Book Lore - The facts and traditions on the subject of books that have been accumulated over time through education or experience.   Acquired knowledge or traditional beliefs.

For him that stealeth a Book from this Library,   let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his Members blasted. Let him languish in Pain, crying aloud for Mercy,   and let there be no sur-cease to his Agony till he sink in Dissolution. Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not,   and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment,   let the flames of Hell consume him for ever and aye. ~Curse Against Book Stealers, Monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona

A Bibliomaniac must be carefully distinguished from a bibliophile. A bibliophile has not yet freed himself from the fact that books are meant to be read. The bibliomaniac has uses for books: he carries them about with him as talismans, he passes his time in the contemplation of their bindings, illustrations, and title pages. Some say he even rates himself before them in silent adoration in that Joss house which he calls his library. Bibliomaniacs are not all alike. There are numerous subdivisions. Some care for uncut copies, some only for books printed in black letter or in italics, some for first editions, some for curious or famous bindings, while some make collections on special subjects. But all book lovers agree in this, — that the intrinsic merit of the book is a superior consideration in comparison with its market value and possible scarcity.

Who invented printing? Given that printing is usually granted a key role in the emergence of modern society, its origins are oddly obscure. Almost everyone believes that Johann Gutenberg, a goldsmith from the German town of Mainz, invented printing. But while his existence has never been in doubt, everything else about Gutenberg is uncertain. There is almost no evidence of his character and activities. No book ever bore his name, and no one knows what he looked like. This obscurity encouraged the emergence of about a dozen rival candidates for the title of inventor. For centuries, even as printing made possible unprecedented progress in knowledge of all other kinds, its own origin remained both murky and controversial.

These days we are discouraged from writing in books — whether they come from the library or from our own shelves. But the practice was once a widely practiced part of reading, particularly for scholars. They developed elaborate schemes of annotations, providing for commentary, cross-referencing, and rebuttal. Now known as adversaria, books containing such jottings are regarded as invaluable testaments to readers' thought processes in a distant age, and they are much sought after by historians. But you still shouldn't write in books.

In the eighteenth century, "lascivious" or "obscene" books were among the most profitable of all. In France, the "philosophical books" that fueled the Enlightenment included not only the works by Rousseau and Voltaire that we still recognize as philosophical, but many others that would now be labelled as outright pornography. And in fact it was often difficult to draw a clear distinction between these two kinds of literature, least of all in terms of manufacturer. The first printer known to have been arrested as part of a government-sponsored anti-porn crusade was Joseph Streater of London. He was caught in 1688, shortly after finishing work on the greatest book in the history of science, Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. When we consider the adversarial atmosphere that modern genetic researchers must work under, we realize the world hasn't changed very much after all.

What is reading anyway? Descriptions of the experience of reading—the physiological and psychological processes—vary from time to time. In the Renaissance, physicians and philosophers appealed to magic, theology, and anatomy to explain the effects of reading. Nowadays we have recourse to psychology. Either way, the explanations reach to the deepest recesses of the psyche. If we allow a book to educate us or transport our imagination, then the authors aims will have been served.