the library of quinta da soledade
A book about a lost manuscript and fanatical book dealers is bound to have plenty of library scenes. The best is in the nearly emptied, dilapidated house of Victor Fargas – Quinta da Soledade (The House of Solitude):
Corso nodded vaguely, but Fargas didn’t notice. at one end of the vast room was an enormous fireplace with logs piles up in it. There were a pair of unmatched armchairs, a table and sideboard, an oil lamp, two big candlesticks, a violin in its case, and little else. But on the floor, lined up nearly on old, faded, threadbare rugs, as far away as possible from the windows and the leaden light coming through them, lay a great many books; five hundred or more, Corso estimated, maybe even a thousand. Many codices and incunabula among them. Wonderful old books bound in leather or parchment. Ancient tomes with studs in the covers, folios, Elzevirs, their bindings decorated with goffering, bosses, rosettes, locks, their spines and front edges covers with gilding and calligraphy done by medieval monks in the scriptoria of their monasteries. He also noticed a dozen or so rusty mousetraps in various corners.
-Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Club Dumas
I’ve worked with books most of my life, but not as a collector. I had to look up a couple of terms in the description above. “Elsevirs” are books published by a famous family of Dutch booksellers. “Goffering” is a decoration of ridges or pleats produced by a hot iron.
