Bancroft Bookplate

["Richard Noble, Brown Univ" <AP201101@BROWNVM.BITNET>]

My thanks to John Chalmers, John B. Thomas, Robert Beasecker, and Henry
Raine for their kind responses to my inquiry concerning the "Bancroft"
bookplate, and to James Cartwright, who responded privately.

I see now that I was a bit woolly in phrasing my query, and
ought to have let on that I knew this to be almost certainly a late 19th-c.
plate, and that I was really trying to pin down a particular collector:
but that's what we're about, refining our communication by experience--
quite a lot of it lately...

At any rate, Rebecca Johnson, of the University of Delaware, seems to have
hit on the right person, Samuel Bancroft, Jr (1840-1915), a Wilmington
textile magnate, collector of pre-Raphaelite painting, and member of the
Lambs Club (our Bancroft books include a couple illustrated by Caldecott--
Bancroft bought one of Kate Greenaway's "Language of Flowers" watercolors--
and a raft of sammelbaende containing acting editions of plays). I take
this opprotunity of asking her whether she might have a look at the
plates in his books at Delaware. I have seen an elaborate version
reproduced in "The Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Jr. and related Pre-
Raphaelite Collection" (1977), with the legend "Samuel Bancroft Junr".
The plate we have is a more modest affair, with the same coat of arms and
crest, the motto "Dat Deus incrementum", and the sole name "Bancroft"
in black-letter underneath. I suspect that this is an earlier and/or
more workaday plate found on modest items. If I'm right about this,
many of his books were dispersed well before his death, some of which
came into the possession of one H.W. Bryant, who gave them to us.

Dat Exlibris scientiam.

RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
AP201101@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU/BROWNVM.BITNET  401/863-1187 : PROVIDENCE, RI 02912