A treatise on the mineral waters of Harrogate and its vicinity
London: Longman and Co.; Black, Edinburgh; Langdale, Harrogate; Inchbold, and Cross, Leeds. 1830. First edition, 12mo, pp. vii, [1], 138; original printed green muslin (an early example of printed cloth), some fraying along the joints and spine, spine sunned, else very good. The text treats of the medical history of mineral baths, sulfur springs, chalybeate springs, saline springs, directions for taking the waters, baths, exercise, and diet. The binding is one of the first cloth bindings with printed covers. Books bound in full cloth date from the 1760s onwards. These early cloth bindings were generally of coarsely woven hessian cloth or canvas and used most frequently on school textbooks. Publishers' full cloth bindings date from the early to mid-1820s, William Pickering being one of the early innovators. In 1829 gilt was used to label the spines on these cloth-bound volumes, and by 1834 the cloth was finally embellished with an illustration. I can find no books in the bookbinding literature with printed cloth covers of an earlier date. OCLC locates copies at the BL, Oxford, Leeds, Cambridge, U. of St. Andrews, York, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, McGill, 1 in Paris, and in the U.S. only 3: College of Physicians in Philadelphia, Wisconsin, and Penn. Item #66791
Price: $950.00
