Bibliomania

Dibdin’s Bibliomania is an anthem to the printed book, a warning to the unwary about the perils of obsessive book-collecting, and the confessions of a rabid book-collector. As a casual glance at the book will show, Dibdin’s footnotes predominate over text, and it is in the footnotes that the interest lies. They invite questions as often as they answer them. What is the supposed similarity between ‘Orator’ Henley’s library and Addison’s memoranda for the Spectator? What cutting words did Edward Gibbon write about Thomas Hearne? Why should we not be surprised to find a book on American history by a Spanish admiral in the library of the President of the Royal Society? Who was Captain Cox who ‘could talk as much without book, as any Innholder betwixt Brentford and Bagshot’? Was Polydore Vergil a plagiarist and John Bagford a biblioclast? What is bloterature? Sometimes Dibdin tells us, sometimes he assumes we know, and sometimes he chooses to tantalise us. The endnotes provide some of the answers and will, it is hoped, lead readers to discover new books and new writers, or, more often and more pleasurably, old books and old writers. This book is based upon Dibdin’s first edition of 1809, to which have been added an introduction and eighty-five pages of valuable endnotes, mostly concerned with biographical details of the printers, librarians, bookbinders, writers, book-collectors and Bibliomaniacs to whom Dibdin refers. An appendix contains John Ferriar’s Bibliomania, the poem which prompted Dibdin’s work. There are also a substantial bibliography and index. This book will be invaluable to bibliographers, librarians, cultural historians and all those interested in books and book people. It gives a valuable insights into antiquarianism in general and book-collecting in particular. Dibdin’s book ranges widely, from Juliana Barnes, Wynkyn de Worde, Michael Maittaire and the St Albans Schoolmaster, to Thomas Hope, Edward Rowe Mores, William Hunter and Horace Walpole. Many of his footnotes (which take up far more of the book than the text) contain details of the important book sales of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century to tantalise the reader: Caxton’s Boke of Chivalrie selling for 11 shillings in 1756; Grenville’s 1800 edition of Homer selling for an astounding GBP99 15s in 1804. Peter Danckwerts studied Book Publishing at Oxford Polytechnic, Bibliography & Textual Criticism at the University of Leeds, Mathematics with the Open University, and Medieval Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is currently preparing an edition of Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers for Tiger of the Stripe.