The Reference Library of a Bibliomaniac

A library represents the mind of its collector, his fancies and foibles, his strength and weakness, his prejudices and preferences. Particularly is this the case if to the character of a collector he adds—or tries to add—the qualities of a student who wishes to know the books and the lives of the men who wrote them.
                           Sir William Osler, Bibliotheca Osleriana

I enjoy researching and writing about the books in my library, their authors, and even their former owners.  To help me do all that, I have assembled an extensive reference library of bibliographies, biographies, and other reference works.

Reading about bibliographical matters may become tedious to the non-initiated so instead, I shall present a picture display of my reference library, with many pictures and fewer words.   And I will post a link to the catalogue of my bibliographies and other reference works on Library Thing at the end of this blog.

                           The New Bible on SJ                     The Old Bible on SJ
                           published 2000                                   published 1915
                                                                                   supplemented 1939
                                                                                    reprinted 1984
               took Fleeman 30 years to compile his bibliography.  Both
        Fleeman and Courtney died before their books were published

   50th Anniversary Catalogue of Johnsonian Keepsakes;  Johnsonian Contact List

                   
                   
  Biographies of SJ in my library:  My Many Lives of Samuel Johnson
                                         
                                                      My Bible on books about books
                                                                 published 1939

                                           

                                                        Another copy,
                                                      my working copy,
                                        signed by my granddaughter Carrissa;
                                       now one of the treasures of my library
                                 note to Noah and my other grandchildren:
                                            don't even think about it!

                                Wrote about the former owner and the author in
           The Collector and the Collected:  Two Typophiles From New York

                                1921 edition (1st)                          1928 edition
                  reminds me of the the energizer bunny:   9th edition published in 1960
                                                 Lessons in Bookselling

The Bibles on Miniature Books                           published 1985
  published 2001 and 2000                         Levitan, Founder of Miniature Book Society
formerly owned by Don Brady
 

                                                   Grolier Club 1905
Vol 2 only of 3 vol set;  catalogue of English works "from Wither to Prior"

 

            Lowndes                                                                 Lowndes
            published 1834                                       published 1857-1864
           Vol 3 only of 4 vol set                                        revised and expanded by Bohn
                                                                            2 sets*, 11 vols ea

                                           *Vol 8 of 2nd set eaten by my dog
                                          "some books should be tasted . . ."

                           
                       English Books  1475-1900 Sawyer & Darton 1927
               STC English Books 1475-1640 Pollard & Redgrave 1946, reprinted 1969
                                    STC 1641-1700 compiled by Wing 1951

                                                       odd volumes
Brunet Tome Quatrieme 1843 (1810);      Dibdin Vol 2 1808;                Moss Vol 2 1825
used all three books in researching Greek and Latin classics in the Auchinleck Library

                                                          De Ricci 1921
       Subtitle:  A Practical Handbook of British and American Bibliography

     Wilson 1827  Catalogue of works relating to Shakespeare                    
Bartlett & Pollard 1916  Census of Shakespeare quartos 1594-1709

                                             Dodd, Mead & Co. 1907
   An account of the four folios and a census of known perfect copies of the First Folio

                              NUC 1977  All pre-1956 works of Shakespeare



               biographies and other books on Shakespeare catalogued on Library Thing

        Duff 1917                 (top) Cordasco 1970   ←18c bibliographies →Williams 1924
   Hellinga Supp 2009                  (bottom) Schwartz 1931
top:  Smollett, Richardson, Sterne, Fielding, Dibdin, Godwin, Gibbon, Young, Burke
left:  took Duff 28 years to compile his bibliography
bottom: 555 points on works by Eng authors; 555 points on works by Amer authors
right:  Armstrong, Shenstone, Akenside, Collins, Goldsmith, Churchill, Sheridan

                     Fabes 1930, 31, 32  Presentation 1930  Dedication 1931
Covers works by Abercombie, Arlan, Baring, Barrie, Bates, Beerbohm, Belloc, Bennett, Birrell, Bone, Brooke, Burke, Campbell, Chesterton, Conrad, Coppard, Corvo, Crackanthorpe, Crockett, Davidson, Davies, De la Mare, De Morgan, Douglas, Dobson, Dodgson, Dowson, Doyle, Drinkwater, Dunsany, Feuchtwanger, Firbank, Flecker, Freeman, Galsworthy, Graham, Graves, Haggard, Hall, Hanley, Hardy, Harris, Herbert, Hewlett, Hoult, Houseman, Hudson, Huxley, Jacobs, Jerome, Kennedy, Kipling, Lawrence, Ledwidge, Leslie, Lewis, Locke, Machen, Mackenzie, Mansfield, Masefield, Maugham, Meredith, Meynell, Montague, Moore, Mottram, Munro, Newton, Noyes, O'Casey, O'Flaherty, Phillpotts, Powys, Priestley, Quiller-Couch, Remarque, Sadleir, Sassoon, Sedgwick, Shaw,  Shiel, Sirwell, Somerville, Stevens, Stevenson, Symonds, Thomas, Tomlinson, Wallace, Walpole, Wells, Weyman, Woolf, Wilde, and Yeats

                                                          Fabes 1932

                 Roff 1979                Murray 1968 (1st 1900)   Green 1946
                                                Dobson 1970 (1st 1925)

                                            Breslauer Catalogue Sixty  1946
                               (more on Breslauer catalogues maybe next month)
                                                   

                                                      Seymour 2011

  Sabin Readex Microprint c.1967  172 parts in 29 vols completed 1936
                    Sabin 1-82  Eames 83-116  Vail 117-172
                                             My Bible on Americana

                            Johnson/Blanck 1936;  Fullerton 1932;  Waldman 1925

Howes 1st ed 1954 2nd ed 1962  Reprinted 1963, 1970, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1988
Reese Catalogues 294 and 295  2012 (50th anniversary of 1962 edition)

                                                      Jenkins 1977, 79

               Richardson 1966 (1st 1931)       Wood 2nd ed 1956 (1st 1949)

              Stonehill, Block & Stonehill 1927;  Halkett & Laing 1926-1934
                                      bibliographies on pseudonyms

                                                       Growoll 1898
                                            more on this book next month

                       (top) De Ricci 1969 (1st 1930);  (middle) Dickinson 1986;
       (left) Fletcher 1969 (1st 1902;) Quaritch 1892; Quaritch 1968 (1st 1892);
                             Cannon 1941; Bowker 1948 9th ed (1st 1912-13)
                                               for provenance research

                      Fox-Davies 1970 (reprint of 1929 7th ed, 1st ed 1895)

Burke PDF (1884); 23 Heraldry Books on CD: Boutell, Papworth etc.; Var. Ex Libris

                                                     Davenport 1909

                                                    McBride 1987

                                                        Gorlach  1998

                                                   UNC, Chapel Hill 1969
       bibliography of Eng & Am authors of detective stories (book length)
                                 

Sonnenschein 1969 (repub of 1910 3rd ed); 1896 (repnt of 1892 2nd ed; 1st ed 1887)
                               The 1896 ed was my first bibliography

                                           Allibone 1874; Supplement 1891
                                 used so much I have to resew and rebind vol 1

                                                   Browning 1958

     

                                       Lang 1912; Hist of Eng Lit
                                   Morley 2nd ed c.1877; First Sketch of Eng Lit
                       Legouis & Cazamian 1940 (1st 1930) Hist of Eng Lit

Drinkwater c.1923; Bateson 1941; Quennell 1986 (1981);  Benét 1965 2nd ed (1st 1948)

   Harvey 3rd ed 1946 rpnt 1955     Drabble 1985  1st ed Companion publ 1932

Hallam 1855 5th ed (1st 1837-39); Intro to Lit of Eur 15th, 16th and 17th Cent. 

Bagehot 1910;  Essays on Coleridge, Shakespeare, Cowper, Gibbon, Shelley etc.
 Taine 1877 (1st 1872) Hist of Eng Lit transl by H. Van Laun

                               Legouis 1953 (1934)                   Simonds 1902

      Northup 1925,             Courtney 1915,                  Sabin 1966 (1st 1877)
Northup:  Winslow Webber's copy
Courtney:  Multi-tasked, compiling this register and the Samuel Johnson bibliography
Sabin:  (subtitle) A Handy Book About Books Which Relate to Books

                                                      Oak Knoll c.2000
                                                 My Bible on bibliographies

                                               About Books c1990s

                                 

                                        Briscoe 1982;  Kaplan 1961
                    Kaplan's bibliography covers works published before 1945

                McKerrow 1928 (1927);  Esdaile 1974 4th ed 3rd im (1st 1931)

(top to bottom) Vitale 1971; Bühler, McManaway; Wroth 1949; Ferguson 1900;
Jones 1974;  Gore 1968 (1966).


And that's that.  I hope you enjoyed the picture tour of my reference library.   You can view the catalogue of my bibliographies, biographies, and other reference works on  my Library Thing pages.


ADDENDA

Here's a few reference books I've added to my library in the last four years:

Rogers 1996

Seymour 2016

Van Pelt 1898

Dickinson 1998

Starnes & Noyes 1946

A Census of Ladies in My Library

These ladies in my library are an enchanting lot.
There is not a one I would not like to have known.
Norman H. Strouse, 1966

In 1966, Ellen Shaffer, Rare Book Librarian of the Free Library of Philadelphia, became the first women to hold the office of President of the Manuscript Society.  And she invited her long-time friend, the distinguished book collector, Norman H. Strouse, to deliver the talk at the society's annual meeting.  "Ladies in My Library" was the title of his talk.

"Ladies in My Library" was also the title of the talk that Norman Strouse gave at the meeting of the Philobiblon Club on November 21, 1967:   "An Evening in Honor of Miss Mabel Zahn," the renowned bookseller of Sessler's Bookstore in Philadelphia.

And the following year, from September 3rd to November 17th, the Free Library of Philadelphia held an exhibition by the same title:  Ladies in My Library: Books and Letters From the Collection of Norman H. Strouse.

In my library, I have the typescript of Norman Strouse's talk before the Manuscript Society, which I recently acquired from Oak Knoll Books.  And I have two copies of the catalog of the exhibition at the Free Library of Philadelphia.  The cataloger of the exhibition suggested that other collectors might "enjoy making a census of their feminine representatives and comparing them with those of Mr. Strouse."


A Census of Ladies in My Library

While I enjoyed making a census of ladies in my library, my motley collection of books and letters is no match for the admirable display of fine bindings, not to mention letters literally from First Ladies, in Mr. Strouse's library.  But surprisingly, there are four ladies in my library who were ladies in Norman Strouse's library!

NOTE:  Many of the ladies in my library made names for themselves in more than one field.  But for simplicity's  sake, I will only list them in one category.


Women As Book Collectors

Estelle Doheny

Estelle Doheny (1875-1958) is one of the ladies in my library. And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library. She gave a portion of her library to St. Mary's Seminary in 1954, which included two copies of  Trees and Other Poems.   These copies  were part of lot number 371 of the Christie's Sale of the Estelle Doheny Collection held on Dec. 14, 2001.

The statement on the listings below: "First appearance of Kilmer's beloved poem," is incorrect. The poem first appeared in the August 1913 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.

Mary Hyde

Mary Hyde (1912-2003) is one of the ladies in my library. And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library.  Norman Strouse called her "The First Lady of Books" because of her Boswell-Johnson collection at the Four Oaks Library.   And in 1984 Mary Hyde became a lady of nobility, "Lady Eccles," when she married David, Viscount Eccles.

Four Oaks Farm and Four Oaks Library were the first books I acquired for my Mary Hyde collection.  At last count, I have over 135 books either by her, about her, or formerly owned by her.  And here is the listing of "The Beginning of the Collection" from my old webtv website:

Mrs. Piozzi

Mrs. Piozzi (1741-1821), also known as Hester Lynch Thrale, is one of the ladies in my library. I have a copy of the catalogue of her library, her anecdotes in Johnsoniana, and the books that Mary Hyde wrote about her. I have yet to read the marginal comments she wrote in Boswell's Life of Johnson but am looking forward to reading them when I'm old and grey. . . .

Alida Roochvarg

Alida Roochvarg (1922-1993) is one of the ladies in my library.  She collected  books about books for almost forty years (my area of expertise), and then decided that "the time had come to think of sending the collection out into the world."  The author and collector, Herman Abromson, claimed Alida Roochvarg as his mentor when both were members of the Long Island Book Collectors. And in the forward to the catalogue of her library, he wrote, "Through her collection, you glimpse a great book lady."


Maureen E. Mulvihill

Maureen E. Mulvihill, scholar and writer, Princeton Research Forum, is one of the ladies in my library. At a Florida Bibliophile Society meeting in October 2011, I had the pleasure of viewing some of her rare books and listening to her presentation,  "The Evolution and Education of a Collector (1980s-): The Mulvihill Collection of Rare and Special Books and Images."

Asta Beckett

Asta Beckett is one of the ladies in my library, and I am "honoured" to have her in my library.  Asta not only collects fine leather books, she makes a living by cleaning, reconditioning, and then selling them to other booklovers.  Here are some of her recent reconditioned bindings.   Norman Strouse would have loved them.



Women As Bookplate Collectors

Lydia M. Poirier

Lydia M. Poirier (1873-1936) is one of the ladies in my library. She was the librarian at the Duluth Public Library in the early 1900s and collected bookplates. She traded bookplates and corresponded with other bookplate collectors, including Wilber Macy Stone. I have nine of her letters in my autograph collection.



Women As Librarians
Ellen Shaffer

Ellen Shaffer (1904-1994) is one of the ladies in my library.  And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library as well.  She knew Norman Strouse for sixty years, from when she worked at Dawson's bookstore, when she was Rare Book Librarian at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and when she was Strouse's librarian at the Silverado Museum, a museum devoted to Robert Louis Stevenson.

The two letters from Ellen Shaffer displayed above were to the book collector, J. C. Dykes, whom she recognized from her days at Dawson's.  And the presentation to her displayed below is from Mike Harrison, written on her copy of Harrison's book, How to Build a Poor Man's Library.  Ironically, one of Norman Strouse's books was titled How to Build a Poor Man's Morgan Library.

Nancy H. Marshall

Here is the listing of this book from my old webtv website:
Great Libraries by Anthony Hobson, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1970. A great book from a great lady! I bought this book on ebay a few years ago from Nancy H. Marshall,  Retired Dean of University Libraries at the College of William and Mary, and a life-long collector of the many editions of Moore's Night Before Christmas. She is the author of Night Before Christmas, A Descriptive Bibliography of Clement C. Moore's Immortal Poem,  Oak Knoll Books, April, 2002. Here is the link to her website: http://www.nightbeforechristmas.biz/author.htm  

Centered on the book above is Nancy Marshall's business card which she included with a batch of prints of the Koran, a fourth century Greek Bible, royal portraits, and manuscripts and first editions. Her note on the reverse side of the card explains the prints: "Jerry--I had these from an exhibit I did many years ago--perhaps they will be of interest to you". ...like I said...."a great lady" ....and in My Library!


Women As Booksellers

Faith Legg

Faith Legg is one of the ladies in my library. She was the proprietor of The Guildhall Bookroom when I first started collecting books in the late 1980s while stationed in England.  I thought of her when I recently read Joel Silver's article in the Winter 2014 issue of Fine Books & Collections: "Collector and Bookseller:  A Vanishing Relationship?"   Faith Legg was my first mentor in the pleasures of book collecting.  And she taught me well.  When I had depleted her stock of books that were to my liking, she gave me copies of the PBFA membership list so I could find books in other bookstores around the English countryside.

Karen Thomson

Karen Thomson is one of the ladies in my library.  I never met her, but I received five of her exquisite catalogs of books on language while stationed in England in the late 1980s. And I acquired another sixty of her catalogs in 2012.   You can view the covers of  over twenty of her catalogs  in one of my blog posts from last year.

Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern

Leona Rostenberg (1908-2005) and Madeleine Stern (1912-2007) are ladies in my library.  And I have enjoyed reading their adventures in finding, buying, and selling rare books.  They too are dually qualified in "Women as Booksellers" and "Women as Authors."

Sheila Markham

Sheila Markham is one of the ladies in my library. She also qualifies in both "Women as Booksellers" and "Women as Authors.  Her interviews of other booksellers first appeared in the Bookdealer  in 1991.  Her Book of Booksellers: Conversations With the Antiquarian Book Trade was first published in hardback in 2003, and in my well-read  softcover copy in 2007.

Sheila Markham has a sequel to her first book that is due out in the Spring in a limited edition of 500 copies:
A Second Book of Booksellers:  Conversations With the Antiquarian Book Trade.

And this is what the mockup of the cover looks like:

Women As Autograph Sellers
Mary Benjamin

Mary Benjamin (1905-1998)  is one of the ladies in my library.  And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library.  Mary Benjamin was known  as "The Autograph Lady."  I have 60 issues of The Collector dating back to 1887 when her father, Walter R. Benjamin, first started his autograph business.  The earliest issue I have with his daughter, Mary Benjamin, as part of the company is 1926.  She took over the running of the company in the 1940s and ran it for another 50 years.  Yes.  Mary Benjamin earned her title as "The Autograph Lady."

Women As Bookbinders
Edith Diehl

Edith Diehl (1876-1953) is one of the ladies in my library.  And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library.  Nine of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library were bookbinders, including his wife.  And of the 82 items listed in the exhibition catalog, 32 of them were fine bindings.

I have one binding by Edith Diehl from her own library, a relatively plain binding displayed below.  Norman Strouse had a binding from her own library as well.

L. Averill Cole

L. Averill Cole (1880-1971) is one of the ladies in my library.  I'm surprised she wasn't included in the Strouse exhibition because she was one of the premiere binders of her day.   The image above shows parts of a letter to the book collector, William F. Gable, thanking him for a vase he gave her, and discussing a book she was binding.   She signs the letter "L. Averill Howland," but mentions that "L. Averill Cole" is still her professional name.

Women As Authors

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is one of the ladies in my library.  While not purposely collecting her,  ten book by and about her now sit on the shelves in my library.

Anne Fadiman

Anne Fadiman is one of the ladies in my library. And yes, I purposely acquired the books she has written. I even have the last issue she edited of The American Scholar.

Agnes Repplier

Agnes Repplier (1855-1950) is one of the ladies in my library.  I have ten of her books of essays in my library, and have enjoyed reading every one of them.  I also have an autograph letter she wrote to the author, Margaret Sutton Hopkins, who wrote under her maiden name, Margaret Sutton Briscoe.

Catherine Dille

Catherine Dille is one of the ladies in my library.  If you ever have a question about George Birkbeck Hill (and I had a few), then Catherine Dille is your woman!

BonSue Brandvik

BonSue Brandvik is one of the ladies in my library. And she is my youngest son's mother-in-law. My wife enjoyed reading her book, and can't wait for the second one.


Women As Editors
Susan F. Rosen

Susan F. Rosen is one of the ladies in my library.  She was the editor of Other People's Books:  Association Copies and the Stories They Tell, The Caxton Club, 2011.  There were 52 stories in all.  Can you imagine editing essays from 52 authors for one book?  No easy task! I was one of the authors,  and my essay went through several revisions.


Women As Loves of Our Lives

Linda Morris

Linda Morris is the love of my life.  She loves reading.  She loves football.  She loves baseball.  And she loves me.   I am blessed.  And do I know it!

Twelve Blogs for Christmas: Contributions to Biblionotes: Chapbooks

Last Christmas I started a custom in which I will post one of Walter Harris's Twelve Contributions to Biblionotes on My Sentimental Library blog. Last year's topic was "Ex-Libris" and this year's topic is "Chapbooks." Both pieces were written in the 1950s.

By now you must be wondering who Walter Harris is and what Biblionotes is. And I have yet to mention bibliomites. To provide background information for you, I posted "About Bibliomites, Biblionotes, and Walter 'Wally' Harris" on my Biblio Researching blog. I recommend you click on the link and read that blog post first. There will be a link at the end of it to return you to this blog post.

Merry Christmas and Enjoy!

To make it easier to read for you, I have printed "Chapbooks" in its entirety below the image of the typescript page.

Chapbooks

      The Chapman or Itinerant Trader is looked upon generally as a product of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century –– a sort of tallyman of the period. This is far from true however as he is referred to in a work published by Wynken de Worde about 1510. This book, a metrical version of the "History of Jacob and his Twelve Sonnes", has the following

           "Now leave we of them and speak we of the CHAPMAN
          That passed over the sea into Egypt Land."

Shakespeare later on has two references, one in Love's Labour's Lost

           "Beauty is bought by judgment of eye
           not uttered by base sale of CHAPMAN'S tongues."

And the other in Troilus and Cressida

           "Fair Diomed, you do as CHAPMEN do,
           Dispraise the thing you desire to buy."

      About the beginning of the sixteenth century there were circulating in France, a large amount of Farces, Tales, Almanachs, etc., consisting of just a few pages lightly stitched together, and carried round the country by itinerant booksellers known as colporteurs: later, publications of a similar nature began to appear in England, but were mostly translations from the French. It seems that the Chapmen were the sole purveyors, the little books being at first called Chapmans – books, which later developed into Chapbooks, and such they were named up to about 1840-1850, when this type of reading was displaced by the periodicals and family journals which had then begun to appear.

      The Chapman, whether he be a wanderer, tramp, or tradesman, toiling with his pack from village to village to lonely farm or wayside cottage, was a welcome figure. He usually carried cheap jewellery, ribbons and laces, and other small items besides books, ballads, and broadsides. Lavron in his "Cries and Habits of London" depicted a Chapman with a tray slung from his shoulders, very similar to those carried by street-traders of today.

     It is uncertain when the term Chapbook first came into use, but probably between 1650 and 1700. They were uninviting looking things crudely printed on bad paper, and decorated more often than not with a lurid coloured frontispiece and villainous woodcuts. Those issued in the seventeenth century dealt mainly with History, Legends, Shipwrecks, and Travel, whilst those that come later covered almost every subject imaginable. For boys there were tales of action and adventure, for the most part luridly sensational; for girls, stories of a rather sentimental domestic nature; and for older people, tales, stories, songs and valentines, pattern books, riddles and jest books, and a series of pious stories redolent with brimstone and Hell-fire. They were adapted to every kind of reader by their great variety and their cheapness, prices usually being one penny, sixpence, and one shilling. Some of the jest books were rather on the spicy side, full of coarse witicisms, but there were shades of humour to suit all classes.

     The historical section had a very wide range, and included many favourites such as Joseph & his Brethren, Fair Rosamund, Charles the Martyr, Guy of Warwick, Sir Richard Whittington, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, The Conquest of France, Elizabeth and Essex, and a host of others. The mythological, supernatural, and superstitious were well represented, as also were the humourous ones, especially those dealing with Courtship, Marriage, etc. A few of the more amusing in the latter category are "A York Dialogue between Ned and Harry," which gives a description of the courtship and marriage of a tradesman and a chambermaid; "The French King's Wedding or the Royal Frolic , being a pleasant account of the Amorous Intrigues, Comical Courtship and Surprising Marriage Ceremonies of Lewis XIV"; "Taffy's Progress to London: With the Welshman's Catechism", (this has a large woodcut depicting Taffy being pushed along in a wheelbarrow by his wife, with the baby strapped on her back); "Long Meg of Westminster" a story of her life and merry pranks, probably founded on fact; "Joaks upon Joaks, or No Joak like a True Joak together with, The diverting Fancies and Frolicks of Charles 2nd and his three Concubines." The period 1750-1850, seems to have been the most prosperous, for these queer little booklets teemed from the printers. They emanated from most of the larger towns including, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin, York, Birmingham, Worcester and Coventry, whilst smaller places like Paisley, Kilmarnock, Penrith, Aylesbury, Falkirk, Cirencester and others sent out regular if somewhat smaller consignments. London seems to have held the lead, with firms like Cluer and Dicey (the largest of them all), J. Dalton, T. Bland, J. Read, A Hind, Evans, Bettesworth; and in later years, Fairburn, and William Hone. In York was Kendrew; in Newcastle, J. White and Angus & Son; Nottingham, J. Burbage; Coventry, Turner and Morgan. Practically all the Chapbooks were issued anonymously, nor is very much known concerning the persons who executed the woodcuts. Many of the cuts were used for one or more books, as for instance, the cut designed for "Jack and the Giants" is also found in "David and Goliath"; another one represents both Miss Davis and Moll Flanders; yet another serves its purpose in Valentine and Orson and Fortunatus.

      About 1830-1840 this type of reading began to fade away, but whatever may be said of these curious little scraps of literature, they played their part and served their purpose of providing congenial reading at a low price. It is now recognized that a great deal of the social life and habits, tastes and ides of past centuries can be gleaned from the Chapbooks they read. They are getting increasingly scarce, consequently there is a desire to possess these humble little books which are worth many times their small initial price. These fore-runners of the modern thriller, usually depending on sensational details for their appeal, are in common with most publications in paper covers, rarely met with in their original state.

     As a whole, the subject of Chapbooks has never been adequately dealt with, the existing reference books confining themselves to special periods. Mons. Nisard in his "L'Histoire des Livres Populaires ou de la Litterature des Colporteurs", deals very fully with the early French publications, and John Ashton in "Eighteenth Century Chapbooks" has done a wonderful job in producing an amusing and instructive book, which gives a very representative list of these booklets with facsimiles of the woodcuts. Other quite useful works are Halliwell-Phillipps "Notices of Fugitive Tracts and Chap-Books", 1849; and the two volumes issued by Andrew Tuer, "Forgotten Children's Books", and "Children's Books of Yesterday".

     There are collection of Chapbooks in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, but probably the largest collection in the world is at Harvard University Library.

And here is a link to last Christmas's blog post on Ex-Libris.