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John Carter: The Taste & Technique of a Bookman. By Donald C. Dickinson. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2004. xxi, 416 pp. $49.95. ISBN 1-58456-137-8.
From the time that he and Graham Pollard wrote An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets in 1934 to his death in 1975, John Carter was a central figure in the Anglo-American antiquarian book world. As the author or editor of several important books, most notably ABC for Book Collectors, now in an eighth edition, Taste & Technique of Book Collecting, and Printing and the Mind of Man, as well as a vast number of articles and reviews, and through his positions with Scribner's and Sotheby's, Carter influenced the shaping of many important private and institutional collections. It is thus quite surprising that until now there has been no book-length biography of the man. Donald C. Dickinson's John Carter: The Taste & Technique of a Bookman ably fills this void in the literature.
From 1927 until 1953 Carter worked in the rare book department of Scribner's London office, heading it from 1940 on. In this role he...