In Praise of the Bookmark

Bookmarks make antiquarians anxious: will acid in their paper eat into precious pages? Will colour bleed? The oldest survivor, made of leather, lies within the sixth-century vellum of a Coptic codex. In the nineteenth century, leather, silk or ribbon were largely used for bibles and prayer books: images arise of the solemnity of Sundays, servants and family gathered after breakfast to hear the Word. Now, in W. H. Smith, you can buy a faux-wood shark, moose or flying saucer, yours for £6.99 and guaranteed to ruin a book in no time.

Collectors cherish the bookmark’s infinite variety: somewhere in the Netherlands is a man who has 80,000 of them. I myself have over fifty. For years they have spilled out of a letter-rack in my study; today I’ve brought them down to the spare room and categorized them in neat little piles on the ironing-board. Quite a few come from bookshops: Daunt Books, with a lovely line drawing of the Marylebone branch interior; the London Review Bookshop, in cool primary colours; the green and gold of Hatchards, where I once, to my amazement, did a book signing; the Aldeburgh Bookshop, where my old friend Jane Austin [sic] presides over the till. When we were young, Jane and I worked in the lowliest fashion at the Poetry Society, then in Earls Court Square. We wore Laura Ashley cloaks in dusty colours, and Olaf’s Daughters lace-up boots, and had interesting moments with poets. A pile from vibrant small publishers comes next. A handsome rust-orange announces Notting Hill Editions, who in the age of the blockbuster bravely publish essays. Here’s one from Maia Press, with cover images of three good novels. Operating out of a garden hut, Maia ran for ten years, had a novel on a Booker longlist and won a crime fiction award. Now Maggie Hamand, its founding director, has published a novel of her own, Virgin & Child, with the new Barbican Press. There are quite a few from Persephone Books, whose coordinated endpapers and bookmarks from contemporary fabric or wallpaper patterns are a bright surprise inside their quiet grey jackets. And then, of course, the beloved ones from Slightly Foxed, celebrating the tenth anniversary; announcing new Foxed Cub Editions; reproducing the dreamy, black-and-white riverine world of BB’s The Little Grey Men and Down the Bright Stream. On we go. Here’s a pile of book promotions, often picked up on my way out of the writing class I teach at the Faber Academy: Ishiguro’s; The Buried Giant; Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, a surprise bestseller; a novel called Devotion by Madeleine Stevens, adorned with a half-cut peach and lasciviously protruding stone. It’s ‘dangerous, sharp, glittering and sexy’. Over the years my own novels have sometimes, thrillingly, been given a bookmark of their own, but they haven’t been described like that. What else? Offerings from museums and galleries with details of paintings or ancient spines, a large, glamorous one from the last Bonnard show at Tate Modern, with a glimpse of Le Jardin. And here’s a small musical pile: one from the Islington Choral Society, where I sang for perhaps too long; several from the Choral Society of Hereford, whose tremendous cathedral concerts I often attend these days. One on its own from Diana Athill’s only novel, Don’t Look at Me Like That, a Christmas present last year. The back flap of the stylish Granta paperback was also a tear-off bookmark: I thought it the last word. And here are the curiosities, kindly given, treasured, but never used. Cross-stitched tapestry from the Balkans, fringed in scarlet, so thick it would damage the spine. A charming ‘Song of the Cat’, bound in glittering thread, with ribbons at the end: somehow just too fiddly. And one in its own little box, given by someone I met at a literary festival who told me she was a tatter. She sent a tatted cross in pale blue – ‘You don’t mind if I send you something Christian?’ I don’t mind, I’m touched, but I have yet to use it. There are more, including strips of paper which I must once have thriftily cut up: these simple ones are in some ways the most pleasing, conjuring up some imagined reader who makes use of everything around him. Yes, a male for some reason, living alone. A short story begins to tick away. So here are over fifty of these things, culled from here and there. Why have I kept them all? Because my relationship with the bookmark is intense. This I’ve come to realize, as I carefully select one for each particular book. Does size matter? I like a nice big bookmark for a nice big book. The Idler’s is just the thing. I like to colour co-ordinate, so the bold jacket of Celia Brayfield’s Rebel Writers: The Accidental Feminists is complemented by the bright orange of ‘Books Are My Bag’. A little paperback needs a little bookmark, which is where the slender ones from Slightly Foxed come in. And I try to reflect the atmosphere of novels: for something plangent I look for blues and greys in the detail of a painting. My reading companion has no time for any of this nonsense. He dislikes, nay loathes, things that flutter, clutter, fall out, get in the way. Bookmarks, cuttings about the author, letters: away with them. When he puts the book aside he remembers where he’s got to, thank you. Ah, but remembering where I’ve got to is barely the half of it. Bookmarks are my comforters, my encouragers, my friends. So great is my attachment that I can’t begin a book until I’ve found the right one. And once it has settled in, it guides me on. I realize I am a completist: never, except in the depths of a project, do I have three or four books on the go. I finish a book, I record it in a notebook, I begin another. And perhaps, deep down, though reading is at the centre of my life, I need to see the end in sight. The heart sinks, I do confess, at the early-morning prospect of a long chapter. Faced with one I pour another cup of tea and look through the pages for a nice clean break. Here the kindly bookmark can come to rest: my hand is being held, my friend is leading me on. Only another ten pages, and I’ve got something done. Getting things done. My reading companion once gave me a card: Nothing beats the satisfaction of ticking things off on a list. It’s true, and it’s a very long way from the wandering, associative, aleatoric cast of mind wherein my soul resides, which leads reading into all sorts of places behind the lines, and writing one thing into thinking of quite another. A piece about bookmarks goes meandering into the past, and from there to a novel set in 1971 in the worn elegance of those airy rooms at the Poetry Society, to the inky old Gestetner, Camel cigarettes and looming poets. Here I am, the novel murmurs, Here I am.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 80 © Sue Gee 2023