reviews.indd


564 College & Research Libraries 

than that books find their proper “constel-
lations”; they must have an identity, be 
part of a coherent collection that orients 
the reader. An individual book must be 
part of an assemblage (Zaid’s word) that 
“rescues books lost in chaos.” A good 
bookseller, a good librarian, will see to 
it that no book need be orphaned. Book 
dealers and librarians are the intermediar-
ies who will “filter the chaos and create 
meaningful constellations, facilitating the 
writer’s exchange with the reader.” 

This slight, but satisfying, book joins 
what seems to be a new genre of memoirs 
and essays on the pleasures of reading 
(e.g., Alberto Manguel’s A History of Read-
ing, David Denby’s Great Books, Nicholas 
Basbanes’s Patience and Fortitude). Zaid the 
author managed to convey to this reader 
his own passion for books—from his de-
scription of learning to read and acquiring 
the ability to combine individual lett ers of 
the alphabet into the “miracle of the full 
word,” to the way mature readers can be 
liberated, transported from reading the 
page to reading life itself. Perhaps it takes 
a person outside the library profession to 
remind us of the foundations of our work, 
to challenge the notion that it is thought-
filled reading, and not information, that 
changes the way we think and live in our 
culture. Not a required purchase for most 
libraries, but a book every librarian ought 
to read.—Cecile M. Jagodzinski, Indiana 
University. 

Isaac D’Israeli on Books: Pre-Victorian 
Essays on the History of Literature. Ed. 
Marvin Spevack. London: British Li-
brary (ISBN 0712348298); New Castle, 
Del.: Oak Knoll Pr. (ISBN 1584561319), 
2004. 266p. $49.95. LC 2004-299690. 

Who was Isaac D’Israeli? A descendant of 
Italian Jews who emigrated to England in 
the eighteenth century. An independently 
wealthy man of letters who spent his days 
at the British Museum and his nights in 

November 2004 

his home library of 25,000 books. The ge-
nial author of poetry and fi ction, popular 
miscellanies (Curiosities of Literature, Liter-
ary Character of Men of Genius, Calamities 
of Authors, etc.), and a well-regarded his-
tory of the reign of Charles I. Father of 
the flamboyant prime minister Benjamin 
Disraeli, his polar opposite in tempera-
ment, Isaac D’Israeli is now a forgotten 
figure except for a handful of quotations 
in old collections that have migrated to 
the Internet. One quotation, “There is a 
society in the deepest solitude,” seems to 
apply to the author himself. 

This handsome collection of highlights 
from D’Israeli’s writings on the history 
of books signals an att empted revival. 
The editor, Marvin Spevack (a prolific 
Shakespeare scholar), is currently at 
work on a companion critical study. In 
his preface, Spevack places D’Israeli in the 
context of his “revolutionary times” and 
points out his interest in historical and 
cultural processes. Selections are grouped 
under the following headings: Writing 
and Reading, Printing and Publishing, 
Books, Authors & Co., Preservation and 
Destruction, Property and Politics, and 
Libraries. Also included is a famous (some 
say famously inaccurate) biographical 
essay by Benjamin Disraeli entitled “On 
the Life and Writings of Mr. Disraeli,” 
written in 1848, the year of Isaac’s death. 
The volume concludes with a directory of 
personal names, helpful for understand-
ing D’Israeli’s phenomenally broad range 
of references, ancient and modern. 

Superficially, D’Israeli is an old-fash-
ioned bibliophile writing in elaborate 
prose about authors who were already 
obscure in his own lifetime. However, 
the patient reader comes to appreciate 
D’Israeli’s knowledge, judiciousness, 
originality, and humor. D’Israeli believes 
that a historian must consult the original 
sources and cite them punctiliously. His 
wide reading allows him to draw general 



conclusions based on evidence from dif-
ferent times and places. He also provides 
factual information, such as prices charged 
by proofreaders or the price for the dedica-
tion of a play (five to ten guineas from the 
Revolution to the time of George I). He 
uses anecdotes to reveal human character. 
He is really a social historian, one of the 
first to study books and reading as social 
phenomena developing over time. He 
writes: “the favorite book of every age is a 
certain picture of the people. The gradual 
depreciation of a great author marks a 
change in knowledge or in taste.” 

D’Israeli is an enlightenment thinker 
with robust confidence in taste, propor-
tion, and progress, but his intellectual in-
tegrity saves him from false optimism. The 
idea that monastery libraries preserved 
civilization he calls a myth: “They were in-
defatigable in erasing the best works of the 
most eminent Greek and Latin authors, in 
order to transcribe their ridiculous lives of 
saints on the obliterated vellum.” The new 
is not always best; although “our present 
paper surpasses all other materials for 
ease and convenience of writing,” ancient 
ink was far better than modern. D’Israeli 
defends freedom of speech and the rights 
of authors, recommending that authorial 
copyright extend one hundred years. He 
has a healthy skepticism about the role of 
politics, money, vanity, and venality in all 
walks of life, including book publishing. 

Factual errors have been found in 
D’Israeli’s work, and the material is often 
fragmentary and whimsical. Spevack 
presumably selected the best material for 
this edition and organized it into thematic 
chapters, but the reader still has to slog 
through thick paragraphs and even pages 
of only minor interest. There is something 
ridiculous about the conjunction, in a 
section on destruction of manuscripts, of 
Aristotle and Lady Mary Worthley Mon-
tague. Catalogs of curiosities—minute 
writing, forgeries, voluminous authors, 

Book Reviews 565 

bad book titles, handwriting teachers, 
and so on—grow tedious. The mock 
epic tone (Alexander Pope was one of 
his favorite authors) also wears thin, al-
though D’Israeli’s wit can sometimes be 
marvelous. On the theme of dedications, 
he writes: “Never was the gigantic baby of 
adulation so crammed with the soft pap of 
Dedications as Cardinal Richelieu. French 
flattery even exceeded itself.” Or, on the 
metaphysical poets: “They cast about 
them their pointed antitheses, and often 
subsided into a chink of similar syllables, 
and the clench of an ambiguous word.” 

Paradoxically, the most impressive 
passages in this potpourri of a book are 
D’Israeli’s hard-won insights into the laws 
of history and human nature. By studying 
the romantic and mysterious origins of 
printing, he discovers that inventions of 
this nature are always gradual. His aperçus 
may be pithy, but they are never epigram-
matic in the Oscar Wilde style, because 
they always come out of a deeper context. 
“Writing is justly denominated an art,” 
he writes. “I think that reading claims the 
same distinction.” There follows an acute 
discussion of the psychology of reading, 
culminating with the observations that 
“there is something in exquisite composi-
tion which ordinary readers can never 
understand” and “the pleasure of abusing 
an author is generally superior to that of ad-
miring him.” At times, D’Israeli’s insights, 
like blazing comets, seem to come out of 
nowhere. “We like remote truths, but truths 
too near us never fail to alarm ourselves, 
our connexions, and our party.” 

This book is recommended for libraries 
with collections on the history of books 
and reading or on literature. D’Israeli is 
not for the fainthearted, but those inclined 
to make the effort will be impressed.—Jean 
Alexander, Carnegie Mellon University 

Dilevko, Juris, and Lisa Gottlieb. Reading 
and the Reference Librarian: The Impor-