Saturday, January 12, 2008

 

Piles of Books

Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Reminiscences of a Literary Life (1836), pp. 436-437 (on the book collection of the late Richard Heber):
I looked around me with amazement. I had never seen rooms, cupboards, passages, and corridors, so choked, so suffocated with books. Treble rows were here, double rows were there. Hundreds of slim quartos—several upon each other—were longitudinally placed over thin and stunted duodecimos, reaching from one extremity of a shelf to another. Up to the very ceiling the piles of volumes extended; while the floor was strewed with them, in loose and numerous heaps.
A contemporary American painter, Ephraim Rubenstein, specializes in depictions of piles of books. For a selection, see the gallery at the artist's web site (scroll to the right). William Chapman Sharpe, Still-Life Portraits: The Book-Filled Art of Ephraim Rubenstein, is a good introduction to the artist.

William Michael Harnett (1848-1892) also painted many piles of books. Here is his Music and Literature:


Related post: Bibliovoyeurism.



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