Extollager
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A discussion started elsewhere at Chrons Forums about the personal libraries of authors of fantasy and/or science fiction. It was likely to be overlooked, so I thought I'd start a thread here.
This could be a place to tell about where we can find out about such libraries, or to relate anecdotes about visits to places where surviving books from older authors may be seen, etc. -- anything related to the reading and particularly the book ownership of authors in these genres.
J. D. Worthington pointed out that H. P. Lovecraft's personal library has been catalogued and a list thereof released. I noted that, though J. R. R. Tolkien catalogued his library, in detail, in the 1930s for insurance purposes, this has not been published. I noted, however, that C. S. Lewis's library as of six years after his death (by which time, to be sure, some books had been dispersed) was catalogued; the list is available online here:
http://www.wheaton.edu/wadecenter/Collections-and-Services/Collection-Listings/~/media/Files/Centers-and-Institutes/Wade-Center/RR-Docs/Non-archive%20Listings/Lewis_Public_shelf.pdf
I correlated books Lewis owned with the reprints in Ballantine's famous Adult Fantasy series of 1969-1974, and found a remarkable extent of overlap:
------De Camp and Pratt's Land of Unreason is one of a bunch of books Lewis owned that were to be reprinted in 1969-1974, when Tolkien's American paperback publisher, Ballantine, cast about for additional material for the fantasy market. Lewis's library and the approximately 60 titles of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, edited by Lin Carter, both include William Beckford's Vathek, five James Branch Cabell books, Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, F. Marion Crawford's Khaled, Roger Lancelyn Green's From the World's End (the Ballantine edition was called Double Phoenix and included a work by another author), Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang's The World's Desire, Haggard's The People of the Mist, William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land (two volumes as printed in the Ballantine series), George MacDonald's Phantastes and Lilith (also some shorter MacDonald fantasies, gathered by Lin Carter for a book called Evenor), George Meredith's The Shaving of Shagpat, Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist, and William Morris's The Water of the Wondrous Isles and The Wood Beyond the World. (Interestingly, Morris's The Well at the World's End, praised by Lewis, was not in the 1969 catalogue of his library. Perhaps he owned a copy that was later acquired by someone as a keepsake. The Well was reprinted by Ballantine in two volumes.) Also, the Lewis library included eleven titles by Lord Dunsany, an author mined for six Adult Fantasy releases. Richard Hodgens, a member of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, translated a portion of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (“Vol. 1: The Ring of Angelica”), the whole of which Lewis read in the original Italian. The Lewis book collection also included fantasy by Mervyn Peake, E. R. Eddison, and David Lindsay that Ballantine reprinted just before the launching of the Adult Fantasy series proper. Lin Carter would have been impressed by Lewis’s collection. Most of the material reprinted in Carter's series that Lewis did not own belonged to the American Weird Tales magazine tradition (e.g. four volumes of stories by Clark Ashton Smith) or had never been published before (e.g. Sanders Anne Laubenthal's somewhat Charles Williams-y Excalibur or Joy Chant's somewhat Lewisian-Tolkienian Red Moon and Black Mountain).
The Lewis library catalogue lists two other books by the co-author of Land of Unreason. The Well of the Unicorn (1948) is listed as by G[eorge]. U. Fletcher - - the pseudonym used for this book by Fletcher Pratt. Pratt's World of Wonder (1951) is an anthology. Such gatherings of science fiction and fantasy stories were then uncommon publishers’ fare, although the Lewis library included two of the earliest ones, Strange Ports of Call (1948), edited by August Derleth, and Donald A. Wollheim’s Pocket Book of Science Fiction (1943).-----
Lewis's library included numerous books by Lord Dunsany, Rider Haggard, and others. It included a collection of Arthur Machen's major stories, etc. It should be noted that some of the books in Lewis's collection (like Please Don't Eat the Daisies!) probably came to be there thanks to his American-born wife (and fellow science fiction fan) Joy Davidman Gresham.
So we have Lovecraft and Lewis... who are some other authors whose libraries are listed somewhere?
By the way, a related topic would be the records of authors' use of public libraries. See an article in the Essex Institute Historical Collections vol. 68 (Jan. 1932) pp. 65-87 on "Books Read by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1828-1850. From the 'Charge Books' of the Salem Athenaeum." At a glance, I see lots of magazines (I assume, in the form of bound volumes) such as Blackwood's, travel books, borrowings of Swift, Scott, Voltaire, Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, Coleridge's Table Talk, classics like Pliny, etc.
Here's Tolkien... look at those books behind him. Many would relate to his scholarly interest in Old and Middle English.
This could be a place to tell about where we can find out about such libraries, or to relate anecdotes about visits to places where surviving books from older authors may be seen, etc. -- anything related to the reading and particularly the book ownership of authors in these genres.
J. D. Worthington pointed out that H. P. Lovecraft's personal library has been catalogued and a list thereof released. I noted that, though J. R. R. Tolkien catalogued his library, in detail, in the 1930s for insurance purposes, this has not been published. I noted, however, that C. S. Lewis's library as of six years after his death (by which time, to be sure, some books had been dispersed) was catalogued; the list is available online here:
http://www.wheaton.edu/wadecenter/Collections-and-Services/Collection-Listings/~/media/Files/Centers-and-Institutes/Wade-Center/RR-Docs/Non-archive%20Listings/Lewis_Public_shelf.pdf
I correlated books Lewis owned with the reprints in Ballantine's famous Adult Fantasy series of 1969-1974, and found a remarkable extent of overlap:
------De Camp and Pratt's Land of Unreason is one of a bunch of books Lewis owned that were to be reprinted in 1969-1974, when Tolkien's American paperback publisher, Ballantine, cast about for additional material for the fantasy market. Lewis's library and the approximately 60 titles of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, edited by Lin Carter, both include William Beckford's Vathek, five James Branch Cabell books, Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, F. Marion Crawford's Khaled, Roger Lancelyn Green's From the World's End (the Ballantine edition was called Double Phoenix and included a work by another author), Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang's The World's Desire, Haggard's The People of the Mist, William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land (two volumes as printed in the Ballantine series), George MacDonald's Phantastes and Lilith (also some shorter MacDonald fantasies, gathered by Lin Carter for a book called Evenor), George Meredith's The Shaving of Shagpat, Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist, and William Morris's The Water of the Wondrous Isles and The Wood Beyond the World. (Interestingly, Morris's The Well at the World's End, praised by Lewis, was not in the 1969 catalogue of his library. Perhaps he owned a copy that was later acquired by someone as a keepsake. The Well was reprinted by Ballantine in two volumes.) Also, the Lewis library included eleven titles by Lord Dunsany, an author mined for six Adult Fantasy releases. Richard Hodgens, a member of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, translated a portion of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (“Vol. 1: The Ring of Angelica”), the whole of which Lewis read in the original Italian. The Lewis book collection also included fantasy by Mervyn Peake, E. R. Eddison, and David Lindsay that Ballantine reprinted just before the launching of the Adult Fantasy series proper. Lin Carter would have been impressed by Lewis’s collection. Most of the material reprinted in Carter's series that Lewis did not own belonged to the American Weird Tales magazine tradition (e.g. four volumes of stories by Clark Ashton Smith) or had never been published before (e.g. Sanders Anne Laubenthal's somewhat Charles Williams-y Excalibur or Joy Chant's somewhat Lewisian-Tolkienian Red Moon and Black Mountain).
The Lewis library catalogue lists two other books by the co-author of Land of Unreason. The Well of the Unicorn (1948) is listed as by G[eorge]. U. Fletcher - - the pseudonym used for this book by Fletcher Pratt. Pratt's World of Wonder (1951) is an anthology. Such gatherings of science fiction and fantasy stories were then uncommon publishers’ fare, although the Lewis library included two of the earliest ones, Strange Ports of Call (1948), edited by August Derleth, and Donald A. Wollheim’s Pocket Book of Science Fiction (1943).-----
Lewis's library included numerous books by Lord Dunsany, Rider Haggard, and others. It included a collection of Arthur Machen's major stories, etc. It should be noted that some of the books in Lewis's collection (like Please Don't Eat the Daisies!) probably came to be there thanks to his American-born wife (and fellow science fiction fan) Joy Davidman Gresham.
So we have Lovecraft and Lewis... who are some other authors whose libraries are listed somewhere?
By the way, a related topic would be the records of authors' use of public libraries. See an article in the Essex Institute Historical Collections vol. 68 (Jan. 1932) pp. 65-87 on "Books Read by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1828-1850. From the 'Charge Books' of the Salem Athenaeum." At a glance, I see lots of magazines (I assume, in the form of bound volumes) such as Blackwood's, travel books, borrowings of Swift, Scott, Voltaire, Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, Coleridge's Table Talk, classics like Pliny, etc.
Here's Tolkien... look at those books behind him. Many would relate to his scholarly interest in Old and Middle English.
