ABSTRACT
Just as people have lives, so do books. Like identical twins who end their lives looking quite different, even the seemingly indistinguishable copies of twentieth-century trade books accumulate their own histories and physical characteristics over time from readers’ habits and storage conditions. With regard to rare volumes, research on provenance seeks to describe not only books’ origins but also their subsequent biblio-journeys as they are read, borrowed, sold, collected, and held by institutions. Unlike studies concerned with the subject matter or content of rare books, provenance investigates the specific histories of individual copies, either by themselves or in the context of larger collections.
A rare book’s provenance is the history of its ownership, often elaborating its associations with libraries, private owners, or collections. A significant aspect of book collecting and the history of the printed record of cultural heritage, provenance concerns not only the initial origins of a book but also the ongoing connections to collectors and collections. Research and documentation of provenance deal with two categories of evidence that reveal the histories of individual books. Internal evidence, including marks, inscriptions, bookplates, and bindings, focuses on the physical components of volumes. External evidence, such as catalogs issued by publishers and booksellers and those compiled by libraries, dealers, and auction houses, documents the places and conditions of manufacture, subsequent sales, owners, and collections that held the volumes. Provenance research concerns primarily the authenticity and integrity of rare books; however, in recent decades its data can also be used to develop and write innovative histories of books’ circulation, collecting, uses, and reading.
