Since I started collecting old books when I was just a kid, I have been particularly fascinated by the social history them. This is everything from the social context within which these old books were written and printed to the hundreds of scribbled owners names and traces of other people reading and looking after them. Years after I started collecting, the technical history of how these books were put together and bound became increasingly interesting as I took up bookbinding and learned the skills needed to bind and restore old books.

There are a few famous titles that every collector knows - Shakespeare's first folio, the King James Bible, Don Quixote, and Camden's Britannia to name a few. And it's a copy of Camden's Britannia in my collection that I thought would be interesting to write about today.

Camden's Britannia was the first comprehensive chorographical survey of Great Britain, including descriptions and histories of different counties and their towns, collected and written down by a man called William Camden. It saw several latin editions when first published at the end of the 1500s, and was published in English for the first time in 1610. I don't have a complete copy - I bought a fragmentary copy of the 1610 edition, including the introduction and a few counties, about a decade ago with the idea of repairing and rebinding them.

Then, in about 2022, I bought another fragment of the 1610 edition covering the Bishopric of Durham with a very curious pencil note on the first page "from Raid damaged folio".

What an interesting piece of social history, I thought to myself. The note was written in an old fashioned hand - someone who had learned to write at the turn of the 20th century. Presumably this fragment came from a copy of Camden's Britannia that had been damaged or partially destroyed in a bombing raid, probably in the second world war or less likely in the first world war. The pages hadn't been given much care - they had clearly been cut out of the book rather than being carefully removed, and several pages had rust marks from paperclips.

Then it happened again - in 2024 another fragment of the 1610 edition came up on eBay, this time covering Essex, the county of my birth, and again on the first page written in pencil in apparently the same hand "raid damaged folio". This also had the rust mark from a paperclip on the top of the pages.

Unfortunately I wasn't the only one interested in this and I missed out on it! A possible clue in the origin of this folio was lost into the mists of the internet.

Then just a week ago, and the thing that prompted me to write this post several years after buying the first fragment - another piece of the book appeared on eBay. This fragment covered Nottinghamshire and on the first page was written in pencil "Binding broken in Raid. Printed 1610. First important Account of the County". The same hand had made some other notes about William Camden in the margins. There also appeared to be a price on this fragment of 1 shilling. This one, unlike the other fragments, had the tops of the pages trimmed off removing the page numbers.

How many fragments of this book are there?! And when and where was this "raid" that caused the book to be broken up?

Through some further research, I found that a small book called "A Description of Worcestershire" had been printed in 1992 by First Paige Printers of Malvern. This was a reprinted description of Worcestershire, as the title page described it "re-printed from leaves said to have been taken from a raid damaged folio printed 1610". There it was again - the fact that it came from another folio fragment printed in 1610 and the specific usage of the phrase "raid damaged" surely means the fragment used in 1992 came from the same book.

I found that another fragment covering Gloucestershire, this one rebound in a 20th century binding with a 19th century map from another book tipped in, had sold at an auction house under a year ago, in March 2025. This one was again in the same pencil hand noted as "from Raid damaged folio".

I was unable to trace any other fragments unfortunately, but presumably the book was broken up shortly after it was damaged by someone who had clear knowledge of what had happened to it. If we presume it was damaged in the second world war, when there were many more raids (there was only a hundred or so air raids on Britain in WW1, but over 30,000 in WW2), then it was perhaps broken up in the 1940s or 50s, certainly before decimalisation in 1971 since the Nottinghamshire had a price on it in shillings.

There were so many air raids on Britain in WW2 that having any idea which one damaged this book is impossible. The Nottinghamshire fragment having "First important Account of the County" written on it could point to the book being in Nottinghamshire when it was broken up, with the Nottingham Blitz being the most notable bombing of the county - occurring in May 1941.

I managed to get in touch with one of the people selling these fragments, and it turned out they were clearing the house of their grandfather, which had then passed to their uncle, and it seemed like one of them had bought the fragment not long after the book was broken up. However, they had lived in South London all their lives, making it possible that the book was originally from around there.

There's not really any conclusion to take from this, other than there is a curious story behind the breaking up of this old book (the breaking up of books is something I normally hate to even think about, but in this case at least it is an interesting story). It's certainly not the only case of WW2 damage leading to the breaking up of valuable books, I actually have another personal experience of a "raid damaged" book - this other one was fire damaged in the bombing of Strasbourg in 1944. When I came across it, someone else had bought it at auction (a folio sized incunable), and they told me they were thinking about breaking it up and selling the individual pages as curiosities because of how damaged the book already was. Fortunately in that case, I was able to make a deal with them and buy the book, repair the pages, and rebind it.