The Private Library

From The Private Library's Archives: Cats and The Private Library

Anyone who has spent much time in independent bookstores or public libraries is likely to have encountered more than an occasional cat during such visits (for a map of library sightings worldwide, click here).

The domestic cat has been traced back almost 10,000 years to self-domesticating desert wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica) in the ancient Near East.  Although it is unknown when cats first began to be associated with books, there are documented records of domesticated cats being used in medieval monasteries to control biopredators like rats (which otherwise were prone to eat monks' very costly-to-produce manuscripts)--this at the very time in medieval Europe when cats were being exterminated in great quantities due to their supposed association with witchcraft.

However the association began, cats and books seem to be made for each other, and it is not at all uncommon to find private libraries that not only are graced with the real thing, but also contain hundred or thousands of volumes devoted to the subject:

      

Cat owners often begin a private library devoted to their favorite animal by acquiring books relevant to the health and well-being of their furry companion(s).  While some owners are content to settle for general treatments of the subject, others prefer titles more appropriate to the specific species that is sharing their private library:

   

Like any other subject upon which copious quantities of ink have been expended, the best way to build a private library of books about cats is to focus on one or two mini collections.  One popular way to do this is to collect only those books which feature cats as a major fictional character:

      

Another popular mini collection about one's furry friends could be built around the affinity that cats and libraries seem to have for each other:

    

Finally, one could build a private library of antiquarian books that prominently feature cats (although this will take much patience and much money):

      

However you choose to build a private library about this topic, you will be in good company....

Rosetta, bronze Library Cat, 10.5" x 21" x 13"

Font Flags, Specimen Sheets & The Private Library

We have noted in several previous posts that book collectors frequently devote a great deal of effort to collecting ephemera associated with their areas of interest.  This can include everything from keepsakes to library exhibition posters to prospectuses to various types of realia.

Folks interested in the book arts frequently pursue ephemera known as font flags and font (type) specimen sheets, the latter of which are allied to type specimen books.  While the focus of both these collectibles is type, their purposes are quite different.

Font specimen sheets perform basically the same function as the sheets that are found in type specimen books -- i.e.,

A font specimen sheet is about measurement specifics, display of the font [all characters and expressions], at differing point sizes, paragraph setting, leaded or tracked. Upper Case and Lower Case, title box, formal identification of the font – its name, classification, designer/typographer, the foundry and a demonstrated showing of ‘font family’ characteristics [weights/shade in print].

A typical font specimen sheet is shown below (via Just Creative Design):

A font flag dispenses with much of what is found on a font specimen sheet:

A font flag is a poster, a visual ’sell’ presentation of the style, feel, mood and aesthetic sense of a particular font. It deals with the emotive, pictorial, poetic or pragmatic sense of the font. It may recall the sense of history, the classification group, notable or famous uses. It is about appeal, looking good.

A typical font flag is shown below (via Just Creative Design):

Design students often are required to produce both of these to demonstrate their understanding of particular type families.  Here's a font flag for Impact, a sans-serif typeface created by Geoffrey Lee in 1965 (via DeviantArt):

The font specimen sheet below is for a stencil script designed by Tania Whiteley:

One indication of the popularity of these items is that so many companies produce them specifically for sale to collectors.  Purists, however, often fore-go these, as so many of them mix types from a variety of families.  The letterpress sheet below, for example, includes (among others) specimens of Staccato, Runic, Tuscan Gothic, Condensed, Egyptian and William Page wood type:

As with all printed ephemera, such items need to be carefully stored in order to insure long-term preservation....

Park the Biscuit for a Little Glig at The Private Library

We have, as long-time readers will affirm, long been fascinated by the evolution of the English language.  Not a few of our posts have in fact been devoted to collecting books that trace this evolution -- e.g., homophones, netspeak and collective nouns.

Judging from the bestseller lists, it seems that a great many other folks are fascinated as well.  How else to account for the fact that authors still are able to make something of a reputation for themselves by tracing the evolution of English?

Consider the case of San Francisco chiropractor Jeffrey Kacirk:

Born and raised in San Diego, I enjoyed attending the nearby Old Globe Theater, where I developed a fascination with the dialog and general antiquity in the plays of William Shakespeare. In college I became intrigued with European and American social history, especially the languages, activities, and customs of these regions. I have tried to include these longtime interests in my books and calendars. 

I was fortunate to live in a number of other linguistically distinct English-speaking cities, including Milwaukee, New Orleans, London, and briefly New York and Portland, Oregon, and visited as many other parts of America’s “lower 48” as vacation time permitted. This introduction to the diversity of the English language, particularly during my New Orleans years in the late-1970s, planted a seed in me which led to my books and calendars....

Kacirk first came to our attention not through his books, but through his bestselling calendar, Forgotten English, which was a Christmas gift from our spouse some years ago (a now-annual gift which, we must admit, we look forward to with much anticipation):

In addition to the calendar, Kacirk has been able to put his love of language to good use in (to date) four well-received books, ...

  

...each of which is packed with a diverse, often witty selection of English words that trace the evolution of today's "universal language" in all its glory:

  

Kacirk also has published a number of packs of so-called Knowledge Cards which, like the calendar and his books, are based on a close reading of numerous early dictionaries, dialect glossaries, studies of folklore, nautical lexicons, historical writings, letters, novels, and [similar] sources.

So why not park the biscuit ("sit down"), grab one of his books, and have a little glig ("fun") to start your day....

All-Over Designs and The Private Library

It is unfortunate that modern industrial book production utilizes the dustjacket as the primary decorative element of hardbound books, rather than the underlying boards.  Collectors probably fetishize the dustjackets on these hardbacks as much to hide the shocking ugliness of the underlying boards as they do to insure that such boards are protected from the elements.

As we have seen in many previous posts on this blog, 'twas not always so.  Decorating the boards themselves has often led to marvelous art that is very much worth collecting in and of itself.  Be that decoration with onlays/inlays, designs à la fanfare or herringbone, panel-stamped bindings or bindings of strapwork, the results are frequently fantastic.

Bookbinders have many options when choosing how to decorate the boards.  They could, for example, decorate the upper and lower boards, as well as the spine, with different designs.  Or they could, as in the example below, decorate the upper and lower boards with the same motif, but use a different decorative motif for the spine:

Henri Francois Joseph Régnier, Les Reconcontres de Monsieur de Bréot, 1919.  Binding by Belle McMurtry Young.

Most interesting of all, though, in the humble opinion of your faithful blogger, are those bookbindings which exhibit an all-over design -- i.e., a design which is unified across both covers as well as the spine:

By Air.  Binding by Priscilla Spitler.

These types of bindings are particularly impressive when they successfully integrate typographic elements into the design:

Eric Gill, illustrator, The Four Gospels, 1931.  Binding by Deborah Evetts.

The 100th Anniversary Exhibition of the Guild of Book Workers, from whence come all the images in this post, has many more extraordinary examples of all-over design on display for interested collectors.  Worth a look...!

Claudia Cassidy, Lyric Opera of Chicago, 1979.  Binding by Heinke Pensky-Adam.

The Hakluyt Society and The Private Library

Book collectors interested in the earliest printed accounts of voyages of exploration are frequently frustrated in their collecting ambitions by the rarity and great expense of such books.  Even where such books have overcome the usual perils associated with surviving the passage of centuries (wars, fire, etc.), they may not have survived more modern perils like book breaking.

Fortunately for enthusiasts of such books, there exists The Hakluyt Society.

Founded in 1846, The Hakluyt Society has spent the past 165 years reprinting many of the world's rarest accounts of early exploration, not only English-language accounts, but accounts that originally were written in languages as diverse as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Dutch, Russian, Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, Chinese, Persian and Arabic.  (Image below left via Kaaterskill Books, below right via Meridian Rare Books:)

  

As the Society notes in its official history, the Society was named

in commemoration of the Elizabethan historian and expansionist Richard Hakluyt the Younger, celebrated collector and editor of narratives of voyages and travels and other documents relating to English interests overseas. Not only did Hakluyt’s name, as a recorder of voyages rather than an explorer in his own right, better reflect the nature of the society, but it also proclaimed the central ambition of the society, which was to advance Hakluyt’s work into the modern age. A resolution was adopted whereby the Society would print and circulate to its members, for a subscription of one guinea per annum, rare accounts of voyages, travels and geographical records dating from any period prior to William Dampier’s circumnavigation, effectively before the end of the seventeenth century.

The Society's subscription scheme has undergone several changes over the past century and a half.  Currently,

[f]or an annual subscription of £60 (US$110) members receive all volumes issued by the Society (other than those of the Extra Series) for the period of membership. These historically significant texts and translations, often appearing in print for the first time, are fully annotated, well illustrated with maps and plates, and conform to the highest standards of scholarship. As such they often represent the 'last word' on the material they embrace, and are widely valued by historians and geographers throughout the world. 

Normally, two volumes are published each year, representing extraordinary value for money. Beautifully bound and printed, and stamped in gold with the familiar 'Victoria' logo of the Society, the books rapidly become treasured collectors' items. In addition to receiving books at a cost that is effectively well below the normal shop price, members can also purchase many previous publications at specially discounted rates.

The Society's earliest reprints usually had print runs of 250-350 copies, and these reprints have become quite scarce and collectible in their own right.  William Strachey's The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia below (image via Kaaterskill Books) dates to 1849, just three years after the Society was founded (First Series, Part 1, No. 6):

In 1908, the Society broke its long-standing rule about not publishing post-1700 voyages, when it published Bolton Corney’s Voyage of Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez.   In the 1950s, the Society instituted its very popular Extra Series, titles which were too lavish and costly in their production to be freely distributed to subscribers but were made available to members at reduced prices. ("Extra Series" title below via Antiquariat Peter Petrej:)

Even book collectors who can afford originals often purchase Hakluyt Society reprints of titles they own because each Society reprint is graced with copious annotations.  These annotations position the title voyage within the context of other voyages and wider geo-political concerns, and such scholarship has received wide acclaim over the past century and a half.

Late last year, the Society began reprinting the entire collection of 290 volumes published between the years 1847 and 2000 as both a print-on-demand facsimile and as an ebook. Click here for details.

A complete bibliography of all Society titles to date can be found here....

From The Private Library's Archives: Wraparound Bands and The Private Library

Publishers are always looking for creative ways to promote their latest and greatest titles, especially in today's megastores like Barnes & Noble and Waterstone's, where a title can easily get lost among the thousands of other titles on display.  In publishers' promotional arsenals are such time-honored attention-getters as author book signings, stand-alone promotional displays (utilizing posters and the like), and the subject of today's post...wraparound bands for selected titles:

  

Wraparound bands are one of those things which one either hates or loves....there appears to be no middle ground.  Publishers love them, 'cause they have extra advertising space on which to blazon their title's many charms (by the author of the bestselling...; more than 500,000 copies sold...; soon to be a major motion picture....).  Scholars of publishing and/or reading also love them, for the insights they can provide into a book's reception among particular demographics.

Many book collectors, on the other hand, despise them, derisively referring to them as belly-bands or belly-wrappers (though not all such bands are wrapped along the lower portion of a book).  Such disparagement only makes such books more valuable to those collectors who covet books so bound.  Because book collectors who hate wraparound bands generally toss such bands in the garbage, the supply of books with the original wraparound band intact is greatly diminished, which (the laws of supply and demand being what they are) often leads to an enormous increase in the value of books so bound (especially if a book so bound also happens to be a First Edition/First Printing, since most wraparound bands appear only on later editions):

  

Love 'em or hate 'em, publishers are unlikely to remove this promotional tool from their arsenal anytime soon....

Hmong Lit and The Private Library

One of the oldest and most contentious issues in literature is how to represent the "authentic" experience of a particular culture when a writer is not a member of that culture.  How, for example, can an upper-class white female possibly convey (fictionally or otherwise) the authentic experience of growing up among the working poor in Harlem?  How can a writer who has never traveled 50 miles beyond his birthplace in the Upper Midwest possibly represent the authentic experience of a Latino doctor who ministers to refugees around the world on behalf of Médecins Sans Frontières? 

The authenticity question is contentious enough when writers speak and write the same language.  But when a culture's written language is itself a fairly recent invention, such debates often gain an additional urgency.

Consider the developing literature of the Hmong.  This Asian ethnic group, found largely in mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, probably first came to the attention of most TPL readers during the Vietnam War, as the depredations of that war, and the Laotian Civil War, led many Hmong to seek asylum in the West.  Because the most commonly used written language of the Hmong did not develop until the 1950s (when French Catholic missionaries transliterated Hmong using the Roman alphabet) , the experiences of many of these immigrants -- both their experiences in their native lands, as well as in their new homes -- is often rendered in English rather than in their native language:

  

This has interesting consequences for authenticity.  (These consequences are exacerbated by the fact that there are several dialects of the Hmong language, some of which are mutually unintelligible.)

Mai Neng Moua, who lost her father to the Laotian Civil War, moved with her mother and two siblings to the United States in 1981.  A little over a decade later (1994), Moua founded the Hmong literary journal Paj Ntaub Voice precisely so the Hmong could tell their own stories in their own voices.  As she observed with some frustration in the very first issue: Where are our voices? . . . Why are we always waiting for others to tell our stories, to define us, to legitimate us?

 

Moua's exertions notwithstanding, Hmong literature remains, to date, mostly a trickle: a smattering of titles in transliterated versions of the two major dialects of the Hmong's native language, with not that many more titles in English:

  

Time will tell if the authentic experiences of these resilient peoples make a stable and enduring transition to print, or if the stories the Hmong tell themselves about themselves remain largely an oral tradition....

  

Aldo Leopold and The Private Library

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism. Its parts, like our own parts, compete with each other and co-operate with each other. The competitions are as much a part of the inner workings as the co-operations. You can regulate them—cautiously—but not abolish them.

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it....  If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering....

Aldo Leopold, Round River (1953)

Other so-called "nature" writers may have been more lyrical (Thoreau, Annie Dillard), and several may rightly be labeled just as influential (Gifford Pinochet, Rachel Carson), but -- with the exception of the great John Muir -- seldom have a lyrical prose style and real-world influence been wielded as effectively by a single individual as they were by Aldo Leopold.

  

Although the two works for which he is best known (above) were published posthumously, the father of wildlife ecology published over 500 works during his lifetime, including well over 300 scientific publications.  This output makes collecting Leopold comprehensively a considerable challenge for most book collectors.  To collect the few major works is not that difficult (in fact, more books have been written about Leopold and his legacy than were written by Leopold himself):

  

To collect everything else, though -- well, let's just say you'll need far more time and patience, we suspect, than money....

Image via The Aldo Leopold Archives

Knowing the place and the hour, you seat yourself under a bush to the east of the dance floor and wait, watching against the sunset for the woodcock’s arrival. He flies in low from some neighboring thicket, alights on the bare moss, and at once begins the overture: a series of queer throaty peents spaced about two seconds apart, and sounding much like the summer call of the nighthawk.

Suddenly the peenting ceases and the bird flutters skyward in a series of wide spirals, emitting a musical twitter. Up and up he goes, the spirals steeper and smaller, the twittering louder and louder, until the performer is only a speck in the sky. Then, without warning, he tumbles like a crippled plane, giving voice in a soft liquid warble that a March bluebird might envy. At a few feet from the ground he levels off and returns to his peenting ground, usually to the exact spot where the performance began, and there resumes his peenting.

It is soon too dark to see the bird on the ground, but you can see his flights against the sky for an hour, which is the usual duration of the show. On moonlight nights, however, it may continue, at intervals, as long as the moon continues to shine....

...The drama of the sky dance is enacted nightly on hundreds of farms, the owners of which sigh for entertainment, but harbor the illusion that it is to be sought in theaters. They live on the land, but not by the land.

Excerpt from Sand County Almanac

Folioscopes and The Private Library

Folks who collect pop-up books sometimes are drawn to a somewhat similar type of "movable" book known as a folioscope.

Folioscopes, also known as flip books or flicker books, are primitive forms of animation that supposedly rely on persistence of vision to trick one's eyes into detecting motion.  As Kathleen Walkup observes in vol. 2 of The Oxford Companion to the Book, the concept was patented in Great Britain in 1868.

A series of stop-motion images is printed on successive pages of a book scaled to fit in the hand; the reader rapidly riffles the pages with the thumb of the opposite hand.  The subsequent illusion is similar to that of Eadweard Muybridge 's rotoscope images....

John Barnes Linnett, who patented the concept as a Kinéographe, supposedly got the idea from the French architect Peter Hubert Desvignes.  The concept is demonstrated below (via Wikipedia):

Modern audiences are probably most familiar with folioscopes as part of children's literature.  Cracker Jacks included such books as a premium as early as 1900, and other manufactures quickly followed suit, including them in boxes of breakfast cereals, bubble gum, cigarettes and the like (images below via Flippies):

  

But such books also have been published for the adult market (the rare golf folioscope below is via Valuable Book Group):

Repetitive handling means that most such books are unlikely to be found in Fine condition, especially early examples. 

The image above is part of a 1920s series that featured renowned golfer Bobby Jones.  The flip book below left, also via Valuable Book Group, is devoted to one of Jones' illustrious disciples.  The book is in color and shows Tiger swinging the club as an adult as you flip forward and him swinging the club at roughly age five if you flip backwards.  The subject of the book below right is self-explanatory:

  

Book collectors with small children probably are aware that Disney has published numerous folioscopes over the past decades, often in association with its various film projects.  But a number of other publishers also have produced an array of such books, for both juvenile and adult markets.  Folks interested in avidly pursuing such books might find the Thumb Cinema website particularly useful....

Panel-Stamped Bindings and The Private Library

One of the earliest ways to decorate a leather binding, in use from roughly the mid-13th century CE, was to take a piece of wood (later metal, usually brass) that had been worked into a decorative design and impress the stamp into a leather binding.  As the centuries progressed, leather was moistened prior to application of the stamp, and the metal stamp was heated and placed down against the leather before the whole was placed in a press.  The 16th century English example below, via The National Library of New Zealand, depicts the early use of an arabesque panel in gilt:

The advantages of panel stamps were obvious: if the book was small enough, and/or the stamp was large enough, a single stamp could be used to decorate the entire cover.  This was much less expensive than using smaller stamps to build up decorative covers, as was the case with, for example, herringbone or fanfare bindings.

Etherington & Roberts go into this in a bit more detail:

... The large stamp required the use of a press because the pressure required was considerable, particularly for the octavo and folio size stamps. The earliest stamps were employed in the Netherlands, and Flemish binders continued to use finely designed and engraved stamps well into the 16th century. The French began using the technique near the end of the 15th century, when, in Paris and Normandy, they began producing bindings of great beauty, often pictorial in design. Panel stamped bindings were not produced in England to any great extent until near the end of the 15th century.

Virtually all panel stamp bindings produced in England were calfskin, which, of all leathers, best produces the details of the engraving, mainly because of its fine, smooth-grained surface. The panel stamp binding declined in popularity in England after 1550 until revived in the 1820s when stamps were used to emboss bindings. These were usually small books, covered in roan or morocco of a dark color, blocked in blind, and usually with gilt edges. The lettering on the spine was in gilt. The covers were often embossed in huge fly-embossing presses before covering. The impressions made by the blocks on the dark leather were striking in their effect, particularly so because they were in blind. This type of binding appears to have been popular for about 20 years, although blind blocking continued into the 1850s.

The much more elaborate example below is from a 16th century Koran in The Louvre:

Collectors who can afford examples of such bindings often discover unexpected delights when examining such bindings more closely.  It was not particularly uncommon, for instance, for binders to sign their work directly on the binding, as seen in this MGR monogram on a 16th century French binding of Justinian's Institutiones (via Traces of Use):

On this 15th century Dutch book of hours, via the National Library of the Netherlands, the date of the binding can be seen impressed in the center of the binding, as well as on the silver clasps (the hooks have sawn-out banderoles with the date, 1497. Hook and catch are closed by means of a little pin that is fastened to the catch by a chain):

Such extraordinary examples are, understandably, quite expensive when they come up at auction.  Better start saving those pennies...!

From The Private Library's Archives: Does Size Matter in Your Private Library?

Judging from the many private emails we've received, many folks new to book collecting are concerned that there is some sort of metric that has to be achieved for one's collection of books to qualify as a private library -- i.e., if you don't have the resources or the time to construct something akin to the Long Room at Trinity College Library, Dublin, or at least to achieve Grolier Club membership, how can your little book collection possibly qualify as a private library.

We have spent almost two years and 600+ posts trying to disabuse folks of this notion.

If you collect paperbacks, and have a place to shelve them, you own a private library:

 

If you collect zines, and have a place to shelve them, you own a private library:

  

If you collect graphic novels, and have a place to shelve them, you own a private library:

  

If you collect books about any of the several hundred other topics we have covered over the past 23 months (not to mention all the stuff that we haven't covered!), and you have a place to shelve them, you own a private library.

Who gives a flying fig if your library is a couple of recycled wood planks stacked atop a couple of empty plastic milk crates?  Who cares if you're building your private library from discards at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales?  Some of the finest private libraries ever created were started by collectors who didn't have two nickels to rub together when they started out.  Some of the most important private libraries ever created were started by folks, just like you, who collected what everyone else was not collecting. 

The only metric that matters is this: do the books that you're collecting make you happy?  If so, the rest of it--like so much else in life--will take care of itself.

Collect what you like....

Cashier Memoirs and The Private Library

To the people stocking up on the 75% off Holiday merchandise:

You guys are super smart, I tell ya. I never think that far ahead. Unless it comes to planning how many avocados I can safely consume in one day. After the madness of the holidays, the last thing I want to do is load a cart full of Jumbo-sized Santa wrapping paper and a bag stuffed full of miniature wooden nutcrackers into my trunk and then home to shove into some obscure closet.

I have a question for you who do this every year: Do you ever forget that you bought that stuff come next Christmas and end up buying duplicates? Man, that would bite....

Carrie Evans, Letters From Your Friendly Cashier

Memoirs, a sub-genre of autobiography, have been around for centuries.

Memoirs have long been a favorite of politicians.  Other types of celebrities -- sports figures, for example, as well as business and military leaders -- also have been fond of recounting bits and pieces of their professional lives in the form of a memoir.  Even booksellers -- at least those selling to the carriage trade (as we saw in a previous series of posts) -- have occasionally favored this form of autobiography.

Until recently, however, few book collectors would likely have had on their bookshelves memoirs penned by checkout cashiers:

  

In 2006, Italian-born Carmela Narcisi -- who was then working as a supermarket clerk in Neuss, Germany -- began recording on long rolls of cash register receipt paper her daily encounters with customers. Cecilie Rohwedder, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, tells what happened next:

Armed with espresso, Italian liqueur and spicy sausage pasta, [Narcisi] cajoled a friend into translating her notes ... from her native Italian into German. A year later, Ms. Narcisi who has lived in Germany for 36 years, sat on a train when she spotted a magazine advertisement from the Fischer publishing house.

"Fischer Verlag looking for unknown writers," it said.

[Narcisi's] book appeared in late 2007....

While Narcisi's memoir struggled to find an audience, a French supermarket clerk named Anna Sam began to blog about her own experiences as a supermarket checkout clerk in France.  Sam's scathing indictments of her customers made her a media hero of the French working class.  After appearing on prime-time TV, the former literary student cut a book deal, and that book -- recently translated into (British) English as Checkout: a Life on the Tills -- has to date sold over 160,000 copies and translation rights have been sold for at least 16 languages.  Sam's success has lifted the sales of Narcisi's title as well.

 

To date, such memoirs have been much more successful in Europe than in the U.S.  Carrie Evans' two titles, for example, have yet to find the audience that Sam's title has found.  This is a bit puzzling, since journalistic accounts of the working class -- Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed comes immediately to mind -- have been bestsellers here.  But it's still early in the development of this sub-genre, and we suspect there are a good many stories yet to be told....

What embarrasses or intimidates customers? Surely nothing – isn't that the nature of customers? Let me put you straight because there a few items [that] really bother some customers....

Condoms (my favourite embarrassing item). There are customers who appear to think: "If I hide this condom, no one will see it." They try to "drown" the box among other items (some even choose other products whose colour and packaging are similar to the condom packet's), or throw on the conveyor belt at the last minute like a casual afterthought. But they should beware of throwing it too hard because it might bounce on to the conveyor belt of the next till where their neighbour is paying for her shopping. If that happens their only recourse is to move to South America.

Then there are the show-offs. Real comedians. Pumped full of testosterone, they put two or even three or four boxes of XXL condoms on the conveyor belt. They don't buy anything else, obviously, unless it's lubricating jelly ... and they fully expect all the customers around them (preferably the whole shop) to look at them with admiration (if they're ladies) and jealousy (if they're men). They never use a bag....

Anna Sam, Checkout: A Life on the Tills

Julian Tuwim and The Private Library

History loves to play tricks on writers. 

Perhaps that is why the great Polish poet Julian Tuwim is virtually unknown outside Poland itself, and within Poland today he seems to be much more celebrated for his juvenile poetry and literature...

  

...than for his earlier, experimental poetry that represented such a decisive break with 19th century mannerism.  Consider the following poem, for which we give below two English translations:

When every wall is hid by many
new posters freshly pasted up,
when ‘to the people’, ‘to the Army’,
in black print stare appeals alarming,
and any dolt, and any pup
will take for gospel each old lie
that one should go and shoot off guns
and murder, poison, rob, at once;
start drumming into all our noggins
the ‘Fatherland’; the mob incite,
bamboozle with bright-coloured slogans....

Do prostego człowieka, ("To the Simple Man," 1929; tr. Marcel Weyland)

This poem is probably the most widely known of Tuwim's "serious" poems, as it  has --for obvious reasons -- circulated widely on the Internet, though in the translation below, for which we have yet to locate a reliable source:

When plastered billboards scream with slogans
'fight for your country, go to battle'
When media's print assaults your senses,
'Support our leaders' shrieks and rattles…
And fools who don't know any better
Believe the old, eternal lie
That we must march and shoot and kill
Murder, and burn, and bomb, and grill…

When press begins the battle-cry
That nation needs to unify
And for your country you must die…
Dear brainwashed friend, my neighbor dear
Brother from this, or other nation
Know that the cries of anger, fear,
Are nothing but manipulation....

Were Tuwim still with us (he died in 1953), it's entirely possible that he might not mind the juvenile honorific.  After all, probably only Jan Brzechwa is as beloved in Poland for his contributions to children's literature as is Tuwim:

  

But such works are a very far cry from the raw and angry poems of Tuwim's youth, when Tuwim and other members of Skamander frequently used simple images, biting satire and not a little vulgarity to comment on many of society''s perceived ills:

...the local twit smiled like the sweetest dandy,
And went to see a show with the local idiot lady.

On pleasant gropings they spent an hour and a bit,
And she sure was aroused, the local lady twit.

Till finally she whispered: “My twit residentee!
This show, I’m afraid, is uninteresting me.”

So they went out for schnitzel, banana split,
The local lady idiot with her resident twit.

After which they clenched in a sultry squeeze,
The lady, the twit, the birds and the bees.

And that’s how they’ll make a daughter or son,
(Dope, twit, or idiot, dense, thick or dumb?)

So that once again, near the theater pit,
The local lady idiot can meet the resident twit.

Karta z dziejów ludzkości ("A Page from Human History," tr. Pacze Moj)

Very little of Tuwim's serious poetry has been translated into English, and your faithful blogger is aware of but a single book of his poems that has ever been published in English.   As Elivra Groezinger observes in a recent article, although Tuwim probably was Poland's most popular lyric poet of the interwar years, today he often is considered too difficult to translate because of his frequent word inventions and wide linguistic range (which led one early critic to call him the "discoverer of the musicality of the Polish language").

While we were delighted to find Tuwim included in Marcel Weyland's magisterial 2009 anthology of Polish poetry (image to your right), surely a poet of Tuwim's influence deserves to have all of his serious poetry translated and published for a much wider audience.  His principle collection of such poetry, Slowa we krwi (Words in Blood, 1926) -- in which Tuwim addresses the emptiness of urban existence -- certainly deserves the widest possible audience....

Guest Editorial: Tomes for Gastronomes at The Private Library

We are grateful to Linda Hedrick for today's Guest Editorial....

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Gk.  gaster = stomach & nomos = rule, law = a connoisseur of good food and drink

There’s a saying that “everyone is a comedian”.  Likewise, "everyone is a foodie."  Whether you habituate Mickey D’s or roll your own (sushi, of course!), everyone thinks that they are the end-all and be-all of food connoisseurship.

Perhaps we should have a little test.  Do you eat your pasta al dente or mushy?  Recently while dining on Italian cuisine with friends, my husband and I complained to the manager, who happened to stop by, that the pasta wasn’t al dente.  As she took our plates to replace our meals, she told us we needed to specify al dente when we ordered because some people liked it well-cooked.  Just as she finished saying that, our female dining companion stated that she liked her pasta soft.  Female dining companion and her husband consider themselves arbiters of everything, including food.  They had never heard of the term before, but were sure they didn’t like their pasta “uncooked," as my perfectly al dente replacement dish was deemed when I offered a taste.

Heirloom veggies via Eden Brothers

Do you like your pasta, Chinese dish, whatever, swimming in sauce?  If you do you are probably an American.  I remember ordering some angel hair pasta with tomato basil sauce and being served a dish that looked like tomato soup.  I told the server that this was the wrong order, but he assured me that this was what I ordered.  I stuck my fork in it, and voilà!  There was angel hair pasta (overcooked) about ½" down from the top.  The pan-fried noodles I ordered from our neighborhood Chinese restaurant (that just changed hands) had so much sauce that I poured two platefuls off onto clean plates.  Needless to say, the pan-fried noodles were not crisp, but mushy.

My mother was Greek, but not a Greek cook.  However, like many a modern housewife she made spaghetti.  Ours was served al dente, with some sauce.  There was a bowl on the table with just sauce in it, so anyone who wanted more sauce could add some.  I found out later that this is the way Italians serve spaghetti.  Makes sense to me!

Heirloom tomatoes via 4SeasonGreenhouse

Anyway, I digress, and perhaps sound like an effete snob.  But food is important, and ruined food is a travesty.  To that end, I’d like to suggest some cookbooks that are for real foodies – you know who you are.

Let’s start with Harold McGee.  I’ll bet every good chef on the planet has a book or two of his in their collection.  Harold McGee is an interesting fellow.  He started out as a literature and writing instructor at Yale, having gotten his BS in literature at Caltech - a precursor to the food science writer he has become, and proof that books (literature) and food are connected.  He has written two seminal books on food science:  On Food and Cooking:  The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (first published 1984; second revised edition 2004) and Keys to Good Cooking:  A Guide to Making the Best of Food and Recipes (2010).  He has written for countless publications, and teaches a three-day class at the French Culinary Institute in NYC entitled “The Harold McGee Lecture Series”.

   

Christopher Hirshheimer and Melissa Hamilton are the mavens who self-publish Canal House Cooking, and work from their own “food studio”  - a loft overlooking a canal, hence the eponymous name.  They describe themselves as “home cooks”, and indeed their recipes are basic, casual, and understated; the kind of food you love.  Ms. Hirshheimer was one of the founding editors of Saveur, and is an excellent food photographer.  Ms. Hamilton co-founded her family’s restaurant and was an editor and test kitchen director at Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, and Cook’s Illustrated. 

The first issue was summer recipes.  This issue is out of print and expensive when found, but I was told last week there will be a reprint coming out late this summer, although their website states this spring.  Each volume begins with drinks and the epitaph “It’s Always Five O’Clock Somewhere”.

Volume II is all about recipes for Fall and the Holidays.  From old family favorites to “The Fisherman’s Wife Gravlax” there’s plenty to celebrate the season with.  Especially enticing are the baked goods.  All of their recipes in all their books feature ingredients that can be found in most markets, and can be made by both novices and experienced cooks.

Volume III covers winter and the first of spring; Volume IV is Farm Markets and Gardens; Volume V is devoted to “The Good Life”, and Volume VI – due out this month – is dedicated to “The Grocery Store”.  All are available through Canal House, and can be ordered by subscription, which is three books per year and a very, very good deal.

     

There are many outstanding cookbooks that cover simple fare to very involved procedures, not counting all the ethnic ones.  Specialty cookbooks should be chosen according to taste and how involved with the making of the dishes you want to get.  The aforementioned books will serve you well over the years, whether you just want good food or you want to learn more cooking skills.  They are also fascinating reading in themselves.  If I had to start my cookbook collection over, these are the first ones I would buy...

Charles William Jefferys and The Private Library

Like F. O. C. Darley, whose book illustrations did so much to shape the United States' image of itself, Charles William Jefferys seems to be little remembered by present-day citizens of Canada, that great nation whose image of itself he did so much to shape:

In illustrations like Hennepin at Niagara Falls, 1678 (above) and The Battle of Batoche, 1885 (below, both images from his 1930 book Dramatic Episodes in Canada's Story)...

...and in his monumental, much-reprinted, 3-volume Picture Gallery of Canadian History (1942, 1945, 1950), Jefferys "visually reconstructed" large swathes of Canadian history.  As CineFocus Canada notes in the introduction to its video documentary of the artist, Jefferys was the first artist to take Canadian history and make it leap off the page and come to life:

  

Eric Weichel, in a recent survey of Jefferys' opus, notes that Jefferys

was born in Rochester, England, and immigrated to Canada with his family, settling in Toronto by 1880. Jefferys started his career as an artist in 1886, when he began a five-year apprenticeship with the Toronto Lithographic Co[mpany]....

Jefferys’s images are distinguished by a prescient interest in the greater sphere of material culture, as opposed to just “fine art,” as his work, especially historical illustrations, shows an insightful interest in the social meaning of costume, anticipating a later, feminist, re-appropriation of craft and textiles....

 

Kevin Plummer echoes Weichel's setiment, in a recent appreciation of the artist, noting that

Jefferys's reconstructions of bygone events were based on painstaking research. He scoured visual and written sources to ensure accuracy of historical or ethnographic detail. He personally explored battle sites, settlements, and territory traversed by the explorers. Friends noted his idiosyncratic habit of collecting and studying musket locks, shoe buckles, and other antique miscellany—which explains the preponderance of commonplace items and obsolete farming implements sketched in The Picture Gallery of Canadian History. His sketches scrupulously adhered to historical (and technical) accuracy whenever possible....

Jefferys is especially noted for his depictions of exploration and early rural Canada.  Post-Confederation Canada, for the most part, was history too recent for Jefferys' taste.  (The image below, The Order of Good Cheer, 1606, is via Wikipedia):

This image, Champlain Trading with the Indians, is via the Canadian Museum of Civilization:

Canada's history, like that of the United States and many other countries, has undergone much revisionism since Jefferys made the above illustrations.  Consequently, much of his work is today considered a bit too whiggish for some folks.  Still, sixty years after his death in 1951, Jefferys remains the most widely reproduced Canadian artist of all time. 

That said, he and his work remain largely unremarked save for the occasional exhibition catalog (focused mostly on his paintings, not his book illustrations) and a brief illustrated biography put out by his publisher, The Ryerson Press, almost seven decades ago as part of its Canadian Art Series:

  

The definitive biography that Jefferys' talent and influence deserve remains to be written....

Medical Fiction and The Private Library

The Private Library has, over the past couple of years, looked at a number of the sub-genres that make mysteries such a compelling collectible for many book collectors. 

We have examined, among others, capers and coffeehouse mysteries, Tart Noir and gardening mysteries, police procedurals and hardboiled detective fiction, bibliomysteries and that doyen of the mystery genre itself, Dame Agatha.

Given that life and death are such integral parts of most mysteries, it seems only fitting that the world of medicine serve as fodder for mysteries:

  

Because many of these books revolve around forensic experts in the employ of law enforcement, they often are classified as a specie of police procedural:

  

A fair number of authors seem to make a pretty good living penning such mysteries.  Among the better known, at least among folks who only read such works occasionally, is the Harvard-trained physician-novelist Robin Cook, whose various medical mysteries and thrillers have sold over 100 million copies worldwide:

  

Cook's many titles, which have been translated into over 40 languages, are popular in part because so many of them grapple head-on with the difficult ethical issues that underpin so much of modern medicine.  Small wonder that 28 of his titles have appeared on various NY Times bestseller lists, and several more have been made into movies and TV shows.

Many medical mysteries are penned as a series.  Among these are the Dr. David Brooks mysteries of physician-novelist Jerry Labriola and the Dr. Zol Szabo mysteries of physician-novelist Ross Pennie:

  

Other mystery writers, including a number who are not known primarily for novels that revolve around medicine, also have published well-received medical mysteries:

 

Not all medical novels are easily characterized as mysteries, though.  Many of the novels penned by the  late Michael Crichton, for example (another Harvard-trained physician-novelist who is perhaps even better known than Robin Cook), lean more towards the thriller genre.  Wikipedia notes that Chrichton is the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting [in 1994] at #1 in television, film, and book sales (with ER, Jurassic Park, and Disclosure, respectively):

  

Like Cook's, many of Chrichton's books tackle the frequently divisive ethical issues so often associated with modern medicine, though in Chrichton's case the focus usually is on some sort of failure in increasingly complex technological systems.

Michael Palmer, another popular physician-novelist, has -- like Cook & Chrichton -- seen many of his medical thrillers make various NY Times bestseller lists.  Interestingly enough, it was Robin Cook's novel Coma that first gave Palmer the idea that he, too, could pen medical novels:

  

Because the walls between medical mysteries and medical thrillers are fairly permeable, you may find a particular title shelved in your favorite bookshop under either genre, or under another genre altogether.  Because of modern medicine's heavy reliance on technology, for example, you often find such books in the science fiction section:

  

And because life and death are so ... personal, you also are just as likely to find such books in the romance section:

  

Medical romances were among the earliest penned in the romance genre, since hospitals, clinics and the like were one of the few places where men and women might have an "encounter" in the days when many women did not routinely hold jobs outside the home.  Folks interested in medical romances may find the Romance Writers of America Heartbeat Special Interest Group especially useful in keeping track of what's being published (much of it as series fiction under imprints like Harlequin and Mills & Boon)....

For Whom the Bells Toll at The Private Library

We have noted in several previous posts that people often get started as book collectors because of a vocation or avocation.  A fortunate few, for example, are able to make a living at numismatics, needlework, photography and the like, which most people enjoy only as hobbies.  Whether one's involvement with such matters is as an employee or as a hobbyist, such involvement can only be enhanced by a collection of books germane to the topic at hand.

Collecting relevant books frequently comes with the added benefit of introducing one to closely related areas of interest, which in turn often leads to book collecting that is further afield.  The avocations above, for example, frequently lead collectors to collect biographies, keepsakes, and books on topics like local history and place names.  The topic of today's post, campanology, while usually an avocation in most of today's industrialized nations, is no exception to the above observations:

 

Although more popularly known as bell ringing, campanology is concerned not only with the ringing of groups of bells (carillons, chimes, gamelans and the like), but also with the physical properties of individual types of bells -- i.e., with how they are cast, how they are tuned, and -- ultimately-- how they sound.  It is, if you will pardon the pun, the original heavy metal music:

 

Bell ringing fascinates its passionate devotees because of its numerous complexities.  Depending on the materials from which bells are cast, the size and thickness of the bells, whether the bells are played as handbells or are played while hung, whether they are tuned to play in a diatonic or chromatic scale ... all these factors, and many more besides, will produce a wide range of sounds:

  

Small wonder that the literature on this subject requires a great many bookshelves to fully do it justice:

  

By the way ... if you normally do not click on the many links that we include in our posts, you have just missed several nice videos and sound recordings of change ringing, chimes and the like....

   

Dun Emer, Cuala and The Private Library

The book below left may not look like much (image via B & B Rare Books; colophon, below right, via the University of Chicago), but it is one of only 325 copies of the very first book ever printed by what is one of the most interesting of all the private presses to have arisen during the private press renaissance of the early 20th century:

  

The Dun Emer Press, as Clare Hutton points out in vol. 2 of the Oxford Companion to the Book, was unusual among these private presses for three reasons:

First, unlike almost all other private presses that printed reprints, Dun Emer issued original literary works associated with the Irish Revival, including works by W. B. Yeats, who acted as editor to the press.  Secondly, it was part of a wider Irish arts and crafts cooperative, Dun Emer Industries, committed to the revival of craft in Ireland and, where possible, the use of Irish materials.  Unusually for this period, the books were printed on Irish paper.  Thirdly, all presswork was done by women, under the supervision of Elizabeth Yeats, who learned to print at the Women's Printing Society in London....  [The title below left is via Princeton University.  The broadside, below right, is from Villanova University.]

  

A recent University of Wisconsin exhibit gives a bit more background on the founding of the press:

Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, Lily Yeats [W. B. Yeats' sisters] and Evelyn Gleeson founded the Dun Emer Press and Industries in 1902 with the purpose of giving training and employment to Irish girls. The original name of the enterprise, Dun Emer, came from Lady Emer, a famous [mythical] Irish embroiderer [while dun is the Irish word for fort]....

In 1908, Dun Emer Industries split into two sep[a]rate companies. Evelyn Gleeson kept the Dun Emer name and the embroidery portion while the press changed its name to the Cuala Press under Elizabeth Yeats. Cuala was the old Irish name for a barony south of Dublin.

The books produced by the Cuala Press were printed on handmade paper and were bound in blue or brown paper boards with linen backs.

The press continued publishing under Elizabeth Yeats until her death in 1940....  Following Elizabeth’s death, the press continued under the direction of Georgiana “George” Yeats, the wife of Yeats. Between 1940 and 1946, the press published fifteen books under her direction. From 1946 to 1968 it published only hand colored prints and greeting cards. The press was reorganized in 1969 by directors Michael B. Yeats, Anne Yeats [W. B. Yeats' children ], Thomas Kinsella, and Liam Miller....  [Only a few titles were published before the press was closed in 1973.]

Altogether, 77 numbered titles, not to mention a large number of broadsides and Christmas cards, were printed by the two presses.  Much of this output can now be found in major collections held by the University of Notre Dame and the University of Florida.  Many of these titles, and a fair number of the broadsides, were illustrated by another Yeats sibling, Jack Yeats (the broadside below is via Villanova University):

The standard bibliography for both incarnations of the press is Liam Miller's 1973 The Dun Emer Press, Later the Cuala Press: With a List of the Books, Broadsides and Other Pieces Printed at the Press.  Miller followed this up, in 1977, with Pressmarks and devices used at the Dun Emer Press and the Cuala Press. 

In the ca. 1903 photo below left, reproduced from Miller's 1973 title, Elizabeth Yeats is at the iron handpress, Beatrice Cassidy is rolling out ink and Esther Ryan is correcting proofs at the table.  The advertisement for the Cuala Press, below right, is the back cover from W. B. Yeats On the Boiler (1938):

   

Surprisingly, titles from both incarnations of this press are readily available in the marketplace, with most VG-Fine copies running in the low three- to low four-figures....

From The Private Library's Archives: Auction Catalogs, Bibliographies & The Private Library

Auction catalogs have been around for hundreds of years.  By publishing a descriptive list of titles up for sale, auctioneers are able to reach not only potential purchasers attending an auction, but also potential buyers who are unable to bid in person:

 

Publishing these catalogs can be an expensive proposition, especially for important collections, where each individual title may get a page or more of descriptive text, as well as one or more full-color photographs.  If the cataloging is good enough, such an auction may well become a standard reference--i.e., a de facto bibliography of important works in a particular field.

In its barest form, a bibliography is simply a list of titles with brief information as to author, date and place of publication, etc.  In this barest of forms such a bibliography usually is known as a checklist.

But a bibliography, in its more fully developed form, is an extraordinary resource!  Not only do you get the bare-bones description noted above, but perhaps also: the type of paper on which a title is printed and, if known, some background on the paper-maker(s); an in-depth description of the binding and, if known, background on the bookbinder; a collation of the book (how, and in what sequence, were the pages of the book printed and put together); an in-depth description of the book's illustrations and, if known, the persons and processes responsible for such illustrations; the context in which the book was conceived and published, as well as its reception by the public; provenance (other important people who previously owned this very book); a census of known  copies of the book, and where this particular copy ranks (in terms of condition, completeness, etc.); in-depth background about the printer(s) and/or publisher(s); and so on.  (The volumes depicted below are recent winners of the Breslauer Prize for Bibliography:)

  

For a collector, this sort of information is enormously useful--at its most basic, it helps a collector determine if in fact a particular specialty is collectible at all!  (There may be too few copies in the marketplace to make the collector's search worthwhile.)

A fairly recent example of an auction catalog that has become a standard reference for a particular specialty is The Celebrated Collection of Americana formed by the Late Thomas W. Streeter....  Streeter's collection of Texana was the largest ever compiled by a private individual.  The volumes that Streeter did not donate to Yale University's Western Americana Collection eventually were sold in a seven-part auction conducted by Parke-Bernet Galleries from 1966-1969.  Those seven volumes are now a standard reference for Americana. 

In 2007, Book TV visited an auction that was destined to become a standard reference for books about early navigation and exploration: The Frank S. Streeter Library....  Frank was the son of Thomas W., and the similarities and differences between their respective private libraries is quite fascinating.

  

A more recent private library whose sale undoubtedly wiould have become a standard reference (had a series of catalogs been issued)  is The Valmadonna Trust Library, collected by industrial diamond merchant Jack Lunzer.  This fabled collection, the finest private library of Hebrew books and manuscripts in the world, is better than that of most of the world's institutional collections of Hebraica....

[N.B.--The above post, which (like all of our archival re-posts) we have updated where appropriate, was originally published on 22 April 2009.  Since then, Sotheby's hoped-for sale of The Valmadonna Trust Library to a major institutional collector -- Lunzer's own preference was The Library of Congress -- appears to have fallen by the wayside.  The original estimate -- U.S. $30 to $50 million -- was apparently reduced late last year to around U.S. $25 million, and the terms about keeping the library intact apparently were discarded, in hopes of attracting a buyer, any buyer.  The collection was sold by Sotheby's on 16 December 2010, though the buyer and the terms of the sale remain uncertain....]

Strapwork Bindings and The Private Library

Think of strips of leather or metal that have been cut into various lengths and have then been intertwined, often in elaborate shapes.  This is the idea behind strapwork bindings:

Strapwork was quite popular as a design motif on northern European ceilings, screens and panels of the 16th-17th centuries, so it's use as a bookbinding motif should not be all that surprising.  Some strapwork bindings, like the one above (executed by the famed Zaehnsdorf bookbindery in 1914 and now held by the National Library of New Zealand), are relatively simple executions of the concept.  The 16th century binding below, executed for the great English book collector Thomas Wotton (in imitation of the bindings executed for the great French book collector Jean Grolier, and now held by SMU's Bridwell Library), is a bit more elaborate, not least in its more exuberant use of gilt highlighting:

The example below, also from the 16th century (now held by St. John's College at the University of Cambridge), uses both gilt and dark onlays to accentuate the strapwork effect:

Strapwork is not always a stand-alone motif.   In the example below, an 18th century Book of Common Prayer (via James Cummins, Bookseller), strapwork corners decorate a motif that, were there slanting lines at the top and bottom of the panel, might readily be termed a cottage roof binding:

Strapwork often is not limited to a book's binding.  In the 20th century example below, held by the University of Miami, not only the binding of the title, but also the gauffered edges of its textblock, sport a strapwork motif....

Foldouts and The Private Library

At the dawn of printing in Western Europe, most books were folios.  However, because paper was the single most expensive element in early printed books, printers quickly discovered ways to print multiple pages on a single large sheet of paper (a process known as imposition).

As the centuries have passed, and the "average" page has shrunk in size, printers and publishers occasionally have faced the problem of what to do when a book needs just a few pages that are larger than "normal."  Maps, for example, are difficult to read if printed too small.   Certain types of illustrations (anatomical illustrations, for example) also sometimes need more space for everything to show up as clearly as possible. 

If the need for a larger page size is great (an atlas, perhaps), the solution usually is to print the entire book on the largest appropriate paper size.  Where the need is not so great, though, the solution usually is to print only a few pages on larger sizes of paper, then bind these larger pages into the rest of the book as foldouts.

Foldouts can take a wide variety of forms.  They may be gatefolds, in which one or more pages are folded so as to close toward the gutter of the book:

Or foldouts might be accordion folds, which resemble the pleats on an accordion.  In the miniature book below (image via Centerbridge Books), an accordion foldout is used to depict various uniforms associated with the Vatican guards:

Or foldouts may take any number of other forms.  In the image below (via TikiRobot), the page size of the foldout has resulted in some tears.  (The supporting structures are there because this book is being digitized:)

Sometimes, especially with maps, foldouts may not even be bound in to the book, but may be enclosed in a separate pocket, usually attached to a book's inner lower cover.  If bound in to a book, the map's size may lead to some pretty extraordinary folding, such as in the image below (via Not in WorldCat):

Whatever form a foldout takes, foldouts pose a number of problems for book collectors.  If, for example, a book's binding is glued rather than stitched, foldouts often come loose or detached as the glue dries out over time.

Also, all folding creates stress on paper fibers.  The more frequently paper is folded and unfolded across an axis, the greater the stress.  Frequently folded paper eventually tears.   Understandably, such tears lessen the value of foldouts and the books within which they are found.

Foldouts in books printed before the mid-19th century generally have fared better than foldouts in books printed after that date, assuming the same frequency of folding, because the earlier paper's content is rag rather than wood pulp.  But regardless of when they were printed, all books with foldout pages have to be carefully collated, as they often are prey for book breakers, who remove the foldouts for sale as stand-alone illustrations. (Collation also may reveal that the foldouts in your book weren't published with your book at all, but were added later as extra illustration.)

Conversely, the foldout in your book may be original to your edition but not to your specific copy of the edition -- i.e., it may have been inserted into your book after having been removed from an otherwise less desirable copy of the same edition.   (This sort of "improvement" is sometimes also a problem with title pages and illustrations in general.)  If you cannot tell the difference yourself, be sure to deal with independent booksellers who stand behind the authenticity of what they sell with a money-back guarantee....