Now that you've mentioned Gilbert Highet, I have my own bookseller's memoir
to contribute....
When I was an undergrad at Columbia during the early 1980s, the library used
to get rid of its duplicates through the Columbia Library Booksale, an
office on the ground floor that was open daily. The Booksale sold virtually
everything for $2 or less. They had some pretty good stuff from time to
time (by "pretty good" I mean items that now sell for hundreds of dollars).
Around 1984 a large number of books from Gilbert Highet's private collection
passed through the booksale (Highet had taught at Columbia for many years).
I bought many, if not most, of the interesting items. The best of these was
Highet's own copy of his "The Classical Tradition" (1949). It was
interleaved and had about a hundred additions and corrections in Highet's
hand. He apparently thought or hoped that a revised edition of "The
Classical Tradition" would someday be published. But it never happened:
although the book was reprinted many times--it may well still be in print
now, for all I know--no changes were made to the original printed text.
Many years later, when I became a bookseller, I offered this book for $675.
For a few years it sat on the shelf, while virtually all of the other books
I had from Highet's collection sold (I think I still have one or two left).
When an article about Highet appeared in the Columbia alumni magazine, it
occurred to me to write the Columbia Rare Book Library, to see if they would
be interested in buying the book. They hemmed and hawed about it for a
while, and then one day I received a firm order for the book--from someone
else--and sold it. A few days later Columbia wrote me, asking if I would
consider selling it to them for $600. Of course I would have, but by this
time I no longer had the book....
So Columbia missed out on the chance to pay me $600 for the book I had
bought from Columbia for $1. But no tears for Columbia: they made it up
with the tuition they charged.
Best
Bill Cole
Cole & Contreras Books
Barcelona
On 7/27/06 7:49 PM, "Stephen O. Saxe" <sos22@OPTONLINE.NET> wrote:
> I agree that Altick's The Scholar Adventurers is delightful.
>
> Some of the list may remember Gilbert Highet's radio broadcasts about
> books and literature on WQXR in New York in 1952. I wrote him a fan
> latter, and in his reply he urged me to read The Scholar Adventurers.
>
> And may I point out that the texts of those radio talks by Gilbert
> Highet are in another delightful book: People, Places, and Books (OUP,
> NY, 1953.)
> -Steve Saxe
>
> Germaine Warkentin wrote:
>> I'll second the Altick recommendation -- I read it right at the
>> beginning of my grad student career, and it changed my life; I had the
>> pleasure of telling him this when he visited Toronto many years later.
>> I have pressed it on many a subsequent grad student. It is full of
>> bibliographical and book history information and anecdotes, and it
>> stands up very well after many decades. A sheer delight! Germaine
>>