College and Research Libraries


eview- Articles 
Pleasures and Practices 

nvitation to Book Collecting,· Its Pleasures 
and Practices with Kindred Discussions of 
Manuscripts, Maps, and Prints. By Colton 
Storm and Howard Peckham. New York, 
R. R. Bowker Company, 1947· 
It has been six hundred years since Richard 

e Bury firs.t extolled the pleasures of books 
nd book-collecting. The pleasures have 
ardly changed appreciably, although the rna-
erial for collecting has multiplied tremend-
usly. The reasons for submitting to the 
arious kinds of pleasures the pursuit of the 
are or scarce affords, have been described 
gain and again in every century and in 
early every language. The English heritage 

s as rich as any, as such foreign writers as 
abriel N aude and Octave Uzanne have 

eadily found translators. In the eighteenth 
nd nineteenth centuries the passion, which 
arne to be called bibliomania, was most 
raphically described by the letter writers and 
ssayists. The letters of Thomas Gray, 

orace Walpole, and many another traveler 
re liberally seasoned with accounts of their 
requent "discoveries" at home and abroad. 
he essays of Charles Lamb, Andrew Lang, 

and Augustine Birrell are frequently based 
on the feel, the smell, the sight of leather 
bindings. Professional bibliophiles became 
honored in the succeeding volumes of Thomas 
Frognall Dibdin and F. Somner Merry-
weather. 

Today the game is still being described, as 
well as played, and there are few confirmed 
collectors who begrudge a shelf to such con-
temporary guides and friends as A. Edward 
Newton, Edmund Lester Pearson, Percy 
Muir, Holbrook Jackson, George Goodspeed, 
and A. S. W. Rosenbach. In fact, the litera-
ture has grown so large that Jackson has been 
able to compile two delightful anthologies of 
quotations on the subject, The Anatomy of 
Bibliomania in two volumes and The Fear 
of Books in one. This quantity of expert ad-
vice might make one ask why another volume 
is needed or even tolerated. The answer is 
simple. No enthusiast ever has enough of his 
hobby, even if it be at second hand. Further-

OCTOBER, 1947 

more, anecdotes arise with every auction sea-
son and the old ones never lose their appeal 
to a new audience. Today this country is 
full of new collectors-more than ever be-
fore, because a whole new class has recently 
come into real money, and no one enjoys a 
pretty binding more than a nouveau riche, 
unless it be his wife. The volume under con-
sideration is directed quite largely to new 
collectors, particularly to those who feel it is 
only a rich man's game. That there are 
pleasures here for every purse is proved mahy 
times and I can think of no better volume to 
place in the hangs of a college freshman, or 
his mental equal, who earnestly asks, "Why 
collect books?" 
' This is one of the very best books on the 
pleasures of book collecting. Personally I 
still prefer the smaller, cheaper little hand-
book issued Christmas before last by Percy 
Muir, called B oak-Collecting as a Hobby. 
But that:' I should say, is a bit further ad-
vanced-not for the beginner but rather for 
the junior or senior who has progressed to 
the question, "How do I become a discrimi-
nating collector?" 

This volume is based on a series of lectures 
given at the University of Michigan, partly 
to explain the William L. Clements Library, 
"but chiefly to preach the fun we find in col-
lecting books, manuscripts, maps and prints." 
The book is especially fortunate in the com-
bined wisdom and enthusiasms of its · two 
authors. Howard Peckham, . after an ap-
prenticeship as chief editorial writer for the 
Orand Rapids Press, joined the Clements 
Library as curator of manuscripts. He is 
now director of the Indiana Historical Bureau 
and secretary of the Indiana Historical So-
ciety. Colton Storm began as a cataloger in 
the leading book auction houses of Chicago 
and New York and, after what his friends 
identify as the "Retz and Drang" period in 
his own bookshop, became a member of the 
staff of the Clements Library, where he is 
now curator of maps and manuscripts. It is 
his knowledge of the "practices" of book col-
lecting that has made this book invaluable 

465 



to all librarians and amateur collectors who 
are frequently puzzled by that modern mid-
dleman, the "dealer." 

It is the emphasis on the practices of book 
collecting that seems to me to give this book 
not only its chief interest but also its novelty 
in the field of otherwise similar books. Who 
before has put down on paper the motives 
which guide a dealer in pricing a volume? 
Who else has told where dealers find their 
stock and make their profits? Who but a re-
formed dealer could so clearly and so inclu-
sively describe the dealers' procedures and 
his guesses right or wrong? We are still 
waiting for the ripe and learned memoirs of 
a Lathrop Harper and the "now it can be 
told" of Charlie Eberstadt, but this is far 
ne~rer the bookman's daily fare than the 
thrilling "kills" in the Saturday Evening Post 
of Dr. Rosenbach. Here at ·last is an honest 
attempt, well-considered and well-executed, 
to give the dealer his due. His are the brains 
behind most famous collections and his is the 
pleasant life with plenty of ups and downs. 
I refer the interested collector or librarian 
to an impassioned apologia for dealers in rare 
books on pages 190-93. 

I should like also to single out a passage 
further on where a reasoned attack is made 

on a recent development in sales by auctio 
where purchasers are invited to bid by mai 
I agree that this procedure is quite unjustifie 
as it places the auctioneer in the very un 
favorable position of trying to do his best b 
the consignor and the bidder. It usuall 
results in the bidder getting charged his tota 
bid. 

One point needs fuller emphasis than i 
accorded it in this volume and that is th 
tendency of prices to rise immediately upo 
the publication of a definitive bibliography 
We have all noticed the rise in prices o 
volumes included in the original Short Titl 
Catalogue and, more recently, the soarin 
prices for American fiction before 185 I, fol-
lowing the publication of Lyle Wright's 
bibliography. It seems only a matter of a 
few years before the author's Seventeenth-
Century Books Priced at One Dollar or Two 
Are Common will be nostalgically remem-
bered. 

It is obviously the pleasant duty of all 
collectors and librarians to read all the books 
there are on book-collecting. It will be one 
of the great pleasures of the season to dis-
cover this general handbook, partly for the 
pleasures, but especially for the practices of 
this art.-Donald Wing. 

Two More Surveys 
A Report on the Mary Reed Library. By 

Louis R. Wilson. Denver, University of 
Denver, 1947. 18p. 

"The New York State Library: Report of 
a Survey." By Keyes D. Metcalf and 
Andrew D. Osborn. Cambridge, Mass., 
1947. 46p. (Mimeographed) 
Some reviewers of recent surveys have 

raised questions as to both the value and the 
technique of surveys, with the intimation that 
surveys are probably not as valuable as we 
like to believe and that the method is faulty. 
If we assume that both of these observations 
were true up to a point, this reviewer, who 
has been a surveyor himself, would still be-
lieve that surveys have their place in direc;t-
ing library development. Testimony to this 
fact may be found in Louis R. Wilson's anal-
ysis of the results of some university surveys 
in his article in the July 1947 issue of College 
and Research LibrariesJ Part II, 368-75. 

There is nothing strikingly unusual in 
either of the two surveys under review. Dr. 
Wilson's study of the Denver situation is 
straightforward and concise and considers 
such matters as library resources; functions of 
the library committee, the library staff, and 
the educational program; preparation of the 
budget; budgetary allocations; library per-
sonnel; development of library collections; 
building requirements; audio-visual facili-
ties; publications exchange program; library 
accessions list; and "Friends of the Library." 
The report, as Dr. Wilson points out, "is not 
intended to present in detail all the matters 
covered in the survey." Major observations 
are pointed out and measures are suggested 
for improving the service of the library. In 
a brief introduction President Caleb F. Gates 
calls attention to these recommendations and 
suggestions and notes that they "offer a 
challenge to each one of us concerned with 

466 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES