With an Introduction and Notes by John Christian

Edward Burne-Jones: The Little Holland House Album

The Roxburghe Club

2025   |  305 × 213mm   |  64pp

Full Circle. The Roxburghe Club is the oldest society of bibliophiles in the world. Its membership is limited to forty, chosen from among those with distinguished libraries or collections, or with a scholarly interest in books. It was an honour to be elected as the 358th member since its foundation in 1812. Each member is expected to produce a book at his or her own expense for presentation to the other members. The book I produced took my career as a book designer full circle.

In 1981, as a student at Edinburgh College of Art, I published a limited edition facsimile of a volume of poems and drawings that the twenty-five-year-old Edward Burne-Jones had lovingly presented to Sophia Dalrymple – my great great grandmother – at Little Holland House, Kensington, in 1859. With the undaunted confidence of youth, it never occurred to me that it was over-ambitious to attempt to produce, let alone sell, such a book when I had never designed one before and knew next to nothing about printing.

More than forty years on, I looked back to that very first effort, The Little Holland House Album, with the accumulated experience of a working life – and through the extraordinary changes in printing technology that have taken place over that time – and wondered how it might be done better today. The requirement to produce a book for the members of the Roxburghe Club gave me the opportunity to find out.

This new and expanded edition of The Little Holland House Album is available for sale from Maggs and Quaritch.