Customer Reviews

Understanding Book-Collecting

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Don't get me wrong, this is a beautiful little book, and it's full of information. But it's British, and book-collecting in Britain (UK) has a very different slant than here in the U.S., and perhaps this should have been indicated in the title. I also mention "antiquarian", which is the field this handsome little reference seems to favor, whereas there are numerous fields of collecting more egalitarian which are untouched upon. So if you're into antiquarian books, and want to learn more about the British market, this is the book for you. An overview of the field in general it isn't. For a good introductory text I recommend Modern Book Collecting by Robert Wilson.

This is a handsome binding (for a modern book), with much useful information and many interesting pictures. A great browse for us "bibliopegists" (students and lovers of fine bindings). A delightful passage:

"Nevertheless, Sir, there are some things more fit to be looked at than others; for instance, there is nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book . . . It is, as I may say from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that you . . . need not open it unless you please . . . There is no place, in which a man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be otherwise than an innocent and becoming spectacle."

Thomas Love Peacock, Victorian