The Gold Bug

The Gold Bug, by Edgar Poe. London: George Routledge & Sons, Limited, 1894. Pp. [vii], 123, 24mo, 13,5 x 7,5 cm.

Magnificently bound by G.T. BAGGULEY OF NEWCASTLE-UNDER-LYME; binder's name and location 'Bagguley, Newcastle-Under-Lyme' stamped on the inside edge (lower turn-in) of the front cover. Full brown leather binding with highly-stylised gilt Art Nouveau design work on covers, with additional single gilt fillet border to covers. Gilt spine with five raised bands, six compartments framed in gilt, two of which enclosing gilt lettering, year in gilt at foot of spine. Board edges and turn-ins tooled in gilt. Top edge gilt, others untrimmed. A few copies of this work have been printed on Vellum, on Japan paper and on China paper, and considering the very smooth, glossy surface and pale yellowish buff colour of the paper, this is likely one of the few copies. Illustrations by Mittis [Guillaume's Nelumbos series.] Paris printing with engraved frontispiece, and further engraved illustrations throughout, many full-page. 

A little wear to extremities and corner tips with a few hairline scratches to the top gilt, lightly penciled inscription to FFEP reading "Ltd Edition on Vellum, Signed Binding, Newcastle-Under-Lyme", light offsetting to front and rear free endpapers, and a few (very) small turned corners to some pages. Else a fine copy looking like it could have been bound yesterday.

One of the rarest books in Guillaume's Nelumbos series that has originally been composed, engraved, printed, stitched and bound in cloth at the printing office of Edouard Guillaume, 105, boulevard Brune, 105, Paris, herewith in a contemporary rebind by the elusive British bookbinder George Thomas Bagguley, the master behind the well-known Sutherland binding, principally employed on doublures. A beautiful, small edition of Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 detective fiction short story following William Legrand who becomes fixated on an unusual gold-colored bug he has discovered. 'The Gold-Bug' was the most popular and widely read of Poe's prose works during his lifetime, and helped popularise cryptograms and secret writing. 

George Thomas Bagguley (b.1860) established himself as a bookseller in Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire in 1890. Though the firm appears in the Directories from 1892 until 1940 as booksellers and not bookbinders, a photograph of the Bagguley shop in the High Street taken in 1925 shows the front bearing the lettering "Bookbinder, Bookseller, Printer and Stationer". Bookbinding took place on the premises and the shop closed in 1952. The work was often of the highest quality, as Bagguley employed a number of the best finishers, including Louis Genth and Thomas E. Caley.