John L. Clawson of Buffalo, New York, achieved his wish to be recognized as a serious book collector when his collection of Elizabethan and early Stuart literature was sold in 1926 for $642,687--the second-largest sum realized at any American book auction to that time. But while the sale of Robert Hoe's huge collection in nine sessions in 1911 and 1912 had brought in $1,932,056, in some ways Clawson's achievement was more impressive. Hoe's library had consisted of 14,996 lots, Clawson's of only 926 lots; thus, while Hoe's collection was sixteen times the size of Clawson's, it sold for only three times as much. Furthermore, it had taken less than ten years for Clawson to put his collection together, while it had taken Hoe nearly thirty years. The first book Clawson purchased in what was to become his chief field of interest was a Fourth Folio of William Shakespeare 's plays (London: H. Herringman, E...