TOM FOLIO

http://www.tomfolio.com

(from The Tatler, April 13, 1710, by Joseph Addison)

"Tom Folio is a broker in learning, employed to get together good Editions, and stock the Libraries of great men. There is not a Sale of books begins till Tom Folio is seen at the door. There is not an Auction where his name is not heard, and that too in the very nick of time, in the critical moment, before the decisive stroke of the hammer. There is not a Subscription goes forward, in which Tom is not privy to the first rough draft of the Proposals; nor a Catalogue printed, that doth not come to him wet from the press. He is an universal Scholar, so far as the Title-page of all Authors, knows the Manuscripts in which they were discovered, the Editions through which they have passed, with the praises or censures which they have received from the several members of the learned world."

Footnote: The reference is to Thomas Rawlinson (1681-1725), a lawyer and bibliophile whose accumulation of books at his residence in Gray's Inn was said to have compelled him to sleep in a passageway. When Rawlinson's collection was sold at auction, it required sixteen sales over twelve years, each sale taking from two to four weeks.  

For more info about our flagship website TomFolio.com, click here and here.

Ballad of Tom Folio

In the past Bookshops sold

To their own clientele.

Each had their own list

And each did quite well.

Then came the net

And shop receipts languished.

People bought from the web

And store customers vanished.

So shops went to the web,

To large megasite places.

Listing their books,

And soon met new faces.

They liked the web venue.

It was a new kind of store.

Matching people and books

Like never before.

One problem remained

In these new internet times.

Corporations owned the book sites.

And only cared for bottom lines.

Bookdealers became

Only means to more profit

And when the sites changed their terms

Dealers had no way to stop it.

But all was not lost.

Into this world there came

A learned book person--

Tom Folio--by name.

Tom had an idea

Whose time had just come:

"Get all the great dealers

And combine them as one."

"We'll make it a co-op

So it can never be sold.

There be books there for ever

Used books and Old."

And thus a book coop was born

Out of a need that was dire:

A place all can count on

Both dealer and buyer.

bill mcdonnell

May 19, 2000