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....)
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