With the 2010 Census happening all around us here in the states, Bonhams & Butterfields' has seemingly chosen a good time to auction the very first US census from 1790, bearing the signature of then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (his John Hancock, seen here at left). Estimated at $80,000-120,000, this book with manuscript notes and corrections (e.g., someone scratched out the "one" in seventeen ninety-one on the title page, even though the book was published in Philadelphia in 1791) was formally titled Return of the Whole Number of Persons within the Several Districts of the United States, According to "An Act Providing for the Enumeration of the Inhabitants of the United States." This first edition was held by the family of Gideon Granger, Postmaster General under Jefferson, and is thought to be his copy.

The auction will be held in Los Angeles (and simulcast to New York) on October 4th. Another piece of Jefferson will be on the block for a much smaller sum. His signature, clipped from a larger document, is estimated at $800-1,200. 

Book collectors come in all shapes and sizes.  Some of us collect genre fiction (mysteries, for example).  Others collect topically (e.g., books about gardening). Yet others collect a favorite author or authors (Dickens, perhaps, or Herta Müller). Very few book collectors, though, seem to try to collect everything that is published by a particular publisher.

Superheroes in Court! Lawyers, Law and Comic Books, a new exhibit at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School, displays the more playful side to library exhibits (and collecting in general) that is a breath of fresh air. In a year during which comic collecting seems to have spun wildly into the mainstream, Yale's exhibit has perfect timing, as well. It is guest curated by Mark S. Zaid, Esq., a Washington, D.C. attorney who specializes in national security law and is also a major comic book collector and dealer. Pictured here at right is a comic from his collection, Crime Detective Comics no. 8 (Jay-June 1949).

Worth reading (and not replicating) is the New York Times review that ran last week. National legal correspondent John Schwartz surveys the evidence, pronounces a good verdict, and interviews the witnesses. From the article: "Tons of lawyers are collectors," he said. Like Mr. Zaid, they might have read and collected comics as children but let the hobby lapse as they made their way through college and started their working lives. "They come back to it once they settle into a career and a family and they have disposable cash," he said -- though he added that many are "closet collectors" who ask, "Can I be a professional and still play with comic books?"

Good question -- but I won't comment without my attorney present.

The exhibit runs through December 16.  

Guest Blog by Lillian Cole, Twelfth St. Booksellers

In less than a year, I've lost two of my favorite bookseller colleagues. Jean Marie Parmer of Parmer Books, San Diego, California, passed away November 27, 2009 at age 72, much too young at heart to leave us so soon.

She was a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA), the San Diego Booksellers Association, and founding member of TomFolio, an international co-op of independent dealers. She was often seen at antiquarian book fairs, buying and selling, frequently triumphant with a mountain of rare first editions in hand, she wrote articles for various bibliophilic websites, and participated as panel member of the Antiquarian Book Seminar in Denver.

Jean started her own rare book business, Parmer Books, which husband Jerry and later, Robin Nosan, joined full time within a few years. Her interest in polar books was ignited by a visit to the Old Globe Theatre where she saw Ted Tally's play, Terra Nova, the tragic story of Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1912. Parmer Books specialized in polar, travel and exploration, nautical, and Americana.

Early on, Jean and Jerry embraced the rapidly developing technology, the computer and the Internet and created Book Stacks, an inventory software for the Macintosh. Because my mind was stubbornly closed to the encroaching powers of the Internet, they offered to help me find books and are responsible for opening me up to the great possibilities of finding the huge variety of gem and jewelry books that I have since accumulated for my own business. This selfless act of friendship is just a hint of the deeply generous spirit that I was so privileged to know.

Jean's warm and gracious spirit nurtured her garden, her family, and her friends with her very big, loving heart. She was a bookseller's bookseller, fair, knowledgeable, honest, and brought that same gift to her creation, Parmer Books.

Henry Polissack, antiquarian bookseller and antique jewelry seller and specialist, in Northampton, Massachusetts, died May 5, 2010, just short of his 71st birthday, too young, too soon.

He was a member of the Massachusetts & Rhode Island Antiquarian Booksellers and the British Society of Jewellery Historians. His passion for collecting beautiful things started with his early collection of antique pens, and within ten years, built one of the largest collections in the United States, which when completed was sold, en bloc. While searching for these beautiful pens, he became fascinated with antique jewelry, which he ultimately turned into a business where he was well known and loved as evidenced by the moving tribute by Diane Singer in the Newsletter of the American Society of Jewelry Historians. His passion for the jewels led him to build a library on the subject and his book business was a natural result of his soon overflowing collection of books on jewelry, gems and related topics. Henry pursued books with a passion, and found me listed in a book trade directory as a specialist in books on gems and jewelry, and was usually the first caller when my yearly catalog was mailed out.

He formed the La Prima Jewelry-Book Collectors' Club specializing in books about jewelry, gems, history of jewelry, engraved gems, crown jewels, noted jewelers and goldsmiths, travel and adventures related to them, and created twelve catalogs between 1999-2007. During our many long telephone conversations about our books of our special interest, he confided his decision to build the finest, most comprehensive collection of books in the field in the United States and vigorously pursued them nationally and internationally, building a collection of over four thousand volumes. He loved building collections, and when satisfied that he had the best, the scarcest, the rarest, the most significant and important books in the field, he offered them at auction with Swann. They advised him that because of its size, there should be two auctions, and so there were, the first on March 20, 2003, and the second scheduled for May 27, 2004. The first took place the day after the United States bombed Iraq; nevertheless, though sparsely attended, there was much phone bidding activity and the auction was successful. The two catalogues of Books on Gems and Jewelry, The Henry Polissack Library are a great source of reference and are in my own reference library, together with all twelve catalogues issued between 1999-2007.

Another remembrance of Henry written by Mary Murphy Hammid in the Journal of the Geo-Literary Society tells of her visit with him at his home in Northampton, where she saw the enormous volume of books in his private collection as well as the inventory for his book business, evidence of the overflow of his obsession, his "splendid addiction," his "gentle madness." Henry was honest, knowledgeable, a lovely man, a wonderful friend and colleague who I admired and respected with deep affection.

--Thanks to Lillian Cole for this homage to two great bibliophiles. 

Climate control, computer chips, and closed-circuit cameras: The Vatican Apostolic Library reopened today after a three-year renovation. Before (pictured here the Sistine Hall, courtesy of Wikipedia), and After -- click to see a slideshow of some breathtaking photos of the library's interiors and treasures, though the captions are terrible ("Old Books are displayed in the reading room," yes but what is it?!). 

Today is the birthday of our great dictionary maker, Samuel Johnson, born 1709. In honor of this, I pass along this fun tidbit: At an August sale from Leslie Hindman, a first edition, first printing in full tree calf of Mr. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755) went for $7,500. Another one of these beauties (in original boards) is coming up for auction later this fall -- details in the autumn issue of FB&C, in your mailboxes in less than two weeks!

Pat Saine of Blue Plate Books in Winchester, Virginia, got more than he bargained for when a missionary with a box of old books walked into his shop. In the box was a 1881 edition of Jefferson Davis' history of the confederacy and an 1832 life of George Washington by John Marshall. The books, however, were also stamped as property of the Department of Justice's Library. After some back and forth with the librarian at the DOJ, it turned out that these books had been missing for so long they weren't even in the new catalog system, but an older inventory showed that they had never been withdrawn. Where did they come from? The seller, Robert Cole, had been given them by a widow whose husband told her he found them in the trash sometime in the mid-sixties.

Amazing finds in the trash -- it's a story that gets recycled every so often. I asked Pat to tell me more about his adventure with these books and how he helped reunite them with the DOJ Library. Here's what he wrote:

In general, people come to my store store with their books to sell. Often people are moving, cleaning off their shelves to make room for more books, or finding a good home for books from a relative who passed away. Sometimes there is a story involved: with this batch of books the gentleman was selling them to raise money for a church mission trip to Romania.

In general, as a used book dealer I don't deal in ex-library books. The reason I turn library books away, besides the poor condition, is that I don't want to encourage people removing items from libraries as a moneymaking venture. In this particular instance, I recognized these books as from a rare book room, from the Department of Justice Library, and not withdrawn or deaccessioned. I researched the Department of Justice Library - who was not publicly accessible on the web. So I contacted the Library of Congress and briefly described the issue and they steered me to a contact in the Department of Justice Library. They did a significant amount of research, checking previous catalogs and asking me to describe specifically how the articles were stamped and marked so that they could determine when and how the books could have left the library. Many conversations and e-mails later, they determined that these particular books were indeed missing from the library.

Is it plausible that the books were found in the trash? I do believe the story of the person in possession of the books: he says that he obtained them from a widow, who in turn was left them by her husband. How did her husband get ahold of them? He's passed away, so I'll leave it to thriller writers to conjecture.

Good idea! To read more, see "Justice Served" from Saine's local paper, the Winchester Star.