The Spectator at war: Compulsory purchase

From ‘Pitfalls in Bookland’, The Spectator, 20 February 1915:

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Mark Galeotti

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EVERY bookman knows that the taste for buying books inevitably outruns the capacity for reading them. At first a man buys a book only when he wants it vehemently—when he is so anxious to enjoy it that he despatches the preface while he is waiting for his ‘bus, and runs through the first three chapters in the suburban train. Then he begins to buy books because he will want them some day in the future; and he puts them on his shelves and forgets about them, and goes out to buy more. After this he becomes rapidly shameless and buys for all sorts of reasons. He buys books because they are standard works, because he does not know what he has done with his other copy (the first duplicate marks the acute stage of the disease), because he has not bought one for a long time, because he was never in that particular shop before and did not like to leave without getting something, because he wanted it to complete a series, because it was such a handsome edition, and even because it was such a bargain.