Uncovering Writing

4 of 5 stars

A delightful little book that I acquired in 2015 during the height of my Modern Library fixation but only got around to reading this month. It is a collection of essays (originally printed in The Atlantic) that has been divided into two parts: the first on collecting books and the second on the author’s favorite or interesting authors. The first part was excellent and I was drooling and nodding my head as I worked through the fantastic introduction and the essays on collecting. This is a man after my own heart. I admit I too am fond of book catalogues (p. 4) and can amuse myself for hours on end reading them or bibliographic texts. Newton also loves London, especially for its numerous types of bookshops. One quote that easily could have come from my mouth was “There is a city called London for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress” (p. 13). I’ve been very lucky to have spent six weeks in London over my lifetime. It is a magical city.

There are some hiccups along the way. He doesn’t seem to be interested in anything that isn’t written in English. He cares not for any other ancient or modern language. Sadly, he prefers tomes to be in private collections rather than in a museum. He feels that only a connoisseur, such as himself, can truly appreciate these volumes, not some gawker at a museum. I’ve been amazed at books I’ve seen on display, things I could never own, or might not want to own, but can marvel at them and maybe even use them for research.

His sexism and homophobia come out in his piece on Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi and Oscar Wilde. He raves about their work but then does a bit of hacking at the character of these authors. He wants to have it both ways, condemning them but loving their works. It diminishes the quality of those articles. He also does a sad hack job on William Godwin, with whom he disagrees philosophically, but the piece seems only a vehicle for his rant and sadly doesn’t bear out over time.

Having mentioned some flaws, I still thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection, including the final essay on Harry Elkins Widener, a rich collector and friend of the author. He died when the Titanic sank, but his legacy lead to the creation of the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard.

Thomas Frognall Dibdin, 1776 1847: A Bibliography by John Windle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thorough, great reference. Though, I would have enjoyed some commentary on the entries, a la Augustus De Morgan, David Smith, and even Dibdin himself.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating read that is much more than a traditional bibliographic tome. I came upon it via David Eugene Smith’s Rara Arithmetica (1908). Smith’s book referenced the work of De Morgan and I always wanted to read it. The volume I have (1970) includes a reprint of the original Rara Arithmetica, along with its 1939 addenda and a full reprint of Augustus De Morgan’s Arithmetical Books from the Invention of Printing to the Present Time (1847), the book I’m reviewing here.

De Morgan’s book is filled not only with bibliographic detail of each volume, but also insights into the history of the book, the author or the times. This is the same format that Smith would follow 60 plus years later. But, I feel that De Morgan has longer entries and had a little more fun with them. One example is Gaspar Lax’s Arithmetica Speculativa (1515). De Morgan writes that it’s a very obtuse description of 250 pages with no example of a number higher than 100. He jokes that that must be how high the author could count (pp. 11-12 original, 590-591 in my volume). Another less cheeky example is of Valentine Menher de Kempten’s “Practicque pour brievement apprendre à Cifrer…” (1565). He notes that this volume as well as other French works from the time period use the terms septante and nonante for 70 and 90 (p. 23 original, 602 in my volume). In most contemporary French-speaking countries, we use soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix (60+10 and 4 20’s + 10). In Belgium, however, they do use these two terms for those numbers. Kempten’s book was published in Antwerp. I’m such a geek for loving this little bit of trivia!

One interesting quirk that drove me nuts at first was that De Morgan spelled out the date for his entries. So, instead of 1515, he’d write “fifteen fifteen”. But, the author addressed it and it makes total sense (pp. x-xi, 561-562 in my volume). He said it’s easier to proofread as well as to not accidentally transpose digits, something that is quite possible when dates abound in volumes like these.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another book on books, this time a rare treat for me that combines my bibliophilia with my love of mathematics. Rara Arithmetica is a detailed catalogue of arithmetic books and manuscripts in George Arthur Plimpton’s library that were written before 1601. It includes detailed bibliographic information, biographies of the authors and important facts about each book including its audience, reception and impact. It includes many reproductions of title pages and other pages within the books.

There were four types of arithmetic in the Middle Ages that were inherited by the Renaissance (pp. 4-7). They are theoretical, algorisms, abacus mathamatics and computi (computus). Theoretical works were based primarily on Boethius, a 6th century CE scholar who drew on Nicomachus and Euclid. Algorisms were practical works used by merchants and business for computations and weights, often using Hindu and Arabic number systems. Abacus arithmetics used roman numerals and were also used for commercial purposes. Computi were the arithmetics used for church calendars and various date calculations, especially for movable religious feasts.

Some highlights from Rara Arithmetica:

A book written in 1488 by the astronomer and poet Anianus, which also includes work by a 13th century astronomer, is a treat. Anianus has, for the first time in print, the Latin version of what we know in English as the 30 days hath September…’ (pp. 31-33):

Junius aprils september et ipse nouember Dant triginta dies reliquis supadditur vnus De quorum numero februarius excipiatur. (pp. 31-33)

The first modern encyclopedia in print was Gregorius Reisch’s Aepitoma omnis phylosophiæ (1504). It includes the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy), along with the natural and moral sciences.

There were several books written on numerical finger and arm symbolism, i.e. how to use your hands and arms to display a number. One neat one was Johannes Aventinus’s 1532 book. It provided illustrations for how to represent numbers up to one million that was useful in both the East and the West during the Middle Ages (pp. 137-138).

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A real fun read of a small edition of this classic book on the love of books. Penned in the 14th century by Richard de Bury, the Bishop of Durham, it talks about the joy and need of books, thoughts on maintaining an scholarly library and the proper handling of books. The author is so excited and it comes out in his writing. He beat Thomas Frognall Dibdin to the punch by almost five centuries. Right off the bat, he writes “In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace” (p. 9). Could it be put any more succinctly?

He also discusses those who don’t see learning or books in the same light that he does. It’s amazing that seven centuries later his thoughts on human action are spot on. He cites Ovid in complaining that many people of the day are turning to making money instead of studying and making new science and philosophy (p. 67). Later, he writes “Although it is true that all men naturally desire knowledge, yet they do not all take the same pleasure in learning. On the contrary, when they have experienced the labour of study and find their sense wearied, most men inconsiderately fling away the nut, before they have broken the shell and reached the kernel” (p. 83-84).

In chapter XVII, he puts forth a wondrous, joyful set of rules for handling books. It’s still excellent advice: “that they [books] may rejoice in purity while we have them in our hands, and rest securely when they are put back in their repositories” (p. 104). In Chapter XIX, he lays out a set of rules for how to lend books out of the Oxford library, such as making a record of the item borrowed, only lending a copy outside the library if there is another copy, and regularly cataloging and reviewing its holdings.

Well worth the time to read through this short work.

This probably should have been a long article. There is some fluff and belaboring of points (e.g. Jonathan Swift’s Battle of the Books in chapter 4). I’ve read long, mostly academic, books on libraries and loved them, and I did get some neat tidbits out of this one, but it never really felt full or deep enough to justify its length.

As I said, the neat tidbits were fun. I enjoyed reading about the Ptolemies in Egypt, who confiscated all books of visitors to Alexandria. They were taken to the library, copied and sometimes the originals were kept (p. 29). This helped increase the library’s holdings. Battles also suggests the possibility that the hoarding of these texts may have contributed to the loss of so many ancient works. Had they been in private hands or in other locations, they might have survived longer (p. 31). I really enjoyed the description of an early Vatican book organization system, with sacred books and profane books laid out on tables in a specific relation to each other (pp. 78-79).

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)

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The English Library before 1700 is an informative and exciting collection of essays about the production, dissemination and collection of books in England from the early mediaeval era to around 1700.

Chapter 3 taught me the difference between vellum (calf) and parchment (sheep). Paper was imported into England around 1300 but it wasn’t until around 1494 that domestic production began. It was fascinating to read about Abbot Trittenheim, who railed against the adoption of paper, saying that writing on paper would only last 200 years while on skin it would last 1,000 or more. He might be right, based on the beautiful condition of older manuscripts, but it was just funny to see the same argument play throughout history (tablets to scrolls, scrolls to bound volumes, paper, printing presses, and now digital). This chapter also covered the cool process by which copyists worked to produce documents: how the material was prepared, folded, written on, rotated, dried, flipped, written, dried, and then incorporated into a final book. Also, as one might expect, some of the illustrators were illiterate. Some of the mistakes in old manuscripts would easily have been noticed and corrected if the text could have been read or proofread.

Chapter 4 covers the transition of books from solely in the monasteries to universities around the 13th century. Universities demanded more books for teaching and books that could be produced quicker, cost less, and be smaller in size for easier transportation.

Chapter 5 discusses the contents of mediaeval libraries. All had religious works. All contained Virgil’s works. Most contained items from Ovid and Horace. There were pockets on grammar, logic, science, medicine, history and a few pieces of prose. Interestingly, most items were in Latin. There was little Greek or Hebrew texts at this point. I also liked that we know of some works only because they were referenced in later works. We know of quotes from Pliny’s Natural History via a 3rd century AD manuscript by Solinus.

Chapter 7 covers the preservation of the classics, which are defined as Latin profane texts that date before AD 200. These texts were widely available prior to AD 500 and again after 1400. During the intervening years, they were preserved, sometimes in single copies across Europe. Italy, Ireland and Britain helped preserve many of these works. Monasteries helped but not always as effectively as private and university collections. Sometimes works were saved by pure luck and collectors’ taste. No one ever had a project to pull together a set of all the classics (p. 147).

Chapter 8 discusses the dispersal of libraries in the 16th century. Books were moved from monasteries to colleges, starting under the rule of Henry VIII. This was part of an effort by the king to seize property and money from the churches after breaking with Rome. Some major cathedral libraries were broken up under Henry. However, it was much worse under his successor, Edward VI. Books, mostly prayer and religious service items, were destroyed that weren’t in sync with the new Book of Common Prayer that was finalized in 1550 (p. 165). By Elizabeth I, the purges had stopped and attempts to preserve and reacquire lost and destroyed manuscripts began.

Chapter 9 is dear to my heart as a bibliophile. It discusses the Elizabethan Society of Antiquarians and the formation of the Cotton library. Robert Bruce Cotton was born in 1571 and he gathered an amazing collection. There are many items that people associate with him, such as the Coronation Book of Charles V and the Lindisfarne Gospels. But there were so much more: many Greek, Latin and Anglo Saxon books. His library included the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, documents from 60 BC (Caesar’s invasion of Britain) up to 1154. It also included the only surviving copies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf, and a 1215 exemplification of the Magna Carta. The Cotton library was the basis for the British Library’s collection.

Chapters 10 and 11 cover the libraries of Cambridge and Oxford, respectively. It was interesting to read about chained libraries, where books were physically chained to a wall or shelf and could only be used at that spot, and how they eventually became unchained, in Cambridge around 1627 and in Oxford by the late 18th century. As books became cheaper to produce and smaller in size, the need to chain them started to go away. Further, as the nobility and gentry started to send their children to university, these students expected and felt entitled to having what they had at home. Their families personal collections were never chained and were beautifully displayed.

Overall, an excellent book, in pieces and as a whole project.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply put, this is pure, unadulterated book porn. A fabulously put together large volume that includes wonderful images, biographical sketches of many of the authors of the books described and tidbits about the books and their receptions. And, of course, it is a scrupulously detailed bibliographic reference for these astronomy-related texts from the San Diego State University collection. In one volume, this work pulls together two of my favorite interests, astronomy and books. It is a perfect compliment to another book I have on my list, Rara Arithmetica,

The short introductory essay by Owen Gingerich, from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was very good. One set of books I enjoyed were the ones that illustrated the battles between the earth-centric and heliocentric models of the solar system. It was nice to see a 1640 book by John Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester (item #208), seeking to defend the sun-centered solar system to the masses. He illustrates a policy of tolerance between science and faith, something that was novel then and, sadly, is a struggle we still have today. The book was entitled “A Discourse Concerning a New Planet Tending to Prove that ’Tis Probable Our Earth is One of the Planets”.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another fabulously fun read of one of my “books on books”. This one is an alphabetical encyclopedia of volumes sold at Sotheby’s around the turn of the 20th century. Each entry gives bibliographic information about the actual edition, its history and provenance and sometimes a pithy comment on the item. Books from the 15th century until the 19th are listed.

I learned some intriguing things, especially about Shakespeare. Some of the books sold were either read or referenced by Shakespeare when he was writing his plays. Others mention the bard or his theater, the Globe, including a map from a mid-17th century book that showed the location of the Globe before the Great Fire of 1666. Shakespeare may have drawn the character names of Rosencrantz and Guidenstern from the frontispiece of a book written by Tycho Brahe in 1602. The names were included in a list of Dutch nobles on that item.

I just love these types of books, because many of these items are gone or in private collections or university libraries. Through these entries, I can “visit” with them, at least for a short while and marvel at all that has come before.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The 1951 Windsor Lectures in librarianship from the University of Illinois were a fun and quick read. It contained three lectures, of which I most enjoyed Mr. Weber’s topic. In it, he covered the differences between English and American editions of English novels. Sometimes you had typos, sometimes pirated editions, sometimes the pirated editions more correctly reflected the author’s intentions than the official version. Ray and Carter both covered how much things have changed in book publication and collecting. Ray notes the rise and fall of the “triple-deckers” (3-volume sets of novels popular in the early 1800s) and the shift in collector taste from finely-bound volumes to “original boards”. Carter takes on the original boards topic as well, noting how there often wasn’t just one “original board”. Carter also tells us how there was more innovation in publishing in the first 35 years of the 19th century than in the previous 350 years.

If you’re a collector, librarian or bibliomaniac, this is an interesting read and worth the little bit of time it takes to read it.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fantastic! I love the details of everything that came off the Strawberry Hill press. I also enjoyed Mr. Hazen shine light on forgeries, unauthorized prints and items incorrectly assigned to the press. He covers the history of their printing, citing from various sources, including the original journal of the press done by Horace Walpole. The facsimiles of title pages and other printed items are joyous to behold. This bibliography is true biblio-porn!

I love seeing bibliography used not just as a dry recording method, but as a tool to solve mysteries, date printings, reconstruct history and uncover forgeries. Hazen inspected many copies of each item, comparing fonts, paper, watermarks, etc., to figure out which items were true editions and which came later, produced by Strawberry Hill’s at times unscrupulous printer Thomas Kirgate. For example, Hazen looks closely at an item that was supposed to have been published in 1757 and was quite valuable. Upon inspection, he finds that the font used in this particular edition hadn’t been invented until 1764, hence the piece was done at a later date and “pre-dated” to increase its value (pp. 154-158). This bibliography is full of interesting examples like this one.

For anyone interesting in Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole, 18th century society, or small press printing, this is a great read.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Davis’s Second Journey wasn’t as fun or interesting as his first. The books selected weren’t as ‘neat’ (for me) as the ones he chose for his 1821 journey. But, I’m still happy to have been able to peruse it.

I would highlight one cited book: Richardi de Bury (originally Richard de Aungerville)’s Phylobiblion de querimoniis Liborum omnibus literatum amatoribus perutile (1473). A fabulous study of how to manage libraries, preserve its books and lending rules. Libraries are one of my favorite places in the world.