It’s Friday, Let’s Read: catalogs & books
Last month, Allie Alvis (Book Historia on social media, check her website) shared two catalogs, from the Winterthur Library, that anyone can access at Internet Archive.
One is an illustrated catalog on revolving bookcases:
Danner’s revolving book cases (1884?)
I started to search for “bookcases” at Internet Archive between 1890 and 1910 and you can also go down that rabbit hole: you’ll find long gone patents about the construction of bookshelves and even magazines with advice, like Work. If you don’t restrict by date, you can also find manuals you can borrow to also learn how to build bookcases (didn’t find a revolving one, though). From here to writing desks, like the ones used in Jane Austen’s time, and reading stands is a small step. This is quite dangerous since soon enough you’ll be thinking about buying some wood and DIY.
The other is precisely a catalog of reading stands (we now have them for ereaders, with remote control):
Holloway reading stand and dictionary holder (1892?)
And since we’re talking about books and bookcases, I’m adding to the pile two books from Project Gutenberg you can read right here, right now:
Gossip in the library by Edmund Gosse (1891). LibriVox also has the audiobook and you can read about Gosse at Wikipedia. In this collection of essays, Gosse goes through several books to talk about libraries and book collectors. You can also head to Internet Archive to check some of those books like The Herbal or General History of Plants (1633).
“Such a man is liable to great temptations. He is brought face to face with that enemy of his species, the borrower, and dares not speak with him in the gate. If he had a book-plate he would say, “Oh! certainly I will lend you this volume, if it has not my book-plate in it; of course, one makes a rule never to lend a book that has.” He would say this, and feign to look inside the volume, knowing right well that this safeguard against the borrower is there already. To have a book-plate gives a collector great serenity and self-confidence.” – Edmund Gosse
The private library, what we do know, what we don’t know, what we ought to know about our books by Arthur L. Humphreys (1897)
And I must say this is a favorite: Humphreys goes through all the aspects of creating a library. From what is a good edition to the art of reading, but also talks about the care of books and their classification, without forgetting bookcases: “The chief faults of bookcases arise from their being designed and made by men who have never used a book.”
Have a wonderful reading weekend!
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