Burn_Background

Archival and historical documentation about James Burn & Co. is thin. Lionel Darley, the Burn company's historian, wrote in the preface to his book: "Suspecting that history is made from that which escapes the dust heap I began collecting anything about Burn and Company so many years ago that the earlier items are now tattered and yellow with age. Even so the gatherings of half a life time hardly filled a large envelope: there were no Burn diaries - no consecutive records, only a few cuttings from trade papers and an assortment of letters and old documents as enigmatic as directions for finding hidden treasure; as with a fisherman's net the gaps were greater than the threads."* And this from a man who worked for the company for 50 years!

Darley does provide useful history about the company but makes only passing reference to Burn's binder's tickets, illustrating three of them on page 67. Some useful historical and contemporaneous background is given in two short articles in two late 19th century journals: The Bookbinder and The British Bookmaker.

* Lionel S. Darley. Bookbinding Then and Now: a survey of the first hundred and seventy-eight years of James Burn & Company (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), p. 5.