9780199922666.jpgIf you subscribe to our printed quarterly, then you have had the pleasure of reading an excerpt from Travis McDade's Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It (Oxford University Press, June, $27.95). I received a copy of the finished book last week and am just past the midway point, so this is not a review--I imagine my decision to print an excerpt in our spring issue speaks for the book's merits. McDade offers clear descriptions of behind-the-scenes book stealing (and selling) along New York's Book Row and shows how it touched the "uptown" dealers, librarians, and collectors. The book is smart and suspenseful.

McDade is the curator of rare books at the University of Illinois College of Law. If you missed them, you should read his two recent blog posts on "The professionalization of library theft" and "Barry Landau's coat pockets," too.  
The British government launched the Cultural Gifts Scheme in March, which offers tax incentives to individuals who make contributions of "pre-eminent" items to cultural institutions while they are still alive. Individuals making such donations are eligible for a reduction in their income or capital gains tax by 30% of the object's value. Thus, a gift of a rare book valued at £500,000 to a special collections library would result in a tax reduction of £150,000.

The first contribution under the new scheme was made to the British Library earlier this month when Hunter Davies, the Beatles' biographer, donated a group of manuscripts of Beatles lyrics including "Strawberry Fields Forever," and "In My Life" handwritten by John Lennon. The British Library maintains a Beatles collection in its popular Treasure Gallery.

Davies was quoted in The Independent about his donation: "I want my Beatles collection to be kept together, in one place, and on public display, and the British Library is the perfect home for it... Working on a new book about The Beatles lyrics made me determined that the British Library should have the world's best public collection of Beatles manuscripts. I'm really pleased the Cultural Gifts Scheme has helped me make this a reality."

The Cultural Gifts Scheme is administered by Arts Council England. It is intended as a complement to the successful Acceptance in Lieu Scheme, which allows individuals to donate heritage items while paying the Inheritance Tax . Both schemes are parts of recent initiatives to encourage philanthropic giving.

Corporations are also eligible to receive a tax reduction if they donate qualifying materials under the Cultural Gifts Scheme, however they receive a reduction in their tax of 20%, rather than a 30%, of the object's value.


The more I learn about old books, the harder it is to enjoy the type of biblio-fiction that should appeal to me. I have always enjoyed novels that feature books, particularly antique books and manuscripts, as an essential element, e.g. Byatt's Possession, Eco's The Name of the Rose, Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book, and Martha Cooley's The Archivist, all of which I'm afraid to re-read now that I've spent the last few years focused on the rare book trade as editor of this magazine. I quibble over bibliographical points and still demand a hardy plot, which makes me a more persnickety reader than most. 

9780670026470H.jpgCharlie Lovett's debut novel, The Bookman's Tale (Viking, June, $27.95), entices the general reader in me. It opens in a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye where antiquarian bookseller Peter Byerly finds what he believes to be a watercolor portrait of his recently deceased wife, Amanda, tucked into a copy of An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers by Edmond Malone. Oddly, the portrait appears Victorian, so it sends Peter's mind reeling. An intriguing premise, but here we are on page 4, and already I'm doubting Lovett, a book collector and former antiquarian bookseller, because Peter removes the watercolor from the book and slips it into a cheaper book before checking out. What?! A find like that and he doesn't pause to consider whether the book contained more evidence, or the sagacity (not to mention ethics) of separating the book from its extra-illustration? Bad bookseller. And yet, as the story continues, we are meant to think of him as a something of a hapless genius.

Peter's pursuit to find the artist of this little watercolor turns into quite the quest--spanning numerous sets of characters and several centuries. William Shakespeare is one such character; Lovett imagines him annotating a copy of Robert Greene's Pandosto and then handing it off to a bookseller. That becomes the holy grail at the heart of the novel, surrounded by forgery, murder, and sex (the latter recounted from Peter's memories of his college days would have been better left unsaid). And while there were too many set changes for a novel under five hundred pages, what I liked about this story is how Lovett invents such a book's origin and follows it through the centuries from writer to bookseller to collector (Robert Cotton) so on and so forth. I would have preferred more in those chapters and less on Peter's personal history.

As my colleague Jeremy Dibbell pointed out last week, this may be the only novel to feature a Hinman Collator, which is pretty neat. Peter uses it to compare two copies of Pandosto while trying to prove that one is a genuine first edition. The final quarter focuses on forgery, through which Lovett develops narrative tension and delivers an interesting ending.

The Bookman's Tale is a breeze to read, and if you are not yet as jaded a reader as I am vis-a-vis biblio-fiction, it makes fine poolside reading.
Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with Gabe Konrad, proprietor of Bay Leaf Used & Rare Books in Sand Lake, Michigan.

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How did you get started in rare books? 

I don't think my story is unique among booksellers.  I started collecting when I was a boy - buying used from a shop a couple of blocks from my childhood home. Over the years collecting evolved into scouting, and then selling.  I used to publish a 'zine, ?oleus Butterefly (named after a brand of bike pedal from the turn of the last century), that focused on vintage bicycles, touring and racing. The 'zine evolved into a magazine of similar content, On The Wheel, and a couple of books.  All the while I was selling scarce bicycle books to my subscribers.  It was my first attempt at a specialty.  The thought of opening a used bookshop, however, was always in the back of my mind.  I was in the Army during the Gulf War and I kept a notebook with my plans for opening a shop.  It was very detailed, right down to the design of the store's sign.  Unfortunately, that notebook was lost to the sands of Saudi Arabia or Iraq, but my passion for fine books never faded. 

When did you open Bay Leaf Books? 

My wife, Melanie, and I opened our shop in early 2007.  The jump from thinking about a shop and actually opening one was actually pretty quick.  I had seen an old friend of mine at a library book sale, John Rau of Mecosta Book Gallery in Mecosta, Michigan, who has been one of my mentors in the trade.  Talking about the old days really brought those old feelings rushing back, and Melanie and I sat down to plan the opening of a shop in a year or two.  But books just began appearing, boxes of them filling every spare inch of our house.  Then an affordable storefront became available and five months later we were open.  It was a real crash course in retail sales.  Kind of like diving in head first - head first into a brick wall.  It really was all John's fault - I mean inspiration... 

What do you specialize in? 

Specialize is a strong word - I would say that I have a special interest in several areas.  One of the things I love about this business is that it allows me to follow my whims - to a certain extent.  If bookplates are piquing my interest, I'll pursue it.  African art and ritual, punk rock, art, poetry, martial arts, radical politics.  I have a special interest in all of these. The day will come when I settle down with one or two of these and truly carve out a niche for myself, but at the moment I'm having too much fun with the variety. 

I understand that you maintain an open brick-and-mortar shop in a small Michigan town of about 500 people. What's your secret? 

The secret is I'm an idiot.  So, you can scratch the "bright" off the "Bright Young Things."  In fact, you should get rid of "young" as well.  Just call this installment "Thing."  Yes, we're in a tiny village with a minuscule year-round population.  There are several little lakes around here, so the summer crowd is decent.  Unfortunately, Michigan summers only last about two-and-a-half months.  I wouldn't suggest it to anyone.  At the end of each winter I seriously consider moving to a more populated location, yet we're still here.  Idiot. 

We really are running two separate businesses here.  One is the open shop with general stock.  We're heavy on the non-fiction side, but stock a lot of popular fiction, classics, and a massive section for kids and young adults.  And then there is the "antiquarian" side of the business which we traffic via catalogues, shows and the internet.  We have some pricier, oddball material in display cases, but this is really for the museum effect that so many people are after when they visit a used book store.  They ooh and ahh, but rarely buy that material.  It's all part of the experience. 

Both facets of the business take a tremendous amount of time and it's a constant push and pull between the two. 

What do you love about the book trade? 

The holy trinity - books, buyers, and the trade itself!  Buying and handling books, the hunt for books, is the most exciting part of the experience.  It's why most booksellers do what they do - the thrill of the conquest, teasing out a book's importance, and passing it on.  I love my customers... for the most part.  Bookshops, like bars, tend to draw in the nuts, and I do tire of hearing about how little green men are living at the center of the earth or how this or that politician is, literally, a demon sent from hell, but most customers are great.  I love talking with artists and architects, professors, train engineers, gardeners - everyone has a great story to tell and we all have a love of books in common.  And then there's the trade itself.  Booksellers are remarkably generous with their knowledge and it never ceases to amaze me that a relatively low-level dealer like me can pick up the phone and have the ear of some of the best booksellers in the country.  It's true that we give each other little discounts, send books on spec, etc., but the collegiality, the advice, and the understanding that we're all in this together is priceless. 

Last year I attended the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar in Colorado Springs.  This is a seminar where some truly talented and successful booksellers gather to teach up-and-coming dealers every aspect of buying, researching and selling antiquarian books.  Trade secrets were shared, every question was thoroughly answered, and lifelong friends were made.  While I had been in business for years prior to going to CABS, the week I spent in Colorado was transformative, and I was able to do this because I received a scholarship from the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA), a trade organization to which I belong and, now, serve on the board.  How great is that!  Who wouldn't love a trade where everyone wants everyone else to succeed? 

Favorite rare book that you've handled? 

Yeah, my favorite books are the ones I've been able to sell!  I have a lot of interesting titles, but once they've sat on the shelves for a while they begin to lose their luster.  But the books that clients are excited about, that move quickly, those are a lot of fun! 

I do like books that have been altered in some way - Grangerized, accessorized, whatever.  I recently sold a copy of Fluxus Codex by Jon Hendricks.  Not a particularly scarce or expensive book - you can still get a fine copy for a few hundred dollars - but this copy had an original (unsigned), Fluxus-style collage on the rear pastedown with spray-painted stencil letters, Shakespeare postage stamps, a bus pass, etc.  I laid in an archival tissue guard, and "poof" it was gone.  Wonderful stuff. 

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What do you personally collect? 

When we opened Bay Leaf Books, pretty much everything I owned went into the shop, but that rectified itself pretty quickly.  I collect books published by The Legacy Press in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who specialize in titles related to the history of bookbinding and papermaking, and books on Goju-Ryu karate.  I have an interest in provenance and tracking books through private and professional hands, so I collect bookplates from a select group of American designers and bookseller labels from around the world - and I created a poorly maintained website.  I'm also gathering books that include any history of bookseller labels and binders' tickets. 

Thoughts on the present state and future of the rare book trade? 

The changes in the book world speak directly to the two-pronged approach of our business.  On the one hand, the advent of megalisters, penny sellers, e-books, big box stores, and online retailers have devalued the printed book dramatically and made it incredibly difficult for used bookshops to keep their doors open.  At the same time, publishers are printing fewer paper books and there is a lot of competition for popular titles on the second-hand market.  As far as popular fiction and non-scholarly non-fiction, I only see this getting worse and I can envision a clash between the lack of inexpensive books and a demand for them.  Supply and demand will, I think, eventually raise prices, and when e-books have cornered the market, those prices will increase as well.  Not everyone can afford, or wants, an e-reader, and when people can no longer afford to read books, we've truly got problems. 

The rare book trade, on the other hand, seems to be in pretty good shape.  While the number of open shops is diminishing, there's an increased interest in fine books and ephemera and a new wave of booksellers coming along to keep the traditions alive.  I can point again to CABS, which is helping develop some exceptional young booksellers, as well as the IOBA striving to improve the online selling experience for buyers and sellers alike, and the ABAA, America's bastion of fine bookselling.  All of these facets are coming together to create a wonderful pool of sellers and dedicated collectors. 

Any upcoming catalogues or fairs? 

I've found that I like experimenting with catalogue formats - and our next catalogue will be no exception.  I like to keep the content and format pretty close to the vest, so I'll just say it will cover modern art and be out sometime in July.  Our upcoming eLists will include poetry, bookplates and radical literature.  Folks can email us at bayleafbooks@sbcglobal.net to be added to our mailing list. 

I just returned from the Ann Arbor Antiquarian Book Fair, which is a fantastic event.  People complain about the decline of regional shows, but Ann Arbor is thriving with great attendance, community support, and a top-notch lineup of booksellers - including many ABAA and IOBA dealers.  This fall we'll be sticking with mainly regional shows including Chicago, the Michigan Antiquarian Book & Paper Show in Lansing, and back to Ann Arbor for the Kerrytown Book Festival.  A schedule will be available on our website


Tempus fugit. I attended my ten-year college reunion last weekend at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. One activity advertised the opportunity to print a broadside keepsake on an 1834 Otis Tufts iron hand press.

I happily waited on line for an hour to feed a sheet of paper into the machine. Finally, I had my turn at the toggle lever and pressed an image of the college onto ivory paper.  Luckily, a local professional printer was there to assist eager compositors; without a guiding hand I would have used far less force than was required to create the impression. In fact, there are some places on my keepsake where the ink is lighter than others.   


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The front of my broadside keepsake, after I folded it. The chapel spire is lighter than other sections. 


Martin Antonetti, curator of rare books at Smith, spoke with me about how he had rescued the machine, and how it ended up on the third floor of the library.  "I found the press in pieces in the basement of Hillyer Hall when it was being cleared out for the renovation project about 10 years ago. Some of the parts were actually missing, but we had them fabricated by the machinist Greg Young on campus, using a diagram we found in a 19th-century printing handbook."  Now, alongside cases of antique type, the machine welcomes visitors at the entrance to the Mortimer Rare Book Room. 

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diagram of a hand press 


While waiting for my turn at the press, I also spoke with Barbara Blumenthal, the rare book specialist in the Mortimer Rare Book Room as well as an administrative assistant for the Book Studies Concentration Program at Smith. She explained the new concentration program to me. 


Since the program's inception in 2011, students have been able to choose from ten areas of interest. There's a concentration in poetry, the aforementioned Book Studies and even an exploration of Buddhism. Students may pursue a concentration in addition to declaring a major. 


The goal of such a course of study is to combine practical and intellectual experiences around one subject.  Each concentration culminates with a 'capstone' experience - an independent senior research project presented at the end of the spring semester. 


The Book Studies Concentration is an exciting addition to the Smith curriculum and an excellent way to explore the vibrant book arts community in the Pioneer Valley. 


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A 1997 first edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, complete with personal annotations and twenty-two original illustrations by J. K. Rowling, grabbed a record-breaking £150,000 ($225,000) at a Sotheby's auction in London on May 21st.  A bidding war between two auction attendees rocketed the price skyward in increments of £25,000 until the hammer fell, to applause, at £150,000, setting a new record for Rowling.

The Sotheby's auction, entitled "First Editions, Second Thoughts," was a charity effort to raise funds for PEN, an English non-profit that fights censorship and advocates for freedom of expression.  Fifty British and Commonwealth writers annotated - and sometimes illustrated - copies of first editions of their work. The auction was curated by the rare book dealer Rick Gekoski and raised an impressive £439,000.

Other highlights included a first edition of Matilda by Roald Dahl with new illustrations by Quentin Blake, which brought in £30,000. Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day raised £18,000, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall went for £16,000, and Ralph Steadman's illustrated edition of Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas took home £14,500.

The first edition of Harry Potter was, however, the talk of the night.  Dr. Philip Errington, Sotheby's director of printed books and manuscripts, referred to it as "the definitive copy of any Harry Potter book."  Rowling annotated the book with reflections on writing it in "snatched hours in clattering cafes or in the dead of night," and added twenty-two illustrations.

Anticipating a significant hammer price, Rowling dictated that 67% of the sale of the annotated Harry Potter would go toward PEN, with the remaining balance directed toward Rowling's own charity, the Lumos Foundation, which seeks to improve the lives of European children living in institutions and helps them transition into family care situations.




Screen shot 2013-05-20 at 1.57.59 PM.pngEarlier this spring Bonhams revealed the news that this unique portrait had turned up in its London office. The oval miniature is catalogued as 'Circle of Charles Hayter,' perhaps obscuring the fact that the image is generally accepted as one of the Romantic poet John Keats. Housed within a gold frame, the reverse reveals strands of dark blonde hair decorated with split seed pearls and gilt-wire. It has been consigned by an American, a descendant of Earle Vonard Weller (1890-1994), an author and avid collector of English Romantic poets. He is known to have purchased this miniature in 1931 from an antiques dealer in Knightsbridge. Though there is some debate over its identification as Keats, Bonhams' catalogue copy does a fine job in describing its history. 

The miniature will be auctioned on May 30th within its red leather traveling case, together with Autobiography of John Keats: Compiled from His Letters and Essays by none other than Earle Vonard Weller (Stanford University Press, 1933), in which an image of the very same miniature is color illustrated on the frontispiece. It is expected to reach £10,000-15,000 (US$ 15,000-23,000).

Image via Bonhams.com.
Almost a year ago, scholars at Canterbury Cathedral and the University of Kent became alarmed when the possibility arose that a major collection of early printed books and manuscripts might be broken up and sold to the highest bidder. The Mendham collection--named for its founder, Anglican vicar Joseph Mendham--was donated to The Law Society of England and Wales in the 1860s. Since 1984, the collection has been on deposit at Canterbury Cathedral Library under a loan agreement between the Cathedral, the University of Kent, and the Society. (That agreement is set to expire on Dec. 31, 2013.)

Lot15.jpgBut in July of last year, the Law Society plucked three hundred of the most valuable books from the collection and consigned them to Sotheby's. An uproar ensued, and a petition was circulated to save the historic library from an uncertain fate. Negotiations began, and there was hope that the scholars and the solicitors might reach an agreement. According to Dr. Clive Field, president of the Religious Archives Group, the Law Society invited bids to purchase the entire collection from a number of UK universities. With no deal in sight, "Highlights of the Mendham Collection"--142 lots of bibles, prayer books, and other rare theological works--is now officially on the Sotheby's calendar for June 5. The six-volume polyglot bible pictured here at left is estimated to be one of the top lots at £70,000-100,000 ($105,000-150,000).

In anticipation of the auction, a letter of support for keeping the collection intact was sent to the Times of London on May 11. Dr. Clive Field; Diarmaid Maccullouch, professor of the history of the church, Oxford; and Roly Keating, chief executive, British Library, wrote as a group describing their concern. "Many items will doubtless be lost to the nation as a result," they wrote. They urged the Law Society to explore "alternative options to the Sotheby's auction, with the attendant damage to scholarship and national heritage."

Some solicitors have also shown support for the effort to save the collection from dissemination. In a May 14 letter to the Times of London, Ian Stevens, director of policy for the Solicitors Regulation Authority, 2007-2010, wrote, "As a history graduate, solicitor and former employee of the Law Society of England and Wales, I am dismayed by the society's proposal to break up and dispose of the Mendham Collection ... The donor's intention was to find a secure home for the collection, not to provide the profession with a disposable asset." Two other UK solicitors followed up with a letter in the Times on May 15 urging other solicitors to "contact the Law Society, as we have done, to ask that the sale be delayed. Short-term financial considerations cannot be a justification for the break-up of a historical collection."

Dr. Alixe Bovey, director of the University of Kent's Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, would very much like to see the collection preserved. In an email last week she wrote, "We're still making efforts to stop the break up of the collection but time is running out."

The Law Society, for its part, has refused to comment. A May 16 email from Fine Books went unanswered by the Society's press office.

Image via Sotheby's.com.

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Today, Northwestern University will be repatriating about 250 documents to France including a letter written by Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Joseph about the future Emperor's patriotism during the French Revolution.

How the documents ended up at Northwestern is an interesting story in itself: Jack McBride, an entertainer in a USO troupe was stationed in Corsica during WWII.  According to family tradition, McBride stumbled across a group of soldiers burning documents while he was wandering around the island.  McBride saved what he could, a parcel of about 250 documents, including the Bonaparte letter.  McBride shipped them home to his family, thinking they might prove to be valuable.  In the 1980s, McBride's descendants deposited the documents at Northwestern for further study.

Some twenty years later, in 2009, Northwestern finally got around to processing the documents. (Like many archival institutions, Northwestern has an extensive backlog of unprocessed documents).  They discovered the Bonaparte letter, which was written in 1792 to an unidentified colonel during the height of the French Revolution.  In the letter, Napoleon's brother, Joseph, insists that Napoleon is a patriot to the revolutionary cause.  The bundle of McBride papers included a variety of other documents over a 450 year time frame.

Northwestern consulted the French government about their find, who were interested in receiving the documents back.  Today, Northwestern will present the bundle to the French consulate in Chicago in a special ceremony at the University.

Northwestern's move raises again the question of repatriation of historical documents. Many special collections libraries (and private libraries) own documents that could arguably be repatriated to their country of origin. Whether they should or not remains a question of much debate.

[Image of Joseph Bonaparte from Wikipedia]