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Journal of the History of Collections Advance Access originally published online on December 7, 2006
Journal of the History of Collections 2007 19(1):33-49; doi:10.1093/jhc/fhl037
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

A friendly gathering

The social politics of presentation books and their extra-illustration in Horace Walpole's circle

Lucy Peltz


  Abstract

All authors are at the mercy of their readers. In the eighteenth century, this realization created a tension that was keenly felt, and articulated, by genteel authors whose response to the unchartable nature of reading was inextricably linked to the material qualities of their books as commodities. These anxieties can be traced in the social politics of presentation books within Horace Walpole's circle of friends and readers. This essay examines the production and reception of such genteel books, particularly those collected, inscribed and extra-illustrated by Richard Bull. Bull's deferential annotations and innovative practice of extra-illustration turned his books into personalized artefacts, rich in emotional investment and individualized experience. His books, thus rendered a spectacle for an audience to enjoy, serve as an instructive diagnostic of the socio-economic culture of gift exchange and ritual response that underpinned the rhetoric of eighteenth-century amateurism and thus helped to assert both the author's gentility and that of his extra-illustrator.

Address for correspondence Dr Lucy Peltz, Curator of Eighteenth Century Collections, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London WC2H OHE. lpeltz{at}npg.org.uk


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