Roxburghe Club


The Roxburghe Club is an exclusive bibliophilic and publishing society based in the United Kingdom.

Origins

The spur to the Club's foundation was the sale of the enormous library of the Duke of Roxburghe, which took place over 46 days in May–July 1812. The auction was eagerly followed by bibliophiles, the high point being the sale on 17 June 1812 of a first edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Christophorus Valdarfer of Venice in 1471, and sold to the Marquis of Blandford for £2,260, the highest price ever given for a book at that time. That evening, a group of eighteen collectors met at the St Albans Tavern, St Albans Street for a dinner presided over by the 2nd Earl Spencer, and this is regarded as the origin of the Roxburghe Club.
A toast drunk on that occasion has been repeated at every annual anniversary dinner since to the "immortal memory of John Duke of Roxburghe, of Christopher Valdarfer, printer of the Boccaccio of 1471, of Gutenberg, Fust and Schoeffer, the inventors of the art of printing, of William Caxton, Father of the British press the prosperity of the Roxburghe Club and the Cause of Bibliomania all over the world". It was decided to make the dinner an annual event: further members were admitted the following year. The club was formed by Thomas Frognall Dibdin, author of the book Bibliomania; or Book-Madness, who served as its first secretary; and the club was formalised under Earl Spencer's presidency.

Membership

The Club has had a total of 350 members from its foundation to 2017. The circle has always been an exclusive one, with just one "black ball" being enough to exclude an applicant. Since 1839 the number of members at any one time has been limited to forty.
A photograph exists of the membership in 1892, including the Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and anthropologist Andrew Lang, as well as American poet James Russell Lowell, Alfred Henry Huth, and Simon Watson Taylor. James Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, was then President.
The first female member was Mary, Viscountess Eccles, elected in 1985. In 2011, the Australian comedian Barry Humphries was elected a member. The President since 1998 has been Max Wyndham, 2nd Baron Egremont.

Publications

The Club rapidly became more than a merely social institution. Each member was expected to sponsor the publication of a rare or curious volume. Other volumes are published by the Club collectively. Initially the volumes were editions of early blackletter printed texts ; but from as early as 1819 they began to include texts taken from manuscript originals. The standards of scholarship are high, and the quality of printing, facsimile reproduction, and binding is lavish. Copies of each volume are presented to all members, and a limited number of extra copies may be made available for sale to non-members. From 1839, the total number of copies for each publication, including members' copies, was limited to 100. Recently, the limit was raised to 342 copies: 42 for the club, 300 for the public. The Roxburghe Club is generally recognised as the first "book club", and was a model for many book societies that appeared later in Britain and Europe.

Some notable members

A full list of the "Membership since 1812" can be found on the club website.