It seems rather difficult to believe Scott took up that much shelf space unless there were multiple copies of Ivanhoe, as there would tend to be. Also the article isn't really about Scott, in fact he's hardly even mentioned.
He wrote like 30 books, if anything I would expect his ouevre to take up more than 3 feet of space if you had all of them.
yeah, but she wrote 3 feet of packed shelves, so I wasn't sure it took up just 3 feet of space. 3 feet wouldn't take up more than one shelf for starters.
Ivanhoe is my favourite novel. I regularly re-read it and every time it transports me to another world. If that's the book she got rid of, what a shame! At least I hope disposal meant distribution to other libraries, not being pulped...
If you read to the end, you will find that weeded books were in fact donated.
I lazily read the title as Sir Walter Raleigh and went in assuming this was about how he introduced tobacco to England and was then put to death: