Shelf-diagnosis

I see Tracey Emin is among the latest celebrities to have posted a “shelfie”. This is the phenomenon I wrote about last year, whereby people take pictures of their bookshelves and publish them, usually on social media.

In fact, Emin was one of 12 artists asked to pose with their book collections for the London Art Book Fair. Luckily, in the age of Kindle, they all had a collection. In another surprise, their shelves were neat. Hers was a grid arrangement – books all vertical, spines out. It was in sharp contrast to her infamous bed.

Emin would hardly qualify, therefore, for inclusion in a slim volume I received recently, entitled Lunacy and the Arrangement of Books. It was sent by "Irishman, Exile, and Bookseller" Brian Walsh. But it was written by another book-dealer, an American, Terry Belanger. And it is, in essence, a short history of the methodologies by which noted bibliophiles have arranged their collections.

Not all were lunatics, despite the title. Take Alistair Cooke, of Alistair Cooke's America fame. It seems only right that, according to Belanger, his New York apartment had a floor-to-ceiling collection on his favourite subject, arranged geographically.

The books about New England were in the upper right corner; California was lower left; etc. No doubt there was some spatial revisionism in between – the corn-belt states hardly took up much room in these United Shelves of America, whereas Massachusetts must have been vast. But the arrangement was sensible.

Théophile Gautier, a 19th-century French writer, was even more practical. Unlike many collectors, he didn’t like smaller formats. He preferred the large, “folio” kind because, when piled horizontally, they made better “footstools”. They were also more secure as booster seats, for raising children at the dinner table.

It’s only when we read about, say, Samuel Pepys, that questions of sanity arise. The famous diarist was a highly organised man. He couldn’t abide the anarchy involved even in having book-rows of varying heights. So to ensure a uniform skyline, he had “little high-heels” built under shorter volumes, as required.

Then there was the writer of an 1863 book on etiquette, who worried about inappropriate touching on shelves. As she put it: “The perfect hostess will see to it that the works of male and female be properly segregated [...] Proximity, unless they happen to be married, should not be tolerated.”

Of course, sometimes, one person’s madness is another’s method, as with Dr Hughlings Jackson, a pioneering neurologist. He was interested only in the contents of books, never their physical properties.

So he reduced large manuals to manageable size by ripping the covers off, while still in the shop, and then making pocket editions of the text by tearing it in two. Watched by an appalled book-seller once, he declared that the “really mad” people were the ones who brought books home whole.

Belanger’s guide also touches upon such specialist areas of insanity as “bibliokleptomania”, ie “the rearrangement of other people’s books on one’s own shelves”. Under which heading, he includes the tragic tale of a 19th-century Spanish monk, Don Vincente.

A bibliophile first, Christian second, Don Vincente became obsessed with acquiring what he believed to be the only copy of a work printed in 1482. And although he bid everything at auction, he still lost to a wealthier rival, Augustino Paxtot. So when Paxtot died in a suspicious fire, and Don Vincente was then found to have the book, he was presumed a murderer.

Enter a clever lawyer, who established that at least one other copy existed, in Paris. That might have created reasonable doubt about his client’s guilt had the unhappy moron himself not been unhinged by the revelation. “Alas, my book is not unique,” he despaired (aloud). They hanged him shortly afterwards.

I don’t expect any such dramas at Dublin’s Molesworth Street this weekend, during the annual PBFA Book Fair. After all, as the aforementioned Brian Walsh, of the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA.org), hints, any despair may be the preserve of the stall-holders. He laments: “Trying to sell antiquarian – or indeed any – books against the massed ranks of the internet is a bit like a Wehrmacht PR officer trying to find something good to say about another snowy day in Stalingrad”.

Even so, he and 13 visiting British dealers will have stalls in the Masonic Hall on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. If you’re looking to add a unique touch to your shelfie, this might be the place to find it.

@FrankmcnallyIT