Lines from the Library

The concept is this, basically: The Fales Library is the primary rare book/special collections/archival repository at New York University. As such, it is a closed stacks collection which puts some solid limits on browsing and discovery and serendipity and all those good things that happen when one is free to roam the stacks and pull books off the shelves.

So, perhaps, this blog can serve as a window into these closed stacks.

For instance, here's a peep at some of the shelves in the Fales American wing:

This picture shows three shelves full of books by E. D. E. N. Southworth -- one of the most popular and prolific American novelists of the nineteenth century. We have six shelves filled with different editions of her novels, and an abundance of works by other authors no one has studied for fifty to a hundred years.

I'll spend some time here describing exactly how one determines what we have on our shelves, but bear this in mind: Mr. Fales wanted to own a copy of every novel published in English in the nineteenth century. He didn't get them ALL, but he came pretty close.

My friend Katie Carr sent me a link to this excellent article by Paul Duguid:

"Inheritance and loss? A Brief Survey of Google books"

Paul Duguid always has interesting things to say about books and the digital realm. In this instance he decided to check the quality of the Tristram Shandy editions available through Google books. The results of his investigation are pretty distressing -- never mind the special features of Sterne's book (the marbled page, the black page, and so on), Google books seems incapable of connecting a user with a legible copy of the text.

But I'll wait here while you follow the link and read the article for yourself.

Done?

I love Tristram Shandy because it demands the modern reader look at the original edition to be able to fully grasp the content. So I went to our shelf of Sterne in Fales and snapped some photos for your benefit:

First, here is the original marbled page from our copy of the first edition of Volume III, printed by R. and J. Dodsley in 1761:

If you really want to read up on the motley emblem of Sterne's work, check out this dissertation by Diana Alexandra Patterson: "The moral of the next marbled page" in Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" Without attempting to summarize her work, let me just point out here that every single copy of this page is a unique work of art. Marbled pages are like snowflakes -- no two are identical.

Right next to our first edition, Fales has a German translation published in Hamburg in 1774. Here's their translation of the marbled page:

That ain't marbled. It's pretty, but it ain't marbled.

Next on the shelf comes a Dublin edition of Sterne's works printed by P. Byrne in 1794.

That's where the marbled page should be, but they didn't even try.

Then there's another collected works -- this one printed in London in 1808:

This is an actual marbled page, but the style and color scheme are completely different from the original edition in 1761. Marbling techniques and styles change with the times, so it makes some sense that this marbled page has a completely different look.

These four examples are just the examples on our shelves in Fales. I did a quick search of the RLG Catalog (I'll post something about that another time) that turned up over 300 editions of Tristram Shandy published before 1900. Reprinting is another topic for the future -- it has become one of my favorite hobby horses in recent months.

But the basic point here is that even the best online edition of any work will leave something out. There will always be a need for places like Fales where one can sit down and look at the original artifacts of literary history.

One of the great challenges of using the Fales Library is the fact that many of our books are not yet listed in BobCat. The situation is much better now than it was when I arrived in Fales in the spring of 1998, but we're still far from the goal of every item in our collection being included in BobCat.

But there is a handy guide to a good chunk of the collection: the Fales Library Checklist Revised and Edited by Theodore Grieder (AMS Press, 1970).

The complete history of the Checklist is covered in the Introduction in Volume 1. The short version is that it was done on a primitive computer system, so entries are very very short. What it provides for you, the eager researcher, is an author and title checklist of what was held in Fales as of 1969, when volumes 1 and 2 went to press.

Here's an example -- page 601 from volume 2:

Note the vintage 1969 sans serif computer printout typeface. Also note that names of cities and publishers are abreviated. But this page does list the 26 titles by William Le Queux that were in Fales some 38 years ago, and that's enough to get you started.

The collection has grown considerably since 1969 and we have nearly tripled the number of Le Queux titles. If you search BobCat for "Le Quex, William" you will discover that we now hold 71 novels by the giant of the Edwardian age.

Then there are authors like Dickens, Thackeray and Scott who fill several pages each in the Checklist. We haven't added tons of new items for them because Mr. Fales already had just about everything.

The basic rule of thumb for the Checklist is that if an author is listed, it's likely we now have more of that author's works in the collection.

Although the checklist is nearly 40 years old, it is still an excellent place to start your research. There are several copies on the shelves in the Fales Library Reading Room, but those can only be consulted when we're open (M-Th 10-6, Fri 9-5). Another set is available in the Reference Collection on the first floor of Bobst (Call #: Z2014.F5 F34 1970). The copy in Reference doesn't circulate, so it's always available.

But you're probably all eager to hear more about William Le Queux...

Ah! William Le Queux.

Le Queux is a great example of an author who fascinates me, but I've never read a single one of his books. I've read bits and pieces of several, but I don't get to sit around reading books on the job.

First, here's a peep at our shelves full of Le Queux:

That's three full shelves of solid LeQueux. And there's more, even.

How can one not be fascinated by titles like The Invasion of 1910 With a Full Account of the Seige of London (1906), Spies of the Kaiser (1909) or A Secret Service: Being Strange Tales of a Nihilist (1896)?

And check out these covers:

This seems like a good time to introduce one of my favorite reference books. Reference books are a huge part of my job, and I find this one quite handy:

There's an Oxford Companion for just about everything and I highly recommend them. Here's an excerpt from the entry on Le Queux:

His earliest novel was Guilty Bonds (1891) which was banned in Czarist Russia; there are more than 200 later novels, some published posthumously, as well as volumes of short stories and sensational books about contemporary history such as German Attrocities: A Record of Shameless Deeds (1914), German Spies in England: An Exposure (1915), and Rasputin, the Rascal Monk (1917).

Over 200 novels! We don't yet have HALF of them in Fales. Hence my fascination -- I managed to track down four missing titles last year.

A more extensive biography of Le Queux is available through another favorite of mine, the Gale Research online Literature Resource Center:

William Le Queux

The Literature Resource Center is another excellent reference tool -- it includes the full text of the complete run of The Dictionary of Literary Biography. Don't be fooled by the term "Dictionary," these are substantial articles with extensive bibliographies attached.

But I haven't even gotten to the most interesting thing about Le Queux. In addition to being an extremely prolific novelist he was also an agent in the British secret service before such a thing truly existed. He wrote spy novels, and spy non-fiction, at the turn of the century when fears of an invasion of England ran high. (Edwardian Fiction: An Oxford Companion has a good entry on "invasion scare stories.") He claimed that he wrote fiction to support himself because no gentleman could accept pay for doing what was no more than his duty to his country. He's the Edwardian James Bond!