Yet there is such balance. He tried to cover every practical subject (the less practical ones — say, the books on navigation) tended to be gifts. If we were to build a similar-size library today, we wouldn’t be doing too bad to replace the outdated titles with modern titles on exactly the same subjects (supplemented by books on entire fields that didn’t exist then).

After some deep thought (of about two seconds duration) I had to answer, “No.”

Many of the books are dated. A book that went through 150 editions such as Johann Georg Zimmermann’s Solitude would be very hard for a modern reader to get through.

From what I’ve seen and read, most of the books would be primarily of interest to a historian or rare book collector. Or an author trying to get a flavor of the times.

Despite that, the breadth of the collection continues to fascinate me. It was a very comprehensive library for the time and Bernhisel did an amazing job with the resources he had available to him.

Author Last, First. Title. Edition. Volumes. (Place: Publisher, date). Presented by … Copies.

Of course, very few entries have that much. The original catalog is very sketchy in its citations, including whether an author is listed first as author, or in a possessive opening to the title (“Smith, John. Roadbuilding.” – vs – “Smith’s Roadbuilding.”) I’ve been leaving that as given in the 1852 catalog, unless I can find a GoogleBooks title page that lets me correct the entry.