Around the Dining Room Table: A View of My Shakespeare Collection

When I retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1989, I brought back about 200 books from England with me.  More than a handful of these books were books by or about Shakespeare.  I recorded these books in the very first catalogue of my library, citing   how much I paid for each book, and the source, with "B" denoting bookstore, "F" denoting book fair, and "A" denoting auction (the average exchange rate in the late 1980s was about $1.50 per £1).

Of these first Shakespeare books, there is nothing spectacular, monetary-wise.  The most I paid for one item was less than $13, and that was for the 1806 set:











Pleasing to the eye is the front cover of Sir Henry Lee's Life of William Shakespeare, displaying Shakespeare's coat of arms, but the cloth on the spine is badly faded.











These books that I brought back from England are the cornerstone of my Shakesepare Collection, and have a sentimental value that money can't buy.  Take for instance the third book on the list, the Shakespeare book with the first four pages of Intro missing.  This was my first ever bookbinding project and one of my first Shakespeare books.

These Shakespeare books, and their brothers and sisters that I have since acquired, have moved from room to room in our house here in Florida: from the living room, to the master bedroom, to the spare bedroom (converted into a library), to the hallway outside the library, and now to the dining room.  Yes, the dining room.

On one side of the dining room table is a cabinet containing my wife's Bing & Grondahl Plate Collection.  On the other side of the dining room table is my barrister bookcase, the new home of my Shakespeare Collection:

Wise bookmen have sat at this very same dining room table, ate lunch, and shared biblio talk with me:  first Paul Ruxin, and then Mark Samuels Lasner and Donald Farren.  If and when they return and sit around this dining room table, they can now view my Shakespeare Collection:

It is fitting that Shakespeare has found a home in my new barrister bookcase.  I received this barrister bookcase as an early birthday present from my wife.  And we celebrate Shakespeare's birthday in April. . . .Well, not everybody celebrated his birthday in April, thanks to the change of calendars . . .

On May 3, 1820, in an essay printed in his periodical, The Indicator, Leigh Hunt wrote,

"The fifth of May, making the due allowance of twelve days, the twenty third of April, according to the change of the Style, is the birthday of Shakespeare. Pleasant thoughts must be associated with him in everything.  If he is not to be born in April, he must be born in May. Nature will have her with him on her blithest holidays like her favourite lover. . . .

The favorite in my Shakespeare Collection is my married set of the First American Edition of Shakespeare's Works.  I almost sold this set in 2006 when I was anxiously awaiting approval of my disability retirement application.  And it is currently on consignment with a notable bookseller  SOLD!!

It is hard to believe that Shakespeare's works weren't published in America until 1795, yet that statement still holds true today.

But what is no longer true is that the frontispiece by Robert Field, in the first volume of the First American Edition of Shakespeare's Works is the First American Engraving of Shakespeare:

An article in an 1885 issue of Shakespeariana, a periodical I have in my Shakespeare Collection, heralded this portrait as the First American Portrait of Shakespeare
(click on image to enlarge):

This claim stood until the Shakespeare scholar, James G. McManaway, announced in the Spring 1961 issue of Shakespeare Quarterly that the First American Engraving of Shakespeare first appeared in a 1787 issue of The Columbian Magazine.  This engraving by James Trenchard is not even a frontispiece; it is an advertisement for a set of Shakespeare books sold by a Philadelphia bookseller:

 James Trenchard, one of the owners of The Columbian Magazine, engraved the advertisement himself.  The advertisement is inserted in the July 1787 issue of the Folger Shakespeare Library copy of The Columbian Magazine, and in the August 1787 issue of the Library Company of Philadelphia copy.  It is not in any issue in the Darlington Memorial Library copy at the University of Pittsburgh –– at least I couldn't find it!  The Darlington Memorial Library copy can be viewed online at archive.org.  Did someone swipe the engraving or was it never inserted in the periodical?  I notified Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh to physically check their copy in storage.

But there is  another contender besides Trenchard's engraving, and it is even a frontispiece!  In a 1917 Rosenbach Company catalogue, the renowned bookseller, A.S.W. Rosenbach, listed the following item:



Rosenbach was on target with the date.  Modern scholars cite 1794 as the date of publication of the Boston edition of this work.  S. Hill is Samuel Hill, a Boston engraver who is credited with engraving the portraits on the frontispiece of the Boston edition of Essays on Physiognomy  (the word physiognomy means a person's facial features).

A London edition of this work published in 1789 didn't have the frontispiece; the portraits were printed individually throughout the book.

In the portrait above, Shakespeare is facing in the opposite direction from Samuel Hill's portrait.  But surprisingly, Hill's portraits from the 1794 Boston edition were used as the frontispiece in another London edition published around 1800:

So even if Trenchard's engraving is disqualified from contention as being a mere advertisement,  Samuel Hill's engraving would be the winner as the First American Portrait of Shakespeare, and not Field's portrait from the First American Edition of Shakespeare's works.

 My set of the First American Edition of Shakespeare's works isn't even the oldest Shakespeare item in my library!   That honor goes to an odd volume of  Rowe's 1714 edition of Shakespeare's works, the first quarto edition published after the folios.  The title page and table of contents are lacking, but each play has its own frontispiece and title page:

Nicholas Rowe was the first Shakespeare editor to provide an extensive biography of Shakespeare.  Later editors would disapprove of his edition because the text of Shakespeare's plays is based on the text of the 1685 Fourth Folio and not on text of the First Folio.

I have one other married set of Shakespeare's Works, but these volumes are not in the  barrister bookcase.  In the barrister bookcase are odd volumes from an 1821 set formerly owned by the Ohio State Library, which I acquired to complete my set of this edition.  But these odd volumes are not compatible with the 19 of 21 volumes which are currently in  the bookcase  in the hallway outside of my library.  The odd volumes in the barrister bookcase do not have marbled edges.  And, unfortunately, they are smaller than the volumes in the hallway bookcase:

I have a number of other odd volumes of Shakespeare's works, most of which are in my barrister bookcase  Of note are odd volumes of The Bankside Shakespeare, a set of Shakespeare's works in parallel texts, published by the Shakespeare Society of New York beginning in the late 1800s.  On the left is the Players' text from the early quartos (1594-1622), and on the right is the Heminges and Condell text from the First Folio of 1623:

The newest addition to my Shakespeare Collection just arrived this week.   It is a two-volume set of Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps.  You may recall that I did my November 2011 blog post on him, and a December 2011 post on the Value of Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare.  My set is the 1898 tenth edition, and not of much value monetarily, but the books themselves contain a wealth of information.  The set is ex-library, and the spines have been crudely rebacked with two slightly different shades of green cloth, but I am not complaining.  After all, I acquired the set for less than six dollars, and with shipping included:

Not all of my Shakespeare books can be viewed from around the dining room table.  My association copies and gifts from friends are in my library room, as are two large odd volumes of the National Union Catalog, Volumes 540 and 541, covering the works of Shakespeare.  These books are too large for my barrister bookcase, as is an oversized volume of Shakespeare I bought when I worked at Waldenbooks in the 1990s.

Other recent additions include Shaksperiana: catalogue of all the books, pamphlets &c. relating to Shakspeare, by John Wilson, London, 1827, a gift from Per Rålamb, and Folomania! : stories behind Shakespeare's most important book, by Owen Williams, Washington, 2011, a gift from Paul Ruxin.  Thanks guys!

Without much ado, you can view these Shakespeare books and more on Library Thing.

On Or About Moi's Books About Books

Black's Law Dictionary defines the phrase "on or about" as a phrase used in reciting the date of an occurrence, to escape the necessity of being bound by the statement of an exact date.

I like that phrase! I will use it to help describe Moi's Books About Books Collection,  short for Moi Bibliomaniac's Books About Books Collection.

More people prefer the phrase "books on books" than "books about books." Google the former and you will receive on or about 2,540,000 results. Google the latter and you will receive on or about 377,000 results. But if you perform the search in Google Books mode, the results are much different. You will receive on or about 32,400 results for "books on books" and on or about 58,500 results for "books about books." From these results, I would venture to say that more bibliophiles prefer "books about books" over "books on books."

Now I can't tell you exactly when I started collecting books about books –– it was sometime in late 1985 –– but I can tell you the exact title and other bibliographical data of my first book about books: The Best Books: A Reader's Guide to the Choice of the Best Available Books (About 50,000) in Every Department of Science, Art, and Literature, With the Dates of the First and Last Editions and the Price, Size, and Publisher's Name of Each Book. A Contribution Towards a Systematic Bibliography by William Swan Sonnenschein, London, 1896. This book is known simply as Sonnenschein's Best Books. My wife found this book for me one weekend in late 1985 on the bargain table in Trinder's, a bookstore in a seventeenth-century building in Clare, England. I paid £1 for it, about $1.30 in American money.

I can also tell you when I first launched a website to display Moi's Books About Books: on or about Nov 21, 1999. It was the first of five webtv websistes I would create to display my book collections.  Its name? –– you guessed it–– Moi's Books About Books.  Today  I display a catalog of Moi's Books About Books on Library Thing, along with my other collections.

Yes, Moi's Books About Books is my largest collection –– 937 books (1,109 as of 11/15/15) –– almost one-third of my entire library.  Most of the books in Moi's Books About Books Collection are on the seven shelves along the south wall of my library.  Six of these seven shelves are exactly twelve inches high.

On the top shelf are Books About Books specifically selected because they are less than nine inches high.  Almost touching the ceiling is a spare set of Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature, 5 books of essays by Augustine Birrell, 7 books from Henry B. Wheatley's Book-Lover's Library Series, and an assortment of  other smaller books, some of them belonging to other collections.

The next three rows below house what are mostly anecdotal books about book collecting arranged in alphabetical order.  Some of these books, you will notice, are part of My Sentimental Library Collection as well.  Having started collecting books while stationed in England in the late 1980s,  English bibliophiles are well represented in Moi's Books About Books Collection:  P.B.M. Allen, A. St. John Adcock, Augustine Birrell, Richard Booth, John Hill Burton, John Carter, Cyril Davenport, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Austin Dobson, Gilbert Fabes, Percy Fitzgerald, R. S. Garnett, Frederic Harrison, W. Carew Hazlitt, Alexander Ireland, Andrew Lang, Sir John Lubbock, Alfred W. Pollard, J. Roger Rees, and J. Herbert Slater to name more than a few.

And I have not ignored American bibliophiles in forming Moi's Books About Books Collection:  William Harris Arnold, Nicholas Basbanes, Luther Brewer, Eugene Field, Anne Fadiman, H. George Fletcher,  Helene Hanff, Laurence Hutton, Holbrook Jackson, Adrian H. Joline,  David Magee,  Brander Matthews, Christopher Morley, A. Edward Newton,  William Dana Orcutt,  Jean Peters, Lawrence Clark Powell, A. S. W. Rosenbach, Harry B. Smith, Vincent Starrett, William Targ, and John T. Winterich, to name more than a few.


Below those shelves is a shelf containing my reference books on book collectors, booksellers, publishers and printers.  Below that shelf is a shelf containing my books about bookplates, bookbinding, papermaking, and bibliography. On the bottom shelf are more bibliography books and some of my book-related periodicals.  On the floor below these seven shelves is my bookbinding equipment: two hot foil stamping machines, four boxes of letter type, two sewing presses and one finishing press.




On the east wall, to the right of the door are five shelves designed to store my oversized books.  Each shelf is on or about fifteen inches high. All but a few books on the top shelf are books by or about the Library of Congress.  Below that shelf are books about other libraries.  On the next shelf are the auction catalogues of two famous American book collectors:  John Quinn and Robert Hoe.  Also on this shelf are some of my oversized book-related periodicals.  The next shelf contains more bibliographies and more oversized book-related periodicals.  On the bottom shelf are oversized books, mostly from collections other than Moi's Books About Books Collection.

In case you're wondering what the thing is on the very top endshelf next to the door, here's a close-up view:

Do you know what it is?

 ––– Maestro! Christmas music please!

It's –– A  C-a-r-t-r-i-d-g-e  in  a  B-a-r-e  T-r-e-e. . .

. . . Speaking of books. . .

The remaining association copies from Moi's Books About Books Collection stand in the first section of the seven shelves on the east wall to the left of the door of my library.  This is the section where most of the books of My Sentimental Library Collection are located. The other sections contain my Charles Lamb, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell,  and Mary Hyde Collections. These seven shelves are the same dimensions height-wise as the seven shelves on the south wall of my library.

Below my work desk, and well out of foot range, are two big brown wicker baskets containing more book-related periodicals and loads of bookseller catalogues.

On the floor on the west wall in front of a bookcase containing my New York, Elements of Style, and Language Resources Collections is another big wicker basket containing still more bookseller catalogues.  And below my library table are more baskets containing fine press books and yes, more book-related periodicals.

And that, my friends, is a view of Moi's Books About Books Collection!

My Samuel Johnson Collection: Odd Volumes, Association Copies, and Other Interesting Items

. . . Every man is, or hopes to be an Idler.  Even those who seem to differ most from us are hastening to increase our fraternity; as peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy. . . .  The Idler, though sluggish, is yet alive, and may sometimes be stimulated to vigour and activity.  He may descend into profoundness, or tower into sublimity; for the diligence of an Idler is rapid and impetuous, as ponderous bodies forced into velocity move with violence proportionate to their weight . . . .

I read these words for the first time almost twenty-seven years ago in an antique store in England.  I  had picked up an odd volume of the Works of Samuel Johnson that was laying on top of a bookcase.  The words are from The Idler, the very first number, dated Saturday, April 15, 1758.  Little did I know when I first started reading this book,  that I would want more books by and about Samuel Johnson.  And more.  And more . . .

My first copy of Johnson's Dictionary, an 1874 Routledge edition, cost me a whopping 60p!  It was formerly owned by a Hilda Watts.  She signed her name three times on the front endpapers of the book, and once upside down on the rear free endpaper.

I've paid a bit more for my other editions of Johnson's Dictionary, including an odd volume of the 1770 fourth abridged edition, which has an interesting bookseller's ticket pasted on the front pastedown:

This is the bookseller's ticket of John Dunlap, the printer of the Declaration of Independence.  He had a bookstore on Market Store in Philadelphia.

Although remembered mostly as an early supporter of cricket, the original owner of my copies of Johnson's Poets, the Third Duke of Dorset, John Frederick Sackville (1745-1799), was the English ambassador to France prior to the French Revolution.  He was instrumental in communicating with the likes of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin which lead to trade treaties  between the United States and England.  Sackville's volumes of Johnson's Poets were most likely on the book shelves in Knole House, the residence of the Sackvilles where, years later, Virginia Woolf wrote her famous novel about the Sackvilles:  Orlando.  I bought Sackville's books in Hay-on-Wye in the late 1980s.  His bookstamp, the size of a dime, took me years to identify:

If my library is any indication, the English clergy had a liking for Samuel Johnson.  Fitzherbert Macdonald (?-1897), the Registrar for the diocese of Salisbury, had three choice first editions by or about Johnson and his travels in Scotland.   Here is Macdonald's bookplate:

In December, 1917, the author and statesman, Augustine Birrell (1850-1933), presented a copy of Aphorisms on Authors and Their Ways to his Diocesan at Norwich, Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919):

The complete title of Birrell's book, a rather lengthy one, is Aphorisms on Authors and Their Ways; With Some General Observations on the Humours, Habits, and Methods of Composition of Poets –– Good, Bad, and Indifferent    
Diligently Collected from Johnson's "Lives"


And then there is G.B. Hill's book, Footsteps of Dr Johnson (Scotland) which was formerly owned by Arthur Roland Maddison (1843-1912), priest-vicar of Lincoln Cathedral:

Speaking of G.B. Hill (1835-1903), I still haven't identified the American recipient of G.B. Hill's letter, dated June 1, 1893, that was inside the first volume of G.B. Hill's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson.  And I believe the Cowan clue mentioned in my research was a wild goose chase.  The bookseller's ticket of the Chicago bookseller Jerrold Nedwick (1895(?)-1966) was pasted on the first volume, and the set may have remained in Jerrold's stock until after his death.  The set may have been part of the 60,000 books the University of Louisville bought in 1966 from his estate.  I credit Donald C. Dickinson for providing the information about the sale of Jerrold's stock in his book, Dictionary of Antiquarian Bookdealers, Westport, 1988, a book I want to acquire for reference purposes one of these days.

And now for a rant!   I have an offprint from The Age of Johnson A Scholarly Annual published by the AMS Press.  It is an article about Johnson and Hill that the G.B. Hill scholar Catherine Dille  sent me.   The title of her piece is  "Johnson, Hill, And The Good Old Cause:  Liberal Interpretation In The Editions of George Birkbeck Hill." An excellent article and one I did not have access to online via my KB Library Pass.  In fact, very few of the articles published in this periodical can be viewed online. As for buying the periodical, would you agree that $182.50 for each issue of this periodical is ridiculous?  An inexpensive periodical on Johnson, and one I recommend –– only $12 a year for two issues –– is The Johnsonian News Letter.

I particularly enjoy acquiring copies of Johnsoniana that were formerly owned by Johnsonian scholars and notable Samuel Johnson collectors.  When I hold a book they formerly owned, I feel I am sharing in their enjoyment.

I have more than a few books of Johnsoniana formerly owned by Mary Hyde  –– more than enough to warrant a separate posting of my Mary Hyde Collection at a future date.

I have two books formerly owned by Allen T. Hazen (1904-1977), who collaborated with R.W. Chapman (1881-1960) in writing the supplement to Courtney's Bibliography of Samuel Johnson.   Hazen received a copy of Philosophic Words:  A Study of Style and Meaning in the Rambler and Dictionary of Samuel Johnson from its author, W.K. Wimsatt, Jr. (1907-1975), along with a scholarly letter  from Wimsatt, well worth reading that identifies some of the anonymous quotations in Johnson's Dictionary.  Hazen's other book is a presentation copy from Charles H. Bennett (1906-1957),  one of the co-authors of a 1936 edition of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, "now first published from the original manuscript."

Do authors enjoy reading about themselves?  Are the books they authored personal keepsakes?  William K. Wimsatt, mentioned in the previous paragraph, is one of the authors of Boswell for the Defence 1769-1774.  He had a copy of his own book sent to himself straight from the publisher.  He inserted the shipping slip and complimentary card from "the authors" inside the front of the book:

He also inserted a review of the book from The Times Library Supplement:

And a Christmas card from Donald and Mary Hyde:

In May 2011, I acquired two books from the library of the Johnsonian, Gwin J. Kolb (1919-2006).  Now the only mark of provenance in these two books is Kolb's signature, but I feel closer to him than I do to Wimsatt, probably because I am more familiar with Kolb.  Over ten years ago, I acquired a copy of the pamphlet, The Reynolds Copy of Johnson's Dictionary by Gwin J. Kolb and James H. Sledd, a reprint from the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.   It is an outstanding article –– read my review –– I enjoyed it so much that I soon acquired a copy of their book, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary:  Essays in the Biography of a Book, Chicago, 1955.   Fast forward now to January 2009.  I had received a review copy of Brian A. Garner's book, Garner on Language and Writing, the month before, read it, reviewed it, and  lambasted the author for his review of the book Gwin J. Kolb co-edited with Robert Demaria, Jr., Johnson on the English Language.  Garner titled his nasty review, "Harmless Drudgery?"

I have no idea who its former owner is because she left no marks of provenance in her copy of Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763.  But she did leave three newspaper articles about Boswell from the 1950s:

And finally, no collection is complete –– in fact, no collection should even begin without a bibliography.  I have two bibliographies of Samuel Johnson:

I have only turned a few pages, so to speak.  So feel free to browse my Samuel Johnson Collection at your leisure.  Queries are welcome.  And comments are appreciated!

The Words of the Wise: My Periodical Collection

On my desk is a copy of Times and Tendencies, Boston and New York, 1931, a volume of essays by Agnes Repplier (1855-1950).  It was formerly owned by the bibliophile Gabriel Austin.  At one time, it was formerly owned by George Woodward Wickersham, President Taft's Attorney General, and the book contains Wickersham's bookplate.  Pasted over the top of his bookplate is the bookplate of St. Charles Seminary, Carthegena, Ohio, which contains part of a verse from Eccles.  XIII, 11:  "Verba Sapientium Sicut Stimuli," meaning "The words of the wise are like goads."

Agnes Repplier made her living as an essayist writing for periodicals.  This book includes seven essays which were published in the Atlantic Monthly, two that were published in the Forum, one that was published in the Yale Review, and another that was published in the Commonweal.  "The Pleasure of Possession" is the one from the Commonweal, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Repplier summarizes the essay as such:

"...the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring ––or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps –– lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them."

And now I have the pleasure of displaying some of the many periodicals in my possession. I hope you enjoy viewing them.


The oldest periodical in my possession is also the oldest book in my library.  It was published from January 1700 to December 1700, and contains reviews of books recently published in Europe:

The review of the first book caught my attention –– mind you, this was published in 1700.  The title was Experiments of Wind:  Hypotheses of the Earth's Motion:  The Phenomena of the Trade-Winds, Tides, Currents, Solv'd:  A Perpetual Motion Intimated:  Observations of the Weather, Winds, Loadflow, Magnetic Variations, and a Water-Screw by Edward Harrison, Gent.

My copy of The History of the Works of the Learned was formerly owned by Edward Gallaway (1869-1930) and contains his bookplate:

Edward Gallaway was a typographer who wrote several books on printing in the early 1900s.  A copy of Erdnase, The Expert at the Card Table, containing Gallaway's bookplate was in the Magic Collection of Jay Marshall.

Another periodical in my library which provided reviews is The Librarian:

The complete title is The Librarian, Being an Account of Scarce, Valuable, and Useful English Books, Manuscript Libraries, Public Records, &c.&c.  Savage published this work monthly from July 1808 to January 1810.  He included a list of books published for the month, but what he reviewed were the contents of the British Museum and other libraries in England.

Now I'm not much for recommending e-books, but I've already downloaded James Savage's book, Memorabilia, or, Recollections, Historical, Biographical, and Antiquarian, first published in 1820,, and which contains "Dr. Johnson's Conversation with the Late King."

Speaking of Samuel Johnson, I would be remiss if I did not display my copy of the 1738 edition of The Gentleman's Magazine which contains his first contributions to this periodical:

Here's a shelf of periodicals from bibliographical societies and from monthly and quarterly reviews.

Yes. Most of my periodicals pertain to books and book collecting.  The first American periodical on book collecting wasn't published until 1861:

I have the complete run in two volumes from December 1861 to December 1863.  I also have an extra copy of Vol II.  The complete title is The Philobiblion:  a Monthly Bibliographical Journal Containing Critical Notes of, and Extracts from Rare, Curious and Valuable Old Books.  I suspect that the Civil War affected the periodical's circulation; but I alƒo wonder if the publiƒher's uƒe of the long S had ƒomething to do with it'ƒ demiƒe.

Here are some more displays of book-related periodicals, and in no particular order:

And more:

Paul Leicester Ford was the editor of the above short-lived periodical; he was murdered by his brother.

Here's 60 issues of The Collector:  A Monthly Journal Devoted to Autographs, the subtitle later changed to A Magazine for Autograph and Historical Collectors.

Here's a periodical containing the Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress.

Notice the difference in bindings?

Not all my periodicals are related to books.  Some are related specifically to Shakespeare:

One issue of a periodical is devoted to a topic of vital importance:

How high is your manure pile?

Now why would I have an issue of this periodical?  Three of my four children were born on this base in Illinois, now called Scott Air Force Base.

When I first started collecting periodicals, I wanted to collect only early issues of periodicals.  I soon realized there were just too many periodicals in the world for me.  Here are more of them.  

Early issues of English Periodicals:

Early issues of American periodicals:

And here are some more periodicals stored in baskets underneath my library table:

I also have books about periodicals in my periodical collection. You can view them and all my periodicals on Library Thing.

Biblio Researching, Biblio-Connecting and Biblio Reviewing

This month I will post a thread from my Biblio Researching blog, and a thread from my Biblio-Connecting blog.  And I will provide a review of My Sentimental Library blog posts for the year.

From my Biblio Researching blog:
Researching the Value of Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare

From my Biblio-Connecting blog:
Biblio-Connecting: monthly blogs

From My Sentimental Library blog:

Jan:  Always Be On Time

My goal was to post at least one blog entry per month.   In two months I posted two        entries to this blog.  And in two months I posted two entries from my other blogs.

Jan:  Arthur Schlesinger's Bookplate:The Whole Picture

How I discovered the source document for Schlesinger's bookplate

Feb:  Changing Bookplates: Multiple Bookplates of Famous People

Inputs from the bookplate maven Lew Jaffe, the book collector Mark Samuels Lasner, and the scholar Linde Brocato.

Mar:  Two Hurt Books And Their Former Owners

Two books formerly owned by two New Yorkers: Paul Leicester Ford and Daniel Van Pelt.

Mar:  Maureen E. Mulvihill List of Online Work

The online works of the  guest hostess, the Irish-American Scholar Maureen E. Mulvihill.

Apr:  My William Targ Collection

Targ was a bookseller, author, editor, publisher, and book collector.  A true bibliophile.

May:  My Many Lives of Samuel Johnson

Grab a chair.  I have a lot of biographies of Samuel Johnson.

Jun:  Ten Books From Texas and Two Reminiscences

My first visit to Larry McMurtry's town of books in Archer City, Texas

Jul:   Blog Posts From Two of My Other Blogs

The first post is from my Biblio Researching blog and documents my somewhat fumbling research of a Greek classic.  The second post is a running diary of my life in the book world.  An abbreviated version was published in the October issue of The Caxtonian.

Aug:  Grand Moments

All about grandchildren, mine and those belonging to bibliophiles in my library.

Sep: My Autograph Letter Collection

Another part of My Sentimental Library Collection.  I strive to have copies of books by and about authors I collect, books they formerly owned,  bookplates if they had them, catalogues of their libraries, and autograph letters either to or from them.

Oct: In And About Foley

A post about an American bibliographer.

Nov:J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Bibliophile

My review of The Shakespeare Thefts perked my interest in Halliwell-Phillipps.

Dec:

Scroll back up to the top amigo!

Yes. 2011 has been a very good year for reading, researching, collecting, and posting about books. May 2012 be an even better year!

Wishing all of you a Happy and Healthy New Year!
Jerry