The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 2, January 11, 2004, Article 5

PILES OF ERUDITION

  Bill Murray writes: "I thought our readers might find the
  following item amusing - it is from Jeffery Kacirk's Forgotten
  English -- All the italics in the quoted passages are Kacirk's.

  "England's most famous bibliomaniac, Richard Heber (1771-
  1833) (was) an obsessive collector" On hearing of a curious
  book, he was known to have put himself in a mail coach and
  traveled three or four hundred miles to obtain it.  Heber's
  family inheritance allowed him to indulge his desire and spend
  immense sums to purchase books, which he did, through
  local booksellers called, bibliopolists"

  When asked about his habit of collecting multiple copies of
  the same works, he replied, "Why you see, sir, no man can
  do comfortably without three copies of a work.  One he must
  have for a show copy, and he will probably keep it at his
  country-house.  Another he will require for his own use and
  reference; and unless he is inclined to part with this, which is
  very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy, he must
  needs have a third at the service of his friends.?"

  "His house at Hodnet" was nearly all library.  His house in
  Pimlico, was filled with books from top to bottom, every
  chair, table and passage containing "piles of erudition." A
  house in York Street, Westminster, was similarly filled.  He
  had immense collections of books in houses rented merely
  to contain them at Oxford, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels and
  Ghent.

  "Amazingly, when Heber died his will did not even
  acknowledge his books.  His bibliolatry had driven him to
  acquire, by one estimate, half a million books, but in their
  disposal after his death they were treated simply as so much
  property in the hands of an auctioneer.  Sotheby's sale of a
  portion of the books required two hundred and two working
  days spanning more than two years.  It was reckoned that
  the proceeds of his books amounted to only about two thirds
  of the books, original cost."

  Now there was real bibliomaniac!
  Happy New Year to all!"

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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