This volume from the library of William Beckford (1760-1844) is bound with the distinctive Beckford Fonthill binding, which combines two motifs from Beckford’s coat of arms on the spine. Tipped in to face the title-page is a fine wash drawing of Amiens Cathedral with the pencil note below: ‘after a finished Sketch by W[illiam] B[eckford]’. Beckford was known to have been in France during 1806, the year Rivoire’s work was published, and the intriguing notation to the sketch of the building found in this volume invites speculation as to whether he visited and recorded the building using this work as a guide.
The possibility of this visit is made more significant because in 1806 Beckford was immersed in the construction of his Gothic Revival masterpiece Fonthill Abbey.
Beckford’s Tower and Museum currently has twenty-four volumes once belonging to Beckford, fourteen of which have Fonthill bindings. The acquisition of this volume adds to this small but significant element of the museum’s collection, which is displayed in cabinets originally designed by Beckford and the architect of the Tower for that purpose. . Beckford’s experience of Gothic architecture in Europe is known to have highly influenced the evolution of ideas for Fonthill Abbey. Personal visits Beckford made to monasteries in Portugal had a significant impact on his understanding and appreciation of Gothic architecture, resulting in his publishing his own account of this experience as the two volume work, Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha, in 1835. The existence of this volume of Rivoire’s account of Amiens Cathedral from Beckford’s library, and the suggestion of its being related to a possible visit to Amiens, provides a further insight into the influence of such first-hand knowledge of Gothic structures on the development of designs for Fonthill Abbey.
Beckford’s Tower and Museum currently has twenty-four volumes once belonging to Beckford, fourteen of which have Fonthill bindings. The acquisition of this volume adds to this small but significant element of the museum’s collection, which is displayed in cabinets originally designed by Beckford and the architect of the Tower for that purpose. It further enhances Beckford’s Tower and Museum’s ability to convey to visitors the ideas behind Beckford’s buildings and the breadth of his magnificent book collection.
This grant was awarded from FNL's B. H. Breslauer Fund, thanks to the generosity of the President and Officers of the B. H. Breslauer Foundation.