Bookplate for W.E. Henley by William Nicholson (Wood Engraving)

Original bookplate designed by William Nicholson for William Ernest Henley, an English poet, writer and critic who (in addition to being a fixture in London literary circles in the late 19th-century) served as the inspiration for Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

‘As a fact, the bookplate […] is in sturdy, heavy lines and shows a bull, a colossalb east, dour of head and short of leg, the whole bulk of him seeming to be crouched and focussed in the immense squareness of the body. It is like a cattle-breeder’s dream of heaven.’ — Kennedy Williamson, W.E. Henley, A Memoir