29_2 ABC forbookcollectors Bob Fleck

236 Pages·2008·1.04 MB·English

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AB C
FOR
BOOK COLLECTORS
[half-title]
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Other books published by
(cid:2)
Oak Knoll Press and The British Library
for the serious book collector
Five Hundred Years of Printing
by S. H. Steinberg
Encyclopedia of the Book
by Geoffrey Glaister
The Art & History of Books
by Norma Levarie
A New Introduction to Bibliography
by Philip Gaskell
The Pleasures of Bibliophily:
Fifty Years of The Book Collector
A Bibliography of Printing
by E. C. Bigmore and C. W. H. Wyman
catalogue available upon request
[advertisement]
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A B C
FOR
BOOK COLLECTORS
(cid:2)
Eighth Edition
JOHN CARTER
and
NICOLAS BARKER
OAK KNOLL PRESS
and
THE BRITISH LIBRARY
[title-page]
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Eighth edition published 2004by
Oak Knoll Press
310Delaware Street
New Castle, de19720
and
The British Library
96Euston Road
London nw1 2db
First published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. 1952.
Second edition 1953, Third edition 1961, Fourth edition 1966,
Reprinted with corrections 1967, Reprinted 1971, Fifth edition 1972,
Reprinted 1973, Reprinted with corrections 1974, Reissued by Granada
Publishing 1978, Sixth edition 1980, Reprinted 1982, 1985,
Reissued 1992, Reprinted 1993, 1994,
Seventh edition, revised and expanded, 1995,
Reprinted 1997, 1998, 2000, 2002,
Eighth edition with corrections 2006.
Copyright © John Carter 1952, 1953, 1961, 1966, 1972
New material Copyright © Nicolas Barker 1980, 1995, 2004
Reprint (2006) ofeighth edition corrected by Raymond B. Williams
ISBN 1‒58456‒112‒2(Oak Knoll)
ISBN 0‒7123‒4822‒0(BL)
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carter, John, 1905–1975.
ABC for book collectors / by John Carter–8th ed. / with corrections,
additions, and an introduction by Nicolas Barker.
p. cm.
ISBN 1‒58456‒112‒2
1. Bibliography—Dictionaries. 2. Book collecting—Dictionaries. 3. Book industries
and trade—Dictionaries. I. Barker, Nicolas. II. Title.
Z1006.C372003 002(cid:2).075—dc21 2003054829
Typeset by Hope Services (Abingdon) Ltd, UK
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
[printer’s imprint & copyright page]
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to
JOHN HAYWARD
R.I.P.
[dedication]
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[verso, blank]
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INTRODUCTION
Like all good reference books, the ABC for Book Collectors, first pub-
lished in 1952, conveys much in a little space, sets limits to its subject
and keeps within them, and – saving grace – treats that subject with
individuality as well as authority, in a style at once concise, forthright
and witty. It is, in short, a masterpiece, whose merits are acknowledged
by the fact that it has never, in more than fifty years, been out of print.
The author, John Carter, was born on 10May 1905and died on 18
March 1975. A scholar of Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, he
knew too well what scholarship meant to embark on the academic life
that his attainments might have made his. Instead, in 1927he joined
the famous New York firm of booksellers, Charles Scribner’s Sons,
with which he remained, apart from war service, until 1953. From then
till 1955, he was attaché at the British Embassy in Washington. He
then joined Sotheby’s, for whom he was largely responsible in open-
ing up a new market in the U.S.A., retiring in 1972. He was also a
book-collector, forming a notable collection of A. E. Housman and
another, unsurpassable, of William Cory, the Eton master and poet.
He was, thus, well equipped to see the book collector’s world from
every angle, to record it at once dispassionately and with insight.
Although for so long a member of the trade, he was never truly in it.
Its older members disliked what they took to be his de haut en basman-
ner and still more his detachment, which they sensed rather than
knew, because he was punctilious and honourable in all transactions.
But there was nothing snobbish about the generosity and encourage-
ment that he extended to the young, ‘bibliomites’ of the trade or
collectors hesitantly beginning, or again those with their foot on the
first step of the bibliographical ladder.
I was one of them, and I shall never forget the kindness and prac-
tical help he gave me, particularly when I had, at short notice after
John Hayward’s sudden death, to take over the editorship ofThe Book
Collector. It is strange, now, to look back on those days. Our world was
indeed a small one and, it seemed, contracting. There were few anti-
quarian booksellers, mostly old men. Their memories stretched back
to the Depression and beyond, when old books were commoner and
so were collectors – the problem was to sell the books. Now where
were the books, and the collectors? They were, they felt, the last gen-
eration: the last books would soon be locked up in institutional
libraries, and the trade that they knew would soon be wound up.
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There was, then, a certain defiance, an assertion of facts and values
that might be forgotten, in the ABC when it came out in 1952.
Memories of Michael Sadleir and the ‘Bibliographica’ series before
the Second World War, the opinions and trenchant style of Stanley
Morison, the centre of our little circle, echo in its pages. But how soon
it was to change – had changed already by 1972, when the fifth edition
came out, by which time, Morison had mischievously said, it ‘might be
a serviceable thing’. It is hard to date the beginnings ofthe change: the
simultaneous release of the residue of the Phillipps collection after
ten years’ seclusion and of the Abbey collection, both alluringly
catalogued by Andreas Mayor and Anthony Hobson, was certainly a
turning point.
But the real change was a larger and more subtle one. The rise in
property values forced booksellers to value the space their stock took
up: ‘high street’ shops became less and less viable. The wise betook
themselves to country rectories and postal business by catalogue, free
from opening hours, non-buying browsers and business rates. There
was time to look for books (not so hard to find after all if you had the
time), and to catalogue them with a shrewder eye to a market now
more accurately defined. The only problem was that the number of
customers grew no larger. To this the book fair proved the answer, not
just the London fair but one in a country hotel or some other public
building, where a car full of books might furnish a modest booth, with
some over to replenish it if sales were good.
At first, I suspect, sales were mostly within the trade (a version of
the Indian rope trick whose final economics I have never quite under-
stood), but gradually the public which had come out of curiosity
stayed to buy. Why? Partly because, in the more prosperous 70s and
early 80s, there was a little money to spare; partly, paradoxically, due
to the ‘flight from money’ – better if you had it to put into something
less prone to erratic fluctuation; partly, too, owing to the decline in
modern book production, particularly the paper and the misnamed
perfect binding of paperbacks whose leaves fell out on bookshop
floors as thick as those that strewed the brooks in Vallombrosa.
All this woke a new interest in books, old and not so old. It was not
just the old staple of literature and the classics: art and the theatre
acquired new professional collections; the decline of industry put a
new premium on previously unsaleable obsolete technical manuals;
newly cheap travel produced devotees of books about remote parts of
the world, particularly those which you still could not reach easily.
New collectors, a species believed to be on the brink of extinction,
became almost common. New antiquarian booksellers set up. Rare
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book librarianship, once the province of a few isolated enthusiasts,
has become a profession, stimulated by the Rare Book School of
Professor Terry Belanger, formerly at Columbia University, now at
the University of Virginia, and a generous contributor to earlier edi-
tions of the ABC.
All this growth would have delighted John Carter, as it does me.
One other change he would have viewed with more sadness, the
dissolution of the ancient craft of bookbinding, superseded in its
primary function by the now largely mechanised process of edition
binding. It has not, however, died entirely, but has been translated into
the new world of book conservators and art binders, both thriving.
Many of the old terms for materials and practices, variable and often
imprecise, discussed long ago with Howard Nixon of the British
Museum and Kenneth Hobson of Sangorski and Sutcliffe, are now
obsolete or disused, except in booksellers’ catalogues. Their survival
there justifies their presence here, since those catalogues are now his-
toric documents, consulted as such. Perhaps another revival, in the
still neglected history ofthe internal, as opposed to external, structure
of bookbindings, may give them a new interest.
It remains only to thank all those who, with suggestions for
improvement and other encouragement, have lightened the task of
preparing the first complete revision of Carter’s text. It has not been
an easy task to alter words written in a style both classic and succinct,
however necessary change may be. Words used originally that
seemed then to need no explanation now require it. New words and
facts, undreamed of then, have to be added. What was part of every-
day trade practice in 1952has now become history; even definitions
seem less definite (unascribed quotations are generally those of the
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). I owe a particular debt to Terry
Belanger and G. Thomas Tanselle, who shared these burdens by re-
reading the text in its entirety and commenting on it, line by line.
I hope that they and others will continue to maintain their critical
interest: there is always room for improvement. I have preserved
the original dedication to one to whom I owe as much as did the
original author.
nicolas barker
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