The passion to possess books has never been more widespread than it is today; indeed, obsessive book collecting remains the only hobby to have a disease named after it. A Gentle Madness is an adventure among the afflicted. Author Nicholas Basbanes, a dedicated bibliophile himself, begins his book 2,200 years ago in Alexandria, when a commitment was made to gather all the world's knowledge beneath one roof. In a series of lively chapters, the continuum then passes through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the twentieth century with a special emphasis on book lore and book culture in Great Britain and North America. In the second half of A Gentle Madness, Basbanes offers a gallery of revealing profiles of living collectors and presents exclusive examinations of the great contemporary stories. The book also includes the most comprehensive bibliography on book collecting compiled in more than a quarter century.
When first published, A Gentle Madness astounded and delighted readers about the passion and expense a collector is willing to make in pursuit of the book.
A Gentle Madness
Vicksburg Daily Citizen: See Campion, “Wallpaper Newspapers,” 129–40. Mary Boykin Chesnut. Since 1905, Mary Chesnut's diary has been issued in four separate editions, including a “restored" version prepared by C. Vann Woodward and ...
His colleague on the Shakespeare project, Tucker Brooke, was a Rhodes S cholar from West Virginia who earned two degrees from Oxford University and enjoyed great renown on both sides ...
"A biography of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his wife, Fanny Appleton Longfellow"--
In 1995 Nicholas Basbanes introduced a resonant phrase to describe the obsessive passion people have had over the past twenty-five hundred years to possess books, a condition more commonly known...
Inspired by a landmark exhibition mounted by the British Museum in 1963 to celebrate five eventful centuries of the printed word, Nicholas A. Basbanes offers a lively consideration of writings that have "made things happen" in the world, ...
I could remember some things from when I was in Sydney five years ago: the smell (musk incense and chamomile tea) of the foster home they'd put me in until the case was heard, the endless questions about Sarafina and our life together, ...
. I thought, there’s more than one victim here; what went on with these kids and why did they think they had no one to go to?” This is a moving and powerfully written novel told from the alternating viewpoints of Rose and Michael with ...
From the acclaimed author of A Gentle Madness comes a new collection of more than thirty dispatches from the world of books.