Small Performances is concerned with Baskerville’s punches, but it is not the first time that a group of Cambridge academics have come together to consider the work of the famous printer.
The Baskerville Club was established in Cambridge in 1903 by a small group of Cambridge librarians, bibliographers and bibliophiles brought together through a common concern for the printer’s books. That they should be interested in the work of Baskerville and choose to name their Club in his memory is unsurprising because Baskerville was, after all, themost famous name in Cambridge printing in the eighteenth century. Elected by the University as one of its stationers and printers, between 1758 and 1766 Baskerville printed in Cambridge several editions of the Book of Common Prayer(1760) and a folio Bible (1763) which to this day is regarded as ‘one of the most beautifully printed books in the world.’
The moving force behind the creation of the Baskerville Club was Charles Sayle (1864-1924) who was then under-librarian at the University Library and a bibliographer of established repute whose work included Early English printed books in the University Library Cambridge (1900). Sayle was joined by two young undergraduates: Arthur Cole (1883-1968) from King’s, an avid collector of books who had developed what was to become a life-long affection for the Baskerville press; and Club Secretary, Augustus Bartholomew (1882-1933), from Peterhouse, who later became Librarian at the University Library, a notable scholar of the Victorian author Samuel Butler, and biographer of the writer, artist and photographer Frederick Rolfe. This triumvirate was quickly joined by Charles Robertson of Trinity, an alpinist, mountaineer and poet who was elected a member of the Club along with John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), then a young undergraduate at King’s. Keynes, best known as an economist, was one of the great book-collectors of his generation whose Baskerville collection grew under the guidance of Gustave David (1860-1936), the influential Cambridge bookseller, to became one of the most extensive of its kind. Francis Jenkinson (1853-1923), University Librarian and bibliographer was elected President of the Club in 1903; and G. H. I. Lloyd of Trinity and Sir Stephen Gaselee (1882-1943) librarian and scholar from King’s also joined the Club in 1903.
From these eight original founding-members the Club expanded to sixty associates, most of whom were elected between 1905 and 1918 when the Club was at its most active. It was a select group of both established scholars and promising young undergraduates drawn from across the Cambridge Colleges whose admission to the Club was by invitation only. Among its luminaries were Geoffrey Langdon Keynes (1887-1982), surgeon and literary scholar; E. Ph. Goldschmidt (1887-1954) bookseller and bibliographer; Montague James (1862-1936), Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum; the Shakespearian scholar, William Aldis Wright (1831-1914); intelligence officer and politician Billy McLean (1819-1989); and the historian Sir Geoffrey Butler (1997-1929). Also admitted to the ranks were the University Printer Charles Felix Clay (1861-1947), and the engraver and printer Wilfred Merton (1888-1957) who was also a book collector specialising in rare Oriental printing and papyri. The opening decades of the twentieth century represented a great era of book-collecting in Cambridge, there was an unprecedented convergence of scholars interested in fine printing and, most importantly, it was a time when young bookmen such as Keynes and Goldschmidt were laying the foundations of future bibliographical studies. The Club was, therefore, a gathering of the most eminent bookmen in Cambridge at the timewhose coming together not only produced a cult for the Baskerville press but also created a distillation of emerging bibliographical thought.