My Bookshelf

Thursday 20 September 2012

A Gentleman’s Library

Book lover: William Forwood had read every single page in his impressive collection


There are times in life when a girl might feel that perhaps she should have been an exceedingly rich and powerful gentleman, preferably a Lord. How nice to sit back in a plush leather sofa, stroking your carefully maintained moustache, perfecting the knot on your wonderfully expensive silk neck tie, while contemplating the import issues of the day: politics, the arts and that ubiquitous word, culture, while surrounded, naturally, by a personal library of FOUR THOUSAND BOOKS. Ok so now I've got to the crux of the issue. I don't really want to be a man... I haven't completely lost it... but I would like to be rich enough to own a library that includes copies (and some first editions!) of some of the most celebrated writers ever published... Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray... I'd love a library, this library, yes, and a lake. Always wanted a lake.

William Forwood was lawyer, businessman, historian and book enthusiast. He died last year at 84 years old and left this fantastic library which is to be sold at auction comprising of a phenomenal 407 lots at the same auction house in the Cotswolds where Forwood bought many of his collected titles. Looking at the images, the library reminds me of something out of My Fair Lady or that it might house the mysterious other half to the spell book in Bedknobs and Broomsticks... Professor Higgins would have been very happy  here certainly.


I will leave you now in a pool of book envy, frantically looking through your accounts wondering if you can scrape together £200,000 in coppers... perhaps this only half eaten tube of gum will have some value? A biro? Keyring?

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