“He Was Always Fond of Books”

This chapter revisits the image of Victorian book collectors through the case study of a Cambridge academic and scientist, John Couch Adams. Although Adams’ss collection was bequeathed to Cambridge University Library in 1892, little has been written about his passions: reading and collecting books. The Adams’s papers highlight the role played by booksellers and librarians as they made the necessary resources and knowledge available to middle class consumers and to students. This chapter also explores the importance of the "collecting friendship", and, in the case of the Adamses, marriage.