Nonfiction · 1886
Books and Bookmen
Lang on collecting, and on the pleasures of wanting books one cannot have. He writes on the Elzevirs and how to tell a real one, on famous bindings — Grolier's, Madame de Pompadour's — and on the French rarities that drive collectors hardest, among them Le Pastissier François, a cookery book worth more than most literature, and early editions of Rabelais and Molière. One essay turns aside entirely to Japanese bogie-books, the illustrated demonologies of Hokusai and his successors, which Lang describes with the enthusiasm of someone who has just discovered them.
Andrew Lang published Books and Bookmen in 1886, with facsimiles of the title-pages and bindings he describes. It is bibliography written as entertainment, by a man who admitted that the hunt mattered more to him than the quarry.
This Bibliomancer edition presents the essays complete.
Contents
New editions
Never lose your place.
This book is free to read in full, and stays that way. Leave an address: one click confirms it and opens a free account, so your progress and bookmarks sync across every device. You'll also hear when the next restored edition enters the archive. Terminate at any time.
About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Source mind
About the author
1844–1912 · Victorian
Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was born in Selkirk and educated at St Andrews, Glasgow and Oxford, where he held a fellowship at Merton College before turning to literary journalism in London. A folklorist, classicist, historian, poet and immensely prolific reviewer, he is best remembered as the general editor of the twelve "colour" fairy books (1889–1910), for which his wife, Leonora Blanche Lang, and other collaborators carried out much of the actual translation under his direction. He also wrote fairy tales of his own, among them Prince Prigio, and a History of Scotland.
Adjacent records
