Ruth Baldwin took the bait and amassed a library of 100,000 volumes, a matchless resource for the study of modern children's literature. A hundred pages of notes, bibliography and index suggest scholarly intent by Mr. Basbanes. But he nurses a taste for firsts, and he never met a superlative he didn't like. Covering great gifts of books, it omits the donation of John Locke's library by a Cambridge man, Paul Mellon, to the philosopher's university, Oxford. Types of collections rival the diversity of owners.
Some people collect only first editions, old or new.
The New York social and political figure Carter Burden set out to save various states of modern books, including sets of proofs, but that became too Herculean a task. A lawyer working for the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington had the floors of his Watergate apartment reinforced, so massive was his library on spies and spying. Others collect only autographed editions or presentation volumes. This set of Dante informed visitors that Papa was really rich, since nobody in the family read Italian and there was not another book in this Sutton Place apartment outside the kids' rooms. But the story doesn't end there.