An unsigned cloth binding gilt for James Montgomery’s Poems, 1860. This pleasing design combines rusticity and orientalism; Montgomery’s poems could only be described as anodyne and conventional, and the binding gives the book a considerable lift, as do the wood-engraved illustrations. [Click on image to enlarge it.]

Photograph © Trustees of the British Museum, reproduced with permission, and text by Simon Cooke.

Bibliography

Montgomery, James.Poems. London: Routledge, 1860.