Roxburghe Club
The Roxburghe Club was formed on 17 June 1812 by leading bibliophiles, at the time the library of the Duke of Roxburghe was auctioned. It took 45 days to sell the entire collection. The first edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Chrisopher Valdarfer of Venice in 1471, was sold to the Marquis of Blandford for £2,260, the highest price ever given for a book at that time. The Marquis already had another copy, but lacking 5 of the pages.
Starting with some eighteen in number, the first dinner party took place at the St Albans Tavern, St Albans Street (later renamed Waterloo Place). The Roxburghe Club is often claimed as the first book club [citation needed], and was a model for many book societies that appeared later in Britain and Europe. The circle is an exclusive one, however: the number of members is limited to forty[1], with one black ball excluding applicants. Each member undertakes to sponsor the publication of a rare or curious volume. The scholarship continues to be high and the quality of binding lavish, with no more than 100 copies ever printed. The first president was the Earl Spencer.
A photograph exists of the membership in 1892, including the Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and anthropologist Andrew Lang, as well as American poet James Russell Lowell,[2] Alfred Henry Huth, and Simon Watson Taylor. James Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, was then President.
Notable members
- Sir Walter Scott
- Thomas Frognall Dibdin
- Archdeacon Francis Wrangham
- Frederick James Furnivall
- Andrew Lang
- Joseph Haslewood
- John Duke Coleridge
- Evelyn Philip Shirley
- James Russell Lowell
- Henry Huth (d.1878)
- Alfred Henry Huth (d.1910, son of Henry)
- Simon Watson Taylor
- William Osler
- Frederick B. Adams, Jr.
- Harry Lawrence Bradfer-Lawrence
- Charles Travis Clay
- Christopher Selby Dobson
- David Eccles, 1st Viscount Eccles
- Sir Anthony R Wagner — Garter Principal King of Arms
- Nicolas Barker — Editor of The Book Collector
- Sir John Paul Getty
- Sir Walter Oakeshott
- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess of Salisbury
- Barry Humphries