The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Ob

A fellow writer once described to me the experience of falling into “research rapture.” While working on this book I succumbed, wholeheartedly. While I relied heavily on the written word (books, periodicals, Internet resources, and so forth) for historical information about the antiquarian book trade, face-to-face interviews (with dealers, librarians, collectors, and others) constituted the majority of my research. Scenes from the lives of Ken Sanders and John Gilkey, especially, were drawn almost exclusively from my conversations with them, with additional information culled from interviews with their relatives, friends, and colleagues. Court documents and police records were also invaluable. And every month or so, I would come across another report of book theft in the press, which underscored for me how prevalent the crime is and how, for all its history, it is still a modern story.

Prologue

1 Leslie Overstreet, Curator of Natural History Rare Books, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, e-mail correspondence with the author.

2 Bock was controversial because he was a physician/metaphysician who believed that botanical parts corresponded to human body parts and processes. Barbara Pitschel, Head Librarian, San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, e-mail correspondence with the author.

3 John Windle. Interview with the author.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid. “There’s a famous story about a scholar in the early nineteenth century going into a fish shop in Germany. He saw them tearing pages out of a Bible to wrap the fish in—and it was a Gutenberg Bible.”

6 Ursula Bendixon and Waltraud Bendixon. Interview with the author.

7 Copenhagen: “Twists, Turns in Royal Library Book Theft Case.” www.denmark.dk (official website of Denmark). May 28, 2004.

Kentucky: “Transy Thieves Took Names from Film.” www.kentucky.com. October 11, 2005. This theft was unusually violent. On December 17, 2004, a young man phoned Transylvania University’s special collections librarian, BJ Gooch, to arrange a visit to the rare book room. Once there, the man asked to see some of the library’s finest books. He’d heard about the first edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species, but wanted to know what other treasures lay in the library, and even called a friend to join him. Gooch had already decided which books to pull from the locked metal flat files and the glass case that held some of the more wondrous texts. Shortly, the friend arrived, wearing hat, scarf, and sunglasses, which made it almost impossible to see his face. Gooch had a bad feeling about the pair, but didn’t expect what followed. As she reached into one of the drawers, they shot her with a stun gun, then tied her up and ran off with several rare items, including the Darwin, two rare manuscripts, and sketches by Audubon. “I lay there on the floor, weak as a newborn baby, while they ran off,” she said. A few days later, the young men took the loot, worth about $750,000, to Christie’s auction house. Their flimsy, improbable story raised suspicions, and the two were caught, along with two other friends who’d planned the heist. All four were sentenced to time in prison. University of Kentucky rare book librarian BJ Gooch. Interview with the author.

Cambridge: “Biblioklepts,” Harvard Magazine, May 1997.

8 John Windle. Interview with the author.

Chapter 1

1 John Carter, ABC for Book Collectors, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p. 118.

2 Nicholas Basbanes, Among the Gently Mad (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), p. 81.

3 Quoted ibid., p. 72.

4 M. S. Batts, “The 18th-Century Concept of the Rare Book,” The Book Collector, 24 (Autumn 1975), p. 383.

5 Ibid.

6 Readers interested in delving more deeply into this subject might enroll in one of several rare book schools in the world. The oldest and most famous is at the University of Virginia, which offers courses for adults on topics concerning old and rare books, manuscripts, and special collections. (Others are in England, New Zealand, and California.)

7 Collecting has traditionally been a men’s game, but changes are afoot, according to dealer Priscilla Juvelis of Kennebunkport, Maine. As she observed in an interview with the author: “There was always this group of profoundly wealthy people, some of whom happened to be women, who collected books because that’s what people with inherited money did. . . . What has changed dramatically in the twenty-seven years I’ve been in business is that when I started in 1980 there were no women who were heads of libraries’ special collections, with very few exceptions. And there weren’t women rare book librarians. . . . Now there are women heads of special collections. There are women faculty members who insist on teaching Harriet Beecher Stowe as something other than a curiosity. . . . There are a number of women collectors out there who want to collect women authors, writings on women’s rights, and the women collectors I have sold these materials to have money of their own, disposable incomes. . . . The atmosphere changed dramatically.”

8 Since Updike’s death in early 2009, the interest in and thus the value of his books have risen, as is almost always the case when a famous author dies.

9 Ken Sanders. Interview with the author.

10 Basbanes, A Gentle Madness, p. xix.

11 Ibid., p. 59.

12 Ibid., p. 62.

13 Ibid., p. 25.

14 Frognall Dibdin, The Bibliomania or Book Madness (Richmond, VA: Tiger of the Stripe, 2004), p. 15. Dibdin further noted that back in his day, the early nineteenth century, collectors were mad for (in order) “I. Large Paper Copies; II. Uncut Copies; III. Illustrated Copies; IV. Unique Copies; V. Copies printed upon Vellum; VI. First Editions; VII. True Editions; VIII. A general desire for the Black Letter” (heavy, ornate black type, the earliest of which were from the Gutenberg presses). Dibdin himself “craved uncut copies. To any sensible person, a book with uncut bolts is an abomination because it cannot be read, and yet there are many book collectors who will pay a premium for a book which is thus virgo intacta.”

15 Rita Reif, “Auctions,” New York Times, April 1, 1988.

16 John Windle. Interview with the author.

17 The suspect, Daniel Spiegelman, claimed he had supplied weapons to the men responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, which meant that if extradited to the United States he could have faced the death penalty. The Netherlands’ extradition treaty clearly specifies that if the offense is punishable by death in the country requesting extradition, it may be refused. After no definitive connection to the Oklahoma City bombers was established, Spiegelman was extradited to the United States, where he faced trial and was sentenced to sixty months in prison, three years of supervised release, and three hundred hours of community service. See Travis McDade, The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman (New York: Praeger, 2006), pp. 58-60.

18 Basbanes, A Gentle Madness, p. 29.

19 California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation inmate locator (telephone service).

20 “Brutal Trade of Rare Books,” The Age, February 19, 2003.

Chapter 2

1 Basbanes, A Gentle Madness, pp. 411-414.

2 One of the most compelling recent explorations into collecting is Collections of Nothing, by William Davies King (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).