A Book Hunter's Bibliocatechism: Part Two

The general inspiration for this “bibliocatechism” came from John T. Winterich’s Collector’s Choice (1926), a gathering of essays offering advice to book collectors.  He devoted a chapter to his own bibliocatechism of fifty questions.  His was more weighted to general literary topics than this.  I thought a version focusing on rare book hunters would be an appropriate homage.  The questions are wide-ranging within the subject and carry no theme beyond whatever came to mind.  May this entertainment stretch your biblio-knowledge and provide a few moments of pleasant distraction.  Answers are found at the end.  For Part One see http://www.bookcollectinghistory.com/2018/02/a-book-hunters-bibliocatechism-part-one.html

26.  This collector claimed 160 acres of government land in Oklahoma based on his mother’s Creek Indian bloodline.  The land turned out to be oil-rich and he was a millionaire before he turned twenty-five.  His collection of art, books and manuscripts on all phases of Indian culture became a well-known museum.

a)  Edward Ayer

b) Thomas Gilcrease

c) Everett DeGolyer

d) Thomas W. Field

Bonus fact:  His wife was the winner of the 1924 Miss America contest.

27.  In 2019, she became the first woman to head the Christie’s NYC book department following in the steps of such prominent bookmen as Stephen Massey, Francis Wahlgren, and Tom Lecky.  She is:

a) A. N. Devers

b) Heather O’Donnell

c) Christina Geiger

d)  Gigi Austin

28.  The infamous Titanic disaster took many lives including a book collecting prodigy who died at age 27.  He was planning to attend the next session of the Robert Hoe auction in NYC.  His grief-stricken mother built a great library at Harvard in his honor.

a)  Harry Widener

b)  Henry Folger

c)  John T. Rockefeller, 3^rd.

d)  Pierpont Morgan, Jr.

29.  One of the foundation collections of the Humanities Research Center at UT-Austin was acquired in 1958 (second batch in 1964).  This mighty collector assembled a spectacular library of modern literature including association copies, manuscripts, and letters by James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Beckett, Shaw, and many more.  He is little known because his collection was absorbed into the institution.

a)  Richard Oram

b) T. E. Hanley

c)  Robert Lee Wolff

d)  Thomas Staley

Bonus fact:  His second wife was an exotic dancer who became deeply interested in the collection over time and wrote a racy autobiography late in life.

30.  Called “Lefty” by friends, this charismatic collector immersed himself in eighteenth century English life via Horace Walpole.  For fifty years he gathered all things Walpole including printed works, manuscripts, letters, books from Walpole’s library, portraits, drawings, architectural designs, and artifacts.  He also gathered similar material of Walpole’s contemporaries.  The massive collection is housed in Farmington, Connecticut under the auspices of a major university close by.  It is an essential research stop for anyone researching 18^th-century English life and letters.

a)  Robert H. Taylor

b)  James Harden

c)  Wilmarth Lewis

d)  Chauncey Tinker

31.  She had a fondness for John Keats above all, forming a major collection of his works and writing an in-depth two volume biography of the poet.  However, her 12,000-volume library (gifted to Harvard) also contained important book, manuscripts and letters of many 18^th and 19^th century authors including Hardy, Austin, Bronte and Ben Johnson.  In her own time, she was better known as a writer.  Who was she and what was her best-known genre?

a)  Margaret Fuller, journalist

b) Emily Dickinson, poetry

c)  Amy Lowell, poetry

d)  Gertrude Stein, novelist

Bonus fact:  She once graced the cover of Time magazine, reading a book.

32.  He was an early champion and collector of Joseph Conrad and authored Fishers of Books, a first-hand view of the fevered collecting excitement of the 1920s.  He also compiled a bibliography of Booth Tarkington.  Pummeled economically by the Great Depression, he became disenchanted with expensive high spot collecting and later focused more on his writing.  He had a lengthy career as editor of Country Gentleman, Ladies’ Home Journal¸ and World’s Work.

a) Richard Curle

b) Barton Currie

c) Christopher Morley

d) Barton Roscoe

33.  She trained under Wilberforce Eames and George Parker Winship.  She mentored a young Frederick Goff.  Her area of focus was incunabula, but she wrote on a variety of bibliographic subjects. She was long-time librarian of the Annmary Brown Memorial Library at Brown University.  Her autobiography Librarians are Human is one of the underappreciated gems of biblio-literature and is filled with entertaining vignettes of many well-known bookmen and women.

a) Henrietta Bartlett

b) Belle da Costa Greene

c) Margaret Stillwell

d) E. Miriam Lone  

34.  This renowned urologist and teacher built several important book collections but his most notable focused on Leonardo da Vinci.  He worked closely with bookseller Jake Zeitlin who supplied many of the gems over four decades.  His library of Vinciana was gifted to UCLA.

a)  Herbert E. Evans

b)  Elmer Belt

c)  John F. Fulton

d)  Harvey Cushing

Bonus Fact:  He was a pioneer in sex reassignment surgery.

35. Formed over forty-five years, this extensive collection documenting women at work contains well-known examples of women’s history and the arts complimented by a wide range of material produced by women “scholars, printers, publishers, laborers, scientists, artists, and political activists.”  In 2015 the collection found at home at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library.  The collector who assembled it is:

a)  Lisa Ungar Baskin

b) Dorothy Sloan

c) Priscilla Juvelis    

d) Mary Hyde

36.  His recent untimely passing sent reverberations throughout the rare book trade.  He apprenticed with Jake Zeitlin before opening his own book shop in partnership with his then wife.  The two printed twenty-five titles under their Press of the Pegacycle Lady in the 1970s.  Although an expert bookman in many areas, his Sixties roots were exemplified by his formation of important collections on psychoactive drug related literature and Vegetarianism, now at Harvard and the Lilly Library, respectively.  Later in life he bought and renovated the Hacienda Hot Springs Spa in Desert Hot Springs.

a) William Dailey

b) William Reese

c) Michael R. Thompson

d) Frank Klein

37.  His Principles of Bibliographical Description forever changed the field of bibliography drawing many disciples and not a few detractors.

a) Charlton Hinman

b) Philip Gaskell

c) William B. Todd

d) Fredson Bowers

Bonus fact:  He was avid breeder of dogs and judge at dog shows, his first book being a handbook on dogs.

38.  This collector was chairman of Ginn & Heath publishers and built a world-class collection of textbooks including manuscripts, incunabula, primers and hornbooks, now at Columbia.  He authored two well-received books based on the collection, The Education of Shakespeare and The Education of Chaucer.   He also presented a large library of Italian literature to Wellesley College in memory of his wife and formed an extensive library on the French and Indian War. 

a) George A. Plimpton

b) John Shaw Pierson

c) William Speck

d) Winston Coleman

Bonus fact:  His grandson was a notable journalist, literary editor, and sports writer.

39.  His father avidly collected Stephen Foster.  He decided to pursue a much wider field, using many of the “most famous” biblio-lists as an outline to construct a formidable collection with exceptional holdings in literature, Americana, medicine, and science.  The collection became the foundation for one of the great rare book libraries in the United States. 

a) Henry Folger

b) Henry Huntington

c) J. K. Lilly, Jr

d) Walter Beinecke

Bonus fact:  He underwrote the funding for Jacob Blanck’s Bibliography of American Literature.

40.  Thomas Streeter ranks high on any list of legendary book collectors, but he was also a formidable bibliographer, authoring the monumental Bibliography of Texas 1795-1845 based on his own collection.  The auction of his Americana library at Sotheby Parke-Bernet from 1966-1969 was a landmark sale.  However, his Texana collection was not included.  Where did it go?

a) University of Texas-Austin

b) Alamo Research Center, San Antonio

c) Beinecke Library, Yale

d) Retained by the family and viewable by appointment

41.  The Grolier Club of NYC formally began admitting women members in 1976.  (Although women gave guest lectures as early as the 1890s.)  The first woman to serve as president of the Grolier Club (2002-2006) was this Churchill collector.

a) Mary Hyde

b) Anne Lyon Haight

c) Susan Jaffe Tane

d) Carolyn Smith

42.  At age 11, he purchased from the Henkels auction house an illustrated edition of Reynard the Fox.  Admitting afterward he was insolvent for the amount, owner Stan Henkels laughed, put him on a payment plan, and proclaimed he was “the very first baby bibliomaniac to come my way.”  He would later be instrumental in building some of the greatest collections of the 20^th century and leave his own collection to establish a museum.

a)  Henry Huntington

b) A.S.W. Rosenbach

c)  Henry Folger

d) Lathrop Harper 

43.  His family business catalogues were groundbreaking and world renowned.  His book collection of early illustrated books and prints was arguably equal to the professional fame.  He would gift the Library of Congress his collection of books but retained it during his lifetime and added to its holdings.

a) William Clements

b) William Andrews Clark

c) Walter Beinecke

d) Lessing Rosenwald   

Bonus Fact:  The family business, Sears, rivaling the size of Walmart and Amazon in its day, has descended into bankruptcy and dismemberment.

44.  He was a prominent book collector who made a fortune as a Broadway producer during the Twenties only to lose all of it in the Depression.  He also published several distinguished literary limited editions via his Watch Hill Press.  In the 1930s and 40s he became known for his writings on fine foods and wine.  David Randall in Dukedom Large Enough recounts how he acquired and sold the collector’s books, a story not without adventure and tribulations.  Randall notes that “the reason [he] stored his library was to keep this asset from his creditors, as I found out when I tried to sell it.”

a) Crosby Gaige

b) Mitchell Kennerley

c) Harry B. Smith

d) Jerome Kern

45. This champion water skier in his youth rose to prominence in the accounting field.  His collection of Baskerville printings and biblio-material, particularly his auction / private library catalogues, are world-class.  He has printed many pamphlets and ephemera on his private press for over fifty years.  He also has the ex-Folger Library Hinman collator in his dining room.

a) William B. Todd

b) William P. Barlow, Jr.

c) Thomas Tanselle

d) Michael Winship

46.  A transplanted Englishman, he was a prominent Bay Area book dealer for decades.  His autobiography Infinite Riches captures his humor and personality along with telling many fine book stories.

a) Peter Howard

b) David Magee

c) John Windle

d) Jeffrey Thomas

47.  This rare bookstore was established in New Haven, Connecticut in 1915.  It has had three owners including E. Byrne Hackett, Franklin Gilliam, and the current proprietor, John Crichton.  The shop’s various locations in its illustrious history include Princeton, New York City, Austin, Houston, and San Francisco.

a) Heritage Book Shop

b) Howell Books

c) Brick Row Book Shop

d) Serendipity Books

48.  Rising to prominence as a Texas novelist and man of letters, relatively few people know that he has been an avid bookman since his days at Rice University.  For many years he owned used /rare bookstores in Washington, D.C. and Houston.  Later, he bought entire bookstores en bloc to establish a massive book emporium located in Archer City, Texas.  In 2012, citing health concerns, he auctioned much of the stock off.

a) John Jenkins

b) John Graves

c) Larry McMurtry

d) Dan Jenkins

Bonus Fact:  His private library, housed in his residence, once the country club of his hometown, holds a reputed 30,000 volumes.   

49.  An expert in detective and mystery fiction, he has published and edited many volumes in the field. He is the proprietor of the Mystery Bookshop in New York City. His massive private collection of first / important editions, numbering almost 60,000 volumes, is housed in his chateau in rural Connecticut. 

a) Peter Stern

b) Jim Pepper

c) Dan Posnansky

d) Otto Penzler

50.  He was an avid fisherman and published a well-regarded history of angling and its literature.  He is more well-known for establishing a famous bookshop whose logo was “Anything that’s a book.”

a) Charles Goodspeed

b) Walter M. Hill

c) Lathrop Harper

d) Peter Howard

Answers:

26. b

27. c

28. a

29. b

30. c

31. c

32. b

33. c

34. b

35. a

36. a

37. d

38. a

39. c

40. c

41. d

42. b

43. d

44. a

45. b

46. b

47. c

48. c

49. d

50. a