Uncovering Writing

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A really great read that is both technical and fun at the same time. William Alexander Jackson helped turn the Harvard “Treasure Room” into the Houghton Library, where he became the founding Librarian. The Introduction is worth the price of entry, where we learn little tidbits of Jackson’s early life, his studies and travels. He fell in love with books at an early age. He liked A. Edward Newton’s “Amenities of Book Collecting” (p. 4), a book that I just recently added to my shelves to read! He liked the book not necessarily for its technical expertise, but for Newton’s joy and enthusiasm.

As I moved into Jackson’s own words, I’m happily surprised that even while he is discussing important and technical matters, his words flow like a good novel. His writing is accessible and exciting. This is a rare and valuable talent and one that made this book so enjoyable for me. His paper entitled “A Dibdinian Tour” (pp 67-82), which covered a several week trip through English libraries and collections, caused me to write in my reading notebook: “Well done, Mr. Jackson. Well done.”

In an essay on Thomas Dibdin, Jackson shows this exciting style while talking about the spirit of Dibdin living on in today’s book collectors:

So long as there are men who are enraptured by the sight of a really fine copy of not necessarily a great book, men who sometimes find themselves walking out of a bookshop with a book under their arm which they had not intended to buy, whose purchase they could not very well defend, but which tempted them by something really fine in its paper or binding, its condition or its total rightness as a book– so long, I say, as there are such Helluones librorum, in Dibdin’s phrase, gluttons of books, some of his rapture, his delight, and his spirit is still inflaming men’s hearts and desires.(p. 52)