- About Bookbinding -

The buying of books is to some men a pastime; to others it is a passion; but to
the librarian and the intelligent book collector it is both a business and a
pleasure. The man who is endowed with a zeal for knowledge is eager to be
continually adding to the stores which will enable him to acquire and to dispense
that knowledge. Hence the perusal of catalogues is to him an ever fresh and
fascinating pursuit. However hampered he may be by the lack of funds, the zest
of being continually in quest of some coveted volumes gives him an interest in
every sale catalogue, whether of bookseller or of auctioneer. He is led on by the
perennial hope that he may find one or more of the long-wished for and
waited-for desiderata in the thin pamphlet whose solid columns bristle with
book-titles in every variety of abbreviation and arrangement. It is a good plan, if
one can possibly command the time, to read every catalogue of the book
auctions, and of the secondhand book dealers, which comes to hand.

You will thus find a world of books chronicled and offered which you do not
want, because you have got them already: you will find many, also, which you
want, but which you know you cannot have; and you may find some of the very
volumes which you have sought through many years in vain. In any case, you
will have acquired valuable information whether you acquire any books or not;
since there is hardly a priced catalogue, of any considerable extent, from which
you cannot reap knowledge of some kind-knowledge of editions, knowledge of
prices, and knowledge of the comparative scarcity or full supply of many books,
with a glimpse of titles which you may never have met before. The value of the
study of catalogues as an education in bibliography can never be over-estimated.

The large number of active and discriminating book buyers from America has for
years past awakened the interest and jealousy of collectors abroad, where it has
very largely enhanced the price of all first-class editions, and rare works.
No longer, as in the early days of Dibdin and Heber, is the competition for the
curiosities of old English literature confined to a half-score of native amateurs.
True, we have no such omnivorous gatherers of literary rubbish as that
magnificent helluo librorum, Richard Heber, who amassed what was claimed to be
the largest collection of books ever formed by a single individual. Endowed with a
princely fortune, and an undying passion for the possession of books, he spent
nearly a million dollars in their acquisition. His library, variously stated at from
105,000 volumes (by Dr. Dibdin) to 146,000 volumes (by Dr. Allibone) was
brought to the hammer in 1834. The catalogue filled 13 octavo volumes, and the
sale occupied 216 days. The insatiable owner (who w/'& a brother of Reginald
Heber, Bishop of Calcutta) died while still collecting, at the age of sixty, leaving
his enormous library, which no single house of ordinary size could hold,
scattered in half a dozen mansions in London, Oxford, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels
and Ghent.

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