BOUILLABAISSE FOR BIBLIOPHILES

Aficionados everywhere will welcome this collection of writings on that most insidious of passions, book collecting. And it may well be that an aspirant, groping his way to Joining the fraternity will find the inspiration- as well as the basic principles here. It is a diversified collection, geared to bookish tastes, containing Verse, essays, stories, lore, epigrams, bits of history, adventures in detective scholarship, and a number of famous incidents in the realm of book collecting. Memorable among these is the story of the Malahide -- Fettercairn documents which enormously expanded the material on Boswell; the Bernal Diaz manuscript contretemps which bid fair to be an international incident, and many others less famous. Each section is presented with a brief biographical note and comment. Among the contributors are such well known bibliophiles as Edward Newton, Max Beerbohn, Pearson, Winterich, Richard Burton, Carolyn Wells, Starrett and others. And some of the contributors are better known in other fields of books, such as Milton, Leigh Hunt, Henry Ward Beecher. One significant chapter in entitled The Bible Through the Ages, and is written by Ben Zevin. This is valuable as a reference tool- valuable for its incidental mention of many sources of information about books and book collecting- valuable as a book to dip into again and again.