A List of the principal Publications issued from New Burlington Street during the Year [1829-1834, 1840-1844,1845-1849, 1855-1859, 1860-1864, 1885-1889, 1890 with 1892 with 1894 and 1898] [35 original issues bound in 7 volumes ] R. Bentley and Son. Miscellaneous Books

Issues limited to 50 copies each, marked 'For Official Use only'. 35 annual issues in 7 volumes, quarter-leather and pink boards, red card dividers between issues, unpaginated: approximately 312, 211, 263, 319, 351, 421 and 270 pp, one or two ills,tables etc. Scarce. Only 50 copies of each issue were printed and marked for Official Use - they were not offered for sale or general distribution and most seem to have remained with the publishers. About 1951 four sets were given to leading National Libraries and Pickering & Chatto acquired the 'few' remaining sets and offered them for sale in their catalogue 361. Rare Book Hub has no record of them at auction: just two appearances of an incomplete set in Quaritch catalogues of 1971 and 1973. The 'Bentley Lists' provide a great wealth of bibliographical and general detail about the publications of the famous Victorian publisher R. Bentley & Son and its predecessor firms during the period 1829 to 1898, when the business was transferred to MacMillan. They were prepared retrospectively from 1893 onwards in painstaking detail. The bibliographer and collector Michael Sadleir published an account of the lists in 1952, enthusing about the richness of the material ".a hitherto virtually unseen miracle of documentation" and "a reference-book which for richness of detail within its specialized limits, will rival any bibliographical work on the library shelves." He described the content: "The lay-out of the catalogue is at once elaborate and unpractical. On each left-hand page, headed with the year under review, appear the author, title, and sub-title, format, pagination, illustration, binding (sometimes), &c., of Bentley publications in order of issue. Each right-hand page carries day and month of issue, price, and either a paragraph of comment or various relevant facts relating to the title opposite on the left-hand page. In other words, each entry is a dual one, stretching across the entire width of two open pages. At the end of each year is a mass of information. Titles and contents of Bentley s series ; contents of each number of Bentley's Miscellany and later of Temple Bar ; the history of the Dickens quarrel from the publishers point of view; the number of editions and printing numbers of especially successful works; notes on individual authors, on trade dinners, on lending libraries and on many other aspects of publishing, make it impossible to imagine a more encyclopaedic record of the activities of a long- lived publishing firm." Our 35 annual issues represent a little over half of a full set of 66 issues. Ex-library copies with stamps, labels and accession marks on the added front endpapers in each volume, but no library markings on the contents save for a small circular stamp on the first title-page in each volume. Leather rubbed and powdering so in need of collagen stabilization; boards slightly faded. Some wear to joints, chips to the heads of the spines of the last two volumes. Internally Very Good save that the 1855-1859 volume has old dampstaining to the top edges with colour bleed to the upper margins (not affecting text), and some volumes have slight agetoning.Clipping from Pickering & Chatto Catalogue 361 describing the Bentley Lists bound into first volume.