Fairs | April 2012 | Rebecca Rego Barry

NY Book Fair(s), Day 1

What I like most about the New York Antiquarian Book Fair is putting faces to names I email, Facebook, and tweet to on a daily basis. And of course, each one of those people can show and tell you something interesting. I spent five hours on the floor yesterday, and though I left empty-handed, my eyes were overloaded by all the beautiful things to look at.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Paul Cohen of Cohen & Taliaferro, whose booth is graced by Giuseppe Rosaccio's Vniversale Descrittione di Tvtto it Mondo, the largest Italian world map published in the sixteenth century. Stop by, you can't miss it, and you shouldn't. I loved seeing the miniature books at Bromer Booksellers, the prison literature at Lorne Bair, and 'Wall of Vellum' at Philadelphia Rare Books & Mss. Co.

It's also nice to see on the shelves some symmetry with our magazine content. I saw a good handful of Larry McMurtry firsts (which would go well with our current issue). Or, for those of you who enjoyed our feature on nature writer Henry Beston (summer 2011), a signed first edition in its scarce jacket (and very fresh to the market) is on offer at Peter L. Stern for $8,500; Between the Covers has a later edition with an autograph signed letter from Beston for $5,000. Browsing the booth of Rabelais--whose specialty is books on food & drink--reminded me of our feature (spring 2011) on cocktail book collector Greg Boehm.

More anon...