College and Research Libraries


184 College & Research Libraries 

special attention to making compatible 
that organization from one discipline to 
another.-Charles B. Osburn, University of 
Cincinnati Libraries, Ohio. 

Stern, Madeleine B. Antiquarian Booksell-
ing in the United States: A History from the 
Origins to the 1940s. Westport, Conn.: 
Greenwood, 1985. 246p. $29.95. LC 84-
19273. ISBN 0-313-24729-3. 
The epigraph of this book is a quotation 

from Sir Stanley Unwin to the effect that 
while writing, printing, and reading 
books are difficult tasks, "the most diffi-
cult task that a mortal man can embark on 
is to sell a book." At the risk of dignifying 
Sir Stanley's hyperbole, one might re-
mark that it would seem even more diffi-
cult to write a history of those who sell 
books. Underscoring the problems inher-
ent in such a history, Stem remarks in her 
introduction: ''That this book represents 
the first formal attempt to record the his-
tory of antiquarian bookselling in the 
United States should cause no undue sur-
prise . . . the bookseller has always been a 
ghost, whose transactions as intermediary 
between source and market are seldom 
preserved." Working from what she ad-
mits are meager sources, she has at-
tempted to "reanimate those ghosts and 
trace the history of their fascinating trade 
. . . to restore their tastes and tempera-
ments, their trials, their struggles, and 
their achievements, to clothe once again in 
flesh and blood the purveyors of antiquar-
ian books." 

The book is di~ided into a series of chap-
ters that outline the history of antiquarian 
bookselling in Boston, Philadelphia, New 
York, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis and 
Kansas City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, 
and "Cities to the South"-
Annapolis/Baltimore, Washington, Rich-
mond, Charleston, and New Orleans. A 
final chapter covers what Stern calls ''lone 
stars,'' booksellers such as Henry Stevens 
of Vermont, who don't fit into the geo-
graphical framework of her book but who 
cannot be ignored. Each chapter is ade-
quately footnoted, and there is a short bib-
liographical essay at the end of the vol-
ume, as well as an index. 

Although she covers some ground al-

March 1986 

ready familiar to those acquainted with 
the biographies and autobiographies of 
A. S. W. Rosenbach, Henry Stevens, Fred 
Rosenstock, and others, Stern has rescued 
any number of interesting ''ghosts'' from 
oblivion. Herself an antiquarian booksel-
ler of no small distinction, she presents 
sympathetic and informative portraits of 
the men and women whose careers she 
chronicles. If she ocassionally lapses into 
biblio-cliches and all too readily quotes 
some of the more gongoristic language of 
earlier writers, her understanding of the 
nature of the business saves her from 
some of the pitfalls awaiting a less sympa-
thetic historian. 

Unfortunately, this book is less a history 
than a. collection of essays, many of which 
originally appeared in AB Bookman's 
Weekly. While she does attempt to place 
the history of bookselling in each city cov-
ered within a larger framework of regional 
history, her book lacks any overall per-
spective on the development of the trade 
itself, or even a unifying sense of inquiry 
that might have melded her chapters into 
a connected narrative. Disavowing any at-
tempt to define antiquarian books or 
booksellers, and ·evading many of the 
questions and problems surrounding 
what must appear to the uninitiated as es-
sentially a luxury trade, she has limited 
the audience for her book to the true be-
lievers of bibliophily. In the one instance 
where she raises an interesting question-
why has the South fostered so few anti-
quarian booksellers and collectors?-she 
avoids answering it by saying that it is a 
''strange anomaly'' caused by the superfi-
cial intellectual and aesthetic culture of the 
region. It as she asserts, the antiquarian 
trade "created a demand, and then sup-
plied that demand . . . helped to shape 
taste, and so has been an educative 
force," why didn't it prove educative in 
this place? 

Stern believes that the antiquarian 
bookseller has been an "arbiter of learn-
ing" and a "dispenser of knowledge," 
but frankly one gets little sense of this 
from her history. The role of the book in 
our culture has only recently come under 
serious study, and certainly the role of the 
specialized antiquarian bookseller must 



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186 College & Research Libraries 

have a place in this history if it is to have 
any significance. But the study will have 
to ask serious questions about the anti-
quarian book and those who sell them if 
we are to have any understanding of the 
manner in which all types of books-new, 
used, and antiquarian-interact with each 
other and with other cultural resources. 
How and why did the specialized anti-
quarian trade develop out of the second-
hand book market? What influence does 
the antiquarian book have beyond the 
elite group of collectors and specialized li-
braries that purchase them? How are 
these elites related to other elite groups 
dominant in a culture or epoch? Who was 
the audience that comprised the earliest 
book collectors? How have general devel-
opments in Western society altered that 
audience or affected the market for rare 
books? How did the development of the 
bookseller catalog influence the develop-
ment of the trade and its clientele? Why 
are so many of the metaphors of book col-
lecting seemingly drawn from the English 
sporting life? 

This is only a first attempt at a general 
history of antiquarian bookselling in the 
United States, and we cannot expect Stern 
to do everything. She is to be commended 
for having at least begun the work, and 
the historical framework she has provided 
can serve as a starting point for later histo-
rians who will have to fill in the blanks and 
ask themselves the questions that will lead 
to the full treatment this peculiar trade 
deserves.-Terence A. Tanner, Hamill & 
Barker, Chicago, Illinois. 

Irvine, Betty Jo. Sex Segregation in Librari-
anship: Demographic and Career Patterns of 
Academic Library Administrators. West-
port, Conn.: Greenwood, 1985. 171p. 
(Contributions in Librarianship and In-
formation Science, no. 53) $29.95. LC 
84-21228. ISBN 0-313-24260-7. 
Irvine surveyed 371 directors, associate 

directors, and assistant directors in the 
ninety-nine academic libraries that belong 
to the Association of Research Libraries 
(ARL). Her survey gathered data from 
which conclusions could be drawn regard-
ing differences between male and female 
administrators in terms of demographic, 
career, and institutional characteristics. 

March 1986 

This book, part of the Contributions to Li-
brarianship and Information Science se-
ries, imparts her findings. 

A change in academic librarianship re-
sulting from the equal-employment-
opportunity, affirmative-action, partici-
patory-management decade of the 1970s 
motivated Irvine to conduct her survey 
and write her book. What existed, in the 
late 1960s, as a "female profession" ad-
ministratively dominated by men, by 1984 
had become a profession whose majority 
of women were substantially represented 
in the administrative ranks. These survey 
results supply unprecedented, fascinat-
ing, and useful information on the rela-
tionship between sex and managerial ca-
reers in librarianship. 

Of the 371 administrators surveyed, 256 
were men and 115 were women. Data 
from the surveys made it possible to com-
pare these two groups in terms of personal 
and family characteristics, mobility and 
career history, relationships with role 
models and mentors, and professional ac-
tivities. The comparisons reveal some un-
expected surprises. The women adminis-
trators, for example, have a lower average 
age than the male administrators (forty-six 
versus forty-nine), and assumed their 
present positions with less previous man-
agerial and administrative experience. 
Certain stereotypes, e.g., that profession-
ally successful women are "first-born 
over-achievers who spen[d] night and day 
amassing degrees and publications," are 
simply not supported by Irvine's statis-
tics. Not all of the findings, however, con-
tradict traditionally accepted notions. The 
men, by a fairly wide margin, have higher 
academic credentials than the women and 
have published more prolifically. Women, 
more than men, have been receiving en-
couragement from mentors to apply for 
promotions internally. In addition, Sex 
Segregation's comparative data on the fam-
ilies of these male and female academic li-
brary administrators is consistent with 
data found in other studies of administra-
tors in higher education and corporate 
management: women in administration 
are more likely to be single or to have 
fewer and older children than their male 
counterparts. 

Irvine's book reads a little like a celebra-