Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with Alex Obercian of James Cummins Bookseller in New York City.  

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NP: How did you get started in rare books?

AO: To pay the rent, I took a job in the rare book department at the Strand in New York. I had been an electrician and had some plan to study architecture. I quickly changed course. The Strand was a wonderful place to learn about the trade - every day I was faced with an onslaught of books to catalogue and price. About this time, I had a friend who worked for a big shot bookman, and it was through this dealer's catalogues that I first learned something of what was possible at the upper end of the trade. It was time to move on, so I petitioned Jim Cummins (also a big shot) for a job, and he found some room for me.  

NP: What is your role at James Cummins?

AO: I share the basic bookselling duties of buying, cataloging, pricing, and selling with the other fellows in the shop - Tim Johns, Henry Wessells, and Jim himself. We all pitch in and pack books and mind the shop, as well. I also work with Jim's son, James, on website design and other projects peripheral to the books themselves. As for the books, I tend to handle the fine bindings, photography, and gastronomy, but I'm in no way limited to those areas. Much of my time is taken up with the production of print catalogues. We put out about 6 full-color, fully-illustrated catalogues a year, and I do all the photography and layout and design. The catalogues look sharp and they sell books - I think of them as my particular contribution to James Cummins Bookseller.

NP: What do you love about the book trade?

AO: Well the easy answer is, I love the books, and I love, or at least like, the people who sell them. I imagine every community bound by a trade learns to muster a bit of congratulatory self-love for its members. But I doubt that people who sell tractor parts feel the same way about what they're pushing.    

NP: Favorite rare book that you've handled?

AO: This is a fairly well-known book that we were fortunate to own for a time -- a copy of a 17th century ferrier manual, The Complete Horse-Man, owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne since a child and later presented to Herman Melville as a birthday present. Hawthorne met Melville on the road in Massachusetts one summer day in 1851 (the year Melville was writing Moby-Dick) and the two went back to Hawthorne's farm to spend the night smoking cigars and talking. They exchanged books that evening -- Hawthorne must have thought a book on the care of horses would be useful to Melville on his farm. The dedication leaf contains both authors' signatures, probably the only extant piece of paper so distinguished. 

NP: What do you personally collect?

AO: Cocktail manuals, books and photographs on butchery and meat, wanted posters and rap sheets with real photographs, Agnes Repplier first editions, Alvin Lustig dust-jackets. This list sounds willfully eclectic, but everything on it is rooted in some personal interest. 

NP: Thoughts on the future of the rare book trade?

AO: I'm optimistic that there will be enough new collectors in the coming decades to sustain the trade. So what if everyone is reading Dan Brown on a Kindle? Rare books have never had mass appeal. A lot of the gripes I hear are variations on the "good-old-days" argument --- that there was a lost golden age of extraordinary books and easy money. I see plenty of younger people interested in rare books, printing, typography, binding, book arts, and so on. It only takes a relatively small number of intelligent, modestly wealthy individuals who would rather develop a taste for rare books than waste their time speculating on contemporary art for the trade to continue to thrive. That said, there has been a definite shift in the trade towards the high-end and the unique object. Internet listing sites have created transparency in the market and the designation of rarity, and have made it harder for the dealer of general used stock to survive. Something Bill Reese said in a talk at the Grolier Club a few years ago has stuck with me -- when he puts a book online, he wants it to be "the best copy, the only copy, or the cheapest copy." When a collector is faced with 20 mediocre copies of the same book online, what's the rush in buying one today? But a copy of a book given by Hawthorne to Melville? Go find me another one. 

NP: Any upcoming fairs or catalogues?

AO: In April we'll be at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, which is the highlight of the bookselling season. I'm currently working on a catalogue of new arrivals and a catalogue of sporting books for the the spring. They'll be available to all on our website.
Jefferson on Books.jpg"Books as well as other things have limits to their value beyond which we would not go," Thomas Jefferson wrote to his bookseller in a letter from Monticello dated April 11, 1819. In this letter, the former president references a booksellers' catalogue he has just received and asks to purchase Scapula's Lexicon (1616). I somehow missed this letter, sold for $13,750 at Bonhams San Francisco last week, but our eagle-eyed auction columnist Ian McKay pointed it out. A true bibliophile's delight.
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The American scholar Thomas Pinney has discovered 50 lost and unpublished Kipling poems.  Pinney found the poems in a variety of locations including Kipling family papers, a Manhattan townhouse, and the archive of a former shipping magnate.  All of the poems will be published for the first time next month in the three-volume Cambridge Edition of The Poems of Rudyard Kipling.  The book, which will be released March 31st, also marks the first ever complete edition of Kipling's poetry.

The new poetry covers a variety of themes, including World War I, gambling, and the intersection of media and fame.  Some comic verse is also included from a sailing between Adelaide, Australia and Ceylon.  An amusing section relates Kipling's frustration with the length and boredom of the voyage:

The children played on the rotten deck / A monthly growing band / Of sea-bred sin born innocents / That never knew the land.

Kipling has recently enjoyed a resurgence in popular and scholarly inquiry, as evidenced by the upcoming publication of the complete edition of Kipling's verse.  Pinney, an emeritus professor of English with the University of California, believes there is still a "treasure trove" of undiscovered Kipling poetry out there.

For more selections of the new Kipling poetry, including the full-text of a poem entitled "The Press" check out an article about the discovery at the Guardian.
Among Booksellers.jpgSome booksellers' memoirs are more enjoyable to read than others -- London bookseller David Batterham offers his as a series of amusing letters written between 1970 and 2006, posted from Barcelona, Brussels, Istanbul, Lisbon, Venice, New York, and various towns and cities in France. Among Booksellers (Stone Trough Books, $17.50) is a splendid read, offering a glimpse into the itinerant bookseller's world of the late twentieth century. The book itself is pleasing, too: a slim and elegant paperback, with good paper and beautiful cover art by British painter and printer, Howard Hodgkin, the man to whom these letters are addressed.

Batterham, who learned the trade in Hay-on-Wye from Richard Booth in the mid-sixties, became the type of bookseller who travels widely, buying primarily from other booksellers. As he wrote from the South of France in 1984, he was "building up a dossier of obscure bookshops against some future visit." Obscure and disappearing, as he would note only six years later from Paris, the only city left where "there still seem to be hundreds of bookshops and the supply of books is volcanic."

His primary interest was illustrated journals, trade catalogues, and vintage fashion magazines. His letters discuss fruitful house calls and accommodating book dealers, as well as pleasant hotels and unpleasant meals (and vice versa). Batterham worries about buying too much or too little, about the German bookseller who preceded him in Copenhagen, about whether the Duke of Edinburgh would be interested in a Russian book about horses purchased in Helsinki. These are stories like the ones a friend in the trade might tell another over a pint -- funny, eccentric, sometimes barbed, but always interesting.
The Grolier Club in New York City opened its new exhibit, American Little Magazines of the 1890s: A Revolution in Print. A product of the 'Gay Nineties,' little magazines, with names like Yellow Book, Chap-Book, the Philistine, and the Echo, are associated with the avant-garde and the emerging modern art movement. Sometimes referred to as "ephemerals" or "fadazines," these publications were committed to maintaining aesthetic standards in popular print, and they were important vehicles for artists and designers like Aubrey Beardsley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, John Sloan, and Will Bradley, as well as authors Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, and Booth Tarkington, who contributed literary works. 

Grolier.jpg John Davidson. "The Ballad of an Artist's Wife," Chap-Book, volume 3, number 11, 15 October 1895. Decoration and illustration by Frank Hazenplug. Lent by: Kirsten MacLeod. Courtesy of the Grolier Club.

Curator Dr. Kirsten MacLeod has chosen to highlight more than 160 items--"the crème-de-la-crème of little magazines" and associated books, posters, manuscript material, and decorative objects from the libraries at Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Delaware, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Delaware Art Museum, the Grolier Club, and various private collections. With a punch of visual appeal, the exhibit explores the artistic, social, and cultural currents of the fin-de-siecle and places these little magazines in context.

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The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly, volume 1, April 1894. Courtesy of the Grolier Club.

American Little Magazines will be up through April 27, which means that those who are planning a trip to Manhattan for the book fairs in April will have the opportunity to see it. For those already in town, two related events are happening in March. On March 13, 6-7:30 pm, Philip R. Bishop, bookseller, rare books specialist, author, and expert on the Mosher Press, will talk about Thomas Mosher's importance in the little magazine movement. This will be followed by a Collectors' Forum featuring Philip R. Bishop, Mark Samuels Lasner, David W. Lowden, and Jean-François Vilain, lenders to the exhibition, who will discuss their collections and the place of little magazines of the 1890s within them. On March 28, 5-7 pm, there will be a symposium on American Little Magazines of the 1890s featuring talks by Johanna Drucker (UCLA), Brad Evans (Rutgers University), David Weir (Cooper Union), and Kirsten MacLeod (Newcastle University). 
This one is for the philatelists amongst the bibliophiles.

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, the Royal Mail in Britain yesterday issued six commemorative Jane Austen stamps.  Each of her novels is represented by a separate stamp.  The artwork was produced by Angela Barrett.

austenstamps.jpgYou can order the stamps (even from America), as well as other commemoration material, via the Royal Mail website.

Active stamp collectors might remember this isn't the first time the Royal Mail issued Jane Austen stamps.  Four Austen stamps were also released in 1975, when rates were a bit cheaper.

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In another celebratory gesture, the Royal Mail is using a special postmark this week only for any letters mailed from Chawton or Steventon (i.e. Jane Austen Country), which will include an oft-quoted line from Pride and Prejudice, "Do anything rather than marry without affection."

So, which stamp is your favorite?
cover.pngAn enhanced ebook on early American erotica? Yes, it's difficult not to grin, and yet, one quickly realizes the seriousness with which its author has researched, written, and designed Such Were My Temptations: Bawdy Americans, 1760-1830 (iTunes, Amazon, $2.99).

The project began when Dorothee E. Kocks, PhD and former tenure-track professor, took time off from the scholarly world to pursue fiction. In researching her novel, The Glass Harmonica, at the American Antiquarian Society, Winterthur, the Lilly Library, and the Kinsey Institute, she discovered a concurrent non-fiction topic worth pursuing. The result, as she describes it, is "a picture book about America's first sexual revolution."

The interactive nature of the ebook--with streaming video, audio clips, and pop-up questions to answer via social media--is inviting. Let's be clear, though, the historic images can be shocking even to modern eyes, which is why Kocks recently adapted the ebook with modesty shields. I asked her a few questions about why she chose the subject and the possibility of controversy.

RRB: Has anyone called this a scholarly Fifty Shades of Grey? (I am half-joking, but the erotica genre, particularly in ebooks, is booming.)

DEK: I think we always discover interesting things about ourselves when we touch the edge of something illicit or naughty. Fifty Shades made it safe for any one and everyone to peek at another world. I would be thrilled if that new permission extends to Such Were My Temptations. Even though it's scholarly, the images are truly racy. I was scared to go there myself. The privacy afforded by a museum-in-your-palm - the "rich-media" ebook - gives us the perfect vehicle to go exploring, it seems to me.

RRB: You created this enhanced ebook as a companion to a novel you wrote. Tell me about the decision to write fiction after a PhD and tenure-track position in history at the University of Utah.

DK: A novel pushes me to empathize more widely than I did as a scholar alone. I have to feel what the first American sexual revolution was like, not just describe it. I have to get inside it. I love that challenge. The "Johnny Appleseed of porn" character in my novel required a lot of research - research that was way too fun to leave on the cutting-room floor. I gathered it all up in Such Were My Temptations.

As for the decision to leave a tenure-track position, it was a foolish midlife gamble - and I've never regretted it. I knew I wouldn't have time to do it all. Learning to write fiction took ten years of quiet apprenticeship. The impetus came from wanting more spiritual growth than I was developing as an academic.

RRB: Last week you released a version of the ebook with "modesty shields." What's the reason for that? Was there a backlash to the nature of some of the historic images?

DK: I'm anticipating backlash, but it hasn't happened yet. We're just getting the word out. We meant to release Such Were My Temptations in the fall, but Amazon's app store rejected it. The Amazon bookstore, a separate division, accepted the book recently. It's the exact same book with a hidden technical difference. The videos, such as reciting a bawdy poem of the time, would have played a little more smoothly with app vs ebook technology. Why did Amazon reject it at first? I don't know. I'm mystified. Maybe it was backlash. They said it was content, but the content guidelines (which prohibit porn) are identical in the app store and the bookstore. Now readers get to tell us what they think.

The modesty-shield edition is a humble .pdf that readers can request through the contact form on my website, BewareTheTimidLife.com. I wanted everyone to have an option to dip their toe into these waters.

RRB: This ebook seems like a wonderful learning tool for mature (18+) students to understand the history of erotica in book publishing, art, and the culture at large. Is that the market for it? If not, who?
 
DK: Yes I really hope students find it, and also life-long learners of any age. The founding generations of this country faced the same, really tough questions that we do - about love and sex and marriage. My novel, The Glass Harmonica, A Sensualist's Tale, asks: what if pleasure leads to virtue instead of to vice? When we open up to the world and experience it fully and without fear, do we become better people? The border between noble restraint and freedom is such a tricky one, and the characters in my fiction and the real people in the museum-ebook ply that boundary bravely ... and stupidly, and in all the very human ways.
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Last week we profiled an unpublished poem by A. E. Housman coming up for auction at Bonham's this spring in the Roy Davids sale.  We're going to take a 180 degree turn from that tender poem to head in another direction entirely.  

William McGonagall, often considered the worst poet in the history of the English language, also has an unpublished poem heading to the block in the same sale.  The strikingly awful poem was written on June 6, 1893 in commemoration of the union between George Albert, the soon-to-be King George V, and Princess Victoria Mary.

Despite (or rather because of) McGonagall's terrible reputation, the poem is expected fetch £3,000 at auction.

McGonagall was a 19th Scottish weaver and actor who published approximately 200 poems in his lifetime.  His contemporaries considered his poetry to be as awful as history would remember it.  As such, McGonagall was regularly invited to give readings throughout Scotland which were considered highly amusing entertainment by the attendees.

His primary claim to fame is the poem "The Tay Bridge Disaster," written about the tragic collapse of a railway bridge over the River Tay, "which will be remember'd for a very long time."

McGonagall's unpublished poem coming up for auction is entitled "In Praise of the Royal Marriage:" It's about on par with McGonagall's usual poetic inclinations:

God bless, the lovely, and sweet Princess May, Also, the Duke of York, so handsome and gay.
Long life, and happiness to them, in married life.
May they always, be prosperous and free from strife.
May their hearts, always be full of glee. And, be kind, to each other, and ne'er disagree.
And, may the demon, discontent, never mar their happiness.
And, my God, be their comforter, in time of distress...
And, if they have children, may they grow grace.
And, be an honour, to the royal race. Of the empress of India, and Great Britain's Queen. Who is faithful to her subjects, and ever has been.

- PBA Galleries sold Angling/Sports & Pastimes/Natural History books on 7 February. Results are here. The top lot was an archive of letters to and from Randolph Huntington, the man who introduced Arabian horse breeding to the United States. The 1,000+ letters fetched $18,000.


- Bloomsbury held a Bibliophile Sale on 14 February; results are here.


- Skinner, Inc. had a Discovery Sale: Books and Manuscripts on 14 February. Results are here. An extensive collection of New England ephemera did unexpectedly well, fetching $11,000 on a $300-500 estimate (somebody found something delicious in there!).


- Bonhams sells Fine Books & Manuscripts on 17 February, in 300 lots. A copy of Bien's Audubon, missing two of the plates, is estimated at $80,000-120,000.


- PBA Galleries will sell Rare Books & Manuscripts on 18 February, in 225 lots. A collection of all sixteen printings of the first edition of the Alcoholic Anonymous Big Book rates a $200,000-300,000 estimate, while a first issue King James Bible is estimated at $100,000-150,000.


- At Bonhams on 18 February, Printed Books and Maps, in 436 lots.


- Bloomsbury will sell the Beatrix Potter Collection of Mark Ottignon on 27 February, in 307 lots.


- Also at Bloomsbury, on 28 February, Literature, Manuscripts & Modern First Editions, in 386 lots. Includes a collection of Hester Thrale Piozzi letters, among other items of interest.


- On 28 February at PBA Galleries, Rare Golf Books, Clubs & Memorabilia from the collection of Georgia Dyer Burnett, in 391 lots.

Surely there is a comparison to be made between vinyl records and fine books -- not just that they are collectible and highly coveted by a select group, but that after a certain amount of bantering about the death of the medium (record or book), the medium experiences a resurgence.

New-WE-BUY-WHITE-ALBUMS-web1.jpgBut here's another similarity: vinyl as art and vinyl on exhibition. Rutherford Chang is a NYC-based artist who collects first pressings of The Beatles' White Album. In We Buy White Albums, an exhibit running through March 9 at Recess Art in Soho, Chang's collection is set up like a record shop, showing off 693 first pressings of the iconic record. But the twist is, he's not selling them; in fact, he's buying them if anyone has an original pressing to offer. According to the press release, "[Chang] considers the serialized first-press, an edition running in excess of 3 million, to be the ultimate collector's item, and aims to amass as many copies as possible."

The album covers in the exhibit have become works of art--bearing the ownership marks of their previous owners. In an extensive Q&A at Dust & Grooves, an online magazine for vinyl collectors, Chang said he finds the "poorer condition albums more interesting ... The white canvases have been personalized with everything from scribbled names to elaborate paintings." His exhibit allows people to walk in and browse his collection of beat-up Beatles and to consider a place where music, art, and collecting converge.