Building a Personal Library of Classic Literature

Why a Library Grows Differently from a Reading List

A reading list is a set of instructions. A library is a record of a life. The two are built in entirely different ways, and confusing them is the reason so many hopeful shelves end up abandoned after a year. A list is something you finish; a library is something you add to. If you begin with the assumption that you will buy six or eight books a year and keep them for thirty, you arrive at something in the region of two hundred volumes — a serious collection, and one whose every spine you will recognise at a glance.

The point is not to own a great many books. It is to own the right ones, in editions that will last, arranged so that they are easy to reach for on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Apply the Rereading Test Before You Buy

Before a book earns a permanent place, ask a single question: would I read this again? Most books fail, and that is no criticism of them. A thriller that kept you up on a train journey has done its job. It does not need to occupy shelf space for the next forty years.

The books that pass tend to fall into three groups.

• Novels of character and observation — Austen, Eliot, Trollope, Hardy — where the pleasure is not the plot, which you already know, but the company and the prose.
• Essays and letters — Montaigne, Hazlitt, Lamb — which are read in fragments and reward dipping rather than marching through.
• Poetry — short, dense, and designed for repetition. A poem you have read twenty times is not the same poem.

Everything else can come from a library, a friend, or a charity shop, and leave again without guilt.

Buy Editions Worth Keeping

Price is a poor guide; paper, binding and printing are better ones. A cheap paperback on grey paper with cramped type will not survive ten readings, and you will not want it to. Look for four things.

• Sewn bindings rather than glued spines, so the book lies flat and the pages stay put.
• Decent paper that is opaque enough to read without the reverse showing through.
• Generous typesetting — sensible margins, comfortable leading, a typeface designed for reading rather than for saving space.
• Notes and introductions where the text is difficult or the context distant.

The second-hand market is your ally here. A hardback printed in the 1950s, slightly foxed at the edges, often offers better paper and binding than anything new at three times the price. Inspect before you buy: check the hinges, the smell, and whether the pages are complete. Foxing on the endpapers is forgivable; a musty, damp-stained block is not.

Give the Collection a Shape

Random accumulation produces a pile. A library needs a spine — three or four strands that you follow deliberately, so that each purchase relates to something already there. Four strands will serve most readers well.

• Fiction: the English novel from Austen to the mid-twentieth century, plus a handful of European works in translations you have actually checked are readable.
• Essays: a core of Montaigne, Hazlitt or Lamb, one or two twentieth-century essayists, and whatever contemporary prose you admire enough to reread.
• Poetry: one good anthology to find your way, then single collections by the four or five poets you keep returning to.
• Working reference: a dictionary, a book of quotations, a classical dictionary, and an atlas. These are the books you will use most often and think about least.

Four strands is plenty. Resist the temptation to add a fifth in a fit of enthusiasm; breadth arrives on its own over the years, and depth has to be chosen.

Where to Look, and What to Spend

Set a modest monthly budget and treat it as permission rather than restriction. Twenty or thirty pounds a month, spent carefully, will build a better library in ten years than a single extravagant splurge. Buy the best copy you can afford of a book you already love, and the cheapest decent copy of a book you are merely curious about. Curiosity does not always survive contact.

The best sources are unglamorous: charity shops in prosperous towns, second-hand bookshops with a knowledgeable owner, house clearances, library sales and church fêtes. Go regularly rather than once. Ask the owner what they would recommend for someone building a shelf of essays; the answer is usually worth the visit on its own.

Living with the Books

Keep the shelves out of direct sunlight, which fades spines and dries paper. Dust them occasionally with a soft brush rather than a damp cloth. Do not pack them too tightly; boards need air and a little room. Beyond that, the best preservation is use — a book that is handled has a life, and a little wear is the honest record of it.

Lend reluctantly and make a note of what has gone. Read in the room where the books live, not only in bed. Leave one or two face-down on the arm of a chair; a library that looks untouched is not a library but a display. The collection will grow unevenly, and the gaps will tell you more about your taste than the full shelves do. That is the whole point. Begin with three books you already love, and let the rest follow.