Dummy Books

In a more spacious age, when books were far fewer and better bound than they are today, they were used on occasion primarily as furniture. Neat lines of handsome volumes were considered an essential part of any well‐equipped room. This led to the practice of having dummy books on the shelves, where the numbers of real books did not extend far enough. To modern readers, dummy books seem a curious and inexplicable relic of the past, yet many stately houses and otherwise impeccable libraries had their rows of dummies, each properly bound but empty save for dust, or perhaps letters, bills and other odds and ends. The devising of appropriate titles for their dummy volumes gave our forefathers considerable scope for wit and punning.