Dorothy L Sayers books at the Grolier Club
On my lunch break, I wandered over to the Grolier Club, an institution of and for books and bibliophiles conveniently located about 300 yards from my office lobby. I was intrigued by their current exhibition (closing in a week or so): Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books. While I found the concept interesting in itself (a guy working with a team of craftspeople created physical editions of books that currently do not exist), the thing that really drew me was the fact that there was a fuckton of Sayers in there.
In fact, as noted on the case's label, while Sayers is not the only writer with more than one book in the exhibit, she is the only one with more than 2-3 and certainly the only one with a full display case of her own.
All books exhibited assume, in the context of the label, that the book exists. So let's take a look at these totally real books and the backstories they're given and see what we think!* (The alt text contains the label text.)
*Well, what I think, fueled partly by the vague few memories I have from the History of the Book class I took in college... but please let me know what you think as well in comments/reblogs!
First up- two books by our own Lord Peter, both mentioned in Clouds of Witness according to the labels- which as far as I can tell is only kind of true. They're not mentioned in the story text, but in the front matter- the fake Debrett's entry (though The Murderer's Vade-Mecum IS mentioned in-text in Unnatural Death!). As such, we don't actually know anything about their contents or contexts. The incunabula book makes a lot of sense, but I must admit- unless it is based on a Sayers text that has escaped me, I find the description of The Murderer's Vade-Mecum to be a bit much as a descriptive leap.
Another minor quibble- it's unclear, was The Murderer's Vade-Mecum printed for public purchase? It says that it's privately printed like the incunabula book, but implies enough of a circulation that murderers might own it. If it was printed for purchase then you can ignore this next bit, BUT- I'm surprised that Wimsey, as a collector of incunabula, doesn't have his own bookbinder who binds his books in a house style. I'd have expected his privately printed books to look coordinated, if not identical exactly, to allow for harmonious shelf displays.
It's History of Prosody, and it looks exactly as big, scary, and toe-breaking as I expected it to, especially with what I assume are a whole second book's worth of footnotes! Nice job.
The Death in the Pot slipcover looks great... but I'm confused by a few things here. Why is the publication date 1922, when (as mentioned on the label) Death in the Pot was published after the events of Strong Poison, which were in 1930? And where does "MG" come from as the name of her publisher- is it referred to somewhere?
I can't decide what I think about the poison cover. Would Lord Saint-George find this funny if he encountered it? Yeah, sure. Would he have the imagination to dream it up? I don't think so.
Another great looking cover and baffling description. Once again, date is weird (publication date would be 1936, most likely, given that they got married in October and during their engagement Harriet was still writing/doing research). Also, the description of Wilfred is a bit odd but I guess can be congruent with the book rendition... but he's not the detective! Where's good ol' Robert Templeton the untidy dresser?
But I do want to emphasize again, excellent cover. No notes.
Book looks good (though I'd have hoped more for a fancy presentation copy bound by Peter as a gift for Harriet or something), though one thing it gets wrong that the label gets right is that no way would it be titled "Harriet Vane Wimsey." It would be Harriet Vane, Lady Peter Wimsey, or both. The date discrepancy is odd- we know Harriet didn't complete her Le Fanu study during the events of Gaudy Night, and she of course left in a bit of a hurry, so the 40s makes sense, but between the two dates I'd assume the right one is 1947- much more likely that she'd have managed to finish it when the war was over and the kids were older.
This looks awesome, though the font/printing is maybe a bit more modern-looking than I expected (but I'm not super knowledgeable). Tiny quibble- it would be Cantab., not Camb. (just as with Harriet's Le Fanu book it said Oxon.). Such an early date as 1901 is slightly surprising, but I suppose there's no real reason why not...? Separately, interesting that they placed the book be at Duke's Denver- Wimsey doesn't live there! Maybe because that's where he used to take part in change-ringing as a kid?
All in all, a great exhibit (and it had a bunch of other fun books as well, like On the Care of the Pig from PG Wodehouse's Blandings Castle stories and a deep-black copy of Memories by DEATH of the Discworld). I think that the worldbuilding around the Sayers books in the labels could possibly have been a bit tighter but quite frankly, merely doing this, and to the high standard that they did when creating the books, and specifically highlighting the vividness of Sayers's world and the worlds within it that she creates (in choosing to specifically spotlight multiple books from Sayers's oeuvre), is already more than we (or at least I) deserve.
Final day of the exhibit is next Saturday- if you're in the NY area, highly recommend!
