Scams! by Schroeder Andreas

Author:Schroeder Andreas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Annick Press Ltd
Published: 2004-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Crazy about Books

THOMAS WILLIAM EDWARD PHILLIPPS didn’t want much.

All he wanted was a copy of every single book that had ever been published in the history of the world.

Back in 18th-century England, when the number of books published each year was only a tiny fraction of what gets published today, this idea might not have sounded quite as crazy as it sounds nowadays—but it was close!

Thomas Phillipps was able to start his obsession early because his father was a rich aristocrat who could afford to give his son a big allowance. By 1798, when he was only six years old, Thomas already owned 110 books. That was about 109 more than any of his friends. Most people in those days didn’t own any books at all—just a Bible.

By 1811, when he was a student of geography at Oxford University, his library already numbered in the thousands. “You know the extent of your money, and it will be in vain to write to me for more,” his father replied when Phillipps wrote home asking for money to buy more books. He pointed out that the year had barely started and Thomas had already spent his entire annual allowance. Why did he need so many books?

Good question.

It might have made more sense if Phillipps had been so fascinated by geography that he was buying hundreds of geography books. But he wasn’t. He really didn’t care that much about geography. Geography was just an excuse to go to university, which was in London, which was a city full of bookstores, which were places where you could buy hundreds and hundreds of additional—books!!

The fact of the matter was that Thomas Phillipps didn’t even care what the books he bought were about.

He was just crazy about books—period. He loved the look of them. He loved the feel of them. He loved their smell, their covers, their papers, their typefaces, their bindings, inks, illustrations, spines, colors, designs. He loved the way books looked on bookshelves—hundreds and hundreds of them, all neatly lined up, floor to ceiling, beautifully printed, bursting with fascinating information.

It was an expensive obsession, even for an aristocrat. Books in the 18th century cost a lot of money because producing a book back then took a huge amount of work. Every page of every book had to be handprinted, and every book handbound. There were no mass-production printing machines in those days. Even an ordinary book cost an equivalent of about $200 today.

By the time Phillipps finished his university education (taking twice as long as everybody else), he was spending about 1,000 pounds per year of his father’s money on books—and his father was getting tired of it.

But in 1818, Phillipps’s father died, and as the only son, Thomas inherited the family’s Middle Hill Estate. This was a huge place, including not only their 21-room mansion but also half a dozen farms covering almost 320 hectares (800 acres). It was mostly the rent from those farms that had been paying the Phillipps’s bills. The estate was worth a fortune, but not (as it turned out) to Thomas.

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