Abc for Book Collectors

(AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 1 ABC FOR BOOK COLLECTORS [half-title] (AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 2 Other books published by Oak Knoll Press and The British Library for the serious book collector Five Hundred Years of Printing by S. H. Steinberg Encyclopedia of the Book by Geoffrey Glaister The Art & History of Books by Norma Levarie A New Introduction to Bibliography by Philip Gaskell The Pleasures of Bibliophily: Fifty Years of The Book Collector A Bibliography of Printing by E. C. Bigmore and C. W. H. Wyman catalogue available upon request [advertisement] (AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 3 ABC FOR BOOK COLLECTORS Eighth Edition JOHN CARTER and NICOLAS BARKER OAK KNOLL PRESS and THE BRITISH LIBRARY [title-page] (AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 4 Eighth edition published 2004 by Oak Knoll Press 310 Delaware Street New Castle, de 19720 and The British Library 96 Euston Road London nw1 2db First published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. 1952. Second edition 1953, Third edition 1961, Fourth edition 1966, Reprinted with corrections 1967, Reprinted 1971, Fifth edition 1972, Reprinted 1973, Reprinted with corrections 1974, Reissued by Granada Publishing 1978, Sixth edition 1980, Reprinted 1982, 1985, Reissued 1992, Reprinted 1993, 1994, Seventh edition, revised and expanded, 1995, Reprinted 1997, 1998, 2000, 2002, Eighth edition with corrections 2006. Copyright © John Carter 1952, 1953, 1961, 1966, 1972 New material Copyright © Nicolas Barker 1980, 1995, 2004 Reprint (2006) of eighth edition corrected by Raymond B. Williams ISBN 1‒58456‒112‒2 (Oak Knoll) ISBN 0‒7123‒4822‒0 (BL) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carter, John, 1905–1975. ABC for book collectors / by John Carter–8th ed. / with corrections, additions, and an introduction by Nicolas Barker. p. cm. ISBN 1‒58456‒112‒2 1. Bibliography—Dictionaries. 2. Book collecting—Dictionaries. 3. Book industries and trade—Dictionaries. I. Barker, Nicolas. II. Title. Z1006.C37 2003 002Ј.075—dc21 2003054829 Typeset by Hope Services (Abingdon) Ltd, UK Printed in the United States of America [printer’s imprint & copyright page] (AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 5 to JOHN HAYWARD R.I.P. [dedication] (AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 6 [verso, blank] (AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 7 INTRODUCTION Like all good reference books, the ABC for Book Collectors, first published in 1952, conveys much in a little space, sets limits to its subject and keeps within them, and – saving grace – treats that subject with individuality as well as authority, in a style at once concise, forthright and witty. It is, in short, a masterpiece, whose merits are acknowledged by the fact that it has never, in more than fifty years, been out of print. The author, John Carter, was born on 10 May 1905 and died on 18 March 1975. A scholar of Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, he knew too well what scholarship meant to embark on the academic life that his attainments might have made his. Instead, in 1927 he joined the famous New York firm of booksellers, Charles Scribner’s Sons, with which he remained, apart from war service, until 1953. From then till 1955, he was attaché at the British Embassy in Washington. He then joined Sotheby’s, for whom he was largely responsible in opening up a new market in the U.S.A., retiring in 1972. He was also a book-collector, forming a notable collection of A. E. Housman and another, unsurpassable, of William Cory, the Eton master and poet. He was, thus, well equipped to see the book collector’s world from every angle, to record it at once dispassionately and with insight. Although for so long a member of the trade, he was never truly in it. Its older members disliked what they took to be his de haut en bas man- ner and still more his detachment, which they sensed rather than knew, because he was punctilious and honourable in all transactions. But there was nothing snobbish about the generosity and encouragement that he extended to the young, ‘bibliomites’ of the trade or collectors hesitantly beginning, or again those with their foot on the first step of the bibliographical ladder. I was one of them, and I shall never forget the kindness and prac- tical help he gave me, particularly when I had, at short notice after John Hayward’s sudden death, to take over the editorship of The Book Collector. It is strange, now, to look back on those days. Our world was indeed a small one and, it seemed, contracting. There were few antiquarian booksellers, mostly old men. Their memories stretched back to the Depression and beyond, when old books were commoner and so were collectors – the problem was to sell the books. Now where were the books, and the collectors? They were, they felt, the last gen- eration: the last books would soon be locked up in institutional libraries, and the trade that they knew would soon be wound up. (AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 8 There was, then, a certain defiance, an assertion of facts and values that might be forgotten, in the ABC when it came out in 1952. Memories of Michael Sadleir and the ‘Bibliographica’ series before the Second World War, the opinions and trenchant style of Stanley Morison, the centre of our little circle, echo in its pages. But how soon it was to change – had changed already by 1972, when the fifth edition came out, by which time, Morison had mischievously said, it ‘might be a serviceable thing’. It is hard to date the beginnings of the change: the simultaneous release of the residue of the Phillipps collection after ten years’ seclusion and of the Abbey collection, both alluringly catalogued by Andreas Mayor and Anthony Hobson, was certainly a turning point. But the real change was a larger and more subtle one. The rise in property values forced booksellers to value the space their stock took up: ‘high street’ shops became less and less viable. The wise betook themselves to country rectories and postal business by catalogue, free from opening hours, non-buying browsers and business rates. There was time to look for books (not so hard to find after all if you had the time), and to catalogue them with a shrewder eye to a market now more accurately defined. The only problem was that the number of customers grew no larger. To this the book fair proved the answer, not just the London fair but one in a country hotel or some other public building, where a car full of books might furnish a modest booth, with some over to replenish it if sales were good. At first, I suspect, sales were mostly within the trade (a version of the Indian rope trick whose final economics I have never quite under- stood), but gradually the public which had come out of curiosity stayed to buy. Why? Partly because, in the more prosperous 70s and early 80s, there was a little money to spare; partly, paradoxically, due to the ‘flight from money’ – better if you had it to put into something less prone to erratic fluctuation; partly, too, owing to the decline in modern book production, particularly the paper and the misnamed perfect binding of paperbacks whose leaves fell out on bookshop floors as thick as those that strewed the brooks in Vallombrosa. All this woke a new interest in books, old and not so old. It was not just the old staple of literature and the classics: art and the theatre acquired new professional collections; the decline of industry put a new premium on previously unsaleable obsolete technical manuals; newly cheap travel produced devotees of books about remote parts of the world, particularly those which you still could not reach easily. New collectors, a species believed to be on the brink of extinction, became almost common. New antiquarian booksellers set up. Rare 8 (AA) ABC prelims pp1-9** 16/5/06 10:14 Page 9 book librarianship, once the province of a few isolated enthusiasts, has become a profession, stimulated by the Rare Book School of Professor Terry Belanger, formerly at Columbia University, now at the University of Virginia, and a generous contributor to earlier edi- tions of the ABC. All this growth would have delighted John Carter, as it does me. One other change he would have viewed with more sadness, the dissolution of the ancient craft of bookbinding, superseded in its primary function by the now largely mechanised process of edition binding. It has not, however, died entirely, but has been translated into the new world of book conservators and art binders, both thriving. Many of the old terms for materials and practices, variable and often imprecise, discussed long ago with Howard Nixon of the British Museum and Kenneth Hobson of Sangorski and Sutcliffe, are now obsolete or disused, except in booksellers’ catalogues. Their survival there justifies their presence here, since those catalogues are now his- toric documents, consulted as such. Perhaps another revival, in the still neglected history of the internal, as opposed to external, structure of bookbindings, may give them a new interest. It remains only to thank all those who, with suggestions for improvement and other encouragement, have lightened the task of preparing the first complete revision of Carter’s text. It has not been an easy task to alter words written in a style both classic and succinct, however necessary change may be.

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