THIS IVORY PALE.
By Allerton C. Hickmott '17. Hartford: Connecticut Printers.Limited edition of 250 copies, of which200 are for sale by Seven Gables Bookshop, Inc., New York. 1970. 55 pp. $15
This volume is modestly presented, but it contains sumptuous fare, such as would appeal to the taste of any bibliographically inclined collector. This Ivory Pale focuses attention on the happy marriage of the knowledgeable collector and the knowledgeable book seller, and Mr. Hickmott carefully points out the assistance of the last, especially of Mr. Michael Papantonio of the Seven Gables Bookshop in New York City. For Mr. Hickmott has assembled one of the most outstanding and astoundingly fine private collections of early English literature in this country; and it is virtually unknown.
Following a charmingly personal introduction, in which the collector explains how he came to collect his great landmark items, there are notes and comments on each of his more than 100 editions of Elizabethan literature. These include the four folios of Shakespeare, 31 quartos, including six printings of Hamlet, first editions of several of the plays, significant early collected editions of the works, and eighteenth-century printings in America. Shakespeare's poetry is headed by one of the four known copies of Venus and Adonis (1594), followed by Poems (1640) and other early printings. Important source books, Chaucer, Painter, Plutarch, Holinshed, Marlowe, are included, as well as virtually all the adaptations published during the Restoration. Much of the collection is either in the original binding or has been handsomely rebound by the famous bindery firms of Riviere and Sangorski and Sutcliffe.
Although Mr. Hickmott professes to be only a struggling amateur, with a career distinguished in business rather than in the book world, perhaps we may have to grant this appellation; but in the sense of a lover of books—no. How many of us could claim to have really read all the books we have collected? This too merits admiration.
Mr. Wright is Curator of Rare Books andChief of Special Collections at the DartmouthCollege Library.
