Provenance

Today’s blog is a bit unique. We’re going to step away, briefly, from the physical book, to talk the man who owned it.

Before transitioning to an exclusively digital relationship with my pet book, I spent some time photographing the thing, trying to record any useful images for future blog posts. As I look through those photos now, I haven’t a single photograph of handwriting, not a single photo of a dog-eared page, or a sticker, or a blood stain. All those things might be interesting, but I don’t think any of them actually existed in my book. If it weren’t for the libraries in special collections, I might never have known about the owner. The book itself leaves not a single clue.

James Augustine Healy

We know that he had the book, but when I looked through, there were no notes in the margin, no bookplates, no stains. You might expect to find some sort of marking, considering that Mr. Healy was a collector. The book was kept well, and is well preserved, which tells us something about how it was used, and how often, but we’ll get to that later.

A Collector of Irish Books

James Augustine Healy’s collection now occupies an entire room in special collections at Colby College, and not a small room, by the way! And as such, the library knows a bit about Mr. Healy. I myself have known about him since the moment I collected my pet book. I selected it on a weekend night, while it was still winter, and when I finally came face to face with my book in special collections, the librarian on duty handed me a small, green booklet on Mr. Healy, like a pamphlet, but more serious.

Sometime between then and now, I misplaced the booklet, but I believe much of what I read in the booklet can also be found on the special collections website. Perhaps, by examining Healy’s biography, we can glean some insight into why his book might be so pristine. It’s possible that he just never used it, but maybe there’s more to the story.

Spoiler: There’s Nothing More to the Story

Look. Healy was an interesting guy, but it really just seems like this book went on the shelf and stayed there. Maybe he read it, maybe not. The Colby special collections website says Healy was a collector of rare Irish books, and ended up donating more than 5000 to Colby’s special collections alone. I have no idea how many books he had in total, but basically, it seems like had way to many to read, even if he did live “a quiet life with his wife Josephine” in his New York residence and his summer home in Casco Bay.

So what can we conclude?

Our pet book wasn’t one of Healy’s favorites. Throughout these blog posts we’ve come back to the idea that this book was meant for beginners, meant to be an introduction into Irish myth and legend, but from a collector’s point of view, it very well might seem like a useless but beautiful addition to the collection.

Healy likely had no need for the pronunciation guide, and likely he knew the stories backwards and forwards. If he did read the book, he probably noticed if and where the myths were abridged or altered to make them more palatable to the everyday reader.

Even if he never used the book, he still bought it, and so the publishers must have been doing something right. The book’s value to Healy must have been that is was beautiful, or at least unique enough to add to his collection. It’s hard to tell if Healy bought every Irish book he could find, but that seems like it would be too much, and since Healy is a collector, he probably had to prioritize buying unique books, to avoid accumulating infinite copies of the same book, reprinted again and again for their literary merit.

A Quiet Life

Considering the amount of paratext in the book, from indexes to pronunciation guides, it feel almost extraordinary that the book appears to be so rarely used. It’s just, so usable, with all that paratext. I guess we can wrap up here. Like its owner, this books seems to have lived a quiet life, mostly undisturbed. In fact, I might be the first person to pick it up since Healy. Isn’t that just a little extraordinary?

Wash you hands and feet for twenty seconds!
Sam McGrath Holmquist