'Remarks on the Upper Silurian Formation', and his full name was given in the Liverpool Albion (17 February 1868) as Charles Ricketts, M.D., F.G.S. He is one of a few people called Charles Ricketts who besides leaving traces in archives and newspapers, published articles and books listed in library catalogues and bibliographies. All his papers have geological themes, although he was trained and worked as a surgeon.

He was born in Titchfield in 1819, the son of Dr. John Alston Ricketts (1786-1852). At a young age, he developed an interest in geology and he kept his first fossil from the Hampshire Cliffs in his collection. He was educated at Bath, graduating in medicine, and in about 1845 moved to Lancaster, and later Birkenhead (near Liverpool) where he worked as a surgeon and lived in Prince-street the greater part of his life. In October 1861 his name figured in the list of 'gentlemen on whom the degree Doctor of Medicine has just been conferred' (Fife Herald, 17 October 1861).

In June 1851, he was married at Cartmel, Lancashire, to Eliza, 'daughter of the late Thomas Clarkson' of Brackenthwaite, near Lancaster (Hampshire Telegraph, 28 June 1851). In 1852 a daughter was born, in 1853 a son (who died the next year). 

In 1863 he became a member of the Liverpool Geological Society (which was established in 1859), and in 1868 he joined the Geological Society of London. He published a paper 'On some Erratics in the Boulder-clay of Cheshire, &c., and the Conditions of Climate they denote' in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London (1885). In 1873, he published Essays On Physical Geology (printed at the Courier steam printing works). Another publication was titled Remarks on the Country around the Wrekin. A Comparison of the Carboniferous Rocks of Coalbrook Dale, with Those of Other Districts (1876). More than twenty of his papers were published in the Proceedings of the Liverpool Geological Society. He was also a member of other societies, such as the Naturalists' Field Club. 

Obituary in Geological Magazine (May 1904)

He donated his collection to the University of Liverpool. In an obituary he was described as a careful observer and an 'indefatigable worker in the field'. His kind, unobtrusive and unselfish character endeared him to many, which was displayed by a gift he received as early as 1857: ‘On Tuesday evening last, a neat and handsome skeleton timepiece was presented to Charles Ricketts, Esq., surgeon, formerly house surgeon at the Dispensary in this town, by a few friends, as small token of their esteem, for his bland and gentlemanly demeanour to all, and particularly for urbane and charitable attention to the humbler classes of Birkenhead and its vicinity’ (Lancaster Guardian, 3 January 1857).

Around 1900 Charles Ricketts moved back to Hampshire where he died on 29 February 1904. He was buried in St. Peter's Church burial ground, Curdridge, where a monument mentions the names of his father and (presumably) a sister.