the book collector
understand why the first decades of the seventeenth are dealt with relatively cursorily. Despite the title the intention was to cover the period ‘from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centu- ries’, beginning when printed auction and retail catalogues start to become the norm. In asking what it was that made an old book ‘rare’ David McKitterick has raised questions that are still valid today. As he concludes: ‘The challenge, what to keep and how to keep it, is in fact simply an old question posed in a twenty-first century context.’ With its chronological as well as thematic approach McKitterick has produced a historiography of pre-analytical printed bibliog- raphy in the period 1640–1840 that should be read by everyone interested in the field. The book is let down only by its illustrations, mostly of title-pages, which are printed in the grey sludge that only Cambridge University Press seems to use. What rare books one should buy may, perhaps, be summed-up in Arnold Bennett’s words in Literary Taste (1909) as recently quoted by ‘J.C.’ in The Times Literary Supplement : Buy! Buy whatever has received the imprimatur of critical authority. Buy without immediate reference to what you read. Surround yourself with volumes as handsome as you can a V ord.
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