Twenty-five Propositions On Book Collecting
By Bennett Gilbert
Copyright © 1996 Bennett Gilbert

1. Old books are part of the history of communication and expression.

2. As such they are an especially powerful, complex, interesting, and beautiful part of the chain of human thought, speech, and imagery starting from cave paintings and rock art, the oldest known works of art.

3. Old books have a further constituent virtually unique to them among antique objects: the text. Each text has its own history and material and is therefore a layer of meaning in the old book against which all its other parts resonate.

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