Letters to a Bookseller

Posted on 22 March 2026

I wanted to share a very interesting book in my collection - a 1658 edition of Dugdale's history of St Pauls that was on its way to landfill when it was saved by an eagle eyed antiques dealer a few years ago. It is a very nice edition, still filled with Hollar's magnificent engravings, and in its original full leather binding.

This, however, is just the beginning of interesting things about this book.

These beautiful double-page engravings normally get swallowed by the gutter of the binding when you try and open them. The clever binder of this book found the perfect fix, and in doing so preserved some fragments of bookselling history: dozens of recycled fragments of private letters between a 1600s bookseller and their clients.

But before we peel back the layers of that mystery, I have to show you the ingenious piece of engineering that I was surprised to not have seen on other books.

The binding

In this book the engravings have been mounted down the middle onto a strip of paper, which itself is bound into the book. So when you open an engraving, it opens free of the textblock and you can see the entire thing without the middle being hidden in the fold.

My attempt at a diagram showing how it works

I've never actually seen this method of exposing the plates to the reader in any other binding structure, although it is such a neat little solution for the otherwise annoying problem of not being to see the centre of double page images in books (especially annoying in tightback bindings).

The plate sitting proud of the textblock when opened

The letters

This is where things get more interesting! The binder hadn't used plain old scraps of paper to create this interesting structure, they recycled old letters that (from what is visible) seem to be letters to a bookseller giving specifics about books that were being purchased. Even more interesting, when you think these recycled scraps must have been written in the 1650s (one is dated 1650), a politically interesting time in Britain, and only a decade before the entire bookselling industry in London would go up in smoke in the Great Fire.

The letters were clearly just cut up without much preparation - there are even two partial wax seals surviving on them.

These fragments can be assigned to three different authors based on their handwriting:

Handwriting #1

"...in quarto a good paper and a very faire print. I would intreate you to put one to binding for me, plainly bound I would have it, but well beaten and..."

"...raine should light on him in his journey. I presume you saw somewhere a note how to convey anything to me, ... send by Thomas Bedford who lyves at the White..."

"By Bedford Carrier at ye Whitthart in Southwarke"

"hour that will doe it well. Take your own time ... and upon you doe let it be well tyed up..."

"Westdeane this 4th of November 1650"

"... those Bibles that were not long since printed at Lond[on]..."

"A prophetick discription of Eng[land]"

Handwriting #2

"Mr Royston you and I have widowed ... [Illegible] Stanley as I doe: I ... [shew?] to pay you 40: a quarter [illegible] ... "

"... then that 10: if hee doth ... once more to send mee up the ... and I will pay you [then?] with ..."

"... [shew?] ... [Distrip?] ... Gerarad ... of ... me not ... shall ...rowes"

Handwriting #3

"... [?] defense of christmass & [the lands?] ... Fauster's dialinge printed for Mr Englesfield ... godly prayers."

"Royston I have rec'd of you [illegible] ... desire you now to send these ... [illegible]"

What do they mean?

Two of the letters mention Royston, at least one if not both of them appearing to directly speak to him as the recipient. With the context of these letters being about purchasing books, I am confident in saying that these letters were written to Richard Royston, an important bookseller of the 17th century.

The first handwriting, which the majority of the fragments are in, is clearly written by a client of his who was ordering books from him by letter. One of the letters is dated and addressed from "Westdeane" in November 1650. West Dean is a village in Sussex, and in November 1650 the manor of West Dean belonged to John Lewknor (1624-69), he was a country gentleman in 1650 but would later go on to become an MP, and is a reasonable candidate to have been writing these letters.

In his letters he mentions that any books to be delivered can be sent by Thomas Bedford, a carrier, who were individuals that would convey goods out into the countryside for clients. It makes sense that he would be at the White Hart in Southwark (one of the only pubs in London I've been kicked out of) since this was on the old London road that ran out towards Sussex among other counties.

It's also interesting that for one book he's ordering he says "plainly bound I would have it" since Lewknor himself, if he is the author, would have been recovering from paying debts that he owed to parliament due to him siding with the king in the civil war. Like Lewknor, Royston, to whom we have already said these letters must be addressed, was also a Royalist during the civil war.

He also mentions the book he's buying to be "well beaten" - a process replaced by rolling in the 19th century - where the pages of a book were beaten with a heavy hammer before binding to compress the pages together and create a nice tight binding. For another book he says to make sure its "well tyed up" presumably meaning that the sewing shouldn't be loose - perhaps he'd had problems with previous bindings he'd had from Royston.

The second handwriting is less legible than the first, but also seems to be from a client buying books. This handwriting directly addresses Royston. It mentions Royston being widowed, but unfortunately very little is known of Royston's personal life or marriage.

The third handwriting lists a number of books that are being ordered, and Royston is presumably expected to find and send copies of them. One of them is Samuel Foster's Art of Dialing printed for Frances Eglesfield in 1638, another is "defense of christmass" which might refer to The Vindication of Christmas printed in 1652.

The timeline makes sense if Royston kept these letters for several years for business records and finally sold them to a bookbinder, or even gave them to one of his own binders, to be recycled nearly a decade after they had been written.

These are all very interesting fragments, each an insight into the printing world of the mid 17th century and the orders that an important bookseller was receiving. What a surprise to see these hidden amongst the pages of an old binding!

The fragments