The Private Library

The Most Influential Book Ever Written and The Private Library

We had suggested in our post of 24 August 2009 that a great way to start an argument among book collectors is to ask what is the greatest novel ever written?

An equally good way to start an argument is to ask what is the most influential book ever written?

The two questions are very different.  What makes a book a great novel are not necessarily the same things that make a book influential. Felicitous turns of phrase, for example, may be important for great novels but not necessarily relevant for books that are extraordinarily influential.

Excepting the foundational texts of the major religions (which believers everywhere are apt to cite as the most influential book ever written), what book do you think is the most influential book ever written?  Why do you find it influential?  Is its influence personal, or is its influence more widely acknowledged?  Is it influential because it changed how you view the world, because it changed how lots of other people view the world, because it founded a line of scientific inquiry that has come to permeate every aspect of human existence?  Consider the following:

      

And what about these...?

     

And even earlier....

    

Of course, such choices always are intensely personal.  For many book collectors, the most influential book may be, quite simply, the book that got them hooked on books in the first place....

The Future of Book Collecting and The Private Library

Since the advent of the Internet (more specifically, the advent of graphical browsers that made it easy for the average Joe and Jane to actually use the Internet), copious quantities of ink (traditional and electronic) have been spilt over the impending death of the book--which, of course, also has implied the death of libraries, bookstores and book collectors.

As the existence of this blog should make clear, we take all of this hand-wringing to be somewhat overwrought.  Certainly book publishing has undergone enormous changes over the past fifteen years, and certainly book publishing is likely to undergo further--probably wrenching-- changes in the years ahead.  There may be fewer books printed, more books may be printed on demand, vooks may take the place of books in certain areas, Google may well digitize millions of older books, Kindles and their ilk may attract more readers who like to curl up with a good computer.  But all of this will no more kill the book than movies killed the book, than radio killed the book, than television killed the book, than home video killed the book:

The problems that book publishers are having, and I mean here the half-dozen or so mega media corporations that dominate the industry, are--to a considerable extent--due to their own poor choice of a business model.  While fewer books may be published for markets like the USA (down 6% by volume in 2008) and the UK (volume down 4% in the same period), emerging markets with a healthier appetite for books (such as India and China) will likely take up much of the slack.  (India, already the world's third largest market for English-language books, is seeing market growth in excess of 10% per annum.)

Once one turns away from the mega media, one finds that all is not doom and gloom.  The Independent Alliance (an organization of ten small publishers) saw its sales volume grow 66% during the first 16 weeks of this year.

But it is not book publishing per se that we are concerned with in today's post.  Rather, it is book collecting that we wish to focus upon.  And the problems in publishing are but one of several trends impacting book collecting.

The worldwide economic recession probably is the dominant factor impacting all kinds of collecting right now.  Most folks have less money than they had at this time last year, and they likely are more careful about how they spend it.  A recent conference at the Grolier Club, Books in Hard Times (nicely summarized by Jeremy Dibbel on his blog Philobiblos), produced comments like the following from well-known book collector Mark Samuels Lasner: I have half the money, books cost twice as much, and there are four times as many of them on the market.

But this particular problem (which, like the depressed housing market, actually is a golden opportunity if you have the funds to take advantage of it), is less worrisome than another trend in book collecting: the "graying" of book collectors themselves.  In a recent essay, which should be read aloud to every organization of book collectors on the planet (many of which you will find links for in the left-hand column of this blog under Bookish Organizations), the founder of Americana Exchange, Bruce McKinney, tackles the vexsome issue of how book collecting is to survive if there is no one to mentor younger generations which rarely spend much time with printed books.  

Book collectors clubs, which have served this purpose for at least two centuries, have seen their membership numbers plummet in recent decades.  McKinney surveys this challenge in some detail, then offers a solution that we find both reasonable and worthwhile, especially for clubs that do not have a solution of their own already in place.  If you are an officer for such an organization, or know someone who is, pass along this link....

The World's Greatest Independent Booksellers and The Private Library (cont.)

We have observed in several previous posts (see, for example, our post of 20 June 2009) that if history has taught us anything, it is that some folks prefer their ideas to everyone else's ideas. This simple fact has led to the destruction of countless libraries, public and private, over the centuries.

But it also has led to the shuttering, and persecution (and often prosecution), of countless independent booksellers over the centuries as well.  In our own times, few independent booksellers have stood against the pernicious and malevolent influences of groupthink (or suffered the consequences of their opposition) as well as City Lights, the infamous (and beloved) San Francisco bookseller and publisher:

Founded in 1953 by Peter D. Martin, City Lights Books was the first all paperback bookstore in the USA. 

Martin had previously established a magazine named City Lights (after the Charlie Chaplin film) to publish Bay Area writers. This led to one of the magazine's writers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, going into partnership with Martin later in 1953.  In 1955, the two launched a book-publishing venture, City Lights Publishing.  (Martin sold his share of the businesses to Ferlinghetti later that same year and moved to New York, where he opened New Yorker Bookstore, which specialized in cinema.)

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, though much of his early childhood was spent in France (he eventually would earn a Ph.D. at the Sorbonne).  He served in the Navy during World War II (taking part in the Normandy assault).  At the time he met Martin, Ferlinghetti was working in San Francisco as a painter, art critic and was teaching French for an adult education program.

It was City Lights publishing and promotion of the so-called Beat Poets that first, and most famously, brought this landmark bookseller into conflict with the "powers that be."  When City Lights published and sold copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (number four in the publisher's Pocket Poet Series), Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges, though later acquitted in a landmark court case that established a legal precedent for the publication and distribution of controversial works of "redeeming social importance:"

As other tenants moved out of its building, City Lights took over their space, eventually acquiring the entire building.  It now offers three floors of both hardbacks and paperbacks, including many titles that other bookstores are unwilling to handle.  

In 2001, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took the unusual step of designating both the building and the business an historic landmark for "playing a seminal role in the literary and cultural development of San Francisco and the nation."  A few years earlier (1998), Ferlinghetti--the author of more than thirty books of poetry--was named San Francisco's first Poet Laureate:

And the beat goes on....

Paging the Private Library

We thought that today we might go inside the typical book to investigate some terms that might not be familiar to a lot of new book collectors.  We do so with the help of ILAB's always useful glossary.

In most books (but not all), one usually first encounters (after the front free endpaper[s]), a half-title page, which gives the title of the book at hand, and sometimes the name of the author.  In modern books, the back of this page (verso) typically lists other books that have been written by the same author:

After this, one typically encounters the full title page, which gives more detailed information about the book at hand (title, author, publisher, date of publication, etc.):

In books printed after copyright laws were enacted, the title generally is followed by the copyright page (Copyright is an issue we hope to explore in more detail in a future post.)  The copyright page often is on the back (verso) of the title page:

In modern books, the copyright page also contains a lot of additional information, including cataloging data, the ISBN (International Standard Book Number--formerly a ten-digit, now a thirteen-digit number that is unique to each book published), etc.:

Following other preliminaries (which may include a dedication page, table of contents, etc.), there follows the text of the book at hand and then, often (especially in the earliest printed books, where it usually is placed at the front of the book), a colophon.  The colophon is where you will find information about the book's physical properties and printing history (printer, type of paper, typeface, size of edition, etc.).  The colophon is what one finds in books that were printed before title pages came into general use; its use in modern trade books is very infrequent, though one usually finds a colophon in modern fine press books (see our posts of 3-6 May 2009):

Finally, especially in books printed in the 19th century (though sometimes also in modern paperbacks, especially for books in series--see our posts of 20-24 September 2009), one often will find pages of advertisements.  These advertisements may be for other books by the same publisher, or other books in a series by the same author, and so forth:

Advertisements like the above are a gold mine for historians of the book, as well as cultural historians and other scholars....

Bibliomania and The Private Library (Part VI)

Wherever on the continuum between "normal" and "excessive" book love one personally happens to be, there likely is a modern author who has addressed a book (or two...or three...) directly to you.

One of the most popular contemporary authors on the subject is Nicholas Basbanes, an award-winning investigative reporter and nationally syndicated columnist whose many books about the love of books have attracted a strong worldwide audience:

     

Basbanes writes of book love, however obsessive, with great empathy and respect.  Even bibliomaniac book thieves, like the infamous Stephen Blumberg (arguably the most successful book thief of the 20th century), are treated with understanding.

A more personal chronicler of book love is Alberto Manguel, whose many books on the subject also have managed to attract a worldwide following:

   

Manguel, who was born in Argentina, and who--through one of those twists of fate so loved by book lovers--spent four years of his youth reading to the blind Argentine writer Jorge Louis Borges--is a strong advocate for the centrality of books to a well-lived life.

A lesser-known chronicler of book love, though one of our personal favorites, is the former editor of The American Scholar, Anne Fadiman.  Anyone who has ever married someone whose personal library is as large as, if not larger than, his or her own will immediately recognize themselves in one of Fadiman's wittiest (yet most poignant) essays, found in her 1998 book, Ex Libris:

Bibliomania has even managed to infiltrate the world of manga, as anyone who follows the exploits of Yomiko Readman will be aware:

 

Where are you on the continuum between bibliophile and bibliomaniac...?

Bibliomania and The Private Library (Part V)

As pointed out in previous posts, the continuum between "normal" and "excessive" love of books is both ill-defined and unstable.  Much depends on who is assigning the label.  If, for example, one were a well-heeled 19th century collector collecting only for oneself, the label "bibliomaniac" appears much more likely to have been cast as an aspersion against one's book collecting than if one were the same type of collector, but eventually bequeathed one's library to the nation.  

Consider, for example, the posthumous reputation of Sir Thomas Phillips, who not only assembled one of the greatest private book collections of all time, but arguably the greatest of all private manuscript collections.  Had he been able to bequeath his massive collection to the English people, as in fact he attempted to do--unsuccessfully--on several occasions, his contemporaries, and history, might have judged him more favorably.  As things turned out, it took some 100+ years to completely disperse his collection (mostly at auction), a state of affairs which did not in fact benefit the English nation, though several national continental libraries (e.g., the Royal Library of Belgium) did wind up with significant portions (as did private libraries in the USA such as that of J. P. Morgan and Henry E. Huntington).

Contrast this with the reputation accorded book collectors like James Lenox, John Jacob Astor and Samuel J. Tilden, whose personal libraries were turned over to the City of New York and combined to form one of the world's great public institutions, the New York Public Library.  Hosanas still are sung to their beneficence....

Fortunately, many of the books about book collecting that were published during the 19th century did not make hard and fast distinctions between bibliomania and bibliophily, which probably is why many still make for enjoyable reading today:

It is unlikely that "love of books," excessive or otherwise, would continue to be a topic of interest to anyone had not finely printed books become available to a more general public, first with the revival of the fine press movement at the end of the 19th century, then with the establishment of fine books for the people! enterprises like The Nonesuch Press and the Limited Editions Club in the early decades of the 20th century.  

The ideology of these movements, as captured (often tangentially) in the works of contemporary authors like Holbrook Jackson and A. Edward Newton, frequently was at odds with the more mundane concerns of running a printing or publishing business, a tension artfully conveyed in Megan Benton's book on the subject:

 

Modern day book collectors, whether they (or others) see themselves as bibliomaniacs, bibliophiles, or something in between, may properly be said to have been birthed, in part, by the increasing availability of finely printed books at affordable prices which first came to pass in the 1920s and 1930s.

Of course, other trends also contributed to a love of books filtering down to the less well-to-do segments of the population, including increasing literacy, increased leisure time among the working class, and other developments in publishing (e.g., the advent of pulp fiction and paperbacks).

We will examine some modern paeans to "book love" in tomorrow's post, including the mechanics of making a brand new marriage work when both spouses have an enormous library.... 

Bibliomania and The Private Library (Part IV)

The early 19th century definitions of bibliomania, as well as the criticisms of same, arose in part from the perception that aristocrats and learned men were focusing not on what was important (i.e.,"the wisdom of the ages"), but rather the vessels by which such wisdom was transmitted.  This all has a whiff of class animosity about it.  The early decades of the 19th century saw an enormous amount of money poured into book auctions (such as the infamous Roxburgh auction of 1812), which prompted the following from Leigh Hunt, the famed British essayist and critic: We are not in the habit, with Frognall [see yesterday's post], of leaping up to kiss every "'enticing"' edition in vellum and every "'sweetly-toned...yellow morocco binding."  Since Hunt spent many years of his adult life in poverty, we must leave it to the psychologists and sociologists to figure out how much of this carping was simply envy, since Hunt himself admitted to "a penchant for good and suitable, and even rich and splendid bindings," as Ina Ferris has pointed out.

Because book production processes were increasingly automated during the course of the 19th century, resulting in increasingly "ugly" tomes (the result of printing on paper made from wood pulp rather than from rags, as well as from the use of cheap bindings and the like), all the affection that earlier collectors had for well-printed books of their own and earlier, more artisanal eras came to be the almost exclusive focus of collecting in the later decades of the 19th century (i.e., there was very little collecting of contemporary books, a few notable exceptions--well illustrated books on husbandry, for example--notwithstanding).  One sees this in the results for a wide range of 19th century book auctions:

The shoddy production practices of the period led not only to a revival of the fine press movement at the end of the 19th century (see our posts for 3-6 May 2009), but also led to attempts to turn mechanical book processes themselves to the production of finer quality books.  This would, in effect, democratize bibliomania, since people with fewer financial resources than the old moneyed aristocracy would now be able to collect books that would (in the words of Alberto Manguel) 

establish an intimate, physical relationship in which all the senses have a part: the eyes drawing the words from the page, the ears echoing the sounds being read, the nose inhaling the familiar scent of paper, glue, ink, cardboard or leather, the touch caressing the rough or soft page, the smooth or hard bindings.  

This is a topic we will examine in more detail in tomorrow's post....

Bibliomania and The Private Library (Part III)

Thomas Frognall Dibdin (whose own, much more famous and influential work on bibliomania appeared the same year as Ferriar's satirical poem--see yesterday's post) credited Ferriar with the first use of the term bibliomania in the sense of a specific medical malady (though the term was in more general use as early as 1739).

Dibdin, a British clergyman infamous for cataloging a famous library for which his language skills were insufficient (that of John Charles Spencer, the third Earl Spencer), reflected in his own Bibliomania the passion for collecting books and manuscripts that gripped many learned men (and it was almost entirely men) during the first decades of the 19th century:

Ina Ferris notes that bibliomania (during the period in question) was typically viewed as "a distortion of properly literary and readerly values, a perverse lust after physical properties," even as "the publicity surrounding it meant that the specialized idiom of book-collection [the language of bindings, paper, margins, tall copies, and so forth]" filtered out into the general populace.

Despite the numerous errors and rhetorical excess of his Bibliomania (as well as of virtually everything else he wrote), Dibdin was well within the mainstream of the audience for whom he was writing. As Deidre Lynch points out, bibliomania's symptoms were virtually identical in all of the numerous books and commentaries about "book disease" printed during the period:

1. a liking for large paper copies; 2. for illustrated copies; 3. for copies printed on vellum instead of paper; 4. a liking not just for first editions but also 5. for particular copies rendered not simply rare but unique by printers' errata. Such lists portray these collectors as downplaying meaning, and loving matter, in all its truculent particularity.

But many 19th century "bibliomaniacs," such as the great British critic and essayist William Hazlitt, believed such books to be not mere physical objects, but "links in the chain of our conscious being."  For Hazlitt, as for many book collectors since, such books have the power to transport readers to "the place where I sat to read the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky:"

Such emotional connection to one's books was much less likely to occur with "ugly" tomes, which may account for why people like Dibdin spent enormous amounts of money on the best papers, the best bindings, the best engravers, the best printers, etc., for his numerous works, although this meant that virtually everything he published produced a net monetary loss.  

As printing became less and less artisanal over the course of the 19th century, the affective losses occasioned by modern production processes would lead to another major wave of bibliomania (in the early 20th century), a topic to which we shall turn tomorrow....

Bibliomania and The Private Library (Part II)

Bibliomania often is defined as "excessive love of books."  This usually is contrasted with bibliophily, which is simply "a love of books and reading."  Like much else in life, the difference is one of degree. The bibliomaniac, unlike the bibliophile, is seen as compulsive in his or her love of books, to the point that he or she often will forsake health and family (or other social relations) in pursuit of books.  But where exactly a book lover is on this continuum between "normal" and "excessive" love of books has been a contentious matter for centuries, and is likely to be so for the foreseeable future.

Richard Aungerville (better known to history as Richard de Bury), whose Philobiblon was an early paean to bibliophily (completed in manuscript in 1345, though first printed at Cologne in 1473 and not translated into English until 1598), was among the first to write about "the degree of affection that is properly due to books:"

But excess was given its due shortly thereafter, when Sebastian Brandt's Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools) was printed in 1494.  Loosely translated into English by Alexander Barclay (printed by Richard Pynson in 1509, Barclay's metrical translation was slightly preceeded by Wynkyn de Worde's 1509 printing of Henry Watson's prose translation), Brandt characterizes the excessive lover of books thusly:

For this is my minde, this one pleasure have I,

Of bookes to have greate plentie and apparayle.

Still I am busy bookes assembling,

For to have plenty it is a pleasaunt thing

In my conceyt, and to have them aye in hande:

But what they meane do I not understande.

But yet I have them in great reverence

And honoure, saving them from filth and ordure,

By often brushing and much diligence;

Full goodly bound in pleasaunt coverture,

Of damas, satten, or else of velvet pure:

I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost,

For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.

A similar, if slightly more modern, criticism was leveled by the 19th century Scottish physician and poet John Ferriar in his 1809 satirical poem The Bibliomania; an Epistle to Richard Heber, Esq. (Heber, a noted book collector, managed to fill eight houses in four countries with some 200,000 books):

...English books neglected and forgot

Excite his wish in many a dusty lot;

Whatever trash Midwinter gave to day,

Or Harper's rhiming sons in paper gray,

At ev'ry auction bent on fresh supplies

He cons his Catalogue with anxious eyes;

Where'er the slim Italics mark the page

Curious and rare his ardent mind engage....

Bibliomania and The Private Library (Part I)

We know your dirty little secret.  

We know how you like to wander about for hours on end in strange, labyrinthine places, your path blocked by tottering piles of tomes, dust showering down as you creep slowly, ever so slowly, forward....

You know the rent is due, but you don’t care....

You could be partaking of a fine meal in a fine restaurant, but you don’t care....

You could be enjoying a movie, taking in a play, buying a new suit of clothes, but you don't care....

You are a bibliomaniac...and over the next few days, you will learn that you are not alone....

Bibliomysteries and The Private Library (Part II)

As noted in yesterday's post, bibliomysteries date back to at least the last quarter of the 19th century.   For the first few decades following that period, publication of bibliomysteries was somewhat sporadic.  We noted a few of these in yesterday's post. Some other early bibliomysteries include Carolyn Wells' Murder in the Bookshop (1936), which deals with the disappearance of an expensive book; Rex Stout's Murder by the Book (1951), which deals with murders arising from an unpublished novel and features his famous fictional detective Nero Wolfe; and Poul Anderson's Murder in Black Letter (1960), which deals with the loss of a pre-Renaissance manuscript:

Judging by the articles published about this sub-genre in various publications, bibliomysteries began to attract a more widespread audience in the early- to mid-1970s.  It was during this period that a number of authors began to publish more than a single book featuring this theme.  Examples include Robert Barnard, Thomas Gifford and Charles Goodrum:

Interestingly enough, quite a few writers who are better known for their science fiction (e.g., Poul Anderson and Isaac Asimov) have penned quite a few bibliomysteries.  In fact, one of the most popular recent bibliomystery series is unabashedly science fiction:

Recent decades have been a sort of Golden Age for the bibliomystery, blessed by a number of great bibliomystery series (such as John Dunning's Cliff Janeway thrillers) and by increasingly literate bibliomysteries that wind up being turned into equally literate films:

A reasonably up-to-date checklist of articles and books about bibliomysteries (including some tentative bibliographies of this sub-genre) has been compiled by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston.  The school's checklist of its own collection, as well as its wishlist, make for a handy set of online bibliographies for this sub-genre....

Bibliomysteries and The Private Library (Part I)

One of the most widely collected of all fictional genres is the mystery.  It constitutes one of the least expensive of all genres to add to one's private library, since so many mysteries are readily available for purchase at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like.

One of the reasons for this widespread availability, no doubt, is that that this genre encompasses a huge range of traditionally popular sub-genres, such as hard-boiled detective fiction (discussed in our posts of 30 June-3 July 2009), police procedurals and cozies (exemplified by the fiction of Agatha Christie, whom we profiled in our posts of 24-26 May 2009).

The sub-genre that most seems to resonate with folks building a private library, though, is the bibliomystery.  Bibliomysteries are defined as

mysteries which deal in some significant way with books and the world associated with books. A bibliomystery may deal with the theft of a rare book, the murder of a bookdealer, or underhanded dealings inside a publishing firm. The key is that the connection to the world of books not be merely tangential. So, a mystery set on a college campus featuring a professor-detective who occasionally wrote wouldn't generally be considered a bibliomystery unless the action of the book somehow centered directly around a book, manuscript, or some other book-related theme.

The bibliomystery is not a recent invention.  Fredric Perkins, for example, penned Scrope: or the Lost Library back in 1870.  Believed to be the first bibliomystery published in the United States, it is rarely offered for sale in anything approaching Fine condition (the image below is of the 1874 edition):

Fortunately, reprints are available, and a digitized copy of the text is available online.

Another early bibliomystery is Agnes Miller's The Colfax Book-Plate (1926), which deals with murders arising from the discovery of a previously unknown bookplate.  Again, finding a copy in anything approaching Fine condition could be an interesting challenge:

Some bibliomysteries are well-known, because the books were by famous authors, or the books were turned into films, or both.  A case in point is The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler (which deals with a rare book dealer who is fronting for a pornographic lending library).  Featuring Chandler's well-known fictional detective Philip Marlowe, the title has twice been turned into film, in 1946 (with Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe) and again in 1978 (with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe).  For more on Chandler, see our post of 2 July 2009:

Another bibliomystery from this same period, which also was turned into a film and has a plot that revolves around stolen first editions, was Fast Company (1937) by Marco Page (pseudonym of Henry Kuritz, who is best remembered for his 40+ screenplays):

Tomorrow, we will look at some more recent examples of the bibliomystery, including a number which are a part of books in series....

Bound to Please at The Private Library

The modern hardback book is a very standardized product.  In terms of its binding, it's usually cloth-covered boards in an octavo (or smaller ) format for most trade fiction and nonfiction.  Oversized productions, like art and photography books, may get special treatment.

Anyone collecting older books for their private library, though, is likely to run across bindings--and binding terms--with which they may be unfamiliar.  We have explored some of these terms in past posts.  Today, we look at a few more such terms with the help of ILAB's very useful online glossary.

One such term is blind-stamped or blind-tooled.  This refers to an impression that is made to the binding of a book that leaves no color, only an impression:

Another term that may be encountered is compartments.  Also known as paneling, this refers to "[r]uled lines forming a square border or frame on a binding, which is done in gilt or blind:"

A term that one may encounter that applies specifically to the edges of a an older book's binding is dentelle.  This is a "lace-like pattern applied to the edges of the cover of the inside border of a book bound in leather:"

Finally, an older book that has an embossed leather binding refers simply to "leather which has been printed with a raised design."  This is the opposite of a blind-stamped design, which is pressed into the leather.  You will feel the raised design if you run your fingers along an embossed leather binding:

Great Book Cities and The Private Library

Back on 14 May 2009, we took a look at the international book town movement.  Today, we want to look at a great book city.

When one thinks of great book cities, what usually comes to mind are major publishing centers: New York, London, Paris, Rome, Caracas, New Delhi and the like.  But there are a lot of other cities that qualify for that distinction.  One of our personal favorites is Toronto:

Canada's most populous city, the capitol of the Province of Ontario, Toronto was founded in 1793 as the town of York.  Like the other great cities noted above, Toronto is a publishing center. And like the other great cities noted above, Toronto is home to a vibrant book culture that draws from a nexus of universities, public libraries, independent booksellers and a host of cultural organizations.

The publishing project known as A History of the Book in Canada, which we discussed in our post of 27 August 2009, was headquartered at the University of Toronto (home to the Toronto Centre for the Book and the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library--the latter holds the largest repository of publicly accessible rare books and manuscripts in Canada), where its volumes ultimately were published by the University of Toronto Press.  Anyone who collects early children's books will already be aware that the Toronto Public Library (which many folks do not realize is in fact the largest public library system in North America), is home to the famed Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books.  

Most importantly, Toronto is still home to a dwindling mix of independent booksellers like Nicholas Hoare (which makes us think of the Cecil Court booksellers over in London--Nicholas himself apprenticed at London's Heywood Hill), and what is arguably Toronto's best-named bookstore, This Ain't the Rosedale Library.  (Get the inside details on these and other great Toronto booksellers by clicking here.  Pages, alas, no longer is among these.)

Add to the above a great selection of tea shops and bakeries, and what we gotta do...buy the plane ticket for you?!

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part V)

Unless one is building a private library that encompasses multiple genres, it is almost impossible to grasp the sheer number of books that are published in series.  But if you collect fiction featuring any of the following characters, you are collecting series fiction: Abbey Girls; Amelia Bedelia; Artemis Fowl; Berenstain Bears; Biggles; The Bobbsey Twins; Hal Keen; The Hardy Boys; Harry Potter; Hercule Poirot; Jack McGurk; James Bond; Jason Bourne: Jim Chee; Joe Leaphorn; Lord Peter Wimsey; Madeline; Miss Marple; Nancy Drew; Nick Carter; Pee-Wee Harris; Peter Decker; Roy Blakeley; Sherlock Holmes; Skippy Dare; Tarzan; Tom Slade; Tom Swift; Westy Martin:

We could extend this list for dozens of pages and only scratch the surface of this publishing enterprise.  Mystery and its sub-genres alone comprise over 3300 series!  If you wanted to build a private library comprised only of juvenile series books that are currently in print, you would need shelf space for close to 30,000 books:

Fortunately, there are a number of online databases available that can help one make some sense of what's out there, and many of these databases are free.  Most are based on printed bibliographies that are more easily updated in electronic format.  For example, if you collect series fiction that is penned by multiple authors, you might click here or here.  If you collect fiction series penned by a single author, you might want to click here.  Publishers' series, which are published in numerical order but which contain titles that are not necessarily related (e.g., Harlequin Presents), can be tracked here.  There are many more such databases available, as a simple Internet search will reveal....

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part IV)

Advanced book collectors are well known for their obsession with completing a collection.  And series publishers count on this, because a really well-received series is a money spigot that allows publishers to sneak other titles onto their lists that traditionally lose money.  If a publisher wants to publish an important academic treatise that may change the world (if only more than two people will buy a copy and read it), it helps to have a money-making series in his or her back pocket to deflect the slings and arrows being fired from the sales and marketing departments.

The publishing statistics for some long-running series are nothing short of phenomenal.  Perry Rhodan, a long-running German science fiction series, has sold over one billion copies worldwide.  Written by an ever-changing team of writers (similar to how the Stratemeyer Syndicate, discussed yesterday, functioned), the series is issued in weekly Heftroman (pulp booklet) format.  Created in 1961, it has spun off its own universe of comics, collectibles and the like:

Of course, some folks would suggest that this should not really count as books in series, since Rhodan's novella format actually is a booklet.  Such critics, however, are not likely to succeed with such criticism against some other well-known, long-running series.

Collectors interested in good old-fashioned swashbuckling, for example, have tendered enough gold pieces to keep the publishers of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series (a British Royal Navy series set during the Napoleonic wars) in swag for some time: 

Truly successful books in series keep publishers in the black for decades after the original author's death.  Although this is not a factor where a stable of writers is writing a series under a pseudonym (as is the case with Perry Rhodan and as was the case with the various series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate), the death of an exceptional series author can be catastrophic unless a series' various copyrights have been locked up tight by the publisher (or by the author's estate).  That done, the lucky publisher (or author's estate) is limited only by the ability of sales and marketing to repackage a series in ways that are likely to continually entice collectors towards completion...

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part III): Guest Editorial

Many collectors do not consider series like the Loeb Classical Library true books in series, a term they reserve for fiction series that share a common set of characters.  This distinction is made quite clearly by James Keeline, the author of today's guest editorial, which explores how series collectors often are led astray by phantom titles. 

James spent over a dozen years managing the children's bookstore, The Prince and The Pauper, in San Diego, California.  He is considered an expert on juvenile books in series, such as those of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, and he has presented annually at the Popular Culture Association since 1992.  James writes:

...many collectors make a distinction between publisher series (almost random collections of books unified only by format and publisher) and regular fiction series (which often share a common set of characters and sometimes a continuing story).

For the publisher series, some use the term "publisher library" to make this distinction. When someone collects "series books" they are seldom interested in publisher libraries:

Titles from The Library of America, a "publisher's library"

I agree that the existence of a series tends to inspire collecting. Sometimes it is important to read volumes in order, so people often will wait until they collect all, or at least the early volumes of a series, before reading an entire series.

Some series, especially juvenile series books, promoted coming titles even when publication was over a year away.  Because things change in the fortunes of publishers, series, and authors, many of these "previously announced titles" never actually got published. Such titles are called "phantom titles" among series collectors.

Sometimes a phantom title resulted from a mere change in the name of a planned title. For example, war themes were added to several series during World War I, and wartime titles replaced the previously announced names of those same titles.

In some cases, a previously announced title in a series may not have been published if sales of a series did not meet expectations. The scarce Stratemeyer Syndicate series, the White Ribbon Boys, had but a single volume published, White Ribbon Boys of Chester (Cupples & Leon, 1916), even though the publishers advertised and described the plot for a second book (White Ribbon Boys of Long Shore). This occurred with other Stratemeyer Syndicate "series" as well:

One of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's most popular fictional series

One "series" had a single volume published, plus advertisements for 11 other volumes which were unpublished phantom titles.

There are even cases of "phantom series," where a series advertised by a publisher was in fact never published. Sometimes series fans play jokes on their colleagues by listing phantom series in reference volumes.

Some publishers had a practice of listing other writings by an "author" in their stable.  Occasionally, these were titles that were planned but not published; other times they were completely fictitious titles for which no actual publication was ever intended.

It can be difficult to prove that a book was never published, and some collectors will keep phantom titles on their want lists. When booksellers advertise for these, it reinforces the false notion that such phantom titles may actually exist. Copyright registrations and listings in Publishers' Weekly magazine, Cumulative Book Index and its predecessors can help. Library listings like WorldCat are worth checking, but since many series books were shunned by public libraries this is not a thorough indication of whether a book was published.

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part II)

We suggested in yesterday's post that some books in series exist only because a particular publisher decided that a particular set of books could be made a series by publishing such books in identical format.  And we noted that classics and canonical books often receive such treatment.

One of the oldest and best known of these types of series is the Loeb Classical Library.  Founded in 1911, and published continuously since then, the Loeb Classical Library--as explained in its initial volumes--sought to

make the beauty and learning, the philosophy and wit of the great writers of ancient Greece and Rome once more accessible by means of translations that are in themselves real pieces of literature, a thing to be read for the pure joy of it, and not dull transcripts of ideas that suggest in every line the existence of a finer original form from which the average reader is shut out

The idea, which has not changed in nearly 100 years, was to make the literature of ancient Greece and Rome available even to those who could not read either language in the original, and to do so in a format that would fit easily "into a gentleman's pocket."  The volumes--green for Greek authors, red for Latin authors--are each only a little larger than 6x4 inches:

One of the challenges for anyone collecting a series like this is that such a series often never reaches completion.  The earliest translations in the Loeb Classical Library, for example, were made at a time when pains were taken "not to give offense."  Since many ancient Greek and Latin writers were quite ... lusty ... some of their Greek and Latin wound up getting translated only as footnotes, and often in a language other than English (Italian was a popular choice).  Loeb began re-translating many of these earlier volumes in the late 1960s-early 1970s, and expects this project to continue for some time....

Books in Series and The Private Library (Part I)

Depending on your point of view, adding books in series to your private library can be one of the most joyful experiences of your life, or one of the most frustrating.

It often is surprising to new collectors just how many books are published as part of a series of books. If you collect romance fiction, science fiction, mysteries, action-adventure, children's books, cookbooks, travel books or classics, you almost certainly are going to encounter any number of titles that are published as part of a series.

A series may be chronological, requiring that each book in the series be read in its proper order in order to fully appreciate it (or a particular work of fiction may be so large that it takes multiple volumes--each of which must be read in sequence-- to tell the full story):

Or a series may have recurring characters, but individual titles in the series do not generally refer back to previous titles in the series, so it does not matter in which order any particular book in the series is read:

Some books in series are a series only because a publisher decided to publish a bunch of books in an identical format and cover (one often finds classical works, as well as canonical works, receiving this treatment):

Books in series can be a goldmine for publishers, because of book collectors' well-known penchant for completeness.  We will examine this phenomenon in more detail over the next few posts....

What's Next at The Private Library? (cont.)

Our profound thanks to everyone who took a few moments out of their busy day to drop us a line.  Many of you made suggestions that we hope to implement, though some things are beyond our control (e.g., TypePad software issues).

We are especially grateful to those of you (you know who you are) that emailed us privately.  Several of your missives were especially thoughtful and deserving of a more detailed personal response, which--time permitting--we hope to address this weekend.

Some matters which bear immediate response: we are aware of both the Disqus and UberVu commenting systems, and are willing to at least give each a try, provided either or both can come up with a way to easily integrate with TypePad without crashing the rest of the system.  This usually is done by creating a widget (a self-contained piece of code) that one simply adds to one's blog as a sort of snap-on.  Neither of these commenting systems is yet at that point for the version of TypePad that we are using.

Roughly a quarter of respondents feel our posts are too lengthy.  And roughly a quarter of respondents feel our posts are too short.  So, I guess the best we can do here is mix the length up a bit more.

The suggestion to put a permanent Welcome post at the top of the page is one that we ourselves have been considering for some time.  This post would contain links to older posts that could help first-time visitors with site navigation, with better understanding what it is that we are trying to accomplish, and so forth.  This permanent post would then be followed by the post de jour.

It is obvious that many of our readers are very passionate about books and about libraries.  We thus would like to once again stress that guest editorials are a great way to share your passions with our readers.  If English is not your native language, we can help you say whatever it is that you want to say.  Why keep all that wonderful knowledge and passion to yourself...?!

What's Next at The Private Library?

September 29 marks the 6-month anniversary of this blog.  So the time seems ripe to assess whether The Private Library has been a useful addition to the blogosphere.  If it has, are there ways we can make it even more useful?  If it has not, do we make a mid-course correction, or simply pull the plug...? 

This is not merely a matter of money, although servers and bandwidth obviously have costs associated with them.  The real issue is time--posting original content 365 days a year is very time-consuming. Constantly sourcing, evaluating and adding appropriate high-quality links also is time consuming.  Has it been worth it?

Comments and unique page views are the only real mechanisms we have for evaluating the usefulness of this blog.  We have had very few comments, despite the enormous diversity of topics that we have covered during our first six months.  And while the average number of unique page views has increased modestly over time, the number is still well below what is necessary to make this blog worth the amount of time invested in it.

So, where do we go from here?  Drop us a line and let us know.  If you don't want to leave a public comment, feel free to send us a private email....

Steel Engraving and The Private Library

Anyone adding 19th century titles to their private library will likely have encountered several books illustrated with steel engravings.  This illustration process, introduced by Jacob Perkins in 1792 for the production of banknotes, was adapted for book illustration (by others) when Perkins moved to London in 1818.  It competed with several other illustrative techniques of the era, including woodcuts and wood engravings (which we reviewed in our posts for 1-6 June 2009). Steel engraving became a particularly popular illustration technique because it  

produced plates with sharper, harder, more distinct lines. Also, the harder steel plates produced much longer wearing dies that could strike thousands of copies before they would need any repair or refurbishing engraving. The hardness of steel also allowed for much finer detail than would have been possible under copper which would have quickly deteriorated under the stress. As the nineteenth century began to close, devices such as the ruling machine made even greater detail possible allowing for more exact parallel lines in a very close proximity.

The considerable detail and fineness of line of which this illustrative technique was capable is readily apparent in the following steel engraved image:

All kinds of books were illustrated by this process.  One of the most readily available examples in the marketplace is the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, all of its illustrations being steel engraved.  The process was especially good for reproducing portraits, scientific drawings and the like:

      

As will be clear from the above images, steel engraving often involved quite a few different artists: the artist who drew the original illustration; the artist  who engraved the steel plate reproducing the original illustration; the artist who colored the engraved reproduction of the original illustration; and so forth.

Folks adding steel engraved books to their private library should always check to make sure that their books are both textually and illustratively complete.  As we have noted in several past posts, there are, regrettably, some booksellers who have no compunction about breaking a book in order to sell the book's illustrations as stand-alone prints.  Because of the exquisite detail and fineness of line produced by steel engraving, these types of illustrated books are particularly subject to this heinous practice.  Caveat emptor....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part V)

Most writers, like most actors, do not like to be typecast.  Many strive mightily to avoid being labeled genre writers, even when the fiction they're writing obviously falls well within the parameters of a particular genre.  One thinks of writers like Kurt Vonnegut, who used to strenuously deny that Slaughterhouse Five was science fiction.  And one would be hard-pressed to find a dread-inducing classic like Shirley Jackson's The Lottery anywhere near the horror section of one's local bookstore.

As we noted in yesterday's post, this attempt to avoid ghettoization as a writer is not necessarily a bad thing--it keeps genres fresh, by preventing them from lapsing into staid formula.  But it sometimes makes things difficult for readers, who may be interested in the genre but unable to easily keep up with what's being published sans some type of labeling.  Fortunately, one can always turn to lists of the genre's award winners.

Arguably the best-known of these awards is the Bram Stoker Award, given annually by the Horror Writers Association.  So if you want to know if Clive Barker (who--if he is to be labeled at all--prefers the label "a master of the fantastic") writes horror fiction, the receipt of a Stoker Award would seem to indicate yes:

Bram Stoker First Novel Award, 1987

Because the Bram Stoker Award covers many different categories (First Novel, Short Fiction, Poetry, etc.), readers often are surprised at the diversity of mainstream authors who win these awards.  Unless you are an avid reader of Joyce Carol Oates, for example, you may not fully appreciate the extent to which elements of horror pervade her fiction.  Or realize that she is a past winner (1993) of the most prestigious of all Stoker Awards, The Brom Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement (awarded to writers "whose work has substantially influenced the horror genre")

       

Other lists that often are used to keep track of what's being published in horror fiction include the International Horror Guild Awards, the Australian Shadows Awards and Australia's Aurealis Awards....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part IV)

With the coming of World War II, which led to higher prices for paper (including the cheap pulp on which horror fiction was being printed) and the unleashing of a host of real horrors that put fiction's horrors to shame, pulp fiction's readership began to turn to others means of entertainment (comic books, paperbacks, tv, movies, etc.).

While the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and like works would continue to command a committed audience, it would not be until the 1970s that a talented writer would again publish a title that would cause horror to explode into popularity.  That writer was Stephen King.  The book he wrote was called Carrie (1974):

A testament to this novel's power to instill fear and/or dread may be the fact that it is one of the most frequently banned books in U.S. schools (the filmed version of the novel was banned in Finland).  So successful was this novel that its conventions and characterizations became the formula for horror for the next two decades.  A glut of this type of formulaic fiction eventually ensued (you can tell when the saturation point has been reached--publishers start publishing parodies of the formula), at which point horror fiction went underground, popping up--occasionally--as anything but horror:

      

Walking into a lot of bookstores nowadays one may be hard-pressed to find a section devoted specifically to horror fiction.  For the genre's long-term survival, this may well be the best thing that ever could have happened to it....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part III)

Although primarily a North American phenomenon, the Golden Age of Pulp Fiction had an enormous impact on the development of genres like science fiction, action-adventure, westerns and, of course, horror.  One of the most prolific and successful horror authors of this period was H. P. Lovecraft:

      

Lovecraft was one of the first horror writers to realize that

in an increasingly technological world based on science, the old horror story themes (ghosts, witches, vampires, werewolves, demons, and the like) just wouldn't do any longer. For, by the 1920's, many readers had become too realistic, too skeptical, to "believe" in them anymore. So something new was needed. Some kind of hybrid supernatural tale combining eerie chills with scientific plausibility. And that's exactly what Lovecraft came up with in his "Mythos" stories, many of which (between the 1920's and 1930's) first appeared in the now legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales.

Of course, the lines between horror and science fiction, fantasy and other genres has never been hard and fast.  That is why the era that saw the greatest overlap in these genres (roughly 1934-1937) also was known as the era of weird menace or shudder pulp fiction:

      

The problem with much pulp fiction, and genre fiction in general, is that it tends, over time, to become very formulaic.  Rather than evolve, its very success guarantees that publishers will seek to constrain the genre's conventions and characterizations.  This would prove to be a recurring problem for horror fiction, a matter which we will examine in more detail in tomorrow's post....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part II)

Horror fiction is a nebulous genre, its shape changing over the centuries.  It often masquerades as science fiction or fantasy, for the genre has never been characterized exclusively by blood and gore, by elements of the supernatural, by physical pain any more than psychological pain.  It has, at various times and in various cultures, incorporated all of these elements, the only consistent theme being that the story being told induce fear and/or dread in the listener or reader.

Religions have used horror to control their adherents, just as governments have used horror to control their citizens.  Some of the world's most ancient archetypes of horror, including demons of every persuasion, can be found in the mythologies and earliest writings of mankind:

    

It was not, however, until the rise of the novel in Western Europe in the 18th century that the genre as we know it today began to explode into popularity.  In gothic novels like Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) and Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and especially in novels like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818--claimed also as a progenitor of science fiction), the march towards modern horror fiction may be said to have begun in earnest:

      

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and novels like Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897--based on one of the most ancient of all horror archetypes) would do much to propel the genre toward what perhaps proved the greatest of all influences on the genre's popularity, the Golden Age of Pulp Fiction:

     

We will examine the influence of that golden age and its writers in tomorrow's post....

Horrors! and The Private Library (Part I)

One of the most widely collected genres of fiction is the broad category known as horror fiction.  The popularity of this genre may be due, in part, to the fact that a lot of this type of fiction is published, and inexpensive examples of this genre can easily be purchased at yard sales, garage sales, friends-of-the-library book sales, publishers' clearance sales and the like.

One often thinks of ghosts or things that go bump in the night when one thinks of horror fiction, but in fact the only real requirement of such fiction is that its story elicit from the reader "an emotional reaction that includes some aspect of fear or dread."  While the books of popular horror writers like Stephen King come immediately to mind, the definition can as easily be applied to Grimm's Fairy Tales or the Christian Bible.

As the Horror Writers Association notes, horror fiction is "writing that delves deep inside and forces us to confront who we are, to examine what we are afraid of, and to wonder what lies ahead down the road of life:"

    

Over the next several posts we will examine this genre in more detail.  We will look at its ancient origins, at some representative examples (past & present), and will explore possible futures for this genre....

Big Lies and The Private Library

Adolph Hitler, writing in Mein Kampf, noted that

...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.

Hitler summarizes rather well the continuing appeal that propaganda holds for politicians, religious zealots, radio talk show hosts and suchlike creatures around the world.

Folks building a private library about this subject generally take one of two approaches: they collect books that examine directly the phenomena and its uses...

      

...or they collect books which actually utilize the techniques documented above...

        

If folks building a private library about this subject have sufficient time and financial resources, they may collect both types of books, as well as posters and other materials relevant to the subject:

      

Assembling a private library of such books and related materials not only creates a valuable resource for future scholars (should one choose to so dispose of one's library), but also has the added benefit of somewhat inoculating oneself from the pernicious effects of this phenomena, to which one is exposed 24/7 in today's global miasma of infotainment....

Edginess in The Private Library

Folks who collect older books, fine press books and the like often encounter acronyms and terms with which they may be unfamiliar.  This is especially true of acronyms and terms that concern the edges of books.  With the help of ILAB's excellent glossary, we thought we might examine a few of these in today's post.

An acronym frequently encountered in catalogs of such books is a.e.g., which stands for all edges gilt.  This refers to a book that has had gilt applied to the top edge, bottom edge & fore-edge of the volume.  If gilt has been applied only to the top edge of the volume, the usual acronym is g.t. (gilt top).  If a publisher uses a decorative stain for the top edge of a book, the appropriate acronym is t.s. (top stained):

    

Gilt is a thin layer of gold leaf or other gold-colored mixture that is applied to the edges of a book not only for decoration, but to keep out dust.  A more purely decorative application of color to the edges of a book is found in the acronym a.e.m. (all edges marbled):

Marbling is a very old decorative technique that also is used for the covers of books.  We hope to explore marbling in more detail in a future post.

Books sometimes are manufactured with bevelled edges (also known as bevelled boards).  This is a bookbinding technique in which the edges of the boards of the book have been cut at a slanted angle, these edges then being covered with cloth, leather or other material that is different from the material which covers the majority of the book's surface:

Most modern books have cut edges (i.e., edges that have been trimmed even with a large binders' knife prior to finishing the binding process).  However, one occasionally (on modern books) also may encounter books that have uncut edges (pages that are uneven because they have not been trimmed with a binders' knife).  This also is sometimes referred to as deckled edges (which may or may not be true of all three exposed edges of the book):

 

Collectors, and (regrettably) some booksellers often confuse uncut edges with unopened edges.  The two terms refer to entirely different things.  As the ILAB glossary notes, "unopened books retain the folds of the original gathering and contain many pages which cannot be read without first opening the pages with a knife. Some collectors prefer an unopened book because it indicates that the book has never been read; other collectors who read their books would rather not have the task of cutting open pages and risking tears and jagged leaf edges:"

 

Notice in the above photograph that the book's signatures (groups of pages) are still connected along the top edges....

Totally Lijit Searches at The Private Library

Many of you have noticed at the bottom of this blog's right-hand column a search feature called Lijit.  This feature allows you to search not only the content of this blog, but also the content of all the blogs in our BlogRoll, all the organizations for which you will find links under Bookish Organizations, all the resources for which you will find links under Selected Bibliographic Resources, and so on.  You just need to make certain you are in the correct search tab before beginning your search.

There are four search tabs:

• Blog
• Content
• Network 
• Web

By default, search opens in the Blog tab, which searches only this blog's posts.

If you click instead on the Content tab, your search will be identical to a search under the Blog tab (because of the way that we have set up the searches).  In short, if all you want to do is search this blog's posts, you can click on either the Blog tab or the Content tab, but there is no need to click on both.

The Network tab is where you want to do your search if a search of this blog's posts did not produce the sort of results you were seeking.  This tab allows you to search all of the websites to which this blog is linked, as listed in both the left- and right-hand columns of this blog.

If such a search still does not produce the results you are seeking, the final tab, Web, will search the entire Internet for you.

You also will note that Lijit allows you to see from whence our readers hail.  In the past 24 hours, for example, in addition to readers from various points across North America, we have received visitors from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Egypt, Finland, France, Japan, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine...among many others.  A reminder that that those of us who love books are not alone: