Three is a Collection . . .
Bibliographies of J.L. Carr and Edmund Blampied, plus bookplates and engravings by Stephen Gooden and others.
This site is dedicated mostly to my collections and to the bibliographies and catalogues that they have led to. The name is taken from the privately printed autobiography of the collector and misanthrope James L'Arbalestier (1875-1938), who wrote:
Beware of aquiring things of the same nature: two is a coincidence; three is a collection.
Here you can find:
► A bibliography of the novels, small books, maps and other published works of J.L. Carr, with printed materials related to him, including articles about Carr. There are a few examples of his paintings, too.
► Pages on the art of Edmund Blampied including designs for sheet music, bookplates, stamps and money, and a comprehensive bibliography of books and magazines containing his illustrations.
► I am also working on a new catalogue raisonné of Edmund Blampied's prints - etchings, drypoints, lithographs and silhouettes - but may publish that, if I can find a publisher.
► NEW pages on the artist and engraver Stephen Gooden. They include my collection of some of his bookplates and a page of basic tables listing his designs for bookplates, coats-of-arms, award labels and devices. I have also added a page on a few other engravings by Gooden.
► A newly updated page on bookplates including examples designed by Mervyn Peake, Henry Rushbury and William E.C. Morgan, plus a page devoted to bookplates initialled W.P.B.
► An inconsequential page about things I have found in books.
► A page of links to personal web sites about books and things.
Other stuff that interests me:
► An article about Kate Abadie's sons who all died in the service of their country.
► A note about John Snow, an epidemiologist, although he didn't know that.
► A page on Betty Trask, an author whose 55 novels have been forgotten, but a Prize carries on her name.
► Things you can download or watch, starting with 3 minutes of church bells.
Why?
Nothing on this site is done for personal gain. It's just been fun to try to teach myself how to construct web pages; to have at my hand basic bibliographies or catalogues of things that I collect; and to be able to share with others my collections and obscure interests. A web site allows me to update the text and order of books or prints easily, whenever I get new information or find new things, and to show images of the items, which may be helpful to collectors. My printed bibliography of Edmund Blampied (2010) was out of date as soon as I found another dust jacket that he had designed. I have now found ten more, so about one a year; there may be more. I can easily add new items as I find them.
A web site also allows me to embed links to other entries on the same site or to supporting information on an external site, which is indicated with this symbol: 
. It should open on a new page. This provides a link to additional information in a way that a printed book cannot, and allows digression and distraction. Many of the links are to Wikipedia or to other sites that provide interesting information, such as how things look now. These other sites are not permanent, so if a link doesn't work, please let me know.
Search engines
I recommend using DuckDuckGo because Google does not find items on this site. For example if you ask Google to search for "Lloyd Kenyon" + bookplate, my page is not found in 1,650 results; if you do the same search on DuckDuckGo my page appears at the top. That's probably because Google does not index a page that this more than two layers below the Index page whereas DuckDuckGo does: Google is a shallow search engine; DuckDuckGo is a deep search engine. My page also comes first on Bing and Yahoo.
Help with viewing this site
Click the Ctrl + keys to enlarge the text on a Windows computer or CMD + on an Apple computer. To reduce the size use the Ctrl - or CMD - keys.
All the images on this site are low resolution, so are shown to illustrate, not to be reproduced. If your mouse cursor changes when you place it over an image, perhaps to show a hand, the image underneath can be enlarged by clicking on it. Press the back key on your browser to return to the page.
This site does not use cookies, but the host site may.
This is work in progress.
. . . Three is a Collection
This is how many views this page has had: