TheRoxburghe Club is abibliophilic andpublishing society based in theUnited Kingdom.
The spur to the Club's foundation was the sale of the enormouslibrary of theDuke of Roxburghe (who had died in 1804), which took place over 46 days in May–July 1812. The auction was eagerly followed bybibliophiles, the high point being the sale on 17 June 1812 of the first dated edition ofBoccaccio'sDecameron, printed byChristophorus Valdarfer at Venice in 1471,[1] and sold to theMarquis of Blandford for £2,260, the highest price ever given for a book at that time. (The Marquis already possessed a copy, but one that lacked 5 pages.) That evening, a group of eighteen collectors met at the St Albans Tavern, St Albans Street (later renamed Waterloo Place) for a dinner presided over by the2nd Earl Spencer, and this is regarded as the origin of the Roxburghe Club.
A toast drunk on that occasion has been repeated at every annual anniversary dinner since to the "immortal memory of John Duke of Roxburghe, of Christopher Valdarfer, printer of theBoccaccio of 1471, ofGutenberg,Fust andSchoeffer, the inventors of the art of printing, ofWilliam Caxton, Father of the British press [and others; and] the prosperity of the Roxburghe Club and the Cause ofBibliomania all over the world". It was decided to make the dinner an annual event: further members were admitted the following year. The club was formed byThomas Frognall Dibdin, author of the bookBibliomania; or Book-Madness (1809), who served as its first secretary; and the club was formalised under Earl Spencer's presidency.[2]
The Club has had a total of 350 members from its foundation to 2017.[3] The circle has always been an exclusive one, with just one "black ball" (negative vote) being enough to exclude an applicant. Since 1839 the number of members at any one time has been limited to forty.[4]
A photograph exists of the membership in 1892, including the Prime MinisterArthur Balfour and anthropologistAndrew Lang, as well asAmerican poetJames Russell Lowell,Alfred Henry Huth, andSimon Watson Taylor.[citation needed]James Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, was then President.
The first female member wasMary, Viscountess Eccles, elected in 1985. In 2011, the Australian comedianBarry Humphries was elected a member.[3] The President since 1998 has beenMax Egremont.
The Club rapidly became more than a mere social institution. Each member was (and remains) expected to sponsor the publication of a rare or curious volume. Other volumes are published by the Club collectively. Initially the volumes were editions of earlyblackletter printed texts (the first, in 1814, was theEarl of Surrey's translation of parts ofVirgil'sAeneid, originally printed in 1557); but from as early as 1819 they began to include texts taken frommanuscript originals. The standards of scholarship are high, and the quality of printing,facsimile reproduction, and binding is lavish. Copies of each volume (in a fine binding) are presented to all members, and a limited number of extra copies (generally in a less lavish binding) may be made available for sale to non-members. From 1839, the total number of copies for each publication, including members' copies, was limited to 100. Recently,[when?] the limit was raised to 342 copies: 42 for the club, 300 for the public. The Roxburghe Club is generally recognised as the first "book club" (that is,text publication society), and was a model for many book societies that appeared later inBritain andEurope.
In 2000 the publisherSusan Shaw completed the work that she had been given by theRoxburghe Club to create a facsimile copy of "The Great Book of Thomas Trevilian" in two volumes. The book was given to the club's members. A copy of Shaw's facsimile book in 2020 was on sale for £2,200.[5]
A full list of the "Membership since 1812" can be found on the club website.[3]
Media related toRoxburghe Club at Wikimedia Commons
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