Bibliomane

A very significant fact is that the Greek and Latin classics in the choicest editions, unless indeed they have the good luck to be in Derome or Trautz-Bauzonnet bindings, are not looked at by the bibliomanes of the period.

To the bibliomanes of my generation, it comes as a shock to learn how much of a book can be punched onto a tape and clicked off by a computer.

(A companion piece by Brenda Scragg on the bibliomane William Ford is, alas, but a shadow of the rewarding study of this collector-turned-dealer which Anthony Lister published in the book collector in 1989.)

The ever-present danger was that the cultivated amateur would overstep the bounds of civilized interest into the domain of obsession; the line between the bibliophile and the bibliomane was never quite as firmly drawn as Nodier would have liked: “There is only a single attack of nerves separating the bibliophile from the bibliomaniac” (Du bibliophile au bibliomane, il n’y a qu’une crise”; 102).