As pointed out in previous posts, the continuum between "normal" and "excessive" love of books is both ill-defined and unstable. Much depends on who is assigning the label. If, for example, one were a well-heeled 19th century collector collecting only for oneself, the label "bibliomaniac" appears much more likely to have been cast as an aspersion against one's book collecting than if one were the same type of collector, but eventually bequeathed one's library to the nation.
Consider, for example, the posthumous reputation of Sir Thomas Phillips, who not only assembled one of the greatest private book collections of all time, but arguably the greatest of all private manuscript collections. Had he been able to bequeath his massive collection to the English people, as in fact he attempted to do--unsuccessfully--on several occasions, his contemporaries, and history, might have judged him more favorably. As things turned out, it took some 100+ years to completely disperse his collection (mostly at auction), a state of affairs which did not in fact benefit the English nation, though several national continental libraries (e.g., the Royal Library of Belgium) did wind up with significant portions (as did private libraries in the USA such as that of J. P. Morgan and Henry E. Huntington).
Contrast this with the reputation accorded book collectors like James Lenox, John Jacob Astor and Samuel J. Tilden, whose personal libraries were turned over to the City of New York and combined to form one of the world's great public institutions, the New York Public Library. Hosanas still are sung to their beneficence....
Fortunately, many of the books about book collecting that were published during the 19th century did not make hard and fast distinctions between bibliomania and bibliophily, which probably is why many still make for enjoyable reading today:
It is unlikely that "love of books," excessive or otherwise, would continue to be a topic of interest to anyone had not finely printed books become available to a more general public, first with the revival of the fine press movement at the end of the 19th century, then with the establishment of fine books for the people! enterprises like The Nonesuch Press and the Limited Editions Club in the early decades of the 20th century.
The ideology of these movements, as captured (often tangentially) in the works of contemporary authors like Holbrook Jackson and A. Edward Newton, frequently was at odds with the more mundane concerns of running a printing or publishing business, a tension artfully conveyed in Megan Benton's book on the subject:
Modern day book collectors, whether they (or others) see themselves as bibliomaniacs, bibliophiles, or something in between, may properly be said to have been birthed, in part, by the increasing availability of finely printed books at affordable prices which first came to pass in the 1920s and 1930s.
Of course, other trends also contributed to a love of books filtering down to the less well-to-do segments of the population, including increasing literacy, increased leisure time among the working class, and other developments in publishing (e.g., the advent of pulp fiction and paperbacks).
We will examine some modern paeans to "book love" in tomorrow's post, including the mechanics of making a brand new marriage work when both spouses have an enormous library....
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