The Private Library

"Coffee Table" Books and The Private Library

Does anyone actually collect "coffee table" books, as opposed to merely accumulating them? 

Most academic libraries do not collect such books, though there are exceptions (which we shall deal with shortly).  Public libraries also do not generally seek out such books, though they may accept donations of such books if there is a great demand for them.  But what about folks building private libraries...?

As ODLIS defines the term, coffee table books are

...expensive book[s] on a popular subject, usually oversize and lavishly illustrated, with the text clearly subordinate to the illustrations. Designed primarily for display and casual browsing rather than cover-to-cover reading, coffee table books are often marketed on the decorative appeal of their colorful dust jackets. In trade bookstores, they may be sold at a deep discount, especially at Christmas to attract gift buyers.

Although the concept of a book intended primarily for display rather than perusal can be traced back to at least Montaigne's 1580 essay Upon Some Verses of Virgil, the coffee table book as we know it today is generally credited to the great American environmentalist David R. Brower.  As Executive Director of the Sierra Club he sought to publish books big enough to carry a given image’s dynamic. For Brower, this meant that [t]he eye must be required to move about within the boundaries of the image, not encompass it all in one glance.

The first of Brower's "Exhibit Format" books (there eventually would be 20 such titles) was published in 1960:

Coffee table books are big ... really big!  They also are expensive.  That is why most institutional libraries do not collect such books.  Have you ever encountered an institutional  library that has enough shelf space and enough money to buy whatever it likes...?! 

Many private book collectors avoid such books for the same reasons.  And yet....

Exceptions are made.  Exceptions are made for the works of eminent photographers and other artists....

...and exceptions routinely are made for subjects about which few other books have been written:

The great mass of such books, though, get heavily discounted and often are bought as remainders:

Interestingly enough, the ultimate coffee table book probably is that developed by the fictional character Cosmo Kramer over several episodes of the 5th season of the long-running sitcom Seinfeld.  Kramer's Coffee Table Book of Coffee Tables (below left via Regis & Kathie Lee) came with folding legs built into the lower cover, so when the legs were extended the book itself served as a coffee table.  In 2003, Black Dog published just such a book (sans the legs), though nowhere in the book is any credit given to the Seinfeld episodes that most likely inspired the book (below right)....

  

Bizarro Fiction and The Private Library

A fascist mustache, the ghost of Franz Kafka, a desert inside a dead cat.  Primordial entities mourn the death of their child.  The desperate serve tea to mysterious creatures.  A hopeless romantic falls in love with a pterodactyl.

From a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where robotic gargoyles are law, to a blighted suburbia where the elephant god Ganesh seeks revenge on a man and his android wife, Cat Brain Land is a place of domestic despair and nightmare foreboding.  Where sirloin steaks enroll in daycare and ex-lovers return as tiny dolls.

This is a land of camel people and the Lord of Meat. The farther into Cat Brain Land you get, the more difficult it will be to get out....

Promo for Lost in Cat Brain Land by Cameron Pierce

As a genre, it has been called "the ultimate in outsider lit."

Take elements of science fiction, fantasy and/or horror; throw in a little satire and elements of absurdism and the grotesque; mix liberally and ... voila! ... you get bizzaro fiction:

 

Don't worry if you've never heard of it.   The genre itself is little more than a decade old, and the label bizarro wasn't actually attached to it until 2005.  Although its roots can be traced back to the establishment of Eraserhead Press in 1999, eleven years later it remains mostly the domain of a handful of small publishers:

  

As Tim Dedopolous observes,

Bizarro is not comfortable. Much of it is deliberately provocative, even offensive. It’s certainly unhinged, too. But if the chaotic juxtapositions and genuinely free creativity it can offer are to your tastes, then there’s a very rich vein of material waiting for you:

  

Fortunately for book collectors looking to get in on the ground floor (so to speak), the inventors of the genre have come up with a handy checklist by which to judge a book's bizarro cred:

• Bizarro, simply put, is the genre of the weird.
• Bizarro is literature's equivalent to the cult section at the video store.
• Like cult movies, Bizarro is sometimes surreal, sometimes avant-garde, sometimes goofy, sometimes bloody, sometimes borderline pornographic, and almost always completely out there.
• Bizarro strives not only to be strange, but fascinating, thought-provoking, and, above all, fun to read.
• Bizarro often contains a certain cartoon logic that, when applied to the real world, creates an unstable universe where the bizarre becomes the norm and absurdities are made flesh. Bizarro was created by a group of small press publishers in response to the increasing demand for (good) weird fiction and the increasing number of authors who specialize in it.

   

Lusting for more, are you?  Get over to Bizarro Central....

The Private Library and The Literature of Love Tokens

In the late 18th century, Great Britain began to look at penal settlements as a possible solution to that nation's dual problem of petty crime and a rapidly growing prison population:

When England lost its American colonies in 1778 in the American War of Independence, it began to look to the Pacific to replace these markets and resources....

[This loss of markets and resources was] compounded by massive unemployment due to the ‘Industrial Revolution’. Food and materials once supplied from farms across the British Isles were now replaced by imports that were processed in mills and factories. British farm owners turned their land over to sheep grazing. They evicted farm labourers and their families, who, with no jobs and nowhere to live, flocked to the cities looking for work in the mills. Many resorted to petty crime to feed their families and indeed petty crime became a way of life for many. Criminality was widespread because it was hard to catch criminals in the warren like streets of the industrial cities and there was not a dedicated professional police force. Despite this the few gaols there started to fill up and a solution to the crime problem was sought.

Despite it being a huge and very expensive experiment to set up a colony in an unknown land on the other side of the world, Britain decided to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay [Australia].... [Supporters hoped that this would] replace convict dumping ground lost in North America, clear out the British gaols, provide a deterrent to crime in Britain and establish a deep water port in the South Pacific for Britain to expand its territories.

Almost 1500 men, women and children were transported to Australia on the First Fleet of eleven ships that sailed from Portsmouth in 1787.  One can imagine the wrenching emotional pain that must have been felt by families that soon would be separated, possibly forever, by several thousands of miles.  A record of this parting is preserved on a very rare token:

As the Migration Heritage Centre at Australia's Powerhouse Museum tells the story,

This convict love token was commissioned by the First Fleet transportee, Thomas Tilley who was sentenced to seven years transportation for theft with force. To ingratiate himself, Thomas Tilley falsely watered down his crime on the token he left for his loved one. On one side is a bird chained from its neck to the ground, and on the obverse is inscribed, ‘Thomas Tilley transported 29 July 1785 for signing a note sent the hulks Jan 24 1786′. Vanity perhaps led him to ascribe his own crime to fraud rather than theft with force – a detail suitably sanitised for immortality on a token of love....

This token was possibly made by an itinerant engraver in England as facilities for traders to visit the prisons and hulks for commerce were readily available. There they would have found a ready market for these trinkets, manufacturing the ever popular love tokens to order from smoothed-down coins, the tokens then being left behind in England with loved ones.

Such tokens became popular with the more general British populace by at least the early 1800s.  Romantics would remove coins (usually silver) from circulation; they would then smooth down one or both sides of the coin; finally, they would have engraved upon the newly smoothed surface(s) some scene or memento of the one they loved.  Most frequently, this meant the elaborately engraved initials of one's loved one.  These love tokens would most often be presented to the lady in one's life, though men also wore such tokens attached to their watch chains as a reminder of their affections:

  

This tradition migrated to North America within a few decades.  Today,  love tokens are avidly collected and have spawned their own literature.  There are two standard references, one for the earlier convict love tokens, the other for love tokens more generally:

  

For the most part, though, the literature of love tokens is primarily serial literature -- the occasional article in numismatic publications like Coin World or World Coin News, plus the more specialized articles that appear in Loveletter, the bi-monthly newsletter of the Love Token Society....

Parody and The Private Library

                        Alas, poor Yorick!  I knew him, Horatio.  A
                        funny little man with a derby hat and a bamboo 
                        cane.  He wore a jacket that was too small and 
                        shoes that were too large.  He used to walk a 
                        splayfooted walk, all the while twirling his cane.  
                        And he had a tiny little mustache which he used 
                        to twitch back and forth when he was upset.  
                        He was a funny little man.  And the last time 
                        I saw him, he was a pink-faced, white-haired 
                        old man who kept patting my hand and saying, 
                        "Keep warm.  Keep warm."  It doesn't seem 
                        fair that the comedians should have to die, 
                        just like everyone else.

Richard Nathan, Act V, Scene I: A Night in Elsinore

Literary parody uses humor, satire (parody usually is classified as a specie of Horatian satire) and/or irony (under whose aegis parody fell in ancient times) to make fun of a literary work by imitating it (or its subject, style or author).  Such imitation is not necessarily at the expense of what's being parodied (really good parodies often are mistaken for the original).  As D. J. Taylor noted in a recent Times of London article, parody can be recognized

as a gradual heightening of the original’s stylistic quirks to the point where [these collapse] into absurdity ... by variations such as pastiche (quasi-sympathetic imitation drawing attention to its own facility) and burlesque ... rarely malign, in which everything is so deviously mocked that the ur-text can sometimes be left far behind in the burlesquer’s slipstream....

Undoubtedly the most frequently and successfully parodied English-language author is Shakespeare.  There are websites devoted to nothing but Shakespeare parodies, and a fair number of books have been published which focus on such parody, either by itself or as part of a larger overview of parody:

  

Eric Ormsby suggests that there's something snugly parasitic in [parody's] intimacy. The parodist must inhabit his victim's voice down to its least inflections—with close and lingering attention to those very flourishes an author is proudest of—only to turn the voice to ridiculous effect. The trick is to yoke the unmistakable manner to a grotesquely disproportionate subject.

Shakespeare aside, perhaps the longest-lived progenitor of English-language literary parody is the immortal first sentence of Sir Edward G. D. Bulwer-Lytton's Paul Clifford (1830).  The subject of its own international competition since 1982, the latest prize-winning parody reads as follows:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

A number of otherwise "serious" English-language authors have produced well-known parodies. Swift's immortal Gulliver's Travels, for example, is a parody of travellers' tales (as well as a satire on human nature).   Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is essentially a parody of Gothic fiction:

What has proved to be arguably the most popular of all sustained English-language parodies, though (it eventually occupied three volumes), had nothing at all to do with Shakespeare, or dark and stormy nights, or the immortality of the elderly.  Rather, it was penned as a reaction to an 18th century English aesthetic movement.

In 1768, an English artist, clergyman and schoolmaster named William Gilpin published a book, Essays on Prints, wherein he proposed that only picturesque views were worthy of the discerning traveller.  Over the next two decades Gilpin travelled extensively, recording his thoughts about what he saw in terms of this focus on the picturesque.  In 1782, these observations were published as Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales, etc. relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770.  In 1791, this was followed by his publication of Remarks on forest scenery, and other woodland views, (relative chiefly to picturesque beauty), illustrated by the scenes of New-Forest in Hampshire, in three books:

  

Gilpin's fashionable principles of correct travel were satirized as early as 1800 by Jane Austen in the title we've already noted above (though not published until 1817):

I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance. But Catherine did not know her own advantages — did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward. In the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge, declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw; and a lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear that she soon began to see beauty in everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest that he became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste. He talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances — side-screens and perspectives — lights and shades; and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape. Delighted with her progress, and fearful of wearying her with too much wisdom at once, Henry suffered the subject to decline, and by an easy transition from a piece of rocky fragment and the withered oak which he had placed near its summit, to oaks in general, to forests, the enclosure of them, waste lands, crown lands and government, he shortly found himself arrived at politics; and from politics, it was an easy step to silence.

Between 1809 and 1821, though, an extraordinarily popular three-volume parody of Gilpin and the picturesque was published that not only highlighted the work of one of history's greatest caricaturists, but also featured what is arguably the earliest popular cartoon character. 

The author of these volumes was William Combe.  The caricaturist was Thomas Rowlandson.  And the immortal focus of their three volumes?  Dr. Syntax....

A Bookseller may keep his carriage,
And ask ten thousand pounds in marriage;
May have his mansion in a square,
And build a house for countryair;
And yet 'tis odds the fellow knows
If Horace wrote in verse or prose.
Could Dr. Grey in chariot ride,
And take each day his wine beside,
If he did not contrive to cook,
Each year, his Tour into a book;
A flippant, flashy, flow'ry style,
A lazy morning to beguile;
With every other leaf, a print
Of some fine view in aqua tint' ?
Such is the book I mean to make
And I've no doubt the work will take:
For though your wisdom may decry it,
The simple folk will surely buy it....

Collecting the "Best" Edition for The Private Library

Popular articles about book collecting sometimes leave the impression that if one does not collect First Editions one is somehow a failure as a book collector.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are all kinds of reasons not to collect First Editions.  Expense is one, especially if one doesn't particularly care for the upkeep that is required to keep all those dustjackets (which usually account for a substantial portion of a First's market value) in tip-top condition.

A more important reason not to collect Firsts, though, may be that such editions often are not the best edition of an author's work.

"Best" by whose standard you might well ask?  Well, sometimes by the standards of authors themselves; other times by the standards of later critics and specialists of one sort or another.

Of course, if the First Edition of an author's work is the only edition of that work ever published, and such work is never translated, then that edition is by default the best edition.  On the other hand....

Consider the well-known case of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.  This seminal science fiction novel by science fiction's first Grand Master lost almost 60,000 of its original 220,000 words to the censor -- it was too sexually advanced for 1961, the year of its first publication (below left).  In 1991, Heinlein's widow retrieved the original manuscript from Heinlein's archives at UC Santa Cruz and Heinlein's original publisher released an unexpurgated version of the SciFi masterpiece (below right).  Many (though certainly not all) readers and critics seem to agree that the unexpurgated version is now the best edition of this title:

  

Sometimes it is not the censor but advances in scholarship that make a later edition the best edition of a particular title.  In numismatics, for example, major archaeological finds often re-write earlier scholarship.  That is why the 1911 Second Edition (below right) of Barclay Head's Historia Numorum: A Manual of Greek Numismatics (since reprinted many times) is often noted as "the best edition" in auction and bookseller catalogs, not the 1887 First Edition (below left):

  

Of course, a century's worth of additional archaeological finds and scholarship have made even the scholarship of the 1911 edition outdated (though, surprisingly, not to the extent that you might think).  Were a modern numismatic scholar to revise Head's magnum opus, it's likely that this revised edition, not the 1911 Second Edition, would become the new best edition of this important title.

The above examples illustrate a couple of the major criteria that often are used to determine the best edition of a work.  The accuracy of the text is a major criteria -- i.e., does the text, as printed, reproduce what the author actually wrote.  Original manuscripts, drafts, emendations...all are used to answer this question. Sometimes, as in the case of Shakespeare, there is no surviving original manuscript in the author's own hand, so scholars have to make the best guesses they can with whatever evidence survives.  That is why, despite all the marketing PR, you would be hard pressed to get most Shakespearean scholars to commit to a single best edition of Shakespeare:

   

Currency is another major criteria for the best edition of a work.  Currency is especially important in scientific and medical works, where outdated information can lead to very serious problems (death being perhaps the most obvious).  But currency is important even in literature.  Our understanding of Shakespeare, for example, has undergone considerable evolution over the centuries, as we have come to better understand how his works came to be printed and distributed to ever wider audiences.  This changing understanding is reflected in the critical apparatus that accompanies works like the Norton and Riverside editions depicted above.

If works have ever been translated, matters get much stickier. The question often is no longer one of how closely does this printed text reproduce the author's original manuscript, but rather how well does this translation allow a non-native reader to approach the original text as a native-language reader would have encountered it?  This does not argue, usually, for literal translations, but for translations that convey something of the author's wordplay, joie de vivre, etc.  It should come as no surprise that such judgments change over time.  Where once Constance Garnett ruled the roost, so to speak, in terms of the best edition of Tolstoy's works in the English language, the best editions of those works in English are now considered by many scholars to be those of Pevear & Volokhonsky:

  

Do you collect best editions?  Why are they the best editions...?

Guest Editorial: Serendipity and The Private Library

"Perkamentus," who was kind enough to contribute a Guest Editorial last week, is back with a post about a rewarding "little book adventure" that he previously shared on his Dutch-language blog (English-language translation and images courtesy of Perkamentus; minor editing by TPL)....

I recently visited a little antiquarian shop in Weesp (not far from Amsterdam) to do a little browsing.  After half an hour I was done and ready to leave.

I was taking a last look at the shop's shelf of House of Orange books (books about the Dutch Royal House) when my eye was drawn to a book with an interesting but untitled spine. The book turned out to be a catalog of an exhibition of portraits and objects relating to the House of Orange-Nassau on the occasion of the inauguration of Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina (1898).

The book contained some 120 pages, largely unopened.  Enclosed separately was a small brochure with 21 pages of errata (including a corrected title page). The book lists over 1300 items without a single illustration:

Extremely unattractive!  The binding, though, was breathtaking:

Obviously parchment, gold tooled and printed in Art Nouveau style.  But wait...this gets better!

On the same shelf I found a little book by Marieke E. Spliethoff, Feestelijke geschenken voor de jonge Koningin 1898-1913  (Festive gifts for the young queen 1898-1913; Amsterdam/Den Haag, 1998).   To my amazement, I found on page 44 of this book a large picture of a catalog that was bound in a style virtually identical to the one above -- a catalog which had been given to the Royal Family when they visited this very exhibition over a century ago!

The binding (in both instances) was designed by Carel Adolph Lion Cachet (1864-1945), a famous Dutch Art Nouveau artist who was the first to apply the batik technique on parchment.   I was shaking a bit as I read further:

Lion Cachet had received many orders for luxury ties, wallets and boxes associated with the coronation of Queen Wilhelmina in 1898.  His largest order was for the Catalogue of the exhibition of portraits and objects relating to the House of Orange-Nassau, from September 8 to October 31, held at the Rijksmuseum.  Using more than 1300 items, the history of the dynasty from the sixteenth century to the time of the coronation of Queen Wilhelmina was shown. The catalog was published by the Amsterdam firm of Holkema and Warendorf.

The order for Lion Cachet included 39 copies of the exhibition catalog bound in batik parchment -- one copy each for Queen Wilhelmina, Queen Emma and Princess Marie von Wied; six copies for the members of the organizing committee; and another thirty copies for foreign dignitaries.

Lion Cachet chose a motif of red cabbage leaves and ferns. In the centre of the upper cover he added a crowned W (Wilhelmina) and for the lower cover he designed a stylized orange tree. Upper and lower covers also have horizontal gold tooled bands to intensify the luxurious design of the book.  While the Royal copies were executed in red and black on a white background, the other copies -- while carrying a similar decorative motif -- are executed primarily in orange and yellow.  On 7 September 1898 Lion Cachet personally delivered some copies to the Rijksmuseum for Royal guests the next day. Some members of the committee had already received their copies. But it was not until Spring 1899 that all copies were finished and delivered: 

I suddenly realised that the book in I had in my hands was one of the very rare thirty-six copies that had been distributed to committee members and dignitaries!

Feverishly, I looked for the price. A pencilled inscription said 14 euros and a few cents (about U.S. $18.00).  I took the catalog and Spliethoff's book slowly up to the front counter and paid. ‘Nice binding," the clerk mumbled.  I didn’t say much.  I paid and took off as fast as I could...!

Postscript: What I Learned from this Little Book Adventure

I have some knowledge about parchment bookbindings, but before my serendipitous discovery of this title had never heard of, or encountered an example of, batik utilized for a parchment binding. 

The ridiculously low price I paid for this book is due to the shop owner's lack of knowledge and experience.  I know for a fact that this shop uses Internet sites like Addall and Antiqbook to determine prices for the books it carries.  The shop does a quick search to see if and where other copies have been sold, and for what prices.  Anybody can do that, but what if you don’t find another copy?  In this case. since the bookbinding is not signed, the shop probably figured it simply had a dull and boring book in a colorful board binding.    

Morals of this story: (1) you don’t need a lot of money to build your private library (especially if you have more knowledge than the bookseller); (2) serendipity is the whole point of browsing brick-and-mortar bookshops....

From The Private Library's Archives: "Why Do Librarians Hate Books?"

Professional librarians long ago grew used to being stereotyped.  Although a large number of professional librarians are males, with beards no less, the image that persists of the professional librarian is quite different:

What does this have to do with creating a private library?  I'm getting there....

Professional librarians get asked lots of strange questions. Two personal favorites are: "Do you have any books I haven't read?" and "Why do librarians hate books?"  The first question involved a patron who was looking for titles by a particular favorite author.  The second question also involved a patron looking for titles by a particular favorite author.  But the second question suggests a persistent stereotype, a stereotype that is relevant to private libraries.

What neither the first patron nor the second understood was public libraries cannot buy every book that is published.  As the American Library Association points out repeatedly in its most recent report on the state of America's libraries, even as public library usage has soared, funding for public libraries continues to decline, often quite precipitously. The question is not why do librarians hate books, but rather why can't librarians afford to buy the books in which I'm interested?!

Because even the best-funded public library is in financial trouble, public libraries are having to make often difficult decisions about which titles to purchase, and which to pass on.  There is no possible way every patron is going to be happy with the decisions that are made.  Even though your local library may have, in years past, purchased every bit of prose or poetry by your favorite author, there is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that they will continue to do so.

If you want to make certain that the titles you're interested in are readily available, start a private library and stock it yourself...!

They Ain't Dead Yet! Independent Bookstores and The Private Library

For a true bibliophile, is there anything more glorious than a day spent browsing the shelves of an independent bookstore...?

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress....

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (trans. William Weaver)

Guest Editorial: a Private Library in the Netherlands

We're deeply grateful to "Perkamentus" for the following Guest Editorial....

I’ve never been in the States, so I may be wrong, but I can’t imagine collecting old and rare books over there the way I collect them here in the Netherlands.

First of all, there probably is a big difference in the way we search for collectibles.  Of course, I use the Internet (I even bought some books from the States that way), but the right stuff for me (and I imagine for others as well) is snooping around in beautiful little bookshops such as still abound here in the Netherlands, especially around me here in Amsterdam:

In my blog (do you read Dutch?) I write about my passion for book collecting, especially 17^th and 18^th century books bound in vellum.  I especially love parchment, or perkament as we call it, hence my blog name Perkamentus:

But as you will see from the pictures on my blog, I also like pamphlets, ephemera, fine press books, books about books and even antique objects (especially the stories behind the objects).  [By the way, almost every picture on my blog is taken by me using antiquarian books and objects in my own collection.   Because this makes my blog sort of an online showcase, I don’t use my real name.]

I'm 49 years old and have been collecting books for about 35 years.  It was my study of history and of the Dutch language that fueled my passion (or disease, as some call it) for collecting books.  Most of my books are bought at little book markets or in one of the many old bookshops in Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague (Den Haag).  I also buy from auction houses like Beijers, Bubb Kuyper, Burgersdijk & Niermans and, in Brussels, The Romantic Agony.  

I often use Internet listings as a guide ('from whom can I buy what, for how much and in what condition").  Because distance is not a big problem in the Netherlands, if I buy something valuable via the Internet from an unknown source I pay him or her a visit, collect (and inspect) my book(s), and pay cash:

The bookseller sites I visit most often are: Addall, Marelibri, Vialibri, Antiqbook and a Dutch site, Boekwinkeltjes, where every individual can offer books for sale.  (NB: These auction houses and bookseller sites are listed on my blog under boekenveilingen and boekenzoeken.  There are other useful links as well.)

I sometimes, though very rarely, play the "gentleman dealer" and sell some of my books.

What I like most -- apart from collecting, reading and learning about book and print history -- is the contact I have with other collectors, booksellers and bibliophiles like myself.

I would advise every starting collector to follow book news, like I do, from multiple sources.  When I am in bookshops, markets and auction houses I always make time for a little chat with the owner.  At home, I read a lot of books about books, and I also pay attention to Internet sources of book news (such as this blog).  As a member of the Dutch Bibliophile Society (Nederlands Genootschap van Bibliofielen), I also like to share my passion for book collecting with others.  All of these things are important, because they give you free and easy access to knowledge and understanding of the antiquarian book trade:

It’s a fact that you can build your private library with passion and a small purse, and I think most of us start out that way.  But if passion is not coupled with increasing knowledge, then collecting is, in my opinion, a dead end....

[NB: all images are courtesy of Perkamentus.]

Fanfare for The Private Library

Collectors who examine enough auction or booksellers' catalogs are likely to encounter the occasional, usually expensive, title clothed in a fanfare binding.  This type of binding generally elicits one of two responses in most book collectors -- either they absolutely adore it, or they absolutely hate it:

The fanfare binding above, which features a central panel with the arms of James I, is via the Princeton University Library.  It clothes a 1601 edition of Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino's Disputationes. (This Italian Jesuit and Cardinal was one of the most important figures of the Counter-Reformation.  He was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930 and is considered the patron saint of catechists.)

As ODLIS points out, fanfare binding

...developed in France during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, featuring interlaced ribbons dividing nearly the entire surface of the covered boards into compartments of various shapes, each filled with small tooled foliate designs, except for the compartment in the center.... {T]he interlace was typically bounded by a single line on one side and a double line on the other....

It is the sheer exuberance and near-totality of the tooling that either attracts, or repels, most book collectors.  The example below, also via Princeton University Library, is found on a 1602 Estienne edition of Euripides' Works:

Yet another example, by way of The British Library, is this tooled à la fanfare goatskin binding on a 1667 edition of Dendrologiae naturalis scilicet arborum historiae, the last published work of the so-called Father of Natural History, Ulisse Aldrovandi.  (Like most of Aldrovandi's numerous books, this title was published posthumously):

Image copyright © The British Library Board

Fanfare bindings may be either open or closed (aka filled).  This refers to how dense the tooling is in each of the various compartments on the binding.  In the example below, the closed or filled fanfare binding is on your left, the open fanfare binding on your right:

CODEX Cometh! ... to The Private Library

Collectors of fine press books may notice a slight wobble in the earth's axis a couple of weeks from now when hordes of fine press printers, publishers, collectors, librarians, and book artisans of every stripe descend on Berkeley, California, for the Third Biennial CODEX International Book Fair and Symposium:

Photo © CODEX Foundation 2009.  All Rights Reserved.

One of three major shows geared to collectors of fine press books, and one of only two being held this year, CODEX will run from Friday, 5 February 2011, till Wednesday, 9 February 2011, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley:

Photo © Donald Farnsworth 2009.  All Rights Reserved.

Founded specifically to preserve and promote the art and craft of the book, CODEX attracts a worldwide audience.  In 2009, for example, CODEX II featured not only a sizable American presence, but also participants from Australia and Canada, Colombia and England, France and Germany, Israel and Italy ... even Japan and Russia!

This year's CODEX offers a full slate of events, beginning with a number of hands-on, half-day workshops that will cover everything from mezzotint to Coptic binding to various types of artists' books. 

When the fair itself officially opens on Sunday, 6 February 2011, fine press book collectors will find a veritable "Who's Who" of private presses and publishers exhibiting their latest wares in the Pauley Ballroom of UC Berkeley's Martin Luther King Student Union:

Photo © Donald Farnsworth 2009.  All Rights Reserved.

In addition to all the collectible books on offer, book artisans and private presses from Canada, France, Germany, Russia and the USA are scheduled to offer presentations to CODEX participants over three consecutive days beginning Monday, 7 February 2011.  During this same period, a number of excellent symposia also will be on tap at Berkeley's Art Museum Theater.

As if all this weren't enough, CODEX itself plans to continue its tradition of producing its own collectible publications, book art object and the monographic series CODE (X) + 1:

What are you waiting for?  Get thee to Berkeley...!

Guest Editorial: a Private Library in the UK

We are deeply grateful to Lionel Burman for today's Guest Editorial:

I cannot resist replying to your invitation.

I have been collecting books and journals for sixty two years, since the age of eight. I now have some ten or twenty thousand, and it has outgrown my shelf space.

My career as, first, an artist and art teacher, then an art museum curator, and now as an art historian, reflects its scope. There are large numbers of works on fine and decorative art and architecture, including substantial groups on William Blake and his circle and on ceramics, and runs of art journals (British, German, French and American):

Also numerous history books, as well as literature (British, European & American), and music and the theatre.  (I am currently writing a book on the 18th century theatre).

My wife and I share a collection of children's books, 18th to 20th century:

I probably have some rarities and fine editions, as well as books personally dedicated to me, but it is a working library, not a collector's treasury.

I was interested to read the item on Robert Dodsley, as I am reading Ralph Straus's biography and the Cambridge UP edition of his correspondence.  (I have vols. I and II of the Collected Poems by Several Hands).

I hope this is of interest....

[Nota Bene: The Private Library hopes that many other readers will follow this reader's example and share their own experience(s) of book collecting.

We all collect within specific cultural contexts, and those contexts vary around the world.  Some of the folks reading this blog, for example, will likely never share with TPL's readers, or anyone else, their passion for collecting the printed book because even to suggest such an idea could get them shot. 

But sharing our experiences of book collecting when and where we can sends a powerful message: you are not alone!]

R. Dodsley and The Private Library

Though little remembered today by any except a few specialist book collectors and librarians, Robert Dodsley was one of the greatest publishers and booksellers of the 18th century.

He was unquestionably the most important poetry publisher of his day.  His Collection of Poems by Several Hands [6 vols., 1748-1750] was the best-selling poetic miscellany of the entire 18th century.

A poet himself, Dodsley also was a popular playwright.  According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, it was in fact his own success as a poet and playwright that led Dodsley to bring to market in the 1740s the two major works by which he is chiefly known to posterity.  The first we have alluded to above; the second was his 12 vol. Select Collection of Old Plays.  This was

[a] compilation of sixty-one plays, ranging back beyond Shakespeare, [that] drew upon the Harleian collection (then in his possession) and the collection of Sir Clement Dormer....  [His] intention to snatch some of the best Pieces of our old Dramatic Writers from total Neglect and Oblivion produced an unprecedented repository of texts in the English theatre tradition to which all subsequent editors would be indebted.

The set below, on offer from Rooke Books, lacks only vol.3.  Among the subscribers to this important landmark in English drama ... Alexander Pope (Pope and Daniel Defoe had helped Dodsley get started as a bookseller):

Dodsley published Defoe, Pope, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Gray and several other leading literary lights of the 18th century.  Moreover, it is to Dodsley that credit generally is given for suggesting to Johnson the idea of that author's seminal dictionary of 1755, the publication of which Dodsley also helped finance. 

Dodsley's circle included many other leading 18th century figures as well:  Horace Walpole, David Hume, Laurence Stern, David Garrick.  It was with the help of Edmund Burke that Dodsley founded the Annual Register (published continuously since 1758).  It was in this same year that Dodsley and his brother James (who eventually would inherit Robert's business) published Robert's own play, Cleone, below (currently held by the Special Collections division of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee):

One hopes that two recent books about this important 18th century bookseller and publisher will help restore Dodsley's once lustrous reputation, and make his books once again an enviable foundation upon which to erect a private library....

  

Doppelgängers and The Private Library

...the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.    

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul....

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

The doppelgänger is a familiar motif in fiction.  Although in modern usage the term can refer to anything from one's twin, to the shape shifters beloved by science fiction, fantasy and horror writers, to simply someone who looks like you, the traditional sense is that conveyed in Stevenson's classic novella -- a tangible double of a living person that typically represents evil:

 

Doppelgängers may be voluntarily created, as in Stevenson's story, or they may simply come with the territory, as is the case with Marie Breenan's popular pair of titles, the first of which originally took the term as its title:

[w]hen a witch is born, a doppelganger is created. For the witch to master her powers, the twin must be killed. But what happens when the doppelganger survives? Mirage, a fierce bounty hunter, lives by her wits and lethal fighting skills. She always gets her mark. But her new mission will take her into the shadowy world of witches, where her strength may be no match against magic. Miryo is a witch who has just failed her initiation test. She now knows that there is someone in the world who looks like her, who is her: Mirage. To control her powers and become a full witch, Miryo has only one choice. To hunt the hunter and destroy her.

The term doppelgängers can be traced to the 1796 three-decker German Romantic novel Siebenkäs, whose author, Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, invented the term to describe his chief character's alter ego:

  

The term has since been appropriated for use by a wide range of writers around the world, making fiction which features doppelgängers an attractive, and mostly inexpensive, theme around which to build a private library:

    

Folks who are more interested in academic studies of the concept's development and use in various literatures can also easily locate much of interest, as suggested by the titles depicted below:

  

Slipping on Some Protection at The Private Library

One of the ways that specialty publishers like The Folio Society try to set themselves apart from trade publishers is that instead of relying on dustjackets to advertise and protect the books they publish, they rely instead on decorated bindings or slipcases or both:

Trade publishers generally only take this route when offering select trade books in "limited" or deluxe editions:

  

As is readily apparent from the above images, a slipcase is a

sturdy cardboard box covered in paper, cloth, or leather, designed to snugly contain a book or set of books, with the front open to expose the spine(s), leaving the spine title(s) visible. Some have thumbholes cut into each side to facilitate use. Intended to keep volumes together and protect them from damage.... A single book may be given a chemise inside the slipcase to protect the sides of the cover from abrasion. A double slipcase is divided by a partition, allowing two volumes to be encased without contact.

The point to keep in mind here is that slipcases, being open on one side, are not completely dustproof, watertight containers.

Books often are published in editions that warrant additional protection.  A typical solution to this challenge is to completely enclose the book in a solander:

A solander is a

box in the shape of a book, wide enough to stand upright, hinged to fold open at the front or side, with a clasp or spring catch, used for storing books, pamphlets, maps, plates, papers, and other documents. Named after Daniel C. Solander, the 18th-century Swedish botanist who designed it for storing specimens at The British Museum....

The judicious use of internal inserts allows solanders to hold more than one book.  In the case of the Letterpress Shakespeare below, the solander holds both the letterpress text volume on the left and a smaller commentary volume on the right:

Also known as a solander box or clamshell case, the solander -- when properly constructed and used -- is dustproof and water resistant, major attributes when trying to preserve fragile or important books and documents over extended periods of time.  Most major archives and rare book libraries have in-house conservators who build solanders "to spec" to insure the best possible fit and protection.  Book collectors can do this themselves, or they can buy ready-made solanders from a number of library supply firms such as Gaylord Brothers and Brodart (both firms also supply do-it-yourself-ers).

Finally, one occasionally encounters in bookseller and auction catalogs books and other items which are said to be contained in a pull-case.  The pull-case (also known as a pull-off case) is a

telescoping box in two separable parts, the uppermost fitting over the lower, designed as a container for one or more books, pamphlets, or other printed material. A pull-case differs from a slipcase in leaving no portion of the contents exposed, providing virtually airtight protection.

Like the solander, a well constructed and fitted pull-case is dustproof and water resistant).  The pull-case below, by way of Heritage Book Shop, has its top removed and placed on the left side of the image:

Ex Officina Elseviriorum and The Private Library

Scattered amongst the many glorious decorations that grace the Great Hall of the Library of Congress is a mural of a philosopher picking grapes from a vine that is entwined about the trunk of an elm tree (the tree also is entwined by a snake).  Opposite this scene is a scroll emblazoned with the Latin motto Non Solus (not alone):

First introduced ca. 1620, this printer's mark is said to symbolize the close relationship between publisher and scholar. Publishers, like the elm tree, are needed to provide support for scholars, just as scholars, like the vine, are needed to produce fruit. Authors and publishers cannot do it alone and need each other: they are interdependent.

The above is but one of many printer's devices that were used over the course of some thirteen decades (1580-1712) by one of the most important printing-publishing-bookselling firms of all time, the House of Elzevir:

  

The Elzevir family began their printing and bookselling business in the Netherlands in 1580. Significantly, they did it at a time when publishing was “risky business,” when freedom of speech and freedom of the press were societal values in very few places. In fact, luminaries such as John Locke, Galileo Galilei and Hugo Grotius chose to publish with the Elzevirs in order to avoid the censorship and regulation in their own countries. 

Lowys (Louis) Elzevir and six generations after him ensured the success of their publishing house in Leiden by developing a strong relationship with the university there, for which they printed theses and reprints of classic texts. One family member or another would serve as both beadle, or peace officer, on campus and official printer, until in 1712, the last of the original Elzevir family publishers died, leaving behind no heir willing to continue the business. During its existence, the House of Elzevir published some 2,000 to 3,000 titles, including reprints of virtually all the major works of classical antiquity (the image below is by way of UNESCO):

Although other early printer-publishers may have produced more elegant titles in large formats, the various pocket editions produced by the House of Elzevir were the first to put printed books within the economic reach of non-elite readers. As Andrew Lang noted,

[t]heir classical series in petit format was opened with ‘Horace’ and ‘Ovid’ in 1629.  In 1641 they began their elegant piracies of French plays and poetry with ‘Le Cid.’  It was worth while being pirated by the Elzevirs, who turned you out like a gentleman, with fleurons and red letters, and a pretty frontispiece:

The image above (via the Rare Books & Special Collections division of the University of South Carolina) shows just how diminutive these Elzevirs were -- only a few inches high.  Although the Elzevirs could and did print titles that could hold their own against the best printers of their respective eras (their 1663 edition of Corpus Juris Civilis being a notable example), this dynasty's claim to fame rests upon the cheap, diminuitive reprints that played such a huge part in the rise of the modern university and in making printed books affordable for "the masses."  (The firm also is supposed to have introduced one of the most important false imprints of all time, that of Pierre (du) Marteau, in order to avoid censorship by authorities.)

Because most Elzevirs were produced inexpensively and in great quantities (for their respective eras), they are among the few 400-year-old books that the average book collector actually can afford.  Rather than costing the tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of dollars that many of their contemporaries cost, most Elzevirs in Very Good condition can be had from today's antiquarian booksellers for, at most, a few hundreds of dollars:

  

By the way, despite assertions to the contrary (not infrequently by folks who should know better), there is absolutely no connection, or continuity, between the printers-publishers-booksellers we are discussing here and the modern information services giant Reed Elsevier, as Reed Elsevier itself makes clear....

[Nota bene: Given the enormous contributions that the Dutch have made to printing, publishing and bookselling over the centuries, it seems only fitting that one of the world's most beautiful bookstores should be located inside a former church in Maastricht.]

Library Exhibition Posters and The Private Library

As we have noted in several prior posts, folks building private libraries owe much to institutional libraries. 

Institutional libraries, by publishing catalogs of their holdings, provide book collectors with ready checklists of what to collect for their own libraries.  The marketplace for used and rare books contains numerous titles that entered the marketplace solely because institutional libraries chose to deaccession some of their holdings.  And institutional libraries, in their quest to attract supporters, often produce and distribute very attractive ephemera -- keepsakes, for example -- that are collectible in their own right.

Of all the ephemera that institutional libraries produce, though, perhaps none are so attractive and so collectible as the large advertising sheets known as library exhibition posters:

In the modern era, many institutional libraries make reproductions of these exhibition posters readily available to their patrons and other interested parties via library gift shops, online shopping and similar venues:

  

Original posters are another matter altogether.  Patience and considerable sleuthing may be required to determine how an institutional library disposes of original exhibition posters once an exhibition is over.  Is there, for example, any sort of written policy in place which determines how such material is disposed of?  Is the library obligated to save the best possible copy of a particular exhibition's poster(s) for the library's own archives?  Is there any sort of formal mechanism for disposing of the remainder -- direct or auction sales by the library itself, direct or auction sales through an affiliated friends group, etc.? 

The situation will vary widely.  Moreover, the folks who can best answer your questions are likely doing jobs that used to be done by 2, 3 or more people (thanks to continuing budget cutbacks in libraries across the nation).  Assuming you can locate the right person to answer your questions, be respectful of the constraints within which they operate.

That said, exhibition posters are available from a wide range of institutional libraries for a wide variety of subjects:

These exhibition posters are especially collectible when they feature a publisher, author, or subject that one already is collecting books about:

As if you really needed something else to collect....!

Clerihews and The Private Library

Sir Humphry Davy

Was not fond of gravy.

He lived in the odium

Of having discovered sodium.

Few people can claim to have invented a successful poetic form while trying to avoid schoolwork as a teenager, but Edmund Clerihew Bentley -- a popular English novelist and humorist of the early 20th century -- did just that while sitting in a science class at the age of 16 (1891):

George the Third

Ought never to have occurred.

One can only wonder

At so grotesque a blunder.

The name of this poetic form, the clerihew, is derived from Bentley's middle name. The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary defines the form as a humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain, rhymed as two couplets, with line of uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose.  The modern example below is cited by author Richard Rhodes in his book Dark Sun:

Sir James Dewar

Is smarter than you are

None of you asses

Can liquify gases.

A more down-to-earth definition is given by Billy Mills in a recent article:

...these poems are biographical, focusing on a specific detail of a well-known person so as to poke gentle fun at them. There are four lines of no set length, although the first two are usually short and the second two long. 

The first line is usually wholly or partly made up of the subject's name. These lines rhyme AABB, with portmanteau words and other linguistic innovations encouraged to achieve the rhymes. Although the results are (or at least meant to be) funny, Clerihews are rarely satirical and never abusive. Behind the wit, you can generally sense great admiration for the subject. If anything, most Clerihews are best seen as ironic eulogies....

Gilbert Chesterton was a fellow student of Bentley's, and Chesterton did much to help Bentley popularize the form.  The two friends penned a couple of books that were especially influential in popularizing clerihews.  Their first book, Biography for Beginners, was published in 1905.  More Biography for Beginnners followed in 1929:

  

Baseless Biography, illustrated by Bentley's son, was published in 1939:

An omnibus volume (below left), combining all three books, appeared in 1951, five years before Bentley's death. The omnibus volume below right appeared in 1982.  (The most recent omnibus volume that we could locate was an ebook publication in 2009.)

  

Many authors since Bentley have been enamored of the form:

  

For some reason, clerihews seem to be particularly popular with philosophers, witness this example from Dean W. Zimmerman:

G. E. Moore
was a bit of a bore;
more an old fossil
than a Cambridge Apostle.

With its focus on brevity and celebrity, the clerihew would appear to be the perfect poetic form for the Twitter generation....

   

Collecting Netspeak for The Private Library

We know several book collectors who collect books about the technologies and personalities associated with computers.  Some of these collectors have been collecting such books for decades. 

A few of these book collections are fairly comprehensive, encompassing everything from foundational works like John Napier's Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio (1614) to the latest installment of Computers for Dummies.  (Even with the advent of ebooks, the great majority of this literature continues to have a print equivalent.  Why is that?)  Other such collections, though, are more focused: they deal only with the invention and evolution of personal computers, for example, or with the invention and evolution of the Internet.

Computing, like other technologies, has developed over the years its own terminology.  Much of this terminology is specific to computer hardware and software.  Accordingly, books about such terminology are frequently included in collections like those described above:

Because computers increasingly mediate communication between human beings, terminology also has arisen that tries to capture the nature and consequences of such mediation. 

A number of books have been published that are geared to specific types of computer-mediated human communication...

  

...while others explore the impact of computer-mediated human communication on language use in the "real world:"

 

Because human communities are built upon shared languages and/or interests, books about the impact of computer-mediated human communication on the evolution of such concepts also have become quite collectible:

  

Although the Internet did not begin to really take off until NCSA Mosaic 2.0 was introduced in 1994, books devoted to the above topic were already in print.  Is anyone out there, though, familiar with any computer-mediated communication titles (Internet dictionaries, guides to Internet culture, etc.) that pre-date George S. Machovec's Telecommunications, networking and Internet glossary (1993)...?

Trompe l'oeil at The Private Library

Trompe l'oeil, a French term that translates into English as "deceive the eye," is a style of art that uses light and shadow to create an illusion of three dimensionality such that objects appear to be resting upon, or projecting from, a painted surface:

In the above painting (ca. 1699) by Dutch painter Evert Collier  (currently held by the Victoria & Albert Museum), one is almost tempted to reach out and remove an item.

What appears to be a white marble sculpture in the photograph below is in fact, like the Collier above, merely a trompe l'oeil painting (on a background that has been carefully cut out to reinforce the effect):

Trompe l'oeil is put to good use not only by painters, but also by sculptors.  The 19th century bust below (in the UK's Bankfield Museum) was sculpted so that it appears that the face is hidden behind a transparent veil:

Trompe l'oeil was a favorite technique of manuscript illuminators, especially when illuminating the borders of manuscripts.  In bookseller and auction catalogs, such borders are also sometimes termed scatter or strewn borders:

The extraordinary example above is a 15th century Book of Hours held by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, which observes in its exhibition notes for this item that

[w]hile manuscripts were gradually ousted by printed books in the rest of Europe towards the end of the fifteenth century, a last, major flowering of hand-written and opulently illuminated Books of Hours took place in the cities of Bruges and Ghent. A characteristic feature of the manuscripts produced in these towns are the borders in which separate branches and flowers seem to have been strewn on the coloured background, with added shading enhancing the illusionistic effect....

The close-up below, from a manuscript held by the British Library (Burney MS 132, f. 2), better shows how these talented illuminators were able to achieve their life-like effects:

Image © The British Library

Alas, most book collectors do not have the deep pockets required to collect these types of manuscripts.  Fortunately, a more affordable source of trompe l'oeil effects may be found on the dustjackets that clothe modern printed books.  The brand new dustjacket below, for example, only appears to be worn and faded....

The tromp l'oeil effect is illustrator Michael Koelsch's homage to the pulp fiction roots of this 1994 Nebula Award-nominee that deftly combined science fiction with hard-boiled detective fiction.

Many more tromp l'oeil dustjackets are out there.  Search and ye will find (be sure not to overlook juvenile fiction)....