An unmitigated delight for any bibliophile, Holbrook Jackson's musings on the joys of reading combine his irrepressible wit with the wisdom of famous readers from all corners of the world. These three volumes are a leisurely, luxuriant confabulation on "the usefulness, purpose, and pleasures that proceed from books."

In The Anatomy of Bibliomania, Jackson inspects the allure of books, their curative and restorative properties, and the passion for them that leads to bibliomania ("a genial mania, less harmful than the sanity of the sane"). His sparkling commentary addresses why we read, where we read (on journeys, at mealtimes, on the toilet -- this has "a long but mostly unrecorded history" -- in bed, and in prison), and what happens to us when we read. He touches on bindings, bookworms, libraries, and the sport of book hunting, as well as the behavior of borrowers, embezzlers, thieves, and collectors. Francis Bacon, Anatole France, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Leigh Hunt, Marcel Proust, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Shakespeare, and scores of other luminaries chime in on books and their love for them.