The Book Lovers' Anthology compiled by the Bodleian Library, Oxford

I came across a most unusual book.  It had no author, editor, or translator, but it did have notes and an index of nearly 30 pages.  The Book Lovers’ Anthology found its way to publication when compiled by the Bodliean Library at the University of Oxford.  So we have no plot, no pictures, no characters – except for the thoughts and fancies of many noteworthy literary figures dating back to the ancient Greeks.  Therefore, all I can do is offer some tempting tidbits to make you smile, laugh, and occasionally groan.

In a letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey wrote, “Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the lottery!  What is that to opening a box of books!  The joy upon lifting up the cover must be something like what we shall feel when Peter the Porter opens the doors upstairs, and says, ‘Please do walk in, sir.’  That I shall never be paid for my time and labour according to the current value of time and labour, is tolerably certain;  but if anyone should offer me £10,000 to forgo that labour, I should bid him and his money go to the devil, for twice the sum could not purchase me half the enjoyment.  It will be a great delight to me in the next world, to take a fly and visit these old worthies, who are my only society here, and to tell them what excellent company I found them here at the lakes of Cumberland, two centuries after they had been dead and turned to dust.  In plain truth, I exist more among the dead than the living, and think more about them, and, perhaps, feel more about them” (4).

Not all the contributors are well-known.  C.C. Colton, and English Vicar, wrote, “We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit” (6).  From this side of the pond, Washington Irving wrote in his Sketch Book, “The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity” (9).  Ralph Waldo Emerson notes, “It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books.  They impress us with the conviction that one nature wrote, and the same reads.  We read the verses of one of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with the most modern joy – with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part caused by the abstraction of all time from their verses.  There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said” (26).

Bodleian Library, Oxford, England

Robert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke spoke at the Croyden Science and Art Schools in 1869.  He exhorted the students to, “Cultivate above all things a taste for reading.  There is no pleasure so cheap, so innocent, and so remunerative as the real, hearty pleasure and taste for reading.  It does not come to everyone naturally.  Some people take to it naturally, and others do not, but I advise you to cultivate it, and endeavor to promote it in your minds.  In order to do that, you should read what amuses you and pleases you.  You should not begin with difficult works, because, if you do, you find the pursuit dry and tiresome.  I would even say to you, read novels, read frivolous books, read anything that will amuse you and give you a taste for reading” (35).  I have given this exact same advice to my students, who – in increasing numbers – do not read. 

So thank you Emerson, and Voltaire, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Samuel Johnson, Shakespeare, Dickens, Swift, Laurence Sterne, Milton, Tennyson, Thackery, and many dozens more.  The Book Lovers’ Anthology: A Compendium of Writing about Books, Readers & Libraries compiled by the Bodliean Library in Oxford, England should not be read like a novel.  Browse through and zero in on a favorite writer.  Open the volume to random pages and find all the wonders and delights of reading and books you share with these giants of literature.  5 stars.

--Chiron, 5/10/15

The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

After books about English Professors and literature – or perhaps before, it is an extremely close race – I love novels set in bookstores.  Christopher Morley has an especially warm place in my heart, since he is a Philadelphia native and a journalist to boot.  Novels by former newspaper people are a close third on my list.

Morley’s second novel, The Haunted Bookshop, starts out as a whimsical tale of Roger Mifflin, an eccentric owner and operator of the shop.  An interesting cast of characters haunts the shop.  Set in about 1919, the prose, attitudes, and viewpoints of the characters might seem a bit dated.  I felt the faint glow of O. Henry who died in 1910.  While Morley does not have a clever twist at the end, the story does take a radical turn on the last few pages.

One day, Aubrey Gilbert stops by the shop and proposes an advertising campaign to increase sales.  Roger will have none of it.  He claims, “The people who are doing my advertising are Stevenson, Browning, Conrad, and Company” (7).  Thus begins a cascade of literary references, which tempted me beyond all reason to catalog.  Once I started, I could not stop, and ended up with six pages, single-spaced of authors and works, much to the amazement of my book club.  Some mentioned items were well-known, others not so much, but only a few escaped my research.  This makes a daunting and most interesting reading list.

Aubrey persists without making any headway, but coincidentally, he does write ad copy for a Mr. Chapman, CEO of Dantybits Company, who also happens to frequent the shop.  Mr. Chapman has a daughter fresh out of “finishing school,” and he wants her to have some real-life experiences.  Roger agrees, and the young lady moves into the attic.

A peculiar set of booksellers – known as the “Corn Cob Club” -- also meet at the shop.  Mostly they decry the pitfalls and misfortunes of the bookselling business, as well as the theory and practice of stocking such a shop.

I have “haunted” many a shop like Roger Mifflin’s in my life, and I recognized the characters, the complaints, and the dusty shelves.  On one occasion, Roger is called to a noted bookseller in Philadelphia to appraise his collection.  The trip to the City of Brotherly Love turns out to be a fake, thus setting in motion the bizarre turn the story makes.  With some hours to spare before his return train to Brooklyn, Roger walks down Market Street to visit, Leary’s Bookshop, on 9 South 9^th Street.  Leary’s operated for nearly 100 years at that location.  It closed in 1969, and was known as the oldest bookshop in America.  I spent so many fond afternoons in Leary’s I could not recount them all.  I happened to visit the day they announced the closing.  I stood on the sidewalk with tears streaming as though I had lost a great, good friend.  Indeed, I had.

The copy I have is print-on-demand, and the editing and layout are atrocious.  If you order this quaint book, make sure a publisher is listed in the description.  The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley will provide hours of fun – and not all of them actually reading – for anyone interested in books and literature.  5 stars.

--Chiron, 1/30/15

So Long as Men Can Breathe by Clinton Heylin

Not at all what I expected – I guess I should have looked at it a little more carefully before buying. Sometimes those of us who love books and reading as much as I do have our “auto-buy” module switched on when we see a title, an author, or a dust jacket that strikes us in a particular way.

The book was useful, and I am glad I added this bit of arcane knowledge to my bank. Heylin tells the story of the publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I always thought they were published under his direction, but apparently not. The author offers a plausible explanation for Shakespeare’s distance from the original collection.

Not for the everyday reader, but certainly for any professional who cares about Shakespeare as the grteat writer he really is. 4 stars.

--Chiron, 7/12/10