They Made Me a Book Collector

[Image courtesy of The Helfond Gallery in San Anselmo, CA]

Hello Biblio-friends.  Well, I'm back on the blog trail and thought I would begin this entry by addressing the title of the image to the left.  I love this imaginative play on the old pulp thrillers with a bibliophile connection. And nothing could be closer to the truth when it comes to book collectors and collecting.

Book collectors are not born...they are made, plain and simple.  While no one (at least that I am aware of) has forced an unwilling citizen into building a book collection by means of an injection, those of us in the collectible book trade do go out of our way to lure like-minded people toward book acquisition.  But unless the citizen is in some way inclined to purchase books...books that they have no desire to part with and build a collection...there is very little we can do force the issue. So there must be some proclivity on the part of the citizen for ownership before members of the book trade and the bibliophile can engage.  Therefore, our mutual relationship with regard to the arena of 'book collecting" is consensual not imposed. 

The function of booksellers in the book collecting game is to purchase and inventory material of interest to collectors.  The collector seeks out copies of material of interest to them and their collection that meets their criteria regarding edition, condition and subject matter.

I have never "made" a book collector...let me correct that by saying that I have never forced anyone to collect books.  The collectors I have had dealings with over the last 27 years have all been infected with the collecting virus that may have lain dormant for any number of years before we came into contact.  In some ways, I think of booksellers who serve the needs of collectors as something of a doctor but only in the broadest sense of the word.  If we're on our game, we look for symptoms of the collector's virus:  the request for specific titles, authors or subject matter, the close inspection of a book's condition, the proper removal of a book from a shelf then we do our best to alleviate the problems related to their condition:  The problems that are caused by books.

There is a difference between book ownership and book collecting.  The former is about acquisition and the latter concerns acquisition with discrimination.  At Gregor Rare Books we aim to fulfill the needs of discriminating bibliophiles, and in my next posting I will discuss the habits and criteria of a discriminating collector.