Isadore Brodsky and Me

At some point in mid-1980s, I decided that I wanted a copy of Isadore Brodsky's Sydney's Phantom Bookshops (Sydney, 1973), but was unable to find one in any of the new and second-hand bookshops that I visited.

Whether I encountered a reference to the book in my reading, or a bookseller had suggested that I read it, or even whether I had found the book myself, while browsing library shelves for Australian books on book-collecting—which I probably did, about the time I was reading A. Edward Newton’s This Book-Collecting Game (Boston, 1928)—I can’t now recall.

What I do recall is that, since I was (fortunately, as it turned out), young and gloriously naïve, I decided to go directly to the Sydney University Co-op bookshop on Broadway in Ultimo—the publisher—and ask for a copy, figuring they should still have one. After a long walk to my local station, a long train journey to Central Station, and a long walk from Central to Broadway, I was told that the book was out of print, that they didn’t have a copy in stock, and may never had carried it.

When I pointed out that Sydney University Co-op bookshop was, in fact, the publisher of the book, and that they must have a copy somewhere, a manager was called over. Fortunately, he recalled the book, disappeared into a storage room to search for stray copies, and emerged, struggling with a heavy-looking box.

"How many do you want?" he asked jokingly. It was an unopened box of copies! I asked the price, and he suggested fifty cents a copy. I made a snap decision—based much more on how much money I had on me, than on how many copies I thought I could easily carry home—and bought twenty copies for ten dollars! It was a very long journey home, longer it seemed than it had been to get from home to Ultimo, with many, many rest stops along the way, but I secured twenty copies of the book.

And here, a sane person might ask, as my family did once I eventually got home: "But why though?" A reasonable question, since you can only read one at a time, and even a brute who rips out each page of a book, once it's been read, would be unlikely to read-and-destroy twenty copies of Sydney's Phantom Bookshops in a row.

The answer to this very reasonable question is probably to be found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or a combination of genome sequencing and years-long therapy. Alternatively, you could consult Dibdin's Bibliomania (1809) or Halbrook Jackson’s The Anatomy of Bibliomania (1930), or—as mentioned—Newton's This Book-Collecting Game, which I read in December 1986.

My justification, at the time, was that I was going to profit from my bold and exhausting actions by selling nine-tenths of them, which is what I did. I gave one copy to a close friend, and I recall selling a large handful to Peter Tinsley, from ABC (The Antique Bookshop and Curios), then in Spofforth Street, Cremorne, but now on the Pacific Highway in Crows Nest (above Tyrrell's old shop). Other copies were sold in ones or twos to other booksellers in Sydney and Hobart, over many years, until I was left with just the single copy I now have and treasure.

Although, I am sure, almost everything written by Brodsky could now be significantly improved on, my interest in Sydney’s long history of second-hand bookselling was fired up by the book, and in particular the rear panel of the dust jacket (above), which has a photograph of a goodly collection of Sydney bookseller’s labels: 113 by my count. As this website explains: "Back in the good old days, some of your 'better' booksellers, of both new and second-hand tomes, often affixed their own custom-printed labels inside the books they sold." After spending a lot of time staring at Brodsky's picture, and searching through my books, I was able to assemble a modest collection of my own.

(I plan a post or a series of posts on these so I will only say here that, in a weak moment, in a period of penury, I was persuaded to sell my collection of fifty labels to an Austrian collector (Reinhard Öhlberger, of Vienna), who—I only recently discovered—went on to publish one of the few books on the subject: Wenn am Buch der Händler klebt (1999). I have since assembled a second collection, of about three hundred labels, but have not been able to replace many of the ones I had in the 80s. A copy of Wenn am Buch der Händler klebt is on its way to me now and, after it arrives, I will post more on this subject.)

On a recent trip to Sydney, I found copies of two other works by Brodsky in secondhand bookshops: The Streets of Sydney (1962) and The Sydney Press Gang (1974). After leafing through each, I decided against buying them, though they were both cheap. According to his Wikipedia page (here), wrote a regular column—"Out of the Past"—for The Sun newspaper, about the history of Sydney. His books are certainly journalistic, which both a good and a bad thing. Although they are a little insubstantial and lack the scholarly exactness that I prefer these days, they are light, easy, and fun to read: perfect for the "young and impressionable creature" (††) I once was.

* * * * *

(**) I bought a lot of books from Peter from the mid-80s through the mid-90s, when he moved to Crows Nest, and I moved to Melbourne, and I learned a lot by reading his catalogues. My copy of Newton's This Book-Collecting Game, from the library of Walter Stone, was bought from Peter. It is the first trade edition; a 1930 reprint is here. Peter has a copy of Sydney's Phantom Bookshops for sale at the moment (here), but it isn’t one he got from me: they would have sold donkey’s years ago!

(††) this phrase seems to date back to about 1840s, so I assume it can be used ironically now. One of the earliest citations I can find is this glorious passage from Mrs. Gordon Smythies' The Matchmaker: A Novel (London, 1842), 130: "… with a woman's rapidity of thought, she in a moment conceived and discarded a suspicion that Julian had wished to excite the interest and win the affection of this young and impressionable creature." (For more on Julian and this young and impressionable creature, see here.)

(‡‡) This whole post is a footnote to my previous post, in which I mention Brodsky's Sydney's Phantom Bookshops.

(§§) Some of the images in this post are taken from this copy, for sale online. I strongly recommend buying this copy—before I do something stupid, like making it my 21st copy.

Dymock's Book Arcade opens at 142 King Street, 2 April 1887

The above advertising leaflet survives pasted onto the rear board of Illustrations to Goethe's Faust in Twenty-Seven Outline engravings by Moritz Retzsch, a slim, undated, oblong volume, with no publisher’s imprint or printed text (aside from the title)—as you can see below.

I recently acquired this volume from Wal Kirsop, who purchased it in 1961, at the start of his career as an academic. (Having successfully defended his doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne in Paris, he returned in July 1960 to work for approximately two years as a lecturer in French at the University of Sydney, before transferring to Monash University in Melbourne.)

As you can see, it is not an attractive copy, and Wal almost certainly bought it—despite its condition—for the Dymocks Book Arcade advertising leaflet that it preserves.

The leaflet offers an interior view of Dymock's Book Arcade at 142 King Street, Sydney. Interior views of bookshops from this period in Australia are relatively uncommon (**), so I did some research to more-accurately date the image and—as you can be seen above and below—I am reproducing it here, in full, with some close-up images, plus—at the end of this post—some AI-generated mock-ups, to help readers visualise the shop. (** The only other I have at hand is Angus and Robertson's shop at 89 Castlereagh Street, reproduced in James Tyrrell, Old Books, Old Friends, Old Sydney (1952), opp. 88.)

Copies of this leaflet appear to be extremely rare. I can find evidence of only one other example, which is reproduced in one of my favourite books: Isadore Brodsky, Sydney's Phantom Bookshops (Sydney: University Co-operative Bookshop, 1973), 3. (See update, below.) I do not know the source of Brodsky’s leaflet, but his copy is in worse condition that this one. I wonder whether it survived another five decades, and—if it did—where it might be today? I looked on Libraries Australia but was unable to find any record of a copy in any Australian library.

In addition to being unable to find evidence of other surviving copies, I was unable to find any definite record of when Dymock's moved into 142 King Street, Sydney. Wal's own article on William Dymock for the Australian Dictionary of Biography (here), states:

Dymock set up his own business in Sydney in the early 1880s, being at 208 Pitt Street by 1884. The shop was called Dymock's Book Arcade … as the Book Arcade expanded its activities and moved its premises, first to 142 King Street and then in December 1890 to 428 George Street.

The same elision of moving date appears on the Wikipedia entry for William Dymock, the founder of Dymock's, and other online sources (like this one), so I searched Trove for variations on "Dymock's Book Arcade" and "142 King Street" to establish when the move occurred. I did not find much advertising when I searched Trove for variations on "Dymock's Book Arcade" and "142 King Street" alone, so I used some of the phrases in this advertising copy.

The text fragments that surround the image can be read in various ways. My reading is as follows:

Dymocks Book Arcade. Books Bought [and] Exchanged, Libraries Purchased. 142 King Street, Sydney. Two Doors West of Elizabeth Street. 50,000 Volumes at Half Published Price. Twelve Miles of Books Always on View. A large Assortment of Standard Works on Engineering, Law, Fine Arts, History, Poetry, Theology, and Fiction. Latest Books. New Books and Periodicals Received by Every Mail. Finest Exhibition of Books in Sydney.

I tried variations on a the more distinctive phrases above (i.e., "Twelve Miles of Books," "12 miles of books," "12 miles" plus "Dymocks" etc.), until I was able to identify a block of advertisements which announce Dymock's move to 142 King Street. The announcement / advertisement appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald in slightly different form on Monday 28, Tuesday 29 and Thursday 31 March 1887 (here, here and here), for the closure of the Pitt Street shop (on Thursday 31st) and a grand opening—with a brass band, Chinese-lantern "illuminations" and an exhibition—at 7PM on Saturday night, 2 April 1887. The 28 March advertisement reads:

NOTICE OF REMOVAL.—WILLIAM DYMOCK takes this opportunity of thanking his numerous friends and customers for the liberal patronage bestowed upon him for the last three years, and has much pleasure in informing them that he has secured those large and commodious premises situated at 142, King-street, near tram, lately occupied by W. Crane, as auctioneer, where it is his intention to open the same as a Book Arcade on and after the 2nd of next month.
WILLIAM DYMOCK'S ARCADE REMOVED to 142, King-street, near tram.
DYMOCK'S BOOK ARCADE will re-open on SATURDAY, April 2, with upwards of 80,000 Books.
DYMOCK'S Book Arcade, 142, King-street Books bought, sold, or exchanged. Libraries purchased for cash.
DYMOCK'S Exhibition of Books on April 2 will be the largest ever held in Sydney.
LADIES and Gentlemen can wait for the tram at DYMOCK'S BOOK ARCADE.
BOOKS can be bought at DYMOCK'S BOOK ARCADE, from 3d to £300 each.
DYMOCK'S BOOK ARCADE will be the LARGEST BOOKSHOP in Sydney. OPENS April 2nd.
PICTURES.—Second only to the Arts Gallery […] DYMOCK'S EXHIBITION [will] be on opening night.
DYMOCK'S ARCADE will OPEN at 7 o'clock on April 2nd. Come and hear the band.
DYMOCK'S BOOK ARCADE REMOVED to 142, King-street, near tram.
CHEAP Music, cheap Music; 18s worth for 3s. DYMOCK'S BOOK ARCADE, King-street.

The 29 March advertisement omits the opening paragraph, and adds the following at the end:

COME and judge for yourself whether Dymock sells Books cheap on Saturday night.
ILLUMINATIONS at Dymock’s Book Arcade next Saturday, at 7 o'clock. Come one, come all.
CHEAP BOOKS. 20,000 Volumes will be offered at 75 per cent. less than English price.
DYMOCK'S Book Arcade, Removed to 142, King-st., near tram. Books bought, sold, or exchanged.

The 31 March advertisement is different again, swapping in a handful of new lines:

COME one, come all to the OPENING of Dymock's Book Arcade, Saturday, 7 o’clock.
FIFTY TON of BOOKS will be on view at Dymock's Book Arcade, King-street.
ART, LITERATURE, and MUSIC, all to be seen and heard free at Dymock's Arcade.
[…]
BOOK ARCADE in Pitt-street is now CLOSED. Re-open in King-street, on Saturday.
COME and hear the Band, come and see the illuminations. Dymock, Book Arcade, King-street.
[…]
Book Arcade has Removed to 142, King street, near tram. Re-opens on Saturday.
DOES DYMOCK sell books cheap? Come and judge for yourselves on Saturday. Book Arcade.

Dymock must have speed-run the shop-refit and Grand opening. A 19 March public notice by William Crane, Jun., auctioneer (here), states that he has "sold the lease of my Auction Room, 142, King-street, to Mr. W. Dymock, Bookseller, who takes possession on Friday next" (i.e., 25 March). Dymock was advertising for a "Signwriter and Painter" on 28 March—here—three days later, and only five days before opening—was looking for his already-advertised "band" on 29 March (here), and a Ticket-writer on 30 March (here).

A brief account of the opening appeared on Monday 4 April (here), as follows:

THE opening of Mr. Dymock's new book arcade, in King-street, attracted a great deal of attention on Saturday evening. There was a large attendance of the public—indeed, the establishment was thronged during the whole of the evening. The arcade was brightly lit up, and decorated with Chinese lanterns, in addition to which a brass band played a selection of excellent music.

* * * * *

The interior view of the "large and commodious premises situated at 142, King-street," in which William Dymock opened his Book Arcade, depicts twelve customers. If you look closely, you will notice that three of the twelve are carrying umbrellas. The wettest months in Sydney are February–March and June. For me, this is sufficient evidence to suggest that the leaflet was prepared and distributed in late March 1877, for the grand opening on 2 April, and that the leaflet, block advertising, brass band and grand "illuminations" were all part of the promotional activity that were undertaken for what was seem in retrospect, as but a brief stepping-stone on Dymock's path to 428 George Street, where the business remains to this day.

The only wrinkle in this neat interpretation is that I am unable to find advertising copy with the climed "Twelve Miles of Books" (or "12 miles of books") before 21 December 1887 or after 11 August 1888. As you can see above, when the new shop was opening, Dymock characterised "the largest [Exhibition of Books] ever held in Sydney" by number ("upwards of 80,000 Books") and by weight ("fifty ton of books")—not by length: shelf-feet or shelf miles.

As it happens, twelve miles of Books is probably wild hyperbole. Twelve miles of books is 63,360 shelf-feet. Charles C. Soule, How to Plan a Library Building for Library Work (1912), 277, states that "it has been usual to [calculate shelf capacity at] ten volumes to a running foot, a figure which has been verified in some libraries" but that "it is prudent to calculate about eight volumes to a foot for octavos and under"; noting "The English authorities still set the average number of volumes to a linear shelf foot rather higher, eight and a half to nine and a half for lending libraries or fiction shelves" (see here).

At eight to ten volumes per foot, twelve miles of books suggests five to six hundred thousand books (i.e., 506,880 to 633,600 books), massively more than the "upwards of 80,000 Books" Dymock advertised. This significantly-lower figure is also more consistent with Dymock's 31 March advertised claim of holding "fifty ton" of books (i.e., fifty British long ton). When I asked ChatGPT to estimate the weight of eighty thousand books in 1887, it concluded: "I would use approximately 59 British long tons as the central estimate for an ordinary mixed bookshop inventory of 80,000 volumes in 1887, with a provisional range of 39–79 long tons."

Returning to the hyperbole: 63,360 shelf-feet would require 2,347 nine-shelf, three-foot wide bookcases: looking at the 1887 image, my estimate is that approximately forty such bookcases are visible along the walls, and the equivalent of ten more may cover the sides of display tables. Even if this view is only one half of one floor, two or three floors of 142 King Street would need to hold much more densely-packed bookcases to make up twelve miles of shelving.

In 1964, Foyles advertised four acres of floor space, over five floors of 119 Charing Cross Road, containing thirty miles of shelves and four million volumes (Ved Mehta, "Quiet, Beneficent Things," The New Yorker (31 October 1964, 69 here—a great article BTW). But the Foyles building—which I visited in 1995—was infamously an innavigable warren. Dymock might have had twelve miles of shelving over two floors if you were to include warehousing / duplicate-inventory shelving, not open to the public, but I am doubtful he had anything approaching that number.

* * * * *

After I had photographed the leaflet, I wondered whether an AI might be up to the task of generating an image based on the woodcut. Gemini suggested that I formulate a prompt that accurately described the space and the people. This was a fascinating exercise, and one which obliged me to examine it very closely and discover specialist terminology (like "retained wall piers" and "retained wall header"). As a result, I noticed the umbrellas, and realised that two of the people in the image are actually statues! After some experimentation, I found that Gemini was wrong about the detailed prompt and that the less I included in my prompt, the better the results were—although I needed to provide the text of the signboards if I wanted to avoid gobbledygook.

Above and below are the best of the single-prompt images. Note a few details that are wrong in the first image above (the woman at left front holds an open umbrella, the man at left front wears a top-hat, two men on the right face away from the viewer), are generated correctly in second, but the second image makes mistakes, which were not in the first (the man at front left sprouts a beard, the two men on the right now face the camera, the couple browsing mid-field have become two women), while some errors persist (the two men on the right both have bowler hats in image 1, both top hats in image 2, whereas the original has one of each). The more I tried to refine the image, the more new hallucinations and errors would proliferate, forcing me to stop. I am sure that a paid-for, frontier model would have been able to either do a better job at the outset, or allowed me to combine all the best bits of all the images generated.

All considered, Google’s NanoBannana 2.1 did a solid job converting the image to a black and white photograph; albeit there were mistakes or infelicities in every image it generated. Over-all, I was struck by just how much better I can visualise Dymock’s Book Arcade (or "Dymocks Book Arcade") via these images, so I gave into temptation and colourised one of them too. (Notice that, in this third image, both men at right are still in top-hats (!), but at least one is holding the umbrella, which missing from images 1 and 2—though the woman at left is still without her umbrella, and the man in centre-field still lacks something even more significant than his umbrella.)

I could probably go one step further than colourising, and use AI to generate a short video of the customers browsing, but if I were to try this I might also find that the statues come to life and start throwing books at the customers, or everyone abruptly starts dancing to "Stayin' Alive" (as here), so I will leave the video-generation for someone else.

[UPDATE 11 November 2026: For my post on Brodsky, see here.]

Blogging Niche Grievances

About a month ago, it occurred to me to check whether I had yet succeeded in convincing Google's Gemini that I had published a book entitled The Pain of a Bibliophile (regarding which, see here).

The short answer is no, I hadn't succeeded, and I didn't really expect that I had (yet! I will keep trying). But what I hadn't anticipated was that Genini's generally-accurate biographical elaboration (about who I am, and what I do) would include such an unflattering characterisation of this blog.

When I read "… a personal research blog where he documents specific, niche grievances and historical findings…"—I had one of those "wait, what?!" moments. Something like this:

I screen-capped the reply to my The Pain of a Bibliophile query, but I didn't notice this barb, so I didn't ask "what niche grievances?"—or why "niche grievances" takes precedence over "historical findings." (Perhaps, it is only the elaboration of historical findings that necessitates that it follows the unelaborated niche grievances?) I have, however, just asked the first question now and, according to Gemini, my top five niche grievances include:

1. Incomplete Book Series ("Completist Frustration") (linked to this post)
2. "Cavalier" and Inadequate Student Editions (linked to this post)
3. Inaccessible Big Data in Literary Studies (linked to this post)
4. Poor Typography and Font Software Transitions (linked to this post)
5. Inaccurate or "Useless" Open-Source Knowledge (linked to this post)

Unsurprisingly, I guess, this all seems rather random to me, but perhaps it is true in general that my specific and niche grievances are prominently on display on this blog, and that my "specific, niche grievances" are rather more prominent than posts concerning "historical findings," which I consider to be the mainstay of this blog.

Since this is a(nother) grievance-post, I will endeavour to correct course with an historical finding in future. Perhaps, I will convince Gemini to characterise this blog as one in which I document more historical findings than grievances at about the same time that I convince it that the following is the cover-art for my forthcoming book:

Order your copy today!

Wal Kirsop, Academic Responsibilities, and the Liberality of Communication

In July 2010, Wal Kirsop gave a talk at the annual seminar of the Johnson Society of Australia on "Boulard the Bibliomaniac and Johnson's Rambler." I didn't hear the talk, but Wal gave me a copy of the printed version of his paper. When I was re-reading it today, I was struck by this peroration:

If a summary conclusion is needed, it is that, far from being a sad victim of an overwhelming mania, Boulard was a misunderstood prophet of intellectual entrepreneurship and even liberation. His is not perhaps a voice for our own dreary and boring managerial time, but I like to think that some day it will [be] heard again. In the meantime his affinity with Johnson—whose definition of academic duties and responsibilities is still posted on my office door—should reassure us that we are somewhere on the right path.

Note that Wal doesn't quote Johnson's definition of academic duties and responsibilities. Perhaps, if he used slides during his lecture, he may have shown it at this point, but I doubt he did that. Instead, in a footnote to his paper, the reader is directed to David Fairer's "J. D. Fleeman: A Memoir" (Studies in Bibliography, Vol. 48 (1995): 23–24). Fairer, in turn, provides the reference for the original publication of Johnson's definition, which was as an appendix to John Moir, Hospitality. A Discourse Occasioned by Reading His Majesty’s Letter in Behalf of the Emigrant French Clergy, in St. Dionis Back Church, May 26, 1793 (London: Rivington and Owen, 1793): 42–43 (ESTC T219725).

Presumably, Wal thought everyone should read the Fairer's memoir as well as Johnson's definition. Those who wish to read Fairer's memoir and Johnson's entire "Fragment" will find it reprinted here. Johnson's definition is quoted in a few places online (as here), but Moir's Hospitality is not available, so I have illustrated this post with images of the title-page and the final page of text from the Bodleian Library copy on ECCO.)

Having chased Wal's allusion back to Fairer's Memoir, I could offer the complete text of Johnson's definition to my readers, but I will, instead, just quote the parts of it that I think Wal had in mind (the rest is available via the link above):

An academick is a man supported at the public cost, and dignified with public honours, that he may attain and impart wisdom. He is maintained by the public, that he may study at leisure; he is dignified with honours, that he may teach with weight. The great duty therefore of an academick is diligence of inquiry, and liberality of communication. Of him that is appointed to teach, the first business is to learn, an unintermitted attendance to reading must qualify him to be heard with profit. … For such service he can be fitted only by laborious study, and study therefore is the business of his life; the business which he cannot neglect without breaking a virtual contract with the community. Ignorance in other men may be censured as idleness, in an academick it must be abhorred as treachery.

"Diligence of inquiry, and liberality of communication" captures nicely Wal's own "unintermitted" activities. In addition to what might be considered his formal scholarly publications—book-length studies, essays published in scholarly journals etc.—Wal's "liberality of communication" extended to scores of pamphlet publications, under the imprints of the Ancora and Chaskett Press, for Louis Green and Foxcroft lectures, among others. One indicator of the present managerial malaise that Wal identifies is that—regardless of the eminence of many of the authors of these Ancora and Chaskett Press publications, and the quality of their writing—none of them would be considered "Quality publications" by Monash, based on their flawed model of bibliometrics.

Although I hadn't read Johnson's definition of academic duties and responsibilities when I started this blog in June of 2009, it has long been a part of my own attempt to fulfil Johnson's ideal. Being a generation younger that Wal, my "liberality of communication" has taken the form of a blog, rather than printed pamphlets. It is likely that Wal's Ancora and Chaskett Press publications will long outlive any of my blog posts, but they are treated with equal contempt indifference by Monash. Nevertheless, like Wal, I will continue to be liberal in my communications.

(Given the long gap in my blog posts between mid-2023 and the start of 2026, close readers of this blog may wonder at this declaration. Close personal acquaintances, will not. All I will say here is that I was obliged to take a lot of leave to care for someone close to me who barely survived a series of traumatic brain injuries. I have struggled to regain both my scholarly and blog-posting momentum since then, and have not wanted to say even this much about my hiatus until I managed to make some progress. My immediate goal was to submit for publication at least two fresh articles (which I have now done) and to publish more than 27 posts in a year, which I succeeded in doing with my last post (28 being now my highest number of posts in a year, since 2011). Hopefully, I have not jinxed myself by offering this explanation, and that scholarly publishing and my blog-posting will continue to be regular in future!)

The Spedding Collection of Baconiana, 1916

Sadly, and as I explain below, "The Spedding Collection of Baconiana" is not the Patrick Spedding collection of books by and about Francis Bacon, but, rather, the rather more famous James Spedding collection of books by and about Francis Bacon, catalogued and offered for sale by Quaritch (inauspiciously) in the middle of WW1.

I feel a quite a bit of affinity with my childless kinsman, James. This is partly a matter of convoluted family connections, but I have a modest collection of books by Francis Bacon, including a handful of seventeenth-century editions, which in no way compares to the collection James assembled, but which did lead me to wonder to what extent our collections may have overlapped (answer: not much).

I started buying books by Bacon four decades ago. Bacon’s Essays are still among my favourite works. Indeed, Bacon’s Essays are partly responsible for my love of both the essay (as a genre) and, by association, seventeenth and eighteenth-century character writing too—the focus of another sub-collection of mine—but I think that the first book I read by Bacon was actually his unfinished utopia New Atlantis.

For what it is worth, I don’t think that New Atlantis is a particularly good utopia (sorry), but I really enjoyed the experience of reading it, in January of 1989, in (what was then) a lovely, newly-acquired 1639 folio edition, in its original binding. I spent a lot of money buying this folio from a Kenneth Hince; at a time when I was a poor student, living off Austudy, so I suppose must have sold a lot of my books in order to make the purchase. (Sometimes, I remember very nice books that I once had, and which I must have sold, and I wonder what possessed me to do sell them. This is an instance of the “what possessed me”!)

Anyway, since it is my ambition to have a collection of my books catalogued and offered for sale as a collection by Quaritch—or a dealer of a similar stature—I thought I’d buy this copy of James’s catalogue. If my ambition is ever realised it won’t, however, be for an armload of editions of Bacon’s essays, or his other works, it is will be my own working library of books by and about Eliza Haywood.

When I bought my copy of James’s catalogue, I wanted to see how our collections compared—not in terms of titles, rarity or value, but in terms of a working library, or scholar-collector-utility. This desire became even stronger once it occurred to me that, while James was focussed on the works of Bacon (mostly published two and a half centuries earlier), I was similarly focussed on the works of Haywood (mostly published two and a half centuries earlier).

Looking at James’s collection, I am struck by how many volumes are NQR—like my own! (Not my Bacon volumes, which are all unusually beautiful, but my Haywood volumes.) Just focussing on two titles in James's collection: the margins are "defective" on his 1625 Essayes and the title-page "mounted" on his 1632 edition; the portrait is “missing” from his 1627 and 1628 editions of Sylva Sylvarum (which contains his New Atlantis), ten pages are missing from a second copy of the 1628 edition, and the Dedication is missing from a copy of the 1670 edition. Indeed, a search of the catalogue for "missing" locates 25 instances in 24 pages!

I am not sure what benefit James’s kin got from the sale of his collection (see below), but it is a shame that none of his books came my way—even the many nineteeth-century editions—and that I have been only able to find the catalogue of his collection since I started looking for his books.

* * * * *

James Spedding (born 26 June 1808), M.A. (Camb. 1834), younger brother of Thomas Story Spedding (see my post here), died on 9 March 1881, after he was hit by a cab crossing a street in London. Thirty-five years later, Bernard Quaritch offered "The Spedding Collection of Baconiana"—lightly "salted"— for GBP400 (the Cornell University copy is here; The Columbia University copy is here).

(The catalogue is undated but was issued by November 1916; library catalogue assertions asside, it appears in a list of "Recent Bibliographies" in The Library Journal, Vol. 41, no. 11 (November 1916): 860; here.)

As well as being undated, the catalogue is unnumbered. The opening description of the collection (transcribed below) states that it contains “363 vols, in 318”—which seems to mean 318 items in 363 volumes rather than 363 items in 318 volumes. (I am too lazy to go through the catalogue, number the items for myself, and count or estimate the total volumes; and ChatGPT seems to be not up to the task yet.)

The publisher of "The Spedding Collection of Baconiana" notes that "A few volumes have been added by me to strengthen the collection, but the great bulk is as Spedding owned it." The language here doesn’t quite gel: "a few volumes … added" implies rather less "salt" (books added by a bookseller to fill out a catalogue) than "the great bulk" leaves room for.

Here is the opening spiel:

BACON COLLECTION. The Collection of Books used by JAMES SPEDDING (1808–1881), the accomplished Editor of the Works of Sir Francis Bacon, as his working library in bringing out that "unsurpassable model of thorough and scholarlike editing." 363 vols. in 318, folio, 4to., and 8vo. v. d.

Price of the Collection, £400 net.

This collection should be an invaluable acquisition to a public library or to a collector of Baconiana, as it includes a number of the first and early editions of Bacon's Works and those of his contemporaries, some of them of great rarity, and also a valuable collection of books in Baconian literature. Additional value is given to many of the books from the fact that they are enriched with Spedding's MS. notes (all the cases in which they occur are not mentioned below). A few volumes have been added by me to strengthen the collection, but the great bulk is as Spedding owned it.

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If an institution had taken Quaritch's bait (as they should have done)—and bought the collection as a whole—it might now be an easy matter to identify how many works and volumes were in Spedding's working library. Unfortunately, it seems that, after a period, Quaritch broke up the collection and sold the items separately. Searching ESTC and Copac, it is possible to identify a few Spedding items, each at a different library:

The essaies of Sr Francis Bacon Knight (1612) [Baconiana, p.4, item 2] is at King's College, Cambridge [Keynes.A.08.20].

Francisci de Verulamio, Summi Angliæ Cancellarii, Instauratio magna (1620) [Baconiana, p.6, item 7] is at the Huntington Library [601344].

The remaines of the Right Honorable Francis Lord Verulam Viscount of St. Albanes (1648) [Baconiana, p.8, item 1] is at the University of Toronto, Library [bac B33 R45 1648] (online here).

A declaration of the demeanor and cariage of Sir Walter Raleigh (1618) [not in Baconiana] is at the Folger Shakespeare Library [STC 20653 Copy 1].

If, I future, I find any more Spedding items, I will add them here.