Genius Fan

Stand back, take in the view, row upon row of books on the shelves of Sir Walter Scott’s library. I was at his home in the Scottish Borders recently and I can tell you the library is at once breathtaking, stirring and impressive. Its true fascination lies in the individual books, the content, of course, the rarity of each item, but also the whole collection…as an entity. So many rows of brown book spines lined up, only their size, folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo, distinguishing them from neighbours on either side, above or below. I found that an impressive sight. And for someone who’s now reading about the Eighteenth century and, bit by bit, reading drama, fiction, prose, poetry and journalism written during that greatest of all centuries, the sight of all those volumes just inches away from my nosey nose, it’s thrilling. The whole thing is awesome, in the sense it inspires reverence. [Pause] But I prefer the look of my own bookshelves.

From where I sit and write I can see both bookcases. There are six shelves in each and the volumes are colourful, the spines have graphic and text designs on them, some have dust jackets, some still have the white stickers with their original library numbers, some are in clear protective wraps, a few are paperback, most are hardback, many are scholarly works, others are for the general reader, they’re different thicknesses and heights, though some are sets all of the same height. Even with my specs off and at a distance of three metres, I can point at a book spine and make a good guess at the identity of the volume. I bought them all, one by one, for a reason, usually because they’re referenced in another book. Of the Scott’s library-type of volumes, I’ve got ten (see below). I like that they fit into the bookshelf-ly panorama, and don’t dominate. With this visual variety I can pretty easily find a book I want, but then I only have twelve shelves (actually, I just counted and my books occupy eight and a half shelves. My wife’s books occupy the rest.) There are sufficiently few volumes for it to still be easy. But how did Sir Walter find his way around a library with so many volumes all with spines looking the same and of similar heights? He must have put each book back in its proper place once he’d finished. Goes without saying.