do open bookcases hold a lot of dust?

Open fronts do let airborne dust settle on the books. Georgian homes suffered terrible coal soot, which is why wealthier owners preferred glazed doors. You'll need to run a brush over the top edges occasionally. Tightly packed books suffer less dust ingress than loosely stacked ones.

My living room has quite low windows and I am hoping to fit some shelving underneath them, do these cases usually have finished backs?

Cabinet makers usually left the backboards unfinished. They built these pieces to stand flat against a wall, using rough pine or deal for the unseen rear. Revolving bookcases form the main exception. Makers finished them on all four sides because they stood out in the middle of a room.

what are those small brass holes inside for?

Those brass strips are Tonks fittings. They consist of slotted metal channels let into the uprights. You place small metal studs into the slots at your chosen height. The wooden shelf then rests on those studs, letting you adjust the spacing.

I have noticed some wooden shelves have a leather strip hanging over the front edge, is this just for decoration or does it do something?

The leather strip is a dust flap. It hangs down to cover the gap between the top of the books and the shelf above. Coal fires created heavy soot in nineteenth-century homes. The leather stopped ash from settling directly on the page edges.

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Antique Small Bookcases from the 19th Century

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Designed to keep reading volumes close at hand, antique small bookcases are low, compact shelving units that often sit alongside armchairs or function as side tables in sitting rooms.