Collecting Fine Press Books for The Private Library (Part I)

Our most recent posts have all been variations on a few basic themes:

1. Collect what you like
2. If others disagree with your taste, so much the better--less demand usually means you will have to shell out less money for the books you want
3. If few other people are collecting the books in which you're interested, yours may one day be the premier collection in an area to which scholarly interest has suddenly awakened
4. if you buy the finest possible copies you can find, and store them properly, your books will certainly attract far more eventual scholarly and marketplace attention than would be the case if they're in shabby condition

Our most recent posts have used the lens of specific types of collecting to examine the above themes:

• Romance fiction, the most read genre in the United States, also represents the type of book collecting most critics uniformly dismiss as "unworthy" of one's attention
• Numismatic book collecting, though it has its diehard proponents, probably would be dismissed by most folks as too "obscure" to warrant one's attention in building a private library
• fine press books, the subject of our next few posts, probably would be dismissed by most folks as "too expensive" a foundation for a private library

Building a private library of fine press books certainly could cost you a lot of money, if your aim were only to collect the highpoints:

The Kelmscott Chaucer, for example, likely would set you back close to six figures....

The Doves Press Bible, on the other hand, could probably be yours (all five volumes!) for less than the price of a new subcompact from Toyota or Honda.....

The Cranach Press Hamlet probably would set you back about the same amount of money as the above Bible....

But before you run away screaming that "the naysayers were right, this is way too expensive," consider this: if you don't collect the highpoints, you can build a very nice private library of fine press books using the very same sources that we spent so many of our early posts examining: i.e., garage sales, yard sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, clearance sales, even--believe it or not--bigbox retailers like Target.  We'll see how in our next post....