ABSTRACT
Using bibliographic and bibliophile texts, and reports in the newspapers and bookselling press, this chapter studies a gorgeous example of fancy printing and collecting as a result of the bookbinder John Whittaker’s patriotic enterprise of a golden Magna Carta, published in England in 1816. One of the most splendid books of the era through its real gold typography, illuminations, and binding, his splendid editions of that foundational text for freeborn Englishmen were literally the objets d’art of emperors and kings, with less princely versions owned by bibliophile aristocrats and commoners. Its production is related to the Gothic revival and nationalism in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period.
