The trend had crossed over the Atlantic right around the time the George Peabody Library first opened in Baltimore, in 1866. The phrase refers to the competitive, sometimes manic, fervor that upper-class bibliophiles applied toward hunting down rare books for prolific collections that sometimes rivaled those of kings or princes. Through some of the library's more curious and memorable acquisitions-50 of which are now on display in a new exhibit-Havens and his fellow curators see a direct link to the craze of "Bibliomania" that took root in England at the turn of the 19th century. "Building this library of 50,000 books in a decade, in the middle of the Civil War, was kind of crazy," acknowledges curator Earle Havens of the library's starting goal in 1861-when Union troops held Baltimore under martial law.īut the zeal the Peabody founders committed to this mission, Havens suggests, is exactly what distinguishes the public research library as a "unique phenomenon of American intellectual life." There was always a bit of an impractical spirit behind the George Peabody Library, founded as it was amid the turmoil of America's Civil War.
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