Books with Bindings by Charles Ricketts
From Cooke, Simon, “Charles Ricketts as a Book Cover Designer,” The Victorian Web, 20 August 2018.
Photos by Simon Cooke.
- Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Ward & Lock, 1891.
- Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. 3 Vols. London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1891.
- Hardy, Thomas. A Group of Noble Dames. London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1891.
- Wilde, Oscar. A House of Pomegranates. London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1891.
- Wilde, Oscar. Poems. London: Elkin Matthews & John Lane, 1892.
- Gray, Thomas. Silverpoints. London: Elkin Matthews & John Lane, 1893.
- Symonds, J. A. In the Key of Blue. London: Elkin Matthews & John Lane, 1893.
- Tablay, Lord de [Warren, John Leicester]. Poems Dramatic and Lyrical. 2 Series. London: John Lane, 1893, 1895.
- Hardy, Thomas. Life’s Little Ironies. London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1894.
- Marlowe, Christopher. Hero and Leander. London: Elkin Matthews, 1894.
- Wilde, Oscar. The Sphinx. London: Elkin Matthews & John Lane, 1894.
- Campion, Thomas. Fifty Songs. London: Hacon & Ricketts, 1896.
- The Pageant. London: Henry, 1897.
- Vacaresco, H. The Bard of Dimbovitza. 2nd Series. London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1897.
- Chatterton, Thomas. The Rowley Poems. London: The Vale Press, 1898.
- Sidney, Sir Philip. The Sonnets. London: Hacon & Ricketts, 1898.
- Wilde, Oscar. The Ballad of Reading Gaol. London: Leonard Smithers, 1898.
- [Wilde, Oscar]. An Ideal Husband. London: Leonard Smithers, 1899.
- Field, Michael [Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper]. Wild Honey. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908.
Rossetti’s “Poems”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, designer
1870
Dark green publishers’ cloth with an elaborate gilt overlay. An Aesthetic binding of flowers in an intricate mesh. This motif is continued on the end-papers.
7 ½ x 5 ¼ inches
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke.
Binding for Wilde’s “House of Pomegranates”
Charles Ricketts
1891
Cloth binding with gilt overlays
8½ x 7 inches
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke
Cloth binding for Gray’s ‘Silverpoints’
Charles Ricketts
1893
Cloth with gilt overlays
8½ x 4½ inches
The radical aspect of this design and of the book as a whole is its narrow shape – a format repeated within in the treatment of the text, which is surrounded by a wide margin. Ricketts’s pattern epitomizes the minimalism of his Art Nouveau design. As in other books, the title is consigned to a small area, privileging the decorative effect of the gilt motifs and conveying the idea of the book as art rather than literature. Perhaps Ricketts’s most delicate work, and certainly his most famous and prized.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]Art Nouveau
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke
Cloth binding for Tablay’s ‘Poems’
Charles Ricketts
1893
Cloth with gilt overlays
7¾ x 5 inches
A fanciful, luxurious binding, heavily patterened in gilt and issued in several colours. The light shown blue here is the most common. Once again, Ricketts emphasises the pattern over any other information.
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke
Cloth binding for ‘The Pageant’
Charles Ricketts
1897
Cloth binding with gilt overlays
10¼ x 7¾ inches
A simple pattern which encapsulates the magazine’s elegant combination of art and literary reviews. Only two volumes were issued, in each case including a dust-wrapper, also by Ricketts but different from the cloth design shown here.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke
Cloth binding for Michael Field’s ‘Wild Honey’
Charles Ricketts
1908
Cloth binding with gilt overlays
7½ x 4½ inches
Though published in 1908, this binding is still very much a part of the late-Victorian style practised by Ricketts and his contemporaries. Elegant and refined, the combination of honeycomb and bees is both abstract and naturalistic.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke
Cloth binding for John Addington Symonds’s ‘In the Key of Blue’
Charles Ricketts
1893
Cloth binding with gilt overlays
7½ x 5½ inches
[See commentary below, and click on image to enlarge it.]
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke
Cloth binding for Wilde’s ‘Poems’
Charles Ricketts
1892
Cloth binding with gilt overlays
8½ x 5¾ inches
Ricketts’s heraldic design encapsulates the sophisticated tone of Wilde’s verse. Distinctly Art Nouveau in style, it is one of most elaborate and elegant covers of the period, and was widely imitated. The curious interlacing of the title and author’s name typifies the designer’s mannered treatment of lettering.
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke
Binding for Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’
Charles Ricketts
1891
Cloth binding with gilt overlays
7½ x 5 inches
This elegant design appeared on the boards of the three volume, first collected edition following its magazine serialization in The Graphic. Though linked to the novel’s pastoral theme, the honeysuckle motif gives little sense of its tragedy, offering in its stead a version of Hardy’s text as romantic idyll.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke
Detail of the Vellum backstrip and Card Boards for Charles Ricketts’s design for Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1891. Card with gilt overlays, 3 x 3 inches. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
This is a detail of Ricketts’s daisies on the front cover. The book is otherwise quite plain – the vellum backstrip is bare except for lettering at the base, while the boards only bear the gilt design on the front cover. The book was issued in a dust-wrapper and good copies, without the jacket or with it, are extremely rare. The image shown here is taken from a damaged copy.
Photograph and text by Simon Cooke.