Bookmarks Past and Present

In this behind-the-scenes blog post, Museum Attendant Sarah Dale has been inspired by donations to our Museum Bookshop to find out more about the history of the bookmark

Our second hand book shop is very much part of our offer at the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, and we are grateful to all the people who donate books for us to sell.  Second hand books are often more interesting than new books, because they have a history of ownership which may be shown by hand written inscriptions, book plates or library stamps.  Another literal marker of where their readers have been is the bookmark which may sometimes be left between the pages.

Bookmarks (or markers, as they were first called) have a long and interesting history.  The earliest bookmark so far identified dates from the 6^th century and was found attached to the cover of a Coptic manuscript excavated from a ruined monastery near Sakkara in Egypt.  This particular bookmark was made of ornamented leather lined with vellum and was linked to the book itself with a leather strap.  Given the great expense in terms of labour and materials that a hand written book represents it’s probably not surprising that it was thought worthwhile to include a bookmark as part of the package – turning over the corner of a page to mark your place would not have been received well by the librarian!

We’re lucky at the museum that we haven’t so far experienced some of the more unlikely items used as bookmarks that librarians report coming across, including banana skins and bacon rashers.  Paper money, letters and photos (some compromising) are fairly common.  In January 2020 the University of Liverpool Library posted a photo of a slice of cheese in a plastic wrapper that had been found in a book

Of course, as this is the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, almost the first thing we thought of doing was to look in Johnson’s dictionary to see how he defined bookmark (or marker) but the only definitions he gives for marker are:

The reason for this (apart from the consideration that English has a very large vocabulary and quite a few words are missing) may partly be that the bookmark didn’t exist as an item separate from a book until the mid-19^th century.  Johnson had, thanks to his father’s trade as a bookbinder, considerable technical knowledge on how to actually make a book.  This doesn’t seem to have made him particularly careful about how he used books, and Boswell records anecdotes from people who lent him their books and found to their displeasure that he had spilled food or tea on them.  It’s also recorded that he used books as coasters, doorstops and to prop up uneven furniture.  Because Johnson was blind in one eye, and apparently short sighted in the other, he could only read by holding a book very close to his face, sometimes bending the covers right back and cracking the spine.  This reputation for rough treatment of books was probably the reason that Garrick refused to lend Johnson his folio edition of Shakespeare.

As bookmarks began to be made as separate items they became collectors’ items in their own right.  In the 1860s machine-woven markers were popular and made to commemorate a wide range of public events, one of the first being to mark the death of Albert, the Prince Consort.  Only 20 years later this fashion had passed its peak and bookmarks printed on stiff paper became more common, mirroring the fact that books themselves were becoming cheaper and more generally available.

In the 19^th century it was also possible to buy multi-purpose bookmarks that also served as paperknives – an interesting wooden example is the bottom item in this picture. The really gadget-conscious Victorian could have purchased a silver patented combination bookmarker, leaf holder and paperknife with a rotating outer silver blade which could hold the leaves of a book open while it was being read. (Source: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-mystery-of-the-phantom-page-turner/)

There are a number of organisations for people who collect bookmarks, including the International Friends of Book Marks, the Leather Bookmark Club and the Bookmark Collectors Club.  Collectors often like to specialise in highly specific areas and these organisations enable networks of collectors to swap specimens at very little cost.  Indeed, there is a huge supply of free bookmarks which are often used by organisations as a cheap and effective way of promoting events and services and as bookmarks are relatively small and easy to store book mark collecting could well prove to be a hobby that is both convenient and of genuine interest in tracking social trends and developments.

This bookmark encourages readers to give feedback on the book and take part
in a literary conversation.

This is a fun example of a book mark made to appeal to a child with a clever design

Some bookmarks are too precious to donate. Monkey was a souvenir from London Zoo and is a faithful bookmark to one of our team!

Here is a leather bookmark with gold tooling, bought by someone as a souvenir of a trip to Harrods. We put it in this book as they seemed to go together!

Here’s a  bookmark that has gone on a circular journey – having started off from the museum book shop some years ago it has finally made its way back home, and is now about to set off on its travels again!