the book collector
This was a socio-economic impact on the market that is an exception to McKitterick’s general theme of evolving bibliograph- ic progress. He sees printed bibliography largely as proactive rather than reactive, as the determiner of taste rather than the result: ‘As a general rule, collecting followed bibliographical guidance.’ This is exemplified in a letter (which he does not quote) that James Mowat wrote from Paris on 30 January 1663 to William Kerr, third Earl of Lothian: I have bought and payed all the bookes mentioned in the incloas’d memoir, all bond in one fazon, de veau marbre , with the titles in gould letter on the back. I will say nothing of the handsome and proprenes, only that knowing men hath mad esteeme of them. 2 Another bibliographic hero, and one of the first to apply some methodology to his perception of rarity, was the Italian-born Nicola Francesco Haym whose Notizia de’ libri rari della lingua Italiana (London, 1726) cannot be separated from his work in London as a composer and librettist of Italian operas, the fashion that had been introduced by returning Grand Tourists and Italian residents in London. An extract from Haym’s address to the reader (here translated from the Italian) is almost McKitterick’s thesis writ small and as he does not draw on it in detail, it seems worth quoting: As well as the author and the subject attention has also been paid to the merit of the impression, in the quality of the types used, the correctness of the text, whether it is fuller than other editions, and often, and this is of some importance, the quality of the paper used, and had the mean- ness of printers not been joined to another step, it is certain we would not see printing in such a state of deterioration compared with what it was in its earliest days; and if it were not for the fact that today some few printers who are ashamed of present abuses, know their own power to maintain this noblest of arts, we should see it reduced to nought. Thus books printed from about 1460 until 1600 and shortly afterwards are more sought after and valued than those printed later. … A crucial factor in Haym’s ground-breaking book (which in 2 . Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr, First earl of Ancram and his son William, third earl of Lothian , Edinburgh 1895, Vol. II, p. 531.
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