Stuff You Missed in History ClassIn a recent episode on George Arents, we asked listeners what kind of book collections they keep. We heard from people with interests ranging from mixology books to a library dedicated to Disney. We also learned about what these collections inspired.
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from housetof works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm to bling a Chuck Reboarding. And this spring we did an episode on George Aarons, who was a famous biller file who donated two very extensive collections to the New York Public Library. And if you remember from that episode, Errants, who was in the tobacco business, received some critical advice early on that he really took to heart. It was choose lots of hobbies when you're young, and then as you get older and have to give some of those hobbies up, you're still donna have plenty to do. And Aran's did end up quitting some of his youthful hobbies like race car driving, but he stuck with book collecting and found it so fulfilling he spent much of his time lecturing about it and recommending collecting to others. His main point, though, something he himself learned early on from bookseller William Ever, It was to focus your collection. Essentially, don't just buy a bunch of first editions of books you enjoy. Pick something, become an expert in it, and this way, even if you don't have the budget for big purchases, or if your collection is very small, it's still a collection. It's a collection right from the start. So we suspected that our listeners might be just the kind of folks with obscure focus book collections. And after that episode, in our sort of well I guess our listener mail sort of segment, we asked y'all to send in some stories to us. We thought that we might get maybe a few examples of collections enough for a little listener mail segment at the end of a podcast, but we ended up getting tons of stories from people, and so many of these suggestions were interesting. Some were such focused, incredible sounding collections that we decided to dedicate a whole podcast to talking about it. So consider this a collector's edition podcast in more ways than one. Yeah, and we had a couple of different categories, several different categories of types of emails that we got from people, so we want to kind of try to break it down that way. A lot of folks, for example, wrote in telling us about collections that kicked off with one book one particular interest that grew over time. For example, listeners Cindy and Nashville said that after reading Antonia Frasier's book on Mary, Queen of Scott's in the eighth grade, she started collecting other books about women in history that were written by female historians, and she said, quote, I'm fifty seven now and I've read a wonderful history as of famous women by Nancy Goldstone, Alison Weir, Rebecca Fraser, Harriet O'Brien, Sarah Bradford, Maria Perry, Caroley, Ericsson, Hannah Pecoola, Nancy Mitford, and many others. Now that I'm retired as an editor of thirty three years, and because of your Arrand's podcast, I'm going to reread all of these books in my focus collection, beginning of course with Antonia Fraser on Mary, Queen of Scott's. So I loved this note, especially since mer Queen of Scots is one of my favorites, and it was an interest that also came about from reading a biography. But I also we mentioned Alison were on a lot of episodes. Rebecca Fraser, she wrote the Charlotte Bronze biography we talked about. So yes, Cindy, we kind of covet your collection. Apparently another listener and that from San Francisco, how a collection start in a similar sort of way, having that one book that you really like and that kicks everything off. And she said that as a teenager during the Olympics, she got Olympic fever really bad, and after the games ended, she started reading all about their history, so starting small and expanding her collection over time. And she wrote, quote, I don't have the time or the money to seek out and hunt for books as George did. But when I go to a place with Olympic significance, either a person or a place or a use bookstore, I make it a point to swing by the souvenir store or sports and biography sections to see if there are any books of interest. And she even has collected some autographs, you know, some some Olympic memorabilia sort of stuff over the years. And I thought this was a good tip too for um collectors who aren't trying to get the perfect rare editions that sort of thing, but have a general interest. You know that she just makes it a point, It's a habit, something she always looks for. That is a great point you can make something out of and can make you can make a collection out of something that you like to do too, or something that you enjoy. Just a side note to this event also collects cocktail books focusing specifically on historical recipes or is she put it quote everything before the time when Red Bull made it into the drinks. So some of our other listeners found their book collections not so much from this one book that kicked everything off, but a collection that sprang naturally from other interests. So one example was George, who is also a public librarian. So he said that he especially loves literary topics, and he wrote to tell us that he has eight six hundred volume library devoted to Disney that he started back in nine and he said, quote, I began with books about Walt Disney World and slowly began purchasing books about Disneyland, biographies on key people, animation, and cultural sociological titles. There's only one other person that rivals my collection, and he works in a Disney corporate library at Walt Disney World. So there you go. I think I know a few people in our office who would covet that collection. I do too. We'll have to let her know because George has also sort of transferred this interest in all Things Disney and his interest in Disney books to a blog. Yes, it does, a blog on his library, and he hosts a video podcast listeners. Scott from Virginia also had an interest or a hobby that naturally resulted in a book collection for him. He wrote quote, I found that I agree with Aaron's uncle on the point of starting life with many interests and then honing in on one or two later that you really enjoy. One of my interests is birds and nature. My bird book collection is very meaningful to me, as I have picked up many foreign country bird guides when traveling and others from use bookstores. I also often refer to them for affirmation of a sighting, or if I read of a sighting overseas. It's also neat to look back on older editions to see how the common names for birds have changed over time. Some Asian guides are not in English, but the Latin or scientific names there so I can still reference it against the North American species that I know better. My collection includes many books beyond guides, mostly nonfiction that discussed birds and birding experiences. I have not yet collected classic pieces of fiction. Shakespeare Royal letters for instance that in include birds or birds names alas, I've already downloaded some bird guide apps for myself and wonder what the future of book collecting will be. There are feelings brought out in holding a hundred year old bird guide and imagining a previous owner using it to make discoveries of their own that computer applications just don't master, and that that feeling of thinking about what the previous owner felt is something we're going to run into. And some of these later listener meals, but this one reminded me a lot of Audubon since we recently did on him and Birds of America, And I wonder if Scott has listened to that episode. Yeah, I know, probably, I hope though, um, but yeah, that was something where clearly the book, the physical book, was so important and I can understand I'm not a birdwatcher myself, but I can understand how an app would be pretty useful. But it seems like there does still need to be a place for a hard copy book, something that's beautiful in and of itself. And as he said, when it comes to like the cross checking between them, that was different. It was interesting and the history to the ornithological history almost how things change every time. Of course, some listeners had a pretty different take on the digital situation, and one was listener Luna, who doesn't collect books per se, but certainly she collects the kind of information that could someday end up in books. I mean, I have been wondered if maybe that was her land, she wrote in to say quote, my collection is a digital collection by necessity because I cannot take home the object of my hobby, gravestones. I began by photographing all of the tombstones in my county before learning the lesson. Errants was taught from the beginning to have a focus. So now I traveled to cemetery's photographing gravestone art statues and animal portraits, carving, etcetera, attempting to chronicle the changing trends. And I thought this was just cool too, because it shows that the focuses is applicable to all sorts of hobbies, um including ones that don't have much to do with book collecting. Yet so Errant's advice can mean something even if you're not a bookie person. Necessarily, other collectors don't necessarily take the same approach as Errants in this way, though, listener Valerie from Austin, for example, has a penchant for children's and young adults literature, and she wrote in suggesting that we cover ghost writers of famous serials like Nancy Drew and like The Hardy Boys, but also told us quote, I am collecting all the Doctor Seuss books, but I'm only getting them from garage sales, thrift stores, and other used copies. It's fun to get the books knowing that they have a kind of history of readers, especially knowing how much I loved reading them as a kid, and other kids learned to read with these books. So in that case, the point is really having a used book, because you know that this book has has seen some action over over its days. And I think it's a pretty great argument for adding non pristine books to a collection, especially when children's books are involved in The stakes are are as high as somebody learning how to read on this book. And I personally love really finding books that somebody has inscribed, whether as a gift or just signed their own name. Um, there's a really great example of a book here at work. I tried to find it before this episode had vanished off the shelf. It was then old. How it works type book. There are there are real housetuff works books here, but also ones that I don't know if somebody you must have brought in at some point for for comparison. But this one was from the nineteen twenties or so, and it was inscribed to a kid graduating prep school, like here's everything you need to know. And I think it really tells you a lot about what's in the book and suggests to you that somebody thought that this was important enough to give as a gift, so it's worth keeping, it's worth looking at and for somebody it's going to be interesting. Still. Yeah, would you inscribe those books yourself too? I mean, then you do you then add to the history. Oh I don't know. I think maybe once it's inscribed, you can't really do it again, right, yeah, just save it? Yeah? Maybe? Well. Listener Leah wrote in with a focus kind of similar to Valerie. She said that she's been collecting old books for several years, in particular educational works published between eighteen seventy and nineteen forty, and she said, quote, my collection includes textbooks, children's books, encyclopedias, and popular volumes on science, geography, art, and history. As well as dictionaries and several languages. I find most of them at our local flea market, often for a dollar or two, though I've been known to seek out volumes I especially crave on eBay. I don't have the usual collector standards of prime condition. Many of my books have loose covers, torn pages, foxing, interior writing, and other flaws. But I love them anyway. I find the writing style and the sometimes startlingly outdated information fascinating and often amusing. And I always admire the beautifully engraved illustrations. And she went on to say that those striking illustrations, and I really I knew what she was talking that here. I used to have an old, kind of fifties era set of children's encyclopedias, but I'd look at when I was a kid, and they did have pretty crazy illustrations. But she said that a lot of that colorful, sometimes out of date illustrative style would inspire her in her own art, and that's why she got into it in the first place. She often scans the illustration. She doesn't want to rip up the book through anything, so she's and them, prints them out archival at and then incorporates those prints into her own pieces of art, and she said, quote, I love the layers of meaning, texture and history that these pages add to my work. She attached a few examples of them to show us. They're really lavish illustrations, and a lot of them had faint text in the background. They did look kind of like they were out of a children's encyclopedia, but in a very modern sort of way. So this was definitely a group of people who appreciated Errant's advice to be very focused while they were working on their collections. But listener Wynn wrote in to tell us that while errants be specific advice might be wise, there could also be such a thing as being a little too specific. He said that while working at Harvard's Rare Books Library, quote, my responsibilities included creating provisional computer records for new collections of books the library had acquired. A collector had donated to the library his prize collection that took years and years to put together, a collection every English language edition of Samuel Johnson's Rasseless. He had collected something like five editions of just that book. No other writer nor book sullied his fine collection. Of course, three different editions of Rasseles have worked their way into my library. How could they not? So that was a that was a funny example of somebody really taking that advice seriously getting into something specific. We did, of course, received some notes to from listeners who collected other things besides books, and my favorite of those, I think, came from listener Erica, who, well, she doesn't keep a book collection, she really could still relate to the Arrant's episode, so she wrote in to say quote, I was listening to the George Arrants episode today when a familiar name jumped out at me. Roger Bacon. You mentioned him as a rumored author of William Shakespeare's works, but I know him as someone who helped start a very special collection in my life. When I was two months old, my uncle gave me a stuffed pig for my first Christmas. My mom thought it would be funny call him Roger Bacon, partly after the real person, but mostly because she thought Bacon would be a funny last name for a pig. Roger quickly became my favorite toy, and throughout my childhood I messed quite an impressive collection of pig items, including several other stuff pigs that my mother, true to form, named Hambone, Hamlet and the like. Roger, however, was always my favorite, and I carried him everywhere I went. More than three decades later, I long ago outgrew my pig collection, most of which has been donated or is bagged up in my parents basement, but Roger continues to have a special place in my home, and he's still well remembered in my family. He's so special, in fact, that my mother recently found a brand new stuffed pig just like him and gave it to me as an Easter present. Perhaps this will begin a whole new collection for me. So that was a fun one. I can appreciate a stuff pig collection, Yeah, definitely, it's it's unusual. Finally, though, listener Katrina, who works at a university special books collection, wrote in to tell us more about the accessibility of special works to the public, something that Michael Edman touched a little bit on during the Arrand's episode. But she also shared a tip with us. In addition to visiting amazing works for free at a library, you can win antique book collections online. She started her own set, a collection of biographies by Harriet Beecher Stowe from eighteen sixty eight when she want to give away through the collector Forgotten Bookmarks. And as soon as I got this email, I visited that site and they had one of these collections collection giveaways going on that happened to include some of my favorite British novels, and I was like, I've got to win this thing. I did not, but I mean it is a great tip in a really fun way. I think to start a collection too. There's an element of chance involved. There is what your specialty is going to end up being. I think it sounds like a good idea. So I guess you have to check that site frequently to see if it's something that you want. Yeah, I think they have giveaways regularly. And um yeah, everybody I guess now listening to this podcast is probably going to go my odds will look at work. Why did we include that on here? Thank you Katrina for telling us about that, and um, thank you to all of you guys for sharing such amazing stories that there were many that we could not include in this in this segment, but I was impressed by how focus people's collections were, how open minded folks were about books that were beat up and how that added an element of Um, I don't know, it added something for for the collection to think of all those people who had owned it before you. Um, it was a neat, neat thing to to learn about. I was just impressed by the number of people who had collections. I mean to me, it's almost kind of throwback. I mean, so many people spend their time doing other things nowadays, playing on the internet, watching cable or whatever. You know, it's almost this throwback as like writing letters still rather than emails, collecting something. Yeah, there's still folks out there who have, for sumably these shelves or in the Disney Guy's case, I'm sure, like a room filled with these books and or pigs yea, or or or different kinds of pig memorabilia. Um. And I like to imagine folks pulling them down and reading them and using the collections too. I think that's the coolest part about it. Yeah, it's kind of inspiring in that way. And I have actually, Sarah, as you know, had a little collection started or a collection started for me recently when all the editors and writers here gave me children's books for my new baby. Yeah, getting a little library going. It's a really fun shower and especially a fun office shower kind of thing for people who love books already. Right, yeah, it is, and I think that I'm probably enjoying them right now more than the baby will for many years. The previewing them, you know, looking back at some of those children's books that you read before but you haven't seen in years, or new ones that I've never read before. Just looking through some of the really great illustrations that children's books contain. Um, it's been really fun and having fun with the tactile books. We got a few of them, I did. I got some furry books, so little bonus. Yeah, that was that was pretty fun. And I'm glad that you've got a collection going. I've got to think of one now. I know what are we gonna get you? Maybe books will have some suggestions out there if you want to email us about your collection. Um, yeah, I did miss the boat on this one, but we're still interested. You can write us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at Misston History and we are on Facebook. Maybe you should collect textadermy cats. Oh dear, I'll pass on that one to put all right, And if you want to get some ideas of maybe books that you can collect. See what rare books are out there. We have a title called top ten rare Books and you can look that at by visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? M hm hm m m m
