C.J. Scheiner wrote:
We have a wonderful collection of titles, but what about books by
collectors/dealers who were not based in the United States?
C.J. Scheiner,
I first started collecting books when I was stationed in England in the
late 80s. I went to London, Cambridge, Oxford and around the English
countryside gathering books about book collecting. These books listed
below will give you a sampling of three centuries of book collecting on
the other side of the pond:
P.B.M. Allen: "Book-Hunter at Home," London, (1920) 1922.
Fred Basson: "Fred Basson's Diary," London, 1950. 2nd Diary,1952. 3rd
Diary,1955.
Augustine Birrell: "Obiter Dicta, First and Second Series," London
1901, Short essays and anecdotes.
John Hill Burton: "The Book-Hunter," New York,1863, London,1882.
Richard DeBury (1281-1345): The Love of Books, Being the Philobiblon,"
London,1907.
Thomas Frognal Dibdin: "Bibliomania or Book-Madness," London, 1876
(1809).
Dibdin: Bibliographical Antiquarian & Picturesque Tour in the Northern
Counties of England and in Scotland," London, 1878, 2 vols..
Austin Dobson: "De Libris in Prose and Verse," London,1908. Short
anecdotes about books.
Dobson: Eighteenth-Century Vignettes, London, 1892. Second
Series,1894, Third Series, 1896. Johnson et al.
Gilbert Fabes: "Autobiography of a Book," London, 1926. Crummy plot,
but loaded with tidbits about the other books on the bookshelves.
R.S.Garrett: "Some Book-Hunting Adventures," London,1931.
W. Carew Hazlitt: "The Book-Collector," London,1904.
A.L. Humphreys: "The Private Library," London, 1897, 2nd ed..
James Lackington: Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years of James
Lackington, Bookseller," London, 1830.
Andrew Lang: "The Library," London, 1892.
Lang: "Books and Bookmen," New York, 1886, London, 1887. Note: The
New York edition contains two essays which aren't in the London edition.
The London edition contains five essays which aren't in the New York
edition.
Mary Russell Mitford: "Recollections of a Literary Life," New York,
1852.
Sir William Osler: "Collected Essays of Sir William Osler," Birmingham,
1985, vol. III. Osler was a book collector. Besides writing about
medical matters, he also wrote about books and authors. Volume Three of
this series contains his essys on Robert Burton, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
John Keats, Sir Thomas Browne, and bookworms.
(Osler) William White: "Osler on Shakespeare, Bacon and Burton,"
offprint from the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, April,1939. Note:
Also includes a reprint of Osler's "Creators, Transmuters, and
Transmitters as Illustratred by Shakespeare, Bacon, and Burton.
Thomas Percy: "The Percy Letters," Louisiana State University Press,
1950s, Yale University Press, 1980s. An author's correspondence with
friends and other authors provides a personal insight that you won't
find in the author's memoirs.
J.H. Slater: "Romance of Book-Collecting," London,1898.
Slater: "Round and About the Book-Stalls," London, 1891. IMHO, J.H.
Slater is the English equivalent of Charles P. Everitt. Slater was also
the author of several books about book collecting for the amateur.
Joseph Spence: 'Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and
Men," London,1820.
Spence: "Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men,"
London, 1820.
Note: This book, better known as "Spence's Anecdotes," was published in
London on the same day by two different publishers. "Observations..."
was published by John Murray, with notes arranged by the late Edmund
Malone. "Anecdotes..." was published by W. H. Carpenter, with "notes
and a life of the author by Samuel Weller Singer." Murray's edition was
302 pages. Singer's edition was 502 pages.
Apologies for the length of this post! If anyone has any questions
about any particular book, please email me.
Best,
Jerry Morris,
Book Collector
Moi's Books About Books http://www.tinyurl.com/hib7
Moi's Library http://www.moislibrary.com My Sentimental Library:
http://www.picturetrail.com/mylibrary
Florida Bibliophile Society
http://www.floridabibliophilesociety.org