William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898)

I'd never heard of this short book until Anne Fadiman recommended it in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. Sadly, as it's not very well known, this little book was difficult to come by until I got a kindle and could download an ebook version for free.

William Ewart Gladstone was a 19th century politician who served as Prime Minister on 4 separate occasions and also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer on 4 separate occasions. Although Gladstone's political achievements were many and various, what is perhaps less well known is that he was also a consumate bibliophile, reading around 20,000 books in his lifetime and owning a library of over 32,000 (now I believe housed at Gladstone's Library, a residential library in the UK).

On Books and the Housing of Them is essentially a short treatise setting out Gladstone's thoughts on what on earth you do with 32,000 books (other than read them of course). He sets out his views on book binding, the future of publishing and finally how we are to store all these books if more and more books are being published and bought by more and more people.

He sets out very detailed instructions on how to construct your own personal library to house your books and calculates that a library 'forty feet long and twenty feet broad, amply lighted, having some portion of the centre fitted with very low bookcases suited to serve for some of the uses of tables, will receive on the floor from 18,000 to 20,000 volumes of all sizes without losing the appearance of a room or assuming that of a warehouse, and while leaving portions of space available near the windows for purposes of study.' Even if we had a room that size in our flat I'm not sure the floor would take the weight of all those books without reinforcing but when I buy my mansion I will certainly try Mr Gladstone's scheme out. He also, very practically, estimates the cost of housing these books which he estimates at 1 penny per volume (which from some quick googling seems to equate to just under £1 in today's money). Of course, if you're looking to house 20,000 volumes that's still £20,000 - yikes!

In a way it seems ironic to be reading a book about housing books on an ereader. But like many people who own ereaders, one of the reasons behind my purchase was because my bookcases, small tables and pretty much every other available surface are covered with books and there are still many books I would like to own. I can only hope Gladstone would have understood... (although he clearly wouldn't have approved of my double stacking my books on my bookshelves - "And I dispose with a passing anathema of all such as would endeavour to solve their problem, or at any rate compromise their difficulties, by setting one row of books in front of another.")

But what mainly shone through was Gladstone's complete love of books and how, like many people on LibraryThing, he just enjoyed being surrounded by them.

"In a room well filled with them, no one has felt or can feel solitary"

Highly recommended to all book lovers.… (more)