PASSAGES FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BIBLIOMANIAC
The introduction to XIX Century Fiction, A Bibliographical Record. London, Constable. 1951. © Richard Sadleir, reproduced with kind permission

Once again, therefore, in default of all but very occasional Gothics, the way was open for me to engage in a new enterprise in novel-collecting, and once again chance put one in my way. In July 1927 was offered for sale at Hodgson's Rooms a quantity of board and label books from the Rhiwlas Library in North Wales. I wandered into Hodgson's one morning, and found the greater part of the large sale room walled on both sides with spines of brown or buff or blue or white, across which ran gleaming, undulating lines of paper-labels. It was a staggering sight; and the memory of Frances Price who began the collection, and of R. L. Ll. Price who (maybe) inherited and certainly carried it on, should ever be held in respect and gratitude, for though they read their books, they did not bind them, andthey kept them for the most part scrupulously clean.

You will say it was no particular good luck of mine to see at Hodgson's a Welsh library offered for public sale. Nor was it; and lots of other people saw it too. But there was, I think, luck in these three facts: first, the Price fiction-purchases were nearly all made between (roughly) 1825 and 1840, when the prevalent fashion among regular novel-readers was for novels of what was derisively known as the 'Silver Fork School' and when writers destined to a great reputation a hundred years later were very few. Second, I was at this period more than normally short of money to spend on books and would, whatever the contents of the library, have had to be content with the cheaper because less wanted lots. It was impossible for me to compete for the Rhiwlas high spots for example, Mansfield Park, or Leigh Hunt's Sir Ralph Esher. I went, therefore, for the novels offered in lots of twelve to twenty volumes. Third, whereas at this very time, I needed Silver Fork fiction as part of the documentation for the first section of Butwer: a Panorama, nobody else cared very much about it. The position was curious. Mid-Victorian novels by authors of repute were now sought after by collectors and readers alike; Gothic and sensibility novels of the eighteenth and very early nineteenth centuries were also in demand. But between these two categories of desired fiction lay the output of upwards of fifteen still neglected years and precisely of that output was the Rhiwlas Library principally composed.

From the Hutchinson library I had already acquired certain of the novels of Mrs Gore and was eager to find more of these witty, experienced and (as evidence of social background) unrivalled books. Through the garish and crudely cheerful spectacles of Frances Trollope and of Theodore Hook, I had studied the vulgarities and ostentations of those who aped the ton. But to understand the arrogance and money-pride and bland assumption of superiority of the self-appointed leaders of that society to which the young Bulwer and the young Disraeli aspired to belong, it was necessary to find Lord Normanby, and Lady Charlotte Bury, and Lady Stepney and T. H. Lister and L. E. L. and Mrs Maberly and such anonyma as Almacks and Herbert Milton and English Fashionables Abroad (and At Home) and, of course, all (if possible) of Mrs Gore. Anyone who has the patience to study the provenance of the novels catalogued in this volume will see how considerable was the Rhiwlas contribution to the achievement of these and similar ambitions. It is not feasible beyond this point to continue my book-collecting story as a single, coherent narrative. Several distinct interests were now running concurrently and have continued to do so to this day. Three-decker firsts in boards or in cloth were always welcome, and increased attention was paid to changing styles of binding material and ornament. In 1930 these physical characteristics were discussed in a monograph on the history of Publishers' Binding Styles between 1770 and 1900 a subject later developed with much skill and constructive argument by John Carter. The social background of the thirties having been worked into Bulwer, investigation was prolonged into the forties (which meant an extension of search for novels of manners in various grades of society, in order to cover that critical and revolutionary decade). It had been my intention to follow Bulwer with a second, and maybe a third, book on the later phases of his pathetic, preposterous yet impressive career; but that plan was abandoned when it became clear that the reading public had no interest whatsoever either in Bulwer Lytton himself or his miserable marriage, or the papier-maché splendours of the high society of his day. The extent to which Bulwer flopped still astonishes me. Now and again I dip into it; and find all manner of ironies, absurdities and pathos, as well as glimpses of the life and shams of the period displayed or betrayed in contemporary periodicals and literature, which offer uneasy parallels to those of a few years ago. These elements of the book at least should, in my judgment as a publisher, have found their mark. But my judgment as a publisher was at fault. No one wanted Bulwer nor ever pretended that he did.

So I revised my scheme of work; and, instead of centring a second volume on the luckless Bulwer Lytton, took as main theme the bizarre story of the lovely Lady Blessington, bringing in Bulwer by a side-door. The writing of Blessington-d'Orsay (which appeared in 1933) was at once reflected in my book-collecting. Apart from Lady Blessington's own works (and in particular the association set par excellence bound to d'Orsay's taste and left for decades after his death to be forgotten in the remote desolation of Chambourcy), I gradually acquired a series as complete as possible of d'Orsay's lithographed portraits, as well as the Part- and Volume-issues of John Mills' d'Horsay or the Follies of the Day; and works by Lord Blessington, Harriet Gardiner and Lady Blessington's nieces.
Blessington-d'Orsay was as widely read as Bulwer was ignored. Whether I felt vaguely that I had avenged a failure and could now relax, or whether having once let them go I could not pick up the threads of social and literary history which I had once intended to follow out to the end of Bulwer Lytton's strenuous but throttled life, I hardly know. But I do know that the zest for biography and literary history was temporarily lost, and that for a while book-collecting and book-writing ceased to be connected.