book collecting

Introduction

      acquisition of books, not only as texts but also as objects desirable for such qualities as their age, scarcity, historical significance, value, beauty, and evidence of association with some important person. Exercising knowledge, taste, and critical judgment, the book collector forms a special kind of library, intended not only for reference, current reading, or entertainment but also for comprehensiveness and quality within the areas it covers. Although such a library may (and often does) exist simply for the collector's own pleasure, the very private and personal activity of book collecting may have significant public benefits.

Notable collections

      Private collections have provided the cornerstones of many of the world's great libraries. The University of Oxford's famous library, for example, bears the name of its benefactor, Sir Thomas Bodley (see Bodleian Library), and the collection formed by Charles V, king of France in the 14th century, lies at the heart of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. At the University of Manchester the John Rylands University Library contains the extensive collection of early European printing amassed by Lord Spencer (George John, 2nd Earl Spencer), as well as professor Richard Copley Christie's important collection of 15th- and 16th-century publications. In Washington, D.C., the Folger Shakespeare Library represents the life's work of American industrialist and collector Henry Clay Folger (Folger, Henry Clay) and his wife, Emily Jordan Folger.

      The catalog of an exceptional collection may serve as the bibliography of a particular genre: the four-volume catalog of the exceptionally rich and complete library of illustrated (colour-plate) books assembled by John Roland Abbey is a case in point. And, of course, there are thousands of other, smaller book collections supporting research in libraries throughout the world, each originally the passionate interest of an individual collector.

      Only in relatively recent times have governments and institutions assumed some of the functions of preservation. Through the efforts of book collectors, basic sources of history and priceless monuments of art and literature have survived that might otherwise have been irretrievably lost. Book collecting in its highest form is inevitably bound up with reverence for the past achievements of the human mind.

Early development

      Although book collecting is certainly as old as the book itself, early references to it (as distinct from the acquisition of books for purely utilitarian purposes) are uncommon and can be misleading. The ancient Chinese term shanben (now generally translated as “rare books”) expresses an appreciation of the book as object reaching deeply into Chinese culture and history. In its original use the term seems to have referred specifically to books that had been carefully collated and checked for accuracy, and only gradually did the meaning of the term also encompass fine editions. There appear to have been Chinese collectors during the Song dynasty (960–1279) interested in books printed by renowned publishers, copied in manuscript by famous scholars, or annotated by celebrities. The papyri of Egypt and the scrolls of ancient Greece and Rome predated the book in codex form, and there were notable collections at many places in the ancient world—Ephesus, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome, to name a few. All these collections were scattered in ancient times, and they are known only through surviving accounts. In the West beautifully written and decorated manuscripts of the Greek and Roman classics were produced, and presumably collected, in antiquity. The Greek historian Xenophon, writing in the 4th century BC, related an anecdote in which Socrates criticized a wealthy young man for seeking to outdo his friends in collecting the works of celebrated poets and philosophers, and in the 1st century AD the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca, Lucius Annaeus) deplored the ostentatious accumulation of books that were seldom read. Reverence for the Qurʾān encouraged from the 7th century AD an appreciation in Islamic countries for books, writing, and education. The initial emphasis was on books as useful tools: although the 40-year search undertaken by Persian scientist al-Bīrūnī (Bīrūnī, al-) in locating the Book of Mysteries by Mani, founder of the Manachean religion, is sometimes cited as an example of bibliophilic zeal, it was more likely a case of Bīrūnī's extreme scholarly perseverance. Books may also be regarded as artifacts and documents in the history of the graphic arts. For example, the proscription of images of human and animal forms in Islamic art helped foster the early development of calligraphy and fine binding, creating a class of objects that were collected and appreciated on aesthetic grounds.

Origins of contemporary collecting

      Even though some of the elements of modern book collecting—a supply of fine books, book acquisition as a competitive and prestigious activity, appreciation for the book as object—existed in the ancient world, books were scarce and expensive handmade items, and collecting was necessarily restricted to a very few wealthy individuals. This remained largely true throughout the Middle Ages, although references to the collecting of books as objects proliferate toward the end of the manuscript era (from the 14th to the 15th century), as literacy rates rose and manuscripts became more common: in his Philobiblon (completed and first circulated in manuscript form in 1344, first printed in 1473; “The Love of Books,” Eng. trans. Philobiblon), English bishop and bibliophile Richard de Bury (Bury, Richard de) eloquently defended the expense of time, money, and attention on books, his goal being not only the pursuit of learning but also the appreciation of books as the physical receptacles of knowledge; the 13th-century Muslim geographer Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī al-Rūmī is known to have donated his extensive library to a mosque in Baghdad in order to ensure its preservation; and Federico da Montefeltro, 1st duke of Urbino, is remembered both for his library of beautiful manuscript volumes and for his famous distaste for the then-new art of printing (see Montefeltro Family).

      In fact, it may be argued that the modern activity of book collecting is largely a product of the printing press. Printing was first developed in Asia, perhaps in the 6th century. The Chinese were known to have produced multiple copies of books by means of carved woodblocks as early as the 7th century; in Korea experiments in printing with non-lead metal type occurred as early as 1232; and Japanese publishers were issuing large illustrated editions of Ise monogatari (c. 980; Tales of Ise) and other sagas in wooden movable type by the late 16th century. In the West Johannes Gutenberg (Gutenberg, Johannes)'s independent invention of printing with movable metal types (c. 1450) allowed the creation of editions of hundreds of more-or-less identical copies, at prices well within the means of the developing European middle class. East or West, as printed books entered the second-hand trade, collectors could for the first time compete for the same desirable objects whose value tended to increase over the centuries as their reputation and “collectibility” grew.

      Uniquely in the West, however, the invention of printing, supported by other economic, social, and intellectual developments, appears to have encouraged book collecting on a scale unparalleled in other cultures. One of the most famous early collectors of printed books was Jean Grolier de Servières, vicomte d'Aguisy (Grolier de Servières, Jean, vicomte d'Aguisy), French royal counselor and treasurer-general of France. Grolier commissioned fine books from Aldus Manutius the Elder (Manutius, Aldus, the Elder), founder of the Aldine Press and the foremost editor, printer, typographer, and publisher of the Italian Renaissance. Grolier's library, comprising more than 3,000 volumes, was noted for sumptuous gilt and painted bindings, many stamped with his generous motto “Ioannis Grolierii et amicorum” (“For use by Jean Grolier and his friends”).

Sociopolitical influences

      The development of book collecting in Europe is tied to cycles of social, political, and religious unrest. The upheavals of the Protestant Reformation brought to market the contents of thousands of monastic libraries, fueling the growth of private (and, indirectly, institutional) book collections. Concurrently, the German wars of religion were instrumental in the development of the great German libraries, such as the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. It was formed largely from the collection of August the Younger, Herzog (duke) von Brunswick-Lüneburg-Wolfenbüttel (Gustavus Selenus), a scholarly heir to the duchy, who wrote on topics such as chess and cryptography, published his own six-volume catalog of his library holdings, and amassed a comprehensive collection of more than 100,000 16th- and 17th-century titles. In England the collections formed by bibliophiles Archbishop Matthew Parker (Parker, Matthew) and Sir Robert Cotton (Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce, 1st Baronet) were salvaged from monastery libraries dispersed under Henry VIII.

      By the end of the 17th century, the printing press had been in operation for 250 years, and, with millions of books in circulation attracting the attention of an increasingly literate and sophisticated public, book collecting began to achieve wide popularity in Europe. Auctions devoted specifically to books, a Dutch innovation, were recorded in England as early as 1676, and printed book-dealer and book-auction catalogs began to appear at about the same time.

      An important change in patterns of book collecting occurred during the 18th century. During the manuscript era, and well into modern times, collectors sought books that were finely produced, beautifully illustrated, or luxuriously bound, but almost always contemporary; old books were generally disdained. One looks in vain for any antiquarian component to Jean Grolier's collection, for instance, and Samuel Pepys (Pepys, Samuel), the 17th-century English diarist and bibliophile, was typical of his age in that he routinely discarded older editions of books in his library for later ones. There were exceptions, of course: the aforementioned collections of Parker and Cotton, assembled in the 16th and 17th centuries, were notable for their wealth of early and important Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The working libraries of antiquarians and historians naturally included older material, but manuscripts and early printed books remained largely “out of fashion” among bibliophiles of the late 18th century. The French book collector Louis César de la Baume Le Blanc, duc de La Vallière, had amassed a library rich in manuscripts, incunabula (books printed before 1501), and early French poetry. After his death in 1780, the sale of his library signaled a shift toward a real appreciation of the antique in book collecting—an appreciation connected to a burgeoning Romantic fascination with the past. This antiquarian focus was strengthened in the aftermath of the French Revolution and later Napoleonic Wars, which brought to the developing antiquarian book market another, even larger influx of books from dissolved monastic and aristocratic libraries.

      The great collections assembled and dispersed in the period 1790–1830 contributed to a golden age of book collecting, described and celebrated by English bibliographer and librarian Thomas Frognall Dibdin (Dibdin, Thomas Frognall). It was Dibdin who first brought the terms bibliomania (book-madness, or uncontrollable passion for books) and bibliophily (love of books) into common English usage, and his writing on these subjects did much to popularize book collecting as a pastime. This was the age of collectors such as George John, 2nd Earl Spencer, noted for his extraordinary collections of Bibles, editiones principes (first editions) of the classics, Aldines (products of the press founded by Aldus Manutius (Manutius, Aldus, the Elder)), and works produced by other early and important presses; the bibliomaniacal Sir Thomas Phillipps, whose zeal for early manuscripts saved so much important and valuable historical material from neglect and destruction; and the equally noteworthy libraries of less-wealthy bibliophiles, such as actor David Garrick (Garrick, David) (collections of old English plays) and naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (Banks, Sir Joseph, Baronet) (exceptional works in botany and zoology).

Bibliophile societies

      By the 19th century, book collecting had firmly established itself as an activity distinct from mere acquisition, having developed its own specialized vocabulary and literature. A new generation of self-identified book collectors began to seek each other's company, founding bibliophile societies such as the Roxburghe Club (1812) in England, the Société des Amis des Livres (1874) in France, the Grolier Club (1884) in the United States, and the Gesellschaft der Bibliophilen (1899) in Germany, many of which are still extant. Animated partly by bibliophilic zeal and partly by the conviction that standards of contemporary bookmaking were declining, English and European bibliophile societies from the beginning focused on the production of fine books, while the more-outgoing American organizations, such as the Grolier Club, sought to educate their membership and the public through lectures, exhibitions, and the publication of bibliographic works. Whether from scholars or investors, interest in ancient books and manuscripts was balanced by an increasing demand for contemporary first editions (by authors such as Robert Browning (Browning, Robert), Charles Dickens (Dickens, Charles), and William Makepeace Thackeray (Thackeray, William Makepeace)) and for the products of the new private presses, such as Kelmscott (Morris, William). The 19th century also saw the rise in prominence of specialized antiquarian book dealers, such as Bernard Quaritch, and the popularity of established auction houses such as Sotheby's in London and the Hôtel Drouot in Paris that had become venues for the sale of rare books and manuscripts.

Styles of collecting

      There are at least as many types of book collectors as there are kinds of books. Traditional approaches tended to fall within three genres: the author collection, the subject collection, and the cabinet collection.

      In the first approach, the collector set out to gather the works of a chosen author. Such a collection could include all the forms in which the works have appeared before the public, or it might concentrate on only one phase of the author's career, or even on one or two of the author's works.

      The subject collection could range from fields as sweeping as classics or American literature to books on chess, coffee, prizefighting, detective fiction, or the development of nuclear energy. Two collections formed by tobacco businessman George Arents and now in the New York Public Library illustrate the variety possible in subject collecting: one includes books on tobacco, the other books that were issued in daily, weekly, or monthly parts. Each has its special points of interest, each marshals facts of significance in the history of society and human endeavour, and the published catalogs of each represent additional use beyond the limitations each subject might suggest.

      The third kind of collection was intentionally limited to a small group, or cabinet, of choice specimens—each the best obtainable of its type, although a particular author or subject might have formed the basis of this collection. Illuminated manuscripts (illuminated manuscript), bookbindings (bookbinding), publishing styles, fine printing, book illustration, and many other topics have lent themselves to this approach. British collector Henry Yates Thompson established the goal of gathering exactly 100 illuminated manuscripts (now part of the British Library), each the best of its type that he could find and afford; further manuscripts were to be added only upon the elimination of other manuscripts that they surpassed. This is a stern ideal, and one which Thompson himself could not follow to the letter, but the principle of cabinet collecting remains attractive for those whose resources or space are limited.

      Contemporary collecting takes place at all economic levels and can focus on physical form (illuminated manuscripts, miniature books, pop-up books, atlases, fine bindings, comic books, livres d'artistes [art books]), subject matter (chess, gardening, architecture), or genre (fiction, biography, children's books). Much of the attraction of book collecting lies in the search and pursuit of rare copies. Yet rarity is not necessarily reflected in price. Many books are far more uncommon than Gutenberg Bibles (Gutenberg Bible) or first folios of William Shakespeare (Shakespeare, William), but, when they can be found at all, they may sell for a small fraction of the price of the famous rarities.

      The books in a collector's library will generally have been chosen for their fine condition, rarity, and desirability. Condition is an important consideration in all types of collecting: a very great difference in value separates a superlative copy of a book from a poor or even an average one. Nonetheless, condition is a relative, not an absolute, quality, and a collector of fragile 18th-century chapbooks (chapbook) may cheerfully accept condition flaws, such as soiled, missing or damaged leaves—unacceptable to the collector of modern first editions, where the goal is a copy that appears never to have been read. Rarity, or scarcity, must also be considered in the context of the material collected, and these qualities must be balanced against the degree of desirability. The balance differs from book to book, and from copy to copy of the same book. The Liber chronicarum (1493; popularly known as “The Nürnberg Chronicle”) by German scholar Hartmann Schedel is a fairly common book, yet it is very desirable. Victorian sermons in print are quite common also, but they generally excite little competition among collectors. An obscure 17th-century religious tract, while scarce or even unique, may be of no interest to anyone; contrast that with the extreme desirability of the 1594 quarto edition of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus or the Diamond Sutra, printed in China from woodblocks in c. AD 868—each known to survive in only a single copy. Worn copies without dust jackets of the first English edition of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (1953) are fairly common, but they are of limited interest to the serious collector; however, a fine copy in dust jacket signed by the author is both scarce and desirable. Association is another important factor contributing to desirability. A book annotated or otherwise inscribed by its author, or containing the markings of some other prominent or interesting person who has owned and used it, will be particularly desirable to the collector. Entire collections have been built around these so-called association copies.

      Many of the books that are objects of a collector's efforts fall into the class of first editions or first printing. While the pursuit of first editions has at times been dismissed as a kind of foolish sentimentalism, there are good reasons why the earliest appearance of a book should be the most desirable. The first edition frequently is the only one overseen by the author, thus presenting the truest version of his or her work. In later editions the author's intentions can be obscured by careless errors or misinterpretations. Furthermore, if later editions contain authorial revisions, the first is still necessary for identifying and analyzing changes.

Contemporary book collecting

      Although the late-Victorian passion for modern first editions still flourishes today, many of the prizes fetishized by Dibdin—incunabula, lavish Grolier bindings, Caxton (Caxton, William) editions—have become so rare and expensive as to be almost unobtainable. New genres and subjects, such as children's books and the history of science and medicine, have arisen in their turn and grown in popularity. Changing patterns of scholarship have influenced modern collecting, placing less emphasis on the historic and literary “canons” revered by earlier collectors and more on information gleaned from hitherto obscure or unregarded material such as political pamphlets, comic books, underground magazines, printed ephemera, travel literature, cookbooks (cookbook), and the like—all fertile areas for contemporary collectors. Organizations of dealers, such as the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (founded 1949) and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (founded 1947), have promoted improved professional standards in the trade.

      Late in the 20th century the increased use of computers had little initial impact on book collecting, although some bibliophiles and dealers found them useful for inventory control and effective in reducing the cost of catalog production. This detached attitude changed abruptly in the mid-1990s, as dealers began to publish their inventories online. Within a very short time millions of books were instantly accessible to anyone with a computer and the means to purchase them. Using the Internet, contemporary bibliophiles can build in a few years collections that in the past might have taken decades to assemble: with the stock of hundreds of virtual bookstores at their fingertips, collectors can compare the price and relative condition of multiple copies of the same book; and with a virtual customer base in the millions, dealers are able to match the right book to the right collector with an efficiency that was impossible through most of the history of book collecting.

      The effect of the Internet on the traditional, personal relationship between dealer and collector is not yet clear: while some second-hand book dealers traded their physical bookshops for virtual Internet storefronts, few of the high-end antiquarian dealers have done so, and it is doubtful whether many books valued in the $100,000 range will be traded solely via online transactions. At less exalted price levels, however, the Internet opened the hermetic activity of book collecting to an enormously wider public, allowing collectors in all genres and at all economic levels to find books quickly, easily, and at affordable prices.

      Developments in communications technology have had another more subtle, but perhaps more important, effect upon book collecting. While bibliophiles have always distinguished between the book as text and the book as object, noncollectors have historically declined to see the physical book as anything other than a useful vehicle for information. In the past the printed page was for all practical purposes the sole textual medium. But the Internet and other media now demand that users judge between the relative merits—aesthetic, informational, logistic—of printed text and electronic text. The choice forces contemplation of the book as object, and the effect may already be seen in the proliferation of book exhibitions, increased membership in bibliophile societies, and a renewed interest in the ancient pastime of book collecting.

Eric Holzenberg

Additional Reading

An accessible and highly regarded reference work is John Carter, ABC for Book Collectors, 8th ed. (2004); collectors and their collections were also profiled in Carter's Books and Book-Collectors (1957). A comprehensive trilogy on book collecting is Nicholas A. Basbanes, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (1995, reissued 1999), Among the Gently Mad: Perspectives and Strategies for the Book Hunter in the Twenty-first Century (2002), and A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World (2003). The basics of building a book collection are discussed in Allen Ahearn and Patricia Ahearn, Book Collecting 2000: A Comprehensive Guide (2000).Additional texts on the tradition of book collecting include Anthony Grafton et al., Collectors, Collections, and Scholarly Culture (2000); Colton Storm and Howard Peckham, Invitation to Book Collecting: Its Pleasures and Practices, with Kindred Discussions of Manuscripts, Maps, and Prints (1947); Barton Currie, Fishers of Books (1931); and Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton, The Great Book-Collectors (1893, reprinted 1997).

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