Maggs Bros. Ltd.

The firm of Maggs was founded in the 1850’s, probably in 1853, by Uriah Maggs, 1832-1913. He came from the town of Midsomer Norton in Somerset, the son of a non-conformist clerk (also called Uriah) in one of the mines of the Somerset Coalfield. The census of 1851 finds him as a footman in the household of the interesting Dr. Barnard Van Oven, a Jewish medical doctor who later played a role in a campaign for the Jews Relief Act of 1858 which allowed Nathan Rothschild to become the first Jewish Member of Parliament. Van Oven lived at 38 Gower Street in Bloomsbury, in a terrace that was demolished to build the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. We note that 38 Gower Street was no more than a couple of hundred yards from our current address on 48 Bedford Square, which was at the time the home of Bedford College, the first college of higher education for women in Britain, and is now the home of the firm he founded.

The next time Uriah is seen in any records is in 1853, by which time he is established in business as a bookseller and stationer at 44 Westbourne Terrace North, close to Paddington Station. The address, and the street itself, now no longer exists, having been consumed by the Westway, London’s pioneer inner city motorway. Oddly, in another coincidence the premises was one of two west London workshops where the 1926 “Subscribers’ Edition” of T.E. Lawrence’s epic war narrative Seven Pillars of Wisdom was printed – the firm has sold 25 copies of the edition (of 170) in the last 25 years. Nothing is known of how Uriah made this transition, but there was a William Maggs in business as a “newsvender” in Knightsbridge in 1841, so there could have been a family introduction to the trade. Irrespective of how the change was made, it was a significant step up in the world for the young man, whose photograph shows an earnest striving fellow out of the pages of Samuel Smiles’ Self Help (first published in 1859), proud to be establishing himself in this nation of shopkeepers.

At the same time as maintaining the London offices the firm also had a branch in Paris from 1925 until the 1950’s (interrupted by the forced removal of much of the stock to Germany in 1940), first at the fashionable 130 Boulevard Haussman and later at 93-95 Rue de la Boëtie, overseen by Dr. Maurice Ettinghausen (1883-1974), one of the great bookseller/scholars of his or any age. It was Ettinghausen and Ernest Maggs who pulled off the greatest bookselling coup of the era, which began in 1932 with the purchase from the government of Russia of a Gutenberg Bible, the first printed book of circa 1455, which they sold by telegram to the Swiss collector Martin Bodmer. Maggs have thus handled two Gutenberg Bibles in their history, the one described above and the Dyson Perrins copy of Volume I (Genesis-Psalms) which they bought at auction in 1947 for a record price for a printed book of £22,000, on behalf of Philip Frere. They resold it in October 1950 for $70,000 to Mrs. Estelle Doheny, a Papal Countess, of California; this latter copy, now at Keio University, is the only one in Japan.

On the visit to St. Petersburg during which they purchased the Gutenberg Bible, the seeds were sown for the purchase of the Codex Sinaiticus, the fourth century biblical manuscript, one of the four most important early bible manuscripts known. The manuscript had previously been in St. Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, where it was “discovered” by the German biblical scholar Constantin von Tischendorff, before ending in the possession of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Oral history has it that the manuscript was on display in St. Petersburg, when the booksellers made a chance comment that if the Soviets really wanted to raise some money they could no better than selling that. Their lure was taken, and after a significant haggle, the manuscript was bought on behalf of the British Museum Library, now the British Library, for £100,000 – half the money came from the British government and half from a public fund-raising appeal.

Among their most prominent customers in the 1920s and 1930s was King Manuel II of Portugal, who had been exiled after the (largely bloodless) revolution of 1910. He lived in South West London in a large house and led the life of a cultured gentleman, fencing, playing tennis, punting, and above all collecting books, forming an unrepeatable collection of books on Portugal and its Latin American possessions. He died unexpectedly in 1932, leaving Maggs Bros with a very large debt of around £35,000. How much was that? Simple comparisons of the value of money between the ages are all but worthless, but in terms of West End property values the sum was several fives of millions of pounds. We know this because the debt was paid and pretty much all of it went to buying the long leasehold of a handsome but dilapidated building at 50 Berkeley Square in the heart of Mayfair. They left Conduit Street because of the expiry of the lease, but dodged a bullet in doing so, for the old building had a direct hit in the Blitz, incidentally fulfilling the plans of the freeholders for the demolition scheduled to take place in 1940. That this reinvestment of the entire windfall was made at a time when Europe was unstable, to say the least, was a tribute to the long-term planning of the firm’s management.

50 Berkeley Square, although initially criticised as being too far from Bond Street and Sotheby’s (all of 300 yards!), became a legendary premises. It was described by the firm on moving in: “The 18^th Century house is ideal in many ways. Its rooms are many and spacious... It retains its 18^th century character with fine decorated ceilings, Adam fireplaces of singular beauty, and torch extinguishers outside the front door. It is situated in the heart of Mayfair, easily accessible, in one of the most beautiful squares in London.” Antiquarian booksellers are good tenants of interesting buildings (they have more important things to spend their money on than building works), and the house was for the most part unaltered since its last modernisation over 100 years ago. The pantries were still lined with large white ceramic tiles, there was a massive cast-iron cooking range in the old kitchen, and there were still horse-stalls in the stables which had never been converted for cars. During the firm’s time there they had to deal with the simultaneously diverting and annoying status as “The most haunted house in London”. Despite this notoriety there is in fact no single first-hand account of any manifestation, and it seems that the whole affair was invented by the Victorian novelist Rhoda Broughton in her tiny and economically told story “The Truth, the whole truth, and Nothing but the Truth”, published in book form in Tales for Christmas Eve (Bentley, 1873). Many layers have been added to the myth since, including a name-check in M. R. James’s A School Story (1911).

Frank’s son John (1926-2015) took over from his father in travel books, and had a particular enthusiasm for cartography, Captain Cook, and the earliest records of the explorations of the Pacific. He was especially proud of purchasing the log of H.M.S. Bounty for the State Library of New South Wales. As the managing director, he was also responsible for navigating the firm through the hazardous years of the 1970s, as Britain was reeling under oil shocks, mining strikes, three-day weeks, high inflation and exchange controls.

Kenneth’s son Bryan (1936-2024) took over early English books soon after his release from National Service, and additionally became a great expert in historical bookbindings, with a depth of understanding that was partly informed by his own skillas a leading fine bookbinder. He worked with many important collectors, but is most associated with John Paul Getty Jr. He would go on to became his chief advisor and bookseller and ultimately his librarian in his country house at Wormsley, continuing the job for Mark Getty. He acted as Chairman of the firm for several years.

John’s son Ed, born 1958 in turn succeeded his father as Managing Director, as well as running the modern English department, chiefly literature, archives, and fine printing. During his time the firm moved again, selling the 21 remaining years of the lease of 50 Berkeley Square and buying 48 Bedford Square (moving from a Grade II listed three-windowed, flat-fronted Georgian house in a leafy London square to a Grade I listed three-windowed, flat-fronted Georgian house in a leafy London square). Today, Ed’s son Ben, a sixth-generation member of the family in the firm, is the resident expert on fine printing and modern binding, as well as being head of systems.

As important as the various Maggs family members are in the history of the business, the company has always been a sizeable operation and some of the finest rare book and manuscript experts have worked for them. One of the keys to the longevity of the firm has been the continued generosity and the long-term commitment of both the many family and staff members over the years, and this found expression in the creation in 1993 of the Maggs Bros Employee Trust, now the majority shareholder, with a substantial minority of shares held by family members.

One of the most lasting tangible legacies of the firm is probably the extraordinary series of catalogues, now numbering well over 1,500. Although the bulk are relatively routine reflections of what was in stock at the time, many are considerable works of scholarship and remain valuable reference works in their own right. Another tangible legacy is the historic archive, mostly dating from its first incorporation as a limited company in 1935. The bulk of it, except for the most recent decades, was donated to the British Library where it now attracts researchers into the history of the book trade from around the globe.

Today, the firm continues to change and develop with a strong team of young dealers who can not only respond to the rapid changes in collecting interests of collectors and libraries but can also lead the way in the development of those changes with a confidence built on the experience of their colleagues and predecessors.