(Roughly) Daily

From Greg Ross, a helpful vocabulary lesson for those of us who would talk about people’s relationships with books…

rarissima
n. extremely rare books, manuscripts, or prints

In The Book Hunter (1863), John Hill Burton identifies five types of “persons who meddle with books”:

• “A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book.”
• “A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements.”
• “A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy.”
• “A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure.”
• “A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass cases.”

These groups seem to have been proposed by French librarian Jean Joseph Rive. Bibliographer Gabriel Peignot added four more:

• bibliolyte, a destroyer of books
• bibliologue, one who discourses about books
• bibliotacte, a classifier of books
• bibliopée, “‘l’art d’écrire ou de composer des livres,’ or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author.”…

For the bibliophiles among us: “In a Word,” from Futility Closet.

(Image above: source)

* Thea Dorn

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As we love our labels, we might send eerie birthday greetings to Howard Phillips Lovecraft; he was born on this date in 1890.  The creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, he was a pioneer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. H.P. Lovecraft was almost unknown in his lifetime, but has become one of the most influential writers of the Twentieth Century– Jorge Luis Borges, Joyce Carol Oates, and Stephen King, among many other writers, comic artists, and filmmakers, have all proclaimed their indebtedness.

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