The book collecting accomplishments of the late Mary Hyde Eccles are renowned in America and Britain alike. She was the first woman (and among only few Americans) to have been elected to the Roxburghe Club, the most distinguished group of bibliophiles in the world. Four Oaks Farm, her home in New Jersey, was a true wunderkammer of books, manuscripts, paintings, and artifacts. The great collections Mary and her first husband Donald Hyde formed--notably of Samuel Johnson and of Oscar Wilde--continued to grow under her direction, and until her death in 2003 attracted researchers and admirers from around the globe. The Hydes' collecting and research drew them into the orbits of some of the most fascinating characters in the world of books and scholarship, including R.W. Chapman, John Hayward, Col. Ralph Isham, and A. Edward Newton (who are recalled in this volume with a thoughtful eye and an affectionate humor). After Mary's 1984 marriage to Viscount Eccles, an English politician and avid book collector, they founded the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and continued to collect and write. Well into her nineties Mary Hyde Eccles's romance with books and zest for life remained as passionate as ever. The seventeen intelligent, perceptive, and engaging writings gathered here include a play; obituaries; essays on Johnson, Boswell, and Mrs. Thrale; autobiographical selections; travelogues; and a family history. From William Shakespeare to Bernard Shaw, from Cape Cod to Kyoto, they reveal the breadth and depth of the worlds Mary Hyde Eccles inhabited. Designed by Jerry Kelly, and printed in an edition of 500 copies.