Chapter 6 - Proust's reading

Summary

In a chapter titled ‘First Steps Toward a History of Reading’, cultural historian Robert Darnton wrote:

[M]ost of us would agree that a catalogue of a private library can serve as a profile of a reader, even though we don't read all the books we own and we do read many books that we never purchase. To scan the catalogue of the library in Monticello is to inspect the furnishings of Jefferson's mind. And the study of private libraries has the advantage of linking the ‘what’ with the ‘who’ of reading.

These words echo those of Georges Andrieux, the Parisian bookseller who, in 1930, had overseen the auction of the library of Paul Souday (1869–1929), the famed literary critic and contemporary of Proust. In the foreword to the auction catalogue, Andrieux remarked:

Thanks to [the catalogue], those who desire to find, for some study, personal notes or documents written by Paul Souday, will be able to take steps to find out in which library an item has been preserved. Thus, even if scattered, these books will always be accessible, and the product of so much work, of so many meditations and controversies will not be lost.