What Books Are in Your Bathroom?

The New York Times' Sunday Book Review contains an essay by Henry Alford titled "Chamber Plots." According to Alford, one of the earlier references to books in the bathroom comes from in the mid-18th century from Lord Chesterfield, who wrote that he knew “a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets, in those moments.”

Imagine. All the Latin poets.

Of course, as Alford points out, here's what happened when Marat read in the bathroom:

The Death of Marat (1793), by Jacques-Louis David