Crown of Thorns | A Token for the Sorrowing | Victorian Mourning Book in Arsenic Binding

Consolation books are filled with religious passages, verses, and spiritual advice meant to comfort the bereaved. These were widely and frequently published during the 19th century, when mortality rates were high and the boom of the mourning industry reached its peak. This edition of Crown of Thorns is dated 1849 and bound in arsenic-dyed, blind stamped cloth. This is one of the shades identified in the Winterthur Library’s Poison Book Project. Textblock is clean and tight; some soiling to the binding on both sides, as shown.