THE EDWARDS CATALOGUE OF IMPERIAL GOLD COINS

James Edwards. A catalogue of imperial gold coins : to be sold at the prices affixed to each, On Monday the 8th of March, 1790, at Mr. Edwards's, No. 102, Pall-Mall. [London] : [s.n.].

In August 2013, the Harry W. Bass, Jr. Library acquired two exciting new additions for the rare book collections, detailed above. The first of mention is an 18th century fixed price list published in London (fig. 1), which I hope to expand on at a later date.

The sale took place on March 8, 1790, and was organized by the Edwards family, a group of eager bibliophiles originally from Halifax. The catalog is 22 pages and lists 400 lots, all kept together in a rather unremarkable soft paper binding. The full title of the sale appears as: A catalogue of imperial gold coins : to be sold at the prices affixed to each, On Monday the 8th of March, 1790, at Mr. Edwards's, No. 102, Pall-Mall.

Based on the address (no. 102 Pall-Mall, in London), we can identify this as the store of Edwards & Sons, established by James and John Edwards in 1784. The Edwards family had a long established tradition in the book industry, dating back to the 17th century. Richard Edwards (?1691-1767) was a schoolmaster and stationer and his son William (1722-1808) blossomed into an established bookseller, bookbinder, and publisher.

William began selling books through auction around 1749 and continued through 1760 in Halifax where he owned a bookshop. Two of his sons, James and John, worked in the Halifax bookshop before setting up shop in London in 1784. They opened Edwards & Sons at no. 102 Pall-Mall, the address which appears on their catalogs from January 1785 through 1791. James Edwards was primarily responsible for these sales, which focused primarily on paper-based materials, and soon established him as one of the most important antiquarian booksellers of his time.

He had a particular fascination with vellum bindings and his sales often included spectacular examples of fine bindings. In addition to being booksellers, the Edwards’ family was perhaps best known as bookbinders with extraordinary talent and artistic skill. They invented and patented a technique for painting under the surface of vellum, which creates a distinctive binding that today is known as “Edwards of Halifax” bindings.

This fixed price list of imperial gold coins seems to be the only occasion where Edwards sold anything other than books, manuscripts, prints, or designs. As noted on the cover, the sale took place at his bookshop at no. 102 Pall-Mall in a building that no longer exists, as the space was demolished in 1836-7 to make room for construction of the Reform Club, which occupies the site today.

It is unclear what prompted this unique sale of coins, but a note on the title-page verso states that: “to prevent any suspicion of partiality, those who intend to become purchasers are desired to deliver in, on Saturday [6 March], lists of such Medals as they choose, and each list shall be supplied as fully as possible, in the order they shall stand as to value.” This suggests that individuals purchasing the most items would get the first choices.

The Edwards’ catalog of imperial gold coins makes an excellent addition to the ANS Library collections for obvious reasons but it is also interesting to see how it fits into the wider context of rare books and binding history. Moreover, fixed price lists make up a substantial portion of the ANS Library collections, with several hundred in the general stacks as well as the rare book room.

However, unlike the auction catalogs in the library collection, the fixed price lists do not appear in the online library catalog, DONUM. They are arranged in alphabetical order according to the dealer-name who sells the coins and those that date to before 1950 are housed in the rare book room, while those after 1950 can be found on shelves in the general stacks.

Because of the sheer number of fixed price lists received, former librarians from the first half of the 20th century decided against cataloging individual lists. Although one card catalog tray devoted to these early lists does exist (and appears in the printed version of the ANS card catalog), it was not included when the card catalog was digitized in the late 1990s simply because it was not a complete record of the fixed price list holdings.

This means that we essentially need to start from scratch in order to create records for these important sales in our online catalog. Thankfully, our full-time library cataloger, Katie Rissetto, has caught us up on other important aspects of the cataloging and can soon begin to address this issue. This is one of the next big projects that we hope to tackle but is one that will also take some time to complete.

For more information on Edwards, see: Fine Bindings from Edwards of Halifax (www.york.ac.uk/library/collections/special-collections/treasures/edwards-fine-bindings/)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web