Extracts from “The Living Room: A Memoir”

In the weeks preceding and following my seventy-fifth birthday in January 2009, I wrote a memoir in the form of a tour guide to my living room, with descriptions of the objects it contains and the associations they have for me. I am delighted that the Council of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia has agreed to publish this memoir in due course, along with some of my other autobiographical essays and pieces on book collecting, as a separate volume. I am also pleased that the editor of Studies in Bibliography, who has long shown an interest in biographical studies of bibliographers, wishes to print a few excerpts from the memoir here. I have selected eleven sections out of forty-five—those numbered 1, 5, 7–10, 13, 17, 18, 22, and 36, which are some of the ones most directly related to the world of books and bibliography.