CHAPTER SIXTEEN

DEFINITION OF TERMS

The terms employed in book collecting are fairly standardized. At the same time they have special uses restricted to this field, and a complete understanding of them is essential, especially when reading auction catalogs and dealers’ catalogs. In such publications these terms will be used repeatedly, on the assumption that anyone reading the catalog is familiar with them. The following is a list of terms and definitions commonly used among dealers and collectors of modern rare books.

-ANA A suffix denoting, originally, a collection of sayings, anecdotes, or other material regarding a person or subject. Nowadays it refers to any kind of material about the author or subject to which it is attached. For instance, Hemingwayana means any book or item about Hemingway, but not by him.

AS ISSUED A term indicating that a given book (or some aspect of it) is in the original condition as published, despite appearances to the contrary. The term is most often encountered today in dealers’ catalogs in cases where a book being described was published without a dust jacket, the normal assumption being that most modern books are issued with dust jackets.

ASSOCIATION COPY A book or pamphlet that has some indication of having belonged to, or at least passed through the hands of, the author or someone closely related to him. Properly speaking, an association copy should carry more than a signed presentation inscription to an unknown person. Any book from the library of an esteemed author, with his annotations, would be an association copy. Likewise, a copy of the author’s book presented by him to someone important in his life, such as a wife or mistress; even better, a copy presented to someone who was known to have served as the model for one of the characters in the book. An example of the latter would be a copy of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises with the signature of Harold Loeb, who was the model for the character of Robert Cohn.

BACKSTRIP The covering over the spine of a book. If this has been replaced, the book is spoken of as having been rebacked.

BLIND-STAMPING An impressed mark, decoration, or lettering, not colored or gilded, usually appearing on the binding. A modern example of this can be found in the plays of Edward Albee, published by Atheneum, where all of the lettering on the front covers of the books is blind-stamped. It can also denote an impressed mark or name used by some persons in preference to a written signature. A familiar example of blind-stamping is the old-fashioned notary public’s seal.

BOARDS The stiff binding material for most modern books; generally cardboard covered with cloth or paper. In the early days of printed books during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, actual wooden boards were used—hence the term. Nowadays, the term is almost exclusively used to describe books whose covers—or boards—have been covered with paper. If they have been covered with cloth, the single word “cloth” is generally used.

BOOK BLOCK The entire book sewn together before it is bound.

BOOK LABEL A label indicating the ownership of a book. It generally bears only the owner’s name and is as a rule smaller and simpler than a bookplate.

BOOKPLATE A pasted-in sign of ownership, usually larger and more elaborate than a book label, and often incorporating a design or artwork. Bookplates themselves form a fascinating field for collecting. Probably the most sought-after bookplate in the United States is that of George Washington.

BROADSIDE A single sheet of paper, usually printed on one side only. Originally these were public proclamations or notices, but later became a popular means of distributing songs and ballads. In the twentieth century, the term generally refers to a single poem printed on a fairly large sheet of paper. Since the end of World War II there has been a virtual mania among small press owners for producing broadside poems, with artwork and typography (and poetry) of varying quality.

CANCEL A tipped-in (i.e., pasted-in) page to replace a page removed after a book has been bound. This is done for a variety of reasons, most commonly to correct a serious misprint discovered too late. A recent example of this occurred with the publication of John Updike’s The Music School, where three lines of verse occur on page 446. Two of these three lines were transposed, and the error was not discovered until a quantity of copies had been not only printed but shipped. The balance of the edition was then withheld until a new page could be printed with the lines in correct order, the page with the error sliced out, and the correctly printed one pasted in, thus creating a “cancel.”

CASE-BOUND This term indicates that a book is hardbound as opposed to a paperback.

CHAPBOOK Properly speaking, a chapbook is a cheaply printed book of the kind sold by street vendors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is today often used to refer to any small pamphlet.

CHIPPED A term used to describe dust jackets or the fragile edge of a paperback where small pieces are missing or fraying has occurred.

CLOTH In many catalogs, the word “cloth” used to describe a copy of a book means simply that the book, cloth-bound, lacks the dust jacket, whether or not it originally had one.

COLLATION Technically, the examination and notation of the physical makeup of a book. By checking for the presence of every leaf or page originally in the volume when issued, a book may be collated as complete. While few modern books will be found to be lacking any printed pages, books issued with illustrations, especially original etchings or lithographs by well-known artists, often, alas, lack one or more of them. Some art dealers make a practice of removing these items and then reselling the book itself. Sometimes there is no indication in the printed text that the illustration should have been present. The unwary neophyte may be trapped into buying an incomplete copy. Aside from those with important artwork, most modern books do not require collation.

COLOPHON A statement from the printer or publisher appearing at the end of a book. In the early days of printing, when books did not have title pages, the printer placed his personal seal or device on the last printed page of the book. He generally indicated the location of his press and the date the printing was completed, often to the very month and day. Today, when most publishers place their names and sometimes devices on title pages, colophons are usually encountered only on limited editions. They may give the number of copies in the edition, and sometimes such printing details as the kind of paper and the typeface used, especially if these differ from the trade edition. If the edition is signed by the author, the signature usually—although not always—appears here.

CONJUGATE LEAF The unsevered second half of a printed page. Books are generally sewn together in signatures (i.e., groups of pages) made up of anywhere from twelve to sixteen sheets of paper, folded so that one single leaf will bear four pages of print. Thus, in a signature of twelve sheets, the leaf bearing pages 1 and 2 will have as its conjugate the leaf bearing pages 23 and 24.

CUT Many modern books are smooth-trimmed after binding so that all edges are even, or flush. This is described as having been “cut,” to differentiate it from books where the edges are left “rough,” or slightly uneven. This term is often confused with “unopened.” (See uncut.)

DECKLE EDGES Another term for uncut or untrimmed edges. (See uncut.)

DEDICATION COPY The copy of the book inscribed by the author to the person to whom the book is dedicated. Obviously, there can be only one such copy, and it is usually regarded as the most desirable of all possible copies of any book. In recent years there has been a widespread misuse of the word “dedication” when the word “inscription” is actually intended, when describing a copy that bears an author’s handwritten inscription. This misuse probably stems from the fact that in French such an inscription is called a dédicace.

DEVICE A printer’s ornament. Also an insignia that is the publisher’s identifying mark, generally found on the title page and also sometimes on the binding of a book. For instance Random House employs a drawing of a house; Knopf uses a Borzoi dog, and the Hogarth Press a wolf’s head. This is also sometimes called a logotype or “logo.”

DISBOUND This term refers to a book or pamphlet, once bound, from which the binding has been removed. Not to be confused with “unbound,” which refers to a book that has never been bound. The term is usually encountered in connection with older pamphlets that were often bound up together in volumes and have since been separated again.

DUST JACKET A term synonymous with dust wrapper, indicating the usually decorative paper wrapper placed around a book to protect the binding. Dust jackets came into general usage towards the end of the nineteenth century, although they did not come to be considered by collectors to be an integral part of the book until well into the twentieth century. Today it is unwise to purchase a book without its dust jacket. Considerable premiums are now asked for books of earlier vintages that still have their original jackets. Particularly startling, for example, is the difference in price between copies of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby with and without the jacket. The former can be ten times the latter.

ENDPAPERS The sheets of paper pasted onto the inner covers, joining the book block to the covers. One half of each sheet is pasted onto the board of the binding, leaving the other half free, creating the front—or rear—free endpapers. These free endpapers are sometimes mistakenly referred to as “flyleaves.” (See book block, flyleaf.)

EPHEMERA Plural of the Greek word ephemeron, meaning something that disappears quickly. This is now an omnium-gatherum word that will include anything not easily classifiable under any other heading. Ephemera is perhaps one of the most diverting and intriguing fields for collecting, and is discussed more fully in Chapter Two.

ERRATA Mistakes or errors. Generally encountered in the term “errata slip,” a small sheet of paper laid in loosely or sometimes glued (or “tipped”) into a book by a publisher who has discovered the errors prior to publication of the book, but too late to correct them. An errata slip is easily lost, and its presence is generally noted in catalogs as a plus point in the value of a particular copy.

EX-LIBRARY A term used to indicate that a particular copy of a book was once in a library, usually a public or institutional library, or even worse, a lending library. It may be expected to be worn and defaced with call numbers, card pockets, perforated title pages, and other such distressing features. Lending libraries also usually paste the flaps of the dust jackets down to the endpapers. Such copies are to be avoided almost without exception.

EXTRA ILLUSTRATED A copy of a book into which additional illustrations have been bound. This was a popular pastime in Victorian days, when years were sometimes spent in gathering engravings of every person and place mentioned in a book and then having the entire collection rebound. Depending on the type of book, a one-volume affair could bulk up into three volumes by this process. Now looked upon askance, except as a curiosity.

FIRST EDITION Generally used by book collectors and dealers to mean the first appearance of a work in book or pamphlet form, in its first printing. (See pages 111—2.)

FIRST SEPARATE EDITION The first appearance as a complete book or pamphlet of a work that has previously appeared as part of another book. For example, Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts first appeared in a book entitled Operas and Plays in 1931. In 1934, after the opera had become a phenomenal success in its American premiere, it was issued separately by Random House—the first separate edition.

FIRST TRADE EDITION The edition produced for general commercial sale, as distinguished from a limited edition. An example of this can be found in the recent books of John Updike, most of which have been issued in both signed limited editions as well as trade editions.

FLYLEAF A blank leaf, sometimes more than one, following the front free endpaper, or at the end of a book where there is not sufficient text to fill out the last few pages. A term often misapplied to the front or rear endpaper. (See endpaper.)

FOXING Brown spotting of the paper caused by a chemical reaction, generally found in nineteenth-century books, particularly in steel engravings of the period. Seldom encountered in twentieth-century books unless they have been stored for a long time in a humid climate such as Florida or New Orleans. While seldom disastrous, foxing does spoil the appearance of a book, and foxed copies are usually to be avoided. However, because of the nature of the paper used in certain books, unfoxed copies may be impossible to find.

FRONTISPIECE An illustration at the beginning of a book, usually facing the title page.

GALLEYS Sometimes called “galley proofs” or “loose galleys” to distinguish them from bound galleys. (See page 172.) Long sheets of paper bearing the first trial impression of the type. Usually containing two or three pages per strip, they are used to catch typesetting errors before proceeding with the book. Very few copies are printed (or “pulled”). In recent years they have become much sought after, particularly if they bear the author’s manuscript corrections. Newer offset printing methods, especially those involving computer typesetting, may produce galleys that are photocopied and perhaps already pagebroken.

GATHERING A group of sheets folded together for sewing or gluing into the binding. Also called a signature.

HALF LEATHER A term indicating that the spine and sometimes the corners of a book are bound in leather, while the rest of the binding may be cloth or paper.

HALF TITLE The leaf carrying nothing but the title of the book, usually preceding the title page. The half title was commonly removed by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century binders. A modern book may have more than one.

HEADBAND A decorative cloth band, sometimes colored or multicolored, appearing inside the backstrip at the top (and sometimes also bottom) of the spine of a book. Headbands were originally a normal feature of a sewed binding but are no longer required; if they appear at all, it is mostly as a matter of swank.

HINGE The joint (either outer or inner) of the binding of a book—the part that bends when the book is opened. Since this is the part that gets the most wear and tear, it is also the part where most defects occur. This is particularly true of leather-bound books kept in a heated room and never treated with a leather preservative. If the inner hinge is starting to come apart, usually noticeable by the endpaper’s splitting, the book is said to be “starting.” Cataloguers apparently cannot bring themselves to complete the phrase by saying “starting to fall apart.”

HOLOGRAPH A term indicating the handwriting of the author. Thus a holograph letter is a letter entirely in the author’s handwriting. The term autograph means the same thing, although in recent years it is generally used to refer to a handwritten name.

IMPRESSION A much misused term, but one that, when accurately employed, means the copies printed during any given press run.

IMPRINT A term that can refer either to the place of publication or to the publisher. Imprint collecting is a popular field, particularly books and pamphlets printed in a given city or state before a specific date. Any book printed in what is now the United States prior to 1776 is a pre-Revolutionary imprint. Books printed in the Confederate States during the Civil War are Confederate imprints, and so forth.

INDIA PAPER An extremely thin yet relatively opaque paper used to help reduce the bulk of what would otherwise be a book of unwieldy size. Most Bibles, for example, are printed on India paper. Thus the synonymous term “Bible paper.”

INSCRIBED Usually indicates a book signed by the author, either with an inscription to a specific person or bearing some brief notation along with his signature. An inscribed copy is not necessarily the same as a presentation copy (which is one actually given to the recipient by the author), but it is often difficult to distinguish between the two. Some authors are particularly careful to make this distinction clear. T. S. Eliot, when making an actual presentation to a friend, would write “For–––––from T. S. Eliot”; when asked by a stranger to sign or inscribe a book, he would write “Inscribed for–––––by T. S. Eliot.” A book bearing only the author’s signature is not an inscribed book, but merely a signed one.

INTEGRAL A leaf or page is said to be integral when it is one that was sewn and bound into a book during its manufacture. The opposite of a cancel. (See cancel.)

ISSUE Generally synonymous today with “state,” referring to the priority of copies within the first edition, if indeed any priorities exist. The earliest copies released are known as the first issue. While sometimes it is a matter of varying colors or types of binding (or even in rare cases of the type of paper on which the book has been printed), issues are usually created by errors that may be corrected during the press run. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, for example, one of the characters says she is “sick in tired.” This mistake was caught during the run and corrected to “sick and tired,” thereby creating a first and second issue within the first edition. Another type of error created two issues in the first edition of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The book originally lacked the disclaimer notice about the characters being entirely fictional. Wishing to avoid any possible lawsuits, the publishers stopped the presses before the printing was completed and inserted the notice. Then the press run was completed. The copies without the notice belong to the first issue, those with the notice to the second issue, although both issues are first editions. Anything that distinguishes one issue from another is known as a “point.” (See points.)

JAPAN VELLUM A smooth, glossy paper, made in imitation of vellum, generally a light tan color. Quite often used in the production of deluxe editions. Virtually all of the books of the Black Sun Press were printed on Japan vellum.

JUVENILES Books originally or primarily written to be read by (or to) children, although they are usually highly esteemed by adults as well. Treasure Island and Winniethe-Pooh are good examples of juveniles that are collected.

JUVENILIA Work written when an author was extremely young, often a child.

LAID PAPER A handmade paper showing parallel lines of the papermaking frame, visible when held up to the light.

LIMITED EDITION Any book whose publication is deliberately restricted to a comparatively small number of copies, usually numbered, and often signed by the author and/or the illustrator. Such books generally (although not always) are further distinguished by being printed on better paper than that used for the trade edition, and with a more expensive binding. Occasionally they are issued in a slipcase (sometimes referred to as a publisher’s box).

LIMP An adjective describing a flexible binding in suede or imitation leather such as that used on the early titles of the Modern Library. A paperback is not a limp binding.

MADE-UP COPY A copy of a book whose parts have been assembled from one or more defective copies. Made-up copies of modern books are uncommon but may be found. Making up and other forms of tinkering are also known as “sophistication.”

MARBLED Paper decorated with an imitation marble pattern. Marbled papers were especially popular for endpapers in the nineteenth century, and today are most often encountered on deluxe limited editions and occasionally on the page edges.

MINT COPY An absolutely perfect copy, as fresh in all respects as the day it was issued.

MISBOUND Pages or signatures sewn together in an improper order. As long as no pages have been omitted, it is not a matter of crucial importance to most collectors, although a perfectly bound copy is, of course, preferable. A misbound copy is not more valuable, as a misprinted stamp might be.

MONOGRAPH A work, generally short, dealing with a single subject and usually issued in pamphlet form.

MOROCCO A type of leather made from goatskins, especially suitable for book bindings because of its durability and beauty. It has a naturally grainy surface texture. When this is pressed to a smoother finish, it is then referred to as “crushed morocco.” Morocco can be dyed a wide variety of colors, red, brown, green, and black being the most common. Black is referred to as “niger morocco” or sometimes merely “niger,” from the Latin word for “black.”

OUT OF PRINT A book no longer available from the publisher is termed “out of print.” Often abbreviated as “o.p.”

PASTE-DOWN The portion of the endpaper pasted to the inner cover of a book.

PIRATED EDITION Any edition of a work issued without permission of the author and without payment of royalties to the author or copyright holder. Until the adoption of the International Copyright Law in 1891, it was common for the work of popular authors to be pirated. This practice virtually died out in the twentieth century until recent years when Russia started pirating the works of British and American authors. Since 1949, a flood of piracies has been coming out of Taiwan, printed by photo offset from the original editions and including even the dust jackets. Since they cannot be legally imported into the United States or the United Kingdom, Taiwan piracies have become, in the peculiar but logical manner of such things, sought after by many collectors.

POINTS Distinguishing characteristics, usually errors, that occur within a first edition and indicate the priority of copies. “Points” differentiate “issues.” (See issue.) It should be noted, incidentally, that existence of an error is not necessarily proof of an earlier state. In T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the letter a dropped out of the word “mountain” on page 41 approximately halfway through the printing run, so presence of the error is proof of the later state. And certain errors, despite appearances, do nothing to establish priority. For nearly fifty years, many dealers have been cataloguing copies of Faulkner’s Light in August as “first issue” because they contain an obvious error on page 340, where “Mottstown” is called “Jeffersonville.” This is not a point, however, since the error was never corrected, and appears in every copy of Light in August ever published, including the Modern Library reprints.

PRESENTATION COPY A copy of a book actually given by the author (or in rare cases by the publisher) to someone of his acquaintance, usually with an inscription of some sort testifying to this disposition. A mere signature of an author does not make it a presentation copy, since most authors are willing to sign numerous copies of their books at readings or other public appearances. Actual presentation copies are relatively uncommon, because authors seldom receive more than a dozen free copies of their books and cannot afford to give away many. Presentation copies are accordingly the most highly valued category of books for the collector. This is particularly true if the presentation is to another well-known author. Prices for such copies may be several times higher than for unsigned or autographed copies of the same book. (See inscribed.)

PRIVATE PRESS A small press, often operated by one person, usually devoted to the production of small quantities of finely printed books. The work is usually of superior quality, and the collecting of “press books” is an extremely popular field of endeavor.

PRIVATELY PRINTED This term does not refer to the output of a private press (see private press), but to a book or pamphlet whose printing was paid for by an individual or a group, and which is meant for private circulation, not public sale.

PROOF See galleys.

PROVENANCE The history of ownership or possession of a given book (or painting or other art object). Some extremely rare books have a recorded unbroken pedigree of ownership through the ages. A catalog may, for example, refer to a copy of a book as “the Hoe-Kern-Goodwin” copy, indicating that the book at various times formed part of these distinguished collections. Collectors of twentieth-century books rarely discover the provenance of a particular book (unless it can be pieced together from signatures or bookplates or dealers’ information), since there are few examples of modern books so rare as to warrant recording the history of ownership.

PUBLICATION DATE The date a book is formally placed on sale. Finished copies may be available as much as a month or six weeks beforehand, and will be in bookstores prior to the publication date. “Publishing” a book is the process of placing it on sale, not of printing it.

READING COPY A copy of a book that is worn or used to such a degree that it is unacceptable to modern collectors, although it may still be textually complete. Such copies are sometimes termed “working copies,” and are generally shunned by collectors.

REBACKED A book that has been repaired by getting a new spine and mended hinges. This is seldom done on modern copies; most twentieth-century books are still in condition not requiring repairs, and few are so scarce as to warrant the expense of such work. Rebacking is usually seen only on leather-bound books of the eighteenth century or earlier.

RECASED A book that has been glued back into its covers after having been shaken loose. This process entails, at the very least, the replacement of the endpapers and often more extensive surgery.

RECTO The front side of a leaf in a bound book; in other words, the right-hand page of an opened book. (Recto means “right” in Latin.)

REMAINDER When a book has ceased to sell, a publisher may get rid of his overstock by “remaindering” the title. Sold in quantity at a reduced price, the books will turn up either in special remainder stores or on bargain counters in regular bookstores at a substantial markdown from their original price. It sometimes happens that a publisher has been holding a certain number of copies “in sheets” (i.e., printed but not bound) and, to dispose of them as cheaply as possible, will bind them for remaindering in particularly inexpensive material. Thus while the pages themselves may be from the first printing, the binding is a so-called remainder binding, and a copy so found is less desirable than one in the original binding. SHAKEN An adjective describing a book whose pages are beginning to come loose from the binding. This separation from the casing usually occurs along the inner hinges.

SIGNATURE In bookmaking, this does not mean the author’s name written out in his hand. It refers rather to the group of pages produced by folding a single printed sheet, ready for sewing or gluing into a book. A careful look at the top of a book will show immediately whether signatures have been inserted into the binding or whether the edges of single leaves have been glued together to make what is rather incredibly called a “perfect” binding. A signature is sometimes called a gathering.

STATE Closely allied to the definition of “issue.” “State” generally refers to a change other than a correction of a misprint. It can occur anywhere, either in the printed portion of the book, the binding, or even the dust jacket. For instance, the photo of Hemingway on the rear panel of the dust jacket of For Whom the Bell Tolls bore no photographer’s credit. This was noted, and the photographer’s name added at some point during the printing of the jackets. Thus while the book itself exists in only one state, the jacket exists in two. An example of a book that exists in four states—none of them due to any error —is Gertrude Stein’s Geography and Plays (where, incidentally, her famous “rose is a rose is a rose” first appears). It was published in 1922 in an edition of one thousand copies. At that time Stein did not sell very well, and the publisher bound up the sheets in groups of 250 at a time, over a period of ten years. As might be expected, after intervals of several years, he was not able to obtain exactly the same binding materials, thus creating four states of the binding—and none of them remainder bindings. (See remainder.)

STUB A narrow strip of paper usually remaining where a leaf has been cut away. Cancels are pasted onto stubs. Sometimes a stub is a normal part of the book’s construction, as for example when a frontispiece is an etching or engraving on paper other than that used for the printing of the text, and a stub is needed as a base to glue it on. A stub without some reasonable explanation is usually a danger signal that something has been removed from a book.

SUNNED Faded from exposure to light or direct sunlight. This usually occurs on spines (and can occur even through dust jackets), but may happen to any exposed portion of a book. Green and purple are notoriously unstable colors, and books bound in those colors inevitably become sunned quickly.

TOP EDGE GILT Usually abbreviated t.e.g., it means that the top edges of the pages have been covered with gold leaf or a gilt material. This was originally done to make the book easier to dust. Today it is mainly employed on deluxe editions as a form of “elegance.”

TRIMMED An adjective indicating that the pages have been cut down to a size smaller than when originally issued. This usually occurs when a book is rebound.

UNCUT One of the most misused terms in book collecting. It means simply that the pages of the completed book have not been shaved down to a uniform surface. (See cut.) It does not mean “unopened.” An unopened copy of a book is one whose pages need the service of a paper knife before they can be opened and read.

VERSO The second, or rear, side of a leaf in a book. When the book is opened, the page on the left is the verso (Latin for “turned”). The opposite of recto.

WRAPPERS The outer covers of a paperbound book or pamphlet. Not to be confused with “dust wrapper.”

ABBREVIATIONS

A.L.S. autograph letter, signed

BDS boards

D.J. or D.W. dust jacket or dust wrapper

MS manuscript

N.D. no date (of publication)

N.P. no place (of publication)

O.P. out of print

T.L.S. typed letter, signed. It is also an abbreviation for The Times Literary Supplement. The context will indicate which.

BOOK SIZES

A full sheet of paper used by printers can be folded in such a manner as to make two or more pages in a book, depending on the size of book desired. When the sheet is folded once, it is termed a “folio”; when folded twice, it becomes a “quarto” (since it then produces four leaves) ; when folded three times it becomes an “octavo” (eight leaves) and so on. Since the size of the original sheet may vary, it is possible to have a large quarto, or a small folio, or even a “Crown octavo,” the latter indicating a somewhat smaller size than the ordinary octavo. These terms are usually indicated numerically:

4to — quarto
8vo — octavo
12mo — duodecimo
16mo — sextodecimo

and so forth. A handy way of correlating sizes is to remember that the larger the number, the smaller the book. Another handy device is to remember that most modern novels are 8vo size.

Note that the book sizes described above are largely based on the traditional sheet-size used by printers until this century. Today, most books are printed on presses capable of handling far larger sheets, so that the standard gathering is 16 or even (less commonly) 32 leaves. Yet the books are no smaller, and a novel “in 32s” will probably still be described as an octavo (that is, about 8½” X 5½” to 9½” x 6”), even though it is technically a “32mo.”

Size has no bearing on the value of a book, but it is customary in dealers’ catalogs to note the size so that the prospective customer will have some idea of the size of the book he is ordering. There is one classic tale, known to almost every American dealer, of the collector who had searched for years for a copy of T. S. Eliot’s Ara Vos Prec, and then, when a dealer triumphantly sent it to him, returned it. When the dealer asked why, his reply was that he had not known that it was so large and it simply wouldn’t fit on his bookshelves! Few collectors are so obtuse, but it does sometimes help in the search if you know the physical size and appearance of the item you are searching for.