'Remarkable Books' Exhibition to Run Alongside Bath Book Fair

A new exhibition at The Guildhall in Bath will showcase a selection of the finest books and bindings from Bath Record Office.

Running June 27-28, Remarkable Books will feature a range of volumes that survived the bombing raids of the ‘Bath blitz’ in 1942 and the catastrophic Bath floods of December 1960 which saw 2,680 volumes lost. It coincides with the antiquarian Bath Book Fair hel at Bath Pavilion on the same two days organised by the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association and Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association.

Leading the exhibition will be a rare trial sheet on vellum of William Morris’s Kelmscott Chaucer published in 1896, presented to the Bath Reference Library in 1927 by May Morris, William's daughter, who was a regular visitor to Bath. 

Other highlights include:

• the Charter of the City of Bath from 1590 which formalised the systems of local governance in the City
• a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, created by Hartmann Schedel and printed by the Koberger Press
• a copy of Boddely's Bath and Bristol Guide from 1753 containing a description of the city and the baths, the cost of hiring chairmen, and timetables for stagecoaches and boats
• a pocket-sized, illuminated Book of Hours created by an unknown scribe and illuminator in the 1430s, featuring more than 1,000 initial letters in burnished gold and vibrant colours

A display celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen will feature books by female authors associated with Bath who inspired Austen including Ann Radcliffe and Fanny Burney, while children’s books from Georgian times to the early 20th century will also be showcased, including a rare first edition of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and rare examples of children’s ‘bookcase libraries’, decorative miniature bookcases filled with tiny books in pretty bindings.