Book collecting

In the ancient world, papyri and scrolls (the precursors of the book in codex form) were collected by both institutions and private individuals.

This new emphasis was nourished by the flood of old books onto the market following the dissolution of monastic and aristocratic libraries during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

[7] The British Whig politician George John, 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834) collected tens of thousands of volumes.

[10] The increasingly wealthy United States during the 19th century saw the appearance of "titan" book collectors such as the railroad magnate Henry Huntington and the financier and banker J. Pierpont Morgan.

[13] However, the theatrical effect of showing a rare book being handled with gloved hands may increase its selling price.

European books created before 1455 are all hand-written and are therefore one-of-a-kind historical artifacts in which the idea of "edition" and "printing" is irrelevant.

[16] The American School Library is an example of a very rare multi-volume boxed set with works by many popular or famous authors.

Ebooks acquired from Project Gutenberg and many similar free collections cause no violation as they have gone out of copyright, have been released under a Creative Commons license, or else are in the public domain.

For more modern accounts, see the series of books on book-collectors, book-collecting and "bibliomania" by Nicholas A. Basbanes: Follow husband and wife team Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone as they search for rare and collectible volumes, and explore real mysteries in the rare-book world, in: For book collecting in China, see: