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Peter Schulman, Willa Z. Silverman. The New Bibliopolis: French Book Collectors and the Culture of Print, 1880–1914. (Studies in Book and Print Culture, number 21.) Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press. 2008. Pp. xvii, 312. $75.00, The American Historical Review, Volume 115, Issue 3, June 2010, Pages 901–902, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.115.3.901
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In an age of the Kindle and e-books, how refreshing and meaningful to read Willa Z. Silverman's fascinating study, which so eloquently describes a time when printed books not only mattered but were treasured, sought after, and treated almost as lovers at times. Far from being a treatise on monomaniacal, “nebbishy” bookworms, Silverman sheds light on a facet of Belle Époque history hitherto underdeveloped and introduces us to a colorful, eccentric, artistic, and fanatically driven set of bibliophiles bent on creating a haven for the book, a “bibliopolis,” or as one of Silverman's subjects, Robert de Montesquiou, put it referring to the importance of a book's cover, “a portal into a world of illusion” (p. 153). Contrary to the “Ancients,” represented by the Société des Bibliophiles Français, who were focused on collecting old and rare books and who concentrated on the book as though it were a museum piece, the “new” bibliophiles Silverman delineates were passionate about books as a sign of the modern. For them, since books were synonymous with the excitement of the times, books needed to be perceived as “exclusive, unique, and contemporary” (p. 88).
