Blumenthal

Imaginary Books and Phantom Libraries

Walter Hart Blumenthal

With all the mountainous mass of books cluttering civilization, the exercise of wit has brought few phantom books to light. To summon figment-titles and make-believe shelves that exist only in the imagination is an engaging pursuit. All but a few bookmen have neglected it: Wit in its older sense; not merely to poke satirical or sprightly fun, but wit levitated with verve, in volant fancy which the French, with their intuitive feeling for nuances, tag as jeu d'esprit. In a word, pinions instead of pin-feathers.

But gather round and regale with a bibliogeste in jocular vein. Recall those who have turned the pages of phantom books; those who have told of ghostly shelves and conjured libraries. This is apart from the theme of mock books that are physical but bogus, and likewise apart from the jocund japes of real books that come under the head of biblio-hoaxery.

One must differentiate. There are three kinds of unreal books: first, the simulated sort that are receptacles and may be called counterfeit or bogus books; second, the pretended shelves and apparent range of facetious titles that of yore hid some manor library doorways in sham array, or the imitation fabricoid spines that masquerade in less pretentious present-day stage sets; and last, the imaginary books that have no existence except as phantom volumes conjured in bibliographic jest or in fictional narrative.

Taken as a whole, this last category of invented titles is disappointing. Those prankish booksters who, from long ago onward, ventured on such lists (usually of authors who never were of flesh and blood) do not regale with inspired largess of laughter. With one or two exceptions, such efforts have lacked effervescence. Since such conjurations rely on bibliography as the wellspring of their wit, this lack of pungency may be ascribed to the sober nature of that métier. The librarian is not often seen to caper along his bibliothecal aisles.

Some day some one will perpetrate an immortal inspiration in this genre that will rock the world of bibliophiles with gusty hilarity. Such a congeries of imaginary books will be subtle, satiric, and sardonic. It will wed wit and wisdom. It will be racy and ribald. It will cause the antiquarian bookdealer to turn a cartwheel and the staid male librarian to do a buck-and-wing as he kicks his budget through the transom!

The shelves of sham book tiers that beguiled Victorian decades were akin to the imaginary volumes in assumed lists, in that both were unreal. Old-fashioned book doors of fake bindings in great private libraries have happily become as obsolete as antimacassars and moustache cups. But fanciful titles have had a long tradition and still persist as a medium of ironic raillery.

Possibly there were older ventures in such phantom book invention, but the earliest extant specimen of these literary larkings seems to be one from the first edition of Rabelais (1533), with alterations at other hands in subsequent printings.

A master of the grotesque leit-motif, Rabelais, with his prodigious vocabulary, was a robust satirist in this sort of sham listing. But the points of most of his lecherous or sardonic shafts are dulled by time. The Rabelaisian mood is typical in this itemized survey of the Library of St. Victor, which Pantagruel discovered in the ancient abbey outside the walls of Paris (Bk. 2, ch. 7). Many of the hundred-odd mock-titles had contemporary allusion, and his puns and facetious prods require a gloss for elucidation. The list delighted, among others, Voltaire, who could have made a witty list of his own, but failed to do so. Some of the Rabelais citations were not obscure, as for instance, concerning No. 11-: "The Appearance of Saint Gertrude before a nun of Poissy who was great with child." The listing has been at least twice reprinted, with interpretation

Gigantic, and likewise imaginary, was Gargantua's "huge pantoufled or thick-covered breviary” weighing "eleven hundred and six pounds” which they carried before him to church in a great basket! Salutations, Francois, man of enormous zest!

Following the example of Rabelais, several other similar early catalogues of unreal volumes appeared, tending toward the pornographic, like that of the Abbe Duprat in his Venus dans le cloitre (1682). Others were interspersed with current political gibes or cautious ecclesiastical humor.

It was once something of a pastime to play with imaginary book titles. John Donne about 1610 indulged in such a Latin list with facetious or ironic twist in allusion to authors and events long since remote. His thirty-four invented titles were ascribed to real authors. The list was included in his Poems, published posthumously in 1633 and 1650. It was published in English by the Nonesuch Press of London in 1930, translated by Percy Simpson, and entitled The Courtier's Library. Sir Thomas Browne in 1683 amused himself by composing a Bibliotheca Abscondita, comprising titles of volumes no living soul had seen -lost, surmised, or nonexistent. Such conjured titles have afforded a tempting vehicle for satire.

A German whimsy appeared in 1649, arraying titles of alleged rarities, supposedly found in a sacked castle in Ireland. This fictitious listing was reprinted in 1925 from an original copy in the Preussischen Staatsbibliothek. About 1700 in Holland was printed another such facetious little sale catalogue of the imagined library of one Don Gio dy Straatslypio. Neither engages us today, but both are mentioned here out of our whim to be comprehensive.

Least known, perhaps, of ostensible catalogues of phantom books was the pretentious list of a bookdealer J. Wolrab, in Old Nuremberg, who indulged himself in this 106-page invention in 1720. A facsimile edition was issued in 1126, so it must have pleased his clientele. Indeed, that ardent bookman, Gustave Brunet, revived it in his Fantaisies Bibliographiques (1864), and it was reprinted at Munich in 1885 (without date). Herr Wolrab's bibliophilic prank was both ribald and satirical. As an indication of how such trifles are esteemed, it may be noted that the London bookdealer, Martin Breslauer, once included in a catalogue a specimen of the 1729 printing at £8/10s. .

A diverting story hinges on the following seemingly innocent item -most gorgeous of all bibliographic hoaxes:

Catalogue d'une tres-riche mais peu nombreuse Collection des Livres, provenant de la Bibliotheque de feu M. le Comte J. -N. -A. de Fortsas… Mons; Typographie d’Em. Hoyois Librarire.

Only 132 copies of this sixteen page purported catalogue were printed at Mons in 1849. A succinct account of this inimitable bit of bibliophilic foolery was given by George P. Philes in his annotation of the once notable Andrew J. Odell Catalogue, in which a copy of the Fortsas gullery occurred for sale. Though Blades and Pearson retell the story at greater length, all the salient facts are re-called by Philes on whom we lean.

European and American collectors were astounded by the issuance of this book-sale catalogue of the presumed Count. The notable listing comprised an array of rariora which formed the cream of the Count's collection. It enumerated fifty-two items, each of them unique. The Count would keep no volume in his collection if he found it mentioned by any bibliographer! The sedate description was set forth deceptively. The sale was to take place August 10, .1840, in the office of a notary at Binche, an insignificant village of Belgium. Brunet, Nodier, Techener, and other Parisian bibliophiles are said to have met in the coach bound for Brussels, each one having thought to steal a march on his rivals.

The Baron de Reiffenberg, then Director of the Royal Library of Brussels, received a government appropriation to acquire some of these treasures. One enthusiastic bookseller made the trip to Binche from Amsterdam, only to behold No.75, Corpus Juris Civilis, printed by the Elzevirs on vellum. The Princess de Ligne, determined to destroy the annals of her ancestor's intrigues and to guard from scandal the grandmothers of the foremost Belgian families, wrote to M. Voisin to buy No.48 at any price. The Roxburghe Club was represented. Singularly enough, every item in the little Catalogue appealed with peculiar lure to the taste of some distinguished collector, and each was the fortunate recipient of a Catalogue through the post.

However, the day before the sale, the newspapers of Brussels contained a notice that the bibliographical world would learn with regret that the Library of the Count de Fortsas would not be sold - that the town of Binche, having resolved to keep it together in honor of its collector, their townsman had bought it entire, and that henceforth it would form a part of the Public Library of Binche! The force of hoaxing could no further go. The Count de Fortsas was a myth: his chateau, his passion and success in bibliographical pursuits, were apocryphal. The unique treasures of his collection (not- withstanding the gentlemen who had duplicates) had no other existence than in this little Catalogue, which has become a great rarity and curiosity in the field of bibliography. So we are told by George P. Philes.

The author of this unrivalled bibliographical joke was M. Renier- Hubert-Ghislain Chalon, of Mons. He was president of the Book Club there and wrote on numismatics.

Sixteen years later, Les Documents et Particularites sur le Catalogue du Comte de Fortsas, was published by Emmanuel Hoyois at Mons in 200 copies. This revealing volume concerning the little Fortsas Catalogue is in royal octavo, so arranged that in the Notes, Appendices, etc., the whole of the original Catalogue is reprinted, despite the legal injunction against its reproduction. For good measure it likewise gives us the correspondence of misguided bibliophiles relating to the sale, and of buying orders that were received; also articles from literary journals thereunto pertaining, and, mind you, a facsimile of a letter purporting to be from the fictitious Count de Fortsas! How gloriously were those bookish pundits hoodwinked!

It is too bad to diminish so good a story as this one of the non- existent Count who, like the announced auction and the very titles of the listed books, had only an imaginary semblance. But conscience causes us to record that some years back the late Leonard L. Mackall cast doubt on minor phases of the account, and stated (we know not on what grounds): “Brunet, Nodier, the Baron de Reiffenberg, etc. did not in fact go to Binche for the fictitious sale, and the Roxburghe Club did not send over a representative.” Still, in its essentials, the hoax was carried off in capital fashion -to the everlasting mirth of booksters. Mackall in the very column from which we quote this recension calls the Renier Chalon catalogue “the most famous and most successful of all bibliophile hoaxes.” And so it will remain until some jocund litterateur excels it.

An account of the fabulous collection projected by M. Octave Uzanne as the Sigismond Library regaled readers of The Dolphin (1933, No. 1) with its intangible treasures. Most impressive, however, in range and rarities was the gathering of Monsieur d' Astarac annotated by Anatole France, who recounts how pleasantly the Abbe Jerome Coignard and Jacques Tournebroche lingered amid the shelves.

One such facetious catalogue was dispensed on April, 1946, as a prank appropriate to the season by a San Francisco bookshop, produced by the Grabhorn Press in impeccable typography and engaging substance. It is reprinted in Targ's Carrousel for Bibliophiles (1947). Here is one of the items from that Catalogue, which was hoaxed by Francis P. Farquhar:

“No.25. Ashendene Press. To Hell With Dante. With an introduction by Aurelia Henry Reinhardt. London, 1894. Quarto, lull crushed raspberry morocco, all edges gilt. $125.00."

Another list arraying the conjectured library of Sherlock Holmes appeared in 1947 in a tribute volume, To Doctor R. -the celebrated Dr. Rosenbach. Vincent Starrett in his “Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933, revised 1960) has a list of that fictive celebrity's supposed publications compiled from allusions thereto in the narratives of detection. Likewise, Madeleine B. Stem, an ardent bibliophile, wrote an engaging article on Holmes as an imagined book collector, listing the presumed volumes used by him in his pursuit of criminals, or otherwise pertinent to his researches. It is a lively diversion in imaginary bibliography (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 1953). .

James Branch Cabell sprinkled devised volumes throughout his baroque pages, particularly in Domnei and in Jurgen. So much so that Books About Poictesme (1937) was neither more nor less than a bibliography of imaginary books mentioned or quoted as pretended sources in that author’s ironic fantasy- with reproductions of three imaginary title pages!

But that was not the last instance. In the curious novel by Austin T. Wright called Islandia (1942) we were given an imaginary country, supplemented by a 61~page appendix (separately issued), comprising an imaginary bibliography of works referring to the Islandians.

Speaking of imaginary books, these figments of literature which he terms "books within books”, Max Beerbohm, in one of the whimsical essays included in his volume And Even Now, pined to hold such intangible works as Poems by Aurora Leigh. Mellowing to the topic, he wrote:

“I crave - it may be a foolish whim, but I do crave - ocular evidence for my belief that those books were written and were published. I want to see them all ranged along goodly shelves."

Poe was fond of quoting from recondite or even imaginary authors. In his Fall of the House of Usher he alludes to "The Mad Tryst", never on any shelf. Irving cited authentic titles in the early part of his Sketches which it is unlikely he could have consulted because of their rarity at the time and place he wrote that work. In humorist Bang’s more or less forgotten book, The Cheerful Idiot, arguments are refuted by quoting non-existent volumes. It was a device as old as literary forgery to cite spurious authorities. There have been bibliographical 'ghosts', such as the Nouvelles Noces de Rabelais (Paris, 11732), repeatedly so cited without ever having existed. Even from Scriptural days the Book of Chronicles mentions various source books which have been suspected of being imaginary. Indeed, an 18th century pundit compiled a four-page list of the presumed volumes available to the Biblical patriarchs.

Taking this theme for a charming causerie, Coggeshall Macy long ago indulged in a bookman's spree with an imaginary antiquarian whose Florentine library held not only a range of books deemed lost by the world ("All the books on this wall are reputed lost”), but an alcove arraying "books not written themselves but written about in other books”.

We are let to believe in this finely turned fantasy that among lost works gracing the shelves at Florence were the letters of Boccaccio to Fiammettta in a "torn and battered vellum manuscript"; the initial canti of the Divina Commedia which the poet made in Latin before he trusted his genius to the vital Tuscan; and Pepys's romance, Love a Cheate, which the lively diarist had tom up but which had been salvaged and pieced together by the lucky custodian!

Among other phantom books conjured in this strange figment of a library were the novels of David Copperfield. Then there was the brochure, Speculations on the Sources of Hampstead Ponds, with Some Observations on the Theory or Tittlebats, communicated by tile immortal Samuel Pickwick, Esq. at a formal meeting or the Club that bore his name. Likewise Walter Lorraine, the first novel by Arthur Pendennis, indeed, the very copy that had belonged to his uncle, the Major. .

Nor would late Victorians (who venerated Thackeray and adored Pendennis) forget the collected works of Miss Rosa Bunion, including Heartstrings and The Deadly Nightshade; nor that pretended drama by a Person of Quality, The Faithful Fool, a Comedy, performed by Her Majesty's Servants (London, 1712), nine copies of which were sold, it is said, before Colonel Esmond had the rest of the impression burned, this particular specimen being "the prompt copy he took with him to Virginia”.

Another play on these ghostly shelves, we are told, was Carpezan, a tragedy by Colonel Esmond's American grandson, George Warrington, and, bound in the same volume, the drama adapted from the French by Nicholas Nickleby.

Then there is the treatise Dr. Gulliver picked up in the Academy or Lagoda, On the Malleability of Fire. Conning the tiers of titles we note the collection of tales of chivalry garnered by the Knight of La Mancha; the ancient jest-book Polonius gave his daughter to read, "that show of such an exercise might color her loneliness”; the very book or verses scanned by the Astronomer-Poet, a volume which, with jug, loaf, and One singing in the Wilderness, made Paradise enow for the Persian!

The whimsical author of this engaging jeu d’esprit stretches himself a bit far in citing among the treasures of this imagined trove the book read by Brutus the night before Philippi, "with the leaf turned down where he left reading”; for it was more likely a scroll than a tome - but why quarrel if bibliophilippics tease fancy with a tricksy tongue! If visitor Macy had lingered longer his eyes might have beheld other titles.

To match such old works as Prospero's Book of Magic, and the folio on necromancy in the handwriting of Nostradamus that once belonged to the learned Dr. Faust, we have such modern tales as Josslyn's clever Sardonyx, and the researched entitled Sherlock Holmes on Tobacco-Ashes. In Swift’s Tale of a Tub the leaf of advertisements lists "previously published treatises" which are quite imaginary. Sterne, too, indulged in such playful conceits. The learned Slawkenbergius (so says Tristram Shandy) undertook a folio on Noses which we never give up hope of sniffing out of limbo!

Perhaps it will turn up in that “bookless bookshop” in London of the thirties, possibly still there, where no stock was carried other than bibliographies and catalogues. These media were consulted to spot valuable items that might be overlooked by bidders, or ‘sleepers’ on other dealers; shelves, and once acquired, their rarity was set forth through the acumen of this wayward bookseller so that they would fetch the price merited.

The lamented Edmund L. Pearson toyed with the idea of conjured volumes, a friendly wraith showing him an unknown work of Shakespeare, and many another to make us gasp: “Here is a copy of Marlowe's Edward II, stained with his blood. He had it in his pocket when he was stabbed.”

A generation before librarian Pearson gamboled in the stacks, academic Brander Matthews cavorted on the campus with his diverting primer of imaginary geography in which we overhear the Flying Dutchman in nostalgic discussion with Ahasuerus, and other long-lived cronies concerning the Fortunate Isles, Avalen, the River Lethe, the Forest of Arden, Altruria, and Prester John's Kingdom and the land of Cocaigne. Others that occur to us are Xanadu in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, and Shangri-la in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. And let us not forget the Biblical Paradise, prototype of all such. There Eve started feminine attire with her fig-leaf, and women have been figging ever since.

A Prague literary prankster named Miloslav Novotny in 1928 hoaxed compatriot readers with a pamphlet listing imaginary titles, with purported specimen pages. There have been spurious biographies of characters constituted only of paper-and-ink. But the most elaborate spoof was perpetrated by a group in the Authors Club, of New York, in 1918. In that volume, Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch: an Appreciation of His Life and Works, even a portrait of the presumed Muscovite litterateur is included.

Some years back there was a plea by an essayist for an authentic list of bogus books, not a bogus list of books. Such bogus lists are few, but the array of works whose peculiarity is their nonexistence would be a task to tax the pseudo-bibliographer. The essayist himself sees the difficulties and is content to mention several authors who invented authorities with which in quotations or foot, notes they bolstered their contentions.

That Parisian bibliophile of a more tranquil day, Charles Nodier, invented a rendition of the Bible which the Marquis de Chalabre deemed veritable and sought in vain. If this seems incredible we have only to submit that in 1929 Nelson Crawford’s A Man of Learning included a trick listing of the supposed writings of its fictive figure, Dr. Arthur Redfield; and, taken seriously in certain quarters, bookstore 'wants' for several of the titles were advertised for in trade publications.

To round out the pastiche we revert to Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, published in six volumes in 1886, with biographies of scores of foreign personages, who never lived, scattered through its columns. These had been feloniously created space rates by an unknown editorial hack. There were forty or more of these detailed fictitious sketches under “S” alone. The exposure came in 1919 when Dr. John H. Barnhart in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden (September) listed fourteen Appleton botanists from abroad whom he proved never to have pestered a plant. Dr. Barnhart, moreover, enumerated sixty-nine titles, the authorship of which was ascribed to these fourteen figments, “not one of which volumes is to be found in any of the great libraries of the world”.

No one seems to have compiled a list of books fictitiously quoted in other books and nonexistent save in the limbo of characters created by quizzical authors. Though mock books have at least a physical semblance, whereas phantom volumes are intangible, the distinction grows vague in that both varieties merge in unreality. As with unforgettable characters created of paper and ink, the line between flesh and figment is often indistinct. In Cervantes' inimitable appraisal of Don Quixote's library the titles were those of real romances of chivalry. It will be remembered how the barber and the priest, as friends of the paladin, in his absence consigned to the fictitious flames such of these tales of spurious knight-errantry as had addled the brain of the fearless Don.

Back in the jejune days of 1910, one Wilhelm Von Scholz published his spritely fantasy in bibliophily entitled Die unsichtbare Bibliothek -The Invisible Library. Therein are random essays of bookish inclination, somewhat in the manner of Chris Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels (1917). What most intrigues in the Scholz chapters are his jocund reviews of unpublished and unwritten books, couched in the familiar jargon and telltale technique of the treadmill book reviewer.

Also German in origin was the Nuremberg catalogue of phantom books offered for sale by Furboter’s Antiquariat as Katalog No. 317, in 1905. It itemizes thirty-nine rarities from the supposed library of one fabulous Emil Meyer, deceased. The titles are described with mock bibliographical decorum, and a memorial tribute to Emil Meyer is included to disarm the distrustful. The full text of this now unprocurable conceit, of which there were only seventy-five copies, is given by John Spargo in his Caxton Club causerie of 1952. It was fabricated to regale a Leipsic bibliophilic gathering, and was concocted by either C. G. Boerner or Anton Kippenberg, it matters not which.

John Spargo did a good job in his Caxton Club's 'keepsake' concerning this theme of books that never were. There is a frontispiece, etching of an imaginary author in his imaginary library. Spargo, the sage of Bennington, whose versatility made him do everything well, gives us a goodly sampling in this lightsome essay, ranging from Rabelais and Cervantes, to Johann Fischart, Antonio Doni, John Donne, Laurence Sterne, Renier Chalon, Thomas Hood, Poe, Field, Farquhar and others who disported among figment titles and shelves.

Another lark of recent years was the spurious St. Ronan Bookshoppe Catalogue, imputing to a phantom antiquarian bookseller the listing for sale of a dozen or more facetious items which could not easily escape detection as ludicrous. One of these offerings was an alleged medieval manuscript: “La Morte de Guenevere, 835 leaves, 7 x 9 l/2 feet. circa 1290. Largest MS known. In gros lettre, bound in crushed purple rhinoceros." The price was in proportion, despite a “slight flaw in the provenance." Another item in this risible round up read:

“Western Americana. Sitting Bull. A. L. S. to Chief Joseph. n.p., 1876. Written on verso of a human scalp, this letter describes the battle of the Little Big Horn. Cramped calligraphy, in a late Uncpapa or Yanktonais hand. Recto of scalp shows incipient bald spots; otherwise fine. $50.00”. This reminds us of Ben Franklin's famous scalp hoax; perpetrated to make the British blush.

Collectors who never lived have gathered volumes that never were. One such pleasantry was concocted in 1848 by Alfred Bonnardot in his Mirror of the Parisian Bibliophile (translated by Theodore W. Koch in 1931). In this satirical fable we are told how M. Jehan Vechel, a fancied collector of erotica had 132 volumes on cuckoldry in a locked cupboard. Several of the fictitious titles are, mentioned as the owner exhibits them stealthily to kindred spirits who chuckle not only over the lascivious pages but from private satisfaction in the fact that their cuckold crony has himself a yielding spouse.

Occasional unscrupulous authors have laid claim to authorship of unwritten books. An American reprobate, Rufus W. Griswold, traducer of Poe (who had made Griswold his literary executor), was one such scamp. Although Griswold became something of an arbiter of American belles lettres, having written, compiled and edited a score volumes, he betrayed himself as a colossal liar and filcher. Several of the titles he claimed to have written were never seen between covers. But such pretense was nothing new, and there were other slants. For instance, David Clement two centuries ago had published in Germany his pretentious Bibliotheque curieuse historique et critique. Its nine volumes and 4,339 closely printed pages were carried only to the letter H. But many of the books described in this catalogue are otherwise unknown, and it is conceded that they do not and never did exist. .

Still another facet concerns real books with masked or imaginary places of publication. Indeed, a two volume German bibliography of these was compiled by Emil Weller in 1864, a French listing by Gustave Brunet in 1866, and an Italian by Marino Parenti in 1951. There have been hundreds of these false or facetious place-imprints on real books and occasionally in connection with imaginary titles. When the books were real there was usually a reason for concealment; when unreal the intent was to add a touch of humor or a barb of satire to the diverting title. Thus Bibliotheca Scatalogica is a singular work with bibliographical entries in Rabelaisian spirit. As Dibdin would say, few may hope to caress a copy. Written by a trio of Parisian farceurs in 1850, its title-page imprint is “Scatopolis, 5850”.

One or the choicest stories concerning bibliolatry was that pertaining to Don Vincent and a rival collector. This anecdote, which had been accepted as veracious by such revered bookmen as Gustav Bogeng, Hanns Bohatta, Albert Cim, Andrew Lang, and many another, is now known to have been no more than a macabre yarn concocted by that droll and delightful fellow, Charles Nodier. How the facts were ferreted out was set forth a decade ago by Lawrence S. Thompson, of the University of Kentucky, who has been without a peer in sleuthing the annals of strange books and all manner of literary eccentrica.

It had been accepted as true that Don Vincente murdered the dealer Augustino Patxot because the latter had outbid him for a 1482 Lamberto Palmart imprint. During the court trial that followed it was disclosed to the consternation of Vincent that the book was not unique, another copy having been round in Paris.

The disclosure that all this was a concocted yarn was set forth by the Spanish bibliographer Ramon Miquel y Planas at Barcelona in 1928, but the detection was tardy in catching up with the legend. Thompson tells us:

"Miquel y Planas diligently searched the Catalonian press over the period cited by the various propagators of the Don Vincente legend, and he round no evidence whatsoever of the existence of Don Vincent or the crimes with which he was charged.”

But Senor Miquel traced the fabrication to an anonymous article, “Le bibliomane ou le nouveau Cardillac,” in the obscure Gazette des Tribunaux, of October 23, 1836. The assumption that Nodier was the author is made by Miquel y Planas because passages have the unmistakable Nodier touch, and because that spirited Frenchman was in Catalonia in 1827. Moreover, says Senior Miquel, the perpetrator of this pleasantry probably there heard the stray story of a 17th century goldsmith who so revered his own craftsmanship that he murdered one or more clients to retrieve the products of his art.

This latter story of Cardillac, the goldsmith, had its fictional origin in the forgotten chronicle entitled Mademoiselle de Scudery by E. T. A. Hoffmann. And, declares the exposure, Nodier admired and imitated Hoffmann. Thus Don Vincent becomes a figment, and esteem for Charles Nodier is enhanced by all fabulists, who know the line between real and unreal becomes more and more indistinct as the perspective of time recedes.

Charles Nodier was partial to such tales of bibliomania, and several emanated from his whimsical pen. Likewise tales of bibliobsession have come from Gutav Flaubert, Charles Asselineau and Stefan Zweig. .

Taking his cue from Joris-Karl Huysman’s anodyne of the hashish-eaters, Robert Briffault's macabre Europa (1935) has its Prince Nevidof show volumes from velvet lined shelves that exist only in the cortices of decadent minds.

There is a malific passage, febrile and phallic, in Briffault'.s novel. The described specimens are, of course, imaginary. With a collector's pride, the prince produced some of the precious volumes from the velvet-lined shelves. There was the Academy of Johannes Meursius, the 1782 edition with thirty-five plates; the tractate of Father Sinistari, De Sodomia; and the Labors of Hercules of Grecourt.

“This, however, is unique,” said the prince. He displayed the Sonnets of Aretino with plates of Marc-Antonio Raidmondi after the drawings of Romano. “This, so far as I know, is the only existing copy. The work is generally thought to have been completely destroyed, the only other copy having been burnt at Dresden some years ago.” The Aretino, of course, was veritable, with the posture plates.

Prince Nevidoff- as the novel has it- caressed rich and exquisitely tooled bindings stamped with elaborate designs of lingams and yonis. He showed several volumes bound in human skin. The Perfumed Garden of Sheikh Nafsawi was bound in the skin of a Negress. There were Chinese books with pictures of fantastic obscenity, bound between tablets covered with human scalps which still retained the hair. So wrote Briffault. The passage continues, with the prince saying:

“This series of volumes, beginning with the Hours of Devotional of Guaitoli, which describes and pictures in exquisite plates the diversions of holy women, the forms of penance imposed in the most noble orders, and the examinations carried out by the Holy Office in women's convents, is bound with the skin of a nun. See how skillfully the tanner and binder have preserved the natural appearance of the parts.”

"But how did you procure the material, prince?" asked Renata.

“A young nun in a neighboring convent had the misfortune to choke to death after partaking of the Holy Sacraments, and I obtained the permission of the ecclesiastical authorities to have her skinned,” the prince said.

A prominent American editor and author of more than a century ago, Robert G. Sands, had a whimsical urge to fabricate authorities with sportiye humor. More than once in literary journals he teased public curiosity by printing purported excerpts from a “forthcoming novel”, seasoned with sly satire and current allusions, said novel being unwritten and existing only in the matrix of his mischievous mind. Over a pen-name he would begin a literary or historical fracas by enticing subscribers to reply to his provocative conceits concocted out of the whole cloth and bolstered with spurious quotations from nonexistent books. Or in a printed retort he would gayly rebut himself anonymously, with meretricious punditry. Unwary correspondents in the columns of his New York Review would be combated with history, facts, quotations, and authorities, all fabricated for the occasion.

One such exchange was ended by Sands with a passage from Pausanias, in the original Greek, for which it is vain to scan any edition of that classic, ancient or modem. Such deception, though innocent in intent, is not without its dangers. Since his printed peccadilloes were ephemeral they may be out of bounds in our bookish survey. He would no doubt relish having his editorial pranks recalled.

Closer to the matter at hand was the little volume imaginary bookplates cleverly devised by L. Joly in his Ex-Libris imaginaires supposes ancien et tmodernes (Paris 1895). There is scope for other such artistic invention having to do with books and authors -a dash of levity and a seasoning of wit make literature as well as life more relishable, provided we are not made to eat our own words, like some hapless scriveners.

Who does not remember the manuscript in Anatole France’s The Crimes of Sylvestre Bonnard? In The Way of All Flesh one hears tell of certain "atrocious books" by Ernest Pontifex, and in the first chapter of Beyond Life, Cabel listed phantom volumes found on the shelves of the equally ghostly John Charteris

To the wraith library may be added two titles mentioned by George Gissing in his novel New Grub Street -one of these a three-decker over which the character Edwin Reardon slaved, and the other by the character Harold Biffin, ,the poor drudge who saves his manuscript from the flames by going up the chimney with it. Olive Schreiner alluded often to the magnum opus of which Woman and Labor (1911) was supposed to be a surviving fragment; but her husband, in his frank biography, intimates that this work was one of whose existence the author had persuaded herself without tangible warrant.

Henry James was inclined to this fictive invention of imaginary authorship among his characters. Clemence Dane’s novel Legend, a story of the survival of personality, likewise speaks of the heroine's masterpiece, which was another unread book. In Woodward’s novel Bunk, allusion is made to a story of civilization being written by the central character. One must also include the "works of Sentimental Tommy." In Hutchinson’s If Winter Comes one hears tell of Mark Sabre's England. And there is the poetry of May Sinclair’s hero in The Divine Fire. Hugh Walpole in Wintermoon has his leading character write a novel, and the hero of Walpole's Fortitude does likewise. Add the Journal from which the host in Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow reads that delightful chapter about the dwarfs; and the volume on rural England upon which Mr. Waddington of Wyck was engaged. But enough! Ye bookman reels over to his solid shelves and raps his knuckles to see if those tiers are illusory and those titles counterfeit.

So we cap the climax, of our theme by noting that a prize short story long ago appeared in Harper’s Magazine concerning a man who was accredited with authorship of a book and received all manner of acclaim for it but never wrote it. Yet even this has been outdone, for Henry Pene DuBois writing on the French Romanticists of the 1830’s tells us: “Jules Vabry is the author of a book which was never written. He is the author of nothing else.”

One cannot go further back than Adam in bibliographical annals. Because of his long life, according to Biblical chronology, Adam acquired much knowledge. On this basis, a fantastic author named Hilscher probed the possible library of Adam and its antediluvian contents. His literary clairvoyance labored under the title Schediasma de Bibliotheca Adami {Dresden 1771) and was never on any bestseller list. Nor was Noah's supposed library I as conceived by a febrile researcher named Reimann; ever convincing in the latter's curious but forgotten Historia Litteraria antediluviana (Halle, 1709). One of the earliest - a paraphrase of Rabelais' Library of St. Victor- was published in Germany in 1590, done by Johann Fischart, and entitled Catalogus Catalogorum. These and other imaginary libraries were rescued from musty lore by those consummate bibliographical sleuths Lawrence S. Thompson and Nathan Van Patten in readable articles that have regaled booklovers who have a penchant for such antique gist and geste.

Defoe cited imaginary titles and several old savants perpetrated deceptive catalogues of nonexistent and unwritten books. Political satire in a compilation of imaginary books with sardonic titles was indulged in an anonymous early pamphlet Bibliotheue Imaginaire de Lovrets, Lettres et discours Imaginaires (Paris, 1615).

Modern inspiration in such pleasantries has been slight but enjoyable. The former Berlin bookseller, M. Breslauer, concocted three imaginary catalogues in 1910-12. And R. Lonsdale in his Catalogue of the Library of Dr. Rainbeau (London, 1862) gave us another. This last supposed collection was announced for auction sale by Messrs. Topsy, Turvy & Co. and was a biting satire on E. F. Rimbault, the music historian and critic, and his library. It contains unveiled hints of musical forgeries and plagiarisms of which Rimbault , was suspected. Lonsdale was the author, but the catalogue was published anonymously for fear of legal action.

A German hoaxed book catalogue was perpetrated by Anton Kippenberg at Nuremberg in 1925. It purported to list books from a deceased collector named Emir Meyer. An imagined Goethe rarity in the list has an annotation that the title-page is tear-stained from the joy of Meyer in finally acquiring the item!

A pleasant little pamphlet on this whimsical subject was written by Edwin H. Carpenter, Jr. with the title Some Libraries We Have- Not Visited (1947), and in its eight pages he has a delightful coverage, once over lightly.

Under the title Bibliotheca Chimaerica the late William A. Jackson of the Houghton Library at Harvard did a diverting list in offset typescript in 1962.

Such slender conceits as we have cited may seem of slight import but they are exceedingly difficult to bring off well. To recall these catalogues may be stodgy stuff, even for some inveterate booksters, but not so the imaginary titles of unwritten books that sprinkle the pages of so many notable novels. They are intrinsic to the diverting theme of phantom libraries and non-existent volumes. And after all, perhaps life itself is a fantasy, and we mortals but phantom dwellers in a transitory tenement of flesh.