Against the Grain
Volume 25 | Issue 1 Article 51
February 2013 Oregon Trails-Book and Book Collecting: A Personal View Thomas W. Leonhardt [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the Library and Information Science Commons
Recommended Citation Leonhardt, Thomas W. (2013) "Oregon Trails-Book and Book Collecting: A Personal View," Against the Grain: Vol. 25: Iss. 1, Article 51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.6452
This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Oregon Trails — Books & Book Collecting: A Personal View Column Editor: Thomas W. Leonhardt (Retired, Eugene, OR 97404)
“…a library is not merely a depository of learning, but a society for the promotion and any other Hessiana it can find. Kliemann , of knowledge…” — Hubert Howe Bancroft by beginning his collection early, was able to acquire publications that might not have been uring the fall of 2012 and after having books that had been required by my professors, available later on or only at greater expense. been retired for more than a year, I had especially those that I had bought for English Most collectors do not get in on the ground Dthe opportunity to attend a couple of and German literature classes. When I became floor as Kliemann did, but it is still possible meetings of the Himes & Duniway Society, a graduate student, I began to acquire books if you find a new author whom you like and a group of Portland bibliophiles and collectors that served my classes and beyond as reference think has promise. who stand in congenial and cultured contrast to books that applied to my studies in general. Each private collector learns by experience the characters, portrayed with some accuracy, But during my senior year, December how to go about acquiring a good personal in Portlandia. One meeting took place in the 1969, Leslie S. Clarke hired me to work collection, as comprehensive as possible and Rare Book Room of the Main Branch (one in UC Berkeley’s Rare Books and Special focused on a single author or theme. But oth- of the more beautiful public libraries in the Collections Department that merged with er collectors, along the way, find themselves country) of the Multnomah County Library the Bancroft Library while I was there, first expanding the field to include other collec- and another was held in a private home and it administratively and then physically. I was tions, some of which are logically connected, was at that meeting that I was asked to share studying German then and intended to become others more tenuously but still connected. As my thoughts on “Books and Book Collecting: a high school German teacher, going as far as an example, long ago I became interested in A Personal View.” fulfilling my student teacher duties. ButMrs. Christopher Morley after reading Parnassus If ever there was a shooting fish in a barrel Clarke’s example and her mentoring slowly on Wheels followed by The Haunted Bookshop, topic for a speaker, that was it. But it seems awakened me to librarianship as a career, one a sequel of sorts but one that can be read and to me that shooting fish in a barrel might be in which my knowledge of German could still enjoyed independently of Parnassus. While dangerous, especially if there are spectators be used to good effect. haunting my own bookshops, I occasionally and the barrel is not bullet proof. And so my I learned many things under her tutelage, found other books by Morley and then ex- topic could likely threaten a listener with ter- but it was the satisfaction of seeing the research panded from reading copies to first editions. minal boredom even if the audience is a group and aesthetic value of special collections that One of Morley’s passions was promoting of like-minded persons, people who like to led me to a change in studies from German and authors, including William McFee and Casu- hear about books, book sellers, book stores, Education to Library Science as it was called als of the Sea, a book I have read and re-read and special collections of books. Digressions at Berkeley at that time. regularly and one that I discovered before I bordering on aimless ramblings are seemingly Under Mrs. Clarke’s guidance, I became had even heard about Morley. I began with a welcomed especially when a common chord responsible for processing fine printing ephem- quote that I copied into a notebook. is sounded. era and other print collections (theater posters “Be master of yourself. The world is not What follows is not a transcription of my and playbills, for example) and for classifying, an oyster to be opened, but a quicksand Himes & Duniway remarks but a variation using her Library of Congress expansion, the to be passed. If you have wings you can on a theme, a riff on books and all that they Horst Kliemann-Hermann Hesse collection fly over it, if not you may quite possibly represent. used extensively by Professor Joseph Mileck, be sucked in.” William McFee, Casuals Larry McMurtry, writing about why he (author of Hermann Hesse and His Critics, of the Sea auctioned off a third or more of his book stock Hermann Hesse: Life and Art, and Hermann I don’t remember where or when I found said that his heirs were literate but not bookish Hesse: Biography and Bibliography) from my Modern Library edition but I am pretty sure and he wanted to leave them a more manage- whom I took his Hesse seminar. Working with it was in 1962 at The Intimate Bookshop in able store. Serious private book collectors are that collection that included all editions of his Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For years it was both literate and bookish and know exactly work, translations, manuscripts, microfilm, dis- the only thing I owned or had read by McFee, what McMurtry means. And if you haven’t sertations, art work, and the works of authors but now I own two more copies of Casuals of read Books, written by McMurtry about his that heavily influencedHesse , I saw the direct the Sea, an Armed Services edition and a first true passion, book selling, relationship between a American edition rebound in a three-quarter try it and see if you are book- comprehensive special leather binding with marbled end papers. I ish or merely literate, not collection and its research have also acquired six additional McFee items that there is anything wrong value, its lasting value including both volumes of Trader Horn, by with being merely literate. to scholars and private Alfred Aloysius Horn and Ethelfreda Lewis, As much as I enjoyed collectors. Volume Two of which contains a foreword by reading as a boy, I relied The Kliemann-Hesse William McFee. These seafaring books sit on heavily on libraries for my Collection, begun by shelves next to my Hornblower collection that reading matter, and even if it Horst Kliemann in 1913, began in an effort to collect copies of all the had occurred to me to collect is one of the richest Hesse Hornblower books written by C. S. Forester but my favorite authors, John collections in the world that now includes The Hornblower Companion R. Tunis, John R. Cooper, and is a good example of (C.S. Forester), The Life and Times of Horatio and Howard Pease, I didn’t have the where- what a dedicated collector can do. And as often Hornblower, a fictional biography of a fictional withal or the know-how to buy the books, and what happens with a serious collector, Klie- character by C. Northcote Parkinson (naval we moved so often that a collection of heavy mann also compiled various bibliographies historian most famous for Parkinson’s Law), books would have been a liability, something and catalogues along the way. Finally, he ran various books about the British navy of sailing I learned later on during my own moves from out of room and was forced to sell his collection ships, dictionaries of nautical terms, books on one state to another. to the University of California where it has seamanship, and the beginning of a collection of When I got out of the Army and went back maintained its comprehensive approach to pri- Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey novels and the books to college, I found myself keeping many of the mary and secondary publications, dissertations, continued on page 77
76 Against the Grain / February 2013
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Special collections have an inherent value pass on to others when I have finished reading Oregon Trails in their intellectual content and research value. them. Some have sentimental value, and I wish from page 76 There is aesthetic value, too, in the make-up they didn’t because they take up valuable shelf of the book — paper, typography, binding, space. But I know from painful experience that that guide the reader through the vocabulary of illustrations, and design. When these things I felt such a loss at some discarded volumes Aubrey’s (and Hornblower’s, too) sailors and the are brought together in the codex, that perfect that I have, more than once, found another seas they sailed in, A Sea of Words and Harbors technology that defies time, it is no wonder that copy and have promised it a permanent home and High Seas, both by Dean King. collectors spend fortunes, large and small, on and tender loving care. Yet another seafaring book that I own is gathering them together and treasuring them Finally, one can spend hundreds of thou- the Signet Classic edition of Richard Henry for all of the things itemized above. There are sands of dollars when collecting truly rare Dana, Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast. It fits some books so wonderfully designed and pre- books, but one can build large and satisfying nicely with my other seafaring books because sented that once you hold them in your hands, collections on a beer budget. There are many of its descriptions of a common sailor’s life on you can’t help but read them. They have a feel online ways to find and buy items for one’s a sailing ship but it is shelved with my Wright about them that causes a feeling about them that collection (author and subject bibliographies, Morris collection because the afterword is by is more emotion than rational thought. if available, are invaluable), and I use them Morris who writes of the connection between Collectors know the importance of desid- regularly, but none of them can match the satis- Dana and the transcendentalists Ralph Waldo erata lists. Know what you have and know faction of roaming the stacks of a second-hand Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, two what you need and then familiarize yourself bookseller, picking out an attractive (an elusive other authors that I collect but only in reading with antiquarian catalogs, second-hand quality that a book hunter recognizes) volume, editions. And on my seafaring shelves sits a booksellers and their shops, reference works carefully removing it (don’t pull it off the shelf Dover Press edition of Dana’s A Seaman’s relating to your interest, bibliographies, check by its headband, please) from the shelf, blow- Friend: A Treatise on Practical Seamanship. lists, and, in these digital times, the Internet, ing the dust off of the top edge, and opening it And so it goes, and so it grows. remembering that one bookseller’s fine may be to the title page to discover a title that you must One good collection deserves another and another’s suitable reading copy. Browsing in a buy even though you didn’t know you were the space to live on. bookshop, antique store, or local charity bazaar looking for it, didn’t even know the book or There are not only degrees of connections allows you the luxury of examining the desired author existed. When you reach that state, you between and among books and authors, there item before buying it. Another advantage of have the bug — you are a collector. browsing is that you just might find something are intellectual themes and expositions that ASSIDVVSSIS IN BIBLIOTHECA that you weren’t even looking for. complement and supplement one another. Any OVAE TIBI PARADISI LOCO EST. librarian building a special collection or even There are many books available about a general collection must have the collector’s book collecting but, as with Horst Kliemann, How busy you are in your library, your instincts and know what a scholar or student collecting should be a passion about something paradise. curious about one thing or another will need that you like and enjoy. Each book on my — Morley’s Knot Hole (Christopher when pursuing a line of thought that is not shelves has a particular value to me. Some Morley Park, Long Island) obvious to the casual eye. have ephemeral interest, books that I will sell or
Against the Grain / February 2013