The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac was published posthumously by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896, Field having died in November 1895 shortly after completing the manuscript. It is his most sustained work of prose and his most personal — a book-lover’s confession structured as a series of chapters, each devoted to a different aspect of the collecting passion: the love of old bindings, the thrill of the auction room, the pleasure of marginalia, the competitive jealousy of rival collectors.
Field was a passionate book collector throughout his life — his Chicago home was crammed with books acquired through decades of obsessive hunting — and the memoir draws on his actual experiences in the bookshops and auction rooms of Chicago, New York, and London. But the book is more than memoir: it is a celebration of reading itself, of the physical book as an object of beauty, and of the community of book-lovers as a kind of secret society whose members recognize each other by shared obsessions.
The tone is humorous and self-deprecating — Field presents his bibliomania as a benign madness, a passion that ruins him financially while enriching him spiritually — but underneath the humor is genuine erudition. Field’s knowledge of printing history, bibliography, and literary history is extensive, and the book is full of anecdotes about rare books, famous collectors, and the peculiar economics of the second-hand book trade that remain relevant to collectors today.
Collecting The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac
First edition (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1896): Cloth binding with gilt decoration.
Market values:
- First edition: $50–$150
- Later printings: $10–$30
- Limited/signed editions: $100–$300