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Examples

  • These belong to the domain of the amateur, the antiquary, or the book-fancier -- not to that of the librarian or the ordinary book-collector.

    A Book for All Readers An Aid to the Collection, Use, and Preservation of Books and the Formation of Public and Private Libraries Ainsworth Rand Spofford

  • But, on the other hand, although Balzac had already acquired a massive aspect, he did not have that vulgar outline which Jacob, the book-fancier, suggests.

    Honore de Balzac Albert Keim 1911

  • He was himself a book-fancier, fond of fine editions and bindings, and he once said to Smellie the printer, whom he observed admiring some of the books in his library, “I am a beau in nothing but my books.”

    Life of Adam Smith Rae, John, 1845-1915 1895

  • The books were spread out on his table, where they held a sort of levee; every book-fancier in all Newport had to call and pay his respects to the rare volumes and to the choice English bindings.

    The Faith Doctor A Story of New York Edward Eggleston 1869

  • He cared least for merely fine books, though he enjoyed, no one more so, fine type, good binding, and all the niceties of the book-fancier.

    Spare Hours John Brown 1846

  • The son of one of them recollected something about it, and said to the cardinal's gentleman, 'Sir, there is a book-fancier who has what you seek, but with no covers to it, and he wants five pistoles for it.'

    A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 4 1830

  • He had a private press, which was worked with types cast at his own expense; and a more determined book-fancier, and treasurer of ancient lore, did not at that time exist in Great Britain.

    Bibliomania; or Book-Madness A Bibliographical Romance Thomas Frognall Dibdin 1811

  • But I should extract that beauty with better will from the history of my own life, that is to say, not as a book-fancier; and it would often happen that I attached that beauty, not to the material volume itself but to a work such as this François le Champi contemplated for the first time in my little room at Combray during that night, perhaps the sweetest and the saddest of my life, when, alas, (at a time when the mysterious Guermantes seemed very inaccessible to me) I had wrung from my parents that first abdication from which I was able to date the decline of my health and of my will, my renunciation of a difficult task which every ensuing day made more painful — a task reassumed to-day in the library of those very

    Time Regained 2003

  • 'trimly covered'; so that we may say with Dibdin, 'a more determined book-fancier existed not in Great Britain. '

    The Great Book-Collectors Charles Isaac Elton 1869

  • "I am quite transported and comforted in the midst of my books," says the younger Pliny, who was an ardent book-fancier; "they give a zest to the happiest and assuage the anguish of the bitterest moments of existence.

    Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs Henry H. Harper

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