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

The work of sorting the Hutchinson library was at once infinitely laborious and continuously exciting. I was lent a small empty room in the London office of my firm's binders (there was no space available in my own office) and relays of packing cases about ten at a time were delivered there from the repository. With the valiant assistance of two or three friends (and often until late at night) these relays were opened up, classified and distributed in various directions. In one place was collected the material for sale at auction; in another junk, only fit for stall-holders in street-markets; in another the certain 'keeps'; in another the 'doubtfuls'; in another the 'imperfects'.. These last were the most troublesome, for until the work was finished there was no knowing whether a missing volume or volumes would or would not turn up. Hutchinson's curious system of filling case after case and storing them away, actually bred imperfections. If he came back to his room with a four-volume novel and there only remained space in one case for two volumes, he would split the work so that two volumes were at the top of one case and the other two at the bottom of another. The cases were neither labelled nor numbered in sequence, and once back in the repository were stacked wherever convenience required. Consequently when they emerged again and were successively unpacked, the original order was hopelessly lost, and the number of titles awaiting completion became a real embarrassment.

Two other queer characteristics of this queer collector increased the labour of sorting, but in compensation added to its piquancy. Not only (as I have said) were hundreds of parcels still unopened, but their contents were bafflingly miscellaneous. Hutchinson made no attempt to separate his important 'finds' from the valueless stuff which he would also buy. If in one shop on one morning he bought six books, of which two were Gothic items and the others modern reprints, he had them all parcelled together and probably packed them as they were. As a result, one could never be sure that something of interest was not hidden in a package of junk, and every volume had to be carefully examined. For example, a beautiful little copy of Mrs Radcliffe's poems was sandwiched between two fiction-cheaps for bookstall sale, the three items wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. Similarly, many of the Gothic chap-books were discovered in bundles of paper-covered oddments modern novels, local guides, time-tables and odd numbers of magazines. Every moment, therefore, had its potential thrill.
The second element of excitement related to condition. Hutchinson was indifferent to condition and bought his novels in any state available. Also he often bought more than one copy of the same title. Now and again fortune threw in his way a really beautiful copy; more often it did not. But all the time there was just a chance that a wanted novel in fine original state might turn up and any collector will understand that in such circumstances those weeks of dust and toil and ceaseless carrying of books were weeks of delicious tension.

The contribution of the Hutchinson library to my collection of Gothic Romances was very extensive. From no other single source were so many new titles obtained. But the outstanding discovery was that which completed the series of 'Northanger Novels ' the seven novels recom mended by Isabella Thorpe to her friend Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's Gothic pastiche. I had, of course, determined in early days to find these novels if I possibly could, and have already told of the good fortune which brought me Horrid Mysteries at the yery outset of my career. The next one to turn up was Clermont a lovely copy in original wrappers bought in a South Coast town. Next came The Mysterious Warning, which for some reason is the one I have since seen most frequently. Then for long enough nothing happened, until one blessed morning, on my way to the office, I went on a sudden impulse into (of all places) the shop which has made Grafton Street famous. This monarch of the antiquarian trade was perhaps the least likely bookseller in London to have such obscure trifles as Gothic Romances; but my good angel guided me, and there straight opposite the door in a shelf under the broad central table was a copy of The Midnight Bell. It was a very nice copy in contemporary calf and had its half-titles.

It was, I think, the miracle of The Midnight Bell which stimulated me, when invited to read a paper before the English Association, to offer one on the Northanger Novels. This was in the autumn of 1926. I consulted Arthur Hutchinson as to where I could get access to the three missing titles: The Castle of Wolfenbach, The Necromancer and The Orphan of the Rhine, no one of which was to be found in the Statutory Libraries. He declared that he possessed the first two and, by some mysterious means, contrived to produce them. The Orphan of the Rhine, however, he definitely had not, nor had ever seen. Borrowing his two and working on my copies of four, I wrote my paper, read it in the Hall of Westminster School in February 1927, and in preparation for its ultimate printing, obtained photographs of the six title-pages for reproduction. The paper ended with a lament that no copy of The Orphan of the Rhine could be located.

In August 1927, Hutchinson died, and during September and October the frenzied struggle to classify and distribute his library was at its height. One evening in late October, stupefied with fatigue and dust and feeling I never wanted to see a book again, I was listlessly unpacking perhaps the hundredth packing case, when my jaded intelligence suddenly awoke to the fact that I was holding in my hand the four volumes of The Orphan of the Rhine. Hutchinson, though he did not know it, had had a copy after all. There was just time to add a postscript to my paper and photograph the title-page, with the result that English Association Pamphlet No. 68 is really complete, and that the seven Northanger Novels in first edition became and will remain a part of the Gothic collection, which has now found a worthy home elsewhere.