IGLI Clinical Files: The In-23 Format Syndrome (and Its Cousin the In-7)

Doctor Achille Dandillot, medical inspector attached to the clinical section of the IGLI.

Dear bibliophiles, good day.

The case examined today belongs to that category of rare diseases that one does not always dare to report in the medical annals, for fear of seeming oneself afflicted. Yet we must carry out our mission: that of recording the most obscure bibliophilic deviations, so that science, or at least its caricature, may emerge the greater for it.

Before us is a bibliophile suffering from a formidable obsession: a devouring passion for marginal formats, above all those that do not exist, or rather should not exist. The in-23 and its lopsided brother the in-7 form for him a religion of their own, a creed printed in millimetres and fractions of an inch.

Whereas the canonical nomenclature stops sensibly at the regular formats (folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo, 18mo, and so on), our patient has become infatuated with flaws, lacunae, grey zones. For him, any volume that escapes the official definitions becomes a metrological miracle. He sees in it not a mere accident of cutting or binding, but the tangible manifestation of a hidden bibliographic reality.

The symptoms, observed over several years, present as periodic attacks whose violence has never ceased to grow.

Compulsion to measure. The patient never goes out without his twenty-centimetre ruler, sometimes replaced by a binder’s compass or a brass rule engraved with archaic gradations. In reading rooms he is caught crouching, measuring height to the millimetre. Every divergence of a quarter-inch brings on an immediate muscular contraction, followed by a jubilant exclamation: “Here is an in-23, beyond dispute!”

Alteration of language. The subject’s conversation no longer evokes books as literary or aesthetic objects, but only as dimensional surfaces. A novel by Balzac becomes “a 203 × 134 mm,” while a treatise of theology is called “a quasi-in-7.” The friend, the publisher, the bookseller disappear: nothing remains but figures.

Aggressive behaviour. At a dinner of the Society of the Friends of the Old Book (Société des Amis du Livre ancien), he threw his glass of Chambertin in the face of a guest who was learnedly maintaining that the in-7 was merely a chimera of an absent-minded binder. The incident, recorded in our archives under the classmark IGLI-CR-187/45, illustrates the social danger of the disorder.

Pathological graphomania. The patient keeps a notebook spattered with ink in which deranged surveys appear: approximate in-23, trimmed edge, suspect binding; potential in-7, but slipping toward failed in-6. On page 47 we noted a disquieting entry: in-23½, perfect format, proof is made. This last addition betrays the passage from obsession to hallucination.

We are in the presence of an advanced case of rare formatomania, an extreme variety of the bibliometric syndrome.

Bibliographic science, since the eighteenth century, has rested on a base of conventions: format is defined by the number of folds of a printing sheet. But as subdivisions multiplied (12mo, 18mo, 24mo, 32mo, 64mo), certain minds let themselves be bewitched by these infinite hierarchies.

Where a reasonable bibliographer is content to approximate (“about a duodecimo”), our patient seeks absolute precision, even if it means inventing nonexistent categories. The in-23 becomes for him a mystical revelation, proof that official bibliography lies. As for the in-7, he raises it to a symbol of resistance: “a forbidden format,” he repeats with the eyes of a visionary, as if measuring paper were tantamount to sabotaging the Ancien Régime.

The quarrels over format are not new. Already the abbé Rive, in his bibliographic imprecations, fulminated against arbitrary subdivisions. Brunet, more moderate, preferred to speak of a “small octavo” or a “small duodecimo.” But nobody had ever dared to baptise an in-23: typographic propriety forbade it.

Yet one day a provincial catalogue of the 1870s let slip an unfortunate misprint: an in-32 became in-23 under the absent-minded pen of the typesetter. This blunder, insignificant to any reader, was for our patient a revelation. Since that day he has lived in the conviction that there exists a race of clandestine formats, carefully concealed by the official bibliographers.

The first symptoms were limited to animated conversations in neighbourhood bookshops. But very soon the disorder worsened.

Intrusive phase. At the Bibliothèque nationale, witnesses claim to have caught him slipping his own corrective slips into the drawers of the paper catalogues. These slips mentioned fanciful formats: in-23 marginalis, in-7 clandestinus.

Missionary phase. He then undertook a deranged correspondence with various scholars. To Mr. Gustave Brunet he wrote: “You have forgotten the in-23 format, shame on your Dictionary.” To a Lyon binder he put the question: “Do you know how to perform the oblique cut that leads to the in-7?” None of these savants answered him, which only increased his sense of persecution.

Paranoid phase. Today the patient is convinced that international librarians are conspiring to erase marginal formats. He claims that UNESCO has drawn up a “blacklist” forbidding any mention of the in-23.

Before asserting the presence of a formatomania, certain neighbouring pathologies must be ruled out:

Bindingomania (reliuromanie): obsession with skewed bindings, which can induce illusions of format.

Compulsive pagination: a disease in which the patient tirelessly recounts the pages, convinced that printers have always cheated.

Fold delirium: an extreme case in which the gatherings are taken apart to check physically the number of folds.

None of these pathologies suffices to explain the fixation on the in-23 and the in-7. We are indeed facing an autonomous clinical entity.

The clinical section of the IGLI recommends several protocols, adapted to the degree of severity.

1. Temporary isolation. Install the patient in a reading room without ruler, compass or decimetre. The volumes are arranged there in no apparent order, formats mixed. This brutal withdrawal first provokes convulsions, then a relative calm.

2. Graded exposure therapy. Present him with books whose binder has carefully trimmed the margins irregularly, so that the exact format becomes indeterminable. The patient, confronted with the unclassifiable, learns to tolerate uncertainty.

3. Bibliographic re-education. An intensive course recalling that format names are only approximate conventions. He is read passages from serious bibliographers explaining that the height of a duodecimo varies from 16 to 18 cm, which ruins his dogma of exactness.

4. Radical treatment. In the most recalcitrant cases the patient is handed a volume bound crooked, oscillating between a 12mo and a 13mo. The instability provokes in him first an acute panic, then, paradoxically, a form of liberation. Some begin to laugh, others to weep: a sign that cure is near.

The prognosis remains guarded. The obsession with format tends to relapse, like the hallucinations of a patient who has contemplated too many typographic concordance tables.

It is probable that the patient will manage to regain a moderately acceptable social life, provided he limits his measuring to domestic shelves. But any visit to a public library represents an almost certain relapse.

We therefore conclude that rare formatomania, and in particular its in-23/in-7 variant, must be regarded as a chronic disorder, incurable in the absolute, but sometimes stabilisable by attentive care.

At the IGLI, we recommend keeping this file as an exemplar of dimensional pathologies. For if bibliophilia is a noble passion, it can, badly supervised, turn into excess, in the literal sense of the word: démesure, a lack of measure.

Clinical Files of the IGLI, File no. 2, classmark IGLI-DC-2/193.

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A Bibliophile on the Titanic, or the Fate of Harry Elkins Widener

Dear bibliophiles, good evening,

The night of 14 to 15 April 1912 was fatal for some 1,500 passengers who had taken their places aboard the Titanic… and for an unknown number of old books which one may presume were precious. They were travelling, indeed, with young Harry Elkins Widener, 27, who was one of the most pampered and most promising young bibliophiles of the early 20th century.

Born in 1885, Harry Elkins Widener developed a taste for bibliophilia very early, cultivated it after his time at Harvard in 1907, and his parents’ immense fortune allowed him to build on it very quickly despite his youth. Thus, at only 27, he owned (almost)… a Gutenberg Bible, as we shall see below.

His tastes were fairly wide, and led him rather towards English-language authors of the 19th century in first editions (Dickens, Stevenson, Brontë, etc.), without disdaining the great classics, since a Gutenberg Bible had come into the family, which is today the pride of the Harvard Library. It is, moreover, a well-known copy, which belonged successively to Pierre Henri Larcher (Paris, 1814), Lord Ashburnham (1840), whose son sold it to Bernard Quaritch (1896). Shortly afterwards Robert Hoe became its happy owner (he shelved it, by the way, right next to my Hoe copy, which therefore carries a little Gutenberg Bible dust, smile), then Quaritch again, before Harry Elkins Widener’s grandfather bought it. The copy was handed over to the library in 1944.

It particularly struck young Harry, who mentions the Bible in a letter to his friend Luther Livingston, a bookseller in Philadelphia, on 10 March 1912, a month before the tragedy, in which he writes that he is about to make a quick trip to England aboard the Mauretania, before returning on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. He ends his letter with these words: “a secret… grandfather has bought the Hoe copy. Isn’t it wonderful? I was hoping it would be for me, but it isn’t!”

Bibliophilia and the acquisition of new old books was, moreover, one of the reasons for his trip to Europe. He was travelling with his parents and we know that he notably acquired a second edition of Bacon’s Essays (1598). After England, the family visited France before re-embarking for the United States via Cherbourg and the new flagship of the White Star Line, the Titanic. The famous liner indeed called at Cherbourg: having left Southampton on Wednesday 10 April 1912 at noon, the new floating palace was to reach the port of Cherbourg a few hours later and make its entrance through the western pass at 6:30 pm. Beyond the prestige, this call made it possible to take on 274 additional passengers, among them the Widener family.

The family and servants occupied first-class cabins C-80-82 (ticket number 13503, price 211 pounds sterling). And on the night of the disaster the Wideners were, in fact, taking part in a dinner given by the captain for the richest passengers. At 11:40 pm the Titanic struck an iceberg on the starboard bow before sinking at 2:20 am off Newfoundland. Between 1,491 and 1,513 people perished. Witnesses report that Harry Widener helped his mother into lifeboat no. 4 before turning back to wait for the departure of the main boat, which unfortunately decided his fate, since he disappeared with the liner. The wreck was located in 1985. It lies at a depth of 3,843 metres, 650 km south-east of Newfoundland, and is currently the subject of excavations.

An anecdote that Mrs Widener never confirmed claims that Harry turned back to fetch his Bacon.

What is certain, however, is that Mrs Widener made a gift of 2 million dollars to build, within the grounds of Harvard, a library that would house her son’s collection and serve as a memorial. That library opened its doors in 1915, still exists, and was designed to house 3 million volumes on several dozen kilometres of shelving.