Nicholas A. Basbanes: Every Book Its Reader

Bibliophilia becomes bibliomania in the work of Nicholas A. Basbanes, and book lovers profit from his addiction. Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World (2005) was one to savour over the course of about a month of stop-and-start reading. Basbanes, who has written several other books about books, takes a biographical approach to his subject, researching the books read by people in history and in the present, their reading habits, the way a book or reading in general affected the course of famous lives or the course of history, what we can learn about people based on what they read and what kind of readers they were.

The trouble with this book is that some readers, and you know who you are, are going to want to derive a lengthy reading list from the influential books Basbanes mentions. I feel compelled now to read the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote (2003), Coleridge's essays and letters, all of F. Scott Fitzgerald, including re-reads of his books already read, and some Goethe, too. This tips the ice berg.

If you notice a male European tilt to this list, that is indeed an accurate reflection of the book's contents, which may alienate some women and people of color. I paused now and then to wish for more variety, but he is writing about what interests him, and since it interested me too, I cannot fault him for failing to write a 1000-page book that covered more ground. If I want to know what Jane Austen read, Basbanes has set a worthy example to follow in investigating that question.

Basbanes looks at the history of some museum exhibitions of rare books and also at attempts over the years to compile lists of significant books. I was curious enough about the Grolier Club's 1903 exhibition of One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature to seek out the list. The only women among these select few were Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A similar Grolier list of American books (1947) that were purported to be the most influential books published before 1900 includes a few more books by women, the usual suspects such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, but how about this one? Mrs. Mary. A Rowlandson: True History of the Captivity & Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, London, 1682. Or this: Susanna Haswell Rowson, Charlotte, a Tale of Truth. Philadelphia, 1794. I've never even heard of these writers or their books, and yet they were named among the most influential books in the United States prior to 1900.

Basbanes calls himself a "literary journalist," modestly avoiding any pretension to scholarship, but he likes to interview scholars, taking us on speculative journeys into the life and mind of several writers including Shakespeare. Basbanes is also a popularizer. His chapter on the marginal scribbles of the famous is derived largely from the work of Heather Jackson, who has written two books on marginalia and has edited six volumes of Coleridge's marginalia for a Princeton University series of Coleridge's collected works. I had no idea! It is likely I would read Coleridge's essays before tackling the marginalia, but it is easy to imagine a scholar getting happily lost in marginalia.

Basbanes talks to some serious book collectors, and he interviews historians and literary scholars about books and reading. I was entranced. It will be fun to go back and read all of his books, beginning with A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (1995), about the history of book collecting.

By the way, the Grolier Club of New York continues its tradition of book exhibitions, although nowadays they are taking an interest in books by women, as evidenced by the exhibit this autumn, This Perpetual Fight: Love and Loss in Virginia Woolf’s Intimate Circle.