Kim C wrote:
I am interested in book collecting...but am not knowledgable. Can
someone tell me what the international collectors library is? Is it
worthwhile to pursue a collection of these books?

Depends on what you mean by worthwhile.

The ICL was a Doubleday & Company book club in the 60s and 70s. The
books are fancy-looking but cheap copies of great lit. Each book was
supposedly made to look like some famous old book, with gilt stamping on
the spines and front covers, gilt on the top edge, and a sort of paper
cover made to resemble leather. Some are illustrated. If you look at a
bunch of them on a shelf from a ways away, or at a picture of them, they
have a sort of attractivess, but, on closer inspection, their cheapness
is evident. As such, you might say that the ICL was a sort of poor
person's Easton Press, although I do not know if the Easton Press even
existed at that time.

Thus these books have little value as collectibles, except for
sentimental value, perhaps, as in my case. I have seven of them. They
were among the first books I ever bought for my library, and include my
first Shakespeare and Odyssey. I was a teenager at the time. While I
have other editions of all seven of these books, I still hang on to the
ICL books. They represent my original desire to have a fine library.

So, if your desire is simply to have copies of the "Great Books" that
are more attractive than paperbacks or even the Modern Library or
Everyman's Library, perhaps it is worthwhile to collect ICL books. They
can certainly be had for cheap on eBay.

I am sure there are plenty of other interesting, if maudlin, stories
about how rcbers first collecting impulses played themselves out. Any
takers? In particular, anybody else still have the first books they
ever bought?

Gary Pfeifer