Bibliomania

Bibliomania: Origin Story

The act of book collecting has existed for as long as books have; there are many historical and current accounts of extremely avid book collectors such as Michael Hurley, Thomas Jefferson, and Oprah Winfrey. (Basbanes, 1995; Temple, 2017). However, the condition describing those who seem to have an uncontrollable urge to collect books had no widely used or accepted term to refer to it until the early 1800s (Roland, 1970). A physician in Manchester, England, John Ferriar, first coined the term and described the condition called “bibliomania” in 1809. According to Dr. Ferriar, the most avid book collectors suffer from a “book-disease” characterized by “wild desires” and “restless torments” where they “read not what they buy” (Purcell, 2019; Roland, 1970). Dr. Ferriar’s description of bibliomania may seem extreme when compared to a more contemporary and simple definition: “the extreme preoccupation with collecting books” (Merriam-Webster). Dr. Ferriar as well as the librarian and Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin, who adopted, enhanced, and popularized Ferriar’s description, would likely both deem the modern definition as more accurately describing a healthy style of book collecting: bibliophilia (Roland, 1970).

Like any hobby used to pursue one’s passions and to fill one’s free time, collecting has positives and negatives. Many people collect things due to their own personal interests, or due to seeking utility, wealth, or even power. Some collectors maintain their collections as professional interests and personal joys–not infatuations that overtake all aspects of their lives–for example, two Jesuits at Creighton, Fr. Greg Carlson and Fr. Michael Flecky. Furthermore, as demonstrated and explained by Fr. Carlson and Fr. Flecky in both in-person expert discussions as well as published writings, expert collectors can display their pieces and expertise in museum and library exhibits, finding great joy and fulfillment in sharing access to the objects of their interest (Carlson, 2021).

However, when collecting morphs into obsession about collecting for the sake of mere personal acquisition, problems can arise. These extreme problems are exactly what motivated Ferriar to publish a poem describing Richard Heber. Heber is the first documented account of one suffering from the book collecting disease bibliomania. Heber’s mania drove him to collect over 150,000 books, filling eight houses full and showing up anxiously at every book sale he knew about. Ferriar—as expected in a poem written by a physician—recorded detailed observations of Heber’s symptoms, creating a clinical description of bibliomania. (Roland, 1970).

Signs and Symptoms of Bibliomania

Both Ferriar and Dibdin described sufferers of bibliomania as possessing a “manic concentration on the nonliterary aspects of books.” When a bibliomaniac does choose to read one of their books, they often do so in an unusual, obsessive manner. Even though it is not recognized or diagnosable as an official mental health condition, someone might fit Ferriar’s diagnostic criteria if they have:

Unrelenting torments [about book collecting] that “seize man”
An obsessive focus on the exterior qualities of books, not the interior content
An infatuation with books as a unique object
Unusual amounts of time and resources devoted to book collecting.
Indifference to other healthy and essential aspects of life such as relationships due to the pursuit of books
Anxiety and/or other negative psychological effects when unable obtain specific books.
An indifference to societal norms while in the pursuit of a book (i.e, breaking and entering)
Locating a major part of one’s self image and identity in the collection of books

Picking up on the description of bibliomaniac symptoms, the British journalist and publisher Holbrook Jackson wrote his own, more famous account of the condition, The Anatomy of Bibliomania (1930). Even later, Dr. Norman Weiner published a paper on bibliomania in Psychoanalytic Quarterly (1966). Weiner felt that bibliomania continued to be unjustly overlooked by psychoanalysts. He argued that only a few people have entered treatment for bibliomania and speculated that this was because the activity may be a behavior that is socially acceptable and reinforces the needs and goals of the person’s ideal self-image (Griffiths, 2013). Perhaps the broad lack of research into bibliomania as its own disease is also because some see it as a symptom of other recognized conditions. Because of this, treatment options, symptom management strategies, and support for those with bibliomaniac behaviors and tendencies remain almost non-existent (Knuttson, 2014). Furthermore, the mental health conditions that bibliomania most closely resembles and is often grouped with, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Impulse Control Disorder, Delusional Disorder, Hoarding Disorder, and/or kleptomania, are not entirely representative and descriptive of true bibliomania and of Blumberg’s behavior (Knuttson, 2014).

Blumberg and Bibliomania

Considering these symptoms and various sources, Blumberg suffered from bibliomania. “These poor old books were laying out in the dirt” Blumberg further described his own book theft and collecting as the “skeleton of his life,” implicitly considering his life as fully dependent on his books (Basbanes, 1995). As reported by Knuttson, FBI Special Agent Dennis Aiken stated that “…Blumberg was going to get this stuff regardless of what he had to do…He defeated difficult alarm systems…Book theft was his life.” (2014). Although Blumberg likely did–and might still–have bibliomania, the lack of research and broad recognition of its nature as a diagnosable mental illness kept bibliomania from serving as sufficient cause for a ‘not guilty by plea of insanity’ legal defense for Blumberg (Basbanes, 1995; Weiss, 1994; Knutsson, 2014).