Confessions of a Book-Lover

In this tenderly eccentric 1914 memoir, E. Walter Walters confesses to an affliction shared by countless bibliophiles: the incurable love of books. He introduces us to his peculiar practice of 'book fishing', plumbing the discount bins of bookshops for buried treasures, treating the hunt itself as ardently as the catch. Like a sommelier pairing wines with courses, Walters matches his reading to context: a novel for the garden, poetry for the bedroom, essays to share with friends. He catalogs his beloved authors (chiefly Victorian Brits), his treasured books, and the fictional characters who have become companions, all presented not as prescriptive canon but as gifts offered to fellow readers. The result is less a reading list than a love letter to the solitary, sustaining habit of disappearing into books. It endures because Walters understood something essential: that bibliophilia is not about correctness or completion, but about the particular, irrational, lifelong romance between a reader and their shelves.