Bibliomania or Book Madness: Containing Some Account of the History Symptoms and Cure of This Fatal Disease

Dibdins Bibliomania is an anthem to the printed book a warning to the unwary about the perils of obsessive book-collecting and the confessions of a rabid book-collector. As a casual glance at the book will show Dibdins footnotes predominate over text and it is in the footnotes that the interest lies. They invite questions as often as they answer them. What is the supposed similarity between Orator Henleys library and Addisons memoranda for the Spectator? What cutting words did Edward Gibbon write about Thomas Hearne? Why should we not be surprised to find a book on American history by a Spanish admiral in the library of the President of the Royal Society? Who was Captain Cox who could talk as much without book as any Innholder betwixt Brentford and Bagshot? Was Polydore Vergil a plagiarist and John Bagford a biblioclast? What is bloterature? Sometimes Dibdin tells us sometimes he assumes we know and sometimes he chooses to tantalise us. The endnotes provide some of the answers and will it is hoped lead readers to discover new books and new writers or more often and more pleasurably old books and old writers. This book is based upon Dibdins first edition of 1809 to which have been added an introduction and eighty-five pages of valuable endnotes mostly concerned with biographical details of the printers librarians bookbinders writers book-collectors and Bibliomaniacs to whom Dibdin refers. An appendix contains John Ferriars Bibliomania the poem which prompted Dibdins work. There are also a substantial bibliography and index. This book will be invaluable to bibliographers librarians cultural historians and all those interested in books and book people. It gives a valuable insights into antiquarianism in general and book-collecting in particular. Dibdins book ranges widely from Juliana Barnes Wynkyn de Worde Michael Maittaire and the St Albans Schoolmaster to Thomas Hope Edward Rowe Mores William Hunter and Horace Walpole. Many of his footnotes (which take up far more of the book than the text) contain details of the important book sales of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century to tantalise the reader: Caxtons Boke of Chivalrie selling for 11 shillings in 1756; Grenvilles 1800 edition of Homer selling for an astounding £99 15s in 1804. Peter Danckwerts studied Book Publishing at Oxford Polytechnic Bibliography & Textual Criticism at the University of Leeds Mathematics with the Open University and Medieval Studies at Birkbeck College University of London. He is currently preparing an edition of Byrons English Bards and Scotch Reviewers for Tiger of the Stripe.