[Thanks to Lake Conservator Mary Oey for contributing this post.]
This is a first edition copy of Lord Byron’s Hours of Idleness, owned by Byron’s friend John Cam Hobhouse. Hobhouse bought the book and had it rebound with alternating blank interleaves, which he energetically filled with editorializing remarks and other — often snarky — comments (although he apparently lost steam about a third of the way through the book and the remaining interleaves are mostly blank). Hobhouse’s own thoughts on his annotations, years later, are inscribed on the front flyleaf (above).
The book, currently in Houghton’s exhibition, “Let Satire Be My Song”: Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, required conservation as the book had broken into seven separate pieces.
I separated the leaves from each other
and resewed them with the same thread pattern used by the binder who had interleaved the book.
The boards were reattached using the flat extensions of the white sewing supports visible in the picture above on the right. I recovered the spine of the book with a new, matching paper and pasted the original spine fragments back into place.
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
You can see this book on display in Houghton’s current exhibition, “Let Satire Be My Song”: Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, up until July 31st.