Denise Gigante

The fascinating history of American bookishness as told through the sale of Charles Lamb’s library in 1848 Charles Lamb’s library—a heap of sixty scruffy old books singed with smoke, soaked with gin, sprinkled with crumbs, stripped of illustrations, and bescribbled by the essayist and his literary friends—caused a sensation when it was sold in New York in 1848. The transatlantic...