The Private Library

Historical Fiction and The Private Library (Part II)

The oldest known work of historical fiction, fragments of an ancient Egyptian text known as Voyage of Unamūn (also known variously as the Story/Report/Misadventures of Wenamun), dates to the 11th century BCE and was long believed to be historical fact rather than fiction.  As with many other ancient texts, though (such as the 4th century CE Historia Augusta), modern scholarship suggests that it is indeed a work of fiction:

While several other early novels of historical fiction are acknowledged by scholars (such as Luó Guànzhōng's much-revered 14th century CE novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms), historical fiction as we know it today is largely a product of the 19th century, and of one author in particular: Sir Walter Scott.

Scott was born in Edinburgh (Scotland) in 1771.  He first saw print as a poet and translator (The Chase, and William and Helen: Two Ballads, from the German of Gottfied Augustus Burger, 1796).  But it was his first novel, Waverley; or 'Tis Sixty Years Since (an historical novel set during the Second Jacobite Rebellion of 1745) that brought him fame and fortune.  Published anonymously in three volumes on 7 July 1814, the First Edition of 1000 copies sold out within two days of publication, becoming the most successful novel published in the English language up to that time.

Within the next five years Scott published a further eight novels set in 17th and 18th century Scotland (upon which his modern critical reputation is largely founded), the best known of which probably are Guy Mannering (1815) and Rob Roy (1817).  Because Chronicles of the Canongate (1827), Scott's first and only collection of short fiction, was the first prose work published under his own name (his previous 22 prose works having been published anonymously, such as Waverly, or pseudonymously, such as Rob Roy), the novels published from 1814-1826 generally are known collectively as the Waverly novels (i.e., "by the author of Waverly").  Well-known works from this phenomenally productive and successful 13-year period include Ivanhoe (1819) and Kenilworth (1821).  Later publishers often would publish all of Scott's prose works as the Waverly novels:

The enduring popularity of these first great works of historical fiction in the English language have ensured that many have remained almost continuously in print, and several have been turned into movies.

Ivanhoe remains especially popular.  Made into an Academy Award- and Golden Globe-nominated movie (starring Elizabeth Taylor) in 1952, it also has been turned into a comic book as well as serving as the source for a popular manga series:

 

But such fiction was not entirely a product of English authors, as we shall see in tomorrow's post....

Historical Fiction and The Private Library (Part I)

One of the most popular subjects around which to build a private library is historical fiction:

  

The Historical Novel Society defines this genre as works of fiction written at least 50 years after the events they describe, by authors who were not alive during the time period that is the focus of such fiction.  But, several additional criteria often also come into play, such as how historically accurate such fiction is (which impacts how believable the work is).

Included in this overarching definition are several subgenres, such as alternate histories; steam punk, (which technically is two different sub-subgenres, being both historical science fiction and alternate history that is focused on technology); pseudo-histories; time-slip novels (a sub-subgenre of historical science fiction); historical fantasies (which some critics define as a sub-subgenre of pseudo-histories); historical romances; historical mysteries; multiple-time novels (a sub-subgenre of historical science fiction) and the like.  

Like many others genres popular with "the mass market," historical fiction has long been dismissed by literary critics. As Sarah Johnson points out in a recent essay on the subject, historical fiction has

the reputation of being either costume dramas, in which modern-day characters are dressed up and paraded around in period garb with a few “thees” and “thous” thrown in for good measure, or barely fictionalized textbooks, in which the author’s need to cram all of his prodigious research into a single novel overwhelms the plot.

Literary works (such as those depicted in the images above) generally are excepted from such criticism, which is aimed at the more formulaic titles which make up the bulk of the genre.

Over the next several days, we will examine this genre in more detail.  We begin with the first known work of historical fiction, a work that was written in Egypt over 3000 years ago....

 

Happy New Year from The Private Library

Yes, we realize January 1 is still a few days away, but tomorrow we begin a multi-part post that will extend several days past that holiday, so permit us to extend to all our subscribers and visitors an early Best Wishes for a Joyful and Prosperous 2010:

  

The past year has been one of mixed blessings for folks attempting to build a private library.  Many of us, for example, know someone who has lost their job, or their home, or is otherwise in difficult financial circumstances.  This has led in some areas to a noticeable rise in yard and/or garage sales, one of several venues that we have promoted in these posts as an inexpensive source of books for one's home library.

We stand by this counsel.  You can help yourself and the persons holding such sales by making a generous purchase of books whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself.

It's hard to believe this blog has only been online nine months (today marks nine months exactly since we launched The Private Library on 29 March 2009).  Perhaps the 278 consecutive posts account for how tired we are!

Frankly, we did not know (and, for reasons that will become clearer shortly, we still do not know) just how well such a specialized blog would fare in the blogosphere.  We don't focus on sex or sports, so a million unique visits per day is out of the question.  Our subscriber statistics have been trending up for several months now), but the trend resembles the long and gradual rise that a car makes traveling away from the coast towards slighter higher elevations inland, not the steep and dramatic ascent that one gets climbing a mountain.

We do not attribute this to a lack of interest in books or home libraries.  We knew going in that it would be very difficult for a specialized blog to get attention in the blogosphere, especially since we do not permit advertising on this blog and thus cannot benefit from the cross-promotions that this entails.  We have to rely on word-of-mouth.

Fortunately, we have received a few accolades, and several of our more zealous subscribers have actively promoted The Private Library to their friends, neighbors, relatives and anyone else they could think of who might have an interest.  We are very grateful for this support!

A look at the overall statistics for the past nine months indicates that we have had visitors from an astounding 89 different countries.  Considering the United Nations only recognizes 192 sovereign nations, we consider this a pretty good batting average, all things considered.  Since this is an English-language blog, our most consistent visitors have hailed from nations where English is the native language: the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Australia.  But we also have a substantial core of repeat visitors from countries where English is a widely utilized second language, such as many of the nations of Western Europe.  Over the next few months we hope to examine some of the major European literary traditions in light of this continued support.

What we still find a bit puzzling is the lack of comments.  With folks from 89 different countries stopping by, one would think the circumstances of collecting books in such a diversity of geopolitical environments would lend itself to someone actually speaking out about their own collecting interests, or at least taking issue with (or supporting) one of our own posts.  Perhaps this blog is too young yet for such participation.

In any event, we have some great posts planned for 2010, so don't change that channel....

Aquatint and The Private Library

Invented around 1650, aquatint is a book illustration and printmaking technique that creates the effect of watercolor or ink washes:

The effect is created by dusting copperplate or other printing plates with finely powdered resin that is

then heated until the resin melts in tiny mounds that harden as they cool. Acid (aqua fortis) is applied to the metal plate and bites channels around the resin droplets. The resulting microscopic reticulation will hold more or less ink, depending upon how long or how deeply the acid is allowed to penetrate the plate.... Tones ranging from light gray to velvety black can thus be printed.

The process was overshadowed by the invention of mezzotint at approximately the same time, and it did not become popular until recipes for creating its effects were published towards the end of the 18th century in two books, Art de graver au pinceau (1773) and Découverte du procédé de graver au lavis (1780).

Aquatint produces a wide range of tonal values, and it was particularly popular during the late 18th-early 19th centuries for illustrating books containing portraits (especially caricatures and depictions of fashion) and landscapes:

The greatest master of the process was the famed Spanish artist Francisco Goya, who created four outstanding cycles of etchings that used the technique to great effect: Los Caprichos (1799); Los Desastres de la Guerra (1810–19); La Tauromaquia (1816); and Disparates (ca. 1816–23).  All of these have been reprinted numerous times since their original publication:

Play and The Private Library

Summing up the formal characteristic of play, we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress the difference from the common world by disguise or other means.

In Homo Ludens (Man the Player, 1938), the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga argued that all human activity ultimately is "rooted in the primaeval soil of play:"

 

Over the seven decades since this seminal work was published, an entire academic discipline---play studies--has arisen to explore and explicate the notion that  "all creative acts are forms of play, the starting place of creativity in the human growth cycle, and one of the great primal life functions:"

   

What Sally Jenkinson calls the "small secret corners of children's wisdom" makes for a fascinating private library, whether one collects only "serious" works...

    

...or, what probably is more fun for most collectors, one collects examples of play that entertained our ancestors:

    

One must proceed cautiously if collecting the latter, however, since demand for such works (especially for titles in anything approaching Fine condition) is quite heavy.  In addition to those adding such works to their bookshelves because they are interested in play and/or games (a more formalized subset of play), one must contend with collectors interested in local history (as much play arises in very localized contexts); collectors interested in various types of illustration (many such works contain superb wood engravings, stunning chromolithography, and so on); collectors interested in the evolution of bookbindings; and, perhaps the fiercest competitors of all, collectors seeking to build a private library focused on everything that has been published about a specific type of play:

 

If one's books were printed from roughly 1870-1990, one also has to be concerned about the poor quality of the paper upon which such works most likely were printed (see our posts of 16-17 July 2009 and 12 November 2009). 

As will be seen from the last two images, not all books about play are focused only on childhood play.  Many such books focus on adult play, and many more focus on types of play that appeal to all ages:

Because many types of play have (especially in the last century or so) become professionalized (contradicting Huizinga's assertion that "no profit can be gained by it"), folks collecting books about play often also seek out biographies of well-known pros in their area(s) of interest:

 

Unless one has lots of time and lots of money, the key to building a private library around the subject of play (with apologies to our friends in real estate) is focus, focus, focus....

Christmas and The Private Library (Part V)

Aside from children's books (see our posts of 9-14 June 2009) and fine press books (see our posts of 3-6 May 2009), Christmas-themed books remain one of the few publishing niches where talented illustrators still can make a name (and a living) for themselves.  And they do so (have done so) utilizing a wide range of techniques--everything from wood engraving (see our posts of 4-6 June 2009)...

  

...to chromolithography (see our posts of 14-16 November 2009):

  

Among the many famous illustrators whose talent will be found gracing the pages of Christmas-themed books are Arthur Rackham...

    

...Tasha Tudor (see our post of 13 June 2009)...

   

...Charles Robinson...

...Chris Van Allsburg...

...Hilary Knight...

  

...and many, many other talented artists.

A wide range of books have been published about book illustration in various countries, and anyone seeking to collect examples of Christmas-themed books illustrated by a particular author certainly will want to add one or more such books to their bookshelves:

 

And keep in mind that not all Christmas-themed books are illustrated in only two dimensions (see our posts of 21-26 November 2009)...

Christmas and The Private Library (Part IV)

Two other publications helped revitalize Christmas celebrations in the mid 19th century.

The first was William Sandys' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833), where many now-beloved Christmas carols made their first appearance in book form.  Among these were The First Noel, Hark the Herald Angels Sing and God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen:

 

In 1848 the Illustrated London News had published an image of the British Royal family gathered around a decorated Christmas tree at Windsor Castle.  This image was "remixed" by the extremely influential Godey's Lady's Book (removing Queen Victoria's crown and Prince Albert's mustache) and published in the United States during Christmas 1850 as an American scene, becoming the first widely circulated image of a decorated Christmas tree in the United States:

 

With the advent of Christmas cards in 1843, everything was in place for the industrialization of Christmas, a topic which has been the subject of numerous books over the decades:

    

Increasingly, Christmas became very commercialized.  Entire industries arose to produce Christmas cards, Christmas trees (and their accompanying decorations), Christmas music---even religious items like nativity scenes. 

Of course, not everyone was complaining--in fact, many of the items associated with this commercialization of Christmas quickly became collectibles (and as collectibles they have spawned publishing industries of their own):

    

Among other Christmas publishing niches are those devoted to Christmas music...

 

...to Christmas meals...

   

...to Christmas entertainment (especially for children):

 

The nature of publishing for Christmas' various niche markets makes this type of publishing one of the few arenas where talented illustrators still can make a name (and a living) for themselves, as we shall see in tomorrow's post....

Christmas and The Private Library (Part III)

Because Christmas celebrations in most parts of the Western world are a mix of often competing strands of paganism, folklore, mythology and religion, the holiday has been both heavily promoted and heavily criticized over the centuries.

During the English Interregnum, for example, the English Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas altogether.  From 1644-1660, [a]ll shops and markets were to stay open throughout the 25th December and anyone caught holding or attending a special Christmas church service would suffer a penalty.  In the city of London things were even stricter as soldiers were ordered to patrol the streets, seizing any food they discovered was being prepared for a Christmas celebration.

This ban was effected in part because the Puritans felt that Christmas celebrations were an unwanted remnant of the Roman Catholic Church and, therefore, a tool of encouragement for the diss[ident] community that remained in both England and Wales. They argued that nowhere in the Bible had God called upon his people to celebrate the nativity in this manner.  (Several other holidays also were banned for containing Popish elements, including Easter.)

The Puritans also were unhappy with the fact that celebrations of Christmas often led to drunkenness, promiscuity, gambling and other forms of excess.  So the celebration of Christmas in England went underground for a while, even as those Puritans who set sail for the Americas took the urge to ban Christmas with them (a ban that would be effected in Boston from 1659-1681).

In some parts of the world the war over Christmas continues to this day, as several recent books make clear:

  

In any event, Christmas remained for most people largely a community and/or church celebration.  Due to repeated and prolonged sectarian tensions, celebration of the holiday had, over the centuries, been seriously diminished in many locales, and might well have died out altogether had it not been for the publication of several works of fiction in the early decades of the 19th century.  These titles not only revived the holiday itself, but also, for many celebrants, shifted the focus of the celebration away from church and community to family.

Perhaps most significant among such works of fiction were Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819-1820), which supposedly drew upon the tract Vindication of Christmas (1652) for many elements of its stories about Christmas; Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas (first published anonymously in New York's Troy Sentinel newspaper on 23 December 1823); and, most influential of all, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843).

Initially published in seven serial installments from June 1819-September 1820, Irving's Sketch Book probably is better known today for Rip Van Winkle (published in the first installment) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (published in the sixth installment) than for the other twenty-seven stories and essays that comprised its first American publication.  It was, however, the five stories published in the fifth installment of January 1820--which revolved around an idealized Christmas celebration at an English country manor--that contributed to a revitalization of Christmas celebrations in the New World, and that had a self-professed influence on Dickens' own contribution to that revival:

  

Moore, whose authorship of A Visit from St. Nicholas has been debated for decades (usually resolving in Moore's favor), is responsible for, among other things, giving each of Santa's eight reindeer individual names:

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Dunder and Blixem!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

(The names of the last two reindeer would be changed in later printings to Donder and Blitzen.)

The illustrations that accompanied the many re-printings of this poem also would significantly impact the public's perception of the mythical figure of Santa Claus (although it would be caricaturist Thomas Nast's illustrations of Saint Nick, depicted below, that would have the greatest and most long-lasting impact):

In the current (December 2009) issue of Fine Books & Collections, author Jonathan Shipley argues that one reason Dicken's A Christmas Carol has had such an oversized influence on modern Christmas celebrations is that the author himself frequently read from this work, to great effect, during several public lecture tours in Great Britain and America.

Penned during a feverish six weeks in the fall of 1843, all 6000 copies of the initial press run of A Christmas Carol sold out on its first day of publication, 19 December 1843.  Because the great expense of its hand-colored plates cut considerably into Dickens' profits (financial pressures had been the reason Dickens had written it in the first place), this was Dickens' first and only book to be published with such plates:

Dicken's "little carol" has never been out-of-print, and it has inspired some of the world's best illustrators, printers and binders during the course of its many reprints:

The British poet and editor Thomas Hood had declared shortly after publication of A Christmas Carol that [i]f Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were ever in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease. 

How right he was.  The book remains the essential title for any private library focused on Christmas.

In the 166 years since A Christmas Carol's original publication, thousands of Christmas-themed works of fiction have been published worldwide in a huge variety of languages.  Such books are readily found, and eagerly sought, at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales, and in all manner of bookshops around the world:

  

The publication of so many Christmas-themed titles often makes it difficult to critically assess the influence of such literature, although a few attempts have nonetheless been made:

 

Tomorrow, we will examine some of the books reflective of the increasing industrialization of Christmas since the mid 19th century....

Christmas and The Private Library (Part II)

Whether one is collecting everything one can about Christmas, or only focusing on a particular aspect of the holiday, most folks building a private library around this theme generally include on their shelves one or two books about the origins and evolution of the holiday...

  

...including its associated religious and/or secular traditions...

   

...and perhaps also the evolution of the holiday in various locales:

 

For most folks, this is about as far as they delve into the origins and evolution of the holiday, preferring instead to focus their time and money on those one or two aspects of Christmas in which they are most interested (collectibles, cookbooks, etc.). 

Others will delve deeper, adding to their shelves books that deconstruct the holiday bit by bit....

 

...generally starting with ancient pagan antecedents, them moving forward to the various Christian accretions...

  

The deeper one digs, the more book shelves one needs.  Especially since certain works of fiction also have had a tremendous influence on how Christmas is celebrated....

Christmas and The Private Library (Part I)

There are a huge number of holidays that are celebrated around the world during December.  To cite but a few, there's Advent (the four weeks before Christmas); St. Nicholas Day (December 6); Chanuka (December 11-19 in 2009); Festival de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe (December 12); St. Lucia Day (December 13); Las Posadas (December 16-24); Yule (December 20-22); Winter Solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere, December 21 or 22); Soyaluna (December 22); DongZhi (December 21, 22 or 23); Kwanzaa (December 26-January 1); Boxing Day (December 26); Ōmisoka (December 31).

Because many of the above holidays celebrate the triumph of "light" and warmth over "darkness" and cold, and are rooted in ancient pagan traditions that later were co-opted by proponents of Christianity, it is not surprising that quite a few of them are precursors to, or are associated with, what arguably is the most celebrated holiday in the Western World, Christmas:

The literature of Christmas is vast, and any book collector seeking to create a Christmas-themed private library quickly realizes that difficult choices have to be made. 

Does one collect everything written about or influenced by this holiday?  An impossible task--even if one has all the money in the world, some books simply are unavailable in the marketplace.

Does one focus only on nonfiction books (origins, evolution, secular or religious aspects), fiction (not all of which is cheery), or both?  Does one collect such books as a stand-alone theme, or as an adjunct to other collecting areas (folklore, religion, industrialization, childhood, illustration)?

Over the next several days, we will examine the literature of Christmas in more detail....

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. 

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies.... 

Gifts to Help You Build Your Private Library

If family and friends have thrown up their hands in exasperation at your request for yet another book (or gift card with which to buy more books), there are other gifts available during this holiday season which likely would go much further towards helping you develop the private library of your dreams.  At the top of this list are gifts you can give yourself. 

The most notable of these gifts is education.  No book collector, however advanced, can possibly know everything there is to know about book collecting.  That is why most advanced book collectors constantly seek out opportunities to advance their knowledge of books, book collecting, book history and related bookish concerns.

Organizations devoted to specific aspects of books, book history, book collecting and the like thus make an excellent gift at this time of year.  Many of these organizations publish journals on a fairly regular basis, and offer as well the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with like-minded book collectors several times a year.  The memberships for most of these organizations is quite inexpensive, and are a tremendous value.  We list 135 such organizations in the left-hand column of this blog under Bookish Organizations:

    
 
 

Another excellent gift would be a course or two at Rare Book School, California Rare Book School, London Rare Books School, or a one- or two-day workshop at any one of the venues listed here.  Among this year's offerings at Rare Book School, for example, are two new courses designed specifically for collectors, one on collecting law books, the other devoted to provenance research.

If you can't afford the expense (of both time and money) required to take advantage of the above courses, consider a subscription to one of the few remaining print periodicals devoted to book collecting, like The Book Collector or Firsts or Book & Magazine Collector:

   

If you need more shelf space and are considering doing a little weeding, why not consider donating some of your books to other readers via Book Crossing....

Anthropodermic Bibliopegy and The Private Library

Finely grained and delicately textured, the colour of the leather binding is a dirty fawn flecked with spots of darker pigment. The pages are edged with gold, as are the margins of the leather where it has been folded over into the inside of the cover. When I open the book, the first thing I see is an inscription, underlined and in a neat flowing hand: Bound in human skin....

Though quite rare, this rather...interesting...example of the bookbinder's art dates back to at least the 17th century, when one sometimes found anatomy texts bound with the skin of dissected cadavers, volumes created as a bequest and bound with the skin of the testator, and copies of judicial proceedings bound in the skin of the murderer convicted in those proceedings:

 

Only a few libraries admit to having such volumes on their shelves.  The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, for example, "has four such books, including one with a visible tattoo."  London's Wellcome Library also has one.  And at least four such volumes rest on the shelves of Harvard libraries: two at the medical school library, one at the rare book library and one at the law school library.

The volume in Harvard's Langdell Law Library is a 17th century treatise on Spanish Law, Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias Hispaniae..., and it carries the following faint inscription on the last page of the book:

The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace.  (The WaVumba were an African tribe from the area of present-day Zanzibar.)

A more detailed review of this somewhat macabre practice may be found here and here....

Spy Novels and The Private Library (Part VI)

The collapse of the Soviet Union seemed at the time to presage the death of spy fiction as a genre.  The U.S. Congress toyed with the idea of disbanding the CIA and (even worse to some observers) the New York Times abandoned its long-running column that reviewed spy fiction.

While spy novelists who had established audiences before the Soviet collapse continued to be published, it became much more difficult for budding purveyors of spy fiction to break into their ranks.  Among the handful who did manage the feat were American novelists Gayle Lynds and Daniel Silva, and British novelists Charles Cumming and Henry Porter:

  

(Folks who collect bibliomysteries [see our posts of 27-28 September 2009] might want to make an exception for Lynds' latest spy novel, Book of Spies, to be published at the end of March 2010.  In addition to introducing a new spy character, the book (the first in a series) also will introduce a character who is a rare books curator, both of them seeking Ivan the Terrible's "lost" Library of Gold.)

Spy fiction has always required an enemy, preferably one with a global reach, and the nastier that enemy the better.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union, nasty enemies with a global reach were harder to come by...until 11 September 2001.

The events of that terrible day quickly aroused a complacent public into a new appreciation of just how interconnected everyone's lives had become, and a new appreciation also for the role of accurate intelligence about matters which concern us.

Thus it is that editors once again are seeking out authors proficient in matters of espionage. 

And authors are responding.  Because many of these authors are themselves former intelligence operatives, their books often are short on glam and glitz, focused instead on tradecraft realistically depicted.  Among the more notable such authors are Dame Stella Rimington, former Director General of MI5 (British internal security) and former British cryptographer Alan Stripp:

One suspects that spies will be needed yet a while longer....

Spy Novels and The Private Library (Part V)

In 1939 the Scottish-American author Helen MacInnes launched an extraordinarily successful 45-year career as the Queen of Spy Writers:

  

Trained as a librarian, and fluent in both French and German, MacInnes attributed the immense popularity of her books to the prodigious research she undertook before writing each one.  (So accurate was her third book, Assignment in Brittany [1942], that it was required reading for Allied agents working with the French Resistance.  Assignment, incidentally, is one of only four MacInnes novels ever to have been turned into films.  This, despite the fact that her 21 novels have been translated into some two dozen languages and have sold well over 25 million copies.)

At about the same time as MacInnes' debut (1940), Manning Coles published the first of the extremely popular Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon novels:

  

Manning Coles was the pseudonym of two British authors, Adelaide Manning and Cyril Cole.  Manning was born with a birth defect that left her with a deformed ankle, rather limiting her opportunities for employment.  Coles, eight years Manning's junior and dyslexic as a youngster, had been Great Britain's youngest intelligence officer during World War I.  Their collaboration arose from the fortuitous circumstance of Adelaide renting an apartment owned by Cyril's father, from whence Adelaide and Cyril became neighbors and friends.

As Tom & Enid Schantz point out in a recent article, [i]ts realistic portrayal of the real world of espionage is what makes Drink to Yesterday one of the most important books in the development of the spy novel, a fact that was immediately recognized  not only by the critics but by the general reading population. Though the duo wrote several similar novels over the course of their almost-two-decades collaboration, many of which enjoyed considerable popularity, their post-World War II books are dismissed by most modern critics as "formulaic."

It was the "war" after World War II, the so-called Cold War, that gave rise to spy fiction's golden age.  The era from roughly 1945-1991 saw the rise of a number of authors who devoted their often considerable talents to tales of espionage.  Some of the more notable authors publishing in the genre during this period (several of whom continue to publish) were Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, John le Carré, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follett, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy:

 

Many of these modern-day tales of espionage were a bit cynical as to the benefits of the world's second oldest profession.  Nor were all such tales penned only by writers in the West.  The Soviet author Julian Semyonov, for example, covered a wide historical swath of Soviet intelligence history in his spy fiction:

 

Originally an academic with a background in Persian history and politics, Semyonov gave up the cloistered halls of academia to pen a prodigious number of novels and short stories.  He is best known for his character Otto von Stirlitz, the code name for Soviet intelligence agent Maksim Isaev.  So popular is this character in Soviet literature that Stirlitz jokes constitute a virtual sub-genre of their own.  The most popular book in the Stirlitz series, Seventeen Moments of Spring, noticeably depletes Soviet (now Russian) streets whenever a filmed version appears on television (usually on or around Victory Day).

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, much of the raison d'être for modern spy fiction (on both sides of the former Iron Curtain) collapsed with it....

Spy Novels and The Private Library (Part IV)

One of Alfred Hitchcock's favorite writers, John Buchan, was the author of some 30 novels and seven collections of short stories, and was probably the most popular spy novelist during the period of World War I.  Among the best known of his works are the novels about spy-catcher Richard Hannay, as featured in The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) and Greenmantle (1916):

  

When he wasn't busy writing spy novels, Buchan also served a brief stint as Great Britain's Director of Intelligence, as a director of the news agency Reuters, and--after moving to Canada (where he was created the first Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield)--as Canada's 15th Governor General (1935-1940).  Buchan himself is the subject of a number of reminiscences and biographies:

  

At about the same time that Buchan was producing his first Hannay novels, author Gaston Leroux was publishing Rouletabille chez Krupp (1917), one of the earliest French spy novels, which featured his now famous character Joseph Rouletabille.  This dashing young journalist with a bullet-shaped head (hence his name) becomes a French secret agent who infiltrates the Krupp armament factories and saves Paris from being destroyed by a German missile.  The character was featured in a number of Leroux's novels, and has appeared in several films, TV series and comic books:

  

Leroux was not a one-character author.  He is equally well-known for his other major series character, Cheri-Bibi, and is perhaps best known outside Europe for his immortal tale of unrequited love, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera, 1910).  (Could there be a new direction in book collecting here...novels about spies who love operas...?)

The interwar period (1918-1939) saw a number of spy novels penned by retired intelligence officers.  Among the more notable of these authors were W. Somerset Maugham and Eric Ambler:

   

Though Maugham would arguably have the greater impact on literature in general (by virtue of works like Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, and Rain), Ambler would have far greater impact on  spy fiction as a genre.  As Thomas Jones observes in a recent article,

[w]ith the six novels he wrote in the years leading up to the second world war - five of which have just been reissued by Penguin Modern Classics - Eric Ambler revitalised the British thriller, rescuing the genre from the jingoistic clutches of third-rate imitators of John Buchan, and recasting it in a more realist, nuanced and leftishly intelligent - not to mention exciting - mould.

Among other twists on the traditional spy story, Ambler depicted enemy agents as positive and heroic:

  

While the eve of yet another global conflagration would see the debut of two of spy fiction's most successful authors, it was the "war" after the war that would give rise to the golden age of spy fiction....

Spy Novels and The Private Library (Part III)

The world's most famous fictional detective was not above mixing it up with spies, helping to protect British secrets in several stories, feeding the enemy disinformation in another:

  

A more serious examination of espionage was penned by Joseph Conrad, whose 1907 novel (depicted below) was written shortly after the assassination of two U.S. presidents (Garfield and McKinley) and several other world leaders (Carnot in France, Elizabeth in Austria, Canovas in Spain and Umberto I in Italy):

Filmed in 1936 by Alfred Hitchcock as the movie Sabotage, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale revolves around a plot to destroy the famed Royal Observatory at Greenwich.  In many respects, it is "a satire of British and European attitudes toward terrorism and counterterrorism," unlike Under Western Eyes (which he published in 1911), with its much more realistic examination of the roots of terrorism.

But classic novels like those discussed in yesterday's post, as well as those penned by Conrad, were but a blip on the landscape of spy fiction in the early decades of the 20th century.  By far the two most popular authors of such fiction (and arguably the two authors most responsible for the lack of respect that this genre suffers under even to this day) were William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim:

  

Fascinating characters in their own right, both men penned dozens of formulaic novels that are little read today.  Le Queux , who also is famed as a wireless pioneer, was not above publicizing his novels by having actors dressed as German soldiers parade up and down Regent Street, a major shopping thoroughfare in London.  Many of Oppenheim's characters delighted in Epicurean meals, a trait that several later novelists would incorporate into their own works.

Robert Standish (pseudonym of Digby George Gerahty) penned Oppenheim's sole biography, Prince of Storytellers: The Life of E. Phillips Oppenheim, back in 1957.  Le Queux's biography is much more recent (2007):

As the world edged towards global conflict in 1914, another popular author of spy fiction (who later would serve as Governor General of Canada) would step up to the plate....

Spy Novels and The Private Library (Part II)

[N]ational panic makes bad policy and false prisoners.

For over a decade (1894-1906) towards the close of the 19th century, newspaper readers around the world were treated to lurid tales of real-life espionage gone seriously awry...L'affaire Dreyfus: 

When a French Army officer was charged with treason in 1894, based on evidence which eventually was revealed to have been manufactured, his resulting false imprisonment and eventual exoneration created a public appetite for tales of espionage that probably has not been surpassed since.

Even before this shameful episode had completely played itself out on the world stage, three classic novels of espionage had been penned: Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901), Erskine Childers' Riddle of the Sands (1903) and Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905):

   

First published serially in McClure's Magazine from December 1900-October 1901, Kim's focus was The Great Game, the political jostling over Central Asia that so consumed Great Britain and Russia in the 19th century:

Although considered by many critics to be the Nobel Laureate's finest work, Kim leaves many modern audiences less than enthused, the many spies in this tale (Colonel Creighton, Lurgan Sahib, Hurree Chunder Mookherjee) notwithstanding.  Kipling's obvious relish for British imperialism leaves many modern readers questioning just how game-like this jostling must have appeared to the many tens of thousands who lost their homes, their fortunes and/or their lives to such geopolitical wrangling.  (Kim nonetheless has exerted considerable influence on the development of certain genres, most notably science fiction, where conflicts between civilizations often are a major thematic element.) 

A tale of two young men accidentally stumbling upon a German plan to invade Great Britain by sea, The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service actually had the salutary effect of causing the British Admiralty to re-assess Great Britain's vulnerability to sea-based invasion (eventually leading the Admiralty to establish additional naval bases along Great Britain's northern coast).  In one of those ironies so beloved by historians, Childers later became an ardent Irish nationalist and was executed by authorities of the Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War.

Baroness Orczy (Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi) launched, with her novel about an English aristocrat (Sir Percy Blakeney) who rescues French aristocrats from the French Revolution, a publishing sensation that eventually encompassed over a dozen sequels (she published the last sequel only seven years before her death in 1947):

We seek him here, we seek him there,Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? - Is he in hell? That damned, elusive Pimpernel?

But the game was afoot elsewhere as well....

Spy Novels and The Private Library (Part I)

"Bond...James Bond...."

Is there a book collector or movie buff on the entire planet who does not recognize the fictional character associated with the above line?  Spy fiction is one of the most beloved of all genres upon which to construct a private library.  And the books needed to fill one's shelves with this genre can easily and inexpensively be acquired at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like.  Moreover, the paperback versions of such fiction offer a wealth of often...exotic...cover art which frequently is considered a collectible in its own right:

  

Spies can be found lurking in some of the world's oldest and most enduring literature, including Homer's Illiad, the Christian Bible, and Shakespeare's Henry V.   In the early decades of the 19th century James Fenimore Cooper penned The Spy (1821--about a spy for George Washington) and The Bravo (1831--set in Venice in the days of the doges):

 

But it is the publication of three novels shortly after the beginning of the 20th century to which the spy novel as we know it today traces its direct descent.... 

Sizing Up Books at The Private Library

One of the most confusing aspects of book collecting for folks just beginning to build a private library is coming to grips with the often very specialized terminology that booksellers use to describe books.  That is why a considerable number of this blog's past posts have been devoted to explaining many of these terms in "plain English" (along with appropriate illustrations).

Recently, while visiting the website of independent bookseller Henry Hain III in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, we came across an image that rather nicely summarizes, as graphically as possible, some of the terms with which this blog has concerned itself over the past nine months (as with most of the images used on this blog, if you click on the image itself you should see a larger version of it):

 

Another problem for novice book collectors is figuring out what size book is referred to when booksellers describe a book as folio, octavo, etc.   Again, Hain has a nice image to help one grasp the concepts:

 

In fact, Hain's own glossary of book collecting terms is better than what is available from some of the major booksellers organizations, and we strongly commend it to your use (so much so that we have added a permanent link to it under Glossaries of General Book & Literary Terms in the left-hand column of this blog).

For folks who are more comfortable with text than with images, follow this link to a text description of book sizes from TomFolio's own excellent glossary, a permanent link to which you also will now find residing in the left-hand column of this blog under Glossaries of General Book & Literary Terms....

 

Books-to-Film and The Private Library

The recent publication of volume 2 of Kevin Johnson's excellent The Dark Page: Books that Inspired American Film Noir, reminds us of just how difficult it often is for filmmakers to really do justice to books:

  

The Internet Movie Database lists 28,550 "based on novels" films.  Those two words--"based on"--are the crux of the matter.  For a huge number of reasons--cinematic conventions, run-time limitations, special-effects budgets, nervous studio types afraid of deviating from formula, and film making teams eager to put their own imprints on a project--filmmakers, many book collectors will argue, wind up butchering the book on which a movie is based.  

Consider the case of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's 1993 novel of book collecting gone seriously awry, The Club Dumas.  With its numerous references to a wide range of literary classics, such as The Three Musketeers and A Study In Scarlet, many book collectors looked forward to the film adaptation of this novel--Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate--with great anticipation.  To say that most of these book collectors were...underwhelmed... would be a considerable overstatement....

 

Filmmakers, of course, will argue their films often are better than the books on which such films are based.  A case in point is Francis Ford Coppola's critically acclaimed The Godfather, which even the most ardent book collector generally acknowledges is far superior to Mario Puzo's overwrought novel on which the film is based:

There are, in fact, any number of books which both book collectors and filmmakers likely would agree would be difficult to translate to film under the best of circumstances.  John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic Confederacy of Dunces--with its evocations of a New Orleans long since washed away by Hurricane Katrina (not to mention the lack of a John Belushi or Chris Farley to play the role of Ignatius)--is arguably one such book.  Another might be Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, with its missing cat, missing wife, transporting well and a damn spot that just won't go away:

    

Perhaps because all book-to-film adaptations are a moving target (some 30 or so new movies are adapted from books every year), few writers have attempted to address the subject exhaustively:

    

For this reason many book collectors who build a private library around book-to-film adaptations often prefer to utilize one of the many available online lists of such adaptations (such as here and here)....

Collecting the World's Greatest Private Libraries

What constitutes a really great private library?  What kinds of books does such a library contain?  How is such a library furnished?  How many generations are required to bring such a library to its fullest fruition?  How much money must be lavished on such a library to insure its enshrinement in the pantheon of truly great private libraries?

We have spent the past 254 posts showing folks how, using very little money and a few simple collecting strategies, one can easily construct a very nice private library of one's own. 

Judging, however, from the records of searches that have been undertaken on this blog over the past eight months, strong urges among us lesser mortals still compel many of us to indulge in fantasies about what kind of private library we could construct given unlimited funds and several generations of familial collecting.

To assuage this interest we have long included in the right-hand column of this blog a section, Famous Private Libraries, that contains links to information about great libraries past and present.  Because auction records of great libraries often fail to describe the actual room(s) within which a collector's books are (were) housed, we undertake in this post to look at a few books which do provide such descriptions.

Our first title concerns a great private library that was pulled down after a mere four decades of existence, the library of Ralph Willet (1719-1795):

A Description of the Library at Merly in the County of Dorset was printed for Willet by John Nichols in 1785.  As noted in the catalog description of specialist bookseller Jonathan Hill (from whence comes the above image), Willet devoted his life to book collecting (and other interests) after inheriting his family's West Indian estates.  An early issue of the magazine The Book Collector (Thomas, Alan.  "Ralph Willet of Merly." 1963, pp. 439-448) observes that

[f]ew collectors can have given more thought to the creation of a fitting casket for their treasures. The room was 84 feet long 23 feet wide, and 23 feet high, of which 5 feet, six inches were coving. The bookcases, 13 feet 4 inches high, were of carved mahogany, enriched with a complete Ionic order. The top of each bookcase was flanked with busts, and in the centre was an ornamental scroll inscribed with the subject contained in that case, crowned by the lamp of science with the motto ‘Non Extinguatur’ "But it was the plasterwork of cove and ceiling which made this unique among Georgian libraries. Thought up by Willet and executed by a ‘Mr. Collins’, the theme was nothing less than the origin and progress of civilization.

Alas, this great library--probably the most magnificent private library building constructed in England in the 18th century--was torn down by Willet's nephew after Willet's books were sold in 1813.

These types of titles are rare--most great private libraries are known by the books they contained, not the room(s) in which such books were housed.  Thus, one's source of knowledge about such private libraries most often is the catalog of such books, said catalog created by the owner of the library or by his/her heirs or, much more frequently, by the auction house which disposed of the collector's library upon his/her demise (more on this shortly).

That said, more encompassing titles occasionally still get published, a recent notable example being The Holkham Library: A History and Description.  Privately printed for distribution to members of Great Britain's Roxburghe Club by the present (7th) Lord Leicester in 2006, the volume gives a detailed description and history of one of the world's finest private libraries, much of which was acquired on the Grand Tour of France and Italy by Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (1697-1759) who built Holkham Hall in Norfolk:

 

As a condition of membership in the Roxburghe Club (the oldest bibliophilic society in the world, founded in 1812), all members are required to produce (at their expense) a book for presentation to the other [39] members. The subject of such books lies entirely at the discretion of the individual member, providing that it lies within the normal scope of the Club’s [own] publications.

Accordingly, 100 copies of Lord Leicester's survey of his family's magnificent library (penned by D. P. Mortlock, the Earl's librarian) was bound in original quarter green morocco with library buckram sides blocked in gilt on spine and upper cover, of which 39 copies were reserved for presentation to Lord Leicester's fellow Roxburghe Club members.  The remaining 61 leather-bound copies, plus an additional 200 copies bound in original full green buckram, blocked in gilt on upper cover and spine, were reserved for sale "to the trade"  (recognition of the considerable interest generated by this library, one of the world's few truly great private libraries which remains in the possession of its founding family.  Housed in three rooms, the library is still occasionally open to public viewing.)

It usually, though, is not the owner of a great private library that oversees production of a detailed history and description of such library, but rather an outside observer.  Such especially is the case when a formerly private library is bequeathed to the public. Consider the case of Evergreen House, within which still is housed the magnificent four-room library of Ambassador John Work Garrett, which had descended from his father, Thomas Harrison Garrett, and was--during its heyday--the largest private library in Maryland. 

John Work Garrett and His Library at Evergreen House (privately printed, 1944) was penned by Benjamin Howell Grisworld, Jr., a Johns Hopkins University trustee (to which university this library passed when Ambassador Garrett died in 1942).  Griswold's banking firm, Alex Brown & Sons, had been instrumental in financing the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, source of the family's fortune (founded by Ambassador Garrett's grandfather, also named John Work Garrett):

 

If one's private library really is worthy of enshrinement in the pantheon of truly great private libraries, a detailed description of your library's furnishings might even make it into the auction catalog that disperses your collection.  This does not happen all that frequently, but it does happen.  And such auction catalogs, if recent, tend to be readily available in the marketplace and not particularly expensive (in fact, the softbound copies of such catalogs often can be scooped up on eBay and like venues for a mere pittance).  Some typical recent examples include The Library of H. Bradley Martin (Sotheby's, 1989-1990) and The Library of the Earl of Macclesfield Removed from Shirburn Castle (Sotheby's, 2004-2008):

    

Auction catalogs like these are, of course, also great for provenance ("chain of ownership") research, though such research often is bittersweet when a great library like Macclesfield ceases to exist....

The Wild West and The Private Library (Part IV)

In 1987 Patricia Nelson Limerick published The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, and the stormclouds of revisionist criticism of Turner's frontier thesis at last broke with full force:

Limerick's book eviscerates Turner's view of the settlement of the West.  Walter Nugent, in a 1994 article, nicely summarizes the main thrusts of Limerick's argument, which were given more succinct shape as a "non-manifesto" for a New Western History at a 1989 Santa Fe symposium:

the West as a place, not the frontier as a process, should be our focus.  “The term ‘frontier’ is nationalistic and often racist (in essence, the area where white people get scarce)” ....  The history of European advance across North America is better expressed by “invasion, conquest, colonization, exploitation, development, [and] expansion of the world market.”  Turner used “conquest” too, but the point is not the word itself, but rather the need to pay attention to the conquered as well as the conquerors.  The second point follows: whatever it was that happened, it involved “the convergence of diverse people—women as well as men, Indians, Europeans, Latin Americans, Asians, Afro-Americans. . . with each other and with the natural environment”....  The interaction of all these groups, whether in competition or cooperation, is the important thing.  “The West was not where we escaped each other, but where we all met”....  White males were certainly present, but so were many others whom Turnerian history has slighted. 

Third point: the interaction has continued and is still happening.  The “frontier” did not end in 1890, as Turner claimed; another hundred years of rich western history has followed, and it demands historians’ attention.  Fourth, the western story is neither one of triumph over adversity, with the resulting ennoblement of the American character, nor a unique and exceptional subjugation of an empty land (for Indians were virtually invisible in the traditional story except as enemies who resisted the inevitable).  Rather, it is a great moral ambiguity.  “In western American history, heroism and villainy, virtue and vice, and nobility and shoddiness appear in roughly the same proportions as they appear in any other subject of human history. . . .  This is only disillusioning to those who have come to depend on illusions”

A couple of years later (1991), historian Richard White published two books, both of which reinforced Limerick's arguments:

  

In his magisterial ‘It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own’: A New History of the American West, White delineates the forming of a region...where racial tensions and discriminations, extractive industries, highly urban settlements and a common dependence on the federal government were at least as important as the traditional elements we associate with a rural and independent West.

In The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, White

establish[ed] a meaningful new framework for the analysis of Indian-white relations. Rather than setting up easy victim-exploiter categories or glorifying Native American resistance, White examines how violence, cultural innovation, confrontation, and accommodation worked on the ground, in specific interactions and conflicts between and within settler and indigenous groups. The author views Native Americans and Europeans soberly, showing the deep divisions on each side in relation to questions of power, legitimacy, and meaning.

Thus, the history of The Wild West is increasingly a work-in-progress.  Folks nostalgic for the John Wayne version...

..., which adherents of the New Western History insist is but one facet of a many-faceted story, can always limit their collecting focus to Turner and his disciples.... 

The Wild West and The Private Library (Part III)

Turner's frontier thesis had begun to lose some of its potency as early as the late 1940s, which saw the publication of Earl Pomeroy's The Territories and the United States, 1861-1890: Studies in Colonial Administration (1947).  Considered the father of the federal school (historians who stress the role of the federal government in the development and administration of the American West, a primacy slighted by Turner's thesis), Pomeroy followed this up with his influential essay "Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environment" (Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 (1955): 579-600), which began the arguments against the exceptionalism inherent in Turner's thesis. 

Even books that used Turner's terms, such as Malcolm Rohrbough's The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 (1968; 3rd Edition, depicted below, 2007) argued against Turner that "models from older societies" were important in the great migrations westward, as settlers generally sought security before stability and relied on "shared values and priorities" to establish same:

 

More books began to undermine bits and pieces of Turner's thesis.  Julie Roy Jeffrey's Frontier Women: the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 (1979) reinforced Pomeroy's argument about the role of government in the settlement of the American West, pointing out, for example, that Wyoming's legislature had granted women's suffrage (the first in the nation to do so) precisely in order to attract "responsible" settlers.  (This landmark title was extensively revised [to account for the contributions of Native American, Hispanic, Chinese, and African American women] and was most recently published as Frontier Women "Civilizing" the West?" 1840-1880, 1998):

Other cracks began to appear in the Turner thesis.  John Unruh's 1979 publication of The Plains Across: the Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60 (most recently reprinted in 1993, the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Oregon Trail) also reinforced Pomeroy's argument about the primacy of government in development of the American West.  Unruh argued that emigrant fears about hostile tribes along the trails not only led to far more Native Americans than emigrants being slaughtered, but also led to repeated demands for military protection along the trails, greatly increasing government's presence in those areas:

 

As J. Thomas Murphy observed in his excellent overview of "Westward Expansion" (Reader's Guide to American History, 1997), books also were being published that attacked Turner's thesis for failing to account for the importance of impacts generated by countries like Mexico (along the borderlands that emigrants were traversing), and for ignoring the ecological self-destructiveness of emigrants:

    

It was not, however, until 1987 that the revisionist stormclouds broke with full force....

The Wild West and The Private Library (Part II)

On 12 July 1893, at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, noted historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivered an address to a meeting of the American Historical Association in which he suggested that

to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom-these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier.

Turner went on to observe that

now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.

Though not seen as particularly important at the time he delivered it (Turner's own parents, in town for the exposition, did not even bother to attend the meeting), the address was published later that year in Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.  It has been reprinted many times since, and is now widely held to be the single most influential essay ever published on the topic.  It is, in fact, the cornerstone of any private library purporting to concern itself with The Wild West.

The Proceedings..., like most early periodicals, is rarely available in the marketplace, rarer still in anything approaching Fine condition (where one may reasonably expect to part with four figures for the privilege of ownership).  Most book collectors add the essay to their private library via one of the many available reprints, the most enticing of which likely is Turner's own The Frontier in American History (1921), where the essay is reprinted as Chapter 1.  Like the Proceedings..., though, this is a rara avis, so most collectors settle for a later reprint:

    

As Jeffrey Flagg has pointed out, it took a few years for Turner's frontier thesis to take hold:

Turner claimed that traits and characteristics which developed during the Nineteenth-Century push from East to West -- individualism, nationalism, mobility, egalitarianism -- not only deviated from the perceived standard American cultural attitudes which prevailed at the time, but eventually came to dominate the formation of the American character.  With his announcement of the "closing" of the frontier, moreover, Turner implied that the nation would be forced to undergo a painful transition, from a perception of America as a land of endless boundaries, to one which required Americans to accept that their nation was finally a closed-space world, replete with the limitations inherent therein. 

Turner's thesis was not especially well received initially; on the contrary, many of his contemporaries could not let go of the reified idea that America's various political and social institutions germinated in pre-colonial England and, before that, in medieval Germany.  According to this view, American society was little more than an extension of European culture.  Turner's thesis, then, struck many historians as heretical by arguing that the United States had evolved into a unique society.

Turner's thesis eventually prevailed, however, helped along by other scholars who would take his thesis and embellish it.  Among the most significant of these was historian Ray Allen Billington (president of the Organization of American Historians, 1962-1963), who tirelessly advocated Turner's thesis in books like Westward Expansion, a History of the American Frontier (1949) and The Far Western Frontier, 1830-1860 (1956):

  

Westward Expansion... was in its fifth edition by 1982 (no doubt helped along by its extensive bibliography), but revisionist stormclouds were on the horizon, stormclouds that soon would break and inundate Turner's frontier thesis with a deluge of criticism....