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.

* * * * *

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.

The Life and Times of the Kings and Queens of England series

The series, The Life and Times of the Kings and Queens of England, edited by Antonia Fraser, was established in 1972. It was first published by Weidenfeld [and] Nicolson, and reprinted by Book Club Associates, London.

It took a suprising amount on time (hours—plural) wrestling with Google, Library Thing, and ChatGPT, to get a satisfactory answer to the simple question of "how many volumes are there in this series?" (For details of why this was so hard, see my postscript below.) Consistent with other posts on this blog, having finally got my answer, I thought I'd post the resulting research to save others from the hassle of duplicating my efforts.

The answer is: there were a total of 31 volumes in the series The Life and Times of the Kings and Queens of England: 25 volumes in what I will call the First Series, from 1972–74, and another six volumes in what I will call the Second Series, from 1980–81. These are listed below in monarch order.

In 1976, Fraser prepared a single volume, under the ttle The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, which covers all the monarchs, including those omitted in the series (this is the fat volume, second from the right, in the first image above). If this was a first attempt at a sop to the completists, it clearly was not enough, since in 1980 the series was restarted (or, rather, Weidenfeld and Nicolson expanded the series with their Kings and Queens of England, in matching bindings, so completists could fill some gaps), but the demand for the missing monarchs must have been slight since the series faltered after only six volumes.

Since the quarto volumes have matching spines, are well illustrated, and were once quite common, they were a tempting collecting target. Even if you were only really interested in one era of history, you would easilly, inadvertently accumulate two or three volumes—which you might be tempted to shelve together, at which point you were doomed. Before you know it you might find yourself accumulating more volumes, and then start actively looking for all of the monarchs in your era, or all eras. If you look on eBay (*), you will see the resulting more-or-less complete collections which illustrate this post.

(*) I.e., here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

If you have landed here on this page because you are on the edge of this collecting precipice: stop while you can! The First Series is not complete—it does not cover all monarchs—and the Second Series does not complete it. The First includes, for instance, George I and George III (both of which I have had), but not George II (which I wanted)—and there is no George II in the Second Series. There are plenty of other monarchs ommitted too, frustrating the would-be completist. (When I discovered that there was no George II, I was so annoyed that I disposed of my George I and George II volumes.)

* * * * *

Series 1, twenty-five volumes (1972–74)

1. Alfred the Great, Douglas Woodruff (1974)
2. William I, Maurice Ashley (1973)
3. Richard I, John Gillingham (1973)
4. King John, Maurice Ashley (1972)
5. Edward II, Caroline Bingham (1973)
6. Edward III, Paul Johnson (1973)
7. Henry V, Peter Earle (1972)
8. Richard III, Anthony Cheetham (1972)
9. Henry VII, Neville Williams (1973)
10. Henry VIII, Robert Lacey (1972)
11. Mary Tudor, Jasper Ridley (1973)
12. Elizabeth I, Neville Williams (1972)
13. King James, Antonia Fraser (1974)
14. Charles I, D. R. Watson (1972)
15. Charles II, Christopher Falkus (1972)
16. James II, Peter Earle (1972)
17. William and Mary, John Miller (1974)
18. Queen Anne, Gila Curtis (1972)
19. George I, Joyce Marlow (1973)
20. George III, John Clarke (1972)
21. George IV, Alan Palmer (1972)
22. Victoria, Dorothy Marshall (1972)
23. Edward VII, Keith Middlemas (1973)
24. George V, Denis Judd (1973)
25. George VI, Keith Middlemas (1974)

Series 2, six volumes (1980–81)

26. The Saxon Kings, Richard Humble (1980)
27. The Norman Kings, James Chambers (1981)
28. Edward I, John Chancellor (1981)
29. Richard II, Michael Senior (1981)
30. Edward IV, Gila Falkus (1981)
31. William IV, Anne Somerset (1980)

Since numbers 26 and 27 duplicate (in part) numbers 1 and 2, these can't really be intersorted above, so the ideal shelf arrangement of the series woud probably be as follows:

26* The Saxon Kings, Richard Humble (1980)
1. Alfred the Great, Douglas Woodruff (1974)
2. William I, Maurice Ashley (1973)
27* The Norman Kings, James Chambers (1981)
3. Richard I, John Gillingham (1973)
4. King John, Maurice Ashley (1972)
28* Edward I, John Chancellor (1981)
5. Edward II, Caroline Bingham (1973)
6. Edward III, Paul Johnson (1973)
29* Richard II, Michael Senior (1981)
7. Henry V, Peter Earle (1972)
30* Edward IV, Gila Falkus (1981)
8. Richard III, Anthony Cheetham (1972)
9. Henry VII, Neville Williams (1973)
10. Henry VIII, Robert Lacey (1972)
11. Mary Tudor, Jasper Ridley (1973)
12. Elizabeth I, Neville Williams (1972)
13. King James, Antonia Fraser (1974)
14. Charles I, D. R. Watson (1972)
15. Charles II, Christopher Falkus (1972)
16. James II, Peter Earle (1972)
17. William and Mary, John Miller (1974)
18. Queen Anne, Gila Curtis (1972)
19. George I, Joyce Marlow (1973)
20. George III, John Clarke (1972)
21. George IV, Alan Palmer (1972)
31* William IV, Anne Somerset (1980)
22. Victoria, Dorothy Marshall (1972)
23. Edward VII, Keith Middlemas (1973)
24. George V, Denis Judd (1973)
25. George VI, Keith Middlemas (1974)

Alternatively, you could re-number the series as follows:

1. The Saxon Kings, Richard Humble (1980)
2. Alfred the Great, Douglas Woodruff (1974)
3. William I, Maurice Ashley (1973)
4. The Norman Kings, James Chambers (1981)
5. Richard I, John Gillingham (1973)
6. King John, Maurice Ashley (1972)
7. Edward I, John Chancellor (1981)
8. Edward II, Caroline Bingham (1973)
9. Edward III, Paul Johnson (1973)
10. Richard II, Michael Senior (1981)
11. Henry V, Peter Earle (1972)
12. Edward IV, Gila Falkus (1981)
13. Richard III, Anthony Cheetham (1972)
14. Henry VII, Neville Williams (1973)
15. Henry VIII, Robert Lacey (1972)
16. Mary Tudor, Jasper Ridley (1973)
17. Elizabeth I, Neville Williams (1972)
18. King James, Antonia Fraser (1974)
19. Charles I, D. R. Watson (1972)
20. Charles II, Christopher Falkus (1972)
21. James II, Peter Earle (1972)
22. William and Mary, John Miller (1974)
23. Queen Anne, Gila Curtis (1972)
24. George I, Joyce Marlow (1973)
25. George III, John Clarke (1972)
26. George IV, Alan Palmer (1972)
27. William IV, Anne Somerset (1980)
28. Victoria, Dorothy Marshall (1972)
29. Edward VII, Keith Middlemas (1973)
30. George V, Denis Judd (1973)
31. George VI, Keith Middlemas (1974)

Postscript: the volumes themselves do not seem to contain a series title or a list of other volumes in the series, and I was unable to find any advertisement for the series, or any series listing online. Library Thing lists Fraser's one-volume work, and her Introduction or Editorship for only five volumes in the series; it seperately lists (as a Publisher Series) "Kings and queens of England: Weidenfeld and Nicolson" here, in which it conflates what I have called Series 1 and Series 2, and duplicates Charles II by mistakenly including Fraser's 1979 biography as part of the series to get a total of 32 volumes (in the conflated and mistitled series). The various and incompatible claims for "complete" collections on eBay add to the confusion. If there are better collecting resources online, I didn't find them, but if anyone points them out for me, I will add links below—or corrections above if I have messed up anything here.

Dorothy Furman, collector of books and bookplates

Dorothy Furman (fl. 1895–1926), was a well-connected bibliophile, a staff member at the New York Times Literary Review (writing bookish-reviews and book-auction reports in the late 1890s) and was later a book dealer. She built an extensive collection of rare books, mostly first editions (but including treasures such as a fourth folio of Shakespeare's works) and bookplates—being a customer, if not a patron of sorts, to a number of bookplate artists, and corresponding widely within a community of bibliophiles.

Furman was a member of The Bibliographical Society (UK) from 1895–1917 (see here), appears in the Almanach du bibliophile pour l'année 1898 (here), was a Member of the Ex Libris Society in 1895 and 1900 (see here and here); the Bibliographical Society of America in (at least) 1905 and 1908 (see here), the American Bookplate Society in 1913 and 1918 (see here and here), and the Grolier Club in 1914.

Female members of these bibliographical and book-collecting societies were not common. In the fifty years between 1892 and 1942 The Bibliographical Society had approximately nine hundred UK members and four hundred and fifty US members (see cumulative member list here). Of these, there are 17 (UK) and 13 (US) with a "Mrs" prefix and 25 (UK) and 18 UK with "Miss"; that is, a total of 73 female members, or approximately five percent.

Given the rarity of bibliographicaly-inclined female book collectors in this period, and the significance of her bookplate collecting, it is suprising that there is so little information about Furman available online. Having just bought her copy of J. Roger Rees, The Brotherhood of Letters (New York: Lockwood and Coombes, 1889), I did some digging and am posting what I found here to save other collectors the trouble, and perhaps enable them to carry this research forward—something that can probably only be done in situ in New York.

Why New York? Well, Furman lived at a commuting distance from New York for at least two decades. Her reported addresses being 35 State Street, Flushing, Long Island, NY (1898–1905; see Almanach du bibliophile pour l'année 1898 and Ex Libris Society link above); 58 Clark Street, Glen Ridge, NJ (1905–8; see here); and 6 De Hart Street, Morristown, New Jersey (1913 and 1918; see American Bookplate Society links above), opening a bookshop there in 1919 (see here): The Publishers Weekly reporting: "Morristown, N. J.—Miss Dorothy Furman has opened a bookshop at 6 De Hart street, specializing in old, rare and current books, association copies and autographs."

The Walpole Galleries in New York sold at auction collections of her Modern First Editions in July 1920 (advertised in The New York Times on 29 and June 1920 here and here), bookplates and books on bookplates in September and November 1923 (see here and here), and China, Glass, Brass, Prints, Furniture, Pewter Objects of Art, Etc. in September 1926 (see here).

* * * * *

Regarding Furman's writing for the New York Times Literary Review: I have found four articles by her (too long to quote in full). Undoubtedly, she wrote many more since each appears to be only a sample of a series: "Books Worth Reading Again. VII. Dorothy Osbourne's Letters" The New York Times, Vol. 47, Iss. 15029 (12 March 1898): 170c–171b (see here); "Books Worth Reading Again. IX. Louisa May Alcott's Life and Letters" The New York Times, Vol. 47, Iss. 15053 (9 April 1898): 238c–239c (see here); "Books at Auction. Features of the Final Part of the Ashburnham Library Sold This Week in London" The New York Times, Vol. 47, Iss. 15083 (14 May 1898): 324a–b (see here). "Books at Auction. Prices at the Fine Mackellar Sale—Bibles and Manuscripts" The New York Times, Vol. 48, Iss. 15251 (26 November 1898): 794a–b (see here); "Two Noble Lives. Maurice de Guierin and His Sister Eugene—The Journals They Wrote" The New York Times (4 March 1899): 137a–c (see here).

Regarding Furman's collection of books: I can't find an auction catalogue for this 1920 sale, but The New York Times advertisement explains that it contained "First Editions of Modern Authors including Stevenson and Kipling; Riverside. Doves, Kelmscott, Ashendene and other Presses; best library editions of the works of famous authors; bindings; rare early English literature and autographs; being mainly the library of Miss Dorothy Furman." There was a review of the sale published in The Publishers Weekly, which reads:

The library of Miss Dorothy Furman consisting of modern first editions, books printed by private and special presses, fine sets of standard authors, rare early English literature and choice miscellaneous books, was sold at the Walpole Galleries July 1 and 2. The sale was well attended, and prices were very satisfactory. Mr. Turnbull is a careful cataloger and in sales of this character he handles them with a high degree of efficiency. A few of the items, indicating the trend of prices, were as follows: Andrew’s "Gossip about Book Collecting," New York, 1900, $50; same author, "Paul Revere and His Engraving," New York, 1901, $55; Sir Thomas More’s "Utopia," Chelsea, 1906, Ashendene Press edition, $42.50; Beaumont and Fletcher's "Fifty Comedies and Tragedies," London, 1679, second edition, $35; Lord Byron’s "Works," 13 vols., London, 1898–1901, large paper edition, $44; Blanchard's "Life of George Cruikshank," 2 vols. extended to 4 with 140 extra plates, many in colors, $75; De Morgan’s "Collected Works," 8 vols., London, 1906-14, first editions, $26; Drayton's "Poems," London, 1619, $25; Genest's "Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830," 10 vols., 8vo, prepared for extra illustrating with cases, $120; Hallam's "Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," 4 vols., 8vo, London, 1837–39, $60; Ireland's "Records of the New York Stage from 1750 to 1860," New York, 1866-67, large paper copy with extra illustrations, $40; Keats's "Poetical Works," 4 vols., London, 1883, original library edition edited by H. Buxton Forman, $65; Livingston's "Bibliography of Kipling," New York, 1901, Japan paper, $35; Masefield's "Tragedy of Nan and other Plays," London, 1909, first edition and presentation copy, $52.50; Montaigne's "Essays," 3 vols., folio, Boston, 1902, Riverside Press special edition, $65; Shakespeare's "Comedies, Histories and Tragedies," 1685, fourth folio with imperfections, $375; Stevenson’s manuscript of the first draft of "St. Ives," 500 pages, written by Isobel Strong, at Stevenson's dictation with revisions and additions by the author, $340; and Stevenson's "Verses," original wrappers, privately printed, 1912, very scarce, $65.

Regarding Furman's collection of bookplates: Walpole Galleries described it (well in advance of the sale, in 1921) as "The Important Collection of Bookplates of Miss Dorothy Furman of Morristown, N. J., being over 8,000 plates—one of the largest collections in this country" (see here); elsewhere the number is inflated to "about" ten thousand (see "Prospects For The Coming Season," The Publishers Weekly, Vol. 102, No. 18 (28 October 1922): 1553–54: "It includes the sale … the bookplates, about 10,000 in number, of Miss Dorothy Furman, for many years on the staff of the New York Times Literary Review; a superb …" (here).

Furman participated in an exhibition of bookplates in New York in 1895 (see here); she commissioned bookplates from Edwin Davis French in 1902 (see here), Arthur Nelson MacDonald by 1895 and in 1907 (see here and here [and at the head of this post]); J. Winfred Spenceley in 1907 (see here).

The bookplate contained in her, now my, copy of The Brotherhood of Letters is above. This plate is described (and so, a terminus ad quem established) in Ladies' Book-plates: An Illustrated Handbook for Collectors and Book-lovers (London: George Bell and Sons, 1895), 200 (see here):

"The following lines are familiar to many:

O for a Booke and a shadie nooke,
  eyther in-a-doore or out;
With the grene leaves whispering overhede,
  or the Streete cryes all about.
Where I maie Reade all at my ease,
  both of the Newe and Olde;
For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke,
  is better to me than Golde.

This is taken from Dorothy Furman's plate, consisting of the name written on a garter."

(For an excellent investigation into the 1860s origins of this ye-olde verse, see here.)

One of the books she owned have been scanned and are online with her bookplate: Arthur Conan Doyle, Through The Magic Door (London: Smith, Elder [and] Co., 1907) here.

A few odd bits of evidence for Furman's patronage of book plate artists: she made donations of bookplates to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 1901 and 1902 (see here); she made a similar donation to the British Museum by 1912 (see here); and to the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1917 (see here).

Finally, I am indebted—once again—to the blog "My Sentimental Library," on which Jerry Morris (sadly, now dead) collected some information about Furman in 2018 (see here), which I have tried not to duplicate here.

Thieving Canadians versus Elon Musk

A recent analysis puts the cost of launching 1kg into low Earth orbit (LEO), on Elon Musk's Falcon 9 rocket, to approximately USD1500 per kg.

Musk is developing his Starship launch vehicle in the hope of significantly reducing this cost of launching mass to orbit. He has stated that his target is about USD10.00 per kilogram to LEO, which assumes full and rapid reusability and a very high launch cadence for Starship. But this is an aspirational long-term operating cost; it seems that more conservative estimates put Starship launch costs at about USD100–200 per kilo.

* * * * *

The above Coronet edition of John Wyndham's Stowaway to Mars of 1972 weighs 110 grams. If we add 90 grams for minimal packaging (to reach a total of 200g), it seems that Elon Musk would presently charge approximately USD300 to launch a copy of this book into LEO, but he expects to be able to eventually be able launch a copy into LEO for USD2.00 (while more conservative estimates put it at USD20). This is good news for LEO book collectors.

As you can see below, one thieving bastard bookseller (JMCbooksonline, of Cheverie, NS, Canada) is presently asking USD140 [A$196] to launch, I mean post, this book to Australia (see listing here). For the record, I can post 250g to Canada for A$23.05—less than one eighth of this.

This postal charge is the equivalent of USD700 per kilo—more than double the present cost of launching Wyndham's Stowaway to Mars into orbit via a Falcon 9, soon to be thirty-five times the cost of launching it into LEO via Starship, and, if Musk's dreams are realised, three hundred and fifty times the cost of launching it into orbit.

* * * * *

Anyone in Australia who buys books from overseas soon learns that postage from Canada is extremely slow and extremely expensive—possibly the slowest and most expensive postal service in the world, but certainly the slowest and most expensive postal service I am familiar with.

When buying from Canada, there are no bargins to be had, and few books are rare enough to justify stuffing the pockets of either Canadian postal services or Candian Booksellers.

I wonder how long it will be before Musk realises that international parcel post represents an arbitrage opportunity, and that he can use Starfall—the uncrewed reusable re-entry/cargo capsule being developed by SpaceX—to massively reduce the cost of postage of 1970s paperbacks from Canada (or the US) to Australia?

The Drunken Druggist and a Shanghai Reading Room

The book below is an odd volume from Harrison and Co.'s The Novelist's Magazine series, which has a particularly interesting provenance, spending time in the UK, China, the US, and Australia.

The Novelist's Magazine (ESTC p6358) reprinted sixty novels, broken up into weekly parts, from 1780 to 1788. Each novel has a separate title page, and each of the 23 volumes has an engraved general title page. While some of the novels stretched over more than one volume (Sir Charles Grandison occupies vols. 14–15; Clarissa occupies vols. 10–11), most volumes contain multiple novels (for example, vols. 9 and 23 both contain six novels each).

I am interested in the series primarily because it contains Eliza Haywood's Betsy Thoughtless, Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, and The Invisible Spy (in vols. 13, 17, and 23); but I have this volume (vol. 7) because it contains some Haywoodiana: Charles De Fieux Mouhy's The Fortunate Country Maid (1740), an anonymous translation of La Paysanne Parvenue, ou les Mémoires de Madame la Marquise de L. V. (1735–36). Haywood's own translation of this French work, The Virtuous Villager, appeared in 1741, by which time The Fortunate Country Maid had gone through four editions and a Dublin reprint—pretty much running away with the market for the book.

I have had my copy of vol. 7 of The Novelist's Magazine for more than two decades. It is in pretty woeful condition (the spine is broken in three places), but it was cheap (USD10) and I haven't bothered to upgrade it because I liked the bookplate (below) on the front (fixed) endpaper: "James Watson | Manchester." This morning I was able to identify this previous owner as James Watson (1775–1820), an eccentric young druggist known in Manchester as "Doctor Watson."

Watson (below) was apprenticed to a fustian (heavy cotton) manufacturer; when that apprenticeship ended, he worked as a bookkeeper for a cotton merchant, until his father's death obliged him to take over the family's apothecary business. Apparently, "Doctor Watson" was a theatre fanatic: he was a collector of printed theatre ephemera (1799–1800) and, from 1803 onwards, produced a periodical, The Townsman. He became the first librarian of the Manchester’s Portico Library in 1806.

Apparently, Watson soon lost that position because of his "drinking habits and neglect of duty" (i.e., he was an alcoholic), and went on to lose another as a boarding school usher at Altrincham, for the same reason; after which he became homeless and dependent upon charity. After a lengthy period of destitution, he drowned (or drowned himself) in the River Mersey on 28 June 1820 and was buried at Didsbury.

(The portrait and most of the above information about Watson, is taken from a The Spirit of the Doctor: Comprising Many Interesting Poems Selected from the Original Manuscript of the Late Mr. James Watson (Manchester, 1820), online here; and Simon Beattie, Short List 6 (March 2014), online here.)

* * * * *

I took a few photos of my battered odd-volume this morning. When I was filing these, after I had returned the book itself to my "hopital for battered books," I noticed something I had missed in all my previous examinations of the book over the last two decades: there was a very faint blind stamp visible on the title leaf—so faint, that it was really only clear enough to notice on the recto. (Look again at the first photograph in this post, above, showing the whole title-page to this volume. Did you notice the blind stamp?)

I retrieved the book once again, and re-photographed the title page in strong raking light using a macro lense. While it is still the case that—even in these favourable conditions—only part of the blind stamp is visible on the title page (above), the negative on the verso is much clearer. Having reversed (flipped) my photographs of the verso using some image software, I was able to clearly make out a surprising ownership stamp (below): "Astor House Hotel | Shanghai"!

Astor House Hotel, Shanghai, has a lengthy Wikipedia page dedicated to it (here). If you read this page you will see that the Shanghai Astor had a "Reading Room." Peter Felix Richards (1846–1859), a Scottish merchant, opened the first Western hotel in China. In August 1850, Richards advertised that a reading room for shipmasters had been established in his hotel. The advertisement (here) reads: "NOTICE. SHIPMASTERS are respectfully informed that the undersigned have opened a READING ROOM in their Establishment especialy for their accommodation. P. F. RICHARDS [and] Co. Shanghae, 1th August, 1851."

Skipping ahead a half-century, a 1908 real-photo postcard (below; here), captioned "Shanghai——Astor House Hotel Co. Ltd: Lounge," shows (in the photograph) a signboard that reads "Reading and Writing Room." In 1911, when the Astor House Hotel had a grand re-opening, it was described as having "a reading room with several comfortable sofas and easy chairs upholstered in leather"—a description that nicely matches this 1908 postcard image.

Skipping ahead another half-century, the scene is rather different: the Shanghai Astor was bombed and occupied during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War and WW2 (1937–45); thereafter it went into a spiral of decline, and on 19 April 1954 the Hotel was confiscated by the CCP; much of the furniture and interior decoration was destroyed or stolen during the Cultural Revolution. After extensive renovations in the early 2000s, the hotel was bought out, and the hotel closed on 1 January 2018. The building was converted to the China Securities Museum, and the renovated premises are now once again accessible to the public (according to this site).

Pulling together the threads, it seems that my odd volume of The Novelist's Magazine was purchased, early in its existance, by the convivial Mancunian James Watson, who probably pawned it for a bottle of gin soon after. The enterprising Peter Richards picked up this volume on his travels, whether in Manchester or elsewhere, and transported it to Shanghai, included it in his 1850 Reading Room for Shipmasters. If the volume remained in situ, then it was likely looted from the Shanghai Astor by an American GI during WW2, who took it back to the states. When I bought it two decades ago, it was transported back past Asia, to Australia.

I have been unable to find any other remnant of either the James Watson library or the Astor House Shanghai library or Reading Room, and so, no images of either his book label or this blind stamp. I have also been unable to find any real information about whatever library may have at one time existed in the first Western hotels in China, and possibly one of the earliest English-language libraries in China—which is surprising. I hope that, by the time I dig this volume out of my "hospital"—for a team of book-binding robots to properly repair it—more information will be available. But until then, it is time for it to return to rest.

AI is not eating antique books

It seems that the latest injection of disinformation, or "FUD" (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), into discussions about AI is that AI companies are "eating" physical copies of rare and antique books in the same way that data-centres are believed to be "drinking" water. (I asked Nano Banana to generate an appropriate image of this imagnined process—using the same starting prompt I used previously—to help my readers visualise this action. Please enjoy the result!)

This, somewhat alarmist, 25 July article by Frank Landymore, for instance, suggests that AI companies are purchasing antique books in large volumes (this is in the article title: "AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books…") to use as high-quality training data, as these texts are free from modern digital AI content. Because it is cheaper, destructive, high-speed automated scanning processes are being used to digitize the books (i.e., book spines are guillotined off, the covers removed, page-stacks are fed into scanner hoppers, then thrown away). The practice is facilitated by book database services that keep the tech company buyers anonymous. Rare booksellers have ethical concerns about selling books to these services, warning that it permanently destroys some of the last surviving copies of historic literature.

The FUD here is the "antique books" and "historic literature" claim. Once you read through the parent and grandparent linked articles (3 April essay by Val Giordano, promoting the practice, here; 25 June [anonymous] essay on the NL Times, reporting concerns of European book dealers, here; a 26 June article by Benj Edwards here; a solid, 21 July essay by Emanuel Maiberg here) it becomes clear that the books being hoovered up by Anthropic (and possibly others) all post-date 1969 (when ISBNs were introduced) and most, it seems likely, post-date 2006 (when ISBN barcodes became ubiquitous)—about the same time, coincidently, that the arrival of modern smart-phones ended civilisation as we knew it.

That the AI-company proxies are exclusively interested in books with an ISBN is made very clear from the following anecdote reported by Maiberg:

The seller told me that … Bulk purchases … usually reflect interest in a specific topic, whereas the recent, very large purchases were of books that had little in common, except for the fact that they all had ISBNs. This seller also sells rare books that do not have ISBNs, and none of those were part of the bulk purchases. (emphasis added)

That the bulk-purchase companies are likely to prefer later, bar-coded books, seems probable from the scale they are working on—it is simply easier and cheaper to scan the bar codes of hundreds of thousands of books, than it is to key in the ISBN (and then check for errors) on the same number.

From the articles I mention above, it seems that second-hand book dealers are getting what I take to be in-fill requests, for any ISBN that has not shown up in the literal truck-loads of books donated to charities, that are sold off to bulk-book dealers / waste-paper merchants (on this, see my post here concerning Mubin and Raza Ahmed's "Wrap Ltd."—a "printed matter," "waste and scrap paper" import/export business with an annual turnover of £6.5M "or more.")

It simply wouldn’t be economical to buy a book via ABE, Alibris etc. if you could buy the same book at a fraction of the price from parasites, excuse me, erm … paper-dealers like Mubin and Raza Ahmed. I.e., you'd start with whatever your local large-scale charity can wring from a well-meaning public, checked-off against a master-list of ISBNs via bar-code scanning, and then back-fill the gaps in that master-list via ABE, Alibris etc.

For me, this is where it gets interesting. Anthropic et al. have more money than they know what to do with, and have just been stung to the tune of USD3K per book, for all the digital books they stole, and then got sued for stealing. That being the case, the following observation should come as no surprise:

there's a total disregard for the price of the book. I've had some books that sold through this way that were [...] greatly overpriced. That's kind of a tell for AI because they have just so much money.

* * * * *

Since I was born before ISBNs were a thing, it is hard for me to think of books after 1970 as "antique" or "historic" ("rare," especially, "rare on market" is another matter completely). Perhaps, this is easier for Frank Landymore—who seems to be in his early 30s. In any event, I asked one of the water-guzzling, book-eating monsters (ChatGPT) to estimate how many books have been published since 1970 (and 2006) and the answer should be reassuring.

It seems likely that something like 80 million English-language ISBN editions have been released, or which approximately 60 million editions were printed with a barcode. The number of unique works (i.e., with Pride and Prejudice counting once) is obviously much smaller—perhaps 10–20 million, but the number of physical copies printed is much larger, likely "well over 100 billion copies since the 1980s."

So, it seems Anthropic is attempting to gobble up millions of recent books (emphatically-not antique you baby-faced ageists!), mostly comprised of unwanted donations, fenced by the likes of Messers Ahmed, and otherwise unsold obscuriana, laying heavily on the hands of dealers who once supplied libraries, out of a pool of something like 100 billion copies printed.

If it were possible to pile this 100-billion copies one atop the other, it seems that the pile would likely extend 2.5 million kilometres, or about 6.5 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Indeed, only 14.5 billion books would be need to reach the moon, or 14.5% of all books printed with an ISBN.

I would wager as many books as I could carry, that far, far more than this 14.5%—perhaps 80% of these 100 billion books—have already been pulped, without once raising the interest of Landymore et al., making this story a pretty good parallel to widely-disseminated concerns about the water consumption of data centres. (Which is mostly FUD too, since most new data centres consume no water—they use closed-loop cooling—and the water usage of older AI data centres that do use evaporative cooling etc., is dwarfed by the water consumption of golf-course and intensive cattle farms. I.e., this is a gnat on the arse of a flee in the grand scheme of things.)

And while most AI tokens will doubless go to things like generating fake security footage of President John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe in flagrante delicto, or self-insert versions of Terminator or Twilight, it is already clear that AI can, and probably soon will, cure every disease known to man and put a complete stop to the death and mutilation caused by badly-driven cars on the road—to name but two of life’s miseries. If they need to guillotine a copy of each my books to do this (**), they are welcome to do so.

(**) if AI can also restore my use of AdobeCaslonExpert in the later versions of Word, they can have all my essays too.

Bookplate of Thomas Story Spedding

Above and below are images of the heraldic exlibris bookplate of Thomas Story Spedding (1800–1870). The bookplate appears in a bound volume of various parts of the Library of Useful Knowledge (1827–38). Three more volumes of this broken set, each containing one of these bookplates, are presently available here. There is also a copy of Scott’s Quentin Durward (1823) for sale online for USD666(!) (here).

Thomas Story Spedding was an English barrister who lived at the famous Mirehouse estate in Keswick, a historic manor house in Cumberland on an estate that had been left to the Spedding family by Thomas Story in 1802. Thomas served as magistrate and High Sheriff of Cumberland in 1855, but he is much better known for his literary connections.

Thomas’s younger brother James Spedding (1808–1881) was famous for his edition of the works of Francis Bacon. Because of his family's standing, James’ literary connections, and the location of Mirehouse in the Lake District, the Speddings were especially close friends with various “Lake District” writers.

Thomas was close friends with Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)—who wrote movingly of Thomas after his death—and frequently hosted William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Edward FitzGerald (author of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám).

The Mirehouse estate quotes the recollection of Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley (here), which describes the convivial atmosphere of the library at the Spedding family’s Mirehouse estate:

There are those who would fain have that library filled again with the voices of old time. Tennyson’s deep-chested tones, FitzGerald’s laugh, Monckton-Milne’s wit. Carlyle’s strong Northern brogue, James Spedding’s dignified speech, and Tom Spedding’s humour.

* * * * *

There are no images online (that I can find) of this Thomas Spedding ex libris bookplate—one of the few Speddings to dignify their books with a bookplate—and below are most of the tiny number of photos I could find of the library at Mirehouse, either from the estate website or from the Mirehouse Facebook page (here). Since Mirehouse is regularly open to the public I expected to find many more images, but the main attraction seems to be outdoors: the stunning gardens and area generally.

Ye Foolish Book Collector

Above and below are four versions of an image I generated using Google's free AI tool—i.e., via the Google browser. It used Nano Bannana to generate the images. My initial prompt was "Create an image in the style of Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dance of Death series, for the type of book collector depicted in Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff."

I refined the image by asking it to remove the top banner; then "[1] Remove the fools cap from the skeleton reaching for the book; [2] add a simple constellation symbol to the blank pages on book at bottom right (above the banner), such as those found in Hygini, Poeticon Astronomicon"

Of the four images, I like the most the second one above, and this last one below—which is closest to what I had in mind.

Although I was delighted with the images, I was most impressed by the persistence (?)—how well Nano Bannana maintained the integrity of the original image, while modifying small details. This is a huge improvement on what image generators could do only twelve months ago.

* * * * *

UPDATE 27 July 2026. I reused my initial prompt (as set out above) as a staring point for this new post on AI (not) eating antique books, and was so pleased with the resulting "Bibliomaniac versus Death" image that I thought I would add it here:

The Scientific Silverfish and Moth Destroyer, ca. 1928

I recently bought the volume on the right above (The Works of Théophile Gautier), which is from the same series, and in the same binding, as the volume on the left (The Complete Romances of Voltaire … Eight Volumes in One). I have had the Voltaire since 1999, and regularly use its version of Candide in my teaching, and have long wanted more versions of Gautier's La Morte Amoureuse, since it is such an important and early representation of a female vampire, so I was very happy with this find.

The local bookshop that had the Gautier, had five more of these Walter Black volumes in the same soft leather bindings—Zola, Maupassant, Boccaccio, Balzac, and a Voltaire—but the prices were too high for me to buy any others, just for the sake of their matching bindings. Looking on eBay, I discovered someone else in Australia had nine volumes of this series (below), in the same bindings, for less than I paid for my Gautier (the listing is here), but I have so far resisted starting yet-another collection front.

Inside my Gautier, I found a card (above and below), which—at first glance—I took to be an abandoned bookmark. A closer look revealed that, although this may actually have been used as a bookmark, the purpose of the card was to "Scientifically Destroy" silverfish and moths.

As you can see above, the text reads:

THE SCIENTIFIC
SILVERFISH & MOTH DESTROYER.
—————
SIMPLY PLACE CARDS IN OR NEAR
ARTICLES TO BE PROTECTED.
—————
CONTENTS: 14 CARDS 1/- PER PACKET
DUGGAN'S 194 LIT. COLLINS ST. MELBOURNE, C.1.

The verso of the card has had some sort of insecticide painted onto it—you can see the brush strokes.

* * * * *

I was not surprised that I could find no record of these cards; but I was surprised that I was unable to find out anything very concrete about Duggan’s of Little Collins Street, Melbourne. This Facebook post suggests that Duggan's might have been a 1940s dry-cleaning business, which was bought out by Fletcher Jones, the Australian "clothing manufacturer and retailer" (which shut down only in January of this year; "Fletcher Jones to Close All Stores After Nearly 100 Years in Australian Retail," 17 January 2026, online here).

If Duggan's was a dry cleaner, I suspect that these cards were intended to be slipped into the pockets of freshly dry-cleaned coats and trousers, rather than books. But it seems to have done a sterling job anyway: the Gautier remains in lovely condition.

* * * * *

[UPDATE 8 April 2026: I am grateful to a very helpful, regular reader (PP), who ran a quick search on the address, 194 Little Collins Street, in the State Library of Victoria, Sands and McDougall directory series online (here). Although the State Library of Victoria series only includes directories from every fifth year, Duggan's makes no appearance. Only three types of businesses are recorded as operating from this address between 1910 and 1960. These businesses are: hairdresser: Walter Higginbotham (1910, 1915), Percy J. McGrath (1920); watchmaker and jeweller: T. A. Hansen (1925, 1930); tea rooms: Mrs H. M. Eddy (1935, 1940), Miss L. Buckland (1945, 1950), L. Halmson (1955), C. Coleman (1960).

As PP notes, "there is no record of a dry cleaning business at the address." It is possible—if Duggan's had a franchise in Melbourne—that it dates to a period between these five-year intervals, or between these settled buisness occupations, and that a search of the individual directories for this period would locate it. But it is also possible, as PP continues, that, "as with many circulating libraries and other businesses, the operators at the premises were merely a drop-off and collection point." Although my ignorance on the subject is close to comprehensive, I am going to assume that a watchmaker and jeweler would be a poor match for a dry cleaning drop-off and collection point, so my bet is on the tea-rooms of either Mrs Eddy or Miss Buckland, since the only evidence for a Duggan's dry-cleaning business (albeit in the western-districts of Victoria) dates from the 1940s.

Book Shop, Place of Worship

I was browsing for bookshops in Blackburn (Melbourne), when I spotted this:

(you have to imagine the "record scratch" sound-effect here): Did I read that right?!

Sweet! For comparison, here is the nearest "real" bookshop

So, what is a "Place of Worship"? Well, it turns out that it is not a Christian church, Jewish synagogue, Buddhist temple, Hindu mandir or Shinto shrine, each of which have their own symbols on Google Maps, nor (according to the post here) is it a Sikh gurdwara, Jain temple, Japanese Buddhist temple, or—in all liklihood—a pagan temple. It seems that this symbol…

…first appeared on Google Maps at the same time that the star-and-crescent symbol dissapeared, to (checks notes) "promote inclusivity" and to "avoid favouring one religion over another." I am guessing that this is also reason why there is no street number for this Place of Worship, and that Google Maps has deleted all post-2008 street-view data for one end of this street.

All of which is a shame, since I'd like to see any Book Shop that could accurately be described as a Place of Worship, and I have nothing but respect for any faith that so well captures my own sentiments in relation to book shops and book shopping. I'll have to resist the urge to visit this location to see the book shop for myself, in case I end up in a Nineteen Eighty-Four / Total Recall-type situation after Google remotely deletes the relevant data from my head.

On Buying More Books Than You Can Read

The following quotation from A. Edward Newton's "The Decay of the Bookshop"—which first appeared in The Atlantic (January 1920): 48 (here), and was reprinted in Newton's A Magnificent Farce (1921), 78 (here)—has a long and interesting history:

And so it is that, not being a scholar or altogether indigent, I do not much use any library except my own. I early formed the habit of buying books, and, thank God, I have never lost it. Authors living and dead—dead, for the most part—afford me my greatest enjoyment, and it is my pleasure to buy more books than I can read. Who was it who said, ‘I hold the buying of more books than one can peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul’s reaching towards infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish’? Whoever it was, I agree with him ….
     Too many of us who are liberal, not to say lavish, in our household expenses, seem to regard the purchase of books as an almost not-to-be-permitted extravagance. We buy piano-players and talking machines, and we mortgage our houses to get an automobile, but when it comes to a book, we exhaust every resource before parting with our money.

The answer to Newton's rhetorical question ("Who was it who said?") seems to have been William Hobart Royce (1878–1963), an American writer and bookseller who wrote under the name "Penmore"; specifically, Newton had in mind the following quotation (from 1916)

I do hold the buying of more books than one could peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul’s reaching toward infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish — Penmore.

Newton's 1920 paraphrase of Penmore-Royce was expanded by Holbrook Jackson (in The Anatomy of Bibliomania (1930), 225) as follows:

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired by passionate devotion to them produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity, and that this passion is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish, an argument which some have used in defence of the giddy raptures invoked by wine.

Here, Newton's words are indicated by italics. (Throughout Jackson’s Anatomy of Bibliomania, quotations are printed in italic, instead of within quotation marks.) More than fifty years later, a version of the Jackson's quotation appeared in Otto Bettmann, in The Delights of reading: quotes, notes [and] anecdotes (1987), 49 [here]. Bettmann paraphrased Jackson, but attributed the entire paraphrase to Newton:

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity… we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance.
     A. Edward Newton

The passage following the ellipsis in the above quotation ("… we cherish books even if unread […]") appears to have been added Bettmann; certainly, it is not anywhere in either Newton (1920 or 1921) or Jackson (1930). Bettmann's embellished "quotation" is everywhere on the internet.

* * * * *

A 2008 blog post by Steve Dodson (here) unraveled the Newton-Jackson connection, and the lack of a source for the passage following the ellipsis. In a 2017 comment on this blog post, Dan Goldman identified "Penmore" as Newton's source, which he found in the Monthly Bulletin of the Pasadena Public Library "for October of 1915 or 1916." ( This source is viewable only as a "Snippet" to me in Australia.)

Since nearly a decade has passed since Goldman searched for the quotation, I thought I might now be able to find an earlier appearance, and therefore find the full context for the quote.

What I discovered is that the quote only appears as a "pull-quote" (a brief, attention-catching quotation used as a graphic feature): there is no "full context." I also cannot locate a primary source for the quote—but the earliest precisely-datable instance of its use that I was able to find appears to be in Educational Foundations: A Monthly Magazine of Pedagogy, vol. 27, no. 5 (January 1916), 279 [here]. The Penmore-Royce pull-quote is used as an advertisement, in the third of five advertisements for a "Book Buyer's League" that are scattered across this volume (September 1915–June 1916); the fifth advertisement (here) explains:

NOTE — Our friends are asked to remember that the publishers of Educational Foundations have exceptional facilities for filling orders for all magazines and books. The Book Buyer's League is now offering 10 per cent discount on all monthly statements to its members. Membership in the League costs but $2.00 a year and includes a subscription to this magazine.

The first bookish pull-quote (which appears on p. 275) is followed by "See Book Buyer's League announcement, this issue"; the second pull-quote (279) is followed by "Join the Book Buyer's League"; and the third pull-quote reads, in full:

I do hold the buying of more books than one could peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul's reaching toward infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish — Penmore.
     The Book Buyer's League is at your service.

Although I found references to "The Book Buyer's League" dating back to 1902 (Life, Vol 39, no. 1008 (20 February 1902), [np] here), I did not find an earlier example of this Penmore-Royce pull-quote. The Monthly Bulletin of the Pasadena Public Library example given by Goldman appears in a group of quotations, and the other examples I was able to find from 1916 were in the form of quotations too (such as this one here and this one here).

* * * * *

In 2026, it seems that it is still not possible to identify a source for Bettmann's peroration "we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance." Along with Newton's "it is my pleasure to buy more books than I can read"— Bettmann's "we cherish books even if unread" is a key source for the Wikipedia entry on Tsundoku, which is a pre-WW1 era Japanese word, meaning something like "to pile up [books] with intent to read" (1995) or "piling up books and leaving them unread around your house" (2015).

While I did not find the source for Bettmann's peroration, I did find the following 1905 quote on cherishing books:

There are books we like, and books we love; books we honour, and books we cherish; books we admire upon the shelves, and books we thrust beneath our pillow when we go to sleep.

This is part of a monologue by Henry Woolford, a character in Guy Berton's novel, Art Thou The Man? (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1905), 202 (here), which echoes Francis Bacon's famous adage, from his essay "On Studies" (1598)

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

The Woolford monologue is lengthy, but I liked this part of it, so I will close off this post by quoting it in full:

"I've wondered often why some books are favourite books," he said. "Of course, I know why they are, and yet there is a pleasant mystery about it all. There are many books here, and many more down in the library—great books, nearly all of them— books of the masters, histories of the great ones, symbols of thoughts that have lived through the ages undenied. And yet they have no equality in our affections. We pass by one with a glance, and seize upon another. There are books we like, and books we love; books we honour, and books we cherish; books we admire upon the shelves, and books we thrust beneath our pillow when we go to sleep. Some one has said that we have ancestors of the intellect as well as ancestors of the body, and a lineage of the spirit as clearly marked as a family tree. Here are my other ancestors—here in my favourite books. I've kept them here because I could not bear to have them banished in the library downstairs. They have watched me at my work, they have kept wakeful through the long, long nights, and they have been close when I slept. And they have been tyrants, too, for they have kept me awake oftener than they have talked me to sleep. Pleasant, precious comrades, these."