Friedrich August von Hayek · 1940
Hayek’s short book review evaluates the privately printed catalogue of Jacob H. Hollander’s economic library, compiled by Elsie A. G. Marsh and published in 1937. Its organizing distinction is between the achievement of collecting early economic literature and the scholarly usefulness of the catalogue describing it. Hayek admires the collection and its handsome presentation, but judges the catalogue’s reference apparatus more critically.
It is not often that a bibliophile economist can indulge his passion to the point of producing the hand catalogue of his library in a sumptuously got up volume.
The opening establishes the review’s appreciative yet slightly ironic tone. Hollander belongs to a generation of collectors who began acquiring early economic works before the available supply had largely disappeared. His library is consequently significant as a surviving concentration of scarce material. Hayek particularly praises its holdings in pre-Smithian and classical English economics, while questioning the inclusion of a few apparently arbitrary later works. The catalogue offers fellow bibliophile economists pleasure and instruction, even if its publication seems motivated principally by the collector’s own satisfaction.
Hayek then turns from the collection’s distinction to the practical requirements of bibliographical scholarship:
Professor Hollander has not prepared the catalogue himself; and although as a catalogue of a library it has been competently prepared, it is not so arranged as to make it very useful as a work of reference: the extensive abridgment of titles, the grouping of works under the date of the earliest book (or rather the earliest edition, even a late one) of any one author contained in the collection, the listing of reprints from journals without giving the name of the journal, considerably limit its usefulness.
These objections concern identification and arrangement, not the quality of the books collected. Abbreviated titles, awkward chronological grouping, and missing journal references restrict the catalogue’s usefulness beyond documenting Hollander’s holdings. Nevertheless, in the absence of a satisfactory bibliography covering the period, it retains value as a finding-list.
The review concludes by placing the catalogue within the history of collecting itself. Its chief significance is commemorative: it records the industry and resources devoted to assembling an outstanding library. Hayek hopes that the collection will remain intact and accessible to students. His closing prediction that library catalogues will themselves become collectors’ objects links Hollander’s emulation of Massie and McCulloch to future generations. Scholarly access and bibliophilic prestige remain distinct, though connected, measures of the catalogue’s worth.
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