The Conscience of a Collector

by Jeffrey Scheuer

As the years go by and his first editions gain in value, a once starry-eyed book collector is faced with questions beyond price.

1. A Rediscovery

On a spring trip to Oregon in 2005 to look at colleges, my son and I stopped at Powell’s bookstore in downtown Portland—a vast emporium of the printed word. After browsing for several hours, I discovered a magnificent rare-book room on an upper floor. To enter it was to penetrate a hushed sanctuary, a glass-enclosed, carpeted space with an entirely different ambiance from the rest of the store. Another hour passed as I browsed the modern first editions. I could easily have spent a whole day in there, grazing over titles, authors, bindings, covers, inscriptions, dedications. I had come home.

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