The Private Library

Biographies and The Private Library (Part IV)

Folks who are trying to build a private library as inexpensively as possible will be pleased to learn that individual biographies are one of the genres most frequently encountered at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like.  And when not so encountered, most are published in inexpensive paperback, as well as more expensive hardback, editions.

Not only that, but more than a few fellow citizens have been the subject of multiple individual biographies, so that one often has a wide variety of biographies about a particular person from which to choose.  In the USA, for example, biographies about Abraham Lincoln are almost an industry into itself, as is the case with other major figures like Shakespeare.  And virtually any major political figure, scientist, artist or adventurer is likely to have had at least one individual biography penned about him- or herself:

      

There is, in fact, such an embarrassment of riches available in this genre that folks building a private library often have a difficult time deciding what should or should not be added to their shelves.  Thus it is that many of them wind up collecting very specific types of individual biography: political biography, for example, or biographies about early pioneers in various fields of endeavor, or biographies about distinguished (or infamous) family members and so forth:

      

Those who have more money than time often turn to various lists of award-winning biographies to help them in their selection process.  Arguably the most famous of these are the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Prize for Biography:

      

Pulitzer Prize (1976)                                                               Whitbread Prize (1976)

Other notable prizes of this sort include the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize (Canada), the National Biography Award (Australia) and the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography....

Biographies and The Private Library (Part III)

As the world's population has grown over the centuries, and as biography has matured as a genre, it has become more and more difficult to publish biographies about the many thousands, often tens or hundreds of thousands, of people who may have significantly impacted the direction and development of particular fields of human endeavor (e.g., politics, the arts, science, etc.).

Certainly there are so very many deserving subjects that an individual biography of each and every one is unlikely ever to be forthcoming. 

To partially rectify this problem there have been, over the past century or so, several attempts to publish "comprehensive" national biographies, giving every person thought to have contributed to a particular nation's "advancement" at least brief recognition.  Arguably the most famous of these projects are the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Great Britain) and the American National Biography, both of which can be found in most major libraries and on the shelves of more than a few advanced book collectors:

      

As might be expected, anyone not wanting to purchase the several dozen print volumes that constitute these two projects can instead subscribe (for a fee) to an online version of either.

Many other online national biographies, though, can be accessed for free.  You will find links for several of these under Selected Bibliographic Resources in this blog's left-hand column.

One of the major criticisms of these types of national biographies is that they often exclude people who traditionally have not exercised much power: in the USA, such groups include women, African Americans and Hispanics.  Accordingly, national biographies focused on each of these groups have been published in the past several decades.  Examples include the National Women's History Project, African American National Biography, and Hispanic American Biographies:

 

Similar group biographies also have been published for specific types of subjects (e.g., scientists). particular time periods (e.g., Middle Ages) and so on:

 

Tomorrow, we look at a few of the folks who have managed to warrant an individual biography, often many times over....

Biographies and The Private Library (Part II)

As a genre, biography has produced some of the most famous books ever written.

In the Western world these include classical group biographies like Plutarch's Parallel Lives, Suetonius' Lives of the Twelve Caesars and Nepos' Lives of Eminent Commanders:

    
Plutarch, Parallel Lives (1470)                                 Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars (1540)

As biography developed into a more nuanced genre during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, one encounters well-known group biographies such as Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times (better known as Lives of the Artists), Foxe's Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church (better known today as The Book of Martyrs) and Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England:

      

Vasari, Lives of the Artists (1568)                           Foxe, Book of Martyrs (1570)

The great age of individual biographies began in the late 18th century, and there is one biography from that period that stands head and shoulders above all others: James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson.

Boswell, the 9th Laird of Auchinleck, was a Scottish lawyer and diarist.  He first met Samuel Johnson, author of Dictionary of the English Language, on 16 May 1763.  Over the next several decades, Boswell penned numerous journals recalling his conversations with Johnson, upon which his biography of Johnson (who died in 1784) ultimately would be based.

Because Boswell did not meet Johnson until Johnson was already 53 years old, Boswell's biography of the man is not chronologically balanced, and since the biography only describes some 250 days when the men actually could have been together in each other's presence, much of the biography is based upon the recollections of others as well as of Johnson himself.  For these and other reasons, many modern critics do not look kindly upon Boswell's efforts.

These caveats notwithstanding, Johnson's immense stature as lexicographer, essayist, lierary critic, poet, editor (and the second-most-quoted author in the English language after Shakespeare) has insured that Boswell's magnum opus has remained in print pretty much continuously since its original publication in 1791:

Tomorrow, we will look at some modern efforts to "include the excluded" in group biographies.... 

 

Biographies and The Private Library (Part I)

One almost never encounters a private library that does not contain on its shelves one or more biographies.

As a genre, the biography dates back to at least the 5th century BCE, although at that time the genre was known as lives (such as Xenophon's Life of Agesilaus).  As the genre developed over the centuries, the hagiography so characteristic of the earliest biographies became more nuanced, as authors sought to give a more detailed and critical view of their subject.  With the advent of disciplines such as psychology and sociology, additional tools were brought to bear upon the critical examination of the lives of others.  In our modern world, biographers frequently focus on the warts in their subject's lives, often to the exclusion of personality traits that offset such negatives:

    

Folks building a private library that is focused on the work of one or more authors usually have on their shelves a number of biographies about such author(s), in addition to the author's own works, criticism of such works and so forth.  This helps the collector better understand the context within which an author developed and published particular titles, the forces in the author's own life that may have driven him or her to pen the title in question, and so on.

But other collectors simply are interested in learning more about a particular individual or individuals.  Perhaps because that individual was a great political leader.  Or was a well-known scientist.  Or was an inventor whose invention(s) may have changed the course of history.  Or was a distinguished member of one's own family.

Over the next several days we will examine this genre in a bit more detail.  We will begin by looking at some classical biographies of centuries past....

Histories of the Book and The Private Library

It is entirely possible to build a private library by doing nothing more than putting books on a bookshelf. 

Most collectors, however, do not stop there.  Many of them are interested in how it was that a particular title or titles came to be.  How did an author come to write this or that book?  How did a particular title or titles come to be published?  How and to whom was a particular book or books distributed?  How was a particular title or titles received by the reading public?

Some of these questions can be answered by a good descriptive bibliography.  If, for example, you collect books about the California gold rush, a book like Gary Kurutz's definitive The California Gold Rush: A Descriptive Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets Covering the Years 1848-1853 can answer many of the above questions and more besides.

For most collectors, though, descriptive bibliographies only go so far: such bibliographies often offer only a narrow view of the context within which a particular title or titles came into being.  For the broader view, a good history of the book--one that is focused on authorship, publishing and reading within and without broad but specific geopolitical boundaries--often proves to be more useful.

Fortunately, a number of very good national histories of the book have been, and are being, produced even as I type this.  A History of the Book In Canada, for example, already has been completed.  The three volumes constituting the series were published in both English and French:

       

Similar series are being produced for the USA, Australia, Great Britain, Ireland and Scotland.   A History of the Book in America ultimately will comprise five volumes, of which volumes one, three and four already have been published:

    

A History of the Book in Australia is ultimately to consist of three volumes, two of which have been published to date:

     

The Cambridge History of the Book In Britain is the largest of these projects, and eventually is to comprise seven volumes.  Volumes two, three, four and six already have been published:

    

The Oxford History of the Irish Book ultimately will consist of five volumes, but only volume three has been published to date:

 

The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland eventually will comprise four volumes, of which volumes three and four already have been published:

      

There may be other such projects underway of which we are not aware.  If so, we would appreciate it if our readers would bring any such additional projects to our attention....

Doublethink and The Private Library

Private libraries are subversive.

The more dispersed knowledge becomes, the harder it is for those in power, or those who want to be in power, to stamp out knowledge with which they disagree or to which they do not want the general public to become privy. 

It is for this reason that many governments, past and present, frown on private libraries, make every effort to discourage the formation of such libraries, and make every effort to track down and destroy any such libraries of which they become aware.

But governments also have other ways of controlling knowledge.  Oftentimes they simply refuse to disseminate knowledge about matters of which they are aware.  They stamp such knowledge Top Secret, or use some similar classificatory scheme to deny knowledge to their citizenry.  They throw all kinds of bureaucratic roadblocks in the paths of access even to information that is not so classified, a good example in the USA being the Freedom of Information Act and its attendant obfuscatory procedures.

Even for items that are not classified at all, it is possible for governments to make knowledge all but unobtainable by means apparently benign.  One recent example of this particularly invidious method of  shutting out the public is to claim budget cutbacks and propose digitization as a solution.  We refer to the National Archives of Britain, and its proposal to bury original documents relating to British history in salt mines, making only digital copies available to scholars and the public:

Actually, this proposal is already well advanced, as roughly one-third of these original documents of British history already have been buried.  And the National Archives at Kew has publicly admitted that only a small portion of such documents can possibly be digitized.  Regrettably, due to layoffs of many of the Archives' most senior staff (the people most qualified to provide guidance to such materials), what is made available to scholars and the public rests now with digitization technicians who have neither the training nor the historical understanding to properly evaluate the importance of these original documents for future generations.

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'....

Dampstaining, Dings and The Private Library

As a prelude to some future posts we will be doing about tooled leather bookbinding, we want to continue our examination of some of the ills to which book coverings are prone.

Generally speaking, the covers of books are much more prone to accidental damage than textblocks (pages).  This usually is the result of poor handling and/or poor environmental storage conditions.   Any of the problems depicted below (with the help of ILAB's excellent glossary) by definition take a book out of the category of Fine, reducing it to a lesser grade, the exact grade (Near Fine, Very Good+, Very Good, etc.) depending on the nature and severity of the damage.  Such damage also reduces the value that the marketplace is likely to put on one's book.

One of the problems to which book coverings are subject is dampstaining, which is the result of a book cover being subject to prolonged exposure to a liquid such as water (or, in our modern world, coffee, tea, soda, etc.):

 

Depending on the amount of liquid, the length of time of the exposure, and storage conditions, dampstaining may or may not penetrate to the textblock.  (It's also possible to have water damage to the textblock without concomitant damage to the book covering, especially if the book has been recased.)

Another frequently encountered type of accidental damage, almost always caused by rough handling and/or storage, is the ding:

If one's book is a paperback, one may encounter dog-earing, which is where the top or bottom cover of the paperback has been turned down (accidentally or otherwise).  This problem, though, is more often associated with a book's pages:

 

A problem often associated with rough removal and replacement of a book on bookshelves is fraying, which occurs when the threads or fibers of a cloth cover are damaged by excessive rubbing against a harder material like wood:

 

All of these problems can be greatly diminished simply by exercising greater care when handling and storing the titles in one's private library....

The Greatest Novel Ever Written and The Private Library

One of the best ways to start an argument among book collectors is to hold forth on the topic of the greatest novel ever written.

First of all, there is the matter of what, exactly, constitutes a novel.  Once that issue has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction (not!), there's the small matter of which of the millions of qualifying titles published over the past several centuries, in virtually all known languages, makes one's short list (100 titles, one thousand titles...?).

What about editions?  Is one edition of a particular title better than another edition? 

What about translations of titles that were not published (originally) in one's native language(s)?  Is one translation of a particular title better than another?

One easily can get so wrapped up in distinctions that selecting the greatest quickly becomes an exercise both frustrating and pointless.

But if you're game, so are others.  Nick Martino, a bookseller for over 30 years who "read[s] novels like some people eat and breathe," votes for...

 

...the multi-volume, one million words+, novel formerly known as Remembrance of Things Past.

Can you do better...?

Comments, ReTweets and The Private Library

We have made some changes to The Private Library to better enable our readers to share posts and comments with friends and others in their respective social networks.

To begin with, we have brought recent comments to the fore by placing them in the top-left column.  Just click on the comment of your choice to read it, reply to it, and so forth.

As always, you can continue to share our most recent posts by clicking on the green & white ShareThis button at the bottom of each post.  This enables you to cross-post on a wide variety of social networks: FaceBook, MySpace, FriendFeed, LinkedIn and so on.

You also can now retweet our most recent post by clicking on the blue & white retweet button at the top of the right-hand column.  If  you are not already logged into Twitter, it will take you to the login page for your account.  (This application is still in beta, and does not yet work so you can retweet any post on The Private Library.  We hope to see this functionality in the near future.)

Please drop us a line and let us know if you find these changes beneficial.  Also, should you have suggestions about other ways the site can be improved, we'd love to hear from you....

"Fysshynge" and The Private Library (Part III)

Modern-day books about angling tend to have something of an elegiac quality to them--wistfulness for a more innocent past, where the solitary fisherperson could enjoy the peace and quiet of an ice-cold stream, match wits with a few wily denizens of the waters, maybe catch a couple for his or her daily meal, and leave behind nothing but footprints:

 

The pace of life in the modern industrialized nations, rampant pollution of rivers and streams, and rapidly diminishing stocks of fish species worldwide due to almost continuous overfishing by great mechanized fleets, makes the above sort of bucolic memory less and less realistic:

Which is why many private libraries about fish and fishing increasingly include a number of titles that amount to a "call to arms:"

   

It is tempting, perhaps, to attribute the above sorts of titles to "tree huggers" or their equivalent ilk in the piscatorial world, but a review of many such titles published over the last several decades suggests that this is not, in fact, the case. 

Most such titles have been penned either by scientists concerned with the deleterious effects of overfishing on the ability of the world's ever-increasing population to feed itself without destroying the planet in the process, or by fisherpeople who see such effects at their favorite fishing holes and seek to preserve what is left of an enjoyable pastime:

      

Because roughly 16% of the U.S. population 16 years old and older spends an average of 16 days a year pursuing this most ancient of pastimes, and because fishing remains key to the very survival of many indigenous populations around the world, one suspects that anyone building a private library devoted to this subject will need to consider to what extent such library should focus on the tensions outlined above....
 

"Fysshynge" and The Private Library (Part II)

Books about fish, and fishing, tend to be focused on one of three broad areas (though exceptions are not uncommon):

• description and classification (as exemplified by the early illustrated natural history books we noted in yesterday's post, and as published even to this day in titles like Nelson's Fishes of the World)
• recreational or sport fishing, also known as angling
• traditional fishing, which is concerned with the survival value (for humans) of fish as a food source

Depictions of angling appear in Egypt as early as 2000 BCE.  It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that one of the earliest printed books, The Boke of St. Alban, should include a Treatyse of Fysshynge Wyth an Angle in its second edition of 1496.  (Of the dozen artificial lures described therein, six still are in use today.)

Angling, and the earliest books published about angling, were written by and/or for nobility--everyone else was too busy fishing for survival.  Because fishing is treated in such books as a sport, the natural focus of these books was on "where to find fish, how to approach them, and what sort of bait to use:"

      

There was, as might be expected, a rather intense and continued focus on equipment:

 

Arguably the most famous book ever published about angling is Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler.  First published in 1653, the work was added to continuously (by Walton himself) over the next quarter-century. In print almost continually since its first appearance, the book is a great favorite of illustrators:

      

Whereas early angling  books like The Compleat Angler contained not only technical information (e.g., lures & similar tackle) but also paeans to fishing itself, modern angling books tend to be either about one or the other, but not about both:

       

In many respects this division reflects the significant changes in the natural world that have taken place over the past several centuries, and how humankind has both instigated and responded to such changes.  Time for recreational pursuits, for example, is not something that many folks in the modern industrialized nations have in abundance (or so we think); rivers and seas are more polluted than ever; fish species are disappearing worldwide.

The last major category of books about fish and fishing address all of these issues and more, for they are concerned with the survival value of fishes as food.  This is a matter we will examine in more detail in tomorrow's post....

"Fysshynge" and The Private Library (Part I)

We noted in a previous post that book thieves often do not steal entire books, but prefer instead to steal parts of a book.  Of especial interest to book thieves are illustrations, especially illustrations from early natural history books, which often were hand-colored.

Pride of place among these gloriously illustrated tomes probably goes to the magnificent herbals that were printed from the early 16th-17th centuries, and their successors, the flora, published during the 18th-19th centuries:

      

Just as magnificent, hand-colored titles were published about the plant kingdom, so were similar books published about the animal kingdom, some of the better known being Audubon's double-elephant folio The Birds of America and the titles that were published to accompany accounts of the great voyages of exploration, such as The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Erebus....:

     

Among many other titles published about the animal world were titles devoted to the subject of our next few posts, the fishes.

While the gorgeous, illustrated, often hand-colored titles devoted to the description and classification of various fishes usually command the really big bucks, other books about the piscine world also are favored by collectors seeking to build a private library, most especially books about fishing.

The first known English-language title about fishing,(The Boke of St. Albans..., first published in 1486 but not including a treatise on fishing until the second edition of 1496) is not collectible, as only six complete copies are believed to exist and all are housed in major institutional collections.  This book, known more completely as The Treatyses perteynynge to hawkynge & huntynge with other dyvers playsaunt maters belongynge unto noblese: and also a right noble treatise Cot armours, as in this present boke it may appear, holds several additional distinctions: it is the first known English-language book written by a woman (Dame Juliana Berners); it represents the first use of color printing in England; it is the first printed English-language book of veterinary interest; and it is the first printed English-language book about country sports:

 

But it is not necessarily the best known title about fishing, a matter which we will examine in more detail in tomorrow's post....

Fore-Edge Painting and The Private Library

One of the more interesting, if pricier, themes upon which to build a private library is fore-edge painting:

 

The technique, which has been known since at least the 10th century CE, is described in Etherington & Roberts' Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books as follows:

A scene painted on the fore edge of a book, either with the edge solid so that the resultant painting is visible with the book closed, or, in the more accepted use of the term, with the edge fanned out so that the painting is not visible with the book closed. When the painting is done with the leaves fanned out, the edge is generally also gilded or marbled in the usual manner, so that the closed book shows no trace whatsoever of the painting. A double fore-edge painting is one with two paintings, which can be viewed independently by fanning the leaves first one way and then the other. A triple fore-edge painting has a visible scene in addition, in which case the edge is not gilded or marbled:

    

Double fore-edge painting

While the first known "disappearing" fore-edge painting dates from 1649, and while the art reached its peak in England in the latter half of the 17th century, the majority of the surviving examples of this art form on books dates to the 19th century.  Because the actual supply of contemporary examples of fore-edge painting frequently has been insufficient to meet collector demand, it is not uncommon to find early books that received their fore-edge painting(s) many centuries after the book was in fact originally published.

Perhaps the best-known modern proponent of fore-edge painting is the British artist Martin Frost, whose excellent website contains many examples, including a number of brief but informative videos....

Book Thefts and The Private Library

Advanced book collectors occasionally find that the most recent object of their desire, a book for which they paid good money in good faith, is stolen property:

Depending on the laws of the locale where the theft occurred, the collector may or may not have to return the book to its rightful owner, and the collector may or may not be compensated for his or her loss (often by sticking the bookseller with the loss).

More often than not, the theft was not from another private collector, but from an institution such as an academic or major public library.  Because such thefts generally are under-reported by such institutions (for fear of embarrassment, as well as the fact that such thefts are not likely to endear the institution to potential donors), and because laws regarding book theft usually are pitifully non-deterrent, it often is difficult to know in advance whether or not one's most recent purchase may be problematical.

As shameful as book theft is to most serious collectors, what is far more shameful is that so many book thieves do not steal an entire book, but only the part(s) of a book that they need to improve their collection (a map, a title page, etc.).  It is these types of book thefts that most often percolate up through the global miasma of infotainment and into the consciousness of the general public.

There are ways, though, that collectors can protect themselves.  The first is to exercise a little common sense.  Just as no one is likely to sell you a real Rolex for $10, so it is that the real owner of a First Edition, First Printing of The Great Gatsby is unlikely to sell that to you for $10.

Second, buy from booksellers with well-established reputations who belong to organizations with ethical codes of conduct that protect the book collector should a purchase "go bad" (for whatever reason).  See the links in the left-hand column of this blog for some of the more notable such organizations (ABAA, ILAB, IOBA, etc.)

Third, keep an out eye for publicity about stolen items that are issued by organizations such as the Museum Security Network (see the link in the right-hand column of this blog under Bookish BlogRoll).

Fourth, make sure your own, private library is well protected against theft.  If your collection is worth the investment, institutional-grade systems can be installed to protect your library.  You also may want to consult the American Library Association's Guidelines for the Security of Rare Books, Manuscripts and Other Special Collections for additional ideas should the value of your private library warrant such measures.

At a minimum, you should consider keeping a photographic record of your library.  And make sure that it is well-insured.  Most homeowner insurance policies are inadequate for this purpose:  consider adding a rider to such policy, or take out a policy specifically designed for this risk.

(Curses inserted into one's books generally are ineffective, witness this supposedly apocryphal, but since disproved, medieval book curse):

For him that Stealeth a Book from this Library,
Let it change into a Serpent in his hand & rend him.
Let him be struck with Palsy, & all his Members blasted.
Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy,
Let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution.
Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not,
When at last he goeth to his final Punishment,
Let the flames of hell consume him for ever & aye....

Overlooked Resources and The Private Library

While we are flattered that a few of you not only think highly enough of our daily blathering to read our every daily post, but also to occasionally respond to same with a comment, such posts are not the primary focus of this blog.

The primary focus of this blog are the hundreds of online resources that you will find listed in the columns to either side of our daily ramblings:

  

We have spent many, many hours tracking down and evaluating these resources, because the original impetus for this blog was our continuing frustration at not being able to find all these resources gathered together in one place on the Internet.  Now they are...even though our task has only just begun, and the process of tracking down and evaluating additional resources is ongoing.

All of which is our way of suggesting that one might want to occasionally browse through these resources.  If, for example, you are uncertain as to the meaning of a term we use in a daily post, there are two sets of glossaries to which you can refer (general and specialized).  If you want to know what drives others to build a private library, you will find several excellent personal accounts in the right-hand column under Passions & Perils.  If you  are interested in perhaps starting a collection of early 19th century British fiction but do not have several hundreds of dollars to spend on a printed bibliography, the online Database of British Fiction 1800-1829, found under Selected Bibliographic Resources in the left-hand column, might be a great place to start.  If you don't know where to find an independent bookseller in your area, one of the Regional U.S. Independent Booksellers Associations found in the right-hand column probably can point you in the right direction...

As of today's post, there are links to a dozen different glossaries, 81 book-related blogs, 116 organizations that are concerned with matters bibliophilic, 85 podcasts & webcasts of a bookish nature, and 82 selected bibliographic resources that can save you a ton of money.  And we add more such links as we come across them and evaluate their potential usefulness to our readers.

If you know of links that we may have overlooked, please do not hesitate to bring them to our attention....

"Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)"

We have expended much electronic ink on the proposition that one can put together a very nice private library simply by scouting out yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like.  And if one is an accumulator rather than a collector (see our many previous posts about the difference between the two), the condition of the books that one acquires at such venues is unlikely to be a matter of great concern.

Collectors, however, have one eye on posterity: they hope eventually to dispose of their private library through sale or donation. Accordingly, the condition of the books they acquire is an issue of some consequence--books in poor condition do not bring much money in the marketplace, and such books are of little scholarly value if scholars cannot use them for fear they are too fragile.

We have previously examined some of the more common ills to which books are prone, such as foxing and browning.  Today, with the help of photos from ILAB's excellent glossary, we are going to examine some of the problems associated with book coverings.  Most of these would normally be classified as minor concerns, but--as with all else in the world of collectibles--degree of damage can easily elevate such problems to the point where they become consequential.

The corners of a book covering can, with use, become bumped--i.e., the corners get worn down, or rounded, or bent somewhat out of shape:

 

This problem usually is the result of poor handling--e.g., not carefully placing a book on, or removing it from, shelves.  But it just as frequently is the result of booksellers not properly packaging books for the rough treatment books often receive in transit.  Because all components of a book's manufacture (covering material, paper, ink, etc.) degrade over time, and because many modern books are poorly manufactured to begin with, a little extra TLC never hurts.

Book covers also may exhibit chipping, which occurs when a small piece or pieces of the cover (or dustjacket) break off completely:

 

Age of the covering material is a factor here, as are poor environmental storage conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.) and rough handling.

Sometimes tears to dustjackets do not become severe enough to qualify as chipping, but are instead closed tears:

 

A more severe problem is when a cloth or leather cover becomes cracked:

 

As with most of the other problems we have outlined, age is a factor in such damage, as are poor environmental storage conditions, rough handling and the use of poor quality materials to manufacture a given book or books.

We will examine some additional ills to which book coverings are prone in a future post....

The World's Greatest Independent Booksellers and The Private Library

Here at The Private Library we love independent booksellers. (For a list of independent booksellers in your area, go to the right hand column of this blog and click on the appropriate organization under Regional U.S. Independent Booksellers Associations.)

We like 'em if they're big, and we like 'em if they're small.  We like 'em if they're musty and crusty, and we like 'em if they're clean and well-mannered.  We like 'em when you have to navigate teetering piles of books to even find their shelves, and we like 'em when you can immediately find the books in which you're interested.  We like 'em in the bad parts of town, and we like 'em in the good parts of town, and we even like 'em if they're peddling their wares from pushcarts on the quays down by the fishmongers:

    

Of course, with the advent of bookselling on the Internet, and the appearance of super-mega-colossus booksellers like Amazon, many independent booksellers have disappeared.  Many more have passed away.  In just the past few years many of the great independent booksellers of the twentieth century have shuffled off their mortal coils: H. P. Kraus, Sam Weller, Madeleine Stern, Pierre Berès....

All of this notwithstanding, independent bookselling is not dead--not even close!  Accordingly, The Private Library plans to feature the occasional post about independent booksellers that it has been our privilege and honor to have encountered over the past four+ decades.  And we hope our readers will join us.  If an independent bookseller has been a special part of your own book collecting experience, please consider sharing your experience with our readers....  

Latin American Literature and The Private Library (Part V)

There is a "lazy person's way" to collect representative selections of great Latin American literature, and that is to focus on "ready collections" of such literature that are published in English translation by Penguin Classics and similar publishers:

      

Probably the best known of these ready collections is the Library of Latin America published by Oxford University Press:

      

The problem with most such ready collections is that they only are available in trade paperback, and thus do not hold up well to serious reading unless one is extremely careful.

Of course, if one can read this great literature in its original language of composition (Spanish or Portuguese), then hardbacks are readily available from specialist booksellers like Schoenhof's Foreign Books, located on Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  (Founded in 1856, Schoenhof's is the largest foreign-language bookstore in the USA):

      

However you choose to do it, you owe it to yourself to at least consider adding a few titles representative of this great literature to your private library....

Latin American Literature and The Private Library (Part IV)

Latin American literature is so rich and so diverse that one could spend a lifetime acquainting oneself with its treasures.  Regrettably, folks interested in adding representative selections of this literature to their private library often do not have the time to delve as deeply into this literature as they might like.  This is especially true of folks trying to figure out what might or might not be available in English translation.

Sadly, Latin American literature too often shows up in English translation only when a particular title or author is deemed canonical, or when an author or title has somehow managed to establish worldwide popularity outside the English speaking nations.  Canonical examples include works such as Martín Fierro (1872, 1879, by the Argentine poet and politician José Rafael Hernández y Pueyrredón); Os Sertões (1902, by the Brazilian author and engineer Euclides da Cunha); and Yo, el Supremo (1974, by the Paraguayan novelist and short story writer Augusto Roa Bastos):

    

Canonicity often is hinted at by the types of critical reception that authors and their works receive.  This sort of "score keeping" is easily discerned in the awarding of various types of prizes, most notably the Nobel Prize for Literature; the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (after the Nobel, widely considered the most prestigious of the international literary awards); the Cervantes Prize (the most prestigious Spanish language literary award); Mexico's Alfonso Reyes International Prize; and the Camões Prize (the most prestigious Portuguese language literary award):

    

While most Noble Prize winners eventually become available in English language translations, that is not always the case with winners of some of the other prizes noted above.  With a little patience, though, one can eventually track down English language translations of works by many of these "lesser" prize winners.  And thereby acquire a much richer and much more representative sampling of this great literature....

Latin American Literature and The Private Library (Part III)

With perhaps the exception of the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, the great poets of Latin America appear to be largely unknown to readers in North America.  Even the great Nicaraguan poet Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, whose 1888 publication Azul is considered to be the founding document of Latin America's first true literary movement, modernismo, is virtually unknown to most readers in the USA and Canada:

Better known as Rubén Darío, part of this great poet's obscurity (at least as far as North American readers are concerned) may be traced to the difficulty he presents for translators.   Of course, this is a problem for poetry in any language, so much of poetry often revolving around various types of wordplay, rhyme and rhythm which cannot truly be appreciated outside the language within which it is composed.

Because French poetry, especially the work of Parnassian poets like Théophile Gautier and symbolists like Paul Verlaine were such huge influences on Dario's personal aesthetic, it is puzzling that one rarely encounters a private library that includes Dario among his more familiar influences.  (Is this because more people read French than read Spanish...?)

In any event, if Dario generally is unknown to North American readers, other notable poets of the modernismo movement are even more obscure to such readers: for example, the Uruguayan poet Julio Herrera y Reissig (1875-1910); the Cuban poet José Julián Herculano del Casal y de la Lastra (1863-1893); the Peruvian poet Manuel González Prada (who served as Director of the National Library of Peru from 1912-1918); the great female Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini (1886-1914); and so on:

      

Tomorrow, we will examine a few ways in which folks who do not read Spanish or Portuguese can most easily add representative titles of this great literature to their personal libraries....

Latin American Literature and The Private Library (Part II)

As noted in yesterday's post, most U. S. citizens appear to be sadly ignorant of the great literature of their neighbors to the south, the main English-language exposure to such literature likely being the literary style known as magical realism (a term first applied to a genre of painting in Germany in the 1920s, later appropriated by the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier for the prologue of his novel El Reino de este Mundo [The Kingdom of this World, 1949], but probably best known to most English speakers through the works of Nobel laureate Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez):

    

Alas, few norteamericanos appear to be familiar with many other major figures of Latin American literature. We are, for example, unlikely to be aware of the poetry and philosophical essays of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz de Asbaje (ca. 1648-1695) or the drama and novels of José Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi (whose novel El Periquillo Sarniento [The Mangy Parrot...., 1816-1831] is considered to be the first novel written and published in Latin America).  

We are unlikely to be familiar with Argentina's Generation of 1837, which numbered among its stalwarts the writer (and later the seventh President of Argentina) Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Albarracin, whose 1845 work Facundo is a cornerstone of that nation's literature.

We are unlikely to be aware of Colombian writer Jorge Isaacs Ferrer or his only novel, La Maria (Maria, 1867), which is a foundational work of the Spanish Romantic movement and a precursor of the criollista novels of 1920s and 30s Latin America:

      

And if we are for the most part ignorant of these canonical authors of Latin American literature. how much less familiar are we with the works of such major Latin American poets as Félix Rubén García Sarmiento.  This is a matter we shall turn our attention to in tomorrow's post....

Latin American Literature and The Private Library (Part I)

Literature in English translation constitutes only about three percent of all books published in the United States in any given year.  (Actually, this figure somewhat overstates the case, since it includes all books published in translation--the amount of literary fiction and poetry published in English translation actually is less than one percent.)  Since most Americans are monolingual, this means that great swaths of world literature are virtually unknown to U.S. citizens, perhaps the most egregious case in point being the literature penned by our neighbors to the south: Mexico, Central America and South America.

While some of the major figures of Latin American Literature have been translated into English (think Borges, Márquez, Neruda and the like), the great majority have never been translated into English, and even those that have been translated into English remain virtually unknown to their northern neighbors:

      

We hope to do our small part to correct this shameful oversight by examining, over the next few days, several important but lesser known giants of Latin American literature.  Any of these would make an excellent foundation upon which to build a private library, especially if one is willing to collect books published in the original language (Spanish or Portuguese). 

Even if one only is interested in collecting such works in English translation, most of these authors and poets will have had at least one or two works translated into English, so one can at least make a start with this great literature....

Watergate and The Private Library

For most baby boomers--that huge post-World War II population burst that struck the United States between 1946 and 1964--there have been certain historical events that so impacted their young lives that almost any member of that generation can tell you where they were and what they were doing during such moments: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy; the Apollo 11 landing;  the resignation of Richard Milhous Nixon as 37th President of the United States of America:

      

Richard Nixon left office at 12 Noon (Eastern Time), 35 years ago today (9 August 1974).  And his resignation, like most such historical events, spawned an enormous amount of print.  In addition to newspaper and magazine articles, publishers rushed into print all kinds of books focused on the central cause of Nixon's resignation, the complex of events that became known to the world as Watergate:

      

Because such a vast amount has been published about this event, folks building a private library focused on Richard Nixon, on Watergate, or on politics in general, often have to make some hard choices as to which books to pursue.  Nixon himself, in his bid to recreate himself as an elder statesman after his resignation, wrote over a half-dozen books, only one of which (In the Arena, 1990) made any real attempt to address the issue of Watergate.  Additionally, almost every major figure involved in the Watergate affair (as well as many of the minor figures) wrote a book about such involvement, usually in an attempt to absolve themselves of any responsibility for same:

      

Even building a mini collection focused on only the major players in Watergate could be a quite consuming exercise, given the dozens of books that were written by these folks.  A more interesting challenge, perhaps, would be to take such a mini collection to the next level, by collecting such memoirs as signed First Editions, First Printings.  Very few books meeting this latter qualifier remain available in today's marketplace....

Oxfam and The Private Library

Thrift shops run by community organizations often are a good source of inexpensive books for one's private library, especially if one is an accumulator rather than a collector.  In the United States, such shops generally do not have much of a negative impact on the sales of local independent booksellers, since such shops are widely dispersed, run by numerous different organizations, and generally not particularly well stocked in terms of books.

This, however, certainly is not the case in Great Britain, where Oxfam operates over 100 specialist bookshops that generate over U.S. $32 million per year, making Oxfam the largest retailer of second-hand books in the United Kingdom (in fact, in all of Europe).  Understandably, local UK booksellers view this situation as unacceptable, even if they otherwise are supportive of Oxfam's mission (to "fight poverty and injustice" worldwide).  The Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA), the UKs largest trade association for secondhand booksellers, notes that Oxfam's books "are donated by the public, they get very advantageous rates for their property, their volunteers - except for their managers - are unpaid, and they get charitable status as far as tax is concerned, which of course is a great help when you're running a business:"

    

For its part, Oxfam disagrees that it is responsible for the woes of local UK booksellers and stresses its mission to "to raise funds in order for it to help people who [are] living in extreme poverty."  BBC News covers both sides of this contentious issue at some length in a recent online post.

Since The Private Library has a number of UK subscribers, we would be interested in hearing of any personal experiences any of our subscribers may have had with this issue....

An Apology from The Private Library

It is fiendishly difficult to compose a top ten list of just about anything.  Think of all of the great books that you've read, all of the great movies that you've seen, all of the great meals that you've eaten, all of the great places that you've visited...then try to winnow those favorites down to just ten.  It's not easy!  That's why, when our friends at Blogs.com approached us about putting together a list of our ten favorite book blogs, we were more than a little disconcerted.

We can put forward very good reasons why just about every blog in our Bookish BlogRoll (see the right hand column of this blog) should be on such a list.  Unfortunately, our marching orders were clear: no more than ten!

So, to all of those wonderful blogs that did not make the list of our Top Ten Book Blogs, we apologize.  And to our equally wonderful subscribers: we strongly encourage you to visit the other 68 blogs on our Bookish BlogRoll as well!

Before we sign off, we also would like to thank the good folks at Online School for including The Private Library in their list of 100 Best Book Blogs for History Buffs.  We are humbled and honored to be included.

Tomorrow, we look at famous denizens of private and public libraries worldwide, and the books that folks love to collect about them....

Spinal Problems and The Private Library

If one is an accumulator rather than a collector (see our posts from April 2009), one may not be particularly concerned about the condition of the spines on the books that one is buying (especially if one's purchases are being made at yard, garage and like sales).  However, if one is a collector, the condition of one's books is very important, especially if one hopes to one day see one's books find a new and caring home.

The spines of books are prone to a host of problems, most of which can be traced to poor handling and/or poor care.  Three of the most common such problems are cocked spines, crushed spines and sunned spines.

Cocked spines generally are the result of poor handling.  Since few modern books are manufactured with sewn spines (most such books are glued), any attempt to open a modern book so that it will lay flat usually results in a book whose spine looks something like this (from the ILAB glossary):

 

Fortunately, cocked spines are easily avoided with proper care: cradle glued books in your hand and don't open them much past a forty-five degree angle.  If your glued book is heavy (or if you want to open a sewn book that is fragile), you can purchase book cradles that will duplicate this action for you:

      

Crushed spines on books also are the result of poor handling.  They occur whenever one repeatedly takes books off one's library shelves by grasping books by the top of the spine:

 

The easiest way to avoid this problem is quite simple: when you want to remove a book from your shelves, push in the books on either side of the book you want to remove, then grasp your book firmly by the middle of its spine and remove it.

Sunned spines are the result of poor care.  They are caused by prolonged exposure of the spine to direct sunlight:

 

Simply encasing the book in a dustjacket, slipcase or clamshell box does not address this problem--it simply moves the problem to the spine of each of those coverings instead.  The only real solution to the problem is to keep your books out of direct sunlight....

Art and The Private Library (Part III)

Another plastic art which often is the foundation upon which a number of private libraries are built is painting.

As was the case with sculpture, even when a number of different collectors are building a private library around painting, the libraries they create often are quite different.  Because their interests in painting differ.

One collector--a teacher in an urban elementary school, let's say--is concerned about the elimination of funding for art programs in such schools nationwide.  Because of this lack of funding, her school's library has quit buying books about art--has, in fact, quit buying books about anything.  So our hypothetical teacher has begun her own private library about art, specifically painting, and is using the books from her own library to interest her students in the subject:

      

A second collector, an electrician who works on a lot of residential construction projects, likes to unwind by picking up his paintbrush and oils in his spare time.  He also is building a private library, but his library is focused primarily on educating himself about various styles and techniques of painting:

       

A third collector is fairly well-off and collects paintings of the Akita Ranga School.  His private library is focused not only on the methods and major practitioners of this school (Shozan, Naotake, etc.), but also on Japanese painting more generally:

      

Because art encompasses such a diverse range of styles, media, etc., it is impossible to collect everything that has been published about this particular topic over the centuries.  The key to creating a private library focused on art is to choose one or two mini collections and build from there....

Art and The Private Library (Part II)

It always is interesting to watch collectors who ostensibly are building the same type of private library take very different approaches to their task.  One sees this very frequently when the subject of the private library is art.

Consider, for example, marble sculpture.  One collector--a successful businesswoman, let us say--has worked hard to afford a few modern pieces of marble sculpture.  To better appreciate these pieces, she has begun a small private library that is focused upon such sculpture--some general histories of marble sculpture, for instance, along with biographies of favorite sculptors, catalogs of their major works and so forth:

      

A second collector, a modern sculptor, sculpts not only in marble but also in wood, bronze, cast iron and other media.  Like our hypothetical businesswoman, he also is building a private library, but the titles he is collecting are a bit different.  While he does have a few general histories of the media with which he works, the greater part of his private library is devoted to technical aspects of the media themselves: books, for example, about the properties of various types of marble, the properties of various types of wood, etc.  He seeks to improve his artistry by achieving a more intimate understanding of the materials he is transforming:

 

Marmi Italiani (Italian Marble Technical Guide)

A third person also is building a private library focused upon marble sculpture, but this collector curates a museum devoted to sculpture in various media.  His private library is devoted solely to biographies and catalogues raisonné of famous sculptors in this media:

      

As the above should make obvious, building a private library around a particular subject can lead to very different types of private libraries, even where the subject matter is supposedly the same.  We will explore this in more detail when we examine another plastic art in tomorrow's post....

Art and The Private Library (Part I)

One of the broadest of all subject areas around which to build a private library is art.  And if ever there was a topic for which our mini collection strategy (discussed in previous posts) was appropriate, this topic definitely is it.

Even if one were to subdivide all books about art into just two categories (a gross oversimplification), just consider a few of the mini collections that one could focus upon in building one's private library:

• History of Art (general, country-specific, media-specific, genre-specific, etc.)
• Artists (in general, country-specific, period-specific, media-specific, genre-specific, etc.)

One might, for example, first pick a style or movement--art deco, for instance; then choose a major manifestation of that style or movement--e.g., decorative arts (jewelry, textiles, architecture...)  or visual arts (drawing, painting, sculpture...); then choose books about a particular artist or artists representative of same:

      

Over the next several days we will examine this topic in greater detail.  Before we begin, however, one might note that art books generally are more expensive than other types of books due to the great number of illustrations with which they usually are graced.  This subject, more so than many others, is one where prudent purchases at inexpensive venues like yard and garage sales, friends-of-the-library sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like can save you significant amounts of money over time....