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the book collector was made for the ‘virtuosa e gentile donna Lady Wantage’ on the Kalends of November AD 1904. She was so pleased with it that she paid him 250 lire more than he had asked.31 Several common prejudices about women owners of books in fine bindings ought to be discarded. Not all were royal or aristocratic ladies, although many examples of their libraries have survived. Women did not own only religious or pious books in fine bindings, nor were finely bound Bibles and Prayer books made only for women. Women as well as men could be learned and both sexes possessed the sources of their knowledge well bound and on occasion beautifully embellished. They also read for pleasure and out of general interest. The finely-bound copies are of course only the tip of the iceberg, as the great majority of readers (male and female) would pursue their text in simpler trade bindings. Women may have liked ‘pretty’ books, but so did men. Where they differ is that no evidence has survived of men actually wearing a small bound book as personal adornment. But, on the whole, women owners of fine bindings were not all that different from men in their taste. 31. Nixon, “Binding Forgeries”, International Congress of Bibliophiles, Vienna September 29-October 5, 1968,Lectures, (Vienna, 1971), p. 72; for Joni and his work, see Foot, Studies, Op. cit., no. 52. 120
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The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar silke lohmann The small town of Weimar woke up to fire and sirens during the night of 2 September 2004. Famous as the birthplace of Weimar Classicism, the Thuringian town counts only about 65,000 inhabitants but it has a proud heritage and is home to many museums, including those focusing on Goethe, Schiller, Liszt, Nietzsche and the Bauhaus movement (which in 2019 celebrates its 100th anniversary). Fire anywhere would have been a disaster, but this one struck at Weimar’s heart: the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek. The Bibliothek, which contains more than one million books, is regarded as one of the world’s literary treasures, housing as it does special collections of classical German literature and Thuringian history, the library of the German Shakespeare Society and a Faust section that runs to 20,000 volumes. A defective cable in the roof sparked the blaze. By the time the night was over, 50,000 books from the 16th to 20th century had been destroyed, 17,000 alone from the 17th century. The citizens of Weimar battled valiantly, forming chains to retrieve as many books as they could from the flames. Some 118,000 printed works and music manuscripts were saved, 62,000 of them from the famous Rococo Hall, but all suffered varying degrees of fire and water damage. The financial loss was estimated at 70 million Euros, but the cultural loss is incalculable. In the aftermath an exceptional wave of donations, among them more than 20,000 from private donors, contributed to the restoration work. This was not the first time that the people of Weimar had saved their heritage. During the reign of the Duchess Anna Amalia herself 230 years earlier when her residence, the ‘Wilhelmsburg’, caught fire after a lightning strike, the entire town came to her aid, rescuing as much of the ducal furniture, paintings and artworks as they could. Had it not been for Anna Amalia’s foresight in 1760, when she put 121

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the book collector was made for the ‘virtuosa e gentile donna Lady Wantage’ on the Kalends of November AD 1904. She was so pleased with it that she paid him 250 lire more than he had asked.31

Several common prejudices about women owners of books in fine bindings ought to be discarded. Not all were royal or aristocratic ladies, although many examples of their libraries have survived. Women did not own only religious or pious books in fine bindings, nor were finely bound Bibles and Prayer books made only for women. Women as well as men could be learned and both sexes possessed the sources of their knowledge well bound and on occasion beautifully embellished. They also read for pleasure and out of general interest. The finely-bound copies are of course only the tip of the iceberg, as the great majority of readers (male and female) would pursue their text in simpler trade bindings. Women may have liked ‘pretty’ books, but so did men. Where they differ is that no evidence has survived of men actually wearing a small bound book as personal adornment. But, on the whole, women owners of fine bindings were not all that different from men in their taste.

31. Nixon, “Binding Forgeries”, International Congress of Bibliophiles, Vienna September 29-October 5, 1968,Lectures, (Vienna, 1971), p. 72; for Joni and his work, see Foot, Studies, Op. cit., no. 52.

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