Better still, Mencken was introducing the young writer to a new world: Spinoza, Gustave Flaubert, Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, TS Eliot, and many more.

Gustave Flaubert Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate.

At an antique bookseller’s table, we spotted some Gustave Flaubert, the art of French living, religious texts, the history of boules.