BRYAN GARNER'S 39,000-VOLUME LIBRARY

 

Most collectors have at least one woeful tale about the one that got away, the prized item they missed out on because of bad timing, misplaced frugality, or some other regrettable reason. Book collector Bryan A. Garner — a Dallas lawyer and writer who has spent the past 50 years amassing a 39,000-volume-and-counting library — has one of those stories, too, except he let an entire collection get away. Even worse, it wasn't so much that he let the books slip through his fingers. It was more like he balled up his fists and refused them even a chance to graze his palms. Garner was just 14 at the time, so his youthful short-sightedness can be forgiven, but even back then, the rebuff reverberated and proved to be the impetus for a lifelong pursuit.

Today Garner runs a company called LawProse, which specializes in language seminars for lawyers, and is recognized as a leading expert on English usage and grammar. He is also a law professor and the author of 31 books, including 1998's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, which prompted none other than Pulitzer Prize finalist David Foster Wallace to dub him a genius in a lengthy review first published in Harper's Magazine. His most recent work, 2025's The Etcher: The Life and Art of Oskar Stoessel, follows the career of an obscure Austrian artist who, in the 1940s, etched portraits for the entire U.S. Supreme Court. It should come as little surprise, then, that Garner's book collection reflects his fascination with law and the English language and functions as a working library. Among the stacks are some 2,000 English grammars and about 4,800 dictionaries, some of them dating all the way back to the 15th century. By Garner's estimation, his assemblage of dictionaries is likely the largest privately held collection of its kind. "I'm a lexicographer, and I'm a grammarian, so it's really practical to have these," he says, "but maybe that's just my rationalization for my compulsion to collect."

Those shelves of dictionaries came in especially handy a few years ago when Garner served as an expert witness in a case involving the 9/11 attacks and the various definitions of a single word. "Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars rode on the meaning of the word ‘vicinity,'" he says. "And I was able to attach an appendix to my report showing every definition of ‘vicinity' in relevant English-language dictionaries from the 17th century to the current day. The lawyers who hired me were astonished by this, and they said, ‘My goodness, how did you do this?' And I said, ‘Well, I did it without ever leaving my house.'"

The remaining volumes in Garner's vast collection cover topics ranging from Shakespeare scholarship and 18th-century English law to Texas history and the game of golf. There are also plentiful works by Oscar Wilde, John Updike, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Steinbeck, Ezra Pound, and Geoffrey Chaucer — among numerous other poets, essayists, and authors — as well as a collection of books on the history and sociology of etiquette, a trove courtesy of Garner's wife, Karolyne, a fellow lawyer and collector. Other highlights include a full case of works by Samuel Johnson and a treasured copy of 1938's Snakes of the World, which Garner's grandfather gave him when Garner was just 7 years old. "I was so proud of this gift from my grandfather that I wrote my name in the book three times," he says with a laugh. "I wanted to be very clear this is my book."

Nearly as impressive as the collection itself are the rooms that house Garner's beloved books, which stretch across three libraries on his Dallas property. One of the libraries contains only sets of books, each set comprising multiple volumes that are shelved two, and sometimes three, deep. Then there is the scriptorium, a separate custom-built structure at the back of the property that acts as an overflow library and pays homage to one of his heroes, James A.H. Murray. A former schoolteacher, the famed lexicographer was the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, which Garner calls "the greatest monument to Victorian scholarship ever produced." In the 1880s, Murray began compiling the OED in a corrugated-metal shed in the back garden of his Oxford home. His grandiose name for the less-than-lofty building: the scriptorium, a detail that charmed Garner from the moment he learned of it. "There was a biography of Murray that came out when I was about 20 years old called Caught in the Web of Words," Garner says. "It was by his granddaughter, and she talks about his scriptorium at some length. So from the time I was a young man, I thought that any self-respecting lexicographer must have a scriptorium in the backyard."

To read the complete article, see:
A Life in Language: Bryan A. Garner's 39,000-Volume Mission to Get the Words Right (https://intelligentcollector.com/a-life-in-language-bryan-a-garners-39000-volume-mission-to-get-the-words-right/)

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