The Pleasures of Bibliophily: Fifty Years of the Book Collector, an Anthology.(Book Review)

The Pleasures of Bibliophily: Fifty Years of the Book Collector, an Anthology. Edited by Nicolas J. Barker. London: British Library; New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2003. ix, 310 pp. $49.95. ISBN 0-7123-4779-8; 1-58456-097-5.

Here is another handsome volume produced by a team of publishers that, over the past few years, has become exceptionally influential in the discipline known as the history of the book, a discipline that might be better termed the history of communication via the medium of the book. The Book Collector is a periodical known to everyone with even the slightest interest in books, readership, and other fields, in short, in bibliology taken in the widest sense of the word.

The Book Collector emerged from the collapse of Book Handbook or, rather, the collapse of its publisher, the Dropmore Press. A. S. G. Edwards provides a brief history, including an overview of the different editors, in the "foreword" as he stresses the bibliophilic nature of the Book Collector. In the opinion of this reviewer, "bibliophily" is too limiting a word, as is indeed the title of the periodical itself, so wide-ranging is its scope. The initial essay, Nicolas Barker's "The Book Collector: Thoughts on Scoring a Century," expands what Edwards writes in the author's own special, personal, and affable way.

This volume celebrates fifty years of the publication of a journal that has become a leader in its field, so ably directed by Nicolas Barker during the larger portion of its existence, valued for the variety, depth, and excellence of its articles. The major difficulty faced by the editor was how to choose from among so many fine studies the ones that would make up this celebratory volume. Excellence and variety served as inspiration, and fine articles by the top scholars in the fields abound, including Graham Pollard, David…