Something Old...
While I have eschewed many of the eccentricities of the literature scholar (including a PhD), there are a few that I remain faithful to. Foremost among those (or at least second, after usage of ridiculously long words like "ridiculously") is a love of old books. I'm not just referencing books that were PENNED in yesteryear (though they are great), but rather books that were PRINTED then, as well.
Old/rare book collecting is a hobby that isn't really commensurate with my bank account. If you want to get extravagant with it, you can spend a small fortune on old books. I do not HAVE a small fortune. Or a large fortune. Or really any fortune that does NOT emanate from a small, glazed cookie eaten after an Oriental meal.
As a result, I haunt old bookstores and browse incessantly, until I find rarities that I want to own that fit into my price range. This only happens once every few years.
People often wonder why the hell I would take so much pleasure in finding these old books when I could buy new ones for a lot cheaper and get the same story. I'll try and explain via my most recent acquisitions.
I got the crown jewel of my current collection on a recent trip to Plymouth, Massachusetts. My girlfriend, recognizing my dorkish proclivities, took me to a rare book store. I found a copy of Tennyson's Idylls of the King printed in 1867. Miraculously, it was within my price range, so I snatched it up. As to why the owner was selling it for as little as he was, I have no idea, but its not for me to question a good bargain. He rang it up, so I assume he knew he was giving it away. (Judging by some of the amazing things this man had, an 1867 copy of Idylls of the King was probably just a small fish in a huge pond, anyway. I did some research on the fellow after the fact, and it turns out he's a kingfish in the rare book world.)
Mind you, Idylls of the King was originally published in 1859, so my copy was printed less than a decade after the work was first exposed to Tennyson's public.
My copy isn't the work of a "dead author" entombed with five different prefaces, forewords, and introductions. There isn't tasteful "marketing cover art" chosen by someone over at Penguin books. It's not an "e-book". It is just Tennyson's work, in and of itself. It is what it is and it means what it means. At the beginning of the book, he is just "Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L. - Poet Laureate". There's not a set of dates giving the span of his life, or a dramatized picture. The only "introduction", per se, is Tennyson's dedication of the work to long-time admirer Prince Albert.
I'm guessing the assumption was that if you really had a question about the work, you could go look up Tennyson himself (who was roaming the earth until 1892, if memory serves me).
When I look through these old books there is, paradoxically perhaps, something very fresh about them. In 1867, Idylls wasn't a "classic" or the "zeitgeist of romanticism". It was just a really good book of verse, something you probably heard about through word of mouth, or perhaps read about in the local paper.
I like to try and take myself back to the time when my copy of an old book was written. I wonder how someone back then, in England, would have perceived Idylls. At that time, Romanticism wasn't another well-studied "movement"; it was a fresh and vibrant cultural trend. Better yet, it was open rebellion against the stiff emotional reserve that had become common in some artistic mediums at that time.
That's very appealing to me. I think there's a strong resonance there with a lot of the artists I really like today.
To make the matter more interesting, the my old copy has a unique history spanning almost 150 years. It was published by Moxon & Co. in London. The fine binding (which has lasted more than a century and is still fairly sturdy) suggests that this was not a cheap book. Sometime shortly after being published, it must have been purchased by a John M. Sherman, whose name is still pencilled on the first page. The handwriting has a neat, flowing elegance to it; something from an age when the typewriter was still totally supplicant to the hand-written word. His script is neat, balanced, and precise. I'm guessing he was both educated and at least moderately wealthy.
Perhaps more interesting is his the small family crest, used as a form of quick identification, which Mr. Sherman carefully cut and pasted into the front cover of the book. It lends further credence to my theory that Sherman came from a "respected family" (as most people wouldn't HAVE a pre-printed family crest on hand to slap into a book). More importantlly, though, it's the sort of thing you'd do to a book when you A) love it and B) want to make sure that it is definitively part of your library. I can't help but wonder how Idylls of the King affected John M. Sherman. Did it change his life? Did he read it and then put it away in disgust, frustrated by Tennyson's sappy-seeming take on the human condition?
I'll never know, but that doesn't take the fun out of speculating.
From the seller, I know that this copy was bought in an old bookstore along Charing Cross Road in London during the early nineties. That leaves a huge gap in the historical life of the book. How long did it stay with Mr. Sherman? Was it sold to the London bookstore by an uninterested family member after he died? Did he lose his enchantment with it, and either sell it himself, or pass it onto another? How long did it simply sit on someone's shelf, ignored and collecting dust? How did it survive the bombing of London? What untold stories (that will remain forever untold, in all likelihood) surround this book?
These questions fascinate me. They really help this book, this inorganic mass, really come to life. To me, at least, that's more than worth the money. You might say it's a really good bargain. You might say that is what literature is all about in the first place. Stories within stories within stories... in a never-ending chain. Even this post is just another chapter in that book's on-going history.
-Ken