Book Commentary
June 27, 2005
By Michael
Mr. Lake was by a few weeks ago. He spends much of his time in the Far North, poking around fossils and arrowheads and wotnot. He has a passion for old books. I know, because some of them end up here. Mr. Lake actually reads these items: eighteenth-century editions of Sir Thomas Browne, or Tacitus. When he's done reading them, he often sells or trades them for others. Which is how we ended up with an French edition of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield: a little 12mo published by Didot (Voltaire's publisher, I'm told) in the Year Seven of the French Republic. And the text is in English. Nice paper, and the boards aren't so bad, either (there's a little bookworm damage on the lower spine). How utterly cool. And how on earth did it end up here? Whose hands did it pass through?
I'm more familiar with Ralph Roeder as the author of Catherine de Medici and the Lost Revolution than anything else. It's a fine examination of the changes in politics during the French Wars of Religion. Terrible and fascinating, how ghoulish of me. Roeder's The Man of the Renaissance has been kicking around the shelves here for a few years, and if I didn't already have my own copy I'd probably just haul it home. It's a fine-looking book, sturdily bound in cream and red, nice typeface. Over 70 years old and lacking a dust-jacket, it still looks better than books a fraction of its age. And Roeder translates so well into English, it seems.
We've had this handsome little hardcover in the store for a few years, and everytime I passed it I would try to remember what was so familiar about the author, Gordon Daviot. Then, just the other day, I remembered: it's a pseudonym of Josephine Tey. Author of one my all-time favorites, The Daughter of Time: a pro-Richard III polemic thinly disguised as a murder mystery. The 'Daviot' we have is a 1938 edition of the London stage hit, Richard of Bordeaux.
We've also had in, since the film was released, a few paperback editions of Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. I prefer the Geoff Hunt covers to the movie tie-ins; I've been fortunate enough to find almost all my paperback copies as such. Having read the entire series (21 volumes) twice over, I suppose I'm something of a fan. Oh, I don't know what it is about them: the dry wit, the "Jane Austen Meets C.S. Forester" writing style, the two main characters ( the Irish Republican/Spy and his best friend, a Tory Landowner/Sea Captain) Those earlier paperback editions, in mass-market format, are getting mighty scarce.
I remember reading Rogue Primate in the lunch room at Second Look (it was more like a lunch nook). That was a few years ago, but the thesis stayed with me: the idea that before humans could domesticate plants or animals, they had to 'domesticate' themselves. This leads on the more controversial views on competitive struggle for existence, sustainable development and animal rights. Critics on both the Right and the Left were angered by this book. Very interesting and thought-provoking.
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith. P. Didot, Paris, 1799. $75.
The Man of the Renaissance by Ralph Roeder. The Viking Press, New York, 1935. $20.
Richard of Bordeaux by Gordon Daviot. John C. Winston, Toronto, 1938. $25.
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. HarperCollins, 2002. $10.
Rogue Primate by John A. Livingston. Key Porter Books, Toronto, 1994. $11.