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Illustration from The Lion and the Mouse © 2009 Jerry Pinkney Studio. All rights reserved.

Celebrating Independence Day in Philadelphia will be especially patriotic next week, because two of the city's museums have just installed exhibits dedicated to a pair of America's most celebrated and accomplished artists.


The Philadelphia Museum of Art opened an exhibition two days ago showcasing the work of Caldecott award-winning illustrator Jerry Pinkney.  (June 26th has also been declared Jerry Pinkney day in the city and throughout the Commonwealth.) Five decades of images are on view, ranging from Pinkey's work on children's books, record album covers, and even advertising campaigns. The Philadelphia-born artist will be at the museum on July 7th reading and signing books. 


Across town, the Rosenbach Museum and Library is displaying manuscripts and drawings for Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.  The museum is the repository for the majority of Sendak's papers, and The Night Max Wore His Wolf Suit: 50 Years of Wild Things  showcases his original work. 

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Sendak's relationship with the Rosenbach dates to 1966, when the author began to make use of the library archives. Soon after, Sendak began depositing his own work at the museum, and continued to do so for the ensuing decades.


If trekking to Philadelphia isn't in the cards right now, these exhibits will be around for awhile. Witness: The Art of Jerry Pinkney is open to the public from June 28th  through September 22nd and the Sendak show runs through March 2014. 


Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with Lizz Young of lizzyoungbookseller in West Dover, Vermont:

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How did you get started in rare books?

I have always been in love with cookbooks. When I was an assistant editor at Gourmet Magazine my desk was in the middle of their library. Part of my job was to answer questions that the loyal subscribers would ask, either by phone or by letter (before computers). I was in heaven. Imagine a job where they pay you to be surrounded by cookbooks. So, as luck would have it, when my father Roy Young, who has been an Antiquarian Bookseller for over 30 years, suggested I join him, there was little hesitation on my end. 

When did you open lizzyoungbookseller? Also, tell us a bit about why you format the name the way you do?

I officially started lizzyoungbookseller in January 2012. After working with my father for over a year, I realized that I could specialize in the world I know best while still continuing to work with RoYoung and the beautiful books he surrounds himself with. As for the name, lizzyoungbookseller, I have to admit it's a bit of an inside joke. As I mentioned, my father has been in the business for over 30 years which means that when I was in High School he was always looking for people to work (haul boxes) for him.  Many of my male friends ended up working for him at one time or another, and always referred to him as RO-young. After that, my good friend Peter Callahan started calling me lizzyoung, and it stuck. 

What do you love about the book trade?

I would have to say the thing I love most about the book business is the fact that I learn something new every single day. Whether I'm researching a Cuban manuscript from the 1800's or a psychedelic inspired cookbook from the 1960's, I always find something fascinating about the history of the piece or the people who were involved in the production of the item. Another wonderful thing about the trade is the people. Last summer I attended CABS (Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar). This seminar is taught by some of the best and brightest booksellers in this country. Besides gaining an amazing amount of knowledge, I met some fantastic people that I hopefully will be in touch with for a very long time. 

What do you love about rare culinary books in particular?

Culinary books give you a window into the cultural narrative of the specific time and place in which the book was composed. For instance, I have learned a lot about prohibition by studying the tracts and broadsides that the temperance movement published. Another example would be an English manuscript from the late 1600's I purchased at auction. After cataloging this manuscript I realized more than half the "recipes" were more what we would now refer to as "remedies." It was a remarkable insight into the way in which people at the time nurtured one another with what they had at hand. I have always been captivated by the human condition. Culinary books show us how much we have changed but also how much we have stayed the same. 

Any vintage/rare/old recipe to share with us from one of your books?

From: THE COMPLETE COOK, Plain and Practical Directions for Cooking and Housekeeping; with upwards of Seven Hundred Receipts, By James M. Sanderson. Philadelphia, Lea and Blanchard, 1843.

Walnut Catsup
Take three half sieves of walnut shells, put them into a tub, mix them up well with common salt, about a pound and a half. Let them stand six days, frequently beating and washing them; by this time the shells become soft and pulpy; then by banking them up on one side of the tub, raising the tub on the same side, the liquor will run clear off to the other; then take that liquor out. The mashing and banking my be repeated as long any liquor runs. The quantity with be about three quarts. Simmer it in an iron pot as long as any scum rises; then add two ounces of allspice, two ounces of ginger, bruised, one ounce of long pepper, one ounce of clove, with the above articles; let it boil slowly for half an hour; when bottled, take care that an equal quantity of spice goes into each bottle; let the bottles be quite filled up, cork them tight, and seal them over. Put them into a cool and dry place, for one year before they are used. 

Favorite rare book (or ephemera) that you have handled?

As much as I would like to say my favorite book is some old and crusty manuscript, I have to admit I loved (and have sold it twice) Son of the Martini Cookbook, by Jane Trahey & Daren Pierce. This comical book, illustrated by Edward Gorey, is broken up into categories according to how many martinis one has had. The recipes are ridiculous and the illustrations are more than entertaining.

What do you collect personally?

I have been collecting cookbooks for over 30 years, it is a bit of an obsession. I'm a bit of a Jello nut too. I love the idea of jello and jello molds. At Thanksgiving I always make a jello mold; everyone make a face at first, but guess what, it is the first thing to go? My favorite food writers are Laurie Colwin and M.F.K. Fisher. Fisher was the grand dame of food writing; a real trail blazer. The way she wrote about the experience of eating is unrivaled. Colwin wrote novels and short stories but she had an incredible knack for food writing that made you feel as if you were sitting in the kitchen with her while she cooked. 

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

I love to tell the story of the porter who helped us move into our booth at the Boston Book Fair last year. In a very heavy Boston accent, this large, jolly man says to me, "You know, you got a lot of nice books here but what do you think of the Kindle?" I replied, "I love the kindle, gets people to read, maybe makes them appreciate books more...and in my opinion it increases the odds that these books will be all the more valuable in the future." That said, I think there are a lot of different things going on in the rare book trade as we speak. Personally, I have an optimistic impression of the state of business. I have attended CABS and The Rare Book school at the University of Virginia in the past couple of years and have found incredible enthusiasm emanating from everyone I encounter. Of course this is like preaching to the choir, but it does give me hope that there is a whole new generation of people out there that treasure the world of rare books. I attended an art book fair at the MOMA in Queens, NY last fall and it was crawling with a younger audience that were highly energetic about books. I tend to believe the Internet and the access of information has given reading and writing a whole new audience that has an appetite for knowledge. 

Any upcoming fairs or catalogs?

lizzyoungbookseller will be showing at the Vermont Book Fair, Sunday August 11th, in Brattleboro at the Living Memorial Park Skating Rink. I will also be sharing a booth with RoYoung Bookseller at the Baltimore Summer Antique Show, August 22-25 at the Baltimore Convention Center. As for a catalog, I have been thinking about putting together a manuscript catalog, but thinking and doing are two very different things!

FBC2013summer-cover.jpgOur summer issue is off at the printer this week, and here's a sneak peek. Our cover story is a look at the life and legacy of Maurice Sendak by children's book historian Leonard Marcus. In the Book Art column, Richard Minsky interviews printer Clifton Meador. In the Library, we delve into the Huntington's forthcoming exhibit of extra-illustrated books. The Ladies of Letterpress talk to us about our their group and its goals. Nicholas Basbanes visits with married collectors who specialize in decorated paper.

The summer issue is also distinguished by the annual Biblio 360 -- our guide to bookish exhibits, classes, clubs, conferences, and more. Clocking in at 12,500 words, Biblio offers readers more than 250 different ways to get involved with books and connect with fellow collectors. Plus our usual dose of auction reviews and record-breakers, fine cartography, some focus on publishers' bindings, and an essay by bookseller Helen Younger on how collecting children's books has changed in the past twenty years.

If you haven't yet subscribed, find us on the rack in the magazine section of Barnes & Noble.
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A previously unknown, and incredibly rare, letter from Robert the Bruce was uncovered earlier this month by a Scottish academic.  Robert the Bruce led the Scottish forces in the Wars of Independence against England during the Middle Ages. The letter, written to King Edward II of England, calls for an end to "persecution and disturbance."  It was written in 1310, several years before Bannockburn, the decisive battle that would set the path for Scottish independence.

Dr. Dauvit Broun, a professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow, found the contents of the letter copied into a manuscript written by the monks of Kirkstall Abbey approximately 500 years ago.  The original letter has not survived.

Broun, quoted in The Independent, said "It's amazingly rare. A freak survival. There's nothing like this that survives from that time."

The contents of the letter suggest that the Bruce was very serious about establishing peace between the two nations - but only if the countries were officially separated and he was recognized as the King of Scotland. The letter apparently had little effect on Edward II, who would soon advance his army into Scotland only to be decisively defeated on the fields of Bannockburn.

The Kirkstall Abbey manuscript that contains the letter is held at the British Library.
In the 'too-good-not-to-share' department, read this story from late last week about how soap opera star-rock musician Rick Springfield lost--and then found for $600 on Ebay--his inscribed first edition of Stephen King's Danse Macabre, signed by the author in 1981. Turns out Springfield is a bit of horror collector. He told Galley Cat, "Now I have it in my collection I'm very glad I did it. But I do check books very thoroughly now on their way to Goodwill." Read the whole story here.

In February Fine Books & Collections covered The National Endowment for the Humanities' grant to The American Writers Museum Foundation. The Foundation received the grant to help begin what will become the first museum dedicated to America's great writers. The Foundation continues to move forward with the project, canvas.pngreleasing this week its conceptual plans for the museum's first home, aptly named "First Edition." 

 

The plans for the Chicago-based museum are grand. The museum features several galleries with themes such as "writers of science fiction" and "writers who overcame social adversity." A large part of the visitor's experience will include touch-screen technology as well as other computer-based learning systems. In the main hall, for instance, visitors will be able to explore both real and fictional places from American literature by interacting with a large touch-screen literary map of the United States.

 

The Foundation's president, Malcolm O'Hagan, recently told Fine Books & Collections, "Computers will allow visitors to engage with the writers and their works. We will, of course, have great artifacts, but we do not want just static displays. We want visitors to experience the power of words and become involved with the lives of our great writers."

 

As for the artifacts that Mr. O'Hagan spoke of, the museum plans on borrowing pieces from the countless museum, university, and personal collections across the country dedicated to individual authors. The Foundation has expressed its desire to "not compete with other institutions, but rather, make visitors aware of the myriad literary resources available nationwide by showcasing and linking to them."

 

The path to opening day at the American Writers Museum will not be without its challenges. O'Hagan said, "Our biggest challenge is fundraising. We need to raise $10 million for the first phase of the museum. Later this summer we will launch a capital campaign. However we seek broad participation from readers in funding the museum that will honor the writers who bring so much joy and knowledge to their lives."

 

Those who donate $100 or more qualify to be one of the Museum's "Chapter One Patrons." Those interested in contributing to this project are encouraged to donate to the American Writers Museum Foundation at www.americanwritersmuseum.org.


Image Courtesy of The American Writers Museum Foundation



Sara Gran's latest mystery novel, Claire deWitt and the Bohemian Highway, was released this week by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  It's a sequel to the excellent Claire deWitt and the City of Dead published in 2011.  Gran formerly worked in used and rare books, for places like The Strand and Shakespeare and Co, as well and on her own as an independent bookseller.  Books - real and imaginary - play significant roles in her novels.  Her private eye, Claire deWitt, is profoundly influenced by an elusive French book of detection from 1959, entitled Détection, which guides - and haunts - her actions throughout the novels.  I recently interviewed Gran over e-mail:

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I understand you used to work in rare books, both for shops like The Strand and on your own.  Could you tell us more about your previous life as a bookseller?

I've always been obsessive about books. My parents were not collectors, but they were very avid readers, and they were (and are) indiscriminate in the best way: they read what interests them, not what's hot or collectable. And somewhere along the way I developed a somewhat warped, almost talismanic interest in books-as-physical-objects. So working with books was always a fantasy for me. I used to go to these little indie bookstores, like St Marks book back when it was on St Mark's place, and I thought the rude bookstore guys who worked there were coolest people on earth. I really couldn't believe it when I applied for a job at a bookstore and I GOT IT. Of course, the reality was a lot of hard, dirty work--but I still loved it. And I still think people who love books and stay with that love are the coolest people on earth. 

Are the naming conventions for the series a nod to classic mystery series of the past?  (Claire deWitt and the...; Nancy Drew in the...)

Yes, the great old books and also TV shows. They're fun but a lot of work to come up with!

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Several old books populate the pages of Claire deWitt and the City of the Dead, but of course the one that casts the longest shadow over the narrative is Détection by the great French detective Jacques Silette, first published in 1959.  This book often has a profound - even life-changing - effect on those who read it.  Could you tell us a bit more about the inspiration for this book and the mythology behind it?

Well, I'm going to answer that with a story: yesterday I went to the Rose Bowl flea market here in LA. And something from Black Sparrow Press, which I'm sure you and your readers will know, caught my eye at one of the booths. So I look and it turns out this guy has stacks and stacks of unused paper book covers (paper wrappers) from Black Sparrow Press, plus a bunch of printing blocks. His friend worked for the printer and, long story short, saved them all from the trash. So he was selling the blocks that had printed Paul Bowles and Wanda Coleman and John Fante and Charles Bukowski, and no one wanted them. I asked if he'd tried ebay, other book dealers (this guy was not a book guy, just a very cool and smart flea market guy), everything I could imagine. And he said no one wants this stuff. He has a whole garage full of this stuff and no one wants it. So, in part, that's what Détection is about: the fact that we writers put so much into our books, and we hope they will change readers lives, and sometimes they do--but then twenty years later they're at a flea market and you can't give them away. This guy has the plates that printed Post Office, one of the most beautiful books in English. But to me--I could cry just thinking about that book. Détection is a book that really changed Claire's life, and then she went out in the world and found out that no one gives a shit, and that is a heartbreaking place to be--a religion with no members. An equivalent book for me has been Nelson Algren's book Nonconformity, which likewise has had such an impact on my life and no one else seems to care about. I have given away probably a dozen copies of this book and not one person has loved it like I do.

My other favorite old book mentioned in City of the Dead is Poisonous Orchids of Siberia.  Could you tell us a bit more about that one?

Thank you! My other favorite book, after Nonconformity, is The Golden Guide for Hallucinogenic Plants. The fact that that book exists is proof that wonderful things can exist in this universe. I like Golden Guides in particular, and field guides in general, especially odd ones. 

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How about you -- what are some of your favorite rare books?  Are you an active book collector?  What do you collect?

Most of my favorite rare books are rare in the colloquial sense, not in the bookselling sense of "valuable." They are uncommon, but no one really wants them, which is fortunate for me. I don't collect first editions, but I do enjoy early printings of some of my favorites--I have some early Charles Ports novels and some early Andrew Vachss mysteries that really make me happy. I don't collect in any thorough, completist way, but I buy a lot of books about whatever interests me at the moment, and usually end up writing about it. At the moment, I'm excited by books about Marian apparitions; stage magic; locks, keys, and locksmithing; cons and con artists; and specifically art-related cons (and I welcome suggestions from your readers in these areas). And I will almost always buy something interesting and affordable in the fields of yoga, folklore/magic, flowers, criminology, and early detective fiction. My rule of thumb is: how hard will it be to get this book again if I want it? 
 
What are some of your favorite mystery writers of the past? How about of the present?

Claire DeWitt is, in many ways, an homage to my favorite fictional detectives, some of whom I feel like I grew up with. My father has always been a big fan of Nero Wolfe, and you will see a lot of both Nero and Archie Goodwin in Claire. I also drew a lot of inspiration from how Rex Stout organized and structured his series. Andrew Vachss' Burke series is another big inspiration--it's a rare series where the "detective" (in quotes because Burke is not really a PI) grows and changes over the years, as people do. Jim Sallis' Lew Griffith series is also very much about a flesh-and-blood person who changes over the years, and Sallis also brings a real sense of poetry to the mystery novel. And Chandler's Phillip Marlowe is just the all-time best, especially in The Big Sleep.

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Claire deWitt and the Bohemian Highway comes out this month. What's next? Are you already at work on the third book in the series?

Yes, I am, but I am also busy writing for TV and film, so it will be a few years before the next book. And after an extremely busy few years where I've had almost no time to read, i am going to spend a lot of time during the rest of 2013 sitting around reading detective novels! 

Visit Sara Gran on her website, or on Facebook or Twitter.

PA Post_July 6 1776_p1-#25B.jpgLast week Seth Kaller announced the forthcoming sale of the first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence, to be held on June 25 at Manhattan's Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries. This rare document is expected to fetch $500,000-700,000.

A closer look at the auction catalogue created for this sale reveals intriguing details. Publication of the Declaration in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on July 6, 1776 was preceded only by the official broadside, printed by John Dunlap. Kaller's staff discovered a series of typesetting differences between Dunlap's broadside and Benjamin Towne's newspaper edition, "particularly in the use of capitalization, too numerous to be coincidental," according to the catalogue. When compared against two working drafts of the Declaration--one in Thomas Jefferson's hand, the other a copy made by John Adams--they noticed a pattern. It seems Jefferson had a habit of lower-casing words, while Adams frequently capitalized for effect, e.g. "When, in the course of human events," versus "When in the Course of human Events...." What's more, Dunlap's broadside conforms to Adams' style, while Towne's newspaper edition follows Jefferson's style. Minor variations to some, but meaningful in studying the dissemination of one of America's founding documents.

"The most intriguing upshot of showing that the Post follows Thomas Jefferson's style, while the Dunlap follows John Adams' style, is that this may mean that there were two different July 4, 1776 original manuscripts of the Declaration," says Kaller.

This new research will certainly add to the lore (and lure) of this rarity. Only four copies have been recorded on the market in the last fifty years; this one was last seen at Sotheby's in 1993. According to Kaller's census, only nineteen copies of the July 6 Pennsylvania Evening Post are extant, and of those, only two or three are in private hands.

Image courtesy of Seth Kaller.

As has been widely reported elsewhere, sales of Geoge Orwell's dystopian classic 1984 have surged in the wake of the NSA surveillance scandal. Amazon reported a massive spike of 5,800% in sales of the "centennial edition" of 1984 after it was reported that the NSA has been monitoring phone records of U. S. citizens.

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The same surge has also spilled over into the antiquarian book market. Abebooks reported the sale of two British first editions of 1984 last week. The first edition, first printing in a green dust jacket went for $3,000, while the first edition, first printing in the red dust jacket brought home $2,845.

1984 was first published by Secker & Warberg in Britain in 1949. The publisher issued two dust jacket variants, one in red, the other in green. There is still some debate about which is the true first edition, however the general consensus is that the red jacket appeared first.

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If you feel like you've missed out on the fun, more first editions of 1984 are coming to auction on Thursday. Swann Galleries will offer two first editions of 1984 on June 20th. The American first edition (issued with a red dust jacket) is estimated at $400 - $600, while the first English edition (with the green dust jacket) is expected to roughly double that at $800 - $1200.  Of course, with the recent attention garnered by the novel, it's possible that both will blow through their estimates.  They are, after all, quite a bit cheaper than the Abebook copies that sold last week.

676526.jpgMy personal favorite edition of 1984, however, has to be the pulpy Signet classics edition from 1954 with its lurid cover and its false hints about the book's content:

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Screen shot 2013-06-16 at 10.26.40 PM.pngWhen the Margaret Cavendish Society holds its tenth biennial international conference in Sundance, Utah, next month, books will have a place of honor. Keynote speaker Maureen E. Mulvihill of the Princeton Research Forum will present "What Do You See? Frontispieces of Margaret Cavendish -- Invention, Authority, Book Arts" with digital images, a table display of rare books from her personal collection, and a distributed bibliography. Mulvihill will examine these integral pieces of book design and discuss how to "read" them in the context of seventeenth-century book arts and reading habits. Mulvihill has written widely on  rare books, women writers, and the intersection of literature and visual arts. This lecture occurs  at the Creekside Lodge in the Sundance Resort on July 13 at 5:30 p.m. Read more about this program here.

Image Courtesy of Maureen E. Mulvihill.