“WHEN FOUND, MAKE A NOTE OF”: NOTES AND QUERIES, 1850-58

THOMS, W.J., editor. Notes and Queries: A Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. London: George Bell, 1850-58. Eighteen volumes. Small quarto, contemporary three quarter brown morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers. $2200.

First and second series of the journal Notes and Queries, very handsomely bound.

As early as 1841, W.J. Thoms “strongly felt the need of some periodical which might give antiquaries and bibliographers the means of making known to each other points on which they required information. In 1841, with the co-operation of his friend John Bruce, he projected a magazine to supply the deficiency. The journal was entitled The Medium, and some specimen pages were actually set up in type. Bruce was, however, compelled for domestic reasons to remove to the country, and the project was for the time abandoned… In 1849 he resumed his project of providing a paper ‘in which literary men could answer one another’s questions.’ Dilke [editor of the Athenaeum] encouraged him, with the result that the first number of Notes and Queries appeared on 3 Nov. 1849” (DNB). The journal is still published today, by the Oxford University Press. The first series (twelve volumes) covers November 1849 to December 1855; the second series (six volumes) continues until December 1858.

Infrequent scattered faint foxing. Fine condition.