Endpapers

The end of one thing and the beginning of another.

I thought endpapers were something to do with rolling your own cigarettes. I have only recently discovered that endpapers is the official term for those lavishly decorated inside-cover pages of proper books.

And now I wish to know more, much more. In order to do this I need to ramp up my Substack and my Website habit…

It’s almost a year since I started writing my blog on Substack, and now I have transferred to my Website too. At the start I was very scared. Scared to such an extent that I was writing as a fictitious person. I am sooooo uncomfortable talking about myself.

After about 6 months I became less scared and more confused. Writing as a fictitious person was so complicated that I kept losing the thread. And anyway, nobody cares! Everyone is so scared writing about themselves too (probably) they don’t even notice.

The fictitious character I chose to be was a character from the novel that I am writing. In fact, the novel I have actually now written. I am on the fourth draft. This is the stage where I go through every single sentence, perfecting it. Also where I go through every single character, disguising them so that they can never be recognised as anyone I might know or might ever have met. Perish the thought! This is the fun bit. It is also very time consuming and I think it will take me at least another year to do. I have set myself the target of January 2026 to get ready to start putting it out there, whatever that may entail.

In the meantime, whilst parenting and day-jobbing I’ve also managed to maintain an almost daily Substack habit. This has taught me many things- not least that I have the self-discipline to keep it going and also, that I didn’t run out of ideas!

The main thing that I would now like to progress to is making my blogs more meaningful. I will still be Gleefully Dabbling, but in a more Gleefully Intentional way.

I will still aim to post Notes every day, but they will be part of a more in-depth study and my blogs will be fortnightly or even monthly, rather than weekly.

So, for those of you who haven’t fallen asleep, my theme for the next couple of weeks is going to be Endpapers.

The idea came to me in a flash when I was reading a comment from Tom Cox

on his The Villager site, where he mentioned the inclusion of endpapers in some of his first editions. I have always been a fan of endpapers, and seeing the endpapers designed by Tirzah Garwood I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to research the origins and uses of these beautiful literary adornments. Then, guess what, whilst reading the marvellous The Overstory by Richard Powers last night, I happened upon this on page 261:

“…And look at these beautiful endpapers. Marble waterfall.”

I didn’t even know that endpaper designs had titles, though one Marble waterfall probably looks very like the next.

Incidentally, the top of page 261 begins with this sentence:

“The conversion of their house into a library happens too slowly to see.”

Which is also uncanny, because my theme for last week’s blog was Libraries. I will take this as a sign from the universe that I should carry on.

Now I’m off to ransack my bookshelves in pursuit of endpapers hiding in plain sight. Look out for titbits in my Notes every day, and I’ll be back with a polished and professional article in a coupla weeks. If you have any pictures of endpapers, or if you make endpapers (even better!) or you have books featuring your favourite endpapers please please do show me! I love them and I’m very excited about this.

In the meantime, here’s my own design for an endpaper. It was actually a design for a textile print, but I think it would look nice inside a book. The design is based on an abstraction of Southwark Cathedral, from my print collection Fantastic Ecclesiastic, painted in gouache on paper.

My textile print design, Fantastic Ecclesiastic, gouache on paper.