The Private Library

David R. Godine and The Private Library

As we have observed in repeated posts over the past 15 months, much of what gets published nowadays should be an embarrassment to the companies doing the publishing--way too many books nowadays are poorly edited (or not edited at all!), poorly printed (virtually no margins, hard-to-read type, no whitespace to relieve the eyes) and poorly bound (don't even think of opening the book wide enough to actually read it!).

The exceptions to this trend are few and far between.  Fine press publishers still fight the good fight.  As does the occasional specialist publisher like The Folio Society.  But among commercial publishers, this task seems to have fallen to the few remaining independent publishers.  One such publisher, which this year is celebrating its 40th anniversary (a difficult enough achievement in itself), is David R. Godine.

Reading Godine's "mission statement" makes one realize just how far most commercial publishers have strayed:

Our aim is to identify the best work and to produce it in the best way possible. All of our hardcover and softcover books are printed on acid-free paper. Many hardcovers are still bound in full cloth. The list is deliberately eclectic and features works that many other publishers can't or won't support, books that won't necessarily become bestsellers but that still deserve publication. In a world of spin-offs and commercial "product," Godine's list stands apart by offering original fiction and non-fiction of the highest rank, rediscovered masterworks, translations of outstanding world literature, poetry, art, photography, and beautifully designed books for children.

Founded in 1970, Godine rarely publishes more than thirty titles in any given year.  The firm started publishing high-quality books for children in 1980.  It recently launched separate imprints for high-quality photography books (Imago Mundi) and high-quality literature in translation (Verba Mundi). Perhaps equally important, the firm maintains a very active reprint program--one reason, perhaps, why John Martin's famed Black Sparrow Press entrusted its backlist to Godine.

One could do much, much worse than collect titles from this distinguished publisher....

Collecting Books by Fictional Authors at The Private Library

What do all of the following titles have in common...?

• The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
• Histoire Abrégée de la Poésie Anglaise
• Only a Factory Girl
• The Murderer's Vade Mecum
• Conversations with Maud'Dib
• Suggestions for the Amelioration of Sick Bays
  

All of the above titles are imaginary.  The titles were invented by real authors to serve the fictional purposes of real books.  The invented authors for the above six titles were:

• Emmanuel Goldstein
• Humbert Humbert
• Rosie M. Banks
• Lord Peter Wimsey
• Princess Irulan
• Stephen Maturin

To find out what real book by what real author featured the above fictional titles/authors, simply click on the fictional authors above.

Wikipedia, which lists a surprising number of imaginary books and authors, notes that such books often

1) provide the basis of [a] novel's plot, (2) add verisimilitude by supplying plausible background, or (3) act as a common thread in a series of books or the works of a particular writer or canon of work. A fictional book may also (4) be used as a conceit to illustrate a story within a story, or (5) be essentially a joke title, thus helping to establish the humorous or satirical tone of [a] work....

Quite a few real authors have been especially fond of creating fictional authors for the above and other purposes.  Jorge Louis Borges, A. S. Byatt, Jasper Fforde, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut...the list is quite lengthy.  So much so that Brian Quinette created a web site called The Invisible Library to try and keep track of such pseudo-titles/authors.  The site is no longer active (the previous link is to an archived copy of the site).  A successor, though, is active: The Invisible Library, Malibu Lake Branch.  (Other, less inclusive, branches also have since cropped up.)

The greatest challenge for most book collectors, of course, is that virtually no pseudo-books have been printed in a real-world analog.  (The poem at the center of Nabokov's Pale Fire is the rare exception.)  To collect these pseudo-books and pseudo-authors, you are going to need to collect the real books in which they appear....

    

Guest Editorial: The History of Art and The Private Library

We are indebted to Linda Hedrick for today's Guest Editorial, the first in an occasional series of posts on collecting the literature of art history....

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Perhaps the Romans said it best: Vita brevis, Ars longa....

Most people think of art history as a visual survey of art or art connoisseurship. I’m here to tell you differently.  While that college class you had may have been a survey, offering a timeline approach to the history of art, the true study of art history encompasses much, much more.

To put it simply, art historians “read” objects.  Long before there were books, people communicated by using pictures and objects.  To correctly interpret what was “said," one must learn as much as possible about the culture and times during which an art object was made, often a difficult task if the object is ancient and/or from a culture no longer extant. One must tease out the meaning of the object from the standpoint of the object's maker(s), that of the person(s) who may have commissioned it, and that of the object's viewers, so semiotics is an integral part of an art historian’s work (as is critical theory).  

As if this wasn’t enough, an art historian must be able to read several languages – the language(s) of the culture one is studying, of course, but also languages where important works of scholarship are being written (e.g., the languages of any countries doing archaeological work, or where new or improved theories are being published).  This can be very frustrating, as academic writing often is turgid, with a tendency to obfuscate.  (Can you say "academic German"?)

But one has to start somewhere if one wants to learn how art first functioned in society, what art said and says, and how it’s progressed.  So here are some suggestions for a collection of general art history books....

First published in 1926, and most recently updated by Fred Kleiner and Christin Mamiya, Helen Gardner’s Art Through the Ages is arguably the bible of art history. In 2001 the title received both a McGuffey Longevity Award and a Textbook Excellence Award– no other book has received both in the same year.  It set a new standard by not being limited to Western (European) art, but including the art of other cultures:  China, Japan, Africa, the Americas, and the South Pacific.  It currently is available in multiple editions, including separate Western and Non-Western sections, multiple volumes, a concise edition, and editions that include multimedia material.  It is often required reading for introductory art history courses:

     

An equally important introductory art history title is H. W. Janson’s History of Art. First published in 1963 by Janson and his wife, Dora, this book became simply known as Janson, and became the best-selling textbook on any subject in the United States.  Modern editions have been updated by a number of art historians in what is known as The Janson Project, in an ongoing attempt to include new discoveries, changing opinions and definitions, looking at both art and artists from different viewpoints:

The Story of Art (below left) by E. H. Gombrich, was first published in 1950, originally for young people. Perhaps because it was intended for high school students, it offers an easily read and understood introduction to art.  Currently in its 16th edition, translated into 30 languages, it is the best-selling art book of all time.  (More on E. H. and his son, Indologist Richard F. Gombrich, in future posts.)

Art History (below right) by Marilyn Stokstad seeks to replace and update the aforementioned titles.  It is more inclusive of other cultures, and in particular puts women back into the scene, focusing on many female artists excluded from other studies.  The author collaborated with many specialists in their field, and presents a less culturally biased look at art from non-Western areas.  It is a good addition to the general art history collection:

   

There are literally thousands of additional volumes available about this subject, but the titles I have suggested here would make a good start.  Suggestions for more specific areas will be forthcoming....

Chained to The Private Library

Most folks, especially if they are accumulators rather than collectors, do not pay much attention to the security of their private libraries.  Their books are not rare, not in Fine condition, not finely bound, and would represent no great financial loss if they all suddenly disappeared.

Folks whose books do, however, require such security have lots of options available to them: biometric keypads for controlled access, RFID detection systems, tail tags and so on.

Up until roughly the 18th century, virtually all books were considered valuable. Paper was expensive, and because much of the population was illiterate, books were nowhere near as commonplace as they are today.  As we noted in a previous post, this led monasteries and libraries to store their books in locked chests, in locked cupboards or chained to desks or shelves:

Chained books are known as early as the 12th century, and the library at Merton College, Oxford ("the world’s oldest continuously functioning library for university academics and students") can trace its chaining of books to 1284 (such books having previously resided in a chest bound by three locks). Chaining of books probably was preferred by most patrons to another popular option, locking readers in cages.

Great Britain's Hereford Cathedral, which chained its books until almost the middle of the 19th century, is the world's largest surviving chained library.  It notes that the practice was

...the most widespread and effective security system in European libraries from the middle ages to the eighteenth century, and Hereford Cathedral's seventeenth-century Chained Library is the largest to survive with all its chains, rods and locks intact.

A chain is attached at one end to the front cover of each book; the other end is slotted on to a rod running along the bottom of each shelf. The system allows a book to be taken from the shelf and read at the desk, but not to be removed from the bookcase.

The books are shelved with their foredges, rather than their spines, facing the reader (the wrong way round to us); this allows the book to be lifted down and opened without needing to be turned around - thus avoiding tangling the chain.

In 1996 a specially designed, environmentally controlled New Library Building was erected within which to house this famous chained library for the edification and enjoyment of future generations.

Great Britain also is home to the world's second largest surviving chained library, that of Wimborne Minster.  Both make for a great excuse to visit the UK.

Very few books about chained libraries have been published.  Burnett Streeter's The Chained Library; a Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library (1931) remains the best general survey (though one is more likely to encounter the 1970 Burt Franklin reprint than the original Macmillan & Co. publication)....

Guest Editorial: Plan Bee and The Private Library

We are indebted to "loyal reader" Linda Hedrick for today's Guest Editorial....

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“Every third bite”...so the saying goes.  

Approximately one third of the food we eat requires pollination.  We have a lot of pollinators to thank, bees especially.  While much attention is focused on endangered animals such as whales, polar bears, wolves, etc., the general public hears little about endangered insects and bugs, yet they often are a far better indicator of the health (or lack thereof) of our environment.

Along with raising backyard chickens, backyard beekeeping (apiculture) is becoming fashionable, especially among the environmentally conscious locavore crowd.  Beekeeping has a long and honored history. There are pictures of beekeeping activities in a cave in Spain and ancient (Old Kingdom) Egypt. These depictions are arguably the first “published” works on bees.  Virgil’s The Georgics, Book IV, likely published in 29 BCE, discusses bees, as does Columella’s book on beekeeping (part of his multi-volume De Re Rustica, ca. 50 CE, rediscovered in the 15th century and still utilized today).  

Should apiculture interest you, here are a few books that stand out...

If you opened up a dictionary and looked for the term “labor of love,” you would see this picture:

Charles D. Michener’s The Bees of the World is just that – the definitive work on more than 16,000 bee species in 1200 genera and subgenera worldwide.  It is much more than just a listing of all known bee species:

[t]he greater part of the work consists of an unprecedented treatment of bee systematics, with keys (many of them regional) for identification to the subgenus level. For each genus or subgenus, Michener includes a brief natural history describing geographical range, number of species, and noteworthy information pertaining to nesting or floral biology. The work is beautifully illustrated with 48 color photos of bees, and more than 500 black and white drawings and photographs that depict behavior, detailed morphology, and ecology....

I actually own this book, and am awed every time I look through it.

Hive and the Honey-Bee: The Classic Beekeeper’s Manual is by Rev. L.L. Langstroth, often called “the father of modern beekeeping”.  This timeless book (depicted below left) is over 150 years old, yet the information here still holds up, and is a great source for the history of beekeeping as Langstroth includes early apiculturists and their work. 

Bees by Rudolf Steiner (depicted below right) is a seminal book on the subject.  In 1923 Steiner foresaw the demise of bees, predicting that within 50-80 years they would become endangered.  This is not a practical handbook on beekeeping, nor does it offer precise scientific or biologic information on the subject, yet Steiner is well-known for biodynamic gardening (among many other things) and he predicted much of the agricultural mess we are now facing:

  

Plan Bee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Hardest-Working Creatures on the Planet (depicted below left) by organic gardener and beekeeper Susan Brackney, not only includes the information you would expect from the title, but also recipes, some folklore and what led to her own decision to become a beekeeper.

Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis (depicted below middle) by Rowan Jacobsen combines solid investigative journalism with his own thoughts and experiences keeping bees.

Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture (depicted below right) by Ross Conrad is a good handbook for aspiring beekeepers.  A student of world-renowned beekeeper Charles Mraz, he practices what he preaches and supplies local markets with honey:

     

Should you be interested in all pollinators, including some you might be unaware of, the Xerces Society’s Pollinator Conservation Handbook is a one-of-a-kind reference written by the staff of the Xerces Society, whose mission it is to protect biological diversity through the conservation of invertebrates.  This book should be in included, IMHO, in any collection about pollinators.

Rachel Carson called bees a keystone species which is at the very center of the food chain. As bees go, so goes our food chain.  Collecting books on bees, and other pollinators, would be a very timely collection....

Billboards and The Private Library

In most modern industrialized nations, advertising is ubiquitous.  Sleep may well be the only chance most of the living have to escape the clutches of marketing's dark legions.

Of course, not everyone dislikes advertising.  Not a few book collectors find themselves alternately amused, enchanted and incensed by the often wacky ways of advertisers.  Such folks even build private libraries devoted to the subject.

Because advertisers utilize so many different means to reach out to potential customers (film, radio, TV and web commercials; print ads and inserts; etc.), book collectors often have to limit the titles they collect about advertisers and advertising--one has, after all, only so much time and money. Thus it is that some collectors focus their efforts on books about billboards:

  

Folks often choose this specific aspect of advertising because of an interest in art and/or local history. After all, not only were the earliest billboards handpainted, they also often promoted something unique to a specific local area:

Although most modern billboards no longer are handpainted, the historical importance of many of these continues undiminished, even though such importance may be far more than local:

Here in the USA, many book collectors are drawn to titles about billboards because not a few pine for what no longer exists:

  

The modern world is so awash in advertising of every sort that billboards are increasingly restricted or banned altogether in many locales as a specie of visual pollution, which may increase the nostalgic appeal that books about billboards hold for some collectors:

Of course, now that billboards have gone digital and have started emitting odors book collectors may soon need to add to their shelves media other than books in order to fully capture consumers' encounters with billboards....

(Reminder to all: clicking on any image on this blog usually gives you a larger, more detailed image.)

Alphabet Books and The Private Library

One of the very first books that most of us encountered as children was the alphabet book. Also known as abécédaires, ABCs (and similar variations), alphabet books have introduced children to their native language since at least the 16th century.  (As a recent exhibition suggests, [t]he terms ABC book and alphabet book are used interchangeably, except that the former is used to refer to books covering the Roman alphabet, while the latter is used more generally. In fact, alphabet book is even used loosely to include books that treat writing systems that are non-alphabetic, such as Japanese kana AIUEO books, which are more properly called syllabary books.)

Prior to the invention of printing in Western Europe, such instruction often took the form of book gingerbread, a particularly tasty form of language instruction commented upon by the English poet Matthew Prior in his poem Alma:

To Master John the English maid

A Hornbook gives of Gingerbread:

And that the Child may learn the better,

As he can name, he eats the Letter:

Proceeding thus with vast Delight,

He spells, and gnaws, from left to right....

With the advent of printing, gingerbread gave way not only to printed alphabet books, but also to printed hornbooks and, later, to battledores (which killed off hornbooks but not alphabet books).  As a recent exhibition at King's College, London, points out:

hornbooks consisted of a printed or manuscript sheet upon which were the letters of the alphabet in upper and lower case, combinations of vowels and consonants, the invocation and the Lord's Prayer.... Sometimes other texts were included, such as the numbers from one to nine (often in both Roman and Arabic numerals)....

...use of the hornbook declined rapidly during the late eighteenth century when cheap, mass-produced, illustrated booklets became more readily available. These booklets, usually a single sheet of card folded in three, were known as battledores....  Originally cardboard battledores were printed on just one side and were varnished on the text side to protect them. Later, however, they began to have text on both sides. The prayers included in the hornbook were often omitted and a variety of other texts, such as short poems, were included instead. Their modest price, charming illustrations and more entertaining texts all contributed to their popularity and to the decline of the hornbook....

From the 16th-18th centuries both alphabet books and hornbooks usually were associated with religious and moral instruction.  The best-selling alphabet book of the 16th century, for example, was The ABC with the catechisme (1549).  

Most early alphabet books resembled hornbooks, as the alphabet was most often printed in the form of a table.  This began to change with the publication of the first illustrated English-language alphabet book, John Hart's A methode, or comfortable beginning for all unlearned... (1570).  

As we have noted in previous posts, juvenile literature as we know it today is largely a product of the 19th century.  This is as true of alphabet books as of any other type of children's books:

[b]y the nineteenth century, printing technology made possible complex pictures and color printing in text for children. The purpose of alphabet books changed from using familiar images and verses as mnemonic aids to using the alphabet as a framework to introduce new subjects, including farm animals, exotic animals, birds, children's names, the BIBLE and virtues, vocations, common objects, railways, the seaside, patriotic symbols, and the world's nations.

This trend not only continues, but has intensified.  Today, we have not only subject-specific alphabet books...

   

...but also alliterative alphabet books...

    

...pop-up alphabet books...

    

...and much more besides.  As is true of children's literature in general, demand for these books comes not only from children (or, more properly, from adults buying for children), but also from adults buying for themselves.  This is not only due to the great illustrators whose work graces the pages of many such books, but also to the fact that many alphabet books today are made for the adult market specifically.  A number of fine press books, for example, fall into this category:

Great collectibles, whether you're collecting for the kiddies or for yourself.... 

Ten Rules for Reading Books in The Private Library

Our expeditions into the darker recesses of the Internet occasionally result in our "bagging" an especially useful link, which link we invariably display alongside the several hundred other such links that already line both sides of this blog.  

A recent find seems particularly useful as a reminder to both new and established book collectors that condition is, to a not inconsiderable extent, something that we can control. But first, a little background....

Now in its 20th year of publication,  is a magazine focused on collecting First Editions.  Among its many useful articles over the years is one that has migrated to the web as part of the magazine's Fundamentals of Book Collecting series.

Specifically, the article looks at How to Read:

1. Wash and thoroughly dry your hands
2. Do not eat while reading
3. Do not drink while reading
4. Do not smoke
5. Do not remove the dust jacket before reading a book
6. Do not open a book and bend it back by the cover
7. Do not mark your place by laying the book text down on a table
8. Do not run your fingertips repeatedly over the edges
9. Cradle the book’s spine
10. Open the book only to the point where all the text on a single page can easily be seen

The author lays out the rationale behind each of these rules, most of which are common sense.  If your books were in Fine condition when  you bought them, following these few simple rules will help insure that they remain that way for many years to come....

 

Newsbooks and The Private Library

To hear some folks tell it, if there is anything that digital technologies are killing off faster than the printed book, it is the printed newspaper.

We readily acknowledge the impact of such technologies, but wonder if the pronouncement of death isn't a bit premature. After all, the first thing that a lot of folks did after Barack Obama was elected President was run out and buy a newspaper (or two or three) and store it for posterity.  The same thing happened when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, when the two space shuttles blew up, when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, when JFK, MLK and RFK were assassinated, and so on.  There may soon come the day when We the People preserve our most compelling national memories digitally instead of in print, but we are not there yet....

Notwithstanding which, newspapers certainly don't get much respect, as Nicholson Baker pointed out some years ago in his controversial tome Double Fold.  Libraries microfilm 'em and toss 'em out. Individual readers either toss 'em or recycle 'em (to cushion shipments, or as lining for bird cages or, shredded, as cat litter).  Enterprising funeral directors use shredded newspapers (as well as sawdust) as part of the embalming process (as well as stuffing for the pillows and linings used in coffins). Newspapers no longer seem to attract much serious attention as a collectible.

Storage is a big problem.  And the issue is not just one of available space.  Virtually all newspapers since the late 19th century have been printed on paper that degrades very rapidly.  Acid-free folders can slow the process down a bit, but cannot reverse it.  This makes actually handling favorite newspapers from this period a bit too risky for most collectors.

A simple solution to this problem is to collect earlier newspapers.  The earliest of all are the proto-newspapers known as newsbooks, the first English-language editions of which appeared at the beginning of the 17th century. Aside from their historic importance, most newsbooks were published in small formats and all were printed on rag paper, making storage a much less dicey proposition than is the case for post-19th century newspapers. Moreover (and somewhat surprisingly), most newsbooks currently available in the marketplace are quite underpriced given their rarity and historical importance.  As Mitchell Stephens points out,

The early newspapers...were generally printed in one of two formats: in the style of the Dutch papers, or "corantos," in which the reports were packed densely only two or perhaps four pages; or the style of the early German weeklies, which were pamphlets in which the news was spread over eight to twenty-four pages. The various English publishers, including Butter and Bourne, who sometimes competed but often worked together on series of early English newspapers, first used the Dutch style, but switched to the German style by 1622.

News items in these early newspapers were still printed pretty much as they came into the print shop. News of a battle in the Thirty Years War, which was then raging on the Continent, might appear under the name of Vienna, Frankfort or Prague or any other of the handful of cities in which it might have found its way into a letter or a newspaper that in turn found its way to that print shop. A newspaper might report under one date that a city was under siege and then under another date that it had fallen. It was a system of journalism that was easy on printers but not on readers....

Folks interested in delving more deeply into the history of these earliest newspapers will want to have at hand Dahl's Bibliography of English Corantos and Periodical Newsbooks 1620-1642, as well as the title depicted above left....

Type Specimen Books and The Private Library

Very few books today are printed from wood or metal type.  This may be why type specimen books continue to exert such a hold on book collectors, even those who have no especial interest in the book arts:

[t]he ideal specimen book shows the typefaces in a range of sizes, using short sentences rather than A-Z strings (which are of little use for getting a feel for the type in use). Color is sometimes used, but usually very discreetly, such as a red title. Samples in text sizes (6 to 14 point) typically show a longish block of text to help one judge readability, but would not be shown for decorative and display typefaces. It is quite common not to show a complete character set: foundries have always been concerned about piracy. Instead, a chart might be shown in an appendix where the characters included in all the foundry’s fonts are shown.

For a foundry’s more important typefaces, individual specimen books are sometimes produced that concentrate on just a single typeface family:

  

Over the centuries, type specimen books have been produced for all types of markets:

      

Because type specimen books were published to show off a foundry's type to best effect, they were very expensive to produce.  As publishing moved from wood and metal type to phototypesetting and digital publishing, the need for such expensive books was greatly diminished.  Nowadays, only a handful of foundries still issue printed specimen books. This has made older type specimen books very collectible. Regrettably, many of these books have been disbound so individual pages can be framed and mounted (à la broadsides). Complete copies in anything approaching Fine condition are both scarce and expensive, and for many type foundries will prove to be virtually unobtainable.  The titles depicted below will prove invaluable to folks collecting specimen books issued by American type foundries:

    

Vaudeville and The Private Library

It's parentage was decidely mixed: circuses, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, burlesque, concert saloons and music halls, Yiddish theater....

During its heyday, it featured everything from jugglers to ventriloquists, dancers to animal trainers, acrobats to comedians, musicians to plate spinners....

It was the earliest form of entertainment in America to cross racial and class boundaries.

More importantly, from the 1880s to the 1930s it was the single most popular form of entertainment in America:

[t]he development of vaudeville marked the beginning of popular entertainment as big business, dependent on the organizational efforts of a growing number of white-collar workers and the increased leisure time, spending power, and changing tastes of an urban middle class audience. Business savvy showmen utilized improved transportation and communication technologies, creating and controlling vast networks of theatre circuits standardizing, professionalizing, and institutionalizing American popular entertainment.

Some 25,000 performers strode the boards of vaudeville, although only some two percent (2%) are believed to have actually made a comfortable living from it.  Over the course of several hours, multiple 3-4 minute acts (the weakest acts usually coming first and last) alternately enchanted, amused and (sometimes) infuriated audiences nationwide.  Vaudeville was the incubator for some of the earliest superstars of radio, television and film.  And although these last three forms of entertainment are believed to have killed off vaudeville in the early 1930s, the corpse has been restless for decades:

Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O’Brien, taking cues from predecessors Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, have welcomed many a comic, singer, dancer, and juggler, Palace-style, though we call these programs “talk shows.” You could even argue that the most obvious manifestation of the ghost is not the stage musical or such retro films as Chicago but the battery-powered remote. It allows potatoes to choose from a cascade of entertainment without leaving their couches, just as yesteryear’s audiences did by sitting back and placing themselves in the hands of Albee, Keith, and Ziegfeld....

Book collectors can fill their shelves with a cornucopia of relevant titles--everything from biographies and autobiographies of specific performers, to histories of the variety stage (both here and abroad), to critical studies of the influence of vaudeville upon the development of popular culture and later forms of entertainment:

      

A couple of online bibliographies may prove helpful in your quest: click here and here.   

A Dignity of Dragons at The Private Library

Even for native speakers, English can be a fiendishly difficult language to learn.  All those grammatical rules...and all the exceptions to all those grammatical rules.  Words that sound the same but that are spelled differently and that mean different things (dear, deer).  Words that are spelled the same but that sound different and that mean different things (wind [air], wind [twist]).  Participles dangling dangerously and sentences running on....

Fortunately, we live in an age where transitive vampires and other creatures constantly arise to do battle with our language.  Their goal: to whip English into something vaguely resembling a nice, proper language (like Latin, maybe, or Spanish).  Or, failing that, to at least help us all make some sense of the thing.

Some of the more interesting battles have revolved around one of the most basic aspects of any language: how we name things.  And some of the more intriguing titles that have arisen from these battles are those devoted to collective nouns (i.e., the names we give to multiple members of a particular group).  Many such titles focus on the natural world...

 

...but not necessarily:

  

Even fine press editions have been published in pursuit of the elusive collective noun:

Such titles are a great way to introduce children to the joys of book collecting (not to mention reluctant adults)....

  

The great thing is, there's still lots of stuff for which English does not yet provide a collective noun. 

Wordsmiths, ink your quills (or whatever it is you do with that boxy electronic thingy)....

The Folio Society and The Private Library

Your faithful blogger is quite fond of illustrated books.  Although we collect virtually anything that is attractively illustrated (by steel engraving, woodcuts, chromolithography, stippling, pochoir, photography...), we must confess to an especial weakness for books which contain a generous selection of exceptional wood engravings:

Because most modern works of fiction are not illustrated at all (and most non-fiction works are illustrated only by workman-like photography), we find our bookshelves groaning mostly under the weight of books published in centuries past.  The only exceptions tend to be modern children's books and fine press books, both of which continue the tradition of finely illustrated fiction. Among trade books for adults, only a few publishers have continued this noble tradition at a price most book collectors (especially new book collectors) can afford.  One of those publishers is The Folio Society:

    

Conceived by Charles Ede, The Folio Society was established to publish beautiful books that would be affordable to everyone--what we today might think of as a "poor man's fine edition."  The first three titles were issued in 1947.  In the six+ decades since, it has published over 1400 titles (for which The Folio Society has published several well-executed bibliographies):

Over the years, The Folio Society has printed a number of titles that are unabashedly fine press titles (priced accordingly).  But its basic mission remains unchanged.  Its editorial standards are the envy of a great many other publishers. And its commitment to the tradition of finely illustrated fiction is without peer among most modern trade publishers. 

Of course, The Folio Society does not publish just fiction.  It also publishes finely illustrated books in such areas as history, travel, biography, gardening...the diversity offers something of interest to just about any book collector.  (Folks interested in sea fiction will undoubtedly welcome The Folio Society's intent to publish, over the next five years, illustrated editions of Patrick O'Brian's entire Aubrey-Maturin opus:)

 

Most intriguingly, The Folio Society as presently constituted operates at the intersection of a number of different traditions: trade publishing and fine press publishing (as noted above), and subscription publishing (somewhat similar to a book club).  Worth a gander, even if you don't collect illustrated books....

The Cult of Celebrity and The Private Library

"Serious" book collectors often bemoan the considerable number of books that are published about celebrities, many of whom only seem to be famous for being famous.

But the cult of celebrity supported by such publishing is neither recent nor entirely devoid of scholarly interest.  Popular interest in the antics of folks as diverse as LeBron James and Peaches Geldof says as much about us as it does about them, as several recent exhibition catalogues and books make clear.  Any of these would make an interesting foundation upon which to build a private library devoted to the cult of celebrity:

   

Because the cult of celebrity exists in virtually all fields of human endeavor (medicine, science, sports, politics, art, filmmaking, literature...), most folks seeking to build a private library about the cult of celebrity probably will want to limit his or her efforts to a single field of endeavor.  Even so, the sheer number of books that have been published (not just critical studies, but biographies and the like) virtually insure that a large number of bookshelves probably will be needed to support one's quest:

     

No doubt there's a Ph.D. thesis lurking somewhere near the intersection of literary celebrity and literary ephemera....

Literary Ephemera and The Private Library

Like many other book collectors, your faithful blogger collects not just books, but lots and lots of stuff that is connected with books: business (trade) cards, letterheads, postcards, Christmas & other greeting cards from booksellers, librarians, printers, publishers, authors & other bookish folks; coins, medals, stamps & banknotes that depict collected authors, or the art of printing, or important libraries and other bookish subjects; prospectuses of forthcoming books (especially from fine presses, which often print such prospectuses via letterpress); handbills for readings by poets and authors whose books we own; bookmarks and other ephemera found in books (some of these distributed as advertising by famous booksellers that no longer are in business, making them even more highly prized); original photos and other original illustrations of authors, printers & other bookish folks; literary keepsakes, such as the letterpress-printed ephemera which usually accompanies each issue of The Devil's Artisan...the list is actually quite lengthy:

As we have seen in previous posts, some of this material is extensive enough to have had books written about it.  And, not infrequently, this material may actually be signed or inscribed by a favorite author, printer, publisher, illustrator or other bookish notable.

We're curious as to whether or not any of our readers have succumbed to this enjoyable adjunct to book collecting....

Arma Virumque Cano at The Private Library

Wars and a man I sing -- an exile

driven on by Fate,

he was the first to flee the coast

of Troy,

destined to reach Lavinian shores

and Italian soil....

Virgil, The Aeneid (trans. Robert Fagles)

It is difficult enough for most completist book collectors to collect everything that has been published by a particularly prolific author (especially if that author published under multiple pseudonyms). How much more difficult is the completist collector's task when an author is both prolific and influential.  Such authors (Shakespeare being the most obvious example) confront the completist collector not only with difficult decisions about how extensively to collect an author's own works, but also how extensively to collect what others have written about that author and his or her works.

Avoiding prolific authors altogether does not necessarily make the completist collector's task less difficult.  Consider, for example, the case of the not particularly prolific author within whose smaller opus resides a single title that has had an outsized influence. To collect such an extraordinarily influential title in all its known editions and translations, not to mention everything that others have written about that title (and author), may well be to set one's self a task for several lifetimes.

A case in point is the ancient Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro, anglicized as Virgil, who is famous today primarily for three titles.  The first title, The Eclogues, and the second, The Georgics, present collecting challenges of their own.  But it is Virgil's third title, The Aeneid, that most often drives completist collectors to distraction:

T. S. Eliot, no mean poet himself, considered The Aeneid to be the single most influential title in all of Western literature.  Pick an influential later author and you will, more likely than not, be able to readily trace the influence of The Aeneid on that author's works. Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton--all are in Virgil's debt.

So...where does one begin?  With the editio princeps (Rome, 1469)?  Another early edition?  Good luck--all such editions are quite scarce and expensive!  (In fact, it's likely impossible to collect all known editions of The Aeneid...unless certain institutional collections deaccession some of the earliest printed editions.)

Perhaps one should focus instead on some of the better-known translations: Douglas (1553); Surrey (1554); Dryden (1696); Pitt (1740); Cormon's polyglot publication of 1838; Fairclough (1916); or, more recently, Mandelbaum (1971), Fitzgerald (1981) and Fagles (2006).  Here, too, you will need much patience and considerable sums for the earliest of these editions (of course, you can always settle for a nice reprint).

Probably before you get too far into the decision-making process you need to sit down with a really good bibliography.  A number of these have been published.  Some, such as Kallendorf's A Bibliography of Venetian Editions of Virgil, 1470-1599, are narrowly focused.  Others are much broader and, thankfully, sometimes found online.

With diligence and a modicum of luck, you may one day find yourself right up there with Junius Spencer Morgan as a collector of Virgil....

Original Photographs and The Private Library

Book collectors and photography collectors often butt heads with one another when their respective collecting interests lead them to covet the same types of items.  Photography books by master photographers are one such item.  But even more coveted by both parties, perhaps, are the relatively small number of books that have been illustrated with tip-ins of original photographs.

Several such books were published before technologies existed to adequately reproduce photographs within the pages of books (e.g., The Pencil of Nature).  Understandably, most of these books are quite scarce and (especially if they have not been broken up) quite expensive.

As reproduction technologies came into more general use in publishing, tipped-in original photographs became much less common.  Books illustrated with tipped-in original photographs have never completely disappeared, though, for the simple reason that many artists feel that no "mere reproduction" can really do justice to an original photograph.

Among such books are many which are quite famous.  Edward Curtis' magnum opus The North American Indian is one such.  Published in 20 volumes (1907-1930), this title's photogravure plates are one reason that this work routinely sells for six figures.  (The 40 sets on Japanese tissue are especially coveted:)

Another famous title with tipped-in original photographs is famed photographer Ansel Adams' earliest portfolio of prints, Parmelian Prints of The High Sierras (1927).  With letterpress printing by the equally famed Grabhorn Press, this title, too, often commands six figures.  (Although 150 sets were originally intended, a fire in 1937 destroyed several of these, and only about 75 or so sets are believed to have survived.)  This portfolio contains one of Adams' best-known images (Monolith, the Face of Half-Dome, Yosemite), printed (like the other 17 images) on Kodak Vitava Athena Grade T Parchment, a cream-colored, gelatin silver paper that is translucent when held up to the light:

Slightly less famous, perhaps, are earlier works such as Ernest Mouchez's La photographie astronomique a l'Observatoire de Paris et la carte du ciel (1887), with its 4 tipped-in original photographs of the moon, Saturn and Jupiter...

...Owen Simmons' paean to baking, the Book of Bread (1903, which numbers among its tipped-in original photographs 2 gelatin silver prints)...

...and more modern books such as Christian Boltanski's Les Morts pour Rire (1974--the deluxe edition [20 copies] includes 14 original tipped-in photographs alongside handwritten text):

Many more such books are available in the current marketplace, often for surprisingly modest financial outlays....

Oxford World's Classics and The Private Library

We have observed in several previous posts (see, e.g., our posts of 10 August 2009 and 9 February 2010) that 

[l]iterature in English translation constitutes only about three percent of all books published in the United States in any given year.  (Actually, this figure somewhat overstates the case, since it includes all books published in translation--the amount of literary fiction and poetry published in English translation actually is less than one percent.)  Since most Americans are monolingual, this means that great swaths of world literature are virtually unknown to U.S. citizens....

We have suggested several different ways that folks can nonetheless access some of the world's greatest "foreign" literature.  

One means of access that we have not yet detailed, though, may well be the most attractive of all, for it utilizes aspects of the variorum edition and books in series to help one build a private library of world literature by proxy. 

Meet...Oxford World's Classics:

      

Founded as the World's Classics Series in 1901 by Grant Richards, the imprint was purchased by Oxford University Press in 1906.  The hundreds of volumes that have been published under this imprint over the past century (in several different series) constitute one of OUP's most important and enduring contributions to the cause of great literature, irrespective of language.

Because these are world classics, a large number of the titles were originally published in English. Accordingly, collectors who already own this imprint's English-language titles may well choose to focus their attention only upon those titles that originally were published in another language.

Of course, completists will relish the challenge of trying to collect as many titles as they can in all of the series published under this imprint.  Although difficult, this may prove to be surprisingly more affordable than one might think....

  

Right Holiday, Wrong Day at The Private Library

2 July 1776: representatives of the American colonies adopt the Lee Resolution officially severing ties with Great Britain (12 affirmatives, 1 abstention)

4 July 1776: the text of this Declaration of Independence is approved and first published

***********

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Pursuing the Picaresque at The Private Library

Judging from the continuing popularity of the picaresque novel, a lot of book collectors must love (or at least have a considerable interest in) literary rogues, those low-born but clever individual[s] who wander into and out of various affairs of love, danger, and farcical intrigue...[while] typically present[ing] a humorous and wide-ranging satire of...society.

From Candide to Moll Flanders, from Don Quixote to Tom Jones, literary rogues cavort through the pages of some of the most memorable literature ever written:

    

The sheer number of picaresque novels that have been published over the centuries means that most collectors must make difficult decisions.  Collect only picaresque novels published in a particular century?  Only picaresque novels written by a particular author?  Or written in a particular language?  Or all known editions of a particular picaresque novel?

 

Whatever choice one makes, the hunt is likely to consume much time and money.  The true First Edition of Candide, for example, is known to exist in but a handful of copies.  Does anyone even know how many editions have been published of Don Quixote?  Or Huckleberry Finn?  (Even if one collected only fine press editions of Huckleberry Finn, the financial outlay would be enormous.)

Maybe a lesser-known literary luminary like Tobias Smollett should be the focus.  Certainly, collecting every picaresque novel published during the 18th century (during which Smollett lived) might a bit much for most book collectors.

Do you collect picaresque novels?  If so, what boundaries (if any) do you place on your collecting...?