Book collecting: Encyclopedia II - Book collecting - History of Anglo-European book collecting

Book collecting - History of Anglo-European book collecting

Whenever a high degree of civilization has been attained, book-lovers have multiplied, and to the student with his modest desire to read his favorite author in a well-written or well-printed copy there has been added a class of owners suspected of caring more for the externals of books than for the enjoyment to be obtained by reading them. But although adumbrations of it existed under the Roman Empire and towards the end of the Middle Ages, book-collecting, as it is now understood, is essentially of modern growth. A glance through what must be regarded as the medieval textbook on the love of books (bibliophily), the Philobiblon (1345), attributed to Richard de Bury, shows that it deals almost exclusively with the delights of literature, and Sebastian Brant's attack on the book-fool, written a century and a half later, demonstrates nothing more than that the possession of books is a poor substitute for learning. This is so obviously true that, before book-collecting in the modern sense can begin, it is essential that there should be no lack of books to read, just as until cups and saucers became plentiful there was no room for the collector of old china. Even when the invention of printing had reduced the cost of books by some 80 percent, book-collectors did not immediately appear.

There is a natural temptation to imagine that the early book-owners, whose libraries have enriched modern collectors with some of their best-known treasures, must necessarily have been collectors themselves. This is far from being the case. Hardly a book of all that Jan Grolier (1479-1565) caused to be bound so tastefully for himself and his friends reveals any antiquarian instincts in its liberal owner, who bought partly to encourage the best printers of his day, partly to provide his friends with the most recent fruits of Renaissance scholarship.

In England Archbishop Cranmer, the Lords Arundel and Lumley, and Henry, Prince of Wales¹ (1594-1612), in France the famous historian Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553-1617), brought together the best books of their day in all departments of learned literature, put them into handsome leather jackets, and enriched them with their coats of arms, heraldic badges or other marks of possession. But they brought their books together for use and study, to be read by themselves and by the scholars who frequented their houses, and no evidence has been produced that they appreciated what a collector might now call the points of a book other than its fine condition and literary or informational merits. Again, not a few other more or less famous men have been dubbed collectors on the score of a scanty shelf-full of volumes known to have been stamped with their arms. Collecting, as distinct both from the formation of working libraries and from casual ownership of this latter kind, may perhaps be said to have begun in England at the time of the antiquarian reaction produced by the book massacres when the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII, and the university and college libraries and the parish service books were plundered and stripped by the commissioners of Edward VI.

To rescue good books from perishing is one of the main objects of book-collecting, and when Archbishop Parker and Sir Robert Cotton set to work to gather what they could of the scattered records of English statecraft and literature, and of the decorative art bestowed so lavishly on the books of public and private devotion, they were book-collectors in a sense and on a scale to which few of their modern imitators can pretend. Men of more slender purses, and armed with none of Archbishop Parker's special powers, worked according to their ability on similar lines.

Humphrey Dyson (1582-1633), an Elizabethan notary, who collected contemporary proclamations and books from the early English presses, and George Thomason (d. 1666), the bookseller who bought, stored and catalogued all the pamphlet literature of the English Civil War, were mindful of the future historians of the days in which they lived. By the end of the 17th century book-collecting was in full swing all over Europe, and much of its apparatus had come into existence. In 1676 book auctions were introduced into England from Holland, and soon we can trace in priced catalogues the beginning of a taste for Caxtons, and the books prized by collectors slowly fought their way up from amid the heavy volumes of theology by which they were at first overwhelmed.

While book-collecting thus came into existence it was rather as an added grace in the formation of a fine library than as a separate pursuit. Almost all the large book-buyers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries bought with a public object, or were rewarded for their zeal by their treasures being thought worthy of a public resting-place.

Sir Thomas Smith (1513-1577) bequeathed his books to Queens' College, Cambridge; Archbishop Parker's were left under severe restrictions to Corpus Christi College in the same university; Sir Thomas Bodley refounded during his lifetime the library at Oxford University, to which also Archbishop Laud gave liberally and Selden bequeathed his books. The library of Archbishop Williams went to St John's College, Cambridge; that of Archbishop Ussher was bought for Trinity College, Dublin. The mathematical and scientific books of Thomas Howard, Earl of Norfolk (1586-1646), were given by his grandson to the Royal Society. The heraldic collections of Ralph Sheldon (1623-1684) to Heralds' College; the library in which Samuel Pepys took so much pleasure went to Magdalene College, Cambridge. Bishop Moore's books, including a little volume of Caxton quartos, almost all unique, were bought by George I and presented to the university library at Cambridge. Archbishop Marsh (1638-1713), who had previously bought Stillingfleet's printed books (his manuscripts went to Oxford), founded a library at Dublin. The immense accumulations of Thomas Rawlinson (1681-1725), brother of clergyman and antiquary Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755), provided materials for a series of auctions, and Harley's printed books were sold to Osborne the bookseller. But the trend was all towards public ownership.

While Richard Rawlinson allowed his brother's books to be sold, the best of his own were bequeathed to Oxford, and the Harleian MSS were offered to the nation at a sum far below their value. A similar offer of the great collections formed by Sir Hans Sloane, including some 50,000 printed books, together with the need for taking better care of what remained of the Cotton manuscripts, vested in trustees for public use in 1702 and partially destroyed by fire in 1731, led to the foundation of the British Museum in 1753, and this on its opening in 1757 was almost immediately enriched by George II's gift of the old royal library, formed by the kings and queens of England from Henry VII to Charles II, and by Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James VI and I, who had bought the books belonging to Archbishop Cranmer and Lords Arundel and Lumley.

A few notable book-buyers could not afford to bequeath their treasures to libraries, e.g. Richard Smith (1590-1675), Secondary of the Poultry Compter, at whose book-sale (1682) a dozen Caxtons sold, Dr. Francis Bernard (1627-1698), Narcissus Luttrell (1657-1732) and Dr. Richard Mead (1673-1754). At the opposite end of the scale, in Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland and Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke, we have early examples of the attempts, seldom successful, of book-loving peers to make their libraries into permanent heirlooms. But as has been said, the drift up to 1760 was all towards public ownership, and the libraries were for the most part general in character, though the interest in typographical antiquities was already well marked.

When George III came to the throne he found himself bookless, and the magnificent library of over 80,000 books and pamphlets and 440 manuscripts which he accumulated shows on a large scale the catholic and literary spirit of the book-lovers of his day. As befitted the library of a British monarch it was rich in English classics as well as in those of Greece and Rome, and the typographical first-fruits of Mainz, Rome and Venice were balanced by numerous works from the first presses of Westminster, London and Oxford. This noble library passed in 1823 to the British Museum, which had already received the much smaller but carefully chosen collection of the Rev. C.M. Cracherode (1730-1799), and in 1846 was further enriched by the wonderful library formed by Thomas Grenville (1755-1846), the last of its great book-loving benefactors, who died in that year, aged 91.

A few less wealthy men had kept up the old public-spirited tradition during George III's reign, David Garrick (1717-1779) bequeathing his fine collection of English plays and Sir Joseph Banks his natural history books to the British Museum, while the Shakespearian treasures of Edward Capell (1713-1781) enriched Trinity College, Cambridge and those of Malone (1741-1812) went to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the formation of these special collections, in place of the large general library with a sprinkling of rarities, being in itself worth noting.

But the noble book-buyers celebrated by the Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin in his numerous bibliographical works kept mainly on the old lines, though with aims less patriotic than their predecessors. The Duke of Roxburghe's books were sold, and the excitement produced by the auction, more especially by the competition between Lord Spencer and the Duke of Marlborough (at that time the Marquess of Blandford) for an edition of Boccaccio printed by Valdarfer at Venice in 1471, led to the formation of the Roxburghe Club at a commemorative dinner. In 1819 the Duke of Marlborough's books were sold, and the Boccaccio for which he had paid £2260 went to Earl Spencer (1758-1834) for £750, to pass with the rest of his rare books to the widow of John Rylands in 1892, and by her gift to the John Rylands Library at Manchester in 1899.

The books of Sir Mark Sykes (1771-1823) were sold in 1824, those of J.B. Inglis in 1826 (after which he collected again) and those of George Hibbert (1757-1837) in 1829. The 50,000 volumes brought together by Richard Heber at an expense of about £100,000 were disposed of by successive sales during the years 1834-1837 and realized not much more than half their cost. The wonderful library of William Beckford (1760-1844), especially rich in fine bindings, bequeathed to his daughter, wife of the Duke of Hamilton, was sold in 1882, with the Hamilton manuscripts, for the most part to the German government. Their dispersal was preceded in 1881 by that of the Sunderland collection, already mentioned. The library of Bryan Fairfax (1676-1749), which had passed to the Earls of Jersey, was sold in 1885, that of Sir John Thorold (1734-1815) in 1884, his Gutenberg Bible fetching £3900 and his Mainz Psalter £4950, both of which were bought by Quaritch. The great collection of manuscripts formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) has furnished materials for numerous sales. The printed books of the Earl of Ashburnham (1797-1878) kept the auctioneers busy in 1897 and 1898. His manuscripts were sold, some to the British government (the Stowe Collection shared between the British Museum and Dublin), the German government (part of the Libri Collection and Barrois Collection, all save one manuscript of 13th century German ballads, resold to France), the Italian government (the rest of the Libri collection), Yates Thompson (1838-1929) (the MSS. known as the Appendix) and J. Pierpont Morgan (the Lindau Gospels). The collections formed by William Miller M.P. (1789-1848, (mainly English poetry), the Duke of Devonshire (1790-1858) and Henry Huth (1815-1878), are still intact.

Among the book-buyers of the reign of George III, John Ratcliffe (d.1776), whose collection was sold "by Mr Christie" in 1776, and James West M.P., (c.1704-1772), (collection sold at auction in 1773) had devoted themselves specially to Caxtons (of which the former possessed 48 and the latter 34) and the products of other early English presses. The collections of Capell and Garrick were also small and homogeneous.

Book collecting - Cabinet theory of book collecting

Each section, moreover, of some of the great libraries that have just been enumerated might fairly be considered a collection in itself, the union of several collections in the same library being made possible by the wealth of their purchaser and the small prices fetched by most classes of books in comparison with those which are now paid. But perhaps the modern cabinet theory of book-collecting was first carried out with conspicuous skill by Henry Perkins (1778-1855) of Hanworth Park, whose 865 fine manuscripts and specimens of early printing, when sold in 1873, realized nearly £26,000. If surrounded by a sufficient quantity of general literature the collection might not have seemed noticeably different from some of those already mentioned, but the growing cost of books, together with difficulties as to houseroom, combined to discourage miscellaneous buying on a large scale, and what has been called the cabinet theory of collecting, so well carried out by Henry Perkins, became increasingly popular among book buyers, alike in France, England and the United States of America.

Henri Béraldi (1849-1931), in his catalogue of his own collection (printed 1892), has described how in France a little band of book-loving amateurs grew up who laughed at the bibliophile de la vieille roche as they disrespectfully called their predecessors, and prided themselves on the unity and compactness of their own treasures. In place of the miscellaneous library in which every class of book claimed to be represented, and which needed a special room or gallery to house it, they aimed at small collections which should epitomize the owners' tastes and require nothing bulkier than a neat bookcase or cabinet to hold them. The French bibliophiles whom Béraldi celebrated applied this theory with great success to collecting the dainty French illustrated books of the 18th century which were their especial favorites. In England Richard Fisher treated his fine examples of early book-illustration as part of his collection of engravings, etchings and woodcuts (illustrated catalogue printed 1879), and Frederick Locker (Locker-Lampson) formed in two small bookcases such a gathering of first editions of English imaginative literature that the mere catalogue of it (printed in 1886) produced the effect of a stately and picturesque procession.

Some of the book-hoards of previous generations could have spared the equivalent of the Locker collection without seeming noticeably the poorer, but the compactness and unity of this small collection, in which every book appears to have been bought for a special reason and to form an integral part of the whole, gave it an artistic individuality which was a pleasant triumph for its owner, and excited so much interest among American admirers of Locker's poetry that it may be said to have set a fashion.

As another example of the value of a small collection, both for delight and for historical and artistic study, mention may be made of the little roomful of manuscripts and incunabula which William Morris brought together to illustrate the history of the bookish arts in the middle ages before the Renaissance introduced new ideals. Many living collectors are working in a similar spirit, and as this spirit spreads the monotony of the old libraries, in which the same editions of the same books recurred with wearisome frequency, should be replaced by much greater individuality and variety. Moreover, if they can be grouped round some central idea cheap books may yield just as good sport to the collector as expensive ones, and the collector of quite modern works may render admirable service to posterity. The only limitation is against books specially manufactured to attract him, or artificially made rare. A quite wholesome interest in contemporary first editions was brought to nought about 1889 by the booksellers beginning to hoard copies of Browning's Asolando and Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book on the day of publication, while a graceful but quite minor poet was made ridiculous by £100 being asked for a set of his privately printed opuscula. The petty gambling in books printed at the Kelmscott and Doves Presses, and in the fine paper copies of a certain Life of Queen Victoria, for which a premium of 250 percent was asked before publication, is another proof that until the manufacturing stage is over collecting cannot safely begin. But with this exception the field is open.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History of Anglo-European book collecting", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki