The Private Library

Books for Jaded Collectors at The Private Library

It has been this writer's great privilege, during his four decades+ association with books, to have handled some truly extraordinary titles: the Gutenberg Bible, the Audubon double-elephant folio, the Kelmscott Chaucer ... to name but a few.  But there are books out there so extraordinary that even your faithful blogger has not had the privilege of encountering them.  

Among the most extraordinary of all are the jade books that were reserved in traditional Chinese society for the most highly esteemed texts.  These books usually are found as thin jade tablets bound along one edge or strung together on one or more cords, upon which text is inscribed:

The 17th century example above is via Cornell University, which notes

[t]his series of ten jade tablets records in Chinese and Manchu the presentation of the temple name of Shih-tsu and the imperial title Chang huang-ti to the emperor K'ang-hsi [in 1661]. Incised with blue and gold script, the plates are strung together with two cords. They are wrapped in a gold embroidered textile and housed in a wooden casket.

The 18th century example below, from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, is an extremely rare example of a jade book in the codex form that is better known in the West. The BNF observes that jade is associated with the five cardinal Confucian virtues --kindness, uprightness, wisdom, courage and purity:

Even more spectacular, perhaps, is the following example from the National Palace Museum (Taiwan), which we recently sighted on Rachel Leow's excellent blog, A Historian's Craft.  Discovered in 1931, it is a product of China's Northern Song dynasty, ca. 1008 CE. The "pages" are pale-green white jade bound with gold wire, and the text is incised and filled with gold.  The book records the text of the Fengshan Sacrifice ceremonies performed by the Emperor Chen-Tsung, in which he traditionally conveys his wishes to Heaven, e.g. desire for long life, eternal harmony, peace etc.:

Don't bother scouring upcoming auctions for such books -- most known examples are locked away in institutional collections.  But it's nice to dream, isn't it...?

Capers, Criminal & Otherwise, at The Private Library

Some genres see so many books published that the only way a book collector of modest means can possibly hope to tackle the genre is to focus on only one or two of the genre's authors, or on one of the genre's many sub-genres. A case in point is the mystery.

Among the many sub-genres of the mystery are hard-boiled detective fiction, bibliomysteries, Tart Noir and police procedurals.  These sub-genres often overlap -- e.g., Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep is both a bibliomystery and hard-boiled detective fiction.

One of the most collectible of the mystery's many sub-genres is the caper.  In this mystery sub-genre,

the plot centers on the planning and eventual execution of a single daring crime, escape, race, etc., such as the robbery of a bank vault or museum collection so well protected that the operation requires meticulous organization and perfect timing, usually undertaken by two buddies or a gang whose diverse skills are essential, although their interpersonal relations may be less than cordial. Suspense centers on whether and how the plan will succeed, what happens to the plunder, and whether the perpetrators are caught....

Some of the bestselling mysteries of all time are found in this sub-genre, as are some of its bestselling authors:

   

Donald Westlake penned capers for over four decades.  One of this sub-genre's most prolific authors, the three-time Edgar Award winner penned some 90+ titles.  He wrote many of them using a pseudonym.  If you've picked up a title by Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt or Edwin West (among many others), you've likely encountered Westlake's work. Westlake used several of his numerous pseudonyms to write softcore porn (hey...it paid the bills!), and these titles (PBOs all) are among the most expensive of all his works to collect in Fine condition:

   

Hollywood loved Westlake.  Fifteen of Westlake's books were turned into films, and his screenplay of Jim Thompson's pulp novel The Grifters was nominated for an Academy Award in 1990.  His most enduring character probably is John Dortmunder, a criminal whose capers never turn out exactly the way they are supposed to:

   

At the opposite extreme are the caper novels that Westlake penned under his Richard Stark pseudonym, featuring the brutal thief, Parker.  Several of these have been adapted for more graphic media:

  

Most authors in the caper sub-genre are not nearly as well known as Westlake.  One of the better such authors, now known only to hardcore fans of the caper, was Lionel White:

   

Several of White's almost three dozen books (most of which were PBOs) were made into movies, and White's many caper novels were one of Quentin Tarantino's acknowledged inspirations for the movie Reservoir Dogs.  

One of the most interesting descriptions this writer has ever encountered of White's capers was one penned a couple of years ago by August West for his blog Vintage Hardboiled Reads:

White's stories [are] like smashing two beer bottles against the wall. One bottle being the people stuck in a situation they want out of and the other bottle being the evil guys keeping them in that situation. The reader finds them mixed together dripping to the floor....

Even writers who do not specialize in capers often are drawn to pen one or two during the course of their writing careers.  For example: Jack Finney, best known as a writer of science fiction (his novels The Body Snatchers and Time and Again were the basis for popular movies), also wrote 5 Against the House, a caper novel upon which is based the movie of the same name (as well as the movie Ocean's 11).  Eric Ambler, best known for his many fine spy novels, also penned The Light of Day, a caper novel better known from its film adaptation as Topkapi:

   

Even Mark Twain was not above an occasional caper, as can be seen in Huckleberry Finn when Tom Sawyer plots to steal Jim and set him free.  So get thee to a bookstore....

Realia and The Private Library

Some book collectors just can't get enough of their favorite author.  Completists, especially, often do not stop with every title their favorite author is known to have published (in every edition and every known language).  If original manuscripts exist, they pursue those as well.  And once they have exhausted bibliophilic avenues, they frequently seek out realia associated with their favorite author.

Realia refers to [t]hree-dimensional objects from real life, whether man-made (artifacts, tools, utensils, etc.) or naturally occurring (specimens, samples, etc.) -- an author's favorite hat, perhaps, or a walking cane he or she used in later years, or the author's typewriter.  The Irish book collector who purchased the desk at which Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations and a number of other late works (depicted below) thought $850,000 (seven times its original auction estimate) was a bargain for such a piece of literary history:

Other book collectors, also, have thought nothing of expending substantial sums on author realia. Cormac McCarthy's unassuming little Lettera 32 Olivetti typewriter, which the author bought for $50 back in 1963, was auctioned off at the end of last year for $254,500 (twenty times the original auction estimate):

If one's favorite author went on to achieve fame in other areas as well, the sums proferred for realia not only may reach stratospheric heights, but also may attract quite negative reactions from folks who think such realia belongs somewhere other than in your private library.  When Mohandas Gandhi's pocket watch, spectacles and other small realia were auctioned off last year for $1.8 million, the sale generated a firestorm of protest from India, where many citizens consider virtually anything associated with Gandhi to be almost sacred:

Of course, not all author realia sells for such substantial sums.  The William IV writing desk that Agatha Christie used to write many of her best-selling novels, for example, was auctioned off last year for the bargain-basement price of only £2,500:

As with books and manuscripts penned by one's favorite author, the challenge with collecting author realia may well be finding some place to put it all....

Bibliographic Coupling and The Private Library

In one of our first posts to the Fine Books & Collections blog, we bemoaned the fact that many publishers have elected to cut costs by ceasing to publish the scholarly apparatus as an integral part of the book. Nowadays, the indices, appendices, bibliographies, etc., are just as likely to be included on a CD-ROM in a pocket inside the book, or made available via a website.  Such a cost-cutting practice makes bibliographic coupling more difficult than it need be.

Scholars (and advanced book collectors) use bibliographic coupling to help them figure out what other books and articles they may need to read and/or buy.  Basically, the concept is this: if two titles that are of interest contain a citation in common to a third title, that third title also may prove of interest.  A similar concept, co-citation coupling, reverses the situation -- i.e., a third title refers to both of the other titles.

Example: the bibliographies in both of the books depicted below...

   

...cite a third title published a half-century earlier (and reprinted many times since, in multiple languages):

   

Bibliographic coupling is a concept that your faithful blogger and his wife use all the time in bookstores to help us figure out what titles we might be missing in a particular area of interest.  The first thing both of us do when we pick up non-fiction titles of particular interest is check the bibliography at the back of each book.  If we see bibliographic coupling in two or more titles about the same subject, our interest in commonly cited additional titles becomes much greater.  

Such serendipity is not possible when the scholarly apparatus that normally is included at the back of a book is missing.  Note to publishers: if bibliographic coupling has to await the insertion of a CD or the browsing of a website, impulse book buys are greatly diminished.

The downside of this (if you want to call it that) is that if bibliographic coupling is easily achieved, one's private library is apt to grow much more quickly than it might otherwise....

Concert(ina) for Private Library

New book collectors often take for granted many aspects of the printed book. Because the printed book in the West is usually encountered casebound, new book collectors often think that is how all books are bound:

However, case binding was a fairly late development in the production of printed books in the West (first used in Great Britain ca. 1820).  A quick perusal of virtually any antiquarian bookseller's catalog will show that many other binding options have been utilized over the centuries.  In the East, for example, one often encounters books bound with their pages folded first to the left, then to the right.  The image below, by way of the International Paper Knowledge Center, illustrates the concept:

A book bound with its pages folded in this fashion is said to be in a concertina- or accordion-fold binding.  This ancient (usually, but not always) stitchless binding is sort of a scroll-codex hybrid. Heather Weston suggests in Bookcraft that [it] was the first binding to take the [codex] form.  It can be read like a [codex], but its contents are displayed on one continuous sheet.

This type of binding has become very popular with modern book artists, as can be seen from Jason Chin's Jonah and The Whale (held by the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University)...

...which unfolds to ca. 27 feet:

Book collectors who find "normal" books boring often become quite enchanted with concertina and other alternative binding structures.   But since modern books bound in this manner are generally published in very small editions, one should expect to pay a little extra for the privilege of owning examples.  (The Perkolator Press edition of Gordon Johnson's Gravity's Light Grip, below, is one of but 65 copies printed):

Some book artists take concertina and other alternative binding structures in quite interesting directions. For example: in The White Alphabet (edition of 150 copies, 1984), well-known book artist Ron King produced a pop-up double-concertina alphabet book (bound between inlaid wood boards):

A number of professional booksellers specialize in such books.  For additional examples of concertina and other alternative binding structures, click here....

Vade Mecums and The Private Library

Although that may well be the destiny of some, not all books are designed to spend their lives snug and secure on collectors' bookshelves.  Anyone who has ever consulted a birder's field guide, or a restaurant guide, or a travel guide, knows that many books are published to be carried about on one's person :

      

All such books -- the publication of which date all the way back to the dawn of printing in Western Europe -- are known collectively as vade mecums.  

The singular Latin phrase, vade mecum, translates into English as "goes with me."  In a general sense, it refers to any item one normally carries about on one's person -- car and house keys, for example.  But in a bibliophilic sense, the phrase refers specifically to [a] small book such as a guidebook, handbook, or manual meant to be carried about, used during the Middle Ages by physicians, astrologers, and tradesmen for quick reference and computation. Often suspended from a girdle or belt:

  

The term survived the Middle Ages as a shorthand way of designating any book normally carried about on one's person for ready reference (thus distinguishing it from small format fiction).  Although most folks probably have encountered vade mecums designed primarily for recreational use...

   

...in fact they have for centuries been published for a wide variety of occupations as well:

   

Anyone collecting these small ready references needs much patience and a fair amount of money, since the earliest examples are quite scarce in anything approaching Fine condition (having seen, as was intended, hard daily use).  More recent examples, however, are readily available in the marketplace....

   

Modern examples are quite easily added to one's bookshelves, although they often do not identify themselves with the Latin phrase.  Look, instead, for words like handbook, guide, field guide, pocket book, etc., somewhere in the title:

  

Vade mecums make an interesting addition to book collections that are focused on specific vocations and avocations, although some folks collect earlier examples simply as exemplars of particular book arts (girdle bindings, for example).  For certain types of book collecting (e.g., travel guides), vade mecums might easily comprise the bulk of one's collection....

Initial Letters and The Private Library

Among the terms that new book collectors sometimes have difficulty grasping are several that derive from the manuscript tradition that preceded (and for many decades parallelled) early printed books. Booksellers' catalogs, for example, frequently list books whose pages contain initials that are figural, gymnastic, inhabited or historiated.

Fortunately, resources like ODLIS (Online Dictionary of Library & Information Science) are now available to help new book collectors puzzle out these and other confusing terms.

Figural initials are initial letters composed wholly or in part of designs representing animals, humans, and/or imaginary beings unrelated to the text (termed, respectively, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and zoo-anthropomorphic.)  For example: the anthropomorphic initial I, below, is from a 13th century manuscript, the Office Lectionary (via Artnet):

Sometimes, figures must be contorted or exaggerated in order to suggest an initial, as in the case of the anthropomorphic initials depicted below: 

Such initials are termed gymnastic initials.  In the case of both the figural initial and the gymnastic initial, the figure(s) is the initial, and vice-versa.  In both cases, the initial serves a purely decorative function -- it does not comment upon or reflect the text with which it is associated.  This is an important distinction to which we shall return shortly.

Figures sometimes appear within an initial, without actually being the initial.  When such initials are purely decorative, they are called inhabited initials.  A typical example is depicted below, from Alessandro Donati's Roma vetus ac recens utriusque aedificiis ad eruditam cognitionem expositis (Romae: M. Manelphij, 1639):

The above initials are not always "pure" types -- a gymnastic anthropomorphic initial, for example, may also be an inhabited zoomorphic initial.  Nor do such initials always serve a purely decorative purpose. When such initials are identifiable figures and have a narrative purpose (whether or not the narrative is associated with the text they illustrate), such initials are known as historiated initials.

First encountered in insular illumination from the 1st half of the 8th century CE, historiated initials are basically picture stories that the typical reader would be expected to easily grasp (such as the Christian Nativity depicted below, from Ms 1171 fol.9, Bridgeman Art Library):

Such scenes often spilled beyond the confines of a single initial, frequently taking up the entire margin(s) of a page, a state of affairs captured by the term historiated border.  The example below is from the so-called Black Book of Hours (Hours of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Wien Ö.N. Codex 1856):

Such initials and borders have not entirely disappeared from printed books, as can be seen from modern fine press productions like the Golden Cockerel Press version of the Four Gospels... (illustrated by Eric Gill; 1931):

Advice to New Book Collectors from Other Book Collectors at The Private Library: Part II

More advice to new book collectors from folks who have been doing it for a while....

David Klappholz: Every beginner should read Newton's Amenities. The best "technical" introduction is probably Storm and Peckham.

Yolana: This is a real basic one but a potentially expensive one.  Know that what a normal person calls good and what a bookseller calls good are not the same thing or at least it wasn't the same as my good.

Laura Knight: My advice is to establish a relationship with a reliable seller.  First, he/she knows what he/she is selling: a first edition is a first edition and the reliable seller knows why.  The reliable seller likes to share information about books and collecting. The education you can get is incalculable.  And if you collect a certain author or illustrator or genre, the reliable bookseller will alert you should one of these walk through his doors or web page.  Too many new or would-be collectors get taken by unscrupulous or uninformed sellers, losing money, time and, more importantly, the thrill that comes with book collecting.

Jean Ottosen: Well ... don't give up before you start.  Don't listen to nay-sayers.  Just research and brainstorm ways to get what you want ... and pick the best options for you. Not everyone has to have a wonderfully fully registered private library with first editions in a specially designed humidity controlled room.  

Don't overlook what's already in your house!  Don't think you have nothing and have to go on a buying spree.  Usually everyone has a book somewhere on a topic they like ... gather them all together and assess what you have before you go spending any money.  If necessary, narrow the topic ... or work to fill in gaps in the topic.

Which brings me to the point I really like in your blog ... make sure you collect a genre you like!  In the end, it may be worth nothing but its value to you.  Some topics do not have a lot of people interested in them. Consider where the books will go in the end before you buy them.

My areas of interest are:  fibre dyeing, spinning, rug hooking, surface embroidery, knitting and religious (Christianity).  I am thinking some of them might go to an arts college or craft school, some to a Christian college or church, some to the Embroiderer's Association of Canada.  My husband's interest is in family history.  His will be passed down to our eldest daughter who runs a genealogy blog.  We also have a smattering of psychology, gardening, cookbooks and nature books.

Because my husband and I have different interests, we are going to sit down and draw up a purchasing plan for books, so we both have the opportunity to buy books we like.

Another thing I've found is that books go on sale this time of year.  I've been snooping around the Internet for books on my favourite topics for some time, and am now finding 40% and 50% off sales...even cheaper than Amazon.  

Sometimes, with more out of the way topics, you need to bypass the typical booksellers and go directly to specialists in the field.  For example, I really can't find anything good on rug hooking through the average bookseller - on-line or off.  I go to people who sell rug hooking supplies and equipment ... and buy the books from them.  Or direct to the author, who usually has some squirreled away.  I am currently buying a book listed for $195 on Amazon, for $76, including shipping and handling and complete with autograph, from the rug hooking store representing the author.  I like that kind of deal!  The same is true of dyeing and spinning books.  There's general stuff at the bookstore, but the good technical stuff is purchased through people in the spinning and dyeing business.

Keep an eye out for people divesting themselves of their collections.  There's a lady on-line getting rid of all her rug hooking books -- some classics in the field. Very reasonable prices.  I'm negotiating with her now...

And be friendly with people practicing in the field you're collecting books in.  When my rug hooking teacher retired and had to sell her home, she asked if I wanted anything.  I spoke up right away for a few particular books.  In the end she gave me much more ... lots of rug hooking supplies as well.

If you're going to buy books, try to think of where you are going to put them before you buy them.  In some climates leaving them in a box on the basement floor is not a wise idea!  I am lucky I have lots of bookcases from IKEA that are holding up okay, but not the greatest.  As long as they're against the wall they're fine.  But if I were to get serious and try to stand something in the middle of the room, I'd have a carpenter make them ... so I knew they'd be good and sturdy.  Also, don't pack the books too tightly on the shelf.  It really causes wear and tear getting them on and off shelves.  And bring the book spines to the front of the shelf to clean up the look of the library.

The one thing I wish is that we had organized our books sooner.  I did another count of bookcases and we have 7 full floor to ceiling bookcases and the equivalent of 6 half bookcases of books around here. It is going to be a big project to organize them.

We are already talking about weeding the current collection.  Also about clearing out a room somewhere just for books.  Not sure where we'd do that.  We were laughing and talking about adding a 12' wide addition to the back of the house and replacing our old 1 car garage with 2 car garage and upstairs studio ... so there would be more room in the house for books! :-D     That would only be a $100,000 fix!!!

My husband comes by his love for books honestly.  His mother was a librarian with a 10,000 volume private library in her home.  No room was complete without a bookcase of books!  

My father is a scholar and has a struggle limiting the books in his townhouse condo.  His six children are mostly bookaholics (oops!) ... ah ... bibliophiles (love that term!). Thankfully most of them live in big houses and can indulge their habit! ;-)     My one brother who does not have books in his home is a prolific user of the public library system in Vancouver. 

I guess that could be another tip, but I think you gave it already ... check out books through the library before buying if you aren't sure they're what you want for your collection. Make use of the Inter-library Loan system ... which in Canada is mostly free. Unfortunately libraries usually don't loan out the types of books I'm interested in.  

Also, if you're interested in history, check out local archives and local history rooms for titles that might be of interest ... and the local genealogical society.

Don't forget: for questions that booksellers wish new book collectors would ask, click here.

Advice to New Book Collectors from Other Book Collectors at The Private Library: Part I

Drop me a line with your ideas as to what you feel every new book collector should know before they start compiling their own private library....

Some months back (29 April 2010, to be precise), Chris Lowenstein (Book Hunters Holiday) and I asked our respective readers what advice they would pass along to new book collectors.  

At the time, Chris and I had intended to publish this advice as a print article. After careful consideration, though, we decided it would be better to publish such advice as a brief series of cross-linked blog posts. Accordingly, my two posts in this series (which feature advice from fellow book collectors) link to Chris's two posts (which feature questions that booksellers wished new book collectors would ask), and vice-versa.  We hope thereby to cover both the buying and selling side of book collecting.

All advice appears without comment, in hopes that spirited commentary will ensue on both blogs.

Without further ado...

Vincent Benz: (1) As a beginning collector be specific in focus and collect what is important to you. (2) Collect only books in great condition unless you need a reading copy that can be had at a steal.  (3) Become an academic on the topic you are collecting.   The more you know, the less you will spend for more.  (4) Read the books you collect.

Margaret Pratt: I think one of the most important things for a new book collector to do is to specialize in a particular topic or area with which they are already familiar. There are just too many books out there for a person to know which specific book to collect from a never-ending source of supply; whereas a specific genre can be far more easily researched.

Also to be considered is why one is collecting books; is it because one likes to read about a particular topic and will keep the book indefinitely in their own private library, or is it because one is intending to resell the books for a profit?

Madlyn Blom: What I wish I'd known? That a book's content doesn't determine or even impact its value. Wh[ether] a book is a good read or not isn't what determines the collector value - people who have books because they like the content are usually "savers", not collectors in the financial definition of collecting. I wish I'd known early on: Collecting/Saving/Hoarding are all very different states. Then the details will follow after this concept is learned.

Bill: Off the cuff I would say, as an analogy to the real estate truism about location, the 3 most important things are: “Condition, Condition, Condition.”    But knowing when to violate this advice is also important, or you may miss your only chance at a truly rare item.

Next, you may be too modest to note that collectors can gain so much b[y] having a good relationship with dealers in their collecting area. My collection would be a shadow of itself, and my life would have been less rich, if I had not been privileged to know many great book dealers.

Finally, I would say to young collectors today, not every thing can be learned from the internet, as great as it is; you must invest in and learn from publications on your area of interest, including bibliographies, dealer catalogs, bookish memoirs, etc. You would not try to play golf without the proper tools, so it is with book collecting, you must properly equip yourself for “the best indoor sport,” as it has been called.

Maria Lin: Don't be afraid to ask for what you want. Particularly in things like yard sales and such, sometimes if you ask if there are any books you will be surprised at what turns up. The worst that will happen is that they will say no, so always ask. I also found that most of the time what I thought I would pay for books happened to be twice as much as what people were actually asking....

In the beginning, don't worry too much about setting up a 'theme' or a want list or anything else that will restrict your choice in what you'd like to collect. First just pick stuff up, and soon you will know where your fancy leads you by the sort of things that start populating your shelves. Then if you want you can start narrowing things down and maybe trimming your collection.

In the beginning I didn't know the first thing about how much a book should cost, what made it valuable, whether or not it was rare, and so on. As a result I bought a lot of books that were in poor condition just because they were old. Turns out there are a -lot- of old books, and that alone doesn't make them worth scooping up. I've since learned to be more picky, which has saved me a great deal of space and money. 

Related to the above, the only way I've found you can really judge how much a book is worth to you is through constant study, not just on book collecting but in a broader sense. One of my favorite things about book collecting is that it isn't just a hobby of amassing stuff, but a hobby that reflects the collector's particular interests and education. The best way to become knowledgeable about books is to become knowledgeable about the topics found in those books. If you follow your interests, book related or not, you will find that you will naturally increase your knowledge of the books you want to collect, and you will be a head above the people whose main resource is Amazon sales data.

Remember: for questions that booksellers wish new book collectors would ask, click here.  

Tomorrow, advice from David Klappholz, Yolana, Laura Knight and Jean Ottosen....

Post # 500 at The Private Library

This is the 500th post to this blog since The Private Library (TPL) went live 18 months ago (29 March 2009).

I thought I would step out from behind the authorial curtain for a moment to express my gratitude to a few of the folks who have helped TPL reach this point.

Firstly, my deepest gratitude to TPL's Guest Bloggers: James Keeline, Strathmeyer collector extraordinaire; Linda Hedrick, long-suffering spouse, whose wide reading and intelligent commentary are now on daily display at her own blog, Cerebral Boinkfest; and Maria Lin, who graciously took time from her own blog, What's My Age Again, to remind us all of the importance of booksellers' catalogs. The remaining 483 posts, for better or worse, are entirely the responsibility of yours truly.

Other folks have expressed their support in other ways, and I would like to acknowledge some of those folks as well:

• Ian Kahn, Lux Mentis, Lux Orbis
• Paul Razzell, Fine Press Book Association
• Chris Lowenstein, Book Hunter's Holiday
• Rebecca Rego Barry, Fine Books & Collections
• Barbara Werner van Benthem, International League of Antiquarian Booksellers
• Stephen Gertz, Nancy Mattoon & Cokie Anderson, BookTryst
• the editors of American Libraries Direct
• Wayne Homren, The E-sylum
• Lindig Harris
• the folks at the eBay Booksellers Discussion Board
• the numerous bloggers who have graciously added TPL to their own blogrolls
• all the folks responsible for TPL's 600+ comments to date

...and last, but most certainly not least, all of you who make the effort to stop by whenever you can.

Please continue to drop me a line if there's a topic you would particularly like me to address, and I'll see if I can whip up something worthy of the subject.  Among the posts I have planned for the near future is a series about archaeology (in response to a reader request), and another on film (to coincide with this year's AFI Fest in Los Angeles).  As my real life and real job permit, I also plan to add additional relevant links to the 700+ already on offer.

Stay tuned....

Marbling and The Private Library

One of the book arts most commonly encountered by book collectors, especially on volumes which pre-date publishers' cloth bindings (as well as on many modern fine press titles), is marbling:

Marbling is believed to have been invented in China over 2000 years ago, and is known to have been used on paper (in Japan) as early as the 12th century CE.  It has been used for bookbindings and endpapers for hundreds of years:

   

Marbling has been used to create bindings that are exclusively (or almost exclusively) marbled paper, and it has been used to create bindings that are a mix of other materials (such as leather) and marbled paper:

   

In books, though, marbling usually is seen to best effect when it is used to create endpapers...

...and pastedowns for books:

Marbling also is often used to enhance the appearance of the edges of the textblock:

  

Although not a particularly difficult art to learn, marbling is a very difficult art to master.  As Joel Silver points out in a 2005 article for Fine Books & Collections:

The basics haven’t changed very much over the past several hundred years. It still involves depositing bits of color on the surface of water (to which a thickening agent has been added) and arranging those colors, through the use of combs or other implements, into patterns that are then transferred to a sheet of paper.

In suminagashi (Japanese paper marbling), the earliest and simplest form of marbling, inks are applied to the surface of the water with tapered brushes. The ink floats and the water urges the spots of colour into concentric bands (as depicted in the image below):

More complex marbling can be achieved using so-called Turkish marbling, the normal process in the West, where inks are added to the surface of a viscous mucilage known as sizing and then manipulated with a variety of implements (demonstrated in the image below by marbler John Bielak):

One can find marbling demonstrated in numerous videos that are readily available on the Internet. (See, for example, Paper Marbling [Set #1] and Paper Marbling [Set #2] under our Bookish Podcasts & Webcasts on the right-hand side of this blog.)

Folks interested in exploring this art in more depth will find that a number of titles have been penned about the subject, any one of which likely would be a welcome addition to one's bookshelves:

  

Of course. once you get started, it may be hard to stop collecting such books, especially if you decide to take up marbling yourself....

  

The Prospectus and The Private Library

Prospectus is one of those words that gets tossed around quite a bit in publishing circles, although its meaning varies greatly depending on context.  If one is a writer, prospectus usually means the same thing as book proposal: i.e., a written summary that gives potential publishers sufficient information to come to an informed publication decision based on the book's intellectual contribution, production complexities, and market potential.  This is not the sense in which we will be using the term in today's post. (The term has different meanings in other contexts as well: e.g., finance, education, etc.)

The focus of today's post is a printed leaflet or broadside describing a forthcoming book; often with a specimen paper, illustration, and/or table of contents.  The image below depicts what typically is meant by this meaning of prospectus: a sample page from the book being published is reproduced alongside details of the publication, and a tipped-in wood engraving gives an idea of how the title will be illustrated:

The first known prospectus for a printed book (in this sense) was published in 1469. The term is most frequently associated, though, with the rise of subscription publishing of luxe titles in the 17th century. Due to the great expense of publishing such titles, advance orders and -- most importantly -- payment usually was solicited in advance of publication.  (In later centuries, salesmen's dummies and similar items would serve the same purpose.)

Prospectuses are avidly collected by book collectors.  If one cannot afford the actual book, a prospectus at least affords one the satisfaction of owning a memento of the book's publication (leaf books serve much the same function for many collectors):

If a particular volume is announced but never actually published, a prospectus may well be the only way of knowing whether such publication was ever even intended. (The same is true if all known copies of a published title perish in a fire or similar disaster before the title can be distributed.) 

Although it can be a bit difficult to collect prospectuses from past decades and centuries (due to the limited press runs and ephemeral nature of the material), such collecting can be done given sufficient time and financial resources:

  

Several books have been written which may prove helpful to the novice collector of such material.  John Feather's two titles about pre-1801 prospectuses at the Bodleian Library often seem to be as scarce as the prospectuses about which he writes, but a copy of one or both titles does occasionally surface in the marketplace (usually sans microfiche). Fortunately, much of the information in both titles is repeated in English Book Prospectuses: An Illustrated History, a title Feather penned several years later for Bird & Bull Press (which includes 14 large facsimile prospectuses).

Because many of today's fine press titles still are published on a subscription basis, interested collectors may want to investigate such presses as a reliable and inexpensive way of collecting prospectuses.  (Bibliographies of these presses often include a list of the prospectuses they've published.  If you also end up buying some of the books these prospectuses describe, so much the better!)

  

A recent Whittington Press title, British Private Press Prospectuses 1891-2001, may prove helpful to folks collecting British private press prospectuses.  (The deluxe edition includes several original prospectuses.) 

We are unaware of similar titles devoted to prospectuses published in other countries.  Should you know of any, please advise via Comment or email.  (Folks who collect the books of America's distinguished Bird & Bull Press may want to pick up a copy of its 2008 title A conservatory for my prospectuses and specimen leaves, which includes several scarce original prospectuses for early publications of this press....)

In Search of Supralibros at The Private Library

As we saw in our previous posts on ex libris and provenance, book collectors have, over the centuries, used a variety of means to indicate personal ownership of a particular volume. Some of these indicia, such as bookplates, appear inside books.  Other indicia may appear on the bindings of books:

       

When marks of personal ownership are applied to the bindings of books, they are known collectively as supralibros.  Although the best known and probably most numerous supralibros are coats-of-arms, other marks of ownership commonly found stamped on bindings are the owner’s name, initials, monogram, or some combination thereof.  Such marks may appear on either the upper or lower cover, the spine, or in several places at once:

Supralibros used to be quite popular, especially in countries like France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. Leather bindings were the primary recipients of such indicia, either stamped with gold leaf or blind-stamped, although a few extraordinary volumes are known where such indicia was hand-stitched as part of a fabric binding.  Such is the case with the binding below, an armorial velvet binding on Franz Joseph von Herz zu Herzfeld's Historia civilis de quatuor mundi monarchiis (1734), formerly in the collection of Leopold Anton Eleutherius von Firmian, Prince Archbishop of Salzburg (now in the collection of Salzburg University Library):

Among ardent bibliophiles, one of the most collectible of all supralibros is that of the distinguished French book collector Jean Grolier de Servières, viscount d'Aguisy (after whom The Grolier Club is named):

Of course, as with bookplates, supralibros do not guarantee that a particular volume was ever actually in the possession of a particular individual.  It was not uncommon for unscrupulous binders to retain a stamp and use it on volumes that never actually belonged to the device's rightful owner.  As with most other issues of provenance, due diligence will save you much grief....

Pamphlets and The Private Library

History gets recorded and interpreted in a variety of ways.  In the modern era, for example, websites and social media such as Twitter, Facebook and the like allow "just folks" to record and interpret history as it happens.  But from the debut of printing in the West (mid 15th century) until roughly the invention of the first commercially viable telegraph in the mid 19th century, recording and "interpreting" history as it happened was largely a matter of pamphleteering.

Pamphlets, as defined by UNESCO, are publications (other than periodicals) that range from 5-48 pages, exclusive of their covers (anything larger is a book).  Pamphlets have for centuries recorded "history as it happens."  The Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the English Civil Wars, both the American and the French Revolutions ... virtually any historical event of the past several centuries that generated major controversy was a source of pamphleteering by folks trying to recruit supporters to their point of view. (The image below reproduces one of several pamphlets produced during the French Revolution, this from a large collection of such pamphlets at The Newberry Library:)

Because pamphlets have always been much quicker and easier to print than books, they have been a favored PR tool of revolutionaries for centuries.  (The pamphlet below left should need no introduction. The pamphlet below right is Lenin's What is to Be Done? Held by the University of Leeds, it urges a "new vision of a Marxist revolutionary party":)

  

Revolutionaries, of course, have been religious as well as secular:

   

Pamphleteering is not, however, entirely a thing of centuries long past, as these pamphlets, produced during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (1964) and a similar movement in Australia (1982), indicate:

  

Because pamphlets are by definition ephemeral, printed on whatever paper is available, by whatever means are readily at hand, most have not survived the ravages of time nearly as well as books.  Those that have survived usually have done so because they were bound (usually with similar pamphlets) at some point in the past.  (The image below, by way of Wesleyan University, is of a bound volume of pamphlets concerned with the issue of colonizing Liberia:)

Collectors seeking to add pamphlets to their bookshelves not only will have to contend with fragility (and consequent rarity), but also with the fact that many pamphlets (perhaps most) were produced by anonymous authors.  Collectors can either view this as a chance to contribute new scholarship (if they have the time, means and inclination), or they can seek out books that already have attempted to address some of these challenges:

     

Either way, the hunt will likely be an exciting one....

(P.S.  For some other other uses of pamphlets, click here.)

Collecting "THE Book" for The Private Library

Perhaps no type of book collecting is so beloved by book historians, yet so misunderstood by other book collectors, as collecting that is focused on but a single book. 

Stories of such book collecting generally elicit comments like "freaky" from other book collectors, but the academic value of such collections is inestimable.  The Lucile Project, which tracks the 2000+ editions and issues of a now-largely-forgotten title by Owen Meredith, demonstrates the wealth of information that scholars can glean from such a single-book collection.  

There probably is no way of proving it, but one suspects that the most numerous, and largest, single-book collections are those devoted to particular religious texts.  Both the Christian Bible and the Qur'an, to cite but too obvious examples, have been published in countless editions over the centuries.  The study of such texts' reception and distribution has occupied the lifetimes of scholars too numerous to mention.  (Not just religious scholars, either.  In the West, for example, only the works of Shakespeare have had as profound an impact on literature [and language] as the Christian Bible.)

Influential texts such as the above have attracted some of history's finest editors, typographers, printers, illustrators, papermakers, marblers, bookbinders ... and continue to do so. Needless to say, collecting a single book in all its printed manifestations could (depending on the book chosen) very well be the work of several lifetimes.

Your faithful blogger has thought often about the desirability of such a collection.  Alas, no one book has ever attracted his attention strongly enough to make him that obsessive about collecting all its printed manifestations.

Such a book would have to be, first of all, something that could be re-read numerous times, each re-reading producing some new revelation.  The text would need to lend itself to copious and attractive illustration, given your blogger's weakness for well-executed wood engravings.  Attractive bindings, well-made papers, appropriate typography, properly designed pages, well-executed printing -- these, too, would be huge pluses if this correspondent ever were to seriously consider collecting but a single book.

And the book itself?  You'll find a hint in the images scattered above and below (although we remain open to suggestions....)

     

The Library of America and The Private Library

In our current age of political correctness, one would think it would be tempting fate to attempt publication of a national literary canon.  

Because definitions of both "national" and "canon" necessarily depend, as we saw in our post about the Great Books of the Western World, on a limited number of selections made by a limited number of people, disagreements are inevitable.  That said, it hasn't stopped some publishers from making the attempt.  Some attempts have been more successful than others.

One of the most notable such attempts has been La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.  Founded in the 1930s by Jacques Schiffrin, and long since an imprint of the distinguished French publisher Gallimard, 

“La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade” presents reference editions of the great works of French and foreign literature and philosophy, printed on Bible paper and bound, with a full leather and gold cover.

Each year between 10 and 12 new titles are added to this elegant, practical and easy to read imprint. The texts are based on original manuscripts, editions and documents. The translations are new or revised. Previously unpublished material is presented whenever possible and the prefaces, entries and notes, written by specialists, await the lay reader and the researcher alike:

  

Although the 500+ titles that have been published thus far include important "foreign" authors such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen, the focus of La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade has always been primarily the classics of French literature -- the French "literary canon," as it were.  And it was the successful example of this pioneering French publishing effort that gave rise, in 1979, to the establishment of The Library of America (LOA).

Long a dream of American literary critic Edmund Wilson, the first volumes in LOA's distinguished series were published only ten years after Wilson's death (1982).  It should come as no surprise that LOA's "mission statement" closely resembles that of its French exemplar:

[t]he idea for The Library of America was first discussed among scholars and literary critics who were concerned that many works by America's finest writers were either out of print or nearly impossible to find. Without a deliberate publishing effort to preserve American writing, many important works would virtually disappear and be lost to future generations. Deprived of an important part of their cultural inheritance, Americans would lose a collective sense of the country's literary accomplishments.

In the quarter-century since, over 200 volumes have been published, leading the New York Times Book Review to hail The Library of America as the "quasi-official national canon" of American literature:

All LOA volumes are deliberately designed to withstand generations of use, as one would expect of volumes that are supposed to represent a national literary canon:

The paper is acid-free and meets the requirements for permanence set by the American National Standards Institute; it will not turn yellow or brittle. The books are bound with the grain of the paper to ensure that they open easily and lie flat without crinkling or buckling...

The binding cloth is durable woven rayon, dyed in the thread for richness of color. Handsome endsheets match the binding cloth and add to the visual unity of the series. The books are Smyth-sewn for permanence and flexibility, and each includes a ribbon marker....

  

Because the Library of America seeks to keep every volume it publishes permanently in print and widely available to readers, and because it -- like many other nonprofits --does not charge its patrons the full cost of the expenses it incurs to meet this mandate ("[t]o do so would make the volumes too costly for many people and thus severely limit the audience for the series"), LOA has always relied on contributions from donors to underwrite many of its expenses.  This is an attractive way for folks who believe in LOA's "mission" to help ensure the long-term viability of the enterprise.  But, as with any canon, there are critics.

While most folks probably would not disagree with Alcott or Emerson (above) being included in a canon of "American" literature, lots of critics have taken issue with many of LOA's other choices for inclusion in "the canon:"

  

In a recent article for Newsweek Malcolm Jones suggests that LOA may soon mean "Losing Our Authors" if The Library of America doesn't quit publishing "second-tier writer[s]" like those depicted above, all this happening, mind you, while LOA still ha[s] quite a few deceased mastodons left to corral—thanks to the intransigence of publishers and literary estates, there is as yet no LOA Ernest Hemingway, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams or T. S. Eliot.  This sort of criticism seems to be especially directed at the various anthologies and other special publishing projects that LOA has undertaken in recent years.

Of course, as is the case with TV shows and films and other media productions which don't live up to one's own personal definition of "canonical," one always has the choice of simply not purchasing the proffered volume.

Folks who enjoy literary podcasts will find a number of these available from LOA (a link is included under Bookish Podcasts & Webcasts in the right-hand column of this blog).  And folks who enjoy short stories will want to subscribe to LOA's weekly Story of the Week. LOA also has an excellent blog (a link to which you will find included in our Bookish Blogroll)....

The Short Story and The Private Library (Part V)

Folks interested in collecting books of short stories certainly realize by now that what we have covered in our posts thus far does not even begin to scratch the surface of what's available:

    

We have not covered at all, for example, the numerous small literary magazines that do so much to keep the short story alive as a viable literary form.  Nor have we covered the hundreds of other authors, writing in a plethora of languages, who deserve recognition for demonstrated excellence in this literary form.  Fortunately, a number of books exist which can readily remedy these deficiencies.  If some of these are too expensive for your own book collecting needs, most larger public and academic libraries are likely to have a copy on hand:

   

If you have a favorite author, and that author has achieved a modicum of fame, chances are very good that a bibliography has been published which details, as comprehensively as possible, any short stories your author may have penned (in addition, of course, to whatever other works he or she produced):

   

Subject bibliographies also will detail known short stories relevant to the subject at hand:

  

With these and similar titles at hand, one should have no problem at all filling one's bookshelves with numerous volumes of short stories....

The Short Story and The Private Library (Part IV)

Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread. Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife, what is to become of us. How are we to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves. I'll tell you what, husband, answered the woman, early to-morrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest. There we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them. No, wife, said the man, I will not do that. How can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest. The wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces. O' you fool, said she, then we must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the planks for our coffins, and she left him no peace until he consented....  Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's & Household Tales)

It is perhaps unsurprising that short stories are well-suited to children's literature.  After all, the oral storytelling traditions from which short stories arose included tales considered particularly appropriate to children -- fables, parables and fairy tales, for example, have all traditionally been used to make moral instruction more palatable to youngsters:

   

Because short stories for children so often take advantage of folkloric elements, many of these (such as legends and tall tales) appeal as much to adults as they do to children:

  

Do not, however, be deceived: short stories for children are every bit as challenging to write well as are short stories for adults. Authors who can do this consistently deserve their fame.

One such author was the great Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen.  Feted by royalty, published in more than 150 languages, this former weaver's apprentice remains -- 135 years after his death -- one of the most beloved children's authors of all time.   His numerous stories -- The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling and countless others -- have long since passed into the cultural memory of generations of children.  (For a fairly comprehensive list of these stories, in their original order of publication, click here.)  It is perhaps altogether fitting that the so-called "Nobel Prize for Children's Literature," awarded biennially by the International Board on Books for Young People, is designated the Hans Christian Andersen Award.

   

As may be surmised from the above images, Andersen's tales have long proven well-nigh irresistible to a wide range of talented illustrators:

   

But other authors also penned notable short stories for children.  Among these may be numbered British Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling, one of those rare authors whose short stories for children have achieved as much fame as his short stories for adults (and who is known almost as well for his poetry!):

  

The first English-language writer to be awarded the Noble Prize in Literature (1907), Kipling -- like Chekhov -- had an enormous influence on the development of the short story as a literary form.  Authors as diverse as Poul Anderson, Orwell (like Kipling, born in India) and Borges have all publicly acknowledged Kipling's influence on their own short stories.  This influence notwithstanding, Kipling still causes many disagreements among critics, much of it driven by his critics' own political agendas.  

Like Andersen's, many of Kipling's short stories have been (repeatedly) turned into radio, TV and film productions, and -- again like Andersen's -- many of these short stories have attracted some of the world's finest illustrators.  François-Louis Schmied, for example, was one of the finest woodblock engravers of the Art Deco period.  He achieved his first great success adapting Paul Jouve's illustrations for Kipling's Jungle Book:

  

Just as Kipling's reputation has often depended on his critics' own political agendas, so has the reputation of American author Joel Chandler Harris.  Although the short stories penned by this gifted folklorist are widely collected, the fact that Harris based most of them on tales told by slaves has given many critics all kinds of problems.  Most of this criticism appears to stem from the author's attempt to emulate as closely as possible the dialect of these tales as he first encountered them:

...Uncle Remus came around the corner of the house, talking to himself.

"Dey er too lazy ter wuk," he was saying, "en dey specks hones' fokes for ter stan' up en s'port um. I'm gwine down ter Putmon County whar Mars Jeems is -- dat's w'at I'm agwine ter do."

"What's the matter now, Uncle Remus?" inquired Mr. Huntingdon, folding up his newspaper.

" Nuthin' 'tall, Mars John, 'ceppin deze yer sunshine niggers. Dey begs my terbacker, en borrys my tools, en steals my vittles, en hit's done come ter dat pass dat I gotter pack up en go. I'm agwine down ter Putmon, dat's w'at."

Uncle Remus was accustomed to make this threat several times a day....

His critics notwithstanding, the short stories that Harris spun about Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and other such characters have, like the short stories spun by Andersen and Kipling, become part and parcel of the childhood of millions of delighted readers the world over:

   

According to literary critic John Goldthwaite, the Uncle Remus stories penned by Harris are "irrefutably the central event in the making of [the] modern children's story."  Harris influenced everyone from Kipling and Milne to Twain and Faulkner.  And, like Andersen and Kipling, his stories have attracted a host of talented illustrators (not to mention authors interested in re-telling Harris's tales in a more "politically correct" fashion):

  

Of course, these three authors, as good as they are, do not even begin to exhaust the collecting possibilities for children's short stories.  We trust that you, loyal reader, will be able to uncover many more.... 

The Short Story and The Private Library (Part III)

Between the distance and the horizon on the right there was a flash of lightning so vivid that it lighted up part of the steppe and the spot where the clear sky met the blackness. A terrible cloud was swooping down, without haste, a compact mass; big black shreds hung from its edge; similar shreds pressing one upon another were piling up on the right and left horizon. The tattered, ragged look of the storm-cloud gave it a drunken disorderly air. There was a distinct, not smothered, growl of thunder. Yegorushka crossed himself and began quickly putting on his great-coat....  

All at once there was a squall of wind, so violent that it almost snatched away Yegorushka's bundle and mat; the mat fluttered in all directions and flapped on the bale and on Yegorushka's face. The wind dashed whistling over the steppe, whirled round in disorder and raised such an uproar from the grass that neither the thunder nor the creaking of the wheels could be heard; it blew from the black storm-cloud, carrying with it clouds of dust and the scent of rain and wet earth. The moonlight grew mistier, as it were dirtier; the stars were even more overcast; and clouds of dust could be seen hurrying along the edge of the road, followed by their shadows. By now, most likely, the whirlwind eddying round and lifting from the earth dust, dry grass and feathers, was mounting to the very sky; uprooted plants must have been flying by that very black storm-cloud, and how frightened they must have been! But through the dust that clogged the eyes nothing could be seen but the flash of lightning....  Anton Chekhov, The Steppe (1888; trans. Constance Garnett)

The grandson of a serf, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov accomplished more in his all-too-brief 44 years than most folks accomplish in lifetimes twice that long.  His handful of plays and 200+ short stories, many of which reflected the difficult circumstances of his early life and education, revolutionized both drama and short fiction.  

Forced to pay for his own education by his father's bankruptcy, Chekhov submitted numerous short sketches to newspapers as one way to make money enough to feed and shelter himself and his destitute family.  Although eventually able to establish a medical practice, such practice was never lucrative (understandable, given Chekhov's penchant for treating the poor for free). His writing eventually provided most of his, and his family's, income.

Despite being stricken by tuberculosis at age 24, Chekhov's literary output was prodigious and, eventually, well-paying. By age 32 he was able to buy himself and his family a small country estate some 40 miles south of Moscow, where his well-known generosity attracted the sick and poor from miles around. Chekhov's first-hand experiences treating the illnesses of a broad swath of Russian society show up time and again in both his short fiction and his plays.

Always modest, Chekhov thought readers might go on reading his work for no more than seven years after his death (at the time of this remark, he had about six years left to live). He was wrong.  Already a literary legend in Russia, the English-language translations of his work undertaken by Constance Garnett spread Chekhov's fame far and wide.  

Among Chekhov's more famous short stories are The Lady with the Dog, which Nabokov called "one of the greatest stories ever written;" the humorous A Transgression; the often quite moving Misery; and Chekhov's first great work of mature short fiction, The Steppe, which includes what may well be the best description of a thunderstorm in all of literature (only a small snippet of which is reproduced above).

With his dramas championed by the likes of George Bernard Shaw, and his short stories championed by the likes of Raymond Carver, Chekhov need not have feared posterity's judgement:

     

To read Garnett's English-language translations of Chekhov's short stories, in the order in which these stories originally were published (in the Russian language), click here.   

On Monday, a reminder that short stories are not purely the domain of adult fiction....