The Private Library

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

In a provocative recent article, naval fiction maestro David Poyer suggests that there are five major elements and five minor elements which set sea fiction apart from most other types of fiction:

• An emphasis on separation (think Stephen Crane's short story The Open Boat)
• An emphasis on command (à la Vanderdecken in Heine & Wagner's operatic retelling of the legend of The Flying Dutchman)
• An emphasis on techné (the technologies that keep all those ships afloat)
• The sea, the sea...its constant presence
• The unknown...as many early nautical charts and atlases were prone to note: Here there be dragons

• Coming of age is often a theme (in some respects not that dissimilar from any other bildungsroman)
• There is a predominantly male focus
• There is much emphasis on exploration...
• ...and a frequent emphasis on combat (often to prevent others from exploiting the fruits of one's explorations)
• One's ship is often itself a major character

Fiction utilizing one or more of these thematic elements is known as early as the 18th century...

...but it is not until James Fenimore Cooper picked up his pen in America, and Captain Frederick Marryat picked up his pen in England, that the first true flowering of sea fiction began.

Although Cooper's The Pilot (1823) preceded Marryat's The Naval Officer, or Scenes in the Life and Adventures of Frank Mildmay (1829), many scholars treat them as more or less contemporaneous as respects their impact on the development of sea fiction:

  

Both Melville and Conrad were great admirers of Cooper's sea fiction, and Marryat's several books influenced both Conrad and Hemingway.

Folks interested in the early development of sea fiction likely will want to have on their shelves at least one good biography about each of these progenitors of sea fiction...

  

...as well as copies of their more popular works (see modern reprints depicted below), and perhaps as well more scholarly works like Thomas Philbrick's 1961 classic, James Fenimore Cooper and the Development of American Sea Fiction:

  

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

As famous as were the real-life voyages covered in yesterday's post, equally (if not more) famous voyages were yet to come.  Because we will be examining several of these in a future series of posts on exploration, readers looking for a taste of what's to come should consider delving into one or more of the publications depicted below:

 

Among the best known, and most influential, of all early reports of real-life voyages were those published about the three great voyages undertaken by Captain James Cook (1768-1779).  Reprinted numerous times within a few years of the voyages themselves, these reports reached huge audiences because of innovations like Alexander Hogg's "omnibus" edition (originally issued serially in 80 parts at sixpenny each from 1784-1786: these parts often were gathered together and bound into two or three folios, as depicted below, the image by way of rare book dealer Peter Harrington):

 

Books published by and about Cook, his voyages, and his associates during the voyages (e.g., scientist Joseph Banks, sailing master William Bligh, midshipman George Vancouver) constitute a virtual publishing industry unto themselves:

  

Other types of non-fiction also impacted development of sea fiction in the 19th century.  Among these were accounts of everyday sea life by lowly sailors such as Alexander Selkirk and Richard Henry Dana (modern reprints depicted below)...

  

...compendia on matters piratical by authors like "Charles Johnson" and John Esquemeling (also much reprinted, as below)...

    

...naval reports and similar publications regarding the all-important maritime military (the image below also by way of Peter Harrington):

All of these would be grist for the mill of writers of sea fiction.  Interestingly enough, although the first notable writer of such fiction served five years as a Navy midshipman, he is much better known for his tales set on land....

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

It is no secret that the great sea fiction of the 19th century drew much of its inspiration and often much of its remarkable detail from reports of real-life voyages that began to reach European audiences in the 16th century (of course, it also helped--as we shall see in tomorrow's post-- that many of the best authors of this fiction also had served at sea at some point in their lives). 

Most notable of these early reports of real-life voyages was probably Giovanni Ramusio's Navigationi et viaggi, the first volume of which appeared in 1550.  William Reese, one of America's most respected rare book dealers, observes in his catalog note for a later edition of this three-volume work that

Ramusio's effort is the first general compilation of narratives of the European exploration of the rest of the world. From John Locke to Henry Harrisse, scholars and bibliographers have praised Ramusio for his choice of material, his care and accuracy in presenting it, and his assiduous sorting of the evidence of the new discoveries. The first publications or first available publications of many of the most important voyages are contained herein, and the set is basic to any collection of voyages.

While deep-pocketed collectors may be able to pick up all three of the original volumes, most folks building a private library of sea literature likely will have to be content with one of several later reprints:

 

Regrettably, this also is true of virtually all the other early reports of voyages as well -- the originals are invariably quite rare in the marketplace, and inevitably quite expensive for that reason.

One of the best known of these is Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea...(1589, though his fame rests largely on the much expanded 3-vol. Second Edition of 1598-1600).  This great work (a few original copies of which contain  the first "Mercator projection" map published in England), is of such fame and importance that it has been reprinted numerous times and in several languages:

  

Another important early report of real-life voyages was the 25-volume Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam Orientalem et Indiam Occidentalem...(1590-1634), which today is especially revered for its numerous illustrations by the De Bry family of engravers (the first 13 volumes covered Grandes Voyages and were issued in a larger format than the final 12 volumes of Petits Voyages).   The illustration below is by way of The Bancroft Library (University of California at Berkeley):

If any work can be said to have "invented" the Americas (as historian Edmundo O'Gorman argued), De Bry's magnum opus was it.

Some of the best-known and most influential of these early reports of real-life voyages, though, were yet to come....

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

With the exception of Homer's great foundational work of sea literature, The Odyssey (Alexander Pope's celebrated translation is depicted below)...

...most of the earliest printed literature about the sea was produced for, or was a product of, the great voyages of exploration undertaken during the 11th-16th centuries by Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, Great Britain and France.  This literature is first and foremost portolan charts and nautical atlases and pilots' books, many of which were valued more highly than gold, as the knowledge encapsulated in these books and charts often allowed their owners to exploit resources in far-flung lands before anyone else even knew such lands existed (the 16th century portolan chart depicted below documents the waters around the island of Crete):

Anyone hoping to add examples of these to a private library of sea literature needs both very deep pockets and a lot of patience, as such items are both extremely rare (especially in anything approaching Fine condition) and extremely expensive.  This is especially true of landmark items like De Speighel der Zeevaert, the first printed atlas to contain both charts and written navigational directions, produced by the famed Dutch maritime pilot Lucas Jansz Waghenaer in 1584–85.  (This quickly went through many editions.  The illustration below, from the English edition of 1588, depicts the south coast of England):

If one lacks the required monetary resources, or patience, to buy original copies of these items, all is not lost, as many excellent histories of maritime cartography have been published in recent years that at least give one access to the intellectual fruits of these early maritime endeavors.  Some of these, such as the multi-volume The History of Cartography (University of Chicago Press), cover the entire world...

    

...while others cover specific types of maritime cartography in considerable detail:

    

As influential as these charts and books were to their original owners, and as desirable as they may be for a private library of sea literature, it is fiction which graces most private libraries of sea literature.  And the earliest works of maritime literature that would substantially influence the development of such fiction were not charts and atlases but rather printed accounts of the great voyages of exploration, which frequently included ships' logs....

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

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

--John Masefield, Sea Fever

  

Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalu'd jewels,
All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit there were crept,—
As 'twere in scorn of eyes,—reflecting gems,
That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.

Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, Scene IV

For thousands of years the human race has had a love/hate affair with the world's greatest bodies of water, the seas that comprise 71% of our planet's surface and 97% of our planet's water.   This love/hate affair has produced a vast body of literature -- histories, biographies, memoirs, poetry, and a not insignificant amount of truly  great fiction.  Over the next several days, we will examine this cornucopia of literary delights at some length....

Book Care and The Private Library

Perhaps the most frequent questions we get emailed here at The Private Library are questions regarding book care:

 

After pointing out the numerous podcasts and webcasts that can be found on this subject in the right-hand column of this blog, the most common follow-up question is ... but don't you have anything I can print out?

Well, after scouring the Internet for a one-stop, handy-dandy, no-nonsense, ready-to-print-out guide to book care, we think we've uncovered just what the doctor ordered.  This little guide is both fairly comprehensive and frequently quite witty, and is especially good if you live in an area with lots of humidity.  It was put together by Tappin Book Mine, an independent bookseller in northeast Florida (est. 1975).

Here are some sample bits of book care wisdom:

If your books take such a low priority in your life, that you'd even CONSIDER storing them in the garage, then you've got no business reading this. Put something less important on the porch or in the garage, like your spouse, or grandmother.

I hate bugs. Especially cockroaches. They eat books. They love books. Most better bookbindings are Cloth, and the cloth is filled with Sizing, to smooth it. The sizing is paste, usually made from wheat. Roaches love it. So do silverfish. Did you ever wonder how those ragged spots of rough cloth got on books? Yup, it was Roaches or silverfish. They don't just survive on a diet of books, they thrive.So, keep your house or book room insect free. Otherwise, you're just going to feed the bugs. The bugs will thank you by eating your library.

More at Book Care for Bibliophiles....

Vegetarianism and The Private Library

Some viewers of Food, Inc. (a 2010 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary), as well as several other recent movies that explore serious dysfunctions in America's food supply, may well be considering vegetarianism as a way of life.  

Several cultures that first arose in the Indian subcontinent have practiced vegetarianism for millenia, and evidence exists for the practice in ancient Greece as early as the 6th century BCE.  A number of religious traditions advocate vegetarianism in varying degrees, and while the first formal organization devoted to the practice in the West (The Vegetarian Society) was not founded until 1847, books about the practice have been published in the West since at least the 17th century.  Benjamin Franklin, for example, writes in his Autobiography (the unprepossessing true First Edition, written in French and published in Paris in 1791, is depicted below) that he was converted to vegetarianism at age 16 (although historians now dispute the extent of Franklin's long-term commitment):

Franklin attributes his conversion to "a Book written by one Tryon."  His reference is to Thomas Tryon's Philotheos Physiologus..., published in London in 1683.  (Lewis Gompertz, who founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824, also was famously influenced by Tryon's book.)

Other early books noting the benefits of vegetarianism include John Arbuthnot's 1731 Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments...(the book was so popular that a Second Edition, with advice on diet, was published the very next year); George Cheyne's 1733 title, The English Malady...(in which English depression is attributed to "the variable English climate, sedentary habits and too much meat and alcohol"); and Louis Lemery's 1745 work, A Treatise on All Sorts of Foods... (in which he famously cautions non-vegetarians "against overindulgence in frog meat").  These and other interesting tidbits are readily discovered in any of several excellent recent general histories of vegetarianism, such as those depicted below:

    

These types of general histories of the practice make an excellent foundation upon which to build a private library devoted to vegetarianism. Such histories can readily be supplemented by any number of recent histories that are specific to particular nations:

     

Some folks, of course, will want to do this sort of book collecting in much greater depth, adding to their shelves books about, e.g., famous vegetarians...

     

...cookbooks of various types...

    

...perhaps even books about the ethics of modern food production itself:

    

Given sufficient disgust with the "efficiencies" of modern food production, a private library about vegetarianism could even include books preparatory to a movement back to the land....   

"Library Binding" and The Private Library

Anyone who has perused print or online booksellers' catalogs for any length of time will have encountered not a few descriptions where a title is described as being in a library binding.  Many book collectors will not collect such books, especially if the titles actually saw use in a library (and thus also carry shelf marks on the spine, library stamps on the title or half-title, etc.).  Others avoid them in the belief that such titles are not "true" First Editions (a big mistake if, e.g., one collects H. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series).

Other book collectors actually prefer books published in a library binding (assuming they have not been "desecrated" by stamps, as above) for reasons that should be obvious from the following definition taken from the excellent Hain's Glossary:

 

A book bound for, or upon the request of, a library in a binding material with greater strength & durability than the binding used by the publisher for general retail distribution (called Publisher's Binding). Library bindings are characterized by the use of a strong Buckram, strengthen[ed] endpapers, muslin-reinforced end signatures, use of 4-cord thread in the sewing, & reinforcement (backlining) of the spine with fabric. Some books are issued in both a publisher's binding & a library binding when the publisher anticipates a book will be heavily purchased by libraries. Other books are rebound by a library before circulation due to their fragility, or in an effort to restore or preserve a valuable book not easily replaced. Library bindings are also found on bound periodical, pamphlets, and other printed material in need of preservation.

Library bindings are not at all uncommon on true First Editions, especially where titles are expected to encounter rugged use, such as juvenile literature.  A case in point is the true First Edition of the first title in the much-beloved Curious George series.  Issued in both a regular publisher's binding and a library binding, novice collectors can easily mistake the fact that these are not in fact the same binding.  While both bindings are red, the library binding is slightly larger.  The publisher's binding carries the following imprint: Lithographed in the U.S.A. by William C. D. Glaser, New York.  The library binding, though, carries this imprint: Lithographed in the U.S.A.  Such distinctions are why we continually stress the importance of bibliographies, especially if you are collecting First Editions or other costly titles (the copy below is the true First Edition in the publisher's binding and the extremely rare First Edition dustjacket):

  

Publishers issuing books in library bindings are subject to rigorous standards to insure that such bindings can in fact withstand prolonged abuse.  Not a bad binding to have on a book, especially if you expect your book to be subjected to young hands....

"Stitch n' Bitch" and The Private Library

Book collecting often arises as an adjunct to one's vocation or avocation, as we have pointed out in several previous posts (see., e.g., our posts of 29 April 2009 and 1 November 2009).  One's own "work" often is another's "hobby" (and vice-versa), and sometimes what begins as work or hobby eventually becomes its opposite (book collecting, which sometimes becomes bookselling, being a pertinent example).

Knitting and crocheting, which for centuries fell decidedly on the vocation side of this spectrum, has become in many industrialized nations more of an avocation.  And the hobby side of this spectrum appears, in not a few locales, to have become a bit snarky in recent years, if one may judge by the 736+ groups known collectively as Stitch n' Bitch.

The snarkiness is, of course, in good humor, as perhaps befits a vocation/avocation whose knitting component can be traced back to at least the 11th century CE (though there are no known surviving examples, knitting is believed to in fact date back even earlier).  Although the best-known and most commonly collected needlework books are the various pattern books that have been published to guide one's work, the literature of needlework is much older and more diverse than most hobbyists realize. The title below, for example, dates from 1782 and depicts, in the copper engraving on the left, a woman "knitting with her older daughter on one side and her baby asleep in a cradle on the other:"

 

Even earlier titles are known, such as the 1726 work The advantage of employing the poor in useful labour, and mischief of idleness, or ill-judg'd business.... (where one learns that the schools for sewing, knitting, spinning, and bone-lace working shew us a method how to educate our youth of one sex to industry and profitable labour, as our charity-school does for the other sex; and would we improve upon those examples, we have a specimen how the rest of our poor may be maintain'd in a religious, honest and frugal manner, and be managed so as to contribute to their own support).

Just as many of today's needlework enthusiasts work to the accompaniment of something tuneful on their Ipod or similar device, so did enthusiasts of the 19th century (the music score below is from 1849):

Examples like the above help folks who collect needlework literature get some sense of how the transition from vocation to avocation has developed over the past few centuries, as do histories such as those depicted below:

  

On many collectors shelves you will find these sorts of titles supplemented by books that introduce the very young to needlework, as well as books that promote needlework as a "manly art" (knitting was in fact a popular pastime for, among others, shepherds and fishermen in centuries past):

    

Some folks prefer to collect titles that focus on needlework in a particular locale, while others prefer to focus on titles specific to particular needlework items:

 

And for every general overview of needlework that one encounters on the shelves of those that collect the literature of this vocation/avocation, one also likely will find a score or more titles devoted to specialized aspects of knitting and/or crocheting:

  

Knit on...!

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part XI)

If one were to ask a typical group of well-read folks in the West to identify any of the following Arabic writers, it's unlikely they would recognize any, save perhaps for the Nobel Laureate in the group: Tawfīq 'al-Hakīm; Elias Khoury; Muhsin bin Diyaf; Abd al-Karim Ghallab; Marmoud Darwish; Naguib Mahfouz; Al-Tahir Wattar; Ibrahim Al-Kuni.  Part of the problem, as we've mentioned in several previous posts, is the difficulty of translating Arabic-language literature into Western European languages (a couple of the better English-language translations are depicted below):

    

But perhaps a more significant reason for this lack of recognition may be that certain literary genres, e.g. the novel, are fairly recent arrivals to Arabic literature and thus have not yet "matured" to the extent that they have in countries where those literary forms developed much earlier.  Even within the Arab world itself one sees this disparity, the novel as a literary genre in Egypt having matured much earlier in that nation that it has in, for example, Tunisia.

Western readers seeking to develop a more serious and sustained interest in Arabic literature have a number of options that were not available to them as recently as two decades ago, when Naguib Mahfouz became the first native Arabic writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.  

Much more Arabic literature has been translated into Western European languages, and prizes such as the Saif Ghobash – Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation have been introduced as an incentive to improve the quality of such translations.  Publishers like the American University in Cairo Press have undertaken long-term projects to publish a significant variety of Arabic literature in translation.  (As early as the 1970s, the Palestinian poet and critic Salma Khadra Jayyusi had called for precisely this sort of commitment from publishers.  Her Project for the Translation of Arabic (PROTA) successfully sponsored many such translations.)  Numerous websites have been developed along similar lines, as have a number of blogs.

Perhaps another Golden Age of Arabic Literature is not that far off....

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part X)

After the Islamic Golden Age, Arabic literature went into a steep decline, not to be resurrected and revitalized until the 19th century (one of the few English-language examinations of this period will be found in the volume below, which is part of The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature):

 

Al-Nahda (Awakening or Renaissance), the rough Arabic equivalent of Europe's Age of Enlightenment, began in Egypt in the 19th century and spread rapidly from there to other Arabic nations.  Fueled in part by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, and in part by reformist Arab rulers, this renaissance led to two distinct trends in Arabic literature.

The first trend sought to recapture classical Arabic literary traditions.  An example of this was Muhammad al-Muwaylihi's revival of the maqama in his Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham (first published in serial form in the newspaper Misbah al-Sharq in 1898; Roger Allen's English-language study and translation of this work is depicted below):

The second trend focused on emulating non-Arabic works that were being translated into Arabic as part of an effort by several Egyptian scholars to effect "a reconciliation and an understanding between Islamic and Western civilizations."  Notable among these scholars were Rifa'a al-Tahtawi and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra.  

Among the earliest translations which had an especially pronounced effect on Arabic literature was that of Alexandre Dumas, père's The Count of Monte Cristo, which spawned a mini-industry of Arabic historical fiction.

Political upheaval in a number of Arabic nations at the close of the 19th century saw censorship seriously impact the development of Arabic literature of all types, and it was not until 1913 that the first completely realized novel to be written in the Egyptian vernacular would be published.  This seminal work, Muhammad Husayn Haykal's rustic romance Zaynab, traditionally has vied with Zind (by Muhammad Hasnin Heikhal) and Adraa Denshawi (by Muhammad Tahir Haqqi) for the honorific of first true Arabic-language novel.  These early developments in the modern Arabic novel can all be traced in the 6-vol. Modern Arabic Novel: Bibliography and Critical Introduction, 1865-1995, depicted below:

Tomorrow, we conclude this series with a look at recent trends in modern Arabic fiction.... 

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part IX)

Our focus in this series has been on the literature of the so-called Islamic Golden Age (roughly 8th-15th centuries CE).  A simple analogy should help clarify our rationale for this: if you encountered someone totally ignorant of the glories of English-language literature, would you direct their attention to genre westerns or to the tragedies of Shakespeare...?

Most readers in the West have long been ignorant of native Arabic literary traditions (for reasons we've addressed in the previous posts in this series).  And this series of brief posts is unlikely to change that situation for most of our readers (if nothing else, the lack of adequate English-language translations will frustrate most efforts to better acquaint oneself with this literature).  In our last post of this series, we will examine some resources that may help you should you decide to pursue a more in-depth understanding of this ancient and often glorious literary tradition.  For now, we wish to turn our attention to Arabic fiction.

Some kinds of fiction are fairly new to Arabic literature.  Stage plays, for example, are largely a product of the modern era (recent translations of some of these are depicted below):

    

The epic has a much longer Arabic tradition.  Based largely on oral folkloric traditions (The Arabian Nights being the best-known example in the West), Arabic epics nonetheless have received much less scholarly attention than other types of Arabic fiction.  Two of the best-known epics are Taghribat Bani Hilal (also known as Sirat Abu Zeid Al Hilali), based on historical events of the 11th century CE, which was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2003. Another, better known in the West, and based on the exploits of a pre-Islamic Arabian-Abyssinian poet-warrior, is 'Antarah Ibn Shaddād al-'Absī (upon which Rimsky-Korsakov based his Symphony No. 2). Folks interested in the Arabic epic may find one or both of the following titles of interest:

  

The maqāma, which straddles the divide between prose and poetry (being rhymed prose) and between fiction and nonfiction (being a fictionalized, usually morally instructive, account of a real-life situation), was one of the few fictional literary forms to survive the decline of Arabic literature during the 17th-18th centuries.  It also is notoriously difficult to translate, as it usually is characterized by the complexities and extravagances of language known as badi'.  Purportedly invented in the 10th century by Badi' al-Zamān al-Hamadāni, the form traditionally features a trickster figure who preys on the unwary and dazzles them "with virtuoso displays of rhetorical acrobatics."  This literary form later was adopted and extended by Iberian Jews, most notably by Yehuda Alharizi in his Sefer Tahkemoni (Book of Tahkemoni) and by Yosef ibn Zabara in his Sefer sha’ashu’im (Book of Delights).  Folks interested in this literary form can get a sense of it from the following recent titles....

      

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part VIII)

One of the most famous early Arabic biographies is, not surprisingly, Sirat Rasul Allah (usually translated as Life of God's Messenger or The Life of Muhammad) penned in the 8th century CE by Muḥammad ibn Isḥaq ibn Yasār.  Although Muhammad's life has long been a source of much comment in the West, most English-language editions of Ibn Isḥaq's masterwork rely on the 1955 translation of Alfred Guillaume (a recent OUP reprint is depicted below, left).  This notwithstanding, the best biography of The Prophet currently available in English probably is that of Martin Lings (recent reprint depicted below, right). Lings' work is based on an in-depth and comprehensive reading and analysis of all known early Arabic sources, Ibn Isḥaq included:

  

Another important early Arabic biography, virtually unknown in the West (for reasons which will become clear shortly), is Ansab al-Ashraf (Genealogies of the Nobles).  This actually is a collection of biographies of the Arab aristocracy from Muhammad to the Umayyad and Abbāsid caliphs.  Penned in the 9th century by Ahmad Ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri, it is only recently (1997) that a complete edition has been published in any language (the so-called "Damascus Edition" published by Dar al-Yaqazah in 25 volumes).

A similar and equally important early "biographical dictionary" is Wafayat Al-A'Yan WA Anba Abna' Al-Zaman (The Obituaries of Eminent Men).  This was compiled in the 13th century by Abu-l ‘Abbas Ahmad ibn Khallikan; translated into German, French and English in the 19th century; and reprinted several times since.  (The 4-volume, 2700-pp. English translation that William MacGuckin, Baron De Slane did for London's Oriental Translation Fund [1842-1871] has been reprinted as recently as 1996 [in 7 vols. by Kitab Bhavan, India, depicted below]):

 

As is the case with biographies in the West, Arabic biographies often overlap with histories.  The greatest work of the greatest early Arab historian, Abū Zayd ‘Abdu r-Raḥman bin Muḥammad bin Khaldūn Al-Hadrami, is a case in point.  Muqaddimah (Prolegomena), the first volume of Ibn Khaldun's planned universal history (Kitab al-Ibar) not only encompasses biography, but also sociology, economics, historiography, demography and much more besides (for many of these disciplines it is in fact considered a foundational document).  Long considered an independent work in its own right, Muqaddimah has been translated not only into English, but also into French, Portugese, Spanish, Hebrew, Hindi, Russian and Swedish (to name but a few).  The 3-vol. edition of the first complete English translation (by Frank Rosenthal) occasionally pops up in the marketplace, although the 2004 abridgement of this translation (published as part of Princeton Classic Editions) is much more commonly available (depicted below):

 

Another important early Arabic history is Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk (History of the Prophets and Kings), a 10th century work by Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabar that is a primary source for the Zanj Revolt.  The most complete English-language translation was published in 40 vols. by the SUNY Press (depicted below):

A few other important early works of Arabic history also have been translated into English, but it is time to bring this series to a close with a few posts about Arabic fiction....

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part VII)

One of the most ancient and most revered types of Arabic non-fiction is the compilation.  Very few of these are well known in the West (The Arabian Nights being a notable exception).  

The most famous are those penned by the grandson of an African slave, Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr al-Kinani al-Fuqaimi al-Basri, usually shortened to Al-Jāḥiẓ).  This great polymath is believed to have authored almost 400 books (of which some 30 are known to survive) and often is credited as the founder of the Arab prose style.  His most important compilation is Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of Animals), a 7-volume collection of poems, proverbs, anecdotes, etc., about some 350 different animals in which the importance of food chains and environmental determinism are outlined some nine centuries before Darwin and Lamark. 

The best example of his prose style, though, probably is a compilation of stories he penned about greed and its effects, which usually is translated into English as The Book of Misers or Avarice and the Avaricious (a recent English edition is depicted below, left).  He wrote numerous other compilations as well, and some of the shorter pieces from several of these have been gathered together and translated into English in the title depicted below, right:

  

Another favorite type of Arabic non-fiction is the travel book.  Most of these are not well known in the West.  The 10th century work Surat al-Ardh (The Face of the Earth), penned by Mohammed Abul-Kassem ibn Hawqal, includes detailed descriptions of the Byzantine Empire, Spain, Italy and Sicily.  Another 10th century travel book, by Ahmad ibn Fadlān ibn al-Abbās ibn Rašīd ibn Hammād, gives an eyewitness account of a Viking ship-burial.  One of just a few of these earliest travel books to have been translated into English is Muhammad ibn Ahmad Shams al-Din Al-Muqaddasi's great work, Ahsan at-Taqasim fi Ma`rifat il-Aqalim (The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions), which contains especially good early descriptions of Palestine and Jerusalem:

 

By far the best-known Arabic-language travel book in the West, though, is that which recounts the 14th century voyages of Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta.  Battuta's three-decades-long explorations took him through virtually the entirety of the known Islamic world, as well as far afield into regions like Southeast Asia, Central Asia and China, north and west Africa, southern and eastern Europe, India and the Middle East.  The record of his epic journeys has been translated into numerous European languages:

 

Tomorrow, Arabic biographies and histories....

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part VI)

Every breeze that blows

brings your scent to me;

Every bird that sings

calls out your name to me;

Every dream that appears

brings your face to me;

Every glance at your face

has left its trace with me.

I am yours, I am yours,

whether near or far....

Because most of it has never been translated from Arabic into a Western European language, much of the world's greatest love poetry is virtually unknown to Western audiences.  The above snippet is an exception, since the star-crossed lovers Leyli and Majnun may well be the originary source of Arthur Brooke's 1562 Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet, upon which is based the West's greatest romantic drama by its greatest playwright.

Arabic love poetry most often is written in the form known as a ghazal, which in Arabic follows a strict pattern of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter.  The best known modern poet producing ghazals in English probably was the late Agha Shahid Ali:

  

As Charles Horne observed, the earliest Arabic poetry (from whence the ghazal is descended) was based largely on harmonies of sound and striking turns of phrasing. Hence most of the poems are brief; ... a poet's fame depended upon a few brilliant couplets rather than on any sustained melody or long-continued flight of noble thought (the excerpt below, by Abu Al Salam, is a typical example):

Come, Leila, fill the goblet up, 

Reach round the rosy wine, 

Think not that we will take the cup 

From any hand but thine.

A draught like this 'twere vain to seek, 

No grape can such supply; 

It steals its tint from Leila's cheek, 

Its brightness from her eye.

 

Soul of the Soul (vol. 1 depicted below), a recently published Arabic-language encyclopedia of early Arabic poetry -- which at 2790 poems, and fragments of poems, is the largest known compilation of such poetry ever published -- likely contains many such examples, but an English-language translation is likely to be decades away, assuming such translation is undertaken at all:

In some respects, Arabic poetry is not all that dissimilar from Western poetry in its evolution, the most obvious example being the "courtly" phase through which both have passed.  In the West, we celebrate this as the era of the medieval troubadour. In the Arab world this gave rise to the complexities of badi', a notoriously difficult-to-translate form of Arabic poetry full of metaphors, puns, juxtapositions and "tricky theological allusions."  As we noted in yesterday's post, such difficulties go a long way towards explaining the sporadic (at best) attempts that have been made to translate Arabic poetry into Western European languages like English:

  

Tomorrow, a look at the prose side of Arabic literature.... 

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part V)

Although fragments of Arabic literature are known as early as the 6th century CE, scholars are unaware of significant poetry having been penned in Arabic prior to the 8th century. This is because Arabic does not appear to have been extensively used as a written language prior to the compilation of the Qur'an in the 7th century (i.e., while poetry may have been a large part of Arabic culture prior to that period, there are no known manuscript sources which reliably validate this).

Two important compilations of poetry survive from the pre-Islamic period of Arabic literature. One is called the Mu'allaqāt (usually translated as The Hanging Poems or The Suspended Odes, since tradition holds that these poems once were hung in, or from, the Kaaba in Mecca, though most scholars believe this to have been very unlikely).  The other is known as the Mufaddaliyat.

Purportedly compiled by 8th century Arab scholar Hammad Ar-Rawiya, the Mu'allaqāt (a snippet of which appeared in yesterday's post) consists of seven long poems by seven different poets.  To fully appreciate these poems, one must appreciate both the context of their composition (within a Bedouin culture characterized by strong tribal kinship) and the means of their transmission (centuries of oral transmission inevitably introducing varying degrees of mutilation -- rearrangements and/or omission of verses, the piecing together of unrelated verses into a contiguous whole, etc.)  This sort of critical understanding has long been required of other great works of world literature that also are the product of oral traditions (e.g., the works attributed to Homer). 

Although the first English-language translation of the Mu'allaqāt was that undertaken by Sir William Jones in 1782, the best known English-language translation probably is that found in the 2 volumes of Ancient Arabian Poetry authored by Sir Charles James Lyall (1885, 1894):

A recent commentary on these poems by Pierre Joris notes that all attempts at English translation inevitably fail to convey the real beauty of these poems, because the monorhyme scheme & the complex meters are impossible in English, [and] even more troublesome is the high rhetoric structure, something so alien to contemporary American poetry & voice as to be inadmissible. In fact all translations that try to reproduce it sound like bad late Victorian or Tennysonian orientalism.  Which does not, of course, keep Joris from attempting his own translation, this snippet coming from The Ode of Tarafa:

I wouldn't give a damn

to know the hour of my death

if it weren't for these three:

first -- & quit bugging me about it --

the pleasure of an old wine that foams

as soon as you add water

then there is the call from someone in need:

I come running, hunched over,

a tamarisk wolf sensing water

& last but not least the joy in shortening a cloudy day

laying a well-fleshed lady

under a firmly pitched tent.

I have spent my life generously drinking

at its source .  If death should come tomorrow

whose throat would be parched?

 The Mufaddaliyat is an anthology purportedly compiled by Al-Mufaddal ibn Muhammad ibn Ya'lah between 762-784 CE.  It traditionally contains 126 poems by 67 authors (the earliest dating to ca. 500 CE).  Much of what modern scholars know about pre-Islamic Arab life can be traced to the magnificent diversity of this collection.  

Best known to Western readers from Lyall's 1918-1924 3-volume translation (currently available as a print-on-demand reprint), recent translations by scholars like Michael Sells (in Literary Heritage of Classical Islam: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James A. Bellamy) are making this remarkable anthology accessible to a modern audience:

Graceful as a rush of papyrus,

beauty comes to her

before others,

and she grows into it early.

She reveals to you 

a delicate face

paper smooth,

glowing

Like the pearl of pearls

distant Persians use

to light up the throne-hall 

of a sultan,

Purchased at great price,

retrieved by a diver,

bone-thin,

like an arrow.

  

Tomorrow, the evolution of Arabic poetry....

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part IV)

"Arabic literature," like "Western literature," is a misnomer, since neither is monolithic.  Western literature includes not only English-language literature, but also literature in Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish ... a great diversity of literature in a great diversity of languages and scripts.  Likewise, Arabic literature, while written primarily in Classical Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic, is drawn from what often are centuries-old oral traditions in Colloquial Arabic, Maghrebi Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Iraqi Arabic and Judeo-Arabic (to name but a few).  Supporting and promoting this great diversity of literature are some of the world's most beautiful calligraphic scripts, including Naskh (most commonly used for printing books); Nastaʿlīq (primarily a Persian script, also known as Ta'liq or Farsi, and of great beauty -- see below); Ruq'ah; Thuluth; and Kufic (again, to name but a few):

 

Taken as a whole, Arabic literature has always been more about poetry than about prose, at least up until the 20th century.  While compilations of folktales and stories like those of The Arabian Nights certainly feature prominently in the literature, even these usually contain large sections of saj` (rhymed prose).  This reflects a common preoccupation of Arabic literature, that it be both pleasing to the ear and easy to remember.  A snippet of one of the earliest and most famous poems in Arabic literature (The Poem Of Imru-Ul-Quais) is reproduced below (trans. F. E. Johnson):

   ...Early in the morning, while the birds were still nesting, I mounted my steed.

   Well-bred was he, long-bodied, outstripping the wild beasts in speed,

   Swift to attack, to flee, to turn, yet firm as a rock swept down by the torrent,

   Bay-colored, and so smooth the saddle slips from him, as the rain from a smooth stone,

   Thin but full of life, fire boils within him like the snorting of a boiling kettle;

   He continues at full gallop when other horses are dragging their feet in the dust for weariness.

   A boy would be blown from his back, and even the strong rider loses his garments.

   Fast is my steed as a top when a child has spun it well.

   He has the flanks of a buck, the legs of an ostrich, and the gallop of a wolf.

   From behind, his thick tail hides the space between his thighs, and almost sweeps the ground.

   When he stands before the house, his back looks like the huge grinding-stone there.

   The blood of many leaders of herds is in him, thick as the juice of henna in combed white hair.

   As I rode him we saw a flock of wild sheep, the ewes like maidens in long-trailing robes;

   They turned for flight, but already he had passed the leaders before they could scatter.

   He outran a bull and a cow and killed them both, and they were made ready for cooking;

   Yet he did not even sweat so as to need washing.

   We returned at evening, and the eye could scarcely realize his beauty

   For, when gazing at one part, the eye was drawn away by the perfection of another part.

   He stood all night with his saddle and bridle on him,

   He stood all night while I gazed at him admiring, and did not rest in his stable....

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part III)

Just as the Bible is the source and inspiration for much of the West's greatest literature, so is the Qur’an the source and inspiration for much of the greatest Arabic literature.  As Kadi and Mir point out in Literature and the Qur’an (Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, vol. 3), 

[t]he main areas in which the Qur’an exerted noticeable influence on Arabic literature are diction and themes; other areas are related to the literary aspects of the Qur’an particularly oaths..., metaphors, motifs, and symbols.  As far as diction is concerned, one could say that Qur’anic words, idioms, and expressions, especially "loaded" and formulaic phrases, appear in practically all genres of literature and in such abundance that it is simply impossible to compile a full record of them.  For not only did the Qur’an create an entirely new linguistic corpus to express its message, it also endowed old, pre-Islamic words with new meanings and it is these meanings that took root in the language and subsequently in the literature....

We shall examine some of these influences in our next few posts.  For the moment, we want to turn our attention to the Qur'an itself:

 

Considered purely as a work of literature, it is a remarkable achievement, every bit the equal of the King James Bible in the beauty and power of its language.  The two books are in fact more similar than different, the Qur'an summarizing many of the major narratives that also are recounted in the major Christian and Judaic religious texts, exploring some of these narratives in even greater detail, offering alternative versions of others.  

What one takes away from even the most cursory side-by-side examination of the Qur'an and the Bible is that the extremist interpretations of the Qur'an by groups like Al-Qaeda bear about as much resemblance to traditional Islamic theology as the Ku Klux Klan's interpretations of the Bible bear to traditional Christian theology.  (People being people, we all love to nurse our prejudices rather than confront them, the end result being that entire populations are demonized because of the acts of an unrepresentative, but vocal, minority.)

This is doubly unfortunate given that the Qur'an has been readily available in Western languages for centuries, the first Latin translation appearing in 1143, the first English-language edition in 1649, the first German-language edition, depicted below, in 1772:

 

A very accessible English translation (by Thomas Cleary) has been published recently by Starlatch Press:

 

Some typical verses...

 

81: The Rolling Up

In the name of God, the Benevolent, the Merciful

1. When the sun is rolled up

2. and when the stars fall lusterless

3. and when the mountains are blown away

4. and when the pregnant camels are neglected

5. and when the wild beasts are herded

6. and when the oceans are flooded

7. and when the souls are matched

8. and when the infant girl who was buried is asked

9. for what offense she was killed;

10. And when the pages are opened,

11. and when the sky is stripped

12. and when the blaze is fired up

13. and when the garden is drawn near

14. each soul will know what it has brought about.

15. Yes, I swear by the planets that recede,

16. run, and disappear,

17. and the night as it darkens

18. and the dawn as it breaks

19. that this is the word of a noble messenger....

 

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part II)

In a town in Persia there dwelt two brothers, one named Cassim, the other Ali Baba. Cassim was married to a rich wife and lived in plenty, while Ali Baba had to maintain his wife and children by cutting wood in a neighboring forest and selling it in the town.

One day, when Ali Baba was in the forest, he saw a troop of men on horseback, coming toward him in a cloud of dust. He was afraid they were robbers, and climbed into a tree for safety. When they came up to him and dismounted, he counted forty of them. They unbridled their horses and tied them to trees.

The finest man among them, whom Ali Baba took to be their captain, went a little way among some bushes, and said, "Open, Sesame!" so plainly that Ali Baba heard him....

If the average reader in "The West" has any exposure at all to Arabic literature, it usually is through the written version of a centuries-old compilation of oral folktales and stories known variously in English as The Arabian Nights, The Arabian Nights Entertainment or The Thousand and One Nights.  This is a bit ironic, since the best known tales from this compilation -- such as Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves, above, as rendered by Andrew Lang and illustrated, below, by Maxfield Parrish -- are not found in the original Arab sources for this compilation, but were interpolated into it by European translators utilizing other Middle Eastern folktales:

In fact, the original Arabic sources (known as the "Syrian tradition") contain very few tales.  The most accurate modern publication of this tradition is Muḥsin Mahdī's 1984 Arabic edition based on a 14th century Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale.  This was translated into English by Husain Haddawy in 1990:

Western readers whose only exposure to Arabic literature is Sir Richard Burton's somewhat florid and sexually exotic 1885 translation of the more copious "Egyptian tradition" (see below) likely will find Mahdi's rendering, which presents the tales as they are thought to have first been heard by a medieval Arabic audience, to be quite short and coarse:

 

While the earliest evidence for these tales is from the 9th century CE, the earliest preserved manuscript sources (as noted above) are from the 14th-15th centuries CE.  These earliest collections draw upon three major sources:

• Persian tales influenced by Indian folklore and adapted into Arabic by the 10th century
• Stories recorded in Baghdad during the 10th century
  
• Medieval Egyptian folklore

While almost all versions of these tales share a core of common stories (e.g., The Fisherman and the Jinni), the most famous English-language versions (including Burton's) are based largely on a French translation first published by Antoine Galland in twelve volumes from 1704-1717.  Because Galland's translation includes a number of tales that do not exist in the earliest surviving manuscript sources (such as Ali Baba), some scholars speculate that four centuries of fires, floods, neglect and/or warfare may have destroyed some of the sources to which Galland may have had access.  (Galland himself asserted that the additional tales came from a Maronite scholar in Aleppo.)

Whatever the case, Gallant's much more copious Egyptian tradition of the tales was added to continually during the 18th-19th centuries, and it is through this tradition that most Western readers have gained what limited exposure they have to native Arabic literature.  

As famous as the Egyptian tradition of these tales may be in the Western world, it is no more representative of the diversity and grandeur of Arabic literature than the latest Stephen King bestseller is representative of the diversity and grandeur of English literature....  

Arabic Literature and The Private Library (Part I)

For eight long, dark centuries (from roughly 500-1300 CE), the flame of learning in Western Europe flickered and sputtered, coming precariously close to extinction on a number of occasions.

What saved much of the accumulated knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome from being forever lost to history was the salvage work, and translations, undertaken by Arab scholars in Toledo (Spain), Norman Sicily and a handful of other sites.  (Such salvage work also was undertaken in a number of Western European monasteries, most notably in Ireland, but the focus of this salvage effort was primarily classic literature.  To Arab scholars must go the credit for saving ancient philosophy and science:)

    

Given the enormous debt that Western Europe owes to Arab scholarship, it is puzzling why the Arab world's own native literary traditions remain so poorly known and understood in the West.

Over the next several days we shall examine this conundrum in more detail, for by ignoring such a large body of literature, the West is missing out on some of the finest works of literature ever written....

 

Football and The Private Library

As we observed in our post of 26 December 2009, the types of play tolerated and promoted in a society says much about a society's needs and values.  Nowhere is this observation more frequently affirmed than in that annual celebration of the cult of sports and the cult of celebrity known as Super Bowl Sunday, an event which pumps billions of dollars into the local economies of communities across the USA and into many other communities around the world as well.

The game of football around which these cults are centered (the American version, not rugby or soccer, which also are called football), was not always so popular.  A fascinating exercise for fans of the sport might be to trace the game's rise to prominence though the simple expedient of building a private library around this topic.

The earliest books on the subject were either rulebooks or books promoting the new sport to an audience unfamiliar with it.  Such books are often quite rare (especially in anything approaching Fine condition) and quite expensive on the infrequent occasions when one chances upon them in the marketplace:

    

This focus also shows up in early fiction devoted to the subject:

  

Celebrity and professionalization came to the sport fairly early, however, as a number of scarce titles make clear:

     

In tracing the sport's rise to prominence, one also sees a fairly early shift from group celebrity to individual celebrity:

       

Some of the more interesting titles one encounters in tracing the sport's rise to prominence deal with what the distaff side might get out of at least tolerating what has been an overwhelmingly masculine concern with play:

    

Enjoy the game!

Mezzotint and The Private Library

One of the longer-lived techniques used to illustrate books, mezzotint was first used in Amsterdam in the 2nd quarter of the 17th century.  It is a drypoint method of intaglio engraving that became the first tonal method used to make prints and illustrate books.  As Elizabeth Barker observes: 

A mezzotint emerges from darkness into light. First, the artist (or an assistant) roughens (or "grounds") the copperplate using a "rocker," a broad, semi-circular, serrated-edged, chisel-like implement specific to mezzotint. Moved rhythmically and repeatedly across the plate, the rocker eventually yields a pronounced overall texture (or "burr") that will catch the ink. (If printed at this stage, the plate yields a solid field of rich, velvety black.) Next, using a "scraper," a triangular blade fixed in a knife handle, and a "burnisher," a blunt implement with a hard smooth rounded end (both standard engraving tools), the artist smoothes selected passages of the burr, reducing or removing its ink-catching capacity, and thereby rendering the lighter-toned passages of the design. Finally, the artist (or a specialist printer) inks the surface of the plate and transfers the design to a sheet of dampened paper by running it through an intaglio press (beneath layers of protective felts). The process requires great care, since the burr of a mezzotint plate makes it more fragile than those used in other printmaking techniques. Because a mezzotint plate's roughened surface deteriorates rapidly from repeated printing, each plate will render only a small number of truly first-rate impressions. The plate can be reworked (yielding successive "states" of the print), but such reworking historically has not always been expert, and connoisseurs have come to favor early proofs, pulled when the original burr is fresh.  (For a modern video demonstration of the technique, click here.)

Because mezzotint produced a wide range of tonal values without hatching, cross-hatching or stippling (see our post of 17 December 2009), the technique became especially popular in Great Britain, which quickly surpassed Amsterdam as the center of production. (The first known mezzotint, printed in Amsterdam by Ludwig von Siegen in 1642, is depicted below.  He shares with Ruprecht Pfalzgraf bei Rhein, Herzog von Bayern, the distinction of co-discovering the technique:)

Mezzotint was especially favored for printed reproductions of oil paintings, as well as for printing portraits.  Frontispiece portraits in books of the 17th-18th centuries depict one well-known use of the process...

...although its use to reproduce stand-alone prints of paintings is where the technique can be seen to best effect:

 

For a technique that is little used today (it fell out of favor after the introduction of stippling in the 1760s), a surprising number of modern books have been published about mezzotint:

    

The best known modern practitioner of the technique, Japanese artist Yozo Hamaguchi, was introduced to mezzotint by poet E.E. Cummings:

 

To aficionados, a revival of the technique is overdue....

Essential References for The Private Library

Every private library is different. 

Some, as we have noted in previous posts, are mere accumulations of books (see, e.g., our post of 6 April 2009).  Nothing wrong with this--it's where most book collectors begin, and where many prefer to remain.  Other private libraries--given sufficient time and financial resources--become collections (see, e.g., our post of 7 April 2009).

The more time and money one devotes to one's private library, the more focused one's book buying becomes, the more that one's private library edges away from accumulation to collection, the more likely it is that you will want and need a number of reference works to help you achieve your book collecting goals.  What might those reference works be?

Obviously, if you are collecting a specific author, you probably will want on your bookshelves the most comprehensive possible bibliography of that author's works.  Same if you're collecting the works of a specific illustrator, or printer, or publisher.

But some works are so essential to an understanding of books, their history, their technologies, that they deserve to be on the shelves of all book collectors, irrespective of the type of private library being built.

What are those books?

Drop us a line at [email protected] and let us know.  More importantly, let us know why your suggested title(s) should be on the shelves of all book collectors.

We will publish this list in an upcoming series of posts.

Here are three titles to get you thinking....

     

Book Fairs and The Private Library (Part IV)

Most book collectors, if they attend a book fair at all, are far more likely to attend a small, local book fair than they are to attend a major international antiquarian book fair.  This is especially true of novice book collectors. 

Before the advent of the Internet, local book fairs and independent booksellers were the primary means by which collectible books were re-distributed in the marketplace.  Although their respective roles have been greatly diminished by the always open, far-more-books-than-you-will-ever-find-at-a-book-fair-or-independent-bookseller aspects of the Internet, both independent booksellers and local book fairs continue to survive for a number of reasons, reasons which novice book collectors often do not fully appreciate until after they have lost money in one or more online transactions:

Local book fairs and open bookshops allow you to examine your purchase before you buy.  Novice book collectors consistently underrate the importance of this, the result being that The Private Library's email inbox sees a steady stream of missives from novice book collectors who were burned by an Internet transaction. 

The most common complaints--that a book was not as described or was poorly packaged for shipping--are largely eliminated when one buys at local book fairs and independent booksellers.  At both book fairs and open bookshops one can, if one wishes, collate one's book before purchasing it to make sure it is textually and/or illustratively complete.  One can, before purchasing the book, verify the seller's description of condition, edition and other important matters. 

(Most Internet booksellers are hobbyists who do not have a background in professional bookselling or in the terminology associated with the profession.  It is not at all uncommon for a description of a book offered by such online sellers to have been copied from the description of a professional bookseller and then "pasted" by the hobbyist into his or her own description of a book being sold.  While the book described by the professional bookseller may well be unopened, the book offered by the online seller may only be uncut, but since the online seller does not know the difference, you are unlikely to know the difference either, until after you have wasted time and money buying the latter book, and have wasted even more time and money returning the book.) 

This alone is sufficient for many book collectors to do most of their serious book buying at book fairs and in open bookshops:

  

But an equally compelling reason for attending local book fairs is that one is much more likely to chance upon undiscovered treasures at local book fairs.  Think, for a minute, about where most of the stock at such fairs comes from. 

At many local book fairs a large portion of the stock on display is likely to have been purchased directly from local residents...and you never know what someone has had lying about in their attic, their garage, or their barn, covered with dust, unknown and unloved for decades.  The bookseller who buys such items may or may not be able to determine their true worth.  If your knowledge of such items is more certain than the bookseller's, you often can walk away with books worth hundreds or thousands of dollars for a mere pittance.  It happens more often than most people think:

Book Fairs and The Private Library (Part III)

If you go to the left-hand column of this blog and look under Selected Bibliographic Resources, you will find three separate book fair calendars:

• Calendar of Antiquarian Book Fairs Worldwide
• Calendar of Local (USA) Book Fairs
• Calendar of Major Commercial Book Fairs Worldwide

The first calendar draws from the Events Calendar of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), the foremost international organization of its type.  The book fairs listed on this calendar are precisely the sorts of book fairs that we covered in yesterday's post.  Because not everyone lives in an area where such fairs are routinely held (or can afford to attend such fairs if they do live near them), one can get a virtual taste of such fairs by going to the right-hand column of this blog and looking under Bookish Podcasts and Webcasts for the following series of videos:

• Bibliomania I
• Bibliomania II
• Bibliomania III
• Bibliomania IV
• Bibliomania VI (V)
• Bibliomania VII (VI)

This series of videos actually is a single film that has been broken into segments for faster transmission over the Internet.  The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the foremost organization of its type in the United States, had a documentary film made of its 36th California Antiquarian Book Fair (held that year in San Francisco--the fair alternates each year between San Francisco and Los Angeles).  It offers a fascinating glimpse into the sort of high-powered book fair that few book collectors will ever actually get to experience in person.

The third book fair calendar noted above deals with the major commercial book fairs mentioned in the first post of this series--i.e., fairs where the selling is from major publishers to major resellers.

The second calendar listed above covers small, local book fairs held around the USA, which are not all that different from local book fairs held elsewhere in the world (the fair depicted below, Tipperariana, is held the second Sunday of every February in Fethard, Ireland):

 

Because most book collectors get their start at such local fairs, and because one is far more likely to find undiscovered treasures at such fairs than at major antiquarian book fairs, we shall be examining such book fairs in more detail in tomorrow's post....

Book Fairs and The Private Library (Part II)

To serious book collectors, a major antiquarian book fair is like the Super Bowl, Avatar in Imax 3D, and dinner at The French Laundry all rolled into one.  Which is to say, not only is there an embarrassment of riches on display (typical examples are depicted below), but also more bookish talent and knowledge gathered together in one place than one likely will ever encounter anywhere else on the globe:

       

As we have pointed out in several previous posts (see, e.g., our post of 9 April 2009), some of the world's greatest and most important private libraries were created for very little money.  This is because the book collectors who built those private libraries were collecting what other people were not; they were collecting methodically (paying special attention to condition and completeness); and--more often than not, especially as their collections grew--they availed themselves of specialist knowledge.

Major antiquarian book fairs represent perhaps the greatest concentration of specialist knowledge most book collectors will ever likely encounter.  More importantly, the booksellers, collectors, rare book curators and others who attend such fairs often are quite amenable to sharing this specialist knowledge with novice book collectors if they think such an exchange will be mutually beneficial.

How do you, the novice book collector, attain this nirvana?  In simplest terms: be honest, forthright and serious in your approach.

Let the bookseller (or the rare book curator or fellow book collector) know upfront that you are new to book collecting.  Let them know precisely what your book collecting interests are (if you know--if not, let them know that).  Give booksellers some idea of whether you hope to buy or sell anything at the show (remember booksellers are there, first and foremost, to make a profit...and they always are in need of fresh stock).  Thank the person to whom you are speaking for their time (whatever the outcome), and respect their own reasons for being at the show by graciously stepping aside should others need their attention.

Most of the above is simple courtesy and common sense, but it is surprising how often one encounters a major lack of both at major antiquarian book fairs...on both sides of the aisle.

Novice book collectors can greatly increase their chances of being taken seriously by all concerned by doing a little research before attending the show.  If, for example, you want to build a private library of "golden age" science fiction, are there any dealers who specialize in such books who will be setting up at the book fair you'll be attending?  (Most major antiquarian book fairs post an exhibitor list on their website several months prior to the show, and most of these exhibitors post a show inventory to let folks know what they will be bringing with them to the show.)

If the antiquarian book fair that you'll be attending has events planned for novice collectors, by all means attend as many of these as you can.  If you come away from a major antiquarian book fair with nothing else to show for your attendance except the education you picked up at such events, you will have repaid your expense of attending the show many times over.  (Note which booksellers and other experts are presenting at such events--these folks have already indicated they are receptive to novice collectors!)

Major antiquarian book fairs often are spread out over many 1000s of square feet, and working such a show requires some appreciation of one's own limits.  Because these events often take place in facilities with bare concrete floors (and even if the floors are carpeted, you can count on doing lots of walking), comfortable, sturdy shoes are an an absolute must.  So is fuel--a hearty breakfast is recommended, especially if the food onsite is likely to be insipid, expensive, or both, and if there are no other nearby venues for food or drink.  Finally, if you actually make a few purchases, your arms and shoulders will thank you profusely if you ask booksellers to hold your purchases for pickup at the conclusion of your peregrinations (many booksellers are happy to extend this courtesy if it is not abused)....