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"Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I'm handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing - that's reassuring," said Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, at the Hay festival in Caragena, Colombia this weekend.  Franzen continued, "Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough."

And so Franzen articulated a feeling shared by many of us bibliophiles.  That's one of the reasons we collect books in the first place, right?  That sense of connection, permanence, and place.

Fueled by Franzen's comments this weekend, the Guardian also published a fascinating, revealing article from Ewan Morrison on the current eBook publishing bubble.  With these two articles leading the charge under the "Most Viewed" section of the Guardian's Books section, another recent eBook article shot to the top of its list: the profile from earlier this month of Amanda Hocking, the young author who has already made $2.5 million off her self-published eBook series on Minnesota vampires.  So the perennial debate over eBooks and the future of publishing has once again been refueled across the pond.

All of it makes for interesting reading.  But it's Franzen's comments that hit home with so many of us book collectors:

 "Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change.  Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don't have a crystal ball. But I do fear that it's going to be very hard to make the world work if there's no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government."

I think we here at Fine Books can answer a resounding "yes" to Franzen's questions about future bibliophiles.  For evidence, see our Bright Young Things series, where young bookseller after young bookseller has offered compelling insight into the promising future of books and the people who love them.

What I like about Freeman's auction of books, manuscripts, ephemera happening on Thursday of this week is the incredible selection -- 500+ lots of letters, books, photographs, newspapers, posters, find binding sets, works on paper. It's great fun to peruse because there surely will be items to interest one's particular collection(s). The sale also features the Wendy and Alan C. Wasserman collection of N.C. Wyeth. I've chosen a few pieces to highlight below, to give you an idea of the breadth of the auction; the first piece is from the Wyeth collection.

829419.jpgWhat is hoped will be one of the bigger sales of this auction. Wyeth's original charcoal drawing on paper of Abraham Lincoln, c. 1920s. The estimate is $8,000-12,000. 

826192.jpgLife in London; Or Day and Night Scenes, illustrated by I.R. & G. Cruikshank. The first edition in book form published in 1821. I like the pictorial boards, not a common sight. Moreover, this book contains an inserted 12mo sheet bearing George Cruikshank's autograph annotation and his embossed Hampstead Road address. The estimate is $500-800.

826502.jpgAn autograph letter signed of Walt Whitman's, May 24, 1879. References a play about Lincoln's murder. The estimate is $3,000-5,000.

822142.jpgA signed and dated silver print of Queen Elizabeth II, showing her in her coronation dress, 1953. The estimate is $500-800.
I suspect that most of us have vices that we occasionally rue.  Mine is the so-called political novel.

Despite the fact that most such novels rarely rise to the level of brain candy, I can't seem to get enough of them.  I blame this unfortunate defect of character on the American Legion.

In the summer of 1972, the American Legion post where I was living at the time decided to send me to Boys State, one of this nation's best-known institutional attempts to instill in young men some modest sense of civic responsibility.

A month or so later, the Legion compounded its mistake by sending me to Boys Nation, a program which sought to instill that same sense of civic responsibility at a national, rather than a state and local, level.

The political process that myself and my fellow delegates were privileged to witness, especially at the national level, was fascinating.  But then, the American Legion had worked very hard back then (as it continues to do now) to make certain that delegates such as myself came away with precisely that impression.  

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The inner workings of the Defense Department were outlined for us in a meeting with the Secretary of Defense (and former Congressman) Melvin Laird.  A former Attorney General, William P. Rogers, briefed us on the State Department, where he was then serving the nation as Secretary of State. Each delegate had lunch with his state's two Senators in the Senate Dining Room.  The highlight of the program was a handshake and a few brief words with President Richard Nixon in the East Room of the White House.  (Unbeknowst to us teenagers, the seeds of this President's eventual downfall had been sown only a few weeks earlier in a hotel just a mile or so from where we then stood.)

I was hooked.  On politics.  Shortly thereafter, I took a B.A. in Political Science with the idea of going into the Foreign Service.  And I started reading everything political that I could get my hands on: theories, histories, biographies ... political novels.

I think I should get at least partial credit for not starting out immediately with the dross. No sirree!  It was Stendahl's The Red and The Black, Dostoevsky's The Possessed, Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, as well as American political classics like All the King's Men, Advise and Consent and The Last Hurrah.

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Unfortunately, there were enablers.  Lots of them!  I was doing a good bit of travel in those days.  Lots of airports.  Lots of airport bookshops.  Lots of enforced downtime (this was BLT: Before Laptops).  A copy of Irving Howe's Politics and the Novel.

Pretty soon, my briefcase was stuffed with the likes of Time Will Run Back, Speak No Evil, even (much later) my current Senator's A Time to Run....

At one point, I had hundreds of political novels, mostly paperback, scattered about my abode-of-the-moment. Alas, I eventually parted company with most of them due to demands on my time.

But my addiction to the political novel has never been entirely suppressed.  A couple of years ago I picked up a copy of Stuart Scheingold's The Political Novel: Re-imagining the Twentieth Century.  

Oops...!
Catalogue Review: The Collective, Seven Booksellers of Uncommon Ability and Perception to be Found in San Francisco and Pasadena

Screen shot 2012-01-27 at 9.00.43 AM.pngFor this week's catalogue review, something a little different as we lead into the California book fair(s). The slim but beautifully designed list provides a sampling of offerings from seven ABAA booksellers: Book Hunter's Holiday, The Book Shop LLC, Lux Mentis Booksellers, Ken Sanders Rare Books, Anthology Rare Books, B&B Rare Books, and Tavistock Books. To give a fair representation of its contents, I've chosen one favorite (not at all easy) from each bookseller to highlight here.

Book Hunter's Holiday has a rare engraved miniature broadside of the Emancipation Proclamation from 1864 with an early occurrence of Lincoln's image ($5,000). According to the bookseller, Chris Lowenstein, this miniature is held only by the Library of Congress, and she found no record of any previous availability at auction.

From The Book Shop LLC, I was smitten by their excellent copy of On Sunset Highways: A Book of Motor Rambles in California by Thomas D. Murphy ($750). In its original blue cloth trade binding featuring Art Nouveau designs stamped in gilt, green, and orange -- not only a beauty of a publishers' binding from the period, but with the dust jacket to boot. 

Lux Mentis, Booksellers, will have Russell Maret's newest limited edition, Specimens of Diverse Characters, in which "sixteen complete alphabets are displayed; one of which, Iohann Titling, has been cut, fit , and case in foundry metal specially for the edition at the Dale Guild Type Foundry.

Having published an article about Lynd Ward in our current issue, I was excited to see an inscribed first edition of Mad Man's Drum: A Novel in Woodcuts ($450) in Ken Sanders' section of the catalogue. However, I couldn't pull my attention from another of his selections: a collection of 21 "mechanical brides" carte de visites by Edward Bateman ($300). Just so cool.

Anthology Rare Books has John Muir's copy of Richard Jefferies' Red Deer ($1,500). A second edition bound in purple cloth with 17 relief half-tone illustrations, all VG, but it is Muir's bold signature on the flyleaf that will draw visitors to their booth, particularly in San Francisco!

From B&B Rare Books, you could have fine editions of Austen, Scott, or Yeats. Me, I'm partial to the Wharton -- a first edition in its jacket, limited to 130 copies, of Twelve Poems from 1926 ($15,000). This one is a presentation copy to Wharton's friend and fellow writer, Edward Marsh.

Last but not least, Tavistock Books will have Dickens on hand to be sure. But I quite enjoyed looking at the 1904 framed studio photography of Clara Barton that they have ($3,750). It is signed and inscribed by the famous American nurse.       

What a wonderful idea to pool the talent (and the stock) of these booksellers for a collective catalogue. See for yourself: Download it here from Book Hunter's Holiday's website, and check them all out in person in at the SF fair & the CA fair in Pasadena next month.


Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with Brian Cassidy, proprietor of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller in Silver Spring, Maryland:

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 NP: How did you get started in rare books?

BC: Like a surprising number of rare book dealers, I started out as a poet. I earned an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1996. After graduating, I planned on teaching and writing. But as teaching positions were often part-time, I began supplementing my income by working in bookstores, the longest (almost five years) at Denver's Tattered Cover. And it was while at the Tattered Cover that I began some amateur book scouting around Denver and Boulder in order to support my book buying habit. I became reasonably proficient at being able to trade books I could find cheaply for more expensive books I actually wanted. After my daughter was born, the idea of that scouting project writ large began to percolate in my mind.

NP: How did you transition from poetry to bookselling?

BC: I've had this conversation with other poet-booksellers, that poetry -- the serious writing and study of it -- is in many ways an excellent preparation for being a book dealer. In my case, I utilized my background in specializing to some extent in poetry and little magazines. But there is also something of the poetic mindset that I think is well-suited for bookselling. The creativity, the curiosity, the focus and attention I learned as a poet have all served me well as a dealer.

NP: When did you open Brian Cassidy, Bookseller?


BC: I established my business in May 2004, and worked out of my house while I stayed at home with my then three-year-old daughter. I sold mostly the books I accumulated while working in bookstores, along with a handful of better finds from my scouting days, and a few gems from my personal collection. It was largely a part-time venture until 2006 when I attended the Colorado Antiquarian Seminar and finally admitted to myself that this -- and not so much poetry or teaching -- was what I wanted to do with my life. Later that year, after a move to the west coast, I bought an existing bookshop in Monterey, CA and went full-time. I was accepted into the ABAA in 2008. In late 2009, my wife, a Naval officer, was transferred to a new job and I closed my shop and moved to the Washington D.C. area where I've worked since. I recently took office space in downtown Silver Spring, MD where I welcome visitors by chance and appointment.

NP: What do you specialize in?

BC: I like to say "the intrinsically interesting, unusual, and unique," which is broad and vague enough to cover almost anything that strikes my fancy. I embrace the curatorial school of bookselling, meaning I see part of my job as sorting through the many books I could handle to find the ones I want to handle. Typically these are books or ephemera about which I feel I have something unique to say or some spin particular to me. Or they are merely items I think are wicked cool or that appeal or speak to me in some way. Which is not to say my own tastes don't tend to coalesce around a few natural areas of focus - poetry, the mimeo revolution, the Beats, The New York School, the 20th century avant garde - or that I don't buy and sell more ordinary books that find their way to me. However, I do attempt to maintain a healthy skepticism around the entire idea of "specialization." I like to think that if I find something interesting, no matter what its particular genre or content, I can make it interesting to someone else as well.

For example, I am currently fascinated with what I term "folk, vernacular, and outsider books." These are unique, typically handmade books - things like scrapbooks, albums, diaries, manuscripts and the like - that to my mind are the rough biblio-equivalent of folk and outsider art or vernacular photography. But these are often items that defy traditional categories of specialization. In large part that is what draws me to them.

NP: Favorite or most interesting book (or etc) you've handled?

I've been fortunate enough to handle some really fantastic Beat items. A few years ago I sold one of Jack Kerouac's personal copies of Ann Charters' bibliography of his work. It had Kerouac's hand corrections throughout, as well as those of Ann and Sam Charters. It was something I scouted up (meaning it had little in the way of provenance) and took almost a year of research before I could authenticate it. It's my favorite not only because of what it was intrinsically, but also because the entire process of researching and verifying its authenticity was both exhilarating and frustrating.

I also was very fond of a collection of original photographs and collages made by William S. Burroughs during the period he was writing NAKED LUNCH that Ken Lopez and I handled together. More recently, I sold two notebooks that belonged to Peter Orlovsky, one of which dated to the beginning of his relationship with Allen Ginsberg during the period Ginsberg was writing HOWL.

NP: What do you personally collect?

BC: I try to keep my own collecting minimal, practical, and as much as possible inexpensive. Otherwise the temptation to hold back material that flows through the business can be too great. To that end, like many booksellers, I collect books on books. Most of these are reference materials, bibliographies and the like. But I also like books on the history of bookselling, and have a special fondness for bookseller memoirs.

My largest personal collection by far, however, is books with compelling or revealing owner alterations. These can be anything from marginalia and inscriptions (non-authorial, non-association) to more outward changes. For example, I have a book that was in the Jonestown Flood. I look for books that physically tell a story about how they were used (or abused) by ordinary people.

NP: What do you love about the book trade?

BC: That someone pushing 40 (I'm 39) could for the purposes of this interview be considered "young."

But to take your question more seriously, I love that the business affords me the chance to constantly learn new things and how it allows me to follow and capitalize on my own interests and obsessions.

NP: Any thoughts to share on young collectors and the future of the book trade?

BC: When I hear older dealers lament the demise of the book, or how younger people don't read etc., I honestly feel like we're living in different worlds. People are interacting with the written word more now than at any time in human history - texts, email, blogs, the internet, ebooks, Kindles, etc. - and this can only bode well for the future of the book and collecting. Yes, the book and our concept of it is changing. And yes, collecting habits and interests will evolve with it. But the idea that people will stop collecting is nonsense. They'll just collect different things. It will be up to new generations of dealers to recognize these emerging collecting areas as well as to take them up and promote them further - even to take the lead and make the argument for neglected corners of our cultural heritage.

Because at our core, book dealers have always been purveyors, not of books per se, but of culture. For a very long time, the book was the primary repository of that culture. As the infrastructure of our cultural ecosystem diversifies, however, so must what the book dealer handles. This will continue to mean everything from The King James Bible and the Kelmscott Chaucer to Hemingway and Stephen King. But it will also mean punk rock flyers and old computer manuals, zines and amateur photographs, home movies and video tapes, and maybe someday even Atari cartridges. Or Kindles. Or the archive of original HTML files to a seminal blog like Boing Boing. I think it's only a matter of time before we start seeing "first editions" of landmark video games at bookfairs, for example.

NP: Tell us about your upcoming catalogue and how to obtain a copy:

BC: My sixth catalogue should be going to press shortly after you read this and be available by the second week of February. Some highlights include: a rare complete set of invitations to Andy Warhol's first retrospective (from the estate of the exhibit's curator), several good Beat associations, an original poster from Patti Smith's first reading/performance, a complete set of original and striking silk-screens posters from the debut of John Cage's HPSCHD, and a fascinating archive of notebooks and original art from a British trainspotter. Also poetry, the mimeo revolution, modern literature, the counterculture, and assorted other odds and ends. Readers interested in obtaining a copy and/or in being notified when it is available online can either email me at books@briancassidy.net or join the mailing list by filling out the online form on my website.

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A 60 year tradition came to an end last week when the famous Poe Toaster failed to show for the third year in a row at Edgar Allan Poe's grave in Baltimore.  Since at least the 1940s, the secretive visitor appeared annually on January 19th, Poe's birthday, to leave three roses and a half full bottle of cognac beside the tombstone of the famous author.  The tradition continued through 2009, Poe's 200th birthday, before ending as mysteriously as it began.  A vigil of faithful fans kept watch for the Poe Toaster all through the night this year but again returned home disappointed.

The tradition possibly began as early as the 1930s, according to several unverified eyewitness reports.  The Poe Toaster officially entered the historical record in 1950, when the annual visitation was documented for the first time by the Baltimore Sun.  The same pattern was followed each year: an anonymous man arrived at the grave dressed in black with a white scarf and a wide-brimmed hat.  He would pour himself a dram of the cognac, then leave the bottle and three roses on the grave before slipping back out of the cemetery.  According to a note left on the grave in 1999, the tradition passed on to someone else, "a son" of the original toaster.  The second Poe Toaster was more erratic, sometimes leaving cryptic and critical notes on the grave.  In the midst of some controversy, the new Poe Toaster kept the tradition alive for the next ten years, concluding abruptly, and without a final note, in 2009.

Several impostors have appeared each year since in an attempt to continue the tradition, however they have been largely dismissed by the faithful vigil who keep watch each year for the Poe Toaster.  They believe the tradition needs to be carried on by the original family, or should die out entirely.  Instead, a new tradition is in the works: Jeff Jerome, Curator of the Poe House in Baltimore, said fans will be reading tributes to Poe at his gravesite this coming Thursday night. 

So, if you're in the Baltimore area, swing by the burial ground near Westminster Hall on Thursday eve to join a new Poe tradition.  And thank you to the Poe Toaster for making overexposed modern life just a bit more mysterious.  I think Poe would have approved.
(Image from Wikipedia)

shelf-lives.jpgLast week the Cambridge University Library in Cambridge, England, opened an exhibition dedicated to individual book collectors. Shelf Lives: Four Centuries of Collectors and their Books "allows us to observe the changing motives, fashions and tastes of book-collectors over the course of four hundred years." Spanning the sixteenth to the twentieth century, the collector/donors include manuscript collector George Lewis, music collector Marion Margaret Scott, map collector Alfred Harker, and bindings collector Samuel Sandars, along with ten others. Seen here at left are volumes from the collection of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, in one of the bookcases in which he housed them. Keynes' collection includes the work of Jane Austen, William Blake, and Siegfried Sassoon to name a few; these were the books he used to compile his bibliographies.
 

jenkinson.jpgFrancis Jenkinson, pictured at right in John Singer Sargent's 1915 portrait, is featured in Shelf Lives. Jenkinson was the Cambridge University Librarian from 1889 until 1923 (H.G. Aldis was his secretary!). Jenkinson is an interesting collector because he compiled the War Reserve Collection containing some ten thousand unofficial, personal, and ephemeral works distributed during World War I, e.g. trench journals, battalion orders, and propaganda leaflets. It is a wonderful example of "front-line" collecting.

A list of the exhibition's captions is available online, but should you have the opportunity to view it in person, Shelf Lives runs through June 16 of this year.
Catalogue Review: Justin Croft, French Books & Manuscripts

croft000.jpgIt's always a pleasure to peruse booksellers' catalogues, even more so when each page offers something unexpected, as happens in English bookseller Justin Croft's newest selection. He offers here fine manuscripts, printed books, antiquarian music, even a collection of 3,800 French devotional cards (£1,500). Francophile or not, each of the 81 items listed in this nearly octavo-sized, color-printed catalogue is worth a long look.

In manuscripts, a collection of 125 patriotic post- Revolutionary songs made more interesting by the light green/brown wash applied to the text by a censor (£1,500). The wash has now faded so that none of the censored text is obscured. Or, if you're in the market for something more romantic (Valentine's Day is approaching), perhaps a book of engraved love songs and epigrams, compiled by a young woman circa 1784 and bound in tooled red morocco (£2,500). A reading diary of a "voracious female reader" in Restoration Versailles, circa 1820-1822, would surely be of great interest to institutions (or private collectors) with collections devoted to the history of the book (£1,100). It appears she loved Sir Walter Scott.

As for modern books, if you truly want to know what Fitzgerald & friends were drinking in Paris, Jean Lupoiu's Cocktails, a classic guide from 1938, is a good bet (£400). This one is number 16 of 100, with a presentation inscription in Lupoiu's hand. A first edition, inscribed, of Jean Lacassagne's slang dictionary, L'Argot du "Milieu," has a striking cover design shown in beautiful detail on page 61 (£400).

In earl(ier) printed books, "a famous bibliographical eccentricity:" Le Livre a La Mode, printed in green ink throughout, Paris, 1759 (£350). The author, Caraccioli, suggested that ink color ought to be chosen based on the book's subject matter. Sounds like a great addition to a collection on graphic design.  

This, and so much more--eighteenth-century medical bills, a Nazi's prison notebook, a major collection of French fairy tales -- so go and enjoy: http://www.justincroft.com/downloads;jsessionid=8A0D5A1C2680515D85D811A95EF33526
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If you're like me, you had never heard of Elizabeth von Arnim until the recent episode of PBS' smash hit Downton Abbey, when a valet gave a copy of Von Arnim's Elizabeth and Her German Garden to his love interest.  Von Arnim, however, was a hugely popular author during the Edwardian era depicted on the show, and her first novel Elizabeth and Her German Garden, published in 1898, was a spectacular success that underwent repeated printings (twenty-one, in fact, in its first year in print alone).  Von Arnim published a further twenty novels in the early 20th century, most of them successful, before slowly slipping beneath the literary radar over the last fifty years.  Von Arnim's star, however, is once again on the rise as interest in the author re-surges in the wake of Downton Abbey.  So who was this mysterious author?

Elizabeth von Arnim was born Mary Annette Beauchamp in Australia in 1866, but was raised in England, the daughter of a prominent merchant.  While undergoing a tour of Italy in 1891, she met a Prussian aristocrat, Count von Arnim, who she soon married.  The couple moved into the Von Arnim estate in Pomerania, where they had five children despite the gradual deterioration of their marriage.  Count von Arnim, referred to as the "Man of Wrath," in Elizabeth's semi-autobiographical novels, went deeply into debt and was soon sent to prison for fraud.  In an effort to raise funds, Countess von Armin adopted the pen-name "Elizabeth" and went to work on a brooding but satirical novel about her experiences in Pomerania.  The result, Elizabeth and Her German Garden, was published by Macmillan in 1898 and became a huge success for its wry observations on aristocratic provincial life.

The "Man of Wrath" died in 1910.  For the next few years Elizabeth was the mistress of H. G. Wells, before she married her second husband, John Russell, elder brother of Bertrand.  Their marriage, however, was also a failure. Elizabeth soon fled briefly to the United States where she permanently separated from her second husband, although they never divorced.  In 1920 she began a long-term affair with the British publisher Arthur Stuart Frere-Reeves, thirty years her junior.  Frere would later name his daughter Elizabeth in her honor (a move which undoubtedly thrilled his wife).  Elizabeth spent the next thirty years writing frequently and entertaining guests at her homes in London, France, and Switzerland before the outbreak of World War II forced her to relocate to the United States.  She settled in Charleston, South Carolina where she died in 1941.

Von Arnim's literary output was much-lauded in her lifetime.  Her themes were frequently feminist and her style admired for its dry wit.  In addition to Elizabeth and Her German Garden, other standouts were "Vera" in 1921, often considered her masterpiece, The Enchanted April in 1922, and Mr. Skeffington in 1940.

Currently, her books are not particularly collectable and first editions are cheap and easy to come-by.  Will the recent resurgence of interest in Von Arnim be maintained?  If so, perhaps it's time to build a Von Arnim collection.
Tomorrow at PBA Galleries, a fantastic collection of seventy clipper ship sailing cards goes on sale (pun intended). Pictured here is one highlight: a card for the clipper ship Sparkling Wave, in the Merchants' Express Line, 1859, printed on porcelain coated stock, with color wood-engraved illustration. It is estimated at $2,000-3,000.

ClipperShip,jpg.jpgAccording to the American Antiquarian Society, "The publication of clipper ship sailing cards began in 1853 and continued through the Civil War, reflecting the enormous increase in commerce between the east and west coasts after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in California." The ephemeral cards were made for advertising ship departures--"Current Rates and No Deception"--and they often feature full-color illustrations and beautiful design. AAS also notes that those cards which carry an imprint reveal that just three printing offices issued most of them: Nesbitt & Company and Watson & Clark of New York and John H. Bufford of Boston. The one seen above is a Nesbitt production.

The PBA auction also includes more than two hundred lots of Americana, Californiana, and maps. Check out the full catalogue here: http://www.pbagalleries.com/live/sale_details.php?s=471&