Genius Fan

My wife doesn’t appreciate the pleasure that goes with tidying and reorganising our (my) bookcases, so when the topic of redecorating the living room pops up…I know it’s a day of tidying, (putting all books into boxes) furniture moving, cleaning and prep, followed by a day of painting, then six hours of cleaning, furniture reinstatement and then my reward: unpacking the books from their boxes and organising them according to a new idea I had to make them easier to find. Yes, I’m also solving the problem of books removed, but not replaced in their original place on the shelf.

This is a very rough outline of how I organise things, starting with the top shelf and working towards the floor:

Bookcase 01

1. Boswell’s Journals, Yale edition (and some doublers)
2. Associated volumes (see the page at Yale Boswell Editions)
3. Boswell biographies
4. Johnson biographies
5. Scholarly works, essay collections about Boswell and Johnson
6. Boswell publications (The Life, The Tour, Corsica)
7. My prized 2nd (I know) editions of Boswell and Johnson’s Tour
8. Authors in the Footsteps of Boswell and Johnson’s Tour
9. General Eighteenth century history
10. The Enlightenment
11. Scottish history
12. Book collecting and scholars

Bookcase 02

1. Biographies
2. Pindar, The Spectator, novels
3. Art books (Rowlandson, Hogarth, Sandy, Canaletto
4. NKJV Bible, RSC Shakespeare
5. My wife’s photography and cookery books (they’ll disappear into the attic one by one!)