The Private Library

Wallet Edges and The Private Library

One of the most unusual bindings most book collectors are ever likely to encounter is the so-called wallet edge binding, which the TomFolio Glossary describes as

a type of self-closing binding in which the binding material extends along the entire length of the rear [fore-edge], folds over the fore-edge and closes with a narrow tongue snapped to or inserted into a slot in the front [board]

The binding style is well represented in the image below (from Abbey Antiquarian Books), a miniature book published in 1834:

 

A more dramatic example of this binding style may be seen below on a giant (2' 7" x 3' 10") illuminated Koran on offer from Eric Chaim Kline, the wallet edge binding made of stained and varnished buffalo hide:

While the above example is beyond the financial resources of most book collectors, wallet edge bindings are not that rare, especially on books printed prior to the 20th century.  A little diligent research should reward you with several nice examples for very little money....

Variorum Editions and The Private Library

The journey from written manuscript to printed page is not always an easy one.  And although manuscripts nowadays are more likely to be digital, transforming an author's thoughts from a digital file on his or her computer to a printed page is in many respects still fraught with not a few of the uncertainties which afflicted authors' manuscripts much more frequently and profoundly during the handpress era.

Consider how accurately one's manuscript might be reproduced in print if the type for one's book was hand-set by compositors to whom one's text was being read--compositors who may or may not have the necessary type at hand, who then turn your handset type over to printers who may be a bit tipsy....  Let's just say that the printed page may not be a completely accurate reflection of what you actually wrote. (And if you revise your text after seeing the proofs, such inaccuracies might, for the same reasons, simply be compounded.) 

This is one reason why variorum editions (from the Latin editio cum notis variorum editorum ["an edition with the notes of various editors"]) are so important for many authors. They allow later critics and editors to make a case for what an author really meant to say, poor transcriptions, typos, missing or damaged type, and similar prior publication imbroglios notwithstanding.  These conjectural emendations usually are published alongside that of many other editors and critics going back, in some cases, several centuries.

Shakespeare, by near universal assent the greatest author ever to have written in the English language, has long been subject to this sort of scholarship.  As respected London bookseller Peter Harrington points out in his notes for the set depicted below, the first variorum edition of Shakespeare's work, produced by Dr. Johnson in 1765, is the foundation text of modern Shakespearean scholarship:

This simply is another way of saying that such scholarship has not stood still.  As additional evidence has come to light about earlier publications of Shakespeare's works, scholars have revised their ideas of what the Bard actually meant to say:

 

Inventions like the Hinman collator often upset centuries of scholarship (although they just as frequently reinforce what prior editors and critics have surmised about the textual authority of particular publications of an author's works).  The replacement of mechanical collators with electronic collators suggests that variorum editions may be with us for yet a while longer, though whether or not this will necessarily benefit textual scholarship remains to be seen:

There is much no doubt that is exceedingly clever, but, taken as a whole, [such scholarship too often represents] an almost impenetrable mass of conflicting opinions, wild conjectures and leaden contemplations, a huge collection of antagonistic materials which, if not repulsive, is certainly appalling.... 

Most Useful Gifts for Book Collectors at The Private Library

One of the questions we field most frequently here at The Private Library usually goes something like this: my spouse/friend/relative/co-worker loves books and I wonder if you could suggest an appropriate gift for his/her birthday/anniversary/other occasion?

Because we personally feel that gifts should be tailored to a recipient's own preferences and predilections, we generally are reluctant to give such advice without ourselves knowing a great deal about the recipient. Most folks, unfortunately, seem reluctant to accept this as an adequate reason for not addressing their query, so we have come up with a couple of suggestions that seem to work for most recipients in most cases.  We would very much like to hear what you might recommend if faced with such a question yourself.

Given the enormous demands that are placed on the very few hours that most of us have to spare in a typical day, our most frequent gift-giving idea for book collectors is the gift of time.  Few book collectors ever seem to have enough.  So many books, so little...well, you know.  

So why not give your favored book collector a free hour or two here and there.  Excuse them from chores.  Make dinner yourself.  Ditto for picking up the drycleaning, taking the kids to soccer (or whatever), getting the car serviced, etc.  Give 'em a big handful of precious minutes  to just read....

If a gift of time is not within your capacity to give, few book collectors are likely to turn up their noses at a nice copy of John Carter's classic ABC for Book Collectors:

If a single book can be said to be worthy of every book collector's bookshelves, this book is it.  Virtually the entire universe of book collecting is covered over the course of roughly 500 entries, not a few of which reflect Carter's often wry wit.  Not only is this title readily available in the marketplace, it also is inexpensive (in its most recent incarnation).

Your suggestions...?

Cockling and The Private Library

It is not uncommon in some parts of the world for book collectors to encounter the term cockled with some regularity when perusing booksellers' catalogs.  Cockling, as the ILAB Glossary so helpfully observes, is

the wrinkled, puckered, waving, or curling condition of a page or of the boards of a book, which is caused by non-uniform drying and shrinkage. If the cockled page is made of vellum, the condition is caused by humidity. In the case of paper or board, the condition is caused by heat and humidity. In the case of book covers, it can be caused by the use of the wrong type of adhesive or too much adhesive.

As may be inferred from the above, cockling is not something with which most book collectors are well equipped to deal.  Depending on the type, location and severity of the cockling, the work of professional preservationists may well be required.  In the instance depicted below, the professional preservation staff of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan managed to restore a badly cockled parchment copy of Michigan's 1835 state constitution:

 

Most book collectors do not, obviously, have access to a professional conservation/preservation staff, so the decision whether or not to purchase cockled books usually boils down to how important is this book to your collection.  If sufficiently important, most book collectors are likely to purchase the book and arrange to have the cockling dealt with by professionals.  If not....

Keep in mind, as noted in the definition cited above, that the term applies to bindings as well as to pages:

Trains and The Private Library (Part VII): Guest Editorial

We are pleased to conclude this series with a Guest Editorial from loyal reader James Keeline.  James, as long-time readers will know from his two previous Guest Editorials, spent over a dozen years managing the children's bookstore, The Prince and The Pauper, in San Diego, California.  He is considered an expert on juvenile books in series, such as those of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, and he has presented annually at the Popular Culture Association since 1992. 

James and his wife also are steam locomotive engineers for the Poway-Midland Railroad, where they volunteer several days a month and where their work includes operating, among other equipment. a 1907 Baldwin 0-4-0 (13 ton 42" gauge) locomotive from April through early December.   James writes today about the authenticity that one might expect to find in train literature penned for children and young adults:

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"As with aviation fiction, some authors' descriptions are written with more accuracy than others.  It is readily evident when an aviation author has either direct experience flying a plane or has done enough research to write about it accurately.  The same can be said of the authors of railroad fiction.  Some gloss over details of which levers are used, while others seem to have done their research well (to the point of giving a good description when the hero is behind the throttle).

For example, the Stratemeyer Syndicate's Ralph of the Railroad series (1906-1928) by 'Allen Chapman' featured ghostwriting by several writers.  The ghost for several of the first volumes, Weldon J. Cobb, was a Chicago newspaper man and dime novelist (among other things) and he wrote stories about railroads before Edward Stratemeyer hired him to write the first volume from his outline.  Cobb had family members who were principals in a Chicago-based rail line so it would seem that he would have been well suited to write about the early career of young Ralph Fairbanks as he worked his way up to positions of fireman and later engineer.  When the trains are in motion, even when Ralph is at the throttle for the first time, much less detail is given than one might hope for given his background and family connections.  The other ghosts for the series did not have similar backgrounds so it is hardly surprising that their books do not contain deep railroad information.  Cobb did provide good detail about printing technology when he ghostwrote Two Boy Publishers around the same time for Stratemeyer:

   

An early writer for boys, William T. Adams, wrote as Oliver Optic, including a line called the Lake Shore series.  The first volume, Through By Daylight, was originally serialized in Oliver Optic's Magazine in the 1870s and later issued as a book.  In this story some boys learn to operate a 'steam dummy,' a locomotive set up to look like a street car in the theory that it would be less likely to frighten horses. There is a moderate level of detail in this book.  Later volumes shift the scene of the action to steam boats on 'Ucayga Lake' (an anagram for Cayuga Lake) in Upstate New York and a military-style boarding school:

These were among the stories Edward Stratemeyer read as a youth and he set his Rover Boys series in the same area in 1899 and beyond.  'Optic' and Horatio Alger, Jr., were two authors he cited as favorites from his childhood.  There is no immediate evidence that he corresponded with Adams, though his publisher asked him to write a final volume in Optic's Blue and Gray on Land series, An Undivided Union (1899), after Adams died in 1898.  Stratemeyer wrote this as 'Oliver Optic' with his own name below on the title page in tiny type.

Stratemeyer did engage in a correspondence with Horatio Alger, Jr., in the latter years of that author's life. Towards the end, as his health and eyesight were failing, he first proposed the idea of Stratemeyer finishing up some of his incomplete stories.  The younger author did this after Alger died in 1899. Stratemeyer made arrangements with Alger's sister and executor, Olive Augusta Cheney, to use materials Alger left.  Edward wrote eleven stories as Horatio Alger, Jr., with his primary pen name, 'Arthur M. Winfield' (used for his Rover Boys series) in tiny type below.  It was a source of pride that Edward wrote not only stories like his favorite childhood authors but that he also wrote as them on several occasions, buoyed by the support of Adams ' publisher, Lee & Shepard, Alger's sister, and Alger himself.

Alger had a few of his 'rags to riches' success stories set around railroads, like Erie Train Boy, but none seem concerned with locomotive operations:

An author of similar success stories, along with a good range of other topics, was Edward Sylvester Ellis. One story in particular gives some of the more accurate locomotive operation descriptions to be found in a boys' book.  His book, From the Throttle to the President's Chair (Mershon 1898) describes the extended adventures of a boy, Bob Lovell, who rises in a railroad organization.  As with the Alger success story model, Ellis has his character perform a service to a man who will be influential to his later success which can only be achieved through the protagonist's hard work, honesty, and cleverness.  In this case, the young hero saves the life of the railroad president's daughter and this leads him to give the hero a low-rung job in his company.

A four-volume series called the Boys' Story of the Railroad was written by Burton Egbert Stevenson.  The author was better known for his book of poetry.

By the early 1900s railroads were seen as an everyday part of life in most American communities. Hence, it is not surprising that other fields, like aviation, would be more likely to fascinate young readers with dreams of what they might one day accomplish.  The Tom Swift series from the Stratemeyer Syndicate was a series designed to capitalize on this interest.  In the initial volumes of 1910, young Tom is portrayed as the owner-operator of a motorcycle, a motorboat, an advanced airship, a submarine, and an electric automobile.  Tom does not turn his inventive mind towards railroads until a much later volume, Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive (1922).  The volume took its inspiration from developments at the Milwaukee Railroad.  When collecting information for this story from them, Stratemeyer sent a letter to one of Cobb's relatives still associated with railroads.  The ghost for this Tom Swift volume was W. Bert Foster who also wrote one of the Ralph books around this time:

As the Tom Swift series celebrates 100 years (and 105 volumes in five series) this year, a convention is being organized in San Diego for July 16-18.

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Look for James' article on Edward Stratemeyer's New York (and New Jersey) in the revitalized print edition of Fine Books & Collections, due on newsstands in April....

Trains and The Private Library (Part VI)

Railroads have spawned a wide range of collectibles, none of which are better known or more beloved than model railroads.  The vast body of literature that supports this hobby is virtually an industry unto itself:

  

This literature covers everything from pre-assembled rolling stock (such as that depicted above), to the tracks and other items needed to run your own model railroad:...

  

Lest the average reader think that adding such books to one's private library of books about railroading is an unwarranted indulgence in what is essentially child's play, it should be pointed out that quite a lot about the history of railroads and their influence on society can be gleaned from such books.  You may learn, for example, why refrigerated rail cars were considered a boon for advertising, or why railroads and trains and train stations have had such an outsized influence on various arts....

  

  

P.S.

For those folks keeping track (no pun intended), this is our 365th consecutive post.  Who would've thought...?!

Trains and The Private Library (Part V)

Even in areas where trains no longer run, their influence is recalled in the copious trace evidence that remains of their passing.  (Lest one overstate the case, it should be noted that railroads are enjoying something of a renaissance in many areas, as they are able to transport goods in a safer, more environmentally friendly manner than many other modes of transportation.)

Railroads, like insurance companies, steamship companies and similar private concerns, once were allowed to issue their own currency (this was before federal regulation of banking was instituted by most modern industrial nations).  This currency, which was almost exclusively banknotes (not coinage), frequently featured vignettes of a railroad company's rolling stock, making such notes quite attractive to a wide range of collectors (in the United States alone, over 800 varieties of these notes were issued during the 19th century):

Sovereign nations also have issued banknotes in commemoration of railroads' contributions to society, as well as numerous coins commemorating such contributions:

 

These numismatic collectibles often are collected alongside the stocks and bonds that were issued to capitalize railroad company operations (the collection of these latter items is termed scripophily).  These stocks and bonds invariably feature attractive vignettes of railroad stock and/or operations:

Understandably, such collectibles have given rise to a number of books that seek to track, enumerate and contextualize such collectibles:

Railroads also have been commemorated on a wide range of stamps, which likewise has required publication of a number of books that seek to track, enumerate and contextualize these philatelic emissions:

  

What many folks may not know is that railroads themselves once offered postal services.  In the United States, for example,

[t]he Railway Mail Service revolutionized the way mail was processed by sorting mail aboard moving trains. Railway mail service began in 1832, but grew slowly until the Civil War. In 1862, mail was sorted en route, as a train moved between two points. The idea proved to be exceptionally successful, and as the postal service decentralized its operations, it concentrated on sorting much of the growing volume of mail while it was being carried on the nation's rail lines....

Use of this service in the United States reached its peak during World War II, and thereafter experienced a gradual decline until officially terminated on 30 June 1977.  As might be expected, surviving examples of mail which carries a railroad cancellation mark is highly collectible:

And yes, there are a bunch of books devoted specifically to this railroad collectible as well:

   

But none of these items has produced anywhere near the vast number of books that track, enumerate and contextualize what arguably is the greatest of all railroad collectibles....

Trains and The Private Library (Part IV)

The trains [in a country] contain the essential paraphernalia of the culture: Thai trains have the shower jar with the glazed dragon on its side, Ceylonese ones the car reserved for Buddhist monks, Indian ones a vegetarian kitchen and six classes, Iranian ones prayer mats, Malaysian ones a noodle stall, Vietnamese ones bulletproof glass on the locomotive, and on every carriage of a Russian train there is a samovar. The railway bazaar with its gadgets and passengers represent[s]...society so completely that to board it [is] to be challenged by the national character....--Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

Some of the greatest travel narratives ever written are concerned almost exclusively with journeys by rail:

Some of these narratives recount rail journeys that are available to "everyman," journeys that often are most memorable for the culture shock they induce:

 

Other books recall more extraordinary rail journeys, journeys that usually have been beyond the financial means of all but a few:

Many rail journeys have taken place over routes so famous that books have been published solely for the purpose of trying to do visual justice to the journey:

But railroads have not only changed the way that people perceive and experience travel.  They also have made the modern industrial state possible.  There is not a little irony in the fact that so many people are nostalgic for a way of travel that has made possible the very society from which they often are trying to escape (if only for a few days):

  

Railroads revolutionized everything from transport to communication, from social networks to technological networks, and in the process railroads left behind a host of trace evidence that is now considered extremely collectible....

Trains and The Private Library (Part III)

Why is it that so many people wind up dead on trains?  Is it because of all those dark nooks and crannies on a train where murder can be committed unnoticed?  Is it because the victim of such a crime cannot easily escape from a moving train?  Is it the enclosed setting that reduces the amount of descriptive narrative that the author has to employ to convey a sense of place?  Whatever it is, a heck of a lot of railroad fiction falls squarely into the category of mystery:

  

So prevalent are trains as sites of murder and mayhem that the mysteries penned about them have even led to books in series:

  

Sometimes, of course, this murder and mayhem does not take place directly on a train, but rather on railroad tracks or a railroad embankment:

  

In any event, so much has been published along these lines (no pun intended) that such mysteries constitute virtually a sub-genre of their own.

At the other end of the fictional spectrum are the enormous number of titles about trains that have been published for the very young (and young at heart):

  

Not a few of these titles are mysteries, albeit mysteries that are far less violent and bloody than those published for the adult market:

Trains also are a popular character in science fiction...

  

...romance fiction (not all of which is genre fiction)...

 

...and there is an enormous body of fiction in which trains, even if not a major character, still figure prominently in the stories:

   

Tomorrow, great journeys and more....

Trains and The Private Library (Part II)

Most collectors of railroad literature seem to gravitate first to books about the technology of trains, especially books about the so-called rolling stock upon which railroad service depends (this invariably includes locomotives, though purists prefer to characterize these separately as motive stock):

Such books are readily available in the marketplace for a wide range of equipment and an extensive selection of specific railroads:

More importantly to most collectors, such books rarely cost much money, as they frequently are found at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales and other inexpensive book purchasing venues. 

The same is true of many of the books published about railroad infrastructure (train stations, railyards, tracks, railway bridges, etc.):

  

Many collectors of railroad literature prefer to focus on a particular railroad, route or type of service:

  

Part of the fun in focusing on specific routes is that a lot of ephemera, such as railroad posters, can be collected alongside one's books (see also yesterday's post):

  

So prodigious has been the output of railroad ephemera that much of it has its own literature:

As we shall see in tomorrow's post, rail travel not infrequently is the setting for some truly inspired fiction....

Trains and The Private Library (Part I)

We observed in our post of 22 July 2009 that one of the most widely collected types of travel narrative is that which has to do with particular forms of transportation.  And we saw some of this focus on a particular form of transportation in our series about sea literature.  We now turn our attention to travel on land, where one of the most popular and collectible types of travel narrative revolves around trains:

     

Train travel was a fairly late development in the history of transportation, the first steam railroad engine not invented until 1804.  Although coal was transported by wooden waggonway as early as 1758, the first passenger train was not put into service until 1807 (the first regular revenue-earning train commenced operations five years later, in 1812).

Almost from the start, train travel was hailed as a great advance in human transport:

The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines from one city to another, almost as fast as birds can fly, 15 or 20 miles an hour.... A carriage will start from Washington in the morning, the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup in New York the same day....--Oliver Evans (1800)

Books and train travel have, in many respects, grown up together.  The long travel times that early train trips required gave passengers leisure to indulge in quite a bit of reading, a fact that was recognized early on by the development of cheap books like the yellowback and Routledge's Railway Library series that were designed specifically for sale at railway bookstalls:

  

These early forms of cheap reading designed especially for train travelers were, as one might imagine, somewhat fragile and it is rare to find copies in Fine condition.  Anyone collecting such titles will want to have handy resources like Chester Topp's 9-volume Victorian Yellowbacks & Paperbacks, 1849-1905 and, for context, books like Stephen Colclough's Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities, 1695-1870:

  

Closely related collectibles from this period are the early railroad timetables, rates of fare, maps and similar ephemera that many book collectors often collect alongside yellowbacks and related reading for early train travel:

  

But none of these are what most folks building a private library about train travel usually begin with....

High Spot Collecting via Proxy at The Private Library

Want to do a little high spot collecting of your own but can't afford the several million dollars that an original Shakespeare First Folio or Audubon double-elephant folio might set you back?  Well, step right this way...'cause there are lots of high-spot titles that have been reproduced as facsimiles:

Some facsimiles, such as the volume above (part of a four-volume set produced in the early 1970s), are even printed the same size as the originals.  (And the set above is a mere $95,000--a steal compared to the eight million dollars or so that an original Audubon double-elephant folio likely would bring in today's marketplace). 

Many high-spot facsimiles are even priced within reach of the "average Joe" book collector.  Consider, for example, the case of the Kelmscott Chaucer, one of the high spots of the fine press movement:

An original copy might easily set you back $100,000 or more in today's market.  But a perfectly acceptable facsimile of the same title is available from The Folio Society for a mere pittance (relatively speaking): $600 (payment plan available).

Facsimiles not only are a way for the average book collector to access some high spots of literature that might otherwise be unavailable to them due to cost, they also are a way for all book collectors (even those who are financially well off) to access books which are known to exist in a single copy only. 

Illuminated psalters, for example, are unique by definition.  They routinely sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars each, with the better known, more famous and/or more richly illuminated examples selling for multiples of millions of dollars each.  Yet, for just $2,180 (payment plan available), a facsimile of one of the most exquisite of all such psalters, The Luttrell Psalter, can easily be added to your very own bookshelves:

 

Still too much money?  How about a nice facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio for a couple of hundred bucks (depending on the publisher)?

 

Facsimiles have been published for a wide variety of high spot titles.  A diligent search of your local independent bookshop may well uncover several that you would be happy to add to your shelves....

Gauffered Edges and The Private Library

A term that book collectors rarely encounter in descriptions of modern books, but which they encounter not infrequently in descriptions of antiquarian books, is gauffered edges.  This simply means that the edges of a book have had a decoration stamped into them, usually after the edges of the book have been gilded:

Here is a more detailed description of the technique:

The edges of a book, usually gilded, which have been decorated further by means of heated finishing tools or rolls which indent small repeating patterns. Gauffering is most successful on a book printed on hard paper and gilt solid. It may be done directly on the gold, or by laying a different colored gold over the first, and tooling over the top gold, leaving the pattern in the new gold impressed on the original metal. The effect of gauffering is sometimes enhanced by scraping away parts of the gold and then staining the white paper showing through. While this technique was used by a number of European bookbinders, it was especially associated with German bookbinding of the 16th century. The use of color on the edges of books bound in England was less frequent and more restrained. Plain gauffering was done well into the 17th century, usually on embroidered bindings, but appears to have declined sharply after 1650 or so. It was then revived and exploited from the end of the 18th century onwards, and was especially popular in the latter half of the 19th century, when it was found on elaborately bound devotional and other books.

As noted above, though rarely found on modern books (the occasional fine press title excepted), one often encounters gauffering on books like the 1851 Moxon publication of Tennyson's poems, depicted below, ...

...as well as on numerous 17th century titles (should one's finances permit collecting such books)....

High Spot Collecting and The Private Library

Unlike most collectors of mysteries, who tend to be completists (because so many mysteries are published as part of a series), folks who are high spot collectors tend to focus only on those titles considered to be the most important in a particular field or subject.  The high spot in English literature, for example, is generally held to be Shakespeare's First Folio, while the high spot in American orinthology is Audubon's double-elephant folio:

   

While some high spot collectors achieve familiarity with the most important titles in a field--e.g., beat literature--by vocational involvement with the field (e.g., they teach beat literature)...

  

...others rely on any number of books that have  come to assume a sort of guidebook to high spot collecting function.  Arguably the most prominent of all such titles is Printing and the Mind of Man...

..,but there are many more well-known titles that have come to perform a similar function, such as Heralds of Science...

 

...The Zamorano 80 (for high spot collectors of Californiama)...

...and a number of titles published by The Grolier Club:

Mysteries and The Private Library (Part V)

Some of the most beloved and well-known fictional characters ever created are characters in mysteries.  Virtually none of them achieved that popularity from a single book; rather, they achieved their enduring popularity from a series of books in which they were the main character:

   

Hercule Poirot ...? ...series!  Miss Marple ...? ...series!  Chief Inspector Morse ...? ...series!  Adam Dalgliesh ...? ...series!  Inspector Maigret ...? ...series!  Nancy Drew ...? ...series!  Pick virtually any title that we've discussed or illustrated in our previous four posts and...guess what...it's part of a series!

Publishers love series.  As we observed in our post of 23 September 2009,

[t]ruly successful books in series keep publishers in the black for decades after the original author's death.  Although this is not a factor where a stable of writers is writing a series under a pseudonym..., the death of an exceptional series author can be catastrophic unless a series' various copyrights have been locked up tight by the publisher (or by the author's estate).  That done, the lucky publisher (or author's estate) is limited only by the ability of sales and marketing to repackage a series in ways that are likely to continually entice collectors towards completion...

This certainly is true of what arguably is the most beloved and most enduring of all fictional mystery characters, Sherlock Holmes:

By any measure, Sherlock Holmes is a phenomenon.  Many people to this day believe Holmes was a real character.  Arthur Conan Doyle's fans were so enamored of the character during Doyle's own lifetime that when Doyle apparently killed off the character at Reichenbach Falls an uproar ensued among the character's devoted fans, leading Doyle to resurrect the character in The Adventure of the Empty House:

   

Is there any other fictional mystery character that has become an industry into himself the way that Holmes has?  Patron saint of devoted fans worldwide, he has his own museum and has been the subject of numerous radio, film and TV productions:

   

As for the books, well...expect to be collecting the various appearances of Holmes in print for a very long time, even if one only collects what Doyle himself wrote:

    

If you're also going to collect everything that's been written by others about Holmes or Doyle, you're going to need to add some serious additional shelving to your private library.... 

  

Mysteries and The Private Library (Part IV)

One of the most popular sub-genres of the mystery genre is the so-called police procedural.  Unlike other mysteries in which the identity of the suspect usually is unknown until the end of the story, in a police procedural the identity of the culprit often is known early in the story, and the focus of the story is on the various investigative techniques that the police used to uncover that identity:

  

The Grell Mystery (1914) represents one of the earliest known examples of this sub-genre, although procedurals did not really become popular until after World War II, thanks to the inventive fictions of writers like Lawrence Treat (V as in Victim, 1945) and to a number of semidocumentary films that depicted actual police work.

One of the earliest writers to consistently achieve popularity as an author of procedurals was Salvatore Lombino, who first achieved fame with his debut novel The Blackboard Jungle (1954, written under the name he legally adopted in 1952, Evan Hunter), went on to pen the screenplay for the Hitchcock classic The Birds (among numerous other TV and film scripts), but who is best known to most readers for the police procedurals he wrote under the pseudonym Ed McBain:

  

Another author who would greatly influence this sub-genre was John Creasy, who over a 40-year career penned 562 books under 28 pseudonyms, the best known of which probably are the procedurals he wrote under the pseudonym J. J. Marric:

  

This sub-genre would attract numerous other (now famous) authors: Hillary Waugh; P. D. James (Baroness James of Holland Park); Reginald Hill; Joseph Wambaugh; Tony Hillerman...to mention only a few of the better known....

Mysteries and The Private Library (Part III)

Closely related to the gardening mysteries covered in yesterday's post, culinary mysteries have food as a major thematic element, usually as the cause of death, though frequently meals serve as the location or as a substantial backdrop to the story.  One of the best-known modern novelists working in this sub-genre (which, like gardening mysteries, some critics prefer to term a sub-sub-genre of the cosy sub-genre of mysteries) is Diane Mott Davidson:

    

Perhaps the best-known mystery writer who made food a major part of his mysteries, though, is Rex Stout, whose Nero Wolfe mysteries most often are classified in the PI or cosy sub-genres:

    

Stout, a prodigy in arithmetic, invented a school banking system with his brother that allowed him the leisure to move to Paris and become a full-time writer.  He published three novels before turning his attentions to the mystery genre, where eventually he would pen over three dozen short stories and almost as many novels.  Several of these have since been turned into film, TV and radio productions, and Robert Goldsborough later took up the series with the blessing of the Stout estate, producing an updated series of seven novels which were mostly well-received:

  

One of the chief attractions of culinary mysteries are the recipes that often are scattered throughout the books (Stout made it easy for his fans by publishing The Nero Wolfe Cookbook shortly before his death), and any good culinary mystery will be replete with recipes for everything from a really excellent cup of coffee to delightful candies...

  

...from Vegetable Paella to meals fit for a President:

  

I beg you not to entrust these dishes to your cook unless he is an artist. Cook them yourself, and only for an occasion that is worthy of them. They are items for an epicure, but are neither finicky nor pretentious; you and your guests will find them as satisfying to the appetite as they are pleasing to the palate. None is beyond your abilities if you have the necessary respect for the art of fine cooking - and are willing to spend the time and care which an excellent dish deserves and must have. Good appetite! --Nero Wolfe, in Too Many Cooks (1938)

Mysteries and The Private Library (Part II)

One of the more interesting sub-genres of the mystery that we have previously neglected is the so-called garden mystery--i.e., a mystery where plants are a major thematic plot element (as a location or cause of death [e.g., poison], or where the value of a plant or plants is a major plot element because of the plant's theft or disappearance).  [Some critics actually consider this a sub-sub-genre, of the well-known cosy sub-genre of mysteries, the best-known author of which is Agatha Christie.] 

One of the best-known modern novelists plowing this fertile ground (pun intended) is former newspaperwoman and organic gardener Ann Ripley:

   

Greenhouses and potting sheds are popular settings for such mysteries...

  

...and landscapers and florists often do the sleuthing in such mysteries:

  

Because these mysteries usually feature long passages of authentic gardening advice, they are particularly popular with folks for whom gardening is a popular pastime....

   

Mysteries and The Private Library (Part I)

We have examined some of the authors and sub-genres of this extremely popular topic several times over the past year or so (see, e.g., our posts of 24 May 2009, 30 June 2009 and  27 September 2009).  Over the next several days we will examine this genre in more general terms:

    

Arguably the earliest known work of fiction to incorporate the major elements of what we today recognize as a mystery (puzzles, detection. multiple plot twists) is a tale that was compiled as part of The Arabian Nights.  It concerns a locked chest that is found by a fisherman, who sells the chest to a local ruler.  The ruler, ordering the chest opened, discovers inside the body of a young woman which has been cut to pieces.  The ruler orders an advisor to solve the murder or be executed himself.  The advisor fails, but....  This tale usually is translated as The Three Apples or The Tale of the Murdered Young Woman.

As we pointed out in our post on hard-boiled detective fiction, most scholars of the genre consider Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue to be the fountainhead of modern mysteries, a case made most forcefully by Robert Lowndes in his much-cited essay, The Contributions of Edgar Allen Poe (in Nevins' The Mystery Writer's Art).  Among the many elements of the genre credited to Poe are

the brilliant, if eccentric private detective with a genius for applying pure inductive and deductive reasoning to human behavior, a baffling crime, a locked room, the friend to whom the detective tells the facts, the names of innocent suspects, the detective's observations of the crime scene, the battle of wits with the official police,the end where the detective reveals in a satisfying manner how he solved the case, the police asking the detective for help and the detective solving the case from his armchair by reading newspaper accounts and official data....

Folks interested in exploring the origins and evolution of the genre will want to add to their shelves not only the Nevins' title noted above, but also one or more of the following titles:

      

A handy guide or two to major genre characters and their sidekicks might also prove to be helpful:

    

If one wants to trace the geographic- and/or gender-specific evolution of the genre. titles are available to help one out in this respect as well:

   

A number of other titles that trace the development of the genre and its many sub-genres also are available, and a handy guide to such titles will be found here...

Tomorrow, a look at some mystery sub-genres that we've neglected in previous posts....

PoopLit and The Private Library

Among the many things about which Americans are more prudish than other inhabitants of our fair planet (sex being the best known) are any number of naturally occurring bodily functions: flatulence, from whatever orifice; expectoration, from whatever source; and virtually any function of the alimentary variety (going out, not coming in).

Children, of course, are exempted from such prudishness, and it is their fascination with the brave new world of their own tiny bodies that has produced an exceptional body of literature (no pun intended) that would make for a fascinating private library if only their parents could get past their squeamishness about collecting it (again, no pun intended):

    

Alas, most adults only seem to develop an interest in such books when a child becomes constipated due to fear of using the bathroom:

    

This sometimes leads to the purchase of additional books on the subject, some of these books to assuage the child's concerns, others to assuage the concerns of the parent:

    

Once in a great while, though, a particularly insightful parent will realize that his or her child's concern and fascination with this most natural of all bodily functions represents a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to connect the child's world to what Lovelock termed Gaia, the complex biological system which (he argues) sustains us all:

   

     

Of course, once a collector starts down this path, similar outre subjects may well present themselves....

          

Disposing of Your Private Library

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool,
  Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
    At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
      Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve,
        In all the magnanimity of thought;
          Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same.
            And why? because he thinks himself immortal,
              All men think all men mortal but themselves--Edward Young, Night Thoughts

There comes a time when all of us will have to let go of the books we have so carefully and lovingly accumulated over the course of our lives.  How best to do that very much depends on one's own unique circumstances.

If one's books are an accumulation rather than a collection (see our post of 6 April 2009), one will need to sort through what might be worth selling in the current marketplace, and then perhaps consider giving away the rest to deserving recipients.  The more wear and tear that characterizes your accumulation, the less likely it is that individual titles will sell for much money, unless of course there are particular titles that are both important and scarce in any condition:

Your local independent bookseller may be interested in making you an offer on those titles you deem of sufficient importance and condition to warrant selling.  If you are uncertain about which books are worthy of this, many booksellers will be happy to help you make that determination in exchange for the right of first refusal (or some similar consideration) should you indeed decide to sell.

If an independent bookseller is not available in your area, you have numerous other options.  Assuming you have accurately graded the books you wish to sell, there are a number of online venues where such books may be sold.  You also can easily dispose of your books via a yard sale, garage sale or the like.

Those books which you do not choose to sell may be given away to such recipients as you choose--e.g., friends, family, deserving charities (local libraries, hospitals, nursing homes).  Finally, you could choose to give your books new lives further afield by participating in a read and release program like Book Crossing:

What applies to accumulators applies just as well to collectors, though collectors have a number of additional options available to them as well.  Since condition is a prime concern for most collectors, the titles on a collector's shelves are much more likely to warrant disposal via sales rather than donations (exceptions to be noted shortly). 

If one's collection is sufficiently important, an auction may well be the most remunerative way to dispose of one's collection:

Alternatively, major libraries may be interested in making an offer on your collection.  You might contact such libraries on your own, but if you want to sell your collection to them rather than donate your collection, the services of a professional independent bookseller often is quite helpful, especially if the bookseller is a specialist in the field you've collected. Such a bookseller can help you obtain an independent appraisal of your collection's value in the current marketplace, which not only can prove helpful in negotiations to sell your collection but also will be helpful when dealing with the IRS or other tax authorities after your collection has been disposed of (to avoid a conflict of interest, most professional booksellers recuse themselves from buying collections on which they have made an appraisal).

If you choose to donate rather than sell your collection to a major library, the above remarks still apply, especially as respects independent appraisals.  Most libraries will reject donations that come with too many "strings attached": carefully consider before you donate how much control you want to exert over your collection after you're gone.  Some collectors arrange, as part of their donation, to serve as curator of their collection for a specified period of time, often with an eye toward adding to their donation as time and financial resources permit.  If nothing else, your generosity likely will be noted on each and every title in your beloved collection for generations to come....

Ex-Library Books and The Private Library

We have stressed repeatedly on this blog the importance of contrarian book collecting (see, e.g., our post of 25 April 2009) and there is nothing that is more contrarian to most book collectors' philosophy of book collecting than collecting ex-library books.  Most such books have seen considerable wear and tear.  Most also are so disfigured by library stamps, shelfmarks and other signs of former ownership as to make the aesthetic appeal of such books virtually  nil.  And yet...

Such books sometimes represent the only available copy of an important work likely to ever be available in the marketplace (as no copies are known to exist in private hands).  Such books sometimes are the only copies available in the marketplace that you, lacking deep pockets, will ever be able to afford (assuming the book has never been, nor ever is likely to be, reprinted).  And the library marks in such books are not always ugly--in fact, if the primary mark of ownership is a discretely placed bookplate, they not infrequently are quite attractive:

Besides, your library discard might easily be cleaned up if you're very, very careful:

Regardless of what you may have learned from the Internet, fifty percent of library discards are utter trash, another forty percent are little more than reading copies and cleaned up can serve as very nice shelf copies. The other ten percent are books that are scarce in any condition and with a little bit of careful attention can be greatly improved upon. However there are a minute number of books that should not be 'fixed' by the amateur. One can easily turn a good book into scrap paper....

The above snippet is from a useful little [28 pp.] booklet by J. Godsey, Discarded Books: The Facelift for Ex-Library Books.  Published by Methuen in 2004, this title is itself rarely available in the marketplace, but you should have no difficulty purchasing Godsey's more recent title, which covers much the same ground (and much more besides):

Like so many other purchases one makes in a lifetime, the appeal of ex-library books often boils down to how badly do you want a particular title...?

Snow and The Private Library

Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes  were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind. -- William Bentley

     

It no doubt is a bit difficult, when one has spent several days digging out of a major snowstorm, to fully appreciate the fascination that snow always has held for a lot of people, a fascination that is reflected in a not inconsiderable amount of literature:

While much of this literature has been directed at adults...

  

...perhaps even more has been directed at children, who, after all, have not yet had their sense of wonder diminished by the responsibilities and cares of adulthood:

Anyone building a private library around this topic will have an embarrassment of riches from which to choose, everything from books about the ability of snow to save us from ourselves (the impact of weather on war is a collectible topic unto itself)...

...to the vast literature in which snow plays a very substantial, if sometimes secondary, role (think, for example, of arctic exploration, the topic of a future series of posts):

  

So the next time a major snowstorm drives you into your private library for several days on end, maybe it's trying to tell you something....

First Books and The Private Library

According to the ABAA Glossary, first books are the first book appearance by an author (usually refers to a book entirely by the author, not merely a first appearance of a poem or short story in an anthology). Frequently an established, well known author's first book is not widely known....

As this definition suggests, it is not always easy to track down an author's first appearance in book form.  For one thing, most authors never receive the attentions of a descriptive bibliographer, and thus not only is an author's first appearance in book form often problematical for book collectors, but so are all the things that go with it, such as the points that enable proper identification of such a work:

   

This problem is compounded when an author publishes under one or more pseudonyms.  Ariana Franklin, for example, author of the popular historical fiction series The Mistress of the Art of Death, actually is the pseudonym of British writer Diana Norman, whose first novel was published almost three decades before this popular series began (and whose first appearance in book form was almost two decades before her first novel):

  

Details like this often can be traced for modern authors whose publishers have erected a website for the author (or who have had websites put up by themselves or by their fans), although points and the like will not usually be part of whatever checklist is made available on such sites.  For those types of details, especially for authors long dead, a descriptive bibliography (such as Edward Grissom's forthcoming descriptive bibliography of the works of Ernest Hemingway or David Farmer's now three-decades-old Flannery O'Connor: A Descriptive Bibliography) usually is one's best hope:

  

Descriptive bibliographies can save you a ton of grief and frustration.  If you collect by author rather than by subject, the definitive descriptive bibliography for your favorite author(s) [if such exists] should be among the first books you buy for your shelves....

Guest Editorial: Screenplays and The Private Library

Loyal reader Linda Hedrick, to whom we are indebted for yesterday's post on Alice, returns with a Guest Editorial for all those folks who are both film buffs and book collectors....

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Film buffs who also are book collectors may have an interest in collecting screenplays and/or movie scripts.  Depending on your interests, you can own a simple copy of a script or screenplay which may not cost you much, or a copy which has an autograph or autographs of people involved in the film (from both cast and crew) which can cost thousands of dollars:

The problem with collecting these items is scarcity.  Even if your pockets are deep, the availability of a desired object comes into play.  You may never see a desired piece come to market in your lifetime, which can make this genre a difficult and frustrating one to collect.  However, the joy in adding to and building this collection would equal the trials and tribulations.

Condition doesn’t play as important a role as in collecting books.  Since scripts and screenplays are made for use they are inherently “well handled.”

The value of a piece can increase if it’s known to whom it belonged.  A copy known to have belonged to a celebrity can be worth more , and if there are handwritten notations that would make it even more valuable:

However, just like books, much depends on the number produced and their availability.

Although popular films might raise the prices of screenplays and scripts, lesser known or unproduced works can still fetch good prices because of their scarcity, or perhaps what is know of the project’s history – why it wasn’t made and who was/would have been involved.  Early drafts of a work can also be valuable, especially since there were probably a lesser amount produced.

One problem is that the number of copies may never be known, although some studios do record copies.

For help in determining the authenticity of a screenplay or script, such as paper type, original or revision, covers, etc., or for help in defining conditions, check out this site.

And if you have an interest but don’t know where to start, try this list by the Writer’s Guild of America of the 101 Greatest Screenplays.

If you are truly obsessed with a film but have very limited sums, you can buy screenplays in book form from many bookstores.  Some of these are interesting because they include deleted scenes.  Some have additional background on the making of the film.  But beware, some are just summaries of a film, and not the actual screenplay or shooting script, and some are merely transcripts....

Guest Editorial: Alice and The Private Library

Today's Guest Editorial comes to us from loyal reader Linda Hedrick, among whose many interests are all things Alice...

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"And how do you know that you're mad?"

"To begin with," the Cat said, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?" 

"I suppose so," said Alice. 

"Well then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

Friday, March 5^th, the new Tim Burton film Alice in Wonderland opened in the United States.  Not an adaptation of the original book by Lewis Carroll, the Burton story occurs after the action in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (commonly known as Alice in Wonderland) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and, What Alice Found There (shortened to Through the Looking-Glass):

  

In Burton’s story Alice returns to Wonderland to visit her friends and finds that they are all being terrorized by the Red Queen, and so she joins in their resistance. This isn’t the first time that Carroll’s books have been catalysts for fantastic stories.

Lewis Carroll is the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician at Christ Church (Cambridge), who also wrote many significant books on mathematics and mathematical logic [Ed. Note: see our post of 12 June 2009].  A lover of mental games, he invented early versions of Scrabble and Word Ladders.  His inclusion of chess in his work reveals his interest in logic, games, and math. His brilliant use of symbolism, double entendre, hidden meanings, wordplay, and witticisms shine in the Alice books, as do his poems and songs.  Martin Gardner, an authority on Lewis Carroll, looks at the puns, illusions, and puzzles within the Alice books in his Annotated Alice, and in two sequels that expanded Gardner’s annotations:

    

Carroll's personal copy of Alice sold at auction to an anonymous American buyer for $1.54 million in 1998 – the most expensive children’s book ever sold prior to J. K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard in 2007.  Carroll's dedication copy (inscribed by Dodgson to Alice Liddell) of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (a facsimile of the original manuscript version of the original title) sold for £157,250 at Sotheby's (London) in 2001.

The Alice books are considered seminal examples of the fantasy genre. To say they have been influential is a gross understatement. When it was published, with illustrations by John Tenniel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was an immediate hit with both adults and children. The entire first run immediately sold out.  Quirky, silly, and fun, it has never been out of print, and there have been hundreds of editions, as well as countless adaptations:

  

To collect all the Alice-influenced books would be a major endeavor. There was a primary wave of books which slackened after 1920, although it has never waned. Film, television, comics, anime, songs (think Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit or The Beatles I am the Walrus, for example) and several computer games are among many other Alice-influenced works. Terms from the book have entered the English language, such as “curiouser and curiouser,” “down the rabbit-hole”, and “off with her head!” to name but a few.

The first retelling of the story may have been Carroll’s own The Nursery “Alice” which was a shorter version written for younger children. There have been countless “sequels” which feature a slightly different Alice, different locations and/or adventures, and which focus on different characters or events.

To collect Alice books, one should decide where to start.  One could spend one’s entire life on it and perhaps never be done. One could start by collecting all the English language versions of them, which number in the hundreds, with more being published all the time.  Collecting foreign translations would be interesting, including Vladimir Nabakov’s 1923 Russian translation (modern reprint depicted below):

One also could collect volumes with different illustrators.  Salvador Dali illustrated a limited edition by Random House in 1969. To start with any of these strategies, besides booksellers, one can contact one or all of the many Lewis Carroll societies around the world. There also is a wealth of literary criticism of Carroll’s works as well as numerous biographies of  Carroll that one could collect.

There are many works that are clearly influenced by Carroll, such as John Crowley’s Little, Big, or the short story Mimsy were the Borogoves (1943) by Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym for C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner), which was deemed to be one of the best science fiction stories written prior to 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

To further expand one’s Alice collection significantly, one could add the many books that reference Alice, such as Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.

Lastly there are the books that feature snippets of Carroll’s writing style, such as James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake:

Alicious, twinstreams twinestraines, through alluring glass or alas in jumboland?

Wonderlawn’s lost us for ever. Alis, alas, she broke the glass! Liddell lokker through the leafery, ours is mystery of pain....

The sea, the sea...and The Private Library (Part X)

O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, and Forester's Horatio Hornblower series, both remind readers of the importance that has been attached to sea power over the centuries, an importance reinforced by Alfred Thayer Mahan's seminal work on the subject (modern reprint below left; originally published in 1890) and by the continuing popularity of histories of the world's various navies, such as N. A. M. Rodger's ongoing history of the (British) Royal Navy (below right)...

 

...as well as by the numerous accounts of naval actions, both fictional and non-fictional, that remain a popular topic of sea literature to this day:

 

A recent article by one of O'Brian's biographers (Dean King) lists a slew of other "crackerjack sea books" that most fans of sea literature will find hard to resist.  While we have covered some of these in our previous posts in this series, many of the books that King suggests are relatively unknown to modern audiences.  Richard Hughes' 1938 publication In Hazard, for example, recounts a crew encountering the mother of all storms, a relentless, blinding hurricane that behaves against science and with almost human vindictiveness, a worthy successor to Conrad's Typhoon and a worthy predecessor to a more recent title on a similar encounter by Sebastian Junger (Hughes remains best known to modern readers as author of A High Wind in Jamaica):

  

Another relatively unknown work that King brings to the attention of modern readers is Richard Maury's 1939 title The Saga of the Cimba (modern reprint below left), which Jonathan Raban, not a bad memoirist himself, called the most eloquent prose hymn ever written to the exhilaration, the beauty, and the sheer joy of being at sea:

  

There are many more such delights to be found on Dean's list, and it is highly commended to anyone seriously seeking to build a private library of sea literature.

A number of publishers are committed to sea literature, both classic and modern.  Some of the better known of these are the Naval Institute Press (which launched Tom Clancy's career), The Narrative Press, McGraw-Hill (especially their older Sailor's Classsics series), Stackpole Books, Jane's Information Group, Brassey's and--for folks who like their books illustrated--The Folio Society:

  

Hard-core fans might enjoy perusing the U.S. Navy's own Professional Reading Program Guide, and there are any number of blogs and other online resources (such as the Searchable Sea Literature database compiled by students of the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport) that also are strongly committed to sea literature.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul... and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand on me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can....

---Melville, Moby Dick

The sea, the sea...and The Private Library (Part IX)

He was the son of a German-born London doctor who specialized in sexually transmitted diseases. 

He abandoned his first wife and two small children. 

Neither of these facts was known until the last two years of his life. 

By that time, his sea fiction series--which he had begun late in life at the suggestion of C. S. Forester's own editor--had been proclaimed by Richard Snow, in a cover article for the New York Times Book Review, to be "the the best historical novels ever written."  Writing shortly after the author's death ten years ago, Michael McCarthy reminded us why:

[Patrick] O'Brian wrote naval adventure stories, broadly speaking in the CS Forester Hornblower tradition, but infinitely richer than Forester. The background is delineated with an erudition at once staggering in its sweep yet not in the least intrusive: the reader slips easily into another age and hears its intimate small sounds as well as its distinctive speech, grows accustomed to its manners, its culture and its codes of behaviour, even eats its dinners - the Strasbourg pie and the lobscouse, the spotted dog, the figgy-dowdy, the drowned baby.

Through it all winds the long personal saga of Aubrey and Maturin. It is a profound examination both of the depths and the limits of friendship, moving, exciting and hilarious by turns, and of the values they share, which permeate the books and which form one of O'Brian's attractions to his readers, who tend to be neither young nor politically radical. They are immutable virtues, but now very old-fashioned: courage, honour, loyalty, self-discipline, respect for authority, chivalry.

Twenty novels comprised the Aubrey-Maturin series as O'Brian left it at his death.  An unfinished novel, The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey, was published in 2004:

In the decade since O'Brian's death, an entire industry has arisen around the author and his most famous fictional creations.  Some of these, such as the recent biographies depicted below, remind us that O'Brian was a distinguished translator and biographer long before he sat down to pen the Aubrey-Maturin series:

  

Other books help readers navigate the complexities of the series itself:

  

Because food plays such a prominent role in the series (no hardtack for O'Brian's heroes!),  there are even books about the series' gastronomy:

But O'Brian's series, great as it is, represents but a fraction of the truly excellent sea literature that has been published over the past century.  We shall survey a few highlights in our final post of this series, tomorrow....

The sea, the sea...and The Private Library (Part VIII)

Some fictional characters become so real to their legions of fans that they become the subject of fictional biographies.  Fictional biographies of fictional characters (as opposed to fictional biographies of real or supposedly real characters, such as Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur or Soliman's Coco Chanel) exist for, among others, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Tarzan and Jeeves:

   

Sea fiction is not immune to this sort of thing.  One of the greatest fictional characters ever to grace sea fiction is himself the subject of a fictional biography, penned by the economist who formulated Parkinson's Law (alert readers will note that he also penned Jeeves, above):

The character Horatio Hornblower was created by C. S. Forester, an Egyptian-born British author within whose corpus this great fictional character occupies but a small part (only 11  novels and some dozen or so short stories amongst 35 novels, 2 plays, 5 biographies, 3 childrens' books...to mention only some of Forester's more important works, the best known to most general readers likely being The African Queen, upon which was based the Hepburn-Bogart movie of the same name). 

Nonetheless, so revered is Forester's character among fans of sea fiction that readers routinely forgive his character's seasickness (an admiral prone to seasickness...?!) in their admiration of Forester's often lyrical paeans to shipboard life:

It was Sunday morning. The Renown had caught the north-east trades and was plunging across the Atlantic at her best speed, with studding sails set on both sides, the roaring trades driving her along with a steady pitch and heave, her bluff bows now and then rising a smother of spray that supported momentary rainbows. The rigging was piping loud and clear, the treble and the tenor to the baritone and bass of the noises of the ship's fabric as she pitched – a symphony of the sea....

The entire Hornblower series has been reprinted many times, in a wide variety of languages, and has attracted some of the world's best illustrators (such as N.C. Wyeth, below left):

  

One senses an almost direct descent from Marryat to Forester to the author of what arguably is the greatest series of historical fiction ever penned.  That this series of historical fiction just happens to be sea fiction is merely icing on the cake....

The sea, the sea...and The Private Library (Part VII)

If Melville sits atop long-form sea fiction, the great Polish-born émigré writer Joseph Conrad -- who, like Melville, himself spent many years at sea (in the service of both the French and English merchant services) -- arguably is the touchstone against which short-form sea fiction must be judged. 

In novellas like Typhoon, The Heart of Darkness and The Shadow Line, and in short stories like An Outpost of Progress, Youth, The Secret Sharer and others, Conrad frequently used the nature in extremis setting of the sea (and similar evocative settings) to examine a wide range of concepts, not least of which were fear, courage, honor and duty:

  

Not a few scholars consider Conrad to have been every bit Melville's equal at long-form fiction as well, a talent readily seen in novels like Lord Jim (in which a ship's first mate has to face up to his own cowardice) and The Secret Agent (an early instance of the spy novel). 

Conrad's predilection for pitting many of his characters against the sea probably is best explained by a remark he penned in his book of essays The Mirror of the Sea: [t]he sea — this truth must be confessed — has no generosity. No display of manly qualities — courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness — has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power:

    

Neither Conrad nor Melville wrote in a vacuum.  A wide range of sea literature was produced before, during and after their respective heydays.  Masterful non-fiction accounts of shipboard service, for example, were produced by the likes of Commodore David Porter (Journal of a Cruise, 1815) and Arthur Sinclair (Two Years on the Alabama, 1895), modern reprints of which are depicted below:

  

Great voyages were undertaken and reported (some of which were solo):

 

And some of the world's greatest masters of fiction set aside their usual subject matter to pen worthy sea sagas of their own:

  

  

  

   

And yet...

It would be as books-in-series that sea fiction would achieve perhaps its greatest popularity....

The sea, the sea...and The Private Library (Part VI)

Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was  ...  not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew....

Arguably the greatest work of sea fiction ever written (although first published in expurgated form to avoid offending "delicate political and moral sensibilities"), Moby Dick was largely unacclaimed in Herman Melville's own lifetime, and because most modern readers are introduced to this masterwork of sea fiction in high school or college, the sheer joy of reading it too frequently falls victim to remorseless over-analysis. 

Notwihstanding its many complexities, virtually half the novel is devoted to detailed descriptions of New England whaling practices, a subject about which Melville had considerable expertise, having spent some six years at sea himself, including service not only aboard whalers and merchant ships, but also as an ordinary seaman on a Navy frigate.  (Melville described these experiences in several books which preceded Moby Dick--Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket--though he had to publish all three as novels because he could not convince publishers of their veracity.  So vivid were Melville's descriptions of shipboard life in White-Jacket that the novel is said to have influenced Congress to ban flogging.)

Unpopular until the early decades of the 20th century, Melville's magnum opus has since been repeatedly hailed as one of the greatest novels ever written and, given its numerous philosophical and psychological complexities, often is considered to be the first modern novel.  It has been well-served by publishers, attracting some of the greatest book illustrators and publishers of the past century.  (The images below are from the Arion Press edition illustrated by renowned engraver Barry Moser, which is considered one of the finest fine press productions of the past century:)

  

Folks who have trouble "getting their head around" the immensity that is Moby Dick often have more success with Melville's masterful novella, Billy Budd, a book left unfinished at Melville's death and not published until a quarter-century later.  Poorly served by its initial publication (due to poor transcriptions and misinterpretations of Melville's notes), themes like man vs. nature and revenge are replaced by one of innocence destroyed in the service of discipline:

  

Melville was himself a voracious reader and annotator, and several of the works that influenced his own fiction are occasionally available in the marketplace.  One of the most notable of these is the tale of the whaler Essex as recounted by one of its survivors in 1821, which is available in both a modern reprint and a modern "fleshing out" of the story:

   

Tomorrow, forced retirement as ships move from sail to steam gives rise to another master of sea fiction....