Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with John O'Mara of Maggs Brothers in London. This entry concludes our brief sojourn across the Atlantic in celebration of the Olympia Book Fair last weekend.  Look for the series to return to British shores this fall in the weeks leading up to the Chelsea Book Fair.

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NP: What is your role at Maggs?

JO: Maggs has five departments - Travel, Early British, Modern British, Continental, and Autographs. I'm one of four members of the Early British Department. We handle books and manuscripts up to about 1800 that have some connection to the British Isles. More specifically we are interested in British culture and its dissemination which means that we are able to cast a wide net. Doing so means that we have the freedom and flexibility to discover some remarkable (and often very rare) non-English language items printed outside the British Isles that have some bearing on British history. Within our department each of us function with a fair degree of autonomy. I'm charged with buying books, writing descriptions of the items I buy, selling my purchases and, when required, applying for export licenses for my sales.

NP: How did you get started in rare books?

JO: My grandmother was an antique dealer in the Midwest and from an early age my mom dragged me to antique shows and auctions so an interest in 'old things' is probably to some degree genetic! As a child growing up in rural Massachusetts, I collected stamps, coins and baseball cards and I also liked to wheel and deal. My mom likes to tell the story of when, as a six year old, I wanted to buy a rock from a local antique shop. I brought my prospective purchase to the dealer and asked how much it was. The elderly proprietor thought I was the cutest thing until she quoted me a price for my prize and I replied: "Is that the best you can do?". I discovered that I wanted to work with early printed books after an internship in the Collectibles department at Sotheby's in New York. Books captured my historical imagination and also embodied many of the subjects I was pursuing academically at the time. Once I realized that I wanted to work with books and manuscripts, it was a small step into the trade. Dealing is also a good fit for my temperament - I enjoy taking risk given the prospect of the right return.  Dealing books and manuscripts provides me with the opportunity to buy a book or manuscript and to use my knowledge to add value and realize a profit.

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

JO: One of the privileges of working at Maggs is that we get to see so many incredible items so it's hard to identify just one. That being said, the two Caxtons that our department handled were really special!

NP: What do you love about the book trade?

JO: Working for one of the old established London firms is like stepping back a century. We have a tea room and traditionally staff members have met at 11 and 4 for tea. I have always been very struck by this tradition and while fewer people meet for tea twice a day these days, the fact that this practice existed at all suggests to me that the firm is deeply grounded by humane values. I think this is generally true for the trade as well. Especially in the UK dealers are very collegial. I've developed great friendships with other dealers, travelled with them and stayed in their homes. The trade is also predicated on trust. In what other business could you borrow an item valued at tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds from another dealer to show to one of your clients without contracts or lawyers? You can do that as a book dealer provided that you are respectable..

NP: Do you want to open your own shop someday?

JO: Who knows what the future holds. However with the demise of H.P Kraus and with Heritage no longer functioning at the level it once did, I see an opportunity in the US for a larger firm that could handle a broad range of books and manuscripts focusing not only on private collectors but also on institutions.

NP: What do you personally collect?

JO: I love the Renaissance and particularly its manifestation in England. I've assembled a small collection of books and manuscripts related to Renaissance Humanism in England. I also am interested in the history of collecting, and the Grand Tour.

NP: If you could live inside the pages of any rare book, which would it be?

JO: I'd probably choose the original manuscript of Samuel Pepys's Diary ... oh the fun he had!

NP: As an American working in the British trade, what do you notice about the difference between British and American antiquarian bookselling?

JO: I've been in the trade for about a decade. I worked in the US for three years, first for a bookseller in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then for myself when I opened my own business. I've been in London for the last seven years working first for Quaritch for about six months and the remainder of the time at Maggs. I think that European dealers generally view bookselling as the means to have a life immersed in culture. The focus isn't so much on how much money one earns but rather on experiences that the trade provides i.e. eating well, drinking good wine and sharing those things with others.

NP: Thoughts on the future of the trade?

JO: It's certainly a time of transition for the trade. Some of the old models that worked for decades (if not centuries) are no longer viable. The internet has something to do with this as does broad cultural change i.e. collecting books isn't as fashionable as it was 50 to 75 years ago. We as booksellers are subject to these changes but we can influence them as well. We need to really believe in what we do and sell the broader public on the idea of collecting books. We need to be missionaries.

John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces is a cult classic, and its many devotees will be interested to know about a scarce letter and archive that goes under the hammer on June 15. Sotheby's New York is offering a letter written on January 7, 1963 by Toole to close friends Pat (Patricia), Rick (Milton), and Gordon Rickels. Upon her death in 2009, Dr. Patricia Rickels willed the letter to a friend, who has now consigned it to auction. It is, said Sotheby's, the first Toole letter at auction in thirty years.

SothebysTooleLetter.jpgThe letter's current owner, a Louisiana resident and himself an avid collector of historical and political materials related to Louisiana who wishes to remain anonymous, said he believes that Dr. Rickels had absolutely no concept of the monetary value of the items, and that she would not have cared about that anyway, as the real value to her lay in the memories that the items represented. "I don't even think that she knew that the letter still existed. It was tucked amongst a lifetime of other collected correspondence with items from the same era. By the time A Confederacy of Dunces was published I am sure that she had forgotten about the letter and that it had never even been removed from the drawer were it was placed in 1963."

TooleBooks.jpgThe lot at Sotheby's, estimated at $10,000-15,000, contains not only the autograph signed letter but a first edition of Confederacy in its dust jacket, Patricia Rickels' copy of The New Orleans Review from 1978 containing the first published excerpt of the novel, and a "compliments slip" from Toole's mother. There are also ten children's books previously owned by Toole (seen above), including three with inscriptions. Said the current owner, "These were very important to Dr. Rickels because Toole gave these to her son Gordon in 1960. Gordon was killed in an auto accident in 1983, just as Confederacy was at its apex. So the books were both a blessing - a reminder of a special time - but also painful because of the tragically early deaths of her friend Toole and son Gordon." He added, "I simply do not have the same sentimental attachment to the Toole items ... Ultimately it was a very difficult decision to sell the items, but one that is easier knowing that the items will be appreciated and valued."

Since the novel won the Pulitzer in 1981, and given the scarcity of Toole material, that auction estimate may prove conservative. There is hope that Hollywood types, some of whom have been trying to make a film adaptation of Confederacy for years, might join the bidding. Just last week, actor Zach Galifianakis was reported as trying to jumpstart a Confederacy movie.

The current owner plans to follow the auction from Louisiana.

Letter image courtesy of Sotheby's.
Books image courtesy of a private collector. 

RubensImage.jpgWe'd like to turn your attention to this excellent essay on Peter Paul Rubens by Maureen Mulvihill, a scholar who has published several essays of interest to us in the past (e.g., on Jane Austen, or Virginia Woolf). In it, she reviews an exhibition on Rubens currently at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. The ILAB website provides this fine introduction (and a link directly to the essay in a PDF):

Specialists on 17th century books and book arts may enjoy viewing Maureen E. Mulvihill's illustrated exhibition review of the Rubens show at the Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida (February 17th-June 3rd, 2012). The review (12 pp, with a Gallery of Images from the installation) is published in Seventeenth-Century News (Spring-Summer, 2012). The Ringling's permanent collection includes five Rubens canvases (the Louvre, two). The show presents selections from Ringling's Rubens collection and many fine prints of the master's work (engravings, woodcuts) on loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Art, Antwerp.

In addition to the show's spectacular installation (4 large galleries) and its creative multimedia approach (visual art, printed books, electronic exhibit, original 'didactic' constructions), the show wisely brings attention to the painter's successful collaboration with book publishers in seventeenth-century Holland, most especially the Plantin Press at Antwerp, for which Rubens produced frontispieces, ornate title-pages, printers' devices, and other book arts. (Dr Mulvihill's essay includes embedded links on these subjects.) Likewise, the show highlights Rubens's (prescient) advocacy of intellectual property rights: he established a copyright for prints of his paintings which circulated in Holland, England, France, and Spain.
The Guardian reported yesterday that Saddam Hussein's daughter, Raghad Saddam Hussein, is seeking a publisher for her father's hand-written memoirs. Raghad apparently has the documents with her in exile in Jordan. Nothing has been mentioned, yet, about the contents of the work.

When published, Hussein's memoirs will be book number five for the former dictator. He was also the purported author of four novels, although whether the books were ghostwritten or not remains controversial. His first, "Zabiba and the King," was published in 2001. The second, "Walled Fortress," was published the same year. The third, "Men and the City" came out in 2002, and the fourth, "Get Out, You Damned One," in 2005. Hussein's novels are thinly disguised pieces of pulp propaganda, mostly concerned with heroic Arabic heroes fending off foreign invaders.

zabiba.jpg(A French edition of "Zabiba and the King")

"Zabiba and the King" is readily available in English and French editions.  The other three do not appear to have been translated into English and are quite difficult to source.

hussein novel.jpg(An Arabic edition of Hussein's "Get Out, You Damned One.")

The publication of Hussein's memoirs will ignite some of the same controversy in the Arabic world that accompanied Raghad's publication of her father's final novel in 2005.  That book, "Get Out, You Damned One," was quickly banned in Jordan, where Raghad enjoys the protection of the royal family.  The novel, however, found a lucrative new life underground, with numerous pirated copies selling on the black market.

Once published, Hussein's memoirs will join the continually expanding shelf of dictator memoirs, along with works by Hiter, Stalin, Mussolini, Nkrumah, and Mao.

Many have become quite collectable.


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In March, London Metropolitan University's Board of Governors announced plans to find a new sponsor for The Women's Library. In real terms this threatens the UNESCO-recognized collection, the largest to document women's history in Europe, with all but closure. If new space isn't found for the collection of over 60,000 printed works (not to mention hundreds of discrete archives, ephemera, posters, journals, and objects), opening hours will be reduced to one day a week by December 2012, making it difficult for locals to access the collections, and nearly impossible for anybody else. In historic terms this takes on a greater quality of horror: the library was founded in 1926 from a converted pub in Westminster, that is, we're talking about closing the library women could go two years before Virginia Woolf ever thought to demand A Room of One's Own. 

Funny enough, it was rejection from a library that provoked Woolf to write in the first place: "Never will I wake those echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I descended the steps in anger." Imagine the angry look on her face, unforgiving and ultimately iconic, distilled into the pages of A Room of One's Own. How do we relate to that anger today?

There are several ways: the petition in protest of such an upheaval to the Library has reached over 11,000 signatures already: you can sign it here. If you are a UK resident you can lobby your local MP to take action here. Finally, there is a campaign website that accepts testimonies about the library here . In other words the bad has brought out the good, and praise for the library has poured in from all sides, which has sparked a large-scale consideration of what it means to have a space uniquely dedicated to Women's history: from UNISON to The Guardian, from historians historians to lesbians, and even Private Eye has covered the endangered library...twice. What is the measure of a library's cultural impact? One non-theoretical answer lies in who it incites to action, and it is a credit to the Women's Library that the public outcry has been so strong, the testimonies across Facebook so numerous. Indy Bhullar, Information Librarian at the Women's Library, put it best when I asked the question many others have been answering: what does the library mean to you?

"The Library means a good deal of things to me and perhaps the best way of focusing a response would be within the 3 goals of the Save The Women's Library campaign, thus: The collection which holds so much history and through which so many stories can be revealed, with narratives interweaving and adjoining constantly (many of which are still yet to be uncovered or re-read) but all of which reflect the lives of a plethora of women and organisations and which are still relevant to so many people.  I love that it is still a growing collection and continues to reflect new ideas and perspectives, so we've room on our shelves for boxes of zines as well as suffrage banners or a first edition of Adam Bede. The building which arose like an anti-phoenix (that is out of flood-water rather than fire...) and was purpose-built to house the materials which we have but also enabled the expansion of the Library, enabling us to attract and host other groups, organisations, events and exhibitions and which has given the Library more than just a room of its own; The staff who are all committed to seeing this unique institution flourish through the expertise and knowledge that they've amassed over the years and who have helped develop and operate a world class institution.  They are also to be commended for putting up with my woeful sense of humour."


The cornerstone of the collection is the archives of the Fawcett Society, dating back to 1866. This is the group currently campaigning hardest for women, especially women affected by austerity measures in the UK; this is the group who has made claims based on the latest budget figures that the path to gender equality is moving in reverse. So the irony that closing the Women's Library threatens access to Fawcett's history as far back as the bluestockings can't only be symbolic. 


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Nor is the damage done distantly historic: this isn't just Virginia Woolf who's fuming all over again, because this decision disrupts the Library's endeavours to archive the experience of women in the 21st century, including personal blogs, DIY publishing, and zines. The Women's Library is so committed to the idea of the active, living archive, that it documents its new materials as they are catalogued and digitized and keeps up a robust rotation of exhibitions free to the public (the latest is "All Work and Low Pay: The Story of Women and Work"), as well as online exhibitions for events passed. It's this level of energy that makes the thought of slowing the momentum the Library maintains five days a week down to one day a week all the more painful, and the need to act all the more vital.


Keep up with the Campaign to Save the Women's Library through its blog (http://savethewomenslibrary.blogspot.co.uk/), or twitter account (https://twitter.com/#!/SaveTWL).


Image sources courtesy of the Women's Library Online Archive, "We Will Have It!" and "Protest and Survive!" Badge



Back at the beginning of March I posted a list of top eBay book sales from December 2011 to the end of February 2012. Since eBay only keeps listings around for so long I thought I'd repeat the list every two to three months to keep up to date:

The highest five sellers by price:

  1. $33,000: Galileo Galilei.  Dialogo di Galileo Galilei Linceo matematico. (Florence, 1632). Bound in "18th century stiff vellum with red morocco label and gilt-lettered title on spine." Frontispiece lacking "ab origine" according to dealer, replaced with facsimile. Sold on March 13th by Bibliopathos booksellers of Milan. A first edition of one of Galileo's seminal works, at least five copies have come up for auction in the past five years including the Frank Streeter copy (with frontispiece) which brought $85,000 at Christie's in 2007.
  2. $10,733: The second top seller, generating much bidding attention, was a circa 1470 illuminated Italian book of hours. The 246 page manuscript featured  "...a lively full-page border of multicolored naturalistic flowers on a solid golden-bronze background, and a superbly executed inhabited initial 'D' with an exquisite 'Madonna and Child' miniature." Sold by Lux & Umbra of Pittsburgh after 53 bids on May 7th.
  3. $10,100: Otto von Guericke. Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de vacuo spatio (Amsterdam, 1672). Continuing the history of science trend, this early book on the science of creating a vacuum proved a hot item. In addition to a full complement of engravings, this particular volume had attractive provenance, being previously in the collections of scientists Frédéric-Louis Allamand  and Nobel prize winner Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. Sold by Konstantinopel Fine and Rare Books of Enschede in the Netherlands on May 12th after 4 bids.
  4. $10,000: H.D. Thoreau. Walden; Or, a Life in the Woods. (Boston, 1854). Original brown cloth boards.This first edition of Thoreau's classic had a print run of 2,000 copies and is always desirable for collectors of American Literature (a copy sold last year at Sotheby's for $11,000). Sold by Ernestoic Books of Williamsville, New York on May 7th.
  5. $9,800: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Maecenas Press, 1969) with 12 lithographs by Salvador Dali. This copy is number 2106 of the limited edition of 2500. Dali's lithographed books continue to be popular on eBay - a copy of his 1967 lithographed bible was one of the top sellers in my last update. This copy of Alice was sold by Longfellow Books and Magazines of Portland, Oregon on April 23rd.
I've excluded entire collections from the above list otherwise one of the top sellers would have been this impressive collection of 35 books relating to the sinking of the Titanic which aptly named seller "perilonthesea" of New York sold for $29,999.90 to a lone bidder on April 1st.  I was personally fascinated by another sale in the top twenty which reaffirmed for me the increasing interest   in Asian art and art books. Better World Books (which has a large inventory of library discards) sold eight otherwise unidentified books of Chinese architectural and calligraphic design for $7,255 on May 4th after a series of 12 bidders (31 bids in total) took it up from an initial offering price of $19.99!

Finally, in the top twenty were a smattering of incunabula including some intense bidding on a 1498 Parisian book of hours [ISTC ih00395000] offered by Konstantinopel which fetched $6,707.07 after 22 bids on March 30th.  The magnificent Estelle Doheny copy of this title (formerly owned by Napoleon's sister) sold for a whopping 160,000 GBP at Christie's in 2010. Also of interest was Johannes Simoneta's Commentarii rerum gestarum Francisci Sfortiae. (Milan: Antonius Zarotus, 23 Sept. 1486) [ISTC is00533000] from Lux & Umbra. This particular volume, formerly owned by Jacopo de Guazzoni of Cremona was sold at Leslie Hindman just last year. Offered this time by the Pittsburgh bookseller for $11,900, a buyer made a successful offer of $9,400.



Screen shot 2012-05-21 at 9.37.26 AM.pngThe Piccolo Spoleto Festival, a two-week celebration of literature, film, music, dance, theatre, and visual arts in lovely Charleston, South Carolina, opens this Memorial Day weekend. The festival, now in its 34th year, runs nearly 700 events at many locations around town. Of particular interest to you, dear readers, would be the literary lectures and book signings held at the Charleston Society Library. Our own Nick Basbanes will be there on Thursday, May 31, to tell stores of the "Gently Mad" and to sign copies of the new edition of A Gentle Madness, just published by Fine Books Press.

The festival opens on Friday, May 25 and runs through June 10. You can download a program guide or ticket information here.

"Contrappunto," the official festival poster (seen here), was designed by Linda Elksnin.
Last late month we reported that Larry McMurtry had decided to auction 350,000 books from his Archer City bookshop. Today we have more details to share.

They auction, to be held on Aug. 10-11, will be run by Addison and Sarova Auctioneers. In addition to 1,400 shelf lots (each lot containing about 150 books, mostly hardcover), they'll be selling off The McMurtry 100--one hundred titles personally selected by McMurtry to be auctioned individually. "Some were chosen as books that Mr. McMurtry, through 50 years of book-hunting, has scarcely seen (such as a book by Dostoyevsky's daughter). Some are both rare and valuable," say the auctioneers. The list is not yet available.  

The director, Michael Addison, offers an overview of the lots here, adding that "Larry McMurtry will be on-hand," plus there'll be music, BBQ, and cold beer. "Don't be the dealer or collector who misses this!"

See the auction preview & sale schedule here.
Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues its trip across the pond today with Pom Harrington, the proprietor of Peter Harrington, in London.  Peter Harrington will be exhibiting at the Olympia Book Fair in London, which began today and continues through Saturday.

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NP: Considering you grew up in one of Britain's most prominent antiquarian bookselling families, did you develop an interest in rare books early in life?  Or did you come to it later? (On a related note, did you always plan to work in the family business, or did you consider other options first?)

PH: I have been surrounded by books all my life, so I actually was quite blasé about rare books. I am not a strong reader so I had little reason to show much interest in them or the shop until I needed a summer job. I spent most of my teenage summers working in the shop for pocket money, but had no real plans to work in the family business. I had a quick fling with University and when that didn't work out I started to look at the shop more seriously. I eventually asked my Dad for a job when I was 19. He actually said no! It took a bit of persuading for him to change his mind. He felt that I should do an apprenticeship elsewhere first. But to cut the long story short, at 19 I began to work full time for Harrington Brothers as it was then for my father and Uncle Adrian.

NP: When did you take over Peter Harrington and under what circumstances?

PH: Adrian and my Father went their separate ways after selling the business property. My father, I think might have retired at this point, but with me now 22 and chomping at the bit to do business, we set up Peter Harrington on the Fulham Road. Initially my father had control, but he was fairly good at letting me get on with it. We were already exhibiting at the American shows and I was starting to do these on my own with an assistant. In February 2001, my father was diagnosed with throat cancer which forced the situation and I took over the day to day running of the shop.????

NP: What does Peter Harrington currently specialize in?

PH: Our strength is in English books. Particularly Literature and high spot collecting. We try and make sure we always have something special to show, be it a 1/100 signed Ulysses or a Shakespeare folio.
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NP: What do you love about the book trade?

PH: It is still for the most part an honourable business, your word, trust and reputation mean everything. I can walk into virtually any ILAB bookshop in the world, one I have never been to or done business with before and leave with a valuable book on invoice. This is done on trust and honour. I have also developed many great friendships over the years with booksellers all over the world.
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NP: Favorite or most interesting book you've handled?

PH: There have been a few. I have bought Mark Twain's copy of Huck Finn, Shakespeare's first folio, Presentation Galileo, Newton Principia Mathematica. All amazing and brilliant books.
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NP: What do you personally collect?

PH: In 1994, I started collecting Roald Dahl. He's about the only author I read as a child. He was inexpensive then and I always thought he would become more collectable. The collection has become more serious in recent times and I have all his books.
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NP: If you could live inside the pages of any rare book, which would it be?

PH: A Walter Scott novel. I'd be left alone and not disturbed.
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NP: Thoughts on the future of the book trade?

PH: It's changing fast. The internet is continually having a strong effect on our business. Those who adapt best will thrive. On this basis, there are some young talented booksellers starting up and using this to make up for small stock and tight funds.
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NP: Tell us about your exhibit at the Olympia Book Fair and any upcoming catalogues you have in the works:

PH: We have taken two stands this year. [71 and 83] One for books and the other is for our gallery. [Here is Peter Harrington's catalogue for the fair]. I have been putting together a large amount of book related art and wanted a way of displaying them properly. So we have the usual Rackham and Shepard artwork, but also a recently acquired collection of watercolours of the Brock illustrated Pride and Prejudice and Emma. We are always working on catalogues. In the summer, we will produce two new ones. A specialist 75 Great Books and then a larger but more regular catalogue.

GrolierProspectus.pngThe Grolier Club of New York is planning one of its landmark "One Hundred" exhibitions, this time with its eye on children's literature. Showcasing the best known and most admired children's books of the past 400 years, it is sure to be a hit with collectors, book trade professionals, and the general public. A 300-page exhibition catalogue is also in production, featuring essays by American bookseller Justin Schiller, Canadian scholar Jill Shefrin, British scholar Brian Alderson, Eric Carle Museum Curator Nick Clark, and American scholar and Cotsen Children's Library Curator Andrea Immel.

An exhibition of this breadth and depth is no slapdash affair. I asked the exhibition's curator, Chris Loker, a few questions about this multi-year undertaking.

RRB: Tell me about your career in children's books.

CL: As a long time rare book enthusiast, I began working in the antiquarian book world in 2002 in San Francisco, when I joined my husband, John Windle, in his business, John Windle Antiquarian Books. After a 25-year career in the corporate world in Human Resources, I was energized by the dramatic change of working full-time with rare books. In 2004 we decided to expand John's business into a new area ~ children's literature ~ and my bookshop, Children's Book Gallery, was born in 2006.

Although I'm now on hiatus from my business to devote my full efforts to the Grolier Club's inspirational children's book exhibition project, my shop's focus has been on antiquarian children's books from 1750 to 1950 that represent the best of the marketplace, both in rarity and condition. I've focused primarily on books of charm, character and color for young children and adolescents. This has included alphabets, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, pop-up and movable books, grammar books, books of education and virtue, as well as traditional picture books and storybooks.

RRB: How and when did this project get started?

CL: We got started on this landmark project two years ago, in 2010. One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature is an exhibition of one hundred renowned children's books published from 1600 to 2000. This exhibition will be mounted in New York City at the Grolier Club, America's oldest bibliophile society, in late 2014. To give you a frame of reference, The Grolier Club has organized just four "Grolier 100" book exhibitions in its 130-year history. One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature is the fifth in this canon of exhibitions.

The Grolier Club had planned for some years to organize this children's "Grolier 100" exhibition. In 2010 I proposed curating a children's book exhibition at the Club, and was asked if I would take on this broader-scope event. Since that time I've worked with an international advisory committee of ten children's book scholars and collectors to select the exhibition's "one hundred famous books," and to borrow those books (along with historically important ephemeral items and related objects) from twenty lending institutions and collectors. The tasks that remain before the show goes up in December, 2014 are to write and publish the 300-page exhibition catalogue, and to organize the display of the one hundred celebrated books and beautiful related objects that we hope will bring joy to all exhibition viewers and catalogue readers. I also will continue my fundraising activities to support this important exhibition event.

RRB: Are you still working on the exhibition catalogue, and how is that proceeding?
 
CL: Yes, the exhibition catalogue is being written "as I type." This exciting and exacting process began in January of this year, and is proceeding very well. I expect to have a draft of the catalogue finished by December of this year. Then members of our advisory team and I will edit the draft, and send the catalogue manuscript to be designed and printed by the well-known New York book designer, Jerry Kelly, in 2013. The catalogue, which will have a full-page bibliographic entry and a full-page, color photograph of each of the one hundred books, will be printed in 2014 to be ready when the exhibition is unveiled on December 10th of that year.

RRB: As Joel Silver pointed out in one of our recent issues, The Grolier Club "One Hundred" exhibitions have become overnight checklists for any great collections in a particular area. How do you expect the list will affect the market?

CL: This is hard to comment on, Rebecca, since the marketplace is always so tough to anticipate. Certainly we hope that One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature will be well received by the collecting community. And I agree with Joel Silver that the previous four "Grolier 100" exhibitions have become classic checklists for collectors, as well as key bibliographic references in their fields. My belief is that a major exhibition of this kind usually has an energizing effect on the collecting marketplace. And in this case, I hope it becomes a stimulus for collectors to consider literature for children with the same excitement and commitment that we see in the collection of literature for adults. It would be wonderful, as well, if this exhibition inspires new collectors to enter the field to experience the joy of collecting fine works for children.

The exhibit is scheduled to open in December of 2014. We'll be following along till then, checking back in with Chris every now and again to watch this major exhibition and catalogue take shape.