The Santa Clara Early Modern Book Initiative brings together students, librarians, and faculty in an effort to report SCU’s eligible pre-1800 books to the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), as well as to revise and enhance local catalog records.

The work that I do as part of the Santa Clara Early Modern Book Initiative, or SCEMBI for short, can be best categorized as a form of descriptive bibliography. Those of us working on this initiative deal with books from Santa Clara’s University Library, Archives & Special Collections that were published in England (or its territories), or in the English language, prior to the year 1800. In our work, we study the physical characteristics of a particular text, and seek to understand more about its history, production, and distinctive features. In addition to studying these texts, we also catalog them. We regularly contribute to the English Short Title Catalog (ESTC), an online resource created by the British Library in London. Before adding to the catalogue, we must determine whether SCU’s copy of a particular book is identical to the ESTC’s entry for that book. To do this, we compare the title, date/place of publication, and other distinctive features, including printing errors or prefaces; if a text’s features are the same as what is listed in the ESTC, then we conclude that this book is a “match.” Contributions to the ESTC come from thousands of different libraries, connecting our work to that of others from around the world. This also allows us to trace where in the world different copies of the same texts SCU owns have ended up.

The subject of past ownership is one that is particularly important to our work, and it’s going to be the subject of this first blog post about our project. A book’s history of ownership is often referred to as its provenance. Some of the telling markers of provenance that crop up in many pre-1800 texts include handwritten dedications, stamps, family crests, stickers, embossments, or bookplates. All of these features help us to understand how, when, and by whom a specific text has been used, and what it may have meant to a previous owner hundreds of years ago. From this, we gain a sense of the text’s importance or purpose to other people through its lifetime. Furthermore, provenance may help us to trace how these books made their way from England to Santa Clara, whether by chance or design.

One of the most common—and often the most personalized and decorative
—indicators of provenance are bookplates. A bookplate is essentially a label that denotes ownership of a text. It could include the name of the owner themselves or a sort of crest associated with a particular family or organization; sometimes a bookplate may include both. Often these bookplates have been pasted onto the inside cover of the book—what is called the “front pastedown”—making them immediately visible upon first opening the text. It is possible that they were utilized as an attempt to prevent theft, or to proudly display ownership over a text, marking it as a part of one’s own library. One form of a bookplate that I have frequently come across in my work looks like a simple and quite small label that states either the initials or full name of a past owner. Although these bookplates are plain, they typically still include some form of decorative border which surrounds the name. These borders can sometimes be rather intricate, while other times they are merely comprised of a single shape, such as a diamond, that has been repeated to form the border that encompasses the name.

An example of a very simple bookplate can be found in SCU’s copy of Travels of the Jesuits, into Various Parts of the World: Particularly China and the East-Indies, by John Lockman, printed in London in 1762. The name “WM. Matthews” has been printed on a small label that has been pasted onto the inside cover of the book, as is typical. The words are surrounded by a duplicated diamond, making it a rather simple label. It takes up a very small portion of the page, only being about 2.5 cm long and 4 cm wide.

In contrast, a more ornate bookplate can be found in the first volume of this book set. This bookplate is also much larger in size, about 8 cm long and 5.5 cm wide. It includes the owner’s name, “John Bolton,” as well as a decorative family crest. A quick Google search of this crest shows that it is associated with the Anglo-Saxon tribes of Britain. The crest features depictions of lions and a bird, and associates this book not only with John Bolton himself but with the Bolton family in general.

Bookplates with such crests provide a more detailed picture regarding the provenance and the type of individual that would have owned such a book. Overall, provenance is a single yet significant aspect of our work in studying Santa Clara’s rich collection of texts.

Header image: woodcut illustration from one of the texts discussed in this post, The Question of Questions… by J. Mumford, available in Archives & Special Collections.