At the request of the provost he taught a class in ancient Greek literature in translation, sympathizing with students who found Thucydides impenetrable: The Modern Library edition has one map of the entire Hellenic world, with 180 labels on it.

FORBES: Homemade Herodotus

Douglas Brinkley, editor of the Library of America edition of Jack Kerouac's Road novels.

NPR: 'On the Road' at 50

Mr. DOUGLAS BRINKLEY (Editor, Library of America Edition): Their breakthrough came in the late '50s because you started having Marlon Brando and James Dean becoming the new outlaw heroes on the big screen, and there Kerouac broke through as kind of the thinking man's Marlon Brando.

NPR: 'On the Road' at 50

Last year, the library took its pick from 140 first-edition Enlightenment classics donated by the family of the Duke of Sachsen-Meiningen.

ECONOMIST: The Duchess Anna Amalia library

Note that these books sold are copies, and a limited edition of them are available at The Tolkien Library.

FORBES: Why This Copy of The Hobbit Will Cost You $1,100

When I was 9, I used to huddle in the back of the library with my friend Leanne, and we'd turn the 1991 edition of the Guinness book's pages with purple hands sticky from raspberry Laffy Taffy.

NPR: A Drive to Achieve the Extraordinary

And one can add that, when we read the pages where he waits in the Duchesse de Guermantes's library and reflects on the resurrections of memory that he has experienced, then we welcome this Penguin edition that will enable others to read, reread and grow to love such passages in the same way.

ECONOMIST: Proust in translation

In contrast: the 12-volume paperback edition of Dance to the Music of Time presented by its author, Anthony Powell, to an Oxford library.

FORBES: Guilt By Association: Book Inscriptions From the Famous and the Infamous