The Wild Marquis (27 page)

I
n 1809, Thomas Frognall Dibdin published
Bibliomania, or Book Madness
. Described as a bibliographical romance, the work is a semi-fictional conceit both celebrating and deploring the obsessive acquisition of books. I don’t know of any collectors who committed the crimes of my deceased duo, Tarleton and Fitterbourne, but there were a few driven to financial ruin.

The Regency was a great era for book collecting. My Tarleton auction was inspired by the sale of the Duke of Roxburghe’s library in 1812. Prices at the Roxburghe sale reached previously unheard of levels. The record price for the Boccaccio, for which the Marquis of Blandford outbid Earl Spencer, wasn’t in reality broken until 1884. In fact Blandford, himself a sufferer from bibliomania, had to sell his library in 1819. Spencer won the Boccaccio this time, paying less than half the Roxburghe price. (To get Spencer out of the bidding at the Tarleton sale, I have him in negotiation to buy Blandford’s books. For the record, the collection went to auction.)

I enjoyed choosing and inventing books for Sir
Thomas Tarleton’s collection. The Burgundy Hours are of course inspired by the famous manuscript, the
Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berri
. I found the plays with suggestive titles listed in the Roxburghe catalogue. The Shakespeare editions mentioned all exist. The division of Shakespeare quartos into “good” and “bad” didn’t happen until the early twentieth century, but I couldn’t resist the dog. So Juliana is ahead of her time in judging these early texts. Aretino, I discovered, became almost a generic name for pornography in the eighteenth century. A lot of dirty books published under his name bore little resemblance to the Italian original. I took my quotation from one of his French imitators.

The one-year anniversary of the duke’s sale was marked by the formation of the Roxburghe Club, which remains, to this day, England’s foremost society of bibliophiles. My collectors form the Burgundy Club, and in my next book Sebastian Iverley, who refuses to admit female members, will get his comeuppance and fall in love.

Lastly, I’d like to apologize to my erstwhile employer, Sotheby’s, for suggesting that, back in 1819, they might have had a security problem.

Miranda