Decrepitude

While I've always liked to think of myself as what a Hyde Park bookdealer once called the "blessedly pragmatic" type--in search of a working text instead of a collector's item--I nevertheless have had a hard time overcoming my aversion to less-than-intact bindings.  That's a remarkably foolish aversion, given my line of work: cheap texts generally feature cheap bindings, and cheap bindings generally survive...cheaply.  Let's not even mention 1880s and 1890s paper, which has a dismaying tendency to (at best) turn autumnal shades of brown and (at worst) crumble into nothingness at the slightest touch.  Recently, though, I've started acquiring vast quantities of sermons, and Victorian sermons usually come in states of collapse ranging from the nude (no covers) to the discombobulated (no stitching).  So much for attractive-looking bookshelves. 

My first excursion into the realm of what's politely called "the reading copy" took place during graduate school, when I acquired my "dilapidated Disraeli."  To be more precise, I acquired Edmund Gosse's deluxe limited edition of Disraeli's novels.  At one point, this was a remarkably pretty set (see here and here); now, alas, poor Dizzy has become spineless.  It doesn't help that the leather is slowly but surely crumbling, producing random showers of colored dust.  For many years, this set hosted the only truly decrepit books in my collection, but it is acquiring a multitude of new friends.  The sermons, for example.  My copy of the British Pulpit, Vol. II, has covers; if only they were attached to the text block.  As it now stands, when I'm forced to choose between not having an important text and having one that looks like a special guest corpse on Law & Order, the corpse wins every time.  I'm delighted to finally have a decent complete set of John Lingard, even if he seems determined to prove that a book and its binding are soon parted; similarly, I'm pleased to have Neander on my shelves, even if his spines have a nasty habit of falling on the floor.  Obviously, a book on the verge of imminent collapse can make for awkward reading experiences--it's most unnerving to watch one  silently disintegrate over the course of an evening.  (There are times when "deconstruction" takes on a whole new meaning.)  Still, better a book in fragments than no book at all.