My History Books

Appian Romane Warres translation, Shakespeare plagiarised bits, whole paragraphs, for Antony and Cleo, black-letter 1578 print; Plutarch Lives 1579 Lord North trans; Suetonius Twelve Caesars 1606 Philemon Holland trans; Cicero Letters 1753 print.


Folio eds. Tacitus Annals; Livy Early Rome; Livy 2nd Punic War; Caesar Gallic Civil wars; Herodotus Histories; Thucydides Peloponnesian War; Suetonius 12 Caesars; Polybius Rise of Rome; Plutarch's Lives


Pliny Natural History Philemon Holland 1601 trans; John Keat's Chapman's Homer Iliad & Odyssey 1611 trans; complete Livy 1686; Howels Ancient History 1680; Hampton's 1823 Polybius


Sir Walter Raleigh's History writ 1603-1616, 1702 print; Edward Gibbon's 1776 Decline and Fall; Rollin's 1729 Ancient Greek History in trans; Abbot Devertot Roman Revolutions 1732; Wordsworth on Greece


Potter, Greek Antiquities 1697; Burton's visit to Rome 1818; Horsfield Classical Atlas 1762; Mommsen's Nobel prize winning History of Rome; various Loeb translations; Smith's 1869 Geography


Histories mid-Roman Republic esp Punic Wars period. Cambridge Ancient History new eds; Beard; Tan; Kay; Fronda; Wallace Hadrill; Hoyos; and some modern Homeric translations


Modern literary inspirations: Robert Harris, Tom Holland, Stephen Saylor, Mary Beard, Peter Stothard, Boris Johnson, Constantine Cavafy, Stephen Fry, Maurice Sartre

Yes I read ancient authors and the history, but the modern literature inspires, refreshes, awakens the soul

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Beard, Fry, and Boris sharing the same shelf ... oh my.

 

Yup. And I copied Fry and Beard (who follows me on twitter) on the tweet of this shelf. Am imagining a sharp intake of breath from both.

 

Nice. My library is all non-fiction. If it ain't real I don't want it.

 

Some wonderful books. I read most of mine through digital means. I just have a few books of any sort. Less clutter the better to me.

 

Is the Boris book a joke? I don’t get it. I do recall a wonderful video though of Beard wiping the floor with him. Never understood why he was debating her though.

 

No it's not a joke. Boris wrote a popular mass selling book about ancient Roman history (and modern lessons to be learnt). Same basic genre as all the other books on this shelf. Probably outsold most of them. He frequently uses Latin phrases. Very well read guy on the Classics akin to anyone who went to Eton.

That's a reason why Beard and Johnson are often brought together by debaters and commentators.

 

Nice library!

 

I'm with Mat on this one, less clutter. I do have a few reference books for quick access. Enjoyed your post, thank you.

 

Oh, wow! What an incredible collection!

 

Interesting! I figured it was just for the lulz.

 

Boris is pretty interested in the ancient world it wouldn't surprise me if he wasn't a fellow collector.

 

Are those books actually real and in your library or are they in a University library. I've not seen as good a collection that are pictured above. You may have more invested in your library than your coins.

 

Andrews coins are definitely worth more than his books lol

 

Cool!

 

@Andrew McCabe I love your library. Some impressive titles there. You deserve the title of a well-read man. Do you worry about the preservation of your older titles? Do you take any precautions? Personally I put acid-free comic-book backing boards under my books so they do not touch directly the wood, have lavender sachets behind them to deter book-worms and also make sure that no direct sunlight goes anywhere near them. Probably I am a bit too much. No idea if the lavender works, and I hope it doesn't harm them in any way...

I also stack my larger folios on their side so there is no pressure on the spine (and also making sure that there are not too many to put too much pressure on the bottom ones).

 

Pure class @Andrew McCabe! Thank you so much for all your insight and additions to this forum.
What a poorly timed great thread to come up as all my books are in boxes.... I'm moving
Not that my collection is anything like your sweet gathering of old spines, but I do have a pretty sweet 1,800s version of the Iliad. And some really old issues of playboy jk. But I bet if I did they'd be worth more than some of my favorite ancient coins
Now, I understand folks that say, hey I can look everything up online. Why buy books? I'm cheap too. I get it
However, what some may be missing, much like holding ancient coins in our grubby little fingers, holding and reading a wonderfully preserved historic book can make you feel like YOU WERE Napoléon, Caesar or even Alexander the GREAT
Again, hats off and until I can get to my books, here's a blind guy writing/reading a book:

Ionia, Smyrna. Circa 125-115 BC. Æ 20mm (21mm, 8.27g). Phanokrates, magistrate. Laureate head of Apollo right / The poet Homer seated left, holding scroll. Milne, Autonomous 194a; SNG Copenhagen. Former Kairos Numismatik

 

Those are all amazing. I love looking at shelves of old books, whether at bookstores or at people's homes, more than almost any other pastime! (With a few exceptions, admittedly.) I must have 25 -30 shelves of non-fiction history and art history/archaeology books, not counting coin books. More on various aspects of Jewish history than any other specific field. (I don't keep historical novels separate from other fiction, and in the last couple of years I've mostly stopped buying fiction in hard copy -- I don't have any more room, so I read them on Kindle.) Anyway, there are way too many shelves to photograph or post here, although I did post several such photos here in the past. Perhaps instead I'll post photos at some point of the title pages of some of my older individual non-fiction books -- nothing nearly so old or impressive as @Andrew McCabe's, of course, but still a fairly substantial number from the 19th century, and a few from the 18th century.

 

Ha!
Very real indeed.

But these are only my HISTORY books. I've way more Antiquarian COIN books. Which I'll post on another thread. And my coins are better than my books as @Yorkshire confirmed!

Books are relatively cheap. Especially very old books

 

These are very beautiful books.

Precautions: my library is in a North facing glass walled gallery that gets little direct sunlight but quite a lot of light. Tends to be kept about 18C / 64F year around and humidity around 50%, naturally, again year round, which is actually ideal for books. So, no special precautions but I live in a book friendly climate. I also don't take an especial care when handling or reading. They are made to be read. But I do have access to reliable bookbinders, so anything fragile just gets repaired