At first it seemed like the easiest task imaginable. The International Friends of the London Library were holding a literary soiree in our newly opened rare book gallery in New York, and I’d been asked to suggest a passage suitable for a reading by Simon Schama. 

Whether or not he knows it, we regard Sir Simon as a friend of the firm, although not someone necessarily attuned to our approach as rare booksellers. When he filmed part of his recent television series, Story of Us, in our Mayfair shop, he characterised James Bond as a fantasy figure compensating for Britain’s post-imperial decline. True, of course, but not something we emphasise to our avid collectors of Ian Fleming first editions. Let the glamour linger a while longer is our unstated policy.

I wanted to choose a reading from our stock. Afterwards, the guests could inspect the source book in its original state. What more appropriate than Charles Dickens’s American Notes for
General Circulation, published in 1842? The International Friends arrange their donors into three tiers named after authors, and Dickens, a founder