The Private Library

Welcome to The Private Library!

We appreciate your visit.  To help you acclimate to our blog, we have listed below permalinks to several of our past posts.  These posts will quickly get you up to speed on what we're all about.  (Because many of our posts are in fact a series of posts on the same topic, the sixth permalink listed below takes you to the first post in a series--click on the arrow at the top of the post to go to the next post in that series.)  

• Why a private library?
• Making The Private Library Mobile
• Links & the Private Library
• How to conduct searches on this blog
• What's really important on this blog?
• How to Build a Private Library for Less Than $1 a Day
• How to Furnish Your Private Library

We post new original content on a daily basis.  Our most recent daily post will always be found immediately following this welcome message.

Enjoy!

Books-to-Film and The Private Library

The recent publication of volume 2 of Kevin Johnson's excellent The Dark Page: Books that Inspired American Film Noir, reminds us of just how difficult it often is for filmmakers to really do justice to books:

    

The Internet Movie Database lists 28,550 "based on novels" films.  Those two words--"based on"--are the crux of the matter.  For a huge number of reasons--cinematic conventions, run-time limitations, special-effects budgets, nervous studio types afraid of deviating from formula, and film making teams eager to put their own imprints on a project--filmmakers, many book collectors will argue, wind up butchering the book on which a movie is based.  

Consider the case of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's 1993 novel of book collecting gone seriously awry, The Club Dumas.  With its numerous references to a wide range of literary classics, such as The Three Musketeers and A Study In Scarlet, many book collectors looked forward to the film adaptation of this novel--Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate--with great anticipation.  To say that most of these book collectors were...underwhelmed... would be a considerable overstatement....

 

Filmmakers, of course, will argue their films often are better than the books on which such films are based.  A case in point is Francis Ford Coppola's critically acclaimed The Godfather, which even the most ardent book collector generally acknowledges is far superior to Mario Puzo's overwrought novel on which the film is based:

There are, in fact, any number of books which both book collectors and filmmakers likely would agree would be difficult to translate to film under the best of circumstances.  John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic Confederacy of Dunces--with its evocations of a New Orleans long since washed away by Hurricane Katrina (not to mention the lack of a John Belushi or Chris Farley to play the role of Ignatius)--is arguably one such book.  Another might be Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, with its missing cat, missing wife, transporting well and a damn spot that just won't go away:

    

Perhaps because all book-to-film adaptations are a moving target (some 30 or so new movies are adapted from books every year), few writers have attempted to address the subject exhaustively:

    

For this reason many book collectors who build a private library around book-to-film adaptations often prefer to utilize one of the many available online lists of such adaptations (such as here and here)....

Extra-Illustrated Books and The Private Library

Any independent bookstore that has been in business for any length of time is likely to have squirreled away on its shelves a tome or two (or more) that is extra-illustrated.  Such books are

illustrated by means of engravings, variant title pages, and the like, which were not included in the book by the publisher, but added later. This additional matter may consist of original drawings, manuscripts, etc., but it may also consist of leaves taken from other books. The added material may be mounted, inlaid, or trimmed to conform to the size of the other leaves of the book. Also called "Grangerized" (a term derived from the vogue begun by the publication of James Granger's Biographical history of England, in 1769, in which Granger had blank leaves included so that the owner could insert desired illustrations).

Just about any kind of book could be, and often was, subject to this sort of post-publication "enhancement" during the period when Grangerization was a not uncommon way to "personalize" one's books (late 18th-early 20th century).  The Providence (Rhode Island) Public Library, for example, has in its Special Collections department a letter from John Russell Bartlett (John Carter Brown's librarian) to his son which dictates how a copy of Bartlett's Bibliotheca Americana: A catalogue of books relating to North and South America in the Library of John Carter Brown of Providence, R.I. (1865-1871) was to be extra-illustrated:

 

One of the most popular books subject to this practice (and one which a diligent collector may sometimes encounter at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library books sales and the like) is the Christian Bible.  Owners often took the process of Grangerizing Bibles to great lengths: a copy in the Huntington Library, which originally was published in three octavo volumes, grew--through the post-publication addition of some 30,000 extra illustrations--to sixty folio volumes!  This behemoth, which began as Kitto's Pictorial Bible (1836-1838) contained

specimens of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Bibles, ...near 3,000 original drawings by Raphael, Caracci and others, ...missal paintings from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century, ... Rembrandt etchings, ...Dürer woodcuts, [and] many choice impressions of line engravings and mezzotints. In 1875 this Bible was acquired by Theodore Irwin of Oswego, New York [whose son later sold it to Henry Huntington], who spent some years improving the collection still further by exchanging average impressions for better ones and substituting items he considered for some reason not sufficiently worthy.

One would have thought the illustrations in the original volumes (a scene from which is depicted below) would have been sufficient:

 

Among other types of books that frequently were Grangerized are numerous books on natural history, collections of poetry, travels and exploration, biographies, and encyclopedias of all types:

     

Because the extra illustrations used to enhance such volumes are themselves sometimes quite rare, one should scrutinize any Grangerized book that one encounters with some care....

Teeny, Tiny Books and The Private Library

Running out of shelf space in your private library?  Maybe you need to collect smaller books....

Miniature books, commonly defined as books smaller than 3"  x 3" (76.20 mm x 76.20 mm) in width and height, don't get a lot of respect from many book collectors, an unfortunate circumstance since the printing of such books often requires more skill than is required for printing the typical book in the marketplace.  In fact, printing such books requires so much skill that [d]uring the first centuries of printing, miniature books presented challenges to apprentices in the printing trades.  Exercises in setting small types and binding diminutive volumes were instrumental in learning the profession.

Such tiny books were more popular in centuries past partly because they were easily carried or concealed (an especially important consideration if one was fleeing from religious persecution).  This accounts for the numerous thumb Bibles (paraphrases prepared chiefly for children) and miniature Bibles that one occasionally still finds available at major auctions:

Bloem-Hofje Door (1673-74), a modern facsimile of which is depicted below, was--at  0.5" x 0.4" (13 mm x 9 mm) the smallest printed book in the world until the end of the 19th century.  The Mite (1891), also depicted below, was--at 13/16" x 11/16' (21mm x 18 mm) the smallest English-language book printed from movable type until the end of the 19th century:

  

Children's literature played an important role in the development of miniature books.  At the beginning of the 19th century publishers like Darton, Harvey and Co. began publishing miniature libraries for children.  As a recent exhibition at the Lilly Library (from whence come most of the images in this post) observes,

[m]iniature libraries share a number of features, though not all are present in all examples. Bindings are usually uniform, often with various pastel or patterned boards or wrappers bearing similar title labels. Miniature library boxes are built to resemble miniature bookcases, often with small drawers for related materials, which could include pencils, paper, or instructional cards. The drawers enhance their resemblance to miniature pieces of furniture, as did the sliding fronts, which usually present an attractive mounted illustration related to the subject matter, and are often topped with decorative woodwork.

The miniature library depicted below, Infants Own Book-case (1800-1801), is typical of those produced by Darton, Harvey and other publishers:

 

Among the longest-lived miniature books were almanacs and calendars, their miniaturization making them easy to carry around in one's pocket or purse.  Because these often were given as Christmas or New Year's gifts, publishers frequently would clothe these in rich bindings of morocco leather or like material, and sell them in tiny cases with an accompanying magnifying glass.  Schloss's English Bijou Almanac (1841), depicted below, is a typical example:

Although printing from movable type in the Far East preceded such printing in Europe by several centuries, there are many parallels in the printing of miniature books, including a focus on religious texts (Qur'an, Buddhist sutras and the like), as well as miniature translations of Western texts into non-Western languages.  Moral Precepts, Translated from the English into Hindoostany Verse (1834) is a typical example of the latter:

 

One of the highpoints of 19th century miniature book production was the French title Calendrier de tous les Saints (ca. 1815).  This title consists entirely of engravings depicting a saint for each day of the year:

 

Surprisingly, miniature book production in the 20th century owes a large debt of gratitude to Communism.  State sponsorship allowed miniature books to be published that otherwise would not have been commercially viable, and the tiny size of such books made them ideal for propagating an official state ideology to the masses.  This accounts for the pre-eminence of Hungary as one of the past century's most prolific sponsors of miniature books, and accounts as well for the importance (to advanced collectors of such books) of a bibliography like Gyula Janka's Miniatur Könyvek Bibliográfiája (Bibliography of Miniature Books, 1945-1970) depicted below:

 

In our own century, it is fine presses that are at the forefront of miniature book production.  As in days of yore, many of these modern day miniatures are printed from movable type on handmade paper, and are clothed in suitably appropriate bindings.  Bromer Booksellers, a specialist in miniature books, offers a number of examples, of which The Country Life (Fleece Press, 1997) is a recent notable example:

Anyone seriously interested in collecting miniature books will want to have on their shelves Anne Bromer's own Miniature Books: 4,000 Years of Tiny Treasures (2007):

Several important earlier bibliographies also may prove of interest, depending on the bent of one's own collecting interests.  Among these are Adomeit's Three Centuries of Thumb Bibles (1980--Ruth Elizabeth Adomeit is the scholar and collector from which many of the books in the Lilly Library exhibition, referenced above, were drawn) and Robert Bradbury's Antique United States Miniature Books, 1690-1900 (2001--based largely on the Lilly Library's collections and the collection of the American Antiquarian Society)....

Collecting the World's Greatest Private Libraries

What constitutes a really great private library?  What kinds of books does such a library contain?  How is such a library furnished?  How many generations are required to bring such a library to its fullest fruition?  How much money must be lavished on such a library to insure its enshrinement in the pantheon of truly great private libraries?

We have spent the past 254 posts showing folks how, using very little money and a few simple collecting strategies, one can easily construct a very nice private library of one's own. 

Judging, however, from the records of searches that have been undertaken on this blog over the past eight months, strong urges among us lesser mortals still compel many of us to indulge in fantasies about what kind of private library we could construct given unlimited funds and several generations of familial collecting.

To assuage this interest we have long included in the right-hand column of this blog a section, Famous Private Libraries, that contains links to information about great libraries past and present.  Because auction records of great libraries often fail to describe the actual room(s) within which a collector's books are (were) housed, we undertake in this post to look at a few books which do provide such descriptions.

Our first title concerns a great private library that was pulled down after a mere four decades of existence, the library of Ralph Willet (1719-1795):

A Description of the Library at Merly in the County of Dorset was printed for Willet by John Nichols in 1785.  As noted in the catalog description of specialist bookseller Jonathan Hill (from whence comes the above image), Willet devoted his life to book collecting (and other interests) after inheriting his family's West Indian estates.  An early issue of the magazine The Book Collector (Thomas, Alan.  "Ralph Willet of Merly." 1963, pp. 439-448) observes that

[f]ew collectors can have given more thought to the creation of a fitting casket for their treasures. The room was 84 feet long 23 feet wide, and 23 feet high, of which 5 feet, six inches were coving. The bookcases, 13 feet 4 inches high, were of carved mahogany, enriched with a complete Ionic order. The top of each bookcase was flanked with busts, and in the centre was an ornamental scroll inscribed with the subject contained in that case, crowned by the lamp of science with the motto ‘Non Extinguatur’ "But it was the plasterwork of cove and ceiling which made this unique among Georgian libraries. Thought up by Willet and executed by a ‘Mr. Collins’, the theme was nothing less than the origin and progress of civilization.

Alas, this great library--probably the most magnificent private library building constructed in England in the 18th century--was torn down by Willet's nephew after Willet's books were sold in 1813.

These types of titles are rare--most great private libraries are known by the books they contained, not the room(s) in which such books were housed.  Thus, one's source of knowledge about such private libraries most often is the catalog of such books, said catalog created by the owner of the library or by his/her heirs or, much more frequently, by the auction house which disposed of the collector's library upon his/her demise (more on this shortly).

That said, more encompassing titles occasionally still get published, a recent notable example being The Holkham Library: A History and Description.  Privately printed for distribution to members of Great Britain's Roxburghe Club by the present (7th) Lord Leicester in 2006, the volume gives a detailed description and history of one of the world's finest private libraries, much of which was acquired on the Grand Tour of France and Italy by Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (1697-1759) who built Holkham Hall in Norfolk:

 

As a condition of membership in the Roxburghe Club (the oldest bibliophilic society in the world, founded in 1812), all members are required to produce (at their expense) a book for presentation to the other [39] members. The subject of such books lies entirely at the discretion of the individual member, providing that it lies within the normal scope of the Club’s [own] publications.

Accordingly, 100 copies of Lord Leicester's survey of his family's magnificent library (penned by D. P. Mortlock, the Earl's librarian) was bound in original quarter green morocco with library buckram sides blocked in gilt on spine and upper cover, of which 39 copies were reserved for presentation to Lord Leicester's fellow Roxburghe Club members.  The remaining 61 leather-bound copies, plus an additional 200 copies bound in original full green buckram, blocked in gilt on upper cover and spine, were reserved for sale "to the trade"  (recognition of the considerable interest generated by this library, one of the world's few truly great private libraries which remains in the possession of its founding family.  Housed in three rooms, the library is still occasionally open to public viewing.)

It usually, though, is not the owner of a great private library that oversees production of a detailed history and description of such library, but rather an outside observer.  Such especially is the case when a formerly private library is bequeathed to the public. Consider the case of Evergreen House, within which still is housed the magnificent four-room library of Ambassador John Work Garrett, which had descended from his father, Thomas Harrison Garrett, and was--during its heyday--the largest private library in Maryland. 

John Work Garrett and His Library at Evergreen House (privately printed, 1944) was penned by Benjamin Howell Grisworld, Jr., a Johns Hopkins University trustee (to which university this library passed when Ambassador Garrett died in 1942).  Griswold's banking firm, Alex Brown & Sons, had been instrumental in financing the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, source of the family's fortune (founded by Ambassador Garrett's grandfather, also named John Work Garrett):

 

If one's private library really is worthy of enshrinement in the pantheon of truly great private libraries, a detailed description of your library's furnishings might even make it into the auction catalog that disperses your collection.  This does not happen all that frequently, but it does happen.  And such auction catalogs, if recent, tend to be readily available in the marketplace and not particularly expensive (in fact, the softbound copies of such catalogs often can be scooped up on eBay and like venues for a mere pittance).  Some typical recent examples include The Library of H. Bradley Martin (Sotheby's, 1989-1990) and The Library of the Earl of Macclesfield Removed from Shirburn Castle (Sotheby's, 2004-2008):

    

Auction catalogs like these are, of course, also great for provenance ("chain of ownership") research, though such research often is bittersweet when a great library like Macclesfield ceases to exist....

Pochoir and The Private Library

If you ever have had the good fortune to amble amongst the quaint and curious bookshops that make even the rudest European hamlet a wonderful place to indulge one's bookish enthusiasms. you likely will have come across the occasional title illustrated by pochoir.  A highly refined version of stenciling, pochoir is easily recognized by its crisp lines and brilliant colors, [which] produces images that have a freshly printed or wet appearance. 

Pochoir was all the rage in French fashion magazines from roughly 1900-1930, and thus is closely associated with the art movements known as art nouveau and art deco:

 

Stenciling, which has been used to decorate objects since at least 500 CE, was used in 16th century Europe to produce--among other things--playing cards and postcards.  However, it was the popularity of Japanese prints in 19th century Europe that led most directly to the development of pochoir.  As a recent exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum observes,

[p]ochoir begins with the analysis of the composition, including color tones and densities, of a color image. Numerous stencils were designed as a means of reproducing an image. A craftsman known as a découpeur would cut stencils with a straight-edged knife. The stencils were originally made of aluminum, copper, or zinc but eventually the material of choice was either celluloid or plastic. Along with this transition of stencil materials, there was a shift away from the use of watercolor towards the broad, soft, opaque layers of gouache. The technique was further refined in an effort to create the most vivid, accurately colored reproductions. Stencils created by the découpeur would be passed on to the coloristes. The coloristes applied the pigments using a variety of different brushes and methods of paint application to create the finished pochoir print.

The center of the pochoir rage was Paris, and at the height of this illustration technique's popularity there were as many as thirty graphic design studios in France, each employing up to 600 workers.  Such massive employment is a reflection of the intensive hand labor that was required to create pochoir illustrations, every one of which is unique (in that word's purest sense).  It was this very expensive labor that eventually doomed pochoir as an illustration technique, although it still is occasionally used for fine press productions, as we shall see shortly.

Folks building a private library around the subject of pochoir generally collect both books about the technique itself, as well as books illustrated by the technique.  Of the former, one of the most important titles to add to one's shelves is Jean Saude's 1925 exposition of the technique, Traité d'enluminure d'art au pochoir.  Printed in an edition of only 500 copies, this title will likely set you back at least the mid four figures if you can find a decent copy in the marketplace.  Published in the same year as the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, it features a number of stunning art deco designs by Edouard Halouze and Lucien Chapuis:

 

A more modern title that addresses the technique (which remains popular for decorating a wide range of objects) is depicted below:

  

Among the many notable artists who produced books illustrated by this technique are E. A. Seguy and Umberto Brunelleschi, both of whom were active during the period noted above:

  

The technique has been kept alive for book illustration by a number of fine presses.  A couple of recent examples are depicted below:

  

As noted in our post of 17 November 2009, the lush colors of pochoir can be somewhat duplicated by modern technology, as was demonstrated in the recent Whittington Press publication of Portmeirion:

Portmeirion was drawn and colored on a digital drawing tablet by the artist Leslie Gerry.  While the lush colors approximate those produced by the pochoir process, purists will lament the lack of texture provided by the original, hand-colored, hand-printed process (as described below, from the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition):

the thick paint medium, gouache, causes a build up against the stencil's edge resulting in a surface elevation that can be both seen and felt. The visible bristle traces result when a brush is moved straight across a stencil-a visual and tactile element resulting from the manual execution of the print. With varying pressure on the brush, a shading, or gradation, affects the printed results. Textural variety is achieved by varying the technique for applying the paint: daubing, spraying, spattering, or sponging are the most common choices.

The British wood engraver John Nash is one of the best known and most collected artists to have produced English-language books using the traditional pochoir process.  Among his best known works using this process are the Cresset Press edition of Edmund Spenser's The shepheardes calender: conteyning twleve aeaeglogues proportionable to the twelve monethes: entitled To the noble and vertuous gentleman most worthy of all titles both of learning and chevalrie Maister Philip Sidney (1930):

The Wild West and The Private Library (Part IV)

In 1987 Patricia Nelson Limerick published The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, and the stormclouds of revisionist criticism of Turner's frontier thesis at last broke with full force:

Limerick's book eviscerates Turner's view of the settlement of the West.  Walter Nugent, in a 1994 article, nicely summarizes the main thrusts of Limerick's argument, which were given more succinct shape as a "non-manifesto" for a New Western History at a 1989 Santa Fe symposium:

the West as a place, not the frontier as a process, should be our focus.  “The term ‘frontier’ is nationalistic and often racist (in essence, the area where white people get scarce)” ....  The history of European advance across North America is better expressed by “invasion, conquest, colonization, exploitation, development, [and] expansion of the world market.”  Turner used “conquest” too, but the point is not the word itself, but rather the need to pay attention to the conquered as well as the conquerors.  The second point follows: whatever it was that happened, it involved “the convergence of diverse people—women as well as men, Indians, Europeans, Latin Americans, Asians, Afro-Americans. . . with each other and with the natural environment”....  The interaction of all these groups, whether in competition or cooperation, is the important thing.  “The West was not where we escaped each other, but where we all met”....  White males were certainly present, but so were many others whom Turnerian history has slighted. 

Third point: the interaction has continued and is still happening.  The “frontier” did not end in 1890, as Turner claimed; another hundred years of rich western history has followed, and it demands historians’ attention.  Fourth, the western story is neither one of triumph over adversity, with the resulting ennoblement of the American character, nor a unique and exceptional subjugation of an empty land (for Indians were virtually invisible in the traditional story except as enemies who resisted the inevitable).  Rather, it is a great moral ambiguity.  “In western American history, heroism and villainy, virtue and vice, and nobility and shoddiness appear in roughly the same proportions as they appear in any other subject of human history. . . .  This is only disillusioning to those who have come to depend on illusions”

A couple of years later (1991), historian Richard White published two books, both of which reinforced Limerick's arguments:

  

In his magisterial ‘It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own’: A New History of the American West, White delineates the forming of a region...where racial tensions and discriminations, extractive industries, highly urban settlements and a common dependence on the federal government were at least as important as the traditional elements we associate with a rural and independent West.

In The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, White

establish[ed] a meaningful new framework for the analysis of Indian-white relations. Rather than setting up easy victim-exploiter categories or glorifying Native American resistance, White examines how violence, cultural innovation, confrontation, and accommodation worked on the ground, in specific interactions and conflicts between and within settler and indigenous groups. The author views Native Americans and Europeans soberly, showing the deep divisions on each side in relation to questions of power, legitimacy, and meaning.

Thus, the history of The Wild West is increasingly a work-in-progress.  Folks nostalgic for the John Wayne version...

..., which adherents of the New Western History insist is but one facet of a many-faceted story, can always limit their collecting focus to Turner and his disciples.... 

The Wild West and The Private Library (Part III)

Turner's frontier thesis had begun to lose some of its potency as early as the late 1940s, which saw the publication of Earl Pomeroy's The Territories and the United States, 1861-1890: Studies in Colonial Administration (1947).  Considered the father of the federal school (historians who stress the role of the federal government in the development and administration of the American West, a primacy slighted by Turner's thesis), Pomeroy followed this up with his influential essay "Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environment" (Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 (1955): 579-600), which began the arguments against the exceptionalism inherent in Turner's thesis. 

Even books that used Turner's terms, such as Malcolm Rohrbough's The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 (1968; 3rd Edition, depicted below, 2007) argued against Turner that "models from older societies" were important in the great migrations westward, as settlers generally sought security before stability and relied on "shared values and priorities" to establish same:

 

More books began to undermine bits and pieces of Turner's thesis.  Julie Roy Jeffrey's Frontier Women: the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 (1979) reinforced Pomeroy's argument about the role of government in the settlement of the American West, pointing out, for example, that Wyoming's legislature had granted women's suffrage (the first in the nation to do so) precisely in order to attract "responsible" settlers.  (This landmark title was extensively revised [to account for the contributions of Native American, Hispanic, Chinese, and African American women] and was most recently published as Frontier Women "Civilizing" the West?" 1840-1880, 1998):

Other cracks began to appear in the Turner thesis.  John Unruh's 1979 publication of The Plains Across: the Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60 (most recently reprinted in 1993, the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Oregon Trail) also reinforced Pomeroy's argument about the primacy of government in development of the American West.  Unruh argued that emigrant fears about hostile tribes along the trails not only led to far more Native Americans than emigrants being slaughtered, but also led to repeated demands for military protection along the trails, greatly increasing government's presence in those areas:

 

As J. Thomas Murphy observed in his excellent overview of "Westward Expansion" (Reader's Guide to American History, 1997), books also were being published that attacked Turner's thesis for failing to account for the importance of impacts generated by countries like Mexico (along the borderlands that emigrants were traversing), and for ignoring the ecological self-destructiveness of emigrants:

    

It was not, however, until 1987 that the revisionist stormclouds broke with full force....