As the inscription page reads, this book was rebound in 1914. As coincidence would have it, the poetry of John Donne experienced a resurgence in popular culture in the 1920s, after being out of the limelight for quite some time. Poets like T. S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats brought him back into poetry and prose in the 1920s, and one could speculate that this book was rebound exactly because Donne was returning as a big character in literature. One could also speculate that whoever purchased and had this edition rebound saved a lot of money by being ahead of the game.
The cover is made of what seems to be plain leather, with a raised spine. The leather is worn, but if it was rebound as recently as 1914, it may not have been properly handled, or the leather may not be the best there is.
Two other rebound first editions found through online antique traders are either made with morocco, a binding made of goatskin, or a mix of morocco and marbled paper, a style popularized in the late 19th century, depicted here. The trend of marbled paper originally came from the East, but was adopted by European bookbinders due to both cost-effectiveness and the competitive durability of cloth bindings. Leather accents were maintained for a while, as depicted here, but the introduction of marbled cloth eventually led to the end of the leather era. To compare, one can observe the wear and tear on our research item much more than one can see from this image of a similarly rebound first edition. This may be a testament to the durability of cloth bindings over leather, but we are also only seeing a snapshot of these other editions, and so no final conclusion can really be reached. However, both of these editions similarly claim to be rebound in the early 20th century, and in addition to their surfaces looking better than the one we have here, the descriptions also detail less extensive water damage, tears, repairs, and one ad lists “two inserted leaves with ‘The Printer to the Understanders’ and ‘Hexastichon Bibliopolæ'” (AbeBooks). Comparatively, we only have half of a “The Printer to the Understanders” (depicted below). It may be safe to assume that our edition was not treated with the utmost reverence, and may have had a rough journey to UBC’s RBSC Library.
In our edition, there are no leaves with any special patterns, no bookplates, and only one page between the cover and the content which appears to be a part of the rebinding process. The paper material is much thicker and rougher, but is not decorated (not even marbled!).
Comparatively, the rest of the pages in the book are in mediocre conditions at best. Not to mention the fact that the title page is missing. The paper has many battle wounds: stains, paper repairs of various sizes, shapes, and thicknesses, water damage, and plenty of pages with ripped ends.
In conclusion, this edition is not in the most competitive shape, and UBC is missing any information on the details of the edition’s conditions (i.e. rebinding history, ownership, or contextual information), but one can also say that this very edition has gone through some hard times. In terms of the journey of this first edition, some of these battle scars don’t seem too bad – but I am also the fanatically analog John Donne fan here, so I may be a little biased.
