Books and Bookmen

A series of essays and sketches on book-collecting, bibliographical curiosities, and the culture surrounding books, mixing learned history, personal anecdote, and light satire. Topics include the history and appeal of small seventeenth-century Elzevir editions, rare bindings and book-collectors’ foibles, parish-register oddities, bibliomania in France, literary forgeries, and whimsical examinations of Japanese ghost-books and library phantoms. Interspersed are reflections on women as readers and collectors, practical notes on title-pages and ornaments, and playful poems that underline the unattainable nature of prized volumes. The tone alternates between instructive erudition and comic gossip about bookmen.