In the early nineteenth century Miss Richardson Currer of Eshton Hall, Craven, Yorkshire, amassed a large and scholarly collection of books on many subjects. It was housed in a great room with a gallery which must have been the envy of all book-lovers. She was the fond possessor of the rare _Book of St. Albans_, written and compiled by Juliana Berners, prioress of the nunnery of Sopwith in Hertfordshire. It is said that the ardent book collector Richard Heber, being unable to secure the book in any other way, ardently proposed marriage to Miss Currer. She was firm in her refusal however, preferring to keep this first book about sport to be written by a woman to herself.
One of the most learned lady bibliophiles of this century in America was Miss Amy Lowell of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her books and manuscripts, including her collection of Keats, are being preserved for posterity in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial at Harvard. She always enjoyed smoking a good cigar while writing or carrying on her sparkling conversations, as she thought it made her thoughts flow more easily.
One could not write of women in connection with books without speaking of two distinguished custodians of famous libraries, scholars, who are as well known abroad as in America: [the late] Miss Belle Da Costa Greene, the brilliant Director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and Miss Ruth Sheppard Granniss, former Librarian of the Grolier Club and sympathetic friend of all bibliophiles, male or female. They, of course, come under Lang's category of exceptional examples.
But what of the many other exceptions? Would Lang have thought that Miss Lowell could not understand books? Or that Diane de Poitiers could be jealous of their mysterious charms? Or that Catherine of Russia would hesitate to spend what money she could procure to satisfy her passion for them? What could his lady friends have been like to be classed with the enemies of books--and such enemies at that?
It would appear that book collecting is a truly feminine pastime, containing many elements which appeal to their sex; romance, intellectual curiosity, love of the beautiful and the quest of something difficult to obtain. But feminine collectors should beware of pitfalls, for sometimes this mania arouses the baser instincts such as envy, extravagance and self-indulgence. Wives have even been known to spend their marketing money on books instead of daily bread, and to waste hours reading book catalogues instead of attending to their housewifely duties. Book collecting, however, is a common denominator of all ages and a medium through which the minds of both sexes may meet with pleasure, and therefore greatly to be recommended as a delightful occupation.