The joy of small books
This year marks the centenary of perhaps the most marvellous collection of small books in the world (and you can visit it)
It won’t surprise anybody that as the son of librarians - my father was also an archivist and English teacher, my mother ran a mobile bookshop too - the books on my shelves are arranged alphabetically and by subject. There are two exceptions, a kind of ‘to be read/recent aquisitions’ shelf in the sitting room which is naturally a bit of all sorts, and a separate little shelf in the dresser (above the cookery books, which are not alphabetised but are divided into a shelf of recipe books and another of general books about food). This is the ‘small books’ shelf.
Because of its unadjustable height there is not much you can do with it so I’ve made it home to all the really small books that we’ve randomly accumulated. Most of these are for children including Mister Magnolia by Quentin Blake, The Surprise Party by Pat Hutchins, Father Christmas Joke Book by Raymond Briggs, Andy Pandy’s in the Country (one of mine from decades ago, a classic of the genre), Katie Morag Delivers the Mail by Mairi Hedderwick, a stack of Mister Mens and Little Misses, two copies of Happy Christmas Maisy by Lucy Cousins, various Little Red Train books, several Noggin the Nog books (including my favourite, The Omruds, full of very small people), numerous Rev W Awdry Train Series books, A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone, The Secret Path (one of the Percy the Park Keeper books) by Nick Butterworth, and the slightly unsettling A Rabbit in the Attic which allows the child reader to put their finger in a rabbit-shaped piece of cloth and poke it through holes on each page.
It’s a nice little collection but it pales beside what’s inside one of architect Sir Edward Lutyens’ most luxurious 1920s London townhouses, built for the then reigning monarch, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year. As you would expect, it is beautifully constructed, from the servants quarters to the wine cellar. But perhaps the most remarkable room is the library, superbly stocked, walnut-panelled, and like the rest of the house, on a perfect 1:12 scale.
Designed and built between 1921 and 1924, the Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House was a present to to the consort of King George V from childhood friend Princess Marie Louise, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. The work is fine throughout - it has electricity, running water, a lift, and even a titchy vacuum clearner and working concert piano. But particularly spectacular is the library, the story of which is now chronicled in a fascinating new illustrated history by Elizabeth Clark Ashby, Curator of Books and Manuscripts at the Royal Collection Trust called The Miniature Library of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House.
Not only does it have accessories such as a doll-sized leather-top desk, ivory paperknife, leather-upholstered armchairs, and miniature bronze busts of Schiller and Goethe, the library is stocked with 595 miniature books, 176 of which are handwritten manuscripts. These were commissioned by the Princess and her friend the writer EV Lucas from the country’s leading authors including Sir Max Beerbohm, AA Milne, and JM Barrie. Writers were sent 4cm high blank notebooks in which they wrote their contribution (Rudyard Kipling also decorated his selection of verses with his own charming pen-and-ink drawings). The notebooks were then bound by the leading names of the day including Sangorski & Sutcliffe, Riviere & Son, and Birdsall & Son in leather with gold tooling, then finished with a bookplate designed by EH Shephard.
“Fougasse’s J. Smith is perhaps my favourite volume,” Elizabeth Ashby told me in a recent interview. “Fougasse was the pseudonym of writer-cartoonist C. Kenneth Bird, famous for the ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ Second World War posters. His rhyming story is about a fairy who finds himself in London, and both the story and Fougasse’s illustrations are excellent.
“There is also something thrilling about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story about Sherlock Holmes, written specially for the library. How Watson Learned the Trick is an amusing vignette of Dr Watson trying to make deductions about Holmes, and failing. And one I am particularly fond of is by Mary C.E. Wemyss, unknown today. Her tale of a mother losing her sons in the First World War is very moving.”
There are also several books about dolls including Principles of Doll-Surgery by surgeon Sir John Bland-Sutton, as well as M.R. James’s short horror story The Haunted Dolls’ House, also the longest in the library (pictured above) at 5,000 words. Perhaps slightly strangely, children’s authors were not asked to contribute and none of the books are really aimed at younger readers.
“As well as being small, the books are incredibly fragile,” says Elizabeth. “Too much strain on the joints will cause the leather to break. Some are sewn very tightly, meaning they do not open well and it is difficult to read them. Another problem is that it is easy to turn over more than one of the thin pages at a time, so that you can miss parts of the text when reading. Authors actually encountered this problem quite often when writing in the little books, so you often see blank pages, or pages that have clearly been skipped accidentally but filled in later with illustrations.”
According to Glenn Bartley, Head of the Royal Bindery, the dolls’ house is kept in climate-controlled conditions so the books are in very good condition. “None have been rebound,” he says, “and over the years we have only ever had to do minor conservation. We keep light levels at 40–50 Lux and temperatures between 17⁰ and 20⁰C with a relative humidity of 45–55%.” Visitors can check for themselves as the doll's house is on public display at Windsor Castle, included in the general price for entry.
There are also 132 printed books, many published before the doll’s house’s creation. The oldest is Biblia, a miniature abbreviated Bible made for children in 1727. Others were specially printed for the library, such as the Ashendene Press’s collection of poems by Horace, Carmina sapphica. The library also holds newspapers, railway timetables, a complete Shakespeare (40 volumes), two dozen music scores, two stamp albums, and 241 blank books. The Royal Collection Trust does not do anything as venal as valuing the house or the books in the library. “However, the cultural value of the Dolls’ House Library is staggering,” says Elizabeth. “I cannot think of any comparable collections where so many contemporary writers have come together to contribute works. It is a remarkable, invaluable insight into the literary world of the 1920s.
“We have records of books that are no longer in the collection. It is an ongoing project to trace them. A tiny collection of autographs of parliamentary figures including seven prime ministers was found in 1973. A book collector who purchased it at auction realised its significance and offered it back to Queen Elizabeth II who gratefully paid for its return. It would be lovely to find more missing books.”
Many thanks to the Royal Collection Trust for all the images above which are © the RCT and His Majesty King Charles III