The Conscience of A Collector

Before leaving the store, I impulsively purchased two books: a first edition of Knight's Gambit (1949), an obscure collection of short stories by William Faulkner; and a lovely two-volume 1930s edition of Alphonse Daudet's novella The Tartaria of Tarascón, a French adventure tale inspired by Don Quixote, originally published in 1872. (It was published in a book titled /, Vincent in 1978, four years after his death.) He revered not just paintings but the human stories behind the canvases: the trials of the artists, the quirks of dealers and collectors, the sometimes tortuous careers of the works themselves. First and foremost, one wants the books to be safe, knowing that, as paper objects, they won't last forever.