Sleuthing Stack Moles

Hallo and welcome to a new blog exploring the voluminous collection of books (and other artefacts) stored in the vast ark which is the Exeter Library stacks. This is the rather loosely applied term for the cavernous spaces beneath the main library floor where you’ll find rolling stack shelving groaning and creaking with books spanning decades, even centuries. It’s also where the so-called ‘cage’ area is hidden away, the locked room where the real treasures are stored. These include books and documents dating back to the 15th century, as well as runs of Victorian magazines, sumptuously illustrated editions, special collections and rarities. We’ll be excavating some of those anon and telling some of the fascinating stories behind them – stories of authors, artists and of the books themselves and how they arrived here.  

But first perhaps we’d best explain the title chosen for this bibliographical odyssey. Whilst reshelving some books in the literary realms of the Dewey 800s (804 to be precise), I noted the words Sleuthing in the Stacks centred in a square bookplate affixed to a plain, undemonstrative blue cover. What a great title, I thought, and how perfectly it described the kind of investigations I loved to get embroiled in. The author was one Rudolph Altrocchi, a Professor of Italian at the University of California, the book published by Harvard University Press in 1944; so there are some heavyweight academic credentials at play.

An attractively designed bookplate on the inside cover, along with a ‘discarded’ stamp gives us evidence as to where the book lived before finding its way to the South West; it came from The Library Association Library in Chaucer House, London. The Library Association was founded in 1877, was awarded a royal charter in 1898 and remained a distinguished professional body throughout the 20th century. In 2002, it was amalgamated with the Institute of Information Scientists to form the unwieldly titled but chirpily acronymised CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). Hopefully their Latin motto remains the same, however: Ingenia Hominem Res Publica, which, as any ful kno, means the learning of humanity for the benefit of the public. Or something like that. Pliny innit.  

Professor Altrocchi tries to adopt a light, amusing style, but years spent in the rarefied environs of academia have made him a little fusty, his humour distinctly tweedy. He certainly feels no need to translate the Latin and French bon mots he liberally employs. Chapters have titles such as Ancestors of Tarzan, Lust and Leprosy, God and Darwin Reconciled and The Weaker Sex (the author’s italics) and investigate the works of Dante, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Gabriel D’Annunzio as well as lesser know (or, let’s face it, completely forgotten) literary figures like Antonio Fogazzaro, Nicholas Granucci and Frederic Jesup Stimson. According to his introduction, ‘(the author) has avoided even adumbrations of pontifical solemnity – a sin of which professors are too often accused. In fact, he did not hesitate to thrust into his style little dashes of laughter – or at least, he tried’. This little third person self-portrait has some self-deprecatory charm and you can’t help but think Prof. Altrocchi would be jovial company, a jolly old cove.

He outlines the nature of his quest thus: ‘The first question of the detective is: What is the crime? In this case, a book. Where was it committed? In the dark, solitary aisles of library bookstacks. Why was it committed? The motive is always a more complicated question. Why does a writer write? Probably because he must, just as a bird must sing and a frog croak. And if the writer happens to be a professor, he must also burrow, like a mole. Rather composite animal, the writer; homo allegedly sapiens, by instinct scribally articulate.’ So let us, stack moles all, follow in the good professor’s footsteps and go Sleuthing In The Stacks!