John Harrison Stonehouse (1864 – 27 August 1937) was an English bookseller and Charles Dickens scholar at long-established London booksellers Henry Sotheran Ltd where he rose from apprentice to managing director through hard work and a strong entrepreneurial instinct. He introduced and popularised the "Cosway" binding and commissioned the opulent edition of Edward FitzGerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that was lost when RMS Titanic sank in 1912. He published a book on the subject in 1933.
He became a specialist in manuscripts and acquired a previously unknown collection of Dickens material relating to a youthful romance between the author and Maria Beadnell, his notes on which were turned into a book published in the United States. He later published a book about Dickens's early life. He also acquired 37 volumes of material relating to the prophetess Joanna Southcott, and a collection of "intimate" letters between the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
He was president of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association in 1936. He died in 1937 and received an obituary from the poet Siegfried Sassoon titled "Adventurer in Bookselling". He left little money, forcing his widow to seek financial assistance from his former employers.
Early life and family
John Stonehouse was born in Wilton, Wiltshire, in 1864.John Harrison Stonehouse Birth • England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008. Family Search. Retrieved 5 November 2022. He married Mary Martha. In 1891 they were living in Albert Street,John H Stonehouse Census • England and Wales Census, 1891. Family Search. Retrieved 5 November 2022. Camden Town, and in 1901, Bramshill Gardens, Dartmouth Park, to the north of Kentish Town. By 1901 they had children Dorothy, Joseph, and Ida.John H Stonehouse Census • England and Wales Census, 1901. Family Search. Retrieved 5 November 2022. Later, the Stonehouses lived at 19 Grand Avenue in Muswell Hill, north London.
Career
In 1884, Stonehouse joined the London book dealers Henry Sotheran Ltd as an apprentice, ultimately rising to the position of managing director through his skills of literacy, invention, and marketing. There, he worked with figures such as Henry Cecil Sotheran ("Cecil Sotheran" 1861-1928), the last Sotheran to run the firm, the scientific literature specialist and bibliographer Heinrich Zeitlinger, and manager and book scout Alexander Railton. He became a specialist in manuscripts and in 1905 acquired for his employers a previously unknown collection of Dickens material. In 1906 he acquired 37 volumes of material relating to the prophetess Joanna Southcott, and in 1908 purchased the "intimate" letters between Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.Gray, Victor. (2011) Bookmen London: 250 years of Sotheran bookselling. London: Henry Sotheran. pp. 216–217. ISBN 9780950821962
When Cecil Sotheran was killed in a motor accident in 1928, it was Stonehouse that prevented the firm from being wound-up by persuading his friend and fellow bookseller Gabriel Wells to buy it and recoup his outlay by selling shares in the firm. One investor was the banker and collector Anthony de Rothschild which ultimately led to the banking firm of that name buying the whole firm in 1957.
In 1933, he began to produce Piccadilly Notes, a continuously paginated publication that combined offers from Sotheran's stock with a column penned by Stonehouse titled "Adventures in Bookselling" featuring romantic recollections from his career and observations on the book world. It continued until his death and then for two more issues, the first being a memorial issue with text by Stonehouse, and the second a simple price list issued in 1938 as No. 23.Gray, pp. 292-295 & 311. It was revived in 1989.Gray, p. 388. In 1936, he was president of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association.ABA Past Presidents 1930–1942. Antiquarian Booksellers' Association. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
Cosway bindings
In 1901 or 1902, Stonehouse introduced what became known as the Cosway binding, a book in a fine binding, in which Sotheran's already specialised, but with the addition of a miniature portrait on the front cover relating to the author or subject of the book. The name came from the 18th-century miniaturist and macaroni Richard Cosway whose work had been the subject of several exhibitions in London in the 1890s.
The books were bound by the Rivière bindery, who already did a lot of work for Sotheran's, and the portraits painted by Miss C. B. Currie (Caroline Billin Curry, died 1940) in oil on ivory.Gray, pp. 194–195. They were protected by a thin glass cover.The Secret Language of Rare Books: Cosway-Style Bindings. Rebecca Romney, Bauman Rare Books, 5 May 2015. Retrieved 5 November 2022. Currie produced several thousand miniatures during her career with Sotheran's,Know Your Antiques Cosway Bindings. Bibi Mohamed, incollect. Retrieved 30 November 2022. as well as at least 164 numbered fore-edge paintings for the firm,Gray, pp. 233–236.The Concise Dictionary of National Biography. Bromer Booksellers. Retrieved 28 November 2022. but her identity was kept secret until 1911 when the success of the books was so great that Stonehouse decided to use her as part of the firm's marketing.Gray, pp. 207-208. Similar bindings had been made in 18th-century France and 19th-century America, and a number of competitors copied Sotheran's success, but it was the Cosways from Sotheran's that popularised that style of binding.What is a Cosway-Style Binding? Swann Auction Galleries, 26 April 2017. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
The "Great Omar"
In 1909, Stonehouse commissioned the bookbinders Sangorski & Sutcliffe to produce an edition of Edward FitzGerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859), a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. As Stonehouse later recalled, he told Francis Sangorski:Gray, pp. 204–205.
Do it and do it well; there is no limit, put what you like into the binding, charge what you like for it; the greater the price, the more I shall be pleased; provided only that it is understood, that what you do, and what you charge for, will be justified by the result; and the book when finished is to be the greatest modern Binding in the world; these are the only instructions.
The book, based on the large 1884 American edition illustrated by Elihu Vedder, took two years to complete at Sangorski & Sutcliffe's bindery in Southampton Row and included 1,050 jewels of topaz, turquoise, ruby, amethyst, garnets, and olivines. These were set in a binding of 5,000 pieces of coloured leather on a green morocco leather base. Stonehouse named the book the "Great Omar".Gray, pp. 205-206. According to company legend, he once played a prank on Sangorski by hiding the book when they met for dinner, causing Sangorski to think that he had lost it.Sotheran's: 250 Years of Bookselling. Beatie Wolfe, International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, 3 March 2011. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
Despite the book not being finished, Stonehouse made it the centrepiece of Sotheran's shop display for the Coronation of George V and Mary in June 1911. It was priced at £1,000, more than three times the price of any other single volume offered by the firm at the time. He was confident it would sell as there was already strong demand for jewelled bindings, particularly in the United States, but despite wide publicity it failed to find a buyer. It was refused by the King's librarian at Windsor, who was repelled by it, and Gabriel Wells refused it at £900. In 1912, an attempt to send it to the United States for the viewing of wealthy book buyers there, failed due to customs problems. Finally, Cecil Sotheran, whom Stonehouse had not consulted before commissioning the book, ordered it to be sold without reserve at auction. It came up at Sotheby's in March 1912 and was sold to Gabriel Wells for £405.Gray, pp. 212–214. Wells sent it to New York on RMS Titanic but the book was lost when that ship sank in April 1912.The Peacock Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe. Kagerou Bunko, Tokyo, 2022. pp. 3–5. Stonehouse published his history of the book in 1933.Stonehouse, John Harrison. (1933) The Story of the Great "Omar", Bound by Francis Longinus Sangorski, and its Romantic Loss. London: Piccadilly Fountain Press.
The troubled history of the book and its loss on the Titanic has caused some to view it as "cursed".The Cursed Book: Sangorski and Sutcliffe's 'Great Omar'. Peter Harrington, 12 April 2022. Retrieved 24 November 2022.The Curse of "The Great Omar". Delphine Hirasuna, @issue, 30 November 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2022. The front cover featured three peacocks, a bird traditionally associated with immortality"Peacock" in Maureen Stafford & Dora Ware. (1974) An Illustrated Dictionary of Ornament. London: George Allen & Unwin. p. 164. ISBN 0047290013 but in the modern era also with pride"Peacock" in Sarah Carr-Gomm. (2000) Dictionary of Symbols in Art: The illustrated key to Western painting and sculpture. London: Duncan Baird. p. 174. ISBN 1900131897 and vanity,"Peacock" in Alison Jones (1995) Larousse Dictionary of World Folklore. Edinburgh: Larousse. pp. 342–343. ISBN 0752300121 sins possibly reflected in the commissioning, pricing, and decorating of the book which featured 97 topazes on the cover with a border of 250 amethysts. The back cover showed an innocuous Persian mandolin, but inside the front doublure was a snake (or serpent) in an apple tree, evoking the story of the temptation of Eve by the serpent in the Garden of Eden which introduced evil into the world, while the back doublure showed a skull with teeth made of ivory. Among the flowers decorating the end pages were poppies and deadly nightshade, the whole creating a theme more of death than immortality. In 1912, Francis Sangorski drowned in an accident, while a later replica of the book created by Sangorski & Sutcliffe was destroyed during the London Blitz.Sangorski and Sutcliffe: The Rolls Royce of Bookbinding. Kelsey McKinney, Ransom Center Magazine, 10 December 2012. Retrieved 24 November 2022.
Charles Dickens
Stonehouse's personal literary interests centred on the works of Charles Dickens. In 1905, an employee of Sotheran's overheard a man in a hotel bar talking about documents that he thought were by Dickens and would be of great value if only they could be authenticated. Stonehouse became involved as the firm's specialist in manuscripts and found a poem titled "The Bill of Fare" and a number of letters of a romantic nature from Charles Dickens to Maria Beadnell (1811–86, later Mrs Maria Winter), who ultimately married a merchant with better prospects than the unestablished young Dickens. After a number of visits to the owner, a daughter of Maria Winter,"Preface" by Henry H. Harper in George Pierce Baker (Ed.) (1908) Charles Dickens and Maria Beadnell: Private correspondence. Boston: Bibliophile Society of Boston, Mass. pp. ix–xxx (pp. x & xii). Stonehouse managed to obtain 18 letters which he transcribed with notes sufficient to form the basis of a book that for the first time identified Beadnell as the model for Dora in Dickens's autobiographical novel David Copperfield and as Flora Finching in Little Dorrit.