When I am hunting for old books on the internet, I am often struck by the number of sellers’ adverts, which state that their books are coming from a ‘smoke-free home’.  Rather than be reassured by this claim, which is clearly intended to encourage the buyer, I find it rather… pernickety. 

Old books are meant to smell old.  The obsessive-compulsive cleanliness regime, which ‘smoke-free home’ conjures up for me, suggests a book that has been kept in a hermetically-sealed prison: unloved; unread; entrapped and enslaved without recorded history.

I enjoy the signs of previous ownership within old books: the loving inscriptions; the foxed pages; the stains and creases.  And that old-book-smell is an essential part of that same heritage.  For me, it is an indicator of a life well lived; a book that has a genuine story to tell.

Some people have suggested that that old-book-smell is actually the smell of death.  The slow, organic decay of paper; the inevitable breakdown of the compounds and components, which physically comprise a book.  Others have even suggested that it has potentially harmful consequences, containing within its smell mould and fungi and bacteria; pathogenic spores, which infiltrate and infect.  This seems to be focussing way too much on the purely physical properties of a book’s smell, whilst overlooking its health-benefitting social link to a wider shared community.

Like a person, I feel that a book grows from its associations; takes on its own personality; gradually individuates itself from others of its original print-run; ultimately survives, while others fall.

New terms have sprung up to describe the smell of old books––biblichor––and the act of smelling books––bibliosmia.  Both smack of being rather too contrived neologisms.  Like the smell of an old book itself, they will need to bed in and mulch for a good few decades before I ever fully accept them.

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow wakes up to the smell of old books in the morning.