“As Mr Hazlitt shows, his field of choice is wide enough. Ancient typography fascinates some, but here a long purse is needed. Bibles and Testaments, Liturgies, Books of Hours, or similar devotional works appeal to others. The British Museum Library, for instance, is singularly rich in editions in all languages of the ‘Imitatio Christi.’ Books of travel, of voyages, and on topography, such as county and town histories, have all their devotees, and of late years the search for Alpine literature has become so much keener that some books, printed barely forty years ago, have quite doubled their published price. Yet even the systematic collector, as Mr Hazlitt tells us, often runs risks. Here, as among all things human, fashions and whims exist, and a particular class of literature may have ‘booms’ and ‘slumps,’ like certain ‘stocks’ of a questionable character. The books, for instance, in William Morris’s library were ‘below mediocrity in state,’ and of little intrinsic value, yet they excited keen competition, and went for sums ‘which were simply absurd.’”—Standard.
“The subject abounds with stories, for, indeed, in a sense which the author of the aphorism little imagined, habent sua fata libelli. We might fill columns with curiosities about the buying and selling of books from these pages. Mr Hazlitt, however, is not of the non-literary collectors; no man could write such a book as this about the subject if he were. Readers, therefore, as well as buyers, may find ‘The Book Collector’ to their taste. Then there is the eleventh chapter, with its many interesting anecdotes of inscriptions; often the casual name or note which some purchaser or owner of a bye-gone time has written will be of more interest than the volume itself.”—Spectator.
“There is pleasure nevertheless—nay, much intellectual and sometimes pecuniary profit—in the pursuit, when intelligently pursued. Mr Hazlitt discourses pleasantly on every side of book-collecting, and his book will be valued by all interested in the subject.”—Chambers’ Journal.
Illustrated with upwards of 450 Engravings on Wood
Amateur’s Guide to Architecture
By S. Beale
Embracing Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman, Grecian, Italian, Renaissance, and Early English Specimens of Tombs, Doors, Windows, Arches, Bridges, Aqueducts, Balconies, Roofs, Supports, Porticos, Turrets, Steeples, Pillars, Columns, Ornaments, Capitals, Mouldings, examples of Wood Carving, etc.
Post 8vo. Pub 3s. 6d.
CONTENTS