Creator
Dibdin, Thomas Frognal.
Title
The Bibliographical Decameron ….
Coverage
London
Publisher
Printed for the author by W. Bulmer and Co.
Date
1817
Subject
12 volumes.
Description
The Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847), antiquary, a bibliographer, and librarian to the great Earl Spencer, is credited with founding the first Golden Age of modern book collecting. The publication of his Bibliomania in 1809 generated enormous popular interest in the collecting of rare books and early editions, an arcane pastime previously limited to a very few scholars and bibliophiles. The Bibliographical Decameron, a dialogue with the same interlocutors as his Bibliomania, is the most lavish of Dibdin’s works and arguably the most popularly successful. This extra-illustrated copy, the gift of Grolier member Lucius Wilmerding, is from the library of the English collector George Henry Freeling (1789–1841), who extended the original three volumes to twelve by inserting additional plates, letters, pages from early printed books, and in one of the volumes, the cancelled copper plate of Diane de Poitiers from Dibdin’s Bibliographical tour.
Source
Gift of Lucius Wilmerding, 1937.