Member: Benthamite

I've read practically all the books written about Johnson's library. And nowhere have I read that Johnson limited his library to 3000 books. Boswell makes no mention of any library limitation in his Life of SJ, nor is any such quotation attributed to Johnson.

I have a number of older quotation books, none of which contains a "one book in, one book" quotation or anything similar. I suspect the quotation has sprung up sometime in the last seventy-five years.

Johnson did have approximately 3000 books in his library, which went up for auction after he died – some scholars say there were 2922 books. But the number of books in his library was not controlled by design.

best,
Jerry Morris

posted by moibibliomaniac at 9:37 pm (EST) on Aug 11, 2009

I'm am honoured that you have included my library in your list of interesting libraries.

posted by SamuelJohnsonLibrary at 12:09 pm (EST) on Aug 3, 2009

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that Samuel Johnson instituted a "one in, one out" policy once his library got to 3,000 volumes.  I can't find the reference, but it's a thought.

posted by brunellus at 2:16 pm (EST) on Jun 11, 2009

Hello! My, my, it looks like we cross(ed) both bookish and geographical paths. Even before I looked at your tags I thought, "A hispanophone of Italian extraction in England?--must be Argentine". Very nice to meet you--your library at least.

posted by LolaWalser at 7:08 pm (EST) on Jun 23, 2008

You can borrow my translation for comparative purposes if you like. The film adds several absurdities of its own, by the way – it opens with Wittgenstein writing the Tractatus in no-man's-land with shells exploding all around him, and goes on to talk about the exciting new proof of ‘Bormat's Last Theorem’...

posted by brunellus at 4:03 am (EST) on May 20, 2008