The career of Chauncey Brewster Tinker as a literary scholar fed and directed his passion for book collecting. His books, essays, and articles and the range of his collecting activities illustrate a profound commitment to teaching English literature, a subject he found sublime. He believed books were the means of sharing the best and most pleasurable productions of civilized society. Tinker collected thousands of books not merely to exhibit them but to unite books and scholars. "Is a book a thing to be read," he asked in a 1943 tribute to friend and fellow collector A. Edward Newton, "or is it to be enclosed in a glass case and 'exhibited' like a rare hummingbird for stupid spectators to gape at"" Tinker reasoned that to a scholar, the rare book was "a living voice"; to a rich man it might be no more than "a costly souvenir." Newton's great triumph...