Roxburghe Club

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The Roxburghe Club was formed on the 17th of June, 1812 by leading bibliophiles at the time the library of the Duke of Roxburghe was auctioned. It took 45 days to sell the entire collection. The first edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Chrisopher Valdarfer of Venice in 1471, was sold to the Marquis of Blandford for £2,260, the highest price ever given for a book at that time. The Marquis already had another copy, but lacking 5 of the pages. Starting with some eighteen in number, the first momentous dinner-party took place at the St Albans Tavern, St Albans Street (later renamed Waterloo Place). The Roxburghe Club is often claimed as the first book club^{[citation needed]}, and was a model for many book societies that appeared later in Britain and Europe. The circle is an exclusive one, however: the number limited to thirty-one members, one black ball excluding applicants. Each member undertakes to sponsor the publication of a rare or curious volume. The scholarship continues to be high and the quality of binding lavish, with no more than 100 copies ever printed. The first president was the Earl Spencer.

A photograph exists of the membership in 1892, including the prime minister Arthur Balfour and anthropologist Andrew Lang, as well as American poet James Russell Lowell, Alfred Henry Huth, and Simon Watson Taylor. James Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, was then President.