The Private Library

Bibliomania and The Private Library (Part II)

Bibliomania often is defined as "excessive love of books."  This usually is contrasted with bibliophily, which is simply "a love of books and reading."  Like much else in life, the difference is one of degree. The bibliomaniac, unlike the bibliophile, is seen as compulsive in his or her love of books, to the point that he or she often will forsake health and family (or other social relations) in pursuit of books.  But where exactly a book lover is on this continuum between "normal" and "excessive" love of books has been a contentious matter for centuries, and is likely to be so for the foreseeable future.

Richard Aungerville (better known to history as Richard de Bury), whose Philobiblon was an early paean to bibliophily (completed in manuscript in 1345, though first printed at Cologne in 1473 and not translated into English until 1598), was among the first to write about "the degree of affection that is properly due to books:"

But excess was given its due shortly thereafter, when Sebastian Brandt's Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools) was printed in 1494.  Loosely translated into English by Alexander Barclay (printed by Richard Pynson in 1509, Barclay's metrical translation was slightly preceeded by Wynkyn de Worde's 1509 printing of Henry Watson's prose translation), Brandt characterizes the excessive lover of books thusly:

 

For this is my minde, this one pleasure have I,

Of bookes to have greate plentie and apparayle.

Still I am busy bookes assembling,

For to have plenty it is a pleasaunt thing

In my conceyt, and to have them aye in hande:

But what they meane do I not understande.

But yet I have them in great reverence

And honoure, saving them from filth and ordure,

By often brushing and much diligence;

Full goodly bound in pleasaunt coverture,

Of damas, satten, or else of velvet pure:

I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost,

For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.

A similar, if slightly more modern, criticism was leveled by the 19th century Scottish physician and poet John Ferriar in his 1809 satirical poem The Bibliomania; an Epistle to Richard Heber, Esq. (Heber, a noted book collector, managed to fill eight houses in four countries with some 200,000 books):

...English books neglected and forgot

Excite his wish in many a dusty lot;

Whatever trash Midwinter gave to day,

Or Harper's rhiming sons in paper gray,

At ev'ry auction bent on fresh supplies

He cons his Catalogue with anxious eyes;

Where'er the slim Italics mark the page

Curious and rare his ardent mind engage....

Bibliomania and The Private Library (Part I)

We know your dirty little secret.  

 We know how you like to wander about for hours on end in strange, labyrinthine places, your path blocked by tottering piles of tomes, dust showering down as you creep slowly, ever so slowly, forward.... 

You know the rent is due, but you don’t care....

You could be partaking of a fine meal in a fine restaurant, but you don’t care....

You could be enjoying a movie, taking in a play, buying a new suit of clothes, but you don't care....

You are a bibliomaniac...and over the next few days, you will learn that you are not alone....

Bibliomysteries and The Private Library (Part II)

As noted in yesterday's post, bibliomysteries date back to at least the last quarter of the 19th century.   For the first few decades following that period, publication of bibliomysteries was somewhat sporadic. We noted a few of these in yesterday's post. Some other early bibliomysteries include Carolyn Wells' Murder in the Bookshop (1936), which deals with the disappearance of an expensive book; Rex Stout's Murder by the Book (1951), which deals with murders arising from an unpublished novel and features his famous fictional detective Nero Wolfe; and Poul Anderson's Murder in Black Letter (1960), which deals with the loss of a pre-Renaissance manuscript:

 

Judging by the articles published about this sub-genre in various publications, bibliomysteries began to attract a more widespread audience in the early- to mid-1970s.  It was during this period that a number of authors began to publish more than a single book featuring this theme.  Examples include Robert Barnard, Thomas Gifford and Charles Goodrum:

Interestingly enough, quite a few writers who are better known for their science fiction (e.g., Poul Anderson and Isaac Asimov) have penned quite a few bibliomysteries.  In fact, one of the most popular recent bibliomystery series is unabashedly science fiction:

Recent decades have been a sort of Golden Age for the bibliomystery, blessed by a number of great bibliomystery series (such as John Dunning's Cliff Janeway thrillers) and by increasingly literate bibliomysteries that wind up being turned into equally literate films:

A reasonably up-to-date checklist of articles and books about bibliomysteries (including some tentative bibliographies of this sub-genre) has been compiled by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston.  The school's checklist of its own collection, as well as its wishlist, make for a handy set of online bibliographies for this sub-genre....

Bibliomysteries and The Private Library (Part I)

One of the most widely collected of all fictional genres is the mystery.  It constitutes one of the least expensive of all genres to add to one's private library, since so many mysteries are readily available for purchase at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like.

One of the reasons for this widespread availability, no doubt, is that that this genre encompasses a huge range of traditionally popular sub-genres, such as hard-boiled detective fiction (discussed in our posts of 30 June-3 July 2009), police procedurals and cozies (exemplified by the fiction of Agatha Christie, whom we profiled in our posts of 24-26 May 2009).

The sub-genre that most seems to resonate with folks building a private library, though, is the bibliomystery.  Bibliomysteries are defined as

mysteries which deal in some significant way with books and the world associated with books. A bibliomystery may deal with the theft of a rare book, the murder of a bookdealer, or underhanded dealings inside a publishing firm. The key is that the connection to the world of books not be merely tangential. So, a mystery set on a college campus featuring a professor-detective who occasionally wrote wouldn't generally be considered a bibliomystery unless the action of the book somehow centered directly around a book, manuscript, or some other book-related theme.

The bibliomystery is not a recent invention.  Fredric Perkins, for example, penned Scrope: or the Lost Library back in 1874.  Believed to be the first bibliomystery published in the United States, it is rarely offered for sale in anything approaching Fine condition.

Fortunately, reprints are available, and a digitized copy of the text is available online.

Another early bibliomystery is Agnes Miller's The Colfax Book-Plate (1926), which deals with murders arising from the discovery of a previously unknown bookplate.  Again, finding a copy in anything approaching Fine condition could be an interesting challenge:

 

Some bibliomysteries are well-known, because the books were by famous authors, or the books were turned into films, or both.  A case in point is The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler (which deals with a rare book dealer who is fronting for a pornographic lending library).  Featuring Chandler's well-known fictional detective Philip Marlowe, the title has twice been turned into film, in 1946 (with Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe) and again in 1978 (with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe).  For more on Chandler, see our post of 2 July 2009:

 

Another bibliomystery from this same period, which also was turned into a film and has a plot that revolves around stolen first editions, was Fast Company (1937) by Marco Page (pseudonym of Henry Kuritz, who is best remembered for his 40+ screenplays):

Tomorrow, we will look at some more recent examples of the bibliomystery, including a number which are a part of books in series....

Bound to Please at The Private Library

The modern hardback book is a very standardized product.  In terms of its binding, it's usually cloth-covered boards in an octavo (or smaller ) format for most trade fiction and nonfiction.  Oversized productions, like art and photography books, may get special treatment.

Anyone collecting older books for their private library, though, is likely to run across bindings--and binding terms--with which they may be unfamiliar.  We have explored some of these terms in past posts.  Today, we look at a few more such terms with the help of ILAB's very useful online glossary.

One such term is blind-stamped or blind-tooled.  This refers to an impression that is made to the binding of a book that leaves no color, only an impression:

Another term that may be encountered is compartments.  Also known as paneling, this refers to "[r]uled lines forming a square border or frame on a binding, which is done in gilt or blind:"

 

A term that one may encounter that applies specifically to the edges of a an older book's binding is dentelle.  This is a "lace-like pattern applied to the edges of the cover of the inside border of a book bound in leather:"

 

Finally, an older book that has an embossed leather binding refers simply to "leather which has been printed with a raised design."  This is the opposite of a blind-stamped design, which is pressed into the leather.  You will feel the raised design if you run your fingers along an embossed leather binding:

Great Book Cities and The Private Library

Back on 14 May 2009, we took a look at the international book town movement.  Today, we want to look at a great book city.

When one thinks of great book cities, what usually comes to mind are major publishing centers: New York, London, Paris, Rome, Caracas, New Delhi and the like.  But there are a lot of other cities that qualify for that distinction.  One of our personal favorites is Toronto:

Canada's most populous city, the capitol of the Province of Ontario, Toronto was founded in 1793 as the town of York.  Like the other great cities noted above, Toronto is a publishing center. And like the other great cities noted above, Toronto is home to a vibrant book culture that draws from a nexus of universities, public libraries, independent booksellers and a host of cultural organizations.

The publishing project known as A History of the Book in Canada, which we discussed in our post of 27 August 2009, was headquartered at the University of Toronto (home to the Toronto Centre for the Book and the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library--the latter holds the largest repository of publicly accessible rare books and manuscripts in Canada), where its volumes ultimately were published by the University of Toronto Press.  Anyone who collects early children's books will already be aware that the Toronto Public Library (which many folks do not realize is in fact the largest public library system in North America), is home to the famed Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books.  

Most importantly, Toronto is still home to a dwindling mix of independent booksellers like Nicholas Hoare (which makes us think of the Cecil Court booksellers over in London--Nicholas himself apprenticed at London's Heywood Hill), and what is arguably Toronto's best-named bookstore, This Ain't the Rosedale Library.  (Get the inside details on these and other great Toronto booksellers by clicking here.  Pages, alas, no longer is among these.)

Add to the above a great selection of tea shops and bakeries, and what we gotta do...buy the plane ticket for you?!

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part V)

Unless one is building a private library that encompasses multiple genres, it is almost impossible to grasp the sheer number of books that are published in series.  But if you collect fiction featuring any of the following characters, you are collecting series fiction: Abbey Girls; Amelia Bedelia; Artemis Fowl; Berenstain Bears; Biggles; The Bobbsey Twins; Hal Keen; The Hardy Boys; Harry Potter; Hercule Poirot; Jack McGurk; James Bond; Jason Bourne: Jim Chee; Joe Leaphorn; Lord Peter Wimsey; Madeline; Miss Marple; Nancy Drew; Nick Carter; Pee-Wee Harris; Peter Decker; Roy Blakeley; Sherlock Holmes; Skippy Dare; Tarzan; Tom Slade; Tom Swift; Westy Martin:

 

 

We could extend this list for dozens of pages and only scratch the surface of this publishing enterprise.  Mystery and its sub-genres alone comprise over 3300 series!  If you wanted to build a private library comprised only of juvenile series books that are currently in print, you would need shelf space for close to 30,000 books:

Fortunately, there are a number of online databases available that can help one make some sense of what's out there, and many of these databases are free.  Most are based on printed bibliographies that are more easily updated in electronic format.  For example, if you collect series fiction that is penned by multiple authors, you might click here or here.  If you collect fiction series penned by a single author, you might want to click here.  Publishers' series, which are published in numerical order but which contain titles that are not necessarily related (e.g., Harlequin Presents), can be tracked here.  There are many more such databases available, as a simple Internet search will reveal....

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part IV)

Advanced book collectors are well known for their obsession with completing a collection.  And series publishers count on this, because a really well-received series is a money spigot that allows publishers to sneak other titles onto their lists that traditionally lose money.  If a publisher wants to publish an important academic treatise that may change the world (if only more than two people will buy a copy and read it), it helps to have a money-making series in his or her back pocket to deflect the slings and arrows being fired from the sales and marketing departments.

The publishing statistics for some long-running series are nothing short of phenomenal.  Perry Rhodan, a long-running German science fiction series, has sold over one billion copies worldwide.  Written by an ever-changing team of writers (similar to how the Stratemeyer Syndicate, discussed yesterday, functioned), the series is issued in weekly Heftroman (pulp booklet) format.  Created in 1961, it has spun off its own universe of comics, collectibles and the like:

Of course, some folks would suggest that this should not really count as books in series, since Rhodan's novella format actually is a booklet.  Such critics, however, are not likely to succeed with such criticism against some other well-known, long-running series.

Collectors interested in good old-fashioned swashbuckling, for example, have tendered enough gold pieces to keep the publishers of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series (a British Royal Navy series set during the Napoleonic wars) in swag for some time: 

Truly 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 (as is the case with Perry Rhodan and as was the case with the various series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate), 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...

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part III): Guest Editorial

Many collectors do not consider series like the Loeb Classical Library true books in series, a term they reserve for fiction series that share a common set of characters.  This distinction is made quite clearly by James Keeline, the author of today's guest editorial, which explores how series collectors often are led astray by phantom titles. 

James 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 writes:

...many collectors make a distinction between publisher series (almost random collections of books unified only by format and publisher) and regular fiction series (which often share a common set of characters and sometimes a continuing story).

For the publisher series, some use the term "publisher library" to make this distinction. When someone collects "series books" they are seldom interested in publisher libraries:

 

Titles from The Library of America, a "publisher's library"

I agree that the existence of a series tends to inspire collecting. Sometimes it is important to read volumes in order, so people often will wait until they collect all, or at least the early volumes of a series, before reading an entire series.

Some series, especially juvenile series books, promoted coming titles even when publication was over a year away.  Because things change in the fortunes of publishers, series, and authors, many of these "previously announced titles" never actually got published. Such titles are called "phantom titles" among series collectors.

Sometimes a phantom title resulted from a mere change in the name of a planned title. For example, war themes were added to several series during World War I, and wartime titles replaced the previously announced names of those same titles.

In some cases, a previously announced title in a series may not have been published if sales of a series did not meet expectations. The scarce Stratemeyer Syndicate series, the White Ribbon Boys, had but a single volume published, White Ribbon Boys of Chester (Cupples & Leon, 1916), even though the publishers advertised and described the plot for a second book (White Ribbon Boys of Long Shore). This occurred with other Stratemeyer Syndicate "series" as well:

 

 

One of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's most popular fictional series

One "series" had a single volume published, plus advertisements for 11 other volumes which were unpublished phantom titles.

There are even cases of "phantom series," where a series advertised by a publisher was in fact never published. Sometimes series fans play jokes on their colleagues by listing phantom series in reference volumes.

Some publishers had a practice of listing other writings by an "author" in their stable.  Occasionally, these were titles that were planned but not published; other times they were completely fictitious titles for which no actual publication was ever intended.

It can be difficult to prove that a book was never published, and some collectors will keep phantom titles on their want lists. When booksellers advertise for these, it reinforces the false notion that such phantom titles may actually exist. Copyright registrations and listings in Publishers' Weekly magazine, Cumulative Book Index and its predecessors can help. Library listings like WorldCat are worth checking, but since many series books were shunned by public libraries this is not a thorough indication of whether a book was published.

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part II)

We suggested in yesterday's post that some books in series exist only because a particular publisher decided that a particular set of books could be made a series by publishing such books in identical format.  And we noted that classics and canonical books often receive such treatment.

One of the oldest and best known of these types of series is the Loeb Classical Library.  Founded in 1911, and published continuously since then, the Loeb Classical Library--as explained in its initial volumes--sought to

make the beauty and learning, the philosophy and wit of the great writers of ancient Greece and Rome once more accessible by means of translations that are in themselves real pieces of literature, a thing to be read for the pure joy of it, and not dull transcripts of ideas that suggest in every line the existence of a finer original form from which the average reader is shut out

The idea, which has not changed in nearly 100 years, was to make the literature of ancient Greece and Rome available even to those who could not read either language in the original, and to do so in a format that would fit easily "into a gentleman's pocket."  The volumes--green for Greek authors, red for Latin authors--are each only a little larger than 6x4 inches:

One of the challenges for anyone collecting a series like this is that such a series often never reaches completion.  The earliest translations in the Loeb Classical Library, for example, were made at a time when pains were taken "not to give offense."  Since many ancient Greek and Latin writers were quite ... lusty ... some of their Greek and Latin wound up getting translated only as footnotes, and often in a language other than English (Italian was a popular choice).  Loeb began re-translating many of these earlier volumes in the late 1960s-early 1970s, and expects this project to continue for some time....

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part I)

Depending on your point of view, adding books in series to your private library can be one of the most joyful experiences of your life, or one of the most frustrating.

It often is surprising to new collectors just how many books are published as part of a series of books. If you collect romance fiction, science fiction, mysteries, action-adventure, children's books, cookbooks, travel books or classics, you almost certainly are going to encounter any number of titles that are published as part of a series.

A series may be chronological, requiring that each book in the series be read in its proper order in order to fully appreciate it (or a particular work of fiction may be so large that it takes multiple volumes--each of which must be read in sequence-- to tell the full story):

 

 

Or a series may have recurring characters, but individual titles in the series do not generally refer back to previous titles in the series, so it does not matter in which order any particular book in the series is read:

 

 

Some books in series are a series only because a publisher decided to publish a bunch of books in an identical format and cover (one often finds classical works, as well as canonical works, receiving this treatment):

 

Books in series can be a goldmine for publishers, because of book collectors' well-known penchant for completeness.  We will examine this phenomenon in more detail over the next few posts....

 

Steel Engraving and The Private Library

Anyone adding 19th century titles to their private library will likely have encountered several books illustrated with steel engravings.  This illustration process, introduced by Jacob Perkins in 1792 for the production of banknotes, was adapted for book illustration (by others) when Perkins moved to London in 1818.  It competed with several other illustrative techniques of the era, including woodcuts and wood engravings (which we reviewed in our posts for 1-6 June 2009). Steel engraving became a particularly popular illustration technique because it  

produced plates with sharper, harder, more distinct lines. Also, the harder steel plates produced much longer wearing dies that could strike thousands of copies before they would need any repair or refurbishing engraving. The hardness of steel also allowed for much finer detail than would have been possible under copper which would have quickly deteriorated under the stress. As the nineteenth century began to close, devices such as the ruling machine made even greater detail possible allowing for more exact parallel lines in a very close proximity.

The considerable detail and fineness of line of which this illustrative technique was capable is readily apparent in the following steel engraved image:

All kinds of books were illustrated by this process.  One of the most readily available examples in the marketplace is the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, all of its illustrations being steel engraved.  The process was especially good for reproducing portraits, scientific drawings and the like:

      

As will be clear from the above images, steel engraving often involved quite a few different artists: the artist who drew the original illustration; the artist  who engraved the steel plate reproducing the original illustration; the artist who colored the engraved reproduction of the original illustration; and so forth.

Folks adding steel engraved books to their private library should always check to make sure that their books are both textually and illustratively complete.  As we have noted in several past posts, there are, regrettably, some booksellers who have no compunction about breaking a book in order to sell the book's illustrations as stand-alone prints.  Because of the exquisite detail and fineness of line produced by steel engraving, these types of illustrated books are particularly subject to this heinous practice.  Caveat emptor....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part V)

Most writers, like most actors, do not like to be typecast.  Many strive mightily to avoid being labeled genre writers, even when the fiction they're writing obviously falls well within the parameters of a particular genre.  One thinks of writers like Kurt Vonnegut, who used to strenuously deny that Slaughterhouse Five was science fiction.  And one would be hard-pressed to find a dread-inducing classic like Shirley Jackson's The Lottery anywhere near the horror section of one's local bookstore.

As we noted in yesterday's post, this attempt to avoid ghettoization as a writer is not necessarily a bad thing--it keeps genres fresh, by preventing them from lapsing into staid formula.  But it sometimes makes things difficult for readers, who may be interested in the genre but unable to easily keep up with what's being published sans some type of labeling.  Fortunately, one can always turn to lists of the genre's award winners.

Arguably the best-known of these awards is the Bram Stoker Award, given annually by the Horror Writers Association.  So if you want to know if Clive Barker (who--if he is to be labeled at all--prefers the label "a master of the fantastic") writes horror fiction, the receipt of a Stoker Award would seem to indicate yes:

Bram Stoker First Novel Award, 1987

Because the Bram Stoker Award covers many different categories (First Novel, Short Fiction, Poetry, etc.), readers often are surprised at the diversity of mainstream authors who win these awards.  Unless you are an avid reader of Joyce Carol Oates, for example, you may not fully appreciate the extent to which elements of horror pervade her fiction.  Or realize that she is a past winner (1993) of the most prestigious of all Stoker Awards, The Brom Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement (awarded to writers "whose work has substantially influenced the horror genre")

       

Other lists that often are used to keep track of what's being published in horror fiction include the International Horror Guild Awards, the Australian Shadows Awards and Australia's Aurealis Awards....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part IV)

With the coming of World War II, which led to higher prices for paper (including the cheap pulp on which horror fiction was being printed) and the unleashing of a host of real horrors that put fiction's horrors to shame, pulp fiction's readership began to turn to others means of entertainment (comic books, paperbacks, tv, movies, etc.).

While the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and like works would continue to command a committed audience, it would not be until the 1970s that a talented writer would again publish a title that would cause horror to explode into popularity.  That writer was Stephen King.  The book he wrote was called Carrie (1974):

A testament to this novel's power to instill fear and/or dread may be the fact that it is one of the most frequently banned books in U.S. schools (the filmed version of the novel was banned in Finland).  So successful was this novel that its conventions and characterizations became the formula for horror for the next two decades.  A glut of this type of formulaic fiction eventually ensued (you can tell when the saturation point has been reached--publishers start publishing parodies of the formula), at which point horror fiction went underground, popping up--occasionally--as anything but horror:

      

Walking into a lot of bookstores nowadays one may be hard-pressed to find a section devoted specifically to horror fiction.  For the genre's long-term survival, this may well be the best thing that ever could have happened to it....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part III)

Although primarily a North American phenomenon, the Golden Age of Pulp Fiction had an enormous impact on the development of genres like science fiction, action-adventure, westerns and, of course, horror.  One of the most prolific and successful horror authors of this period was H. P. Lovecraft:

      

Lovecraft was one of the first horror writers to realize that

in an increasingly technological world based on science, the old horror story themes (ghosts, witches, vampires, werewolves, demons, and the like) just wouldn't do any longer. For, by the 1920's, many readers had become too realistic, too skeptical, to "believe" in them anymore. So something new was needed. Some kind of hybrid supernatural tale combining eerie chills with scientific plausibility. And that's exactly what Lovecraft came up with in his "Mythos" stories, many of which (between the 1920's and 1930's) first appeared in the now legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales.

Of course, the lines between horror and science fiction, fantasy and other genres has never been hard and fast.  That is why the era that saw the greatest overlap in these genres (roughly 1934-1937) also was known as the era of weird menace or shudder pulp fiction:

      

The problem with much pulp fiction, and genre fiction in general, is that it tends, over time, to become very formulaic.  Rather than evolve, its very success guarantees that publishers will seek to constrain the genre's conventions and characterizations.  This would prove to be a recurring problem for horror fiction, a matter which we will examine in more detail in tomorrow's post....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part II)

Horror fiction is a nebulous genre, its shape changing over the centuries.  It often masquerades as science fiction or fantasy, for the genre has never been characterized exclusively by blood and gore, by elements of the supernatural, by physical pain any more than psychological pain.  It has, at various times and in various cultures, incorporated all of these elements, the only consistent theme being that the story being told induce fear and/or dread in the listener or reader.

Religions have used horror to control their adherents, just as governments have used horror to control their citizens.  Some of the world's most ancient archetypes of horror, including demons of every persuasion, can be found in the mythologies and earliest writings of mankind:

    

It was not, however, until the rise of the novel in Western Europe in the 18th century that the genre as we know it today began to explode into popularity.  In gothic novels like Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) and Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and especially in novels like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818--claimed also as a progenitor of science fiction), the march towards modern horror fiction may be said to have begun in earnest:

      

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and novels like Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897--based on one of the most ancient of all horror archetypes) would do much to propel the genre toward what perhaps proved the greatest of all influences on the genre's popularity, the Golden Age of Pulp Fiction:

     

We will examine the influence of that golden age and its writers in tomorrow's post....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part I)

One of the most widely collected genres of fiction is the broad category known as horror fiction.  The popularity of this genre may be due, in part, to the fact that a lot of this type of fiction is published, and inexpensive examples of this genre can easily be purchased at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like.

One often thinks of ghosts or things that go bump in the night when one thinks of horror fiction, but in fact the only real requirement of such fiction is that its story elicit from the reader "an emotional reaction that includes some aspect of fear or dread."  While the books of popular horror writers like Stephen King come immediately to mind, the definition can as easily be applied to Grimm's Fairy Tales or the Christian Bible.

As the Horror Writers Association notes, horror fiction is "writing that delves deep inside and forces us to confront who we are, to examine what we are afraid of, and to wonder what lies ahead down the road of life:"

    

Over the next several posts we will examine this genre in more detail.  We will look at its ancient origins, at some representative examples (past & present), and will explore possible futures for this genre....

Big Lies and The Private Library

Adolph Hitler, writing in Mein Kampf, noted that

...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.

Hitler summarizes rather well the continuing appeal that propaganda holds for politicians, religious zealots, radio talk show hosts and suchlike creatures around the world.

Folks building a private library about this subject generally take one of two approaches: they collect books that examine directly the phenomena and its uses...

      

...or they collect books which actually utilize the techniques documented above...

        

If folks building a private library about this subject have sufficient time and financial resources, they may collect both types of books, as well as posters and other materials relevant to the subject:

      

Assembling a private library of such books and related materials not only creates a valuable resource for future scholars (should one choose to so dispose of one's library), but also has the added benefit of somewhat inoculating oneself from the pernicious effects of this phenomena, to which one is exposed 24/7 in today's global miasma of infotainment....

Edginess in The Private Library

Folks who collect older books, fine press books and the like often encounter acronyms and terms with which they may be unfamiliar.  This is especially true of acronyms and terms that concern the edges of books.  With the help of ILAB's excellent glossary, we thought we might examine a few of these in today's post.

An acronym frequently encountered in catalogs of such books is a.e.g., which stands for all edges gilt.  This refers to a book that has had gilt applied to the top edge, bottom edge & fore-edge of the volume.  If gilt has been applied only to the top edge of the volume, the usual acronym is g.t. (gilt top).  If a publisher uses a decorative stain for the top edge of a book, the appropriate acronym is t.s. (top stained):

    

Gilt is a thin layer of gold leaf or other gold-colored mixture that is applied to the edges of a book not only for decoration, but to keep out dust.  A more purely decorative application of color to the edges of a book is found in the acronym a.e.m. (all edges marbled):

Marbling is a very old decorative technique that also is used for the covers of books.  We hope to explore marbling in more detail in a future post.

Books sometimes are manufactured with bevelled edges (also known as bevelled boards).  This is a bookbinding technique in which the edges of the boards of the book have been cut at a slanted angle, these edges then being covered with cloth, leather or other material that is different from the material which covers the majority of the book's surface:

Most modern books have cut edges (i.e., edges that have been trimmed even with a large binders' knife prior to finishing the binding process).  However, one occasionally (on modern books) also may encounter books that have uncut edges (pages that are uneven because they have not been trimmed with a binders' knife).  This also is sometimes referred to as deckled edges (which may or may not be true of all three exposed edges of the book):

 

Collectors, and (regrettably) some booksellers often confuse uncut edges with unopened edges.  The two terms refer to entirely different things.  As the ILAB glossary notes, "unopened books retain the folds of the original gathering and contain many pages which cannot be read without first opening the pages with a knife. Some collectors prefer an unopened book because it indicates that the book has never been read; other collectors who read their books would rather not have the task of cutting open pages and risking tears and jagged leaf edges:"

 

Notice in the above photograph that the book's signatures (groups of pages) are still connected along the top edges....

The World's Greatest Independent Booksellers and The Private Library (cont.)

In a previous post (15 August 2009) we signaled our intent to examine a few of the world's great independent booksellers, a useful antidote, we believe, to the mistaken impression that Amazon is the end-all and be-all of bookselling.

We begin this sporadic investigation with a look at what arguably are the two largest independent booksellers in the USA, Powell's Books and Strand Book Store.

Strand is the longer-established of the two, having been opened by Benjamin Bass in 1927 on New York City's fabled Book Row.  Sadly, of the 48 bookshops that once graced this section of Fourth Avenue below Union Square, Strand is the sole survivor:

      

When Ben's son, Fred Bass, took over this family enterprise in 1956, he moved the store to its present location on Broadway at East 12th Street, where its 18 miles of books (roughly 2.5 million+ books) are known to completely overwhelm first-time visitors.  (There is a Strand kiosk in Central Park, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 60th Street, that is open when the weather is cooperative.  The Strand Annex, which was located in Manhattan's Financial District, closed in 2008.)

Powell's was founded by Walter Powell in 1971 on a derelict corner of northwest Portland, Oregon.  Over the years it grew rapidly, moving into a former car dealership, which dealership has since been renovated and expanded multiple times.  Today, Powell's operates six bookstores in the Portland area (four full-service, two specialty).  Its City of Books probably is the best-known of its stores, though the location (1005 W. Burnside, near Portland's often-heavily-trafficked Burnside Bridge), can make accessing it a bit tricky at times:

If you like to combine your love of books with other pleasurable experiences, Powell's location in the Portland Farmers' Market will more likely be your venue of choice.

Do you have a favorite independent bookseller?  If so, we would love to hear from you....

Printing and The Private Library (Part VI)

Before union cards, which identified printers as working for a particular firm, there were printers' medals,which usually had the name or number of the journeyman printer stamped on them.  These were issued by various printers' guilds, such as those that flourished among the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries.  All of these medals being one-of-a-kind, they are understandably quite rare today.  We suspect very few folks building a private library about printing have ever even seen one.  Fortunately, fine press printer Henry Morris (Bird & Bull Press) has, and he has written a book about the subject, which book includes reproductions (cast in silver) of four such medals:

 

Printers' medals also have been cast for other purposes, such as to promote or commemorate various printers.  William Blades is the author most associated with catalogs of this type of material, in books like Numismata Typographica: or, The Medallic History of Printing, which Henry Morris also has published in an expensive (1992) reprint for folks who cannot afford the rare first edition (shown below):

     

Another catalog of this type of material, which is almost as rare as a first edition Blades (it is, in fact,  based on Numismata Typographica), is the 1907 German-language publication über buchdruck-medaillen by Paul Jehne, which fortunately also has been made available in an inexpensive (1992) reprint :

Printing and The Private Library (Part V)

Far too many books have been written about printing to do justice to the subject in a few brief posts.  Folks who want to build a private library around this subject are very strongly encouraged to obtain a copy of Bigmore & Wyman's A Bibliography of printing with notes and illustrations.  The 2001 Oak Knoll reprint combines the three original volumes into a single volume, adding an index, which the original volumes sorely lacked.  For more current titles, G. Thomas Tanselle's Introduction to Bibliography: Seminar Syllabus, used in a number of Rare Book School classes, would be a useful addition to one's bookshelves:

      

If you cannot afford a print edition of these titles, both are available online, free of charge, by going to this blog's left-hand column and clicking on the appropriate links under Selected Bibliographic Resources.

Nowadays, anyone struggling to decipher a text printed in multiple fonts and purple ink on a green background may be forgiven thinking that the eternal verities of printing, like readability, are dead.  Fortunately, this is not entirely true.  Hardy bands of like-minded souls still pursue traditional printing, communicating with each other via electronic media like email lists, as well as through the pages of printed journals that often are exemplars of their craft.

Among the most notable of these are the much lamented, for now deceased, journals such as Ars Typographica (1918-1934), The Fleuron (1923-1930),  Fine Print ((1975-1989) and Bookways ((1991-1995).  If you seriously are interested in building a private library about printing, and you ever come across a complete set of any of these periodicals in the marketplace, you owe it to yourself to snap it up:

    

Fortunately, we still have with us such exemplary journals as Devil's Artisan (1980-), Parenthesis (1998-), Printing History (1979-) and, most illustrious of all, Matrix (1981-):

      

Tomorrow, we will look at how some traditional printers have been commemorated....

Printing and The Private Library (Part IV)

The first known Western European book to deal substantively with printing processes was Joseph Moxon's Mechanick exercises; or The doctrine of handy-works applied to the art of printing (1683).  This was a reprint of what originally appeared as a 24-part series.  It actually constitutes the second volume in the series, the first volume (originally issued as 14 parts from 1677-1680) included chapters on everything from bricklaying and carpentry to smithing and turning.  (The work is widely used by museums for reproductions of 17th century technology.)

Moxon, Hydrographer to Great Britain's King Charles II, was a maker of globes and mathematical instruments, and perhaps equally famous for printing the first English-language mathematical dictionary. Assuming you can find a copy in the marketplace, a first edition of Mechanick Exercises will set you back a good six figures+.  Most collectors settle for one of the numerous reprints that have been published:

     

Another important early title about printing processes was John Smith's The Printer's Grammar, Containing a Concise History of the Origin of Printing (1755), which dealt with compositors' work but not with presswork.  Smith's name may be a pseudonym, as evidence suggests he may in fact have been a Prussian immigrant.  The first edition of this work is very difficult to come by, as--surprisingly--are most reprints of this title:

 

The 19th century saw numerous important works published on printing, including Thomas Curson Hansard's Typographia, an Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Art of Printing (1825); William Savage's  A Dictionary of the Art of Printing (1841) and John Southward's Practical Printing, A Handbook of the Art of Typography (1882):

  

An excellent recent title that summarizes and contextualizes many of these early printing manuals is Richard Gabriel-Rummonds' 2-vol. Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress (2004):

 

Tomorrow, we will look at a few of the more important journals that are relevant to printing....

Printing and The Private Library (Part III)

Continuing with other notable general histories of printing, most collectors probably will want to add to their shelves a copy of Theodore Low De Vinne's The Invention of Printing: A Collection of Facts and Opinions Descriptive of early Prints and Playing Cards, the Block-Books of the Fifteenth Century, the Legend of Lourens Janszoon Coster of Haarlem and the Works of John Gutenberg and His Associates (1878).  De Vinne, arguably the finest American printer of his generation, was a frequent and influential writer about matters pertaining to his craft.  He also was one of the founders of The Grolier Club and of the International Typothetae Society:

Another influential general history that collectors probably will want on their shelves is Thomas F. Carter's The Invention of printing in China and its spread westward (1925; significantly revised by L. Carrington Goodrich in 1955).  The first edition of this title is rarely found in anything approaching Fine condition, although later editions are readily available:

The classic general history of printing in the USA is Isaiah Thomas' The history of printing in America, with a biography of printers, and an account of newspapers. Thomas--a printer, newspaper publisher and later the founder of the American Antiquarian Society--was termed "the Baskerville of America" by fellow printer and patriot Benjamin Franklin, largely in recognition of the 400+ titles issued by Thomas during his heyday.  Apprenticed to a Boston printer at the age of seven, Thomas worked as a printer in the West Indies and Nova Scotia before returning to Boston in 1770 and establishing the publishing empire that would make him famous. (His firm, which ultimately employed over 150 people, published--among other firsts--the first dictionary printed in America.)

Neither the first edition of his History of Printing in America (1810), nor the 2nd (1874), is difficult to obtain in the marketplace, although either one of these in anything approaching Fine condition will set you back quite a bit of money.  Most collectors settle for the limited edition reprint put out by the Imprint Society (1970) or the trade edition reprint published that same year (1970) by Weathervane Books:

          

Tomorrow, we will look at a few of the more influential titles that have been published about printing processes....

Printing and The Private Library (Part II)

The history of printing encompasses a broad range of subject matter, everything from paper and typography to printing processes, illustration and binding.  One can build an extraordinary private library by focusing on any one of these.

Although printing from movable metal type was known in Korea as early as the 13th century, most general histories of early printing tend to focus on the introduction of movable metal type to Western Europe by Gutenberg and his successors.

One of the earliest of these general histories was James Watson's The history of the art of printing: containing an account of its invention and progress in Europe; with the names of famous printers, the places of their birth, and the works printed by them...(1713).  Although the first edition of this title (shown below) is difficult to come by, there is a readily available reprint edition that was published in 1965:

Leon Voet's The Golden Compasses: A History and Evaluation of the Printing and Publishing Activities of the Officina Plantiniana at Antwerp (1969-1972) is another such title.  The Officina Plantinania was one of the greatest of the early printing houses--certainly Belgium's all-time most important printing house, and arguably the all-time most important European printing house of the 16th and 17th centuries.  Founded in 1555 by Christoffel Plantin (who would become the greatest typographer of his day), its operations managed to survive until 1876 (under Plantin's successors, the Moretuses).  [Voet was curator of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, opened in 1877]:

Another important general history of early printing is Edwin Hall's Sweynheym and Pannartz and the Origins of Printing in Italy: German Technology and Italian Humanism in Renaissance Rome (1991). Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweinheim, who are forever linked in the annals of printing, had worked with Gutenberg before establishing Italy's first printing press (at Subiaco) in 1464.  Regrettably, Hall's work has never (to our knowledge) been released in a trade edition, and is very difficult to come by:

 

Probably the most readily available general history of printing is S. H. Steinberg's Five Hundred Years of Printing (rev. 2001).  This general history includes a number of chapters on the significant technological changes that have rewritten the history of printing over the past several decades:

 

Tomorrow we will examine a few more general histories of printing, including a couple that are relevant to the Americas....

Printing and The Private Library (Part I)

There are those who look upon books simply as one of several possible repositories of information, and there are those who look upon books as something special because of their sheer physicality.  The latter concern themselves not only with information while constructing their private libraries, but also with how that information is presented.  Is the text printed on paper that is supple, that takes a good impression, that is likely to outlast its maker?  Is the printing of the text pleasing to the eye, is it easy to read, are the margins generous?  Is the binding appropriate to the text and to the other elements of the book's construction?

These are not questions asked only of books being produced by fine presses.  They are questions that any book collector is likely to ask of books that he or she is looking to place on their bookshelves for a very long time.  No one wants a book that is poorly designed, poorly printed, poorly bound...if other options are available:

    

Printing looms very large in these decisions.  The choice of a font, how well a page is designed with that font in mind, how letters are impressed  upon the page...these matters can easily be the subject of their own private library.

Over the next several posts, we will examine printing and the various ways that book collectors add titles about this subject to their private libraries.  We will begin by examining some important books that deal with the history of printing....

Binding The Private Library

Folks interested in adding older titles to their private library, or fine press and similar types of books, often will encounter bindings that are different from those used on most modern hardbacks (which generally are cloth-over-boards).

The most typical of these bindings are illustrated below (with the help of ILAB's excellent glossary).

The full leather or cloth binding is simply a book that is totally encased in the relevant material:

 

A three-quarters leather or cloth binding has its spine and corners covered with the appropriate material (such coverage approximates 3/4 of the total surface, but is not necessarily exactly that amount):

 

A half leather or cloth binding has only approximately that amount of the total surface of the book's cover encased in the relevant material (notice the slightly narrower coverage at the spine and the corners):

 

The quarter leather or cloth binding has even less of its total surface covered by the relevant material (usually only the spine is so covered):

Note: since the 122,000+ acre Station Fire that is consuming large parts of the Los Angeles area has now reached our vicinity, our posts over the next few days may be sporadic until this fire is brought under control....