Collecting Rare Books

Book collecting is unusual among collecting fields in having a mature, published scholarship. For most significant authors and subjects there exists a bibliography that describes what a correct copy contains, down to the signatures, the advertisements and the state of a particular line on a particular page. The collector's first task is to learn to use it.

Edition, impression, issue, state

These four words are not interchangeable, and a great deal of value hangs on the difference.

An edition comprises all copies printed from substantially the same setting of type. An impression is a single printing from that setting; a first edition may run to several impressions, and only the first is normally described as the first printing. An issue is a part of an edition deliberately altered and separately published — a new title page, a different publisher, a cancelled leaf. A state is an unplanned variation arising during printing, such as a correction made while the press was running.

The first edition, first impression, in the earliest state, is usually the most sought after, but not invariably: the second issue is occasionally the rarer, and for some titles a presentation or subscriber's copy outranks both.

Collation

To collate is to check that a copy is complete and correctly assembled: every leaf, every plate, every map, and the advertisements at the back, which are frequently discarded and often carry the evidence of date. A copy lacking a single plate is a different object, commercially, from a complete one.

Collation is done against the bibliography, not against another copy in the same room. Learn to read the collational formula; it is less forbidding than it looks and it is the language in which books are described.

Sophistication

A sophisticated copy has been made up from more than one copy, or improved by the insertion of leaves, plates or a binding from elsewhere. It is not fraud when disclosed, and it is common in older books. It is a material fact and a good catalogue discloses it. Learn to notice mismatched paper tone, differing plate impressions and margins that do not agree.

Bindings

A book in its original binding — original boards with the paper label, publisher's cloth, an untouched contemporary calf — is generally preferred to the same text rebound, however handsomely. Original condition is evidence; a fine modern binding, whatever its craftsmanship, replaces evidence with decoration.

That said, a distinguished binding is itself collectable, and a contemporary armorial binding may be the most interesting thing about a copy. What matters is knowing which you have and paying accordingly.

Condition

The market is severe about condition, and rightly so. Foxing, damp-staining, trimmed margins, restored joints, supplied endpapers and washed leaves all bear on value. A very good copy of a common book is often a better purchase than a poor copy of a rare one — with the honourable exception of books so scarce that any copy is an event.

Building a collection

Collections that hold their interest have a shape. A single author in depth, including the periodical appearances and the translations; a subject followed across three centuries; the output of one press; books from one library, reassembled. A collection of unrelated famous titles is an accumulation, and it behaves as one when it returns to the market.

Buy the best copy you can afford within your subject rather than a lesser copy of something outside it. Read the catalogues, including those of sales you do not attend; they are the best available education. And handle books wherever you can, because the difference between a fine copy and a good one is learnt in the hand rather than on a screen.