Great Books and Book Collectors

New York: Excalibur Books, 1983. First American Edition. Large Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 7x4x0. First American edition. Faint stain on corner, jacket price clipped. 1983 Large Hardcover. 280 pp. 40 color and 250 black-and-white illustrations. "... the eminent bookseller... tells the story of some of the world's greatest books, their creation and survival, and the men who were responsible for them... he discusses many fascinating aspects of the subject: the invention of printing - Gutenberg, Aldus and Caxton, and the beautiful early woodcut books; bookbinding, from the Gospel found in the coffin of St. Cuthbert to the superb work of French craftsmen still alive today; the heroic story of early editions of the Bible, and the Bible in Hebrew, both of which were often produced under conditions of persecution; the fifteenth-century herbals, the beautiful color-plate flower books such as Redoute and Thornton's Temple of Flora, and a charming example of the art of book production, English books with colored aquatint plates; the great books produced by Palladio, Gibbs, and Robert Adam which did so much to influence architecture in Europe and America. Alan Thomas also considers the achievements of the New World, from the letter in which Columbus announces his discovery of America to one of the finest ornithological works ever produced - Audubon's The Birds of America. In more recent times he discusses the revival of printing through the Private Press movement, why first editions are collected, and recounts and astonishing series of fakes and forgeries. Finally, he follows the history of great book collectors, from men like Sir Robert Cotton who salvaged the manuscripts scattered by the sack of the monasteries to the great American collectors - Pierpont Morgan and Henry Huntington - who established libraries fully comparable to those of the Old World. The lively text and beautiful illustrations, chosen from the finest books ever produced, do justice to the subject as one of the most glorious achievements of Western civilization.