The Enemies of Books

What if book lovers wrote manifestos against the forces of destruction? William Blades did exactly that in 1880, producing something between a scholarly treatise and a furious screed against anyone who has ever harmed a book. A renowned collector and champion of William Caxton's legacy, Blades catalogs with righteous indignation the enemies that threaten volumes: fire, water, gas, heat, dust, neglect. But his greatest fury reserves for humans: the ignorant, the bigoted, the careless servants and children who treat books as mere objects. He even turns his pen on fellow collectors and bookbinders, whom he accuses of causing as much damage as they prevent. The result is a fascinating window into Victorian bibliomania, a book that reads less like a preservation manual and more like a passionate diatribe in defense of paper and ink. Blades ends with an impassioned plea for reverence toward old books, a sentiment that somehow feels both quaint and urgently relevant in an age of digital ephemerality. For anyone who has ever felt their heart race at the sight of a damaged spine or a water-stained page, this is a book that speaks your language.