A few posts ago I spoke of On the differences on Collecting and Reading. The last line of that post “Up next I’ll take a look at the collector and how he does a service to preserving books and culture.” reminded me that I wanted to write about how collectors preserve the written word and at times save literary traditions from going extinct.

Nicholas Basbanes has a great series of books about collecting and collectors. Among the Gently Mad, Every Book Its Reader, Patience & Fortitude, and Gentle Madness. In each volume Basbanes looks at a few collectors that have made it their mission to save books from obscurity. Patience and Fortitude goes deeper into this sub-culture of collectors and explains how book collectors over the centuries have preserved the written word.

Without collectors the 33 known copies of the Gutenberg Bible would have been lost. All the illuminated manuscripts written prior to the movable type press would be gone. Shakespeare’s published Folios would be dust. Rare editions of 19th century works would not have been around to reprint affordable editions that schools purchase so new generations can experience Moby Dick or The Last of the Mohicans (ok so collectors apologize for hours of boredom this books produces in its readers).

When people complain about collectors buying up all the copies of a work and accused of not doing it for the love of the story it reveals a willful ignorance of what book collectors do.

Yes collectors are there to collect the rare, the old, the solid investment. We are also a bit mentally unstable because no matter how many books we purchase for the “investment” we purchase five others because we love books. We all may not be setting a goal to preserve some authors work but by extension we are doing what those bibliophiles in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were doing.

I cannot fathom the number of books that have disappeared because they weren’t collected and slowly each copy made it to the land fill and fell apart and the manuscript was lost to time. I would guess that a large portion of those books weren’t worth saving. But even if a very small percentage were worth it, we have lost some valuable books.