Folio Archives 11: London 1851

In the good old days, when you had to be a member to purchase Folio Society books, members were presented with a free book every year when they renewed their membership by promising to buy at least four books in the following calendar year.
These free presentation volumes were some of the most interesting, and different, books produced by the FS.
In 1972, the presentation book was “London 1851 – The Year of the Great Exhibition”.
Lavishly illustrated in colour (35) and black and white (73), this 128 page, 25x19 cm. book was in landscape format, instead of the usual portrait format. It had no slipcase but a glassine dustjacket that tended to disintegrate with time (mine has not survived). The cover was colour illustrated with scenes from the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace.
The endpapers front and back show the same brown-tone scene with the Crystal Palace in the foreground and London in the distance.
Printed by lithography in Belgium by Henri Proost & Cie, and set in Monophoto Century Schoolbook.





Endpapers
















An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed at : http://www.librarything.com/topic/266300

I joined the Folio Society in 1973, and this presentation volume was the first Folio book that I received. It's an excellent little account of the social and political background, the Exhibition itself, and its aftermath.

I don't remember the glassine dustjacket. I have some glassine paper lying around, and I'm going to cut myself a protective cover. It's a wonderful book with great illustrations. Those machinery halls must have left the visitors in awe.

>2 TabbyTom: joined the Folio Society in 1973

Me too - my first ever Folio Society book :)

Splendid photographs Dr Carter

Thank you for these archive articles.
I bought a copy of London 1851 on the secondary market and it is a delight, but I didn't know about the glassine dustjacket.

>6 CarltonC:

All of the "artists" series which preceded 1851 came similarly clad but I never found one with the glassine intact. I did manage to locate a Regency England "with glassine wrap" but it was so badly chipped and curled up it went straight into the bin.

1851?

Mine did not have a glassine wrap when I bought it on the secondary market, but Folio 50 lists it as having one.

The presentation volumes usually came in glassine wrappers in those days, but the wrappers couldn't stand up to life on my bookshelves.

>11 cronshaw: Thanks for these archive reviews, Warwick, they're a great resource for Faddicts! I'm intrigued to note from the illustrated endpapers of this volume how rural Bayswater remained as late as 1851 (the area to the north of Hyde Park). The changes this area of London would undergo in the following decades must have felt astonishing. Just a few years prior to the Great Exhibition, Dickens wrote Dombey & Son, among my favourites of all his novels; I can't think of any other single work which so vividly portrays the frenetic industrial development and general social tumult of the period.

I have an interesting variant of London 1851, an "identical" trade edition published the following year (1973) under the imprint The Folio Press and J. M. Dent. There are two main differences: the title page with amended imprint and a regular dust jacket which replicates the design of the boards. The rear flap of the dust jacket carries information about the origin of the book as a Folio Society annual volume and how to join.

https://www.librarycat.org/lib/boldface/item/104190072

>12 boldface:

I imagine that one is very rare. This is the first I've heard of it. Folio did have an arrangement with J.M. Dent in the 1970s through which reprints of earlier books were issued via the trade and to Folio customers. They were called something snazzy like "Folio Press /J.M. Dent Reprints" (true!). Printed by photo litho (not letterpress, which was standard for Folio at the time) and issued in plastic dustjackets (not glassine but definitely not slipcases) they were, perhaps unsurprisingly, not very popular and only lasted a couple of years or so. There are striking parallels with the Uncollectables.

Edited for correction.