Two fine volumes owned by the infamous chairman and director of the White Star Line, Joseph Bruce Ismay who failed to provide sufficient lifeboats for the Titanic but managed to survive the 1912 sinking of the company’s flagship when he boarded one of the last to be launched from the doomed liner.
Appropriately enough for copies owned by a trans-Atlantic shipping magnate this edition is a joint publication between J M Dent in London and Little Brown in New York. Bound in fine green cloth with gilt decoration and fleur de lys to the spine, top edge gilt; leafy endpapers on which is Bruce Ismay’s armorial bookplate in both volumes. Slight cracking to paper over inner hinge of Vol I and a very little spine lean. Otherwise both volumes are near fine, illustrations all present and both bindings bright and in excellent condition.
JOSEPH BRUCE ISMAY (1862-1937) was the son of the founder of the White Star Line, Thomas Ismay, who toured the world after serving his apprenticeship with the family firm, living in New York City in the late 1880s where he married Julia Florence Schieffelin, daughter of a New York lawyer. After succeeding his father as Chairman of the White Star Line Ismay commissioned the two luxurious Olympic class liners, RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic. After the Titanic collided with an iceberg on 14 April 1912 and it became clear that it would sink before rescue ships could arrive, Ismay stepped aboard Collapsible C which was launched 20 minutes before the ship went down, to be rescued by the Carpathia 3-4 hours later. After the disaster he was savaged by both the American and the British press and withdrew from public life to avoid the criticism which was levelled at him for his misjudgement about the Titanic’s lifeboats and his personal behaviour on board the Titanic. In the many subsequent films about Titanic he is depicted in an unfavourable light or as almost as a villain, from the German propaganda film Titanic (1943) via James Cameron’s Titanic to Julian Fellowes’ 2012 miniseries.
PROVENANCE: The bookplates have been authenticated as the 1902 version of Bruce Ismay’s bookplate by a representative of the Bookplate Society. The book was acquired in the north west of England - Ismay was born in Crosby, Lancashire.
