Books: Introduction & Miscellany

All books shown in the various sections are copies from my own collection. I have been reading for 75 years and buying and collecting for 65. Like all collections, my book collecting journey didn't start as a project but was simply a passion; however, like all true collections, patterns began to emerge.

The extent of my reading and interests is varied and fits no discernable theme or topic, but simply reflects whatever has piqued my magpie eye and imagination at any time in my life. Although random, this often casual interest has led me down pathways revealing shapes and meanings far removed from my initial passing interest. It has led to fascinating discoveries as half-formed feelings and interests have begun to acquire a shape and meaning that was not my original intention.

Among my 1000s of books, including several Norwich memoirs, I have found that they can be broken down into discrete elements and themes that lead me to further discoveries that never end. All is connected; all is part of the limitless main, and collectors try to provide stepping stones through this vast landscape to make sense of what seem to be wholly disparate fragments of the unknown whole.

The text is the key, and no real collector ever loses sight of that, but we spice the substance with style and seek out the rare, evocative dust jackets that often tell a story in themselves; special editions; first, signed, and associate editions that carry a frisson of their time; fragile or otherwise anonymous paperbacks and booklets that are part of the fabric of their original creation. This is where we move into the realm beyond the academic, the rational, and the intellectual, marrying the two instincts of knowledge and beauty into an artifact that enhances and transcends The sections that follow only give an indication of my collection and are offered simply as an example of the byways I have explored. There is much that I can never hope to own, so I simply enjoy the substance; however, there is much that I can show, giving some idea of how to develop our passions into a visible form.

Much of what I can show is rare and valuable, but some is not, simply demonstrating how imagination can assemble a collection, however small, into a visible representation of something more than the sum of its parts.

There is no deliberate pattern to anything that follows, simply presented as the whim takes me; perhaps if I do it long enough, a meaning will emerge.