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Nearly a year after bookseller Peter Howard's death, Bonhams is holding the first of many auctions to dissolve the store's stock this Sunday. This first auction is chock-full of amazing books and art, John Steinbeck material leading the pack with a typed manuscript of "The Pearl of the World," the original version of his novel, The Pearl, estimated at $15,000-20,000. Another highlight is James Joyce's rare self-published broadside poem, Gas from a Burner. Its estimate is $12,000-18,000.

But surely there is room for serendipity at this auction, as a peruse through the catalogue verifies. How about this portrait (seen above) of Walt Whitman looking like Rip Van Winkle by the Philadelphia artist Gladys Logan Winner, c. 1910. The estimate is only $600-900.

Or these original gouche on paper sketches of costume designs for an unknown production, unsigned but attributed to Orson Welles -- one of the figures clearly resembles him. The estimate for these bold and beautiful sketches is $3,000-5,000.

There's also a wonderful collection of Robinson Jeffers books and letters spread over fourteen lots. Having just learned about Jeffers' Tor House and Hawk Tower from our winter issue's article on literary spots in Big Sur, I can better appreciate the warm inscription and architectural sketch he placed on the front flyleaf of this copy of Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems.

To view the full auction catalogue and experience the serendipity for yourself, click here.

To read more about the heyday of Serendipity Books, here's an article from our winter issue about one writer's encounter with the legendary bookstore. Kurt Zimmerman also posted an appreciative essay about Peter Howard on his American Book Collecting site.

In addition to shelf sales at the store in Berkeley, Bonhams intends to sell other material from Serendipity Books within these scheduled 2012 auctions: Fine Photography in New York on May 8, Period Art & Design in San Francisco on April 15 and May 20, Made in California in Los Angeles on May 21, Fine Books and Manuscripts in New York on June 19, and Entertainment Memorabilia in Los Angeles on June 24.

Coming up on Thursday of the week, Heritage Auctions will hold a large auction of rare books and manuscripts in Beverly Hills, where the heavy hitters will be a first edition of Hemingway's Three Stories & Ten Poems inscribed to Margaret Anderson, a Pony Express Bible in its original binding, a complete set of first editions of Dickens' Christmas books, some Poe, some Melville, and a few others.

As I perused the collection, one of the lots of greatest interest to me is a collection of Pocket Books, including a complete run of the first 1,257 titles, published in New York between 1939 and 1960. These little paperbacks with their vibrant cover illustrations for novels like Lost Horizon and The Maltese Falcon are incredible cultural artifacts, and to see them as a group must be stunning. Another collector had all the fun of acquiring this incredible collection, but someone else can now have the pleasure of it as a standing collection. Much as I'd love to have them--and enough bare bookshelves to shelve them--it would be best for them to end up at an institution with an interest in mid-twentieth-century reading habits, publishing, and print culture. I can imagine great projects that could arise from such a collection in such a complete form. The estimate is $1500--a bargain, in my opinion.

Another fun find is a first limited edition of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 that has been signed by the author a total of four times to the same owner, "Ted." Signed once upon publication in 1953, again 1969, then in 1982, and finally in 1990. What a neat story that book has to tell.

I feel at odds to pluck a few items here and there to highlight from this big and varied sale, but others that caught my eye include an early Virginia imprint of Peter Cottom's The Whole Art of Book-Binding...(1824), a first edition of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land from Margaret Anderson's personal collection, and a set of of The Book Lover's Almanac from 1893-1897.

You can view the catalogue online and begin the bidding straight away, as Heritage has already opened the auction to online bidders.

A reader wrote in to us to ask for help in gathering information about some Redoute rose prints (chromolithographs?) she has. I'm posting a picture in the hope that someone out there might have some information about the publisher, Henry B. Sandler of NYC (printed on its verso).

Our reader has done some Googling and found the same rose print in brighter colors, with the words "Bouquet No. 3" printed below the image. Hers lacks that, having only "P. J. ReDoute" under the image. I'm also showing below the more colorful version offered by J. Manley Gallery. Comment below or email me at rebecca at finebooksmagazine.com if you can help solve this mystery!

What I like about Freeman's auction of books, manuscripts, ephemera happening on Thursday of this week is the incredible selection -- 500+ lots of letters, books, photographs, newspapers, posters, find binding sets, works on paper. It's great fun to peruse because there surely will be items to interest one's particular collection(s). The sale also features the Wendy and Alan C. Wasserman collection of N.C. Wyeth. I've chosen a few pieces to highlight below, to give you an idea of the breadth of the auction; the first piece is from the Wyeth collection.

I suspect that most of us have vices that we occasionally rue.  Mine is the so-called political novel.

When I saw the news bit earlier this week that artist and novelist Audrey Niffenegger will be publishing a short story titled "The Wrong Faerie" in the upcoming anthology, Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, I was beyond excited. The story is about Charles Altamont Doyle, "a Victorian artist who was institutionalised for alcoholism. He was also the father of Arthur Conan Doyle, and he believed in fairies." In short, it sounds fabulous already. Maybe I'm biased. As FB&C readers know, I traveled to Chicago this past summer to meet Niffenegger and discuss books, art, fame, and collecting. She also signed a few books for me. The result of that interview is our winter issue's cover story. But we talked a lot that day, and so there is more to share about our conversation.

I asked her how her creative life has changed since the incredible success of The Time Traveler's Wife. Here is what she said:

Well, one of the things that changed a lot, I never used to have any money, so I never used to go anywhere...I got a lot done. With Time Traveler, I spent about three years running around doing festivals and promoting it, and with Symmetry, I spent about a year and a half, just solid running around, constantly away. And it's almost impossible to do real artwork in hotel rooms, so that has been kind of slowing me down. What I'm hoping to do in the next couple of years is not move around as much, get more centered. I've got big projects that I'm working on that have to get done with real deadlines, so I basically have no choice but to turn things down and make sure I get my work done. Time management is really the big problem. The monetary impediments were removed, but at the same time the time constraints became overwhelming. A lot of people are like, 'So that new novel, it must be done, right?' I'm like, 'no.' It's just difficult when you're constantly talking about the work you've already done to get the new work happening.

Niffenegger collects taxidermy and books. I asked her to talk a bit more about those collections.

The taxidermy is, in a way, not really a serious collection because it's just strange things that hang around the house, and you look at them and think, 'hmmm, that's really strange'... It's not like I'm a biologist and have great insight into all these creatures. I mean, in my collection, the more damaged they are, the more interesting. There are missing eyes and paws, looking really pathetic. Occasionally I'll buy a really glorious piece because it's interesting, but for the most part I buy very strange, cheap, damaged taxidermy. The taxidermy collection is completely eclectic and based on pathos and strangeness. The book collection, on the other hand, there's a very definite train of thought running through that collection. I am interested in books that use images and words together in interesting ways. So if something is typographically interesting, if it's telling an interesting story in a way where everything supports the story interestingly, if the illustrations are really spectacular or if it's going beyond illustration and into a wordless novel or something like that, I'm very interested in that. I'm less interested in sculptural books. I mean, I have a few. I'm very interested in fine print, so, for example, I'm very fond of Arion Press, and I'm always sort of looking out for their things. I'm always interested in what my students and former students are doing, so I veer toward them when I can. Always partial to aquatints because it's what I myself do. I sometimes buy with an eye to showing my students things, so if I don't have a good example of a such-and-such, I will sometimes try to acquire one so that when I'm talking about such-and-such, I can say, 'and here is a such-and-such' and give them a better chance of understanding what the heck I'm talking about. Books are really hard to show in slides ... it's so much better if they can handle it, it just becomes a completely different experience.


One question that many people ask is if, as an artist, she gets to design her own books and limited editions. Here is what she said:

For Time Traveler and for Symmetry, there were limited editions, and I got to design those. I did not get to design the commercial edition because everybody immediately agreed that I am not a very commercial artist, which is fine with me! The design for the cover of Time Traveler was done by Suzanne Dean who is the head designer at Random UK, and she did Symmetry in the UK. Scribner's designer Rex Bonomelli, he came up with the shiny, metallic, twiggy cover, which I liked tremendously. Then when it became a paperback, everyone was saying, 'there must be a person on the cover,' and I said, 'well, okay, but just don't cut off her head.' And so we went through lots of iterations of people with and without heads. I like what they came up with...The limited editions are fun because they don't necessarily have to follow all the rules of conventional book design. Like the limited edition I did for Scribner for Symmetry, it doesn't even have the title on the spine, it the initials of the title and my initials, and if you had it spine-in, that's all you would be able to see. It's not the most readable typeface, the book is entirely black, so it's got lots of things going on that wouldn't scream 'buy me!'...A limited edition of a printed book made by commercial processes is a whole different deal than a real printing.

Last week the Cambridge University Library in Cambridge, England, opened an exhibition dedicated to individual book collectors. Shelf Lives: Four Centuries of Collectors and their Books "allows us to observe the changing motives, fashions and tastes of book-collectors over the course of four hundred years." Spanning the sixteenth to the twentieth century, the collector/donors include manuscript collector George Lewis, music collector Marion Margaret Scott, map collector Alfred Harker, and bindings collector Samuel Sandars, along with ten others. Seen here at left are volumes from the collection of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, in one of the bookcases in which he housed them. Keynes' collection includes the work of Jane Austen, William Blake, and Siegfried Sassoon to name a few; these were the books he used to compile his bibliographies.
 

Francis Jenkinson, pictured at right in John Singer Sargent's 1915 portrait, is featured in Shelf Lives. Jenkinson was the Cambridge University Librarian from 1889 until 1923 (H.G. Aldis was his secretary!). Jenkinson is an interesting collector because he compiled the War Reserve Collection containing some ten thousand unofficial, personal, and ephemeral works distributed during World War I, e.g. trench journals, battalion orders, and propaganda leaflets. It is a wonderful example of "front-line" collecting.

A list of the exhibition's captions is available online, but should you have the opportunity to view it in person, Shelf Lives runs through June 16 of this year.

Tomorrow at PBA Galleries, a fantastic collection of seventy clipper ship sailing cards goes on sale (pun intended). Pictured here is one highlight: a card for the clipper ship Sparkling Wave, in the Merchants' Express Line, 1859, printed on porcelain coated stock, with color wood-engraved illustration. It is estimated at $2,000-3,000.

According to the American Antiquarian Society, "The publication of clipper ship sailing cards began in 1853 and continued through the Civil War, reflecting the enormous increase in commerce between the east and west coasts after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in California." The ephemeral cards were made for advertising ship departures--"Current Rates and No Deception"--and they often feature full-color illustrations and beautiful design. AAS also notes that those cards which carry an imprint reveal that just three printing offices issued most of them: Nesbitt & Company and Watson & Clark of New York and John H. Bufford of Boston. The one seen above is a Nesbitt production.

The PBA auction also includes more than two hundred lots of Americana, Californiana, and maps. Check out the full catalogue here: http://www.pbagalleries.com/live/sale_details.php?s=471&

I've had fun reading year-end lists of the most popular online articles at The Millions, Latham's, and Slate, and I thought it would be neat to see what's been most appealing to our readers as well. Working our statistical magic, we came up with a list of our top 10 online articles of 2011.

1. "Plain But Good" by Karen Edwards. A look at R.R. Donnelley's highly collectible Lakeside Classics series.

2. "A Classic Back in Print" by Nicholas Basbanes. Nick's recent column on Allen and Patricia Ahearn of Quill & Brush and the fourth edition of their indispensible guide, Collected Books.

3. "The Americanist" by Nate Pedersen. Nate's interview with longtime antiquarian bookseller Norman Kane.

4. "On the Road" by Tom Bentley. A profile of Peter and Donna Thomas, the 'Wandering Book Artists.'

5. "Exceptional Ephemera" by Nicholas Basbanes. Nick visits the Grossman collection of ephemera at Winterthur.

6. "Comic Cartography" by Jeffrey S. Murray. The witty world of cartoon maps -- even the New Yorker liked it!

7. "Scholars in the Stacks" by Richard Goodman. Richard went to the New York Public Library's Cullman Center to see what they were up to.

8. "Lovecraft's Providence" by Nick Mamatas. Seeing the homes & haunts of H.P. Lovecraft.

9. "Edward Curtis' The North American Indian" by Jonathan Shipley. A neat story about how this million-dollar set of photos actually plunged its creator into debt and obscurity.

10. "Temple of the Muses" by Nicholas Basbanes. The first in-depth report on the burgeoning American Writers Museum.

And on our blog, the top 5 of 2011 were...

1. "Oddities: Books Bound in Human Skin" by Rebecca Rego Barry. A video-clip from a Discovery Channel episode on these oddities.

2. "Foliomania" by Rebecca Rego Barry. A review of the Folger Shakespeare Library's exhibition catalogue, Foliomania.

3. "John Gilkey Redux" by Brian Cassidy. A virtual APB for book thief John Gilkey.

4. "Game of Thrones, Collectable Fantasy Book, Hits HBO" by A. Genevieve Tucholke. Different editions of George R.R. Martin's books, as the show premieres.

5. "Banned in Boston!" by L.D. Mitchell. Only one copy of 1690's Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick survives -- because it was banned!

For those of you enjoying the winter issue of FB&C, you'll note an article on bibliophilately by Larry T. Nix, writer/publisher of the Library History Buff blog. Larry has set up a webpage with lots of supplemental resources, information, and images for anyone interested in learning more about this fusion of stamp and book collecting. The stamp seen here is from his collection, issued by Germany in 1954 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Gutenberg's 42-line Bible.

Coming up later this month at Christie's, the Duke of Portland's four-volume set of John James Audubon's Birds of America, the most expensive book ever sold at auction. Estimated at $7-10 million, bibliophiles will wait with bated breath to find out if the duke's Birds will break the current world record of $11.5 million, set at Sotheby's sale of Lord Hesketh's rare books and manuscripts in December of 2010. The duke's set is bound in full crimson wide gilt-panelled morocco (seen here at left) and is, according to Christie's, "in very fine condition, with colors fresh and bright, and showing minimal handling evidence."

Audubon was an itinerant artist who traversed the American wilderness of the early nineteenth century, drawing birds. His idea to create an oversized folio of more than four hundred hand-colored plates showing the birds in life-size was visionary; it was also prohibitively expensive. He relied on subscriptions to raise the necessary funds. His magnificently illustrated double-elephant folio was issued in parts in the years 1827-1838, initially printed by W.H. Lizars of Edinburgh, but soon transferred to Robert Havell & Son in London. 

Today I direct your attention to a speech given by Alan Bamberger (a dealer of rare and out-of-print art books and an art consultant) to the Friends of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. It's titled "Collecting Art Like a Pro," but I think you'll find it could very easily apply to books, or any other type of collectible.

...Regardless of how you view your collecting, whether serious or recreational, there are techniques that you can use to maximize not only the quality and value of your art, but also your own personal enjoyment, appreciation, and understanding of that art. Step one is being true to your tastes. This means acknowledging that you like certain types of art regardless of what you think you're supposed to like or what seems to be the current rage. All great collectors share this trait-- that's one thing makes their collections stand out. When personal preference is ignored in favor of the status quo, one collection begins to look just like the next. A few people dictate, the masses follow, everyone walks in lock-step, and the art you see from collection to collection becomes boring and repetitive....[Link to more]

A 'Secret Index' of investment-worthy autographs, you say? Yes, and it has produced a 14.84% return per year since 2000.

A Secret Index Autograph Investment Report published by Paul Fraser Collectibles of Bristol, England, tracks the forty rarest and most investment-worthy autographs in the world. The price of the average autograph from the PFC40 rose 14.84% per year. And, he notes, "The rising trend shows no sign of stopping."

Calling autographs a "mid- to long-term alternative investment that you may not have thought of before," Paul Fraser believes the market for collectibles is gaining strength, and he cites several reasons: 1) baby boomers are "nostalgia investors" who have a lot of wealth; 2) China is a nation of enthusiasts; 3) there are an estimated 200 million collectors in the world, and that is predicted to double in 20 years; 4) leading collectors continue to fight over the best pieces; 5) museums are still actively acquiring; and 6) there is a finite supply and growing demand.

Some of the autograph examples PFC offers in the Secret Index (recently featured on MSN Money) are Neil Armstrong (up 981.8% since 2000), Fidel Castro (up 22% since 2000), Walt Disney (up 22.65% since 2000), and George Harrison (up 26.10% since 2000). Other figures on the list include Salvadore Dali, Bob Dylan, and J.K. Rowling.

The earning power of these items is quite aside from the fact that autograph collecting, like book collecting, is often a personal pursuit. But the fruits of that pursuit are genuinely good investments, some better than others. It's certainly worth a look at the Secret Index!

On display through December 31 at Bard Graduate Center's Focus Gallery in New York City, is a selection of Christmas cards that serve as "an introduction to a large artifactual and aesthetic field that until now has been largely unexplored ... These cards constitute a category of American material culture that is rich in documentary potential yet has been nearly invisible in the scholarly literature." Seen above is a modified French-fold card in green, black, and gold lithography on lightweight imitation parchment, short fold at bottom, ca. 1935, from the Bard Graduate Center exhibit and book, American Christmas Cards, 1900-1960.

An accompanying book, edited by Kenneth L. Ames, contains 375 images with text that examines their visual and cultural history. It's a perfect guide for collectors of ephemera, collectors of graphic history, and, of course, collectors of Christmas material.

Happy holidays!

Last month, I received my Walden Woods/Thoreau Institute newsletter--always a welcome piece of mail bearing good news about education and preservation at Walden Pond. Even better, this newsletter had a bit of rare book news. Bookseller Mark Stirling of Upcountry Letters, who specializes in the Transcendentalists, sold (at a discount) his personal collection of Emerson material to the Thoreau Institute. Stirling wrote to me recently, "I was pleased that the items were returning to their hometown, so to speak, and that they would be available for study."

As one would assume, the Institute's Thoreau collections are fabulous, but in Stirling's words, "it needed Emerson, his essential associate in the history of ideas." The vast collection is primarily manuscript and association items, accumulated by Stirling over the course of twenty years. Some fine examples, according to Jeff Cramer, curator of collections at the Thoreau Institute in Massachusetts, are a first edition, first state copy of Nature, a manuscript leaf from Emerson's lecture, "Reform," and one of only five hundred printed copies of An Oration, Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 ("The American Scholar").

Charles Dickens missed dinner with his wealthy benefactor, Angela Burdett-Coutts, because he had a gig that night. In this letter, offered by James Cummins Rare Books in New York City for $12,000, Dickens sends his regrets, for he is "going to Bradford in Yorkshire to give a Christmas Reading to some three thousand people." That was December, 1854, one year after Dickens began giving such public readings of A Christmas Carol. Turned out that 3,700 people attended his performance.

Seeing this letter about Dickens' 'theatrical career,' if we can call it that, brought to mind a feature we published two years ago about his stage performances in America and the prompt book he carried--containing the marginalia that reminded him know how to inflect certain words or lines, when to turn a page, and how to deliver particular phrases--which now resides at the New York Public Library.

The holiday catalogue from James Cummins is a wonderful selection of Christmas books, letters, and cards. From the first printed illustration of Santa going down a chimney in the New York Mirror, 1841, to a first edition, first issue of The Christmas Carol with "very rare variant state with pink endpapers" and an even more scarce "trial issue" of that book. Grab some eggnog and take a look.

Coming up this week Bonhams' Fine Books and Manuscripts sale on December 15, a desk owned and used by Joseph Heller, complete with coffee ring stains to the top. From the picture, the twentieth-century wooden desk does look a bit worn, but considering that the celebrated author owned it for about thirty years, let's call it a writer's patina. It is believed that Heller wrote at least some of the following works sitting at this very desk in his East Hampton, New York, home: God Knows (1984); No Laughing Matter (1986); Picture This (1988); Closing Time (1994); Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (1998); and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (published in 2000). Heller died in 1999. His desk will be offered without reserve and is (conservatively) estimated to reach $1,500-2,500. Lamp included.

Reminds me of Melville's lap desk Bonhams had not so long ago. That one sold for $34,160.

The Paris Review is holding an online holiday auction. So if you're in the market for some unique, tres literary gifts--like naming a character in an upcoming novel, high tea with an author, or a literary tour of Greenwich Village--take a look at its auction on Bidding for Good, now through Dec. 11. What other treasures await?

Coming up for auction this week at Heritage Auctions is this library book due date slip (remember those?) bearing the penciled signature of "J. Salinger." The worn card with seventeen other signatures dates from December 1959. And what was the famous 40-year-old author reading? Norman Forrest's Death Took a Publisher, a bibliomystery from 1936. Presumably this library card comes from a public library close to Cornish, New Hampshire. Salinger moved there in the early fifties and gradually slipped into a reclusive lifestyle.

Quite an incredible Salinger collectible for the estimate of $800-$1,200 (much prettier and display-worthy than, say, the Salinger toilet up for auction on eBay last year). Online bidding has already begun and looks competitive. The live auction happens in New York on Thursday of this week.

Coming up this Friday, Dec. 2, at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia is a symposium on decorated commercial bindings (such as the beauty seen here designed by Margaret Armstrong for Scribner's in 1912). Our own Richard Minsky is one of three speakers at the symposium, along with Barbara Hebard of the North Bennet Street School of Bookbinding and Susan J. Isaacs of the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.
Isaacs will also judge the accompanying exhibit of work by book artists who were invited "to explore and respond to book covers from the legacy collections of the Athenaeum" through "one-of-a-kind, artist books, book objects, altered books or zines." The exhibit will remain up through March 9, 2012.

In honor of the holiday upon us, here's a fun look at Thanksgiving past. By the time Grover Cleveland took office, the nation had been celebrating the holiday "officially" for more than twenty years, since Lincoln signed a proclamation in 1863 stating, "I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving." Roosevelt fixed the date into law in 1941. Shown here is Cleveland's signed proclamation, declaring, "I, Grover Cleveland, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate and set apart Thursday the 26th of November instant as a day of public Thanksgiving and prayer, and do invoke the observance of the same by all the people of the land." Every president's official proclamation is housed at the National Archives, but presidents often sign extra copies to be distributed to officials. This is one such copy, currently offered by the Raab Collection in Ardmore, PA, for $9,000.

Raab just sold another Thanksgiving treasure, the first-ever Thanksgiving proclamation by a man holding the title president of the United States, John Hanson, in 1782.

Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving!

There are times when booksellers' catalogues are more like limited editions, and such is the case with Glenn Horowitz's new catalogue, Virginia Woolf: The Flight of Time. And with good reason--this beautiful new catalogue chronicles the superb collection of William B. Beekman that is being offered en bloc for $4.5 million. An exhibition of the collection goes up tomorrow at the Forbes Galleries in New York City and will remain there open to the public until January 14.

The breadth of the collection is certain to appeal to Woolf enthusiasts. Beekman built this collection over forty years, and the highlights include an early, apparently unpublished photograph of thirteen-year-old Virginia, many of her letters, two unpublished poems by Vita Sackville-West written for Woolf ("Your darkened windowns numb my darkened heart" is intriguing...), plus inscribed editions of the books she wrote and published and books from her own library. Vanessa Bell's preliminary sketch for the 1930 limited edition of Woolf's On Being Ill, is particularly interesting to see, as is the dedication copy of The Village in the Jungle, from Leonard to Virginia.

The 134-page catalogue was printed in a limited trade edition of 500, featuring photography by David Levinthal. Twenty-five deluxe editions are specially slipcased with a signed print by David Levinthal. Levinthal's prints are delightful historical tableaux. For example, a setting of doll furniture with the Complete Catalogue of the Hogarth Press or Woolf's passport photograph against a black background with a old-fashioned camera in the distance.

Tonight at my local Barnes & Noble, book artist, author, and FB&C columnist Richard Minsky did a talk/signing for his new book, The Book Art of Richard Minsky. As one of the five books we highlighted in our holiday gift guide this year, you may already be aware of this stunning new retrospective of Minsky's book art, which is available in a trade edition from your local bookseller or a limited slipcase edition direct from Richard. But those were not the only books on display while Richard shared some stories of his bookmaking. There was also the Barnes & Noble 2012 Desk Diary (day planner, calendar, whatever you call it) featuring the American decorated bindings that Richard has been researching, collecting, cataloguing, selling, and celebrating for years. (He chronicled many of them in his 2010 book, The Art of American Book Covers: 1875-1930.) There is a hardcover version of the Desk Diary, which comes in its own box, and two faux leather softcover versions, all of which are beautiful for those of you who, like me, still keep a written calendar. And, at under $20, the price is perfect for gift giving.

Richard showed some images from each of his books, read a short entry on how he designed his first unique binding, and talked about what he looks for in great book art, or fine art to be more broad. "Material, image, and metaphor," must all be in balance, he said. When asked about what he finds interesting in commercial publishing, he cited the ingenuity of pop-ups and moveable books and a revival of stamped covers, such as can be seen in B&N's redesigned "classics." Some new Penguin hardcover classics also have stamped cloth covers (designed by the awesome Coralie Bickford-Smith) as do recent bestselling children's books like The Dangerous Book for Boys (U.S., 2007). If we are trending away from jackets and back to decorated cloth, we'll have Richard Minsky to thank.

A Message from the Authors Guild...

Are any of the books in Amazon's new e-book subscription/lending program properly there?

Earlier this month, Amazon launched its Kindle Online Lending Library as a perk for its best group of customers, the millions who've paid $79 per year to join Amazon Prime and get free delivery of their Amazon purchases. Under the Lending Library program, Amazon Prime members are allowed to download for free onto their Kindles any of more than 5,000 books. Customers are limited to one book per month and one book at a time--when a new book is downloaded, the old one disappears from the Kindle.

The program has caused quite a stir in the publishing industry, for good reason (as you'll see).

First, let's look at how books from some major U.S. trade publishers wound up on the Lending Library list.

The British Library's new exhibit, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, showcases the library's incredible collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. The 154 colorful and gilded books on exhibit were made for and owned by England's kings and queens between the ninth and the sixteenth centuries.

Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh had a private viewing just before Friday's opening. And what did QE2 fancy? According to the BBC:

Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., Doyle NY will auction the Fath collection of prints, books, and autographs. Creekmore Fath was a Texas lawyer and politician who served in the FDR administration and made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. His collection is particularly strong in the work of Thomas Hart Benton; it is the largest private collection outside the artist's family and contains all but five known Benton prints. In an exhibition catalogue for a selection of his prints, Fath once wrote, "The desire to collect, and the pleasure derived from each acquisition, are as exciting and compelling as passionate love."

Prints by other American regionalists, such as Grant Wood, George Bellows, and John Steuart Curry (and the Mexican social realists they were inspired by), as well as a rare book library of Americana, presidential biography, modern literature, and illustrated books round out the 268-lot sale. See the entire catalogue here. Below is a visual preview of some highlights.

As if you needed a good reason to travel to Toronto, its International Antiquarian Book Fair is coming up this weekend. From Friday Oct. 28 through Sunday Oct. 30, nearly fifty booksellers will fill the Metro Toronto Convention Centre with an amazing selection of collectible books, manuscripts, maps, and ephemera. Here are a few items to look out for.

It cannot escape notice that there's a bounteous crop of literary-inspired films coming to theaters this fall. Get out your popcorn--here's a preview.  

Anonymous is a film that proclaims that Shakespeare didn't write anything, and Edward deVere is the true author of what we've come to know as the Shakespearean canon. This idea is, of course, not without controversy. In the New York Times earlier this week, James Shapiro, author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, wrote of the film: "The most troubling thing about "Anonymous" is not that it turns Shakespeare into an illiterate money-grubber. It's not even that England's virgin Queen Elizabeth is turned into a wantonly promiscuous woman who is revealed to be both the lover and mother of de Vere. Rather, it's that in making the case for de Vere, the film turns great plays into propaganda."

On Thursday of this week Sotheby's NY will hold the second part of its incredible sale of the library of an English Bibliophile. Judging from the list, this English bibliophile was quite the collector of the high points of American literature. Several of the lots estimated in the six-figure range* are American first editions, including:

The Veil, Julie Chen. Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 2002. Athenaeum purchase, John Bromfield Fund, 2003.

Artists' Books: Books by Artists opens today at the Boston Athenæum's Norma Jean Calderwood Gallery.

Selected and organized by Stanley Ellis Cushing, curator of rare books and manuscripts, this is the first public display drawn entirely from the Boston Athenæum's artists' book collection. The work of Russell Maret, Laura Davidson, Donald Glaister, and Xu Bing are among those on display, as well as those pictured here and more.

In a press release, Cushing was quoted: "It's a fun show, a fun collection. If you like books, I think it's going to be irresistible. I want it to appeal, I want to surprise people. They don't know they like artists' books yet."

Browse more books here. The exhibit runs through March 3, 2012. If you're in Boston for the book fairs next month, don't miss it!

There seems to be a lot of media coverage of book anniversaries this past week. Perhaps closest to my heart is the fiftieth anniversary of Catch-22 this week. This novel is easily in my top ten. When I worked in the book publishing business in the late nineties, I supervised a "classic edition" of it, which afforded me the great honor of corresponding with Heller a few times. The reprint itself is nothing special--a hardcover with deckled edges, and the dust jacket features a serial design--but my personal copy is warmly inscribed to me from Heller. Can't beat that.

The Phantom Tollbooth is also celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, as anyone who has read our fall feature, "Fe Fi Fo Feiffer," will know. There's a new 50th anniversary edition out, as well as an Annotated Phantom Tollbooth by Leonard S. Marcus, who wrote our feature. In this week's New Yorker, Adam Gopnik spends some time with Jules Feiffer and Norton Juster to talk about their collaboration fifty years later.

Art Spiegelman's Maus is about to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary (it was originally published in two parts, one in 1986, the other in 1991*), and his new book, MetaMaus, is making headlines. It's an analysis of Maus, its format, and its history. Publishers Weekly has a great interview with Spiegelman about the intersection of books, art, and technology. In it Spiegelman says, "...while bookstores are all in a tizzy, one of the more lively and alive sections is the so-called "graphic novel" section, because those are harder to replace." Dead on.

*A previous version of this article misidentified the date of the first publication of Maus as 1992. That was the year it won the Pulitzer Prize. --Ed.

It's no secret that children's picture book art and illustration is a growing trend both at auctions and in museums. The cover feature of our fall issue (making its way to your mailbox this week) is about cartoonist, artist, and playwright Jules Feiffer, who illustrated The Phantom Tollbooth fifty years ago and has been focused on children's book illustrations for the last decade or so. It so happens that an exhibit of this part of his artistic life opens later this month at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The curator, Leonard S. Marcus, a children's book historian who also wrote our cover story, is very interested in this cultural reappraisal of comics art and children's illustration.

In fact, he just curated another exhibit, Storied City: New York in Picture Book Art, which opened yesterday at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY. Storied City showcases original art from more than thirty-five picture books and examines the city's iconic landmarks, neighborhoods, parks, and modes of transportation. The featured illustrators include seven Caldecott Medal winners and several artists long associated with The New Yorker magazine.

Guest Blog by James Thomas, Jr., collector and bookseller at Every Other Book in Ft. Wayne, IN.

Have you seen the recent Kindle commercials? In one commercial, you see a young woman reading a traditional book, and in the other she's carrying a large bag on her way to shop for books. In both commercials a young man shows her the advantages of the Kindle. Not to be outdone, she tells him the advantages of the traditional book--things like being able to bend page corners to mark her place, or lug around a heavy bag of books! Now, those of us viewing one of these commercials probably get a laugh from this, but the young man in the commercial doesn't. Being the calm, rational type, which is the point really, he remains silent until the young woman realizes the absurdity of her preference for traditional books. In one commercial, she drops her book bag, grabs her friend's Kindle, and starts to read it like it was her own.

The commercials are simple and direct (with a subtle touch of "dumb blond" humor), and the obvious message is that the smart people forget real books and switch to e-book devices. After all, who wouldn't be impressed by their capacity to download and store hundreds of titles, and their ability to adjust print size? And of course, traveling with e-books is so convenient and light. Yes, the advantages are undeniable to any reasonable person, but is there something to be said for real books? I believe there is, and it has nothing to do with bending page corners.

How do you handle your rare books and collections? Like Harvard, of course.

Own a piece of New York's famous restaurant, Elaine's, by bidding this Tuesday at Doyle NY's auction of the estate of Elaine Kaufman. There are 250 lots of books, art, and restaurant memorabilia, such as the bar stools, barware, and yes, the entire table-and-chair set of Table One (seen above; estimate $400-$600). Regulars will recognize some items, while others were privately held in Kaufman's penthouse apartment.

Kaufman's art collection is impressive. The Andy Warhol print seen above is a signed 1956 lithograph of a shoe and long (estimate $10,000-$15,000). There's another Warhol print, a David Hockney etching, a photographic collage by Wallace Berman, and a watercolor by Reginald Marsh. Kaufman also owned several French Art Nouveau posters; works by both Alphonse Mucha and Toulouse-Lautrec are on the block.

This 59" x 48" framed poster is an enlarged dust jacket from A.E. Hotchner's Everyone Comes to Elaine's (estimate $100-$150). In books, an oversized folio of Helmut Newton's Sumo (Taschen, 1999) on a stand designed by Phillipe Starck leads the lots (estimate $3,000-$5,000). Avedon's Autobiography (estimate $150-$250) and Warhol's Exposures (estimate $800-$1200) are highlights. Then there are several lots of books, grouped by subject, such as Fashion, Food, and Hollywood, many of them inscribed, and several lots of "Signed Books" together with associated framed dust jackets. These books don't seem terribly special until you peek at the photos -- the signatures are not mere scribbled names, the inscriptions are long and personalized in many cases.

Looks like a fun auction for art collectors, book collectors, foodies, and New York-ophiles. Bon Appetit!

Watch and listen as artist Werner Pfeiffer constructs and discusses Out of the Sky: 9/11, his World Trade Center artist's book/ sculpture. A beautiful work. If you are in/around Princeton, NJ, next weekend, a discussion and reception with Pfeiffer will take place on Saturday, September 17, 2011, at 3:00 in the Chancellor Green Rotunda on the Princeton campus.

Next week Heritage Auctions will sell the Jerry Weist Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy Art and Books. Fans of Wells, Lovecraft, Asimov, Clarke, Dick -- rejoice! This incredibly broad and deep collection has complete runs from nearly every publisher in the genre, high-grade pulp magazines, comic books, sci-fi movie posters, and early fanzines.

This All-Story from October 1912 is a highly coveted item, as it is the first appearance of Tarzan. Edgar Rice Burroughs had only published one story prior to this one, and that under an pseudonym. The cover was designed by Clinton Pettee. The estimate of $8,000-$12,000 reflects some minor condition issues.

This framed and signed oil on board by Frank Frazetta graced the cover of Ray Bradbury's 1966 paperback Tomorrow Midnight. Franzetta is considered "the greatest fantasy artist of all time." The estimate is $40,000-$60,000.

Weist, who died earlier this year, was the type of enthusiastic, active collector who sought not only books and art, but relationships with authors, artists, and other collectors. In HA's newsletter, rare books manager Joe Fay described a unique feature on many of Weist's books -- when Weist asked authors to sign books for him, he asked that they draw an outline of their hand and then sign inside the outline.

This first edition of Philip K. Dick's Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975) shows the unique signature. So says the catalogue: "Interestingly, Dick was the only author to question Jerry Weist's habit of asking authors to sign books with their handprints. True to form, Dick thought it was a government conspiracy." The estimate is $400-$600, although it looks like the online bidding has already pushed it to $2,200 with five more days to go.

The auction will be held on Sept. 12 in Beverly Hills, CA. The full catalogue is here: http://historical.ha.com/common/auction/catalog.php?SaleNo=606.

Images courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

An exhibit called Sin & the City: William Hogarth's London will open at Princeton University's Firestone Library on Friday. Celebrating the work of this eighteenth-century painter and printmaker, the exhibition will prompt a "midnight modern conversation," a gallery tour, and a musical evening later in the fall, and the exhibit will remain up through January.


One really neat aspect of the exhibit's preparation so far is the creation of a website that mapped the eighteenth-century London sites depicted in Hogarth's prints. Not only is it a remarkable online component to the exhibit, but an example of how an application like Google Maps can inform book history. Brilliant! Here's a snapshot:

Nick Basbanes, our columnist-in-chief, will be talking with Diane Rehm this Wednesday. It's a Reader's Review panel, and they'll be discussing the bestselling (and bookish) novel (about to turn film), The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. A thoroughly enjoyable read, in my opinion. Peter Reid of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and NPR books correspondent Lynn Neary will also join the panel. Should be great fun to listen -- check your local stations and tune in!

If you're off to Italy this fall or just thinking about it, there are two events to put on your itinerary. The 8th Annual Artelibro Art Book Festival will be held September 22-25 in Bologna. Antiquarian booksellers, contemporary publishers and printers, artists, and collectors gather here to celebrate the art of the book with lectures, special events, and, of course, opportunities to buy. It sounds like a dream vacation. Last year, Artelibro attracted 55,000 attendees.

The theme of the 2011 fair is archaeology/archaeologies. To read more about this year's specific events and dealers, go here: http://www.artelibro.it/en/introduction/

Stay on in Italy for an extra week or so to attend the 27th Florence International Antiques Fair (a.k.a. the Florence Biennale), which will be held October 1-9 this year at the Palazzo Corcini. Not only is it one of the most important art exhibitions in the world, about ninety dealers will be on hand with fine art, antiques, and books.

The French gallery, Les Enluminures, will be celebrating its twentieth anniversary by participating in the Biennale for the first time. One very special item they will show is a 'Gradual,' an illuminated choir book in Latin (pictured above, courtesy of Les Enluminures) in its original binding, metal hardware, and leather decoration from the Olivetan monastery where it was made and used. Les Enluminures also plans to bring manuscript leaves and cuttings, miniatures, paintings, and a thirteenth-century signet ring.

Then, you can go see David!

On Tuesday of this week, this tattered copy of Edgar Allan Poe is expected to sell for more than $20,000 at a Leslie Hindman Auctioneers sale in Chicago. Why so pricey, you ask? Provenance. It was owned by celebrated Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, whose artsy marginalia fills the book. So proclaims the catalogue, "The inscriptions and collages in Kahlo's personal copy of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe form an extraordinary record of the artist's creative process in addition to revealing an important literary influence of her work. The item demands further study of Frida Kahlo's motivations, her selection of specific works, and the pointed references to her relationship with Diego Rivera."

The other block-buster (pun intended) is a three-volume folio edition of History of the Indian Tribes of North America with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs Embellished with One Hundred and Twenty Portraits. From the Indian Gallery in the Department of War, at Washington. It is estimate at $30,000-$40,000.

The selection for this LH sale is broad. There is so much here for the collector who doesn't mind spending a few hours with the catalogue, for he or she will surely find something of personal interest: a hand-colored Merian engraving (from ... Insectorum Surinamensium), several lots of incunable leaves, also single leaves from the First Folio, several lots of medical books from the Collection of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, some Civil War material, a first edition of Naked Lunch, fine bindings, works on paper, some basketball memorabilia, and coins! Should be an exciting sale.

Photos courtesy of Leslie Hindman. 

...Without support from governments, NGOs, or foundations, the English-born, Vermont-based writer Tim Brookes has been documenting this heritage in a unique way, carving specimens on local curly maple in his Endangered Alphabets Project. Every research library may have one or more reference books of world alphabet specimens, but wood carving presents texts in what is literally a new light...[read more]

Intrigued, I visited the Endangered Alphabets site. It is a singularly awesome project that consists of fourteen 18" x 12" slabs of Vermont maple onto which endangered alphabets (Manchu, Samaritan, Syriac, etc.) are carved and painted. These art objects have been on exhibit at several universities and colleges over the past year and are available for future exhibitions. Mr. Brookes has also published a book that acts as a catalogue to the exhibition. You can read an excerpt here; and buy one here.

He is now working on an Endangered Poem Project, and the coming attractions look very cool.

This Wednesday Swann Galleries will hold a two-session auction of vintage posters that are truly fun to look at, which is why a handful of interesting examples are in order. The sale opens with American turn-of-the-century literary posters, including magazine cover art for Harper's, Scribner's, Collier's, and Lippincott's, and moves on to summer resort and travel posters, WWI and WWII propaganda posters, Russian prop art, circus posters, and advertising art. The vibrant colors, the classic graphic design, the embedded cultural history--all make these vintage posters something worth seeing. And a few Henri de Toulouse-Lautrecs too!

A collector of late nineteenth-century novels? This poster for Lippincott's Series of Select Novels by Will Carqueville would be an excellent addition to your library. The estimate is $400-$600.

A poster of a Harper's cover from February 1898 of a man reading with his attendant literary cat? An awesome buy. Designed by Edward Penfield, whose work is represented throughout the auction. The estimate is $1,200-$1,800.

One of several in the auction by James Montgomery Flagg, this is the one we all know and love (we love it, right?). I Want You for U.S. Army, 1917. The estimate is $6,000-$9,000.

A handful of circus posters by designers unknown from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey are on the block. This one is Dainty Miss Leitzel from 1918/The Strobridge Litho. Co. The estimate is $1,500-$2,000.

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share this lovely reading lady by Sadie Wendell Mitchell, 1909. The estimate is $400-$600.

And, of course, the classic Art Nouveau ad art of Alphonse Mucha is not to be missed. Here's one of his Job Cigarette ads from 1898. The estimate is $8,000-$12,000.

I have always been enamored with the Roycrofters--that very late nineteenth and early twentieth-century guild of artisans in upstate NY named after the seventeenth-century printers Samuel and Thomas Roycroft of London. Heavily influenced by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, Elbert Hubbard founded the guild and formed a community of printers, bookbinders, furniture makers, and other craftsmen. He also set up a private press, the Roycroft Press.

This week at PBA Galleries' Thursday auction of "fine books in all fields" and "fine literature," several Roycrofter titles are looking for buyers. The most elaborate of which is the 1900 title, So Here Then is the Last Ride (seen below). It's one of twenty-five copies on vellum, finely bound, and the estimate is $1,200-$1,800).

Hollyhocks and Goldenglow from 1912 is plainer to the eye, but it's original blindstamped brown leather shows its true colors (below). This one is signed by Hubbard, and its estimate is $200-$300.

A Message to Garcia and Thirteen Other Things from 1901 is in its original tan leather and contains two leaves of original manuscript from Hubbard's essay, "Art That Wins." Seen here below and estimated at $500-$800.

A few others are also on the block -- So This Then is the Essay on Self-Reliance (1902) for $400-$600, Justinian and Theodora: A Drama (1906) for $700-$1,000, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1900) for $200-$300, and Will O' The Mill (1901) for $400-$600.

The great papermaker and printer Dard Hunter got his start with the Roycrofters. As Dard Hunter III told FB&C last year, his grandfather applied for a position with Hubbard in 1904:

"He didn't get the job, but he showed up at the compound anyway and was brought into the colony," said Hunter III. Soon, Hunter was designing and making stained glass windows and creating title pages for the Roycroft Press in East Aurora, New York. He also provided all Roycroft products with a unified look--branding the group with a visual identity. While with the community, Hunter also fell in love with and married Edith Cornell, the Roycrofters' concert pianist. [...Read More]

*All photos courtesy of PBA Galleries.

Margaret Atwood, take note. Your LongPen has nothing on Amazon's Kindlegraph, a service which allows authors to "sign" e-books. As Paul Carr of Tech Crunch wrote last week, "Yeah. Ok. So it's not quite the same as having an author sign your physical copy of his or her book."

The technology is cool, and I'd even agree that the way in which it connects author and reader so easily and so broadly might make for interesting study one day, but it also strikes me as lazy and anti-social. The book-signing process is one that brings authors, readers, and fellow readers together under one roof to celebrate the writer, the reader, the book, literature in general. Does it really mean much if a writer sitting in his London home can scratch off a "To Rebecca, With my best wishes" on a digital file that will magically appear on my (theoretical) Kindle whilst I am still sleeping in NY?

To see a demonstration, go here.

Through September 10, The Center for Book Arts in New York City has an exhibition titled Multiple, Limited, Unique: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Center for Book Arts. It showcases the work of book artists, who, over the past forty years, have exhibited, trained, or worked at CBA.  

The exhibition, which opened earlier this month, is the culmination of a three-year Collections Initiative headed by executive director Alexander Campos. The goal of the Collections Initiative was to organize, rehouse, catalogue, and digitize what has accumulated over the past four decades -- e.g., art, books, exhibition catalogues. Campos, collections specialist Jen Larson, and several artists will have a public discussion in concert with the exhibition this Wednesday, July 20.

"We've been collecting unofficially," Campos told me last week, and the result was "piles and random boxes without any order or rhyme or reason." The boxes were often referred to as the center's "archives," but much of what was there was art donated by past students, teachers, supporters, or exhibitors. "In order to safeguard and care for them," Campos decided, "we really needed to call it a collection and change our mentality."


So the CBA solicited funds from government agencies and private foundations to complete a three-year plan to document and digitize the collection, which was catalogued into three separate sections: fine arts collection, containing "objects -- from fine press to offset;" a reference collection, containing a library of how-to books on paper, typography, printing, and binding technique; and the institutional archives, containing exhibition catalogues and institutional ephemera.

The resulting exhibition--which will travel to Savannah College of Arts and Design (Fall 2011), Minnesota Center for Book Arts (Winter 2012), Museum of Printing History (Spring/Summer 2012), Lafayette College (Fall 2012), and the Book Club of California (Winter 2013)--and the web portal: http://www.centerforbookarts.dreamhosters.com/ are the products of this impressive initiative. As Campos told me, the project was about making these items accessible and following through with the Center's goal as a teaching agency.

Click through to the fuller listing here.

Have you heard about or seen the new little flipback books? If you're in the U.S., chances are your answer is no. I read about these iphone-sized flipbacks on Jeremy Dibbell's blog late last month and went directly to Amazon UK to order one for myself. Here is Jeremy's description of the book's format: "The construction of the flipbacks (sewn binding, with the front board and spine unattached to the backstrip) permits them to open fully (handy, I've found, for reading while eating), and the light weight makes it very easy to hold the book with with one hand. They're printed on very thin Indoprint 'Bible paper' (which certainly helps keep the weight down), and typeset in what seems to be a Karmina Sans font. That took a bit of getting used to, but after about twenty pages or so I barely noticed. Flipping the pages upward instead of sideways also was a little disorienting at first, but again I didn't even notice after a few minutes."

Hodder & Stoughton has twelve to choose from (a nice little collection...); I went for the Jaspar Fforde title, Shades of Grey. I'm looking forward to reading this mini-book, if only because while reading in bed, my hands tend to fall asleep before I do!

You can read more about flipbacks in the Guardian or the LibraryThing newsletter, where Jeremy has a Q&A with flipback publisher Kate Parkin. 

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, always has exciting events, exhibits, classes, and family programs going on. Over the next few days, however, there are a few certain to interest bibliophiles, whether you collect children's lit or not. One happens this Sunday the 10th, when world-renowned illustrator and printmaker Barry Moser drops by to 'talk about words and pictures.' A book signing will follow.

Then, on Friday the 15th, Eric Carle himself will host a special presentation and reception in honor of Leo Lionni. Carle will unveil the late author-illustrator's bronze sculpture, Imaginary Garden. The following day, Carle will be at the museum for his annual book-signing visit. (I attended this event four years ago. Yes, you will wait in a long line, but yes, you will also meet the legendary Mr. Carle and get your books signed!)

For more information, check out the events page at the Carle.

Just in time for Independence Day, artist and co-founder of the Booklyn Artists Alliance Mark Wagner opens an exhibit tonight titled Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. Wagner's collage art explores the intersection of art and politics, and he often uses dollar bills as art supplies (called "currency collage"). His monumental 17' x 6' collage, Liberty, (part of it seen above) is an altered Statue of Liberty composed of 81,895 pieces cut from 1,121 US dollar bills. For the current exhibition, Wagner actually built a custom viewing platform that allows for closer examination.  

According to the press release, "Wagner continues to insert his particular brand of word play and satire in everything he touches, proving that a seemingly limited material - the dollar bill - is for him limitless." Considering the economic climate--and with Wall Street just about three miles south--Wagner's ability to impact his viewers is magnified.

Thirty of Wagner's recent works in letterpress, wood and bronze sculpture, abstract painting, and mixed media collage round out the exhibit. Below are a few pieces on exhibit, a vivid and compelling group of works.


Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death is at the Pavel Zoubok Gallery in downtown Manhattan through August 12.

Beginning tomorrow, the Designer Bookbinders, a UK-based group of artists devoted to spreading the word about hand-bookbinding, goes on tour. This is the group's first major tour in years, and it opens at the Sophie Schneideman Gallery in London. The exhibition will remain there until July 23, after which it will travel for an entire year--to The Hull History Centre (Aug. 5-Sept. 16), the Dean Clough Galleries in Halifax (Oct. 22-Jan. 15, 2012), Newcastle City Library (Jan. 20, 2012-March 23, 2012), the Bodleian Library (March 31, 2012-May 27, 2012) and finally to the John Rylands Library in Manchester from June 29, 2012-July 27, 2012).

According to the DB catalogue, "The venues represent some of the best contemporary exhibition spaces available today and we are delighted to be able to bring modern design bookbinding to a new audience, many of whom will be discovering the medium for the first time. The show aims to represent the current state of British bookbinding and includes bindings by some of the most respected practitioners working today. For over fifty years, their constant pushing of the boundaries of technique and craftsmanship has laid the foundations for what can all too easily be taken for granted today."

Here is a sampling of some of the beautiful bindings on display.

Stuart Brockman's vivid Oxford shows the view of the spires of Oxford from South Park in spring. The covering is full transparent vellum over watercolor painting, with black goatskin onlays, gold tooling, lettering, and edges. This binding has a dreamy fairytale quality to it.

Lester Capon's The Shepheards Calendar is a stunningly rich and vibrant design, bound in full blue goatskin with multi-colored calf and goatskin onlays and tooled in blind and gold with gold lettering. Inside is a 1930 edition of Edmund Spenser's poem, with illustrations by John Nash.

Jenni Grey's New York Revisited caught my eye first because it is lovely, and second because the summer issue of FB&C contains an extensive Q&A with Gaylord Schanilec, the wood engraver whose work is bound here in Grey's limp suede. The book is further enclosed in a box made of padouk wood with brass fixtures and name plate.

Lori Sauer has several pieces in the exhibit, and her Shaman: Anthropomorphic Figures in North American Rock Art is book, art, and object combined. She bound this limited edition miniature in suede with a separate handmade folder containing a map, all of which is placed within a beaded suede bag.

The full catalogue is viewable here.

In New Orleans this weekend at Neal Auction Company, Arader Galleries is auctioning several lots of nature prints, books, and maps for charitable causes. As Graham Arader posted earlier this month on his blog:

On anything that you buy in this sale I will give 20% of the hammer price to the charity of your choice. Over $2,000,000 has been raised in previous auctions and this sale hopefully will generate $750,000 in charitable contributions!
     This is a sale that includes a spectacular collection of the aquatints of birds by John James Audubon (lot 81 through 146 - all being sold without any reserves.) And then there is the masterpiece of the sale - a complete set of Audubon's Quadrupeds - all 150 of his Imperial Quadrupeds in mint condition in three volumes.
      Then there will be some single examples of his Imperial sized lithographs of Quadrupeds (lots 155 through 166 - again NO reserves). There also are fine examples of the complete works of John Goulds Hummingbirds (lot 167,) Birds of Great Britain (lot 173) and Birds of Europe (lot 174.)...

What else? Check out the full catalogue here.

I have a secret admirer. Recently I received a copy of the Folger Library's new exhibition catalogue, Foliomania: Stories Behind Shakespeare's Most Important Book, without a note or any accompanying information. It is an impressive volume -- and what is immediately striking is the fact that its format and layout mirrors the First Folio. The colophon confirms this and describes the type, the design, the paper, and the binding. This is one example of how thoughtful editor Owen Williams has been in creating this catalogue.

The catalogue accompanies the Folger's new exhibit, Fame, Fortune, and Theft: The Shakespeare First Folio (open though Sept. 3 of this year). As Folger Shakespeare Librarian Stephen Enniss writes in the foreword, the exhibit takes up where the 1991 folio exhibit left off and reminds us, "what this iconic book has meant to readers over the years." Eighty-three First Folios are on exhibit (82 owned by the Folger, plus one private copy), "the most ever assembled in one place since their original dispersal from Jaggards' print shop."

Anthony James West, curator of the exhibit, provides a wonderful overview of the exhibit and the catalogue. He explains briefly what each essay covers -- one on the paper by Carter Hailey, one on bindings by Frank Mowery (with great images), one on type by Paul Werstine, one of the Droeshout Portrait of Shakespeare by Erin C. Blake and Kathleen Lynch. Steven Galbraith gives a brief history of the First Folio and the Folger Library -- one of the images that accompanies his essay shows the Folger's First Folio vault, practical and yet amazing to behold. West offers an essay on Constantine Huygens' copy of the FF, Steven Escar Smith covers the Shakespeare collections of William Evans Burton and Edwin Forrest, and Don Weingust looks at the FF as an actors' text. If I had to choose a favorite essay, though, it would be Georgianna Ziegler's essay on "Gentleman, Ladies, and Folios: The Lure of the Chase." It details the relationships between Folio collectors, particularly between Mr. and Mrs. Folger, the Halliwell-Phillipps family, and the Burdett-Coutts family. The catalogue ends with an excellent glossary of early printing and Shakespearean terms (e.g., collation, King's Men, vatman).

All together, this seems less like an exhibition catalogue than a 72-page, well-illustrated book of essays about the First Folio by the foremost experts in the field. The price is $24.95 at the Folger shop; I say take money out of thy purse for this one. 

Bonhams New York has two exciting sales coming up tomorrow -- Fine Books & Manuscripts, and then a double sale containing The Golden Age of Illustration Art and Modern Illustration Art. There's no way to do them justice here, so I picked just one amazing item to highlight: Melville's travel desk. A mahogany lap desk, it has brass handles and a velvet lining, and it contains an agate snuff box, two small pen knives, a glass inkwell, a pair of tweezers, a glass seal ("EMM" for E M Marrett, a relation who owned the desk before Herman), and a mother-of-pearl pen. Under the lid are two small mounted sheets inscribed, "Our Box at the Post Office is 1162" and "Herman Melville / 104 East 26th St / New York." And yes, there are three secret drawers! How cool is that. The estimate is $20,000-$30,000, and you can even throw in a first edition of Moby Dick for another $15,000-$25,000.  

Photos courtesy of Bonhams.

Some big news from the NYPL late last week -- it purchased over three hundred boxes of material belonging to psychologist and author Timothy Leary, who advocated the use of  "psychedelic substances to promote psychological well-being, increased creativity, and spiritual renewal" for a trippy $900,000. The archive contains letters, manuscripts, photographs, video and audio tapes, posters and flyers, Harvard research notes, government documents, and more, dating from the 1920s to his death in 1997. Allen Ginsburg, Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey (and G. Gordon Liddy!) -- they're all here. Read more about the acquisition in the New York Times and the New Yorker.

On Saturday, Morphy Auctions of Denver, Pennsylvania, is holding a 900-lot antique advertising sale, featuring the collection of the Gotham Cigar Museum of Tampa, Florida.

"It's amazing how many different types of cigar-related items are sought after by collectors. This premier collection traces to the early days of the cigar industry in America and includes everything from cigar boxes to hand-painted cases to beautiful die-cuts and figural advertising pieces," said Dan Morphy, owner of Morphy Auctions.

Take a look at some of the eye-catching items up for grabs.


Photos courtesy of Morphy's.

A loving look at designer Herbert Bayer's World Geographic Atlas (1953), the first in a series just posted by Nate Burgos, who writes on his Vimeo page, "This series is about the timeless character of books. Their message and what they look like are what is celebrated here. As our culture becomes digital in a lot of ways, it is all the more important (not to mention inviting) to revisit and learn from the early design challenges, creative solutions and general lessons that the 'old' print world keeps relevant."

Watch, and then stay tuned!

Rare Book Feast #1: Herbert Bayer's Book of Maps from Nate Burgos on Vimeo.

Book artist (and FB&C columnist) Richard Minsky announced today that his Third Exhibition of American Decorated Publishers' Bindings is being acquired by the Boston Athenaeum. The books will be available for study in the Arthur & Charlotte Vershbow Special Collections Room once they have been entered into the Athenaeum's system. He wrote today:

The three exhibitions in this series together have presented 1,100 cataloged designs, plus many variants, with 141 identified cover artists. All the original books will be available to researchers, with geographic diversity. The first exhibition is now available for study at the University of Alabama's W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library:
http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/gallery/minsky.html

The second exhibition is at the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington. It has not yet been integrated into IUCAT, and will be available when that is completed.

Institutional libraries often have hundreds of these books, still in circulating stacks. One use that librarians are making of the data file on the CD-ROM that comes with each catalog is to run a comparison with the library catalog for an automated search of these books in their collections. They then can be removed from circulation to preserve them, and can be the basis for an exhibition that will be of interest to Friends of the Library and the outreach community.

If you do not have the catalogs, there may be an institution near you that does: There is a fairly complete list at http://minsky.com/orderform-subscription1.htm#collections.

A quick post today, as I point you instead to reading Brewster Kahle's blog post, "Why Preserve Books? The New Physical Archive of the Internet Archive."

Books are being thrown away, or sometimes packed away, as digitized versions become more available. This is an important time to plan carefully for there is much at stake. ...

Two of the most famous early printed books will be in the same saleroom this week. At Bonhams Printed Books and Manuscripts sale on Wednesday, a fine first edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle (seen above), printed by Anton Koberger in July of 1493, should be the star of the show. A breathtaking book and one of the first to combine text and illustration, it is a history of the world illustrated by more than 1800 woodcuts. About four hundred of the Latin editions are extant. The estimate is £25,000-30,000 ($40,000-$50,000).

The second big title is the first edition of the King James Bible, which happens to be celebrating its four-hundredth anniversary this year. This copy has some condition issues; still, as a masterpiece of the English language, printed by Robert Barker, it's quite a valuable book. The estimate is £6,000-8,000 ($9,800-13,000). 

I heard about this project over the weekend and thought ye lovers of type and letterpress would be interested. Lead Graffiti is a letterpress shop in Newark, Delaware, that has posted a project on Kickstarter--the web-based funding platform for creative projects. They're hoping to raise a total of $3,400 before July 3rd, and if they do, this is their plan:

We like spontaneous projects, the Tour de France, and excuses to put ink on paper.

Pitting our print race against their bike race, we intend to produce a minimum of 25 portfolios of 23 posters (about 15" x 22") via letterpress, one for each stage of the upcoming Tour de France (Saturday, July 2 through Sunday, July 24) plus its two rest days (they can rest, but we won't). ... 

Want to learn more? Watch this.

The epic book celebrates its 75th this month. Ellen F. Brown, longtime FB&C columnist and co-author of the recently published Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, was interviewed on CBS News today about the anniversary as well as the manuscript she found during her research. Congratulations, Ellen!

 Watch it here:

To read our review of the book & an exclusive excerpt, turn back to our February issue.

Thursday is auction day at PBA, and a big one is coming up one week from today. On Thursday, June 2, PBA Galleries in San Francisco is auctioning the Ross Runfola collection of Charles Bukowski and his circle, what PBA calls, "Undoubtedly the finest collection of works by Charles Bukowski ever to appear at auction."

The auction is broken down into six sections:
Section I: Books, Broadsides & other Printed Material by Bukowski, Lots
1-141
Section II: Original Art by Bukowski, Lots 142-157
Section III: Manuscript Poems & Stories by Bukowski, Lots 158-237
Section IV: Letters from Bukowski, Lots 237-276
Section V: Books about Bukowski, Bibliographies, Ephemera, Periodicals,
etc., Lots 277-325
Section VI: Books & Art by other Authors & Artists, Lots 326-343

Certainly the rarity seen above will draw attention. This original oil painting of a man in a bow-tie signed "Buk" is tipped-in to a 1982 limited edition of Ham on Rye, published by Black Sparrow Press. Estimate: $3,000-5,000.

The first story Charles Bukowski ever published is here in the legendary Story Magazine. "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip" appeared in the March-April 1944 issue, and this copy, though sunned and slightly rubbed, is as fine as they come. Estimate $3,000-5000.

7 Flowers Press published 103 copies of Bukowski's The Genius of the Crowd in 1966, but many were confiscated by the Cleveland Police Department. Called "a cornerstone piece of any collection," it seems no copy has sold at auction since at least 1975. Estimate $6,000-9,000.

A special deluxe edition of Bukowski's short story, "Not Quite Bernadette," published by the Graybeard Press in 1990. With nine hand-colored etchings (and two extra of a "more erotic nature" in a hidden compartment...) by James W. Johnson and binding design by Joe D'Ambrosio. Signed by all three. Estimate $4,000-7,000.

View the entire online catalogue.

Want to read more about Bukowski's artwork? Check out our feature from earlier this year on Buk's lost drawings.

All photos Courtesy of PBA Galleries.

Are you one of those people who have always been intrigued by the idea of collecting old and rare books but who doesn't know enough about such things to even know where to start? Are you someone who finds the career of antiquarian bookseller intriguing but mysterious?  Are you someone who really loves books and just wants to know more about them?

Yes? I, too, was, until a few years ago, a person just like you. I've often lamented the fact that there was no major in college for antiquarian books.  Sure, there's the much more general and all encompassing "English" major, but other than teaching one to appreciate and analyze literature and how to write well, it really doesn't do the trick for those of us who love the smell of leather bindings or who want to know about how paper is made and what printing processes were used in the 18th century.

I am a firm subscriber to the belief that it's never too late to learn.  And, as my endeavor to become an antiquarian bookseller proves, indeed it's not. Below are links to various bookish educational programs for all levels of bibliophile, from beginning to experienced:

Do you wish to know about the defining characteristics of individual photographic processes? Being able to identifying such process can help in dating certain items.  Here's a workshop offered by Gawain Weaver.

Gawain Weaver provides, "conservation treatment and consulting services to museums, galleries, collectors, historical societies, libraries, and individuals. Our services range from the treatment of individual fine art prints, to the care of large print and negative collections.

We also offer a range of educational opportunities and products, including workshops, both online and in-person, and historic photographic sample sets."

Looking to travel somewhere in addition to learning about books? Then try the London Rare Book School.  According to their website, "The courses will be taught by internationally renowned scholars associated with the Institute's Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, using the unrivalled library and museum resources of London, including the British Library, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the University of London Research Library Services, and many more. All courses will stress the materiality of the book so you can expect to have close encounters with remarkable books and other artefacts from some of the world's greatest collections."

Smith College offers a new Book Studies Concentration. (Ah, Smith College, where were you when I was an undergraduate?!)

Similarly, St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto in Canada offers either a major or a minor in Book and Media Studies.

And, of course, the California Rare Book School at UCLA has announced its 2011 courses here.

I've written about all the amazing things you can learn at both the California Rare Book School and its counterpart at the University of Virginia many times before.

Last but not least, and maybe the best place to start your education if you plan to enter the antiquarian bookselling trade, is the wonderful Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar.

If you click around on the website of each school, you'll find that many offer scholarship opportunities.

So, if you want to learn more about antiquarian books, what are you waiting for? Bookish educational opportunities abound!

See you in the stacks!

Today the NYPL's iconic Fifth Avenue building turns 100. Did you miss this weekend's stack tours? Last year rare materials cataloger Kathie Coblentz posted this digital tour, a transcript of the tour she gave last year for donors. The pictures are great--perhaps the more so because places like the Information desk and the Reading Room haven't changed all that much. The stacks are depicted here in Scientific American magazine, May 27, 1911.

P.S. Our own Richard Goodman went behind the scenes of the NYPL's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in our spring issue -- you can read his article here.

There is so much going on at the NYPL as it celebrates the centennial of its landmark Fifth Avenue building -- exhibits, stack tours, and perhaps the most interesting, today it launched a book, Know The Past, Find The Future (published by Penguin), that contains photographs of over one hundred New York and US notables, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, actor Stephen Colbert, The Rockettes, John Lithgow, Vampire Weekend, Philip Roth, Jonathan Franzen, and more. (Vampire Weekend?!) Many of the images are accompanied by an essay by that person discussing what manuscript or object they looked at. The book is being distributed FREE on the streets of NYC -- in subway stations, on park benches, at all ninety branch locations. Said Angela Montefinise, the public relations director at the library, "The goal is for the books to be passed on -- someone picks it up, looks at it, leaves it somewhere for someone else to look at it. Sort of a traveling library book." Attempting to get my hands on a copy, dear reader, and then I can tell you more. In the meantime, check out this hourlong slide-show video of NYPL's featured digital collections.

Coming up on Thursday of the week, Christie's sale of Printed & Manuscript Americana in NY has some interesting stories to tell. Why? Because the consignors include historical societies. This is considered a controversial action by some. Back in January, the New Jersey Historical Society took some heat for its consignments to Christie's, and yet here it is again, this time with early American imprints.

The NJHS is selling its "very rare" 1775 folio broadsheet, A declaration by the representatives of the United Colonies of North-America, now met in general Congress at Philadelphia... It is one of the few early documents to enumerate "the causes and necessity of taking up arms." NJHS is hoping for $10,000-15,000 for it. NJHS has consigned the folio broadsheet, The Manual Alphabet for the Deaf and Dumb (Hartford, c. 1840), at an estimate of $1,800-2,500. Other early American imprints from NJHS are also on the block.

NJHS is not alone in its need to sell pieces of its collection to pay debt and/or fund future purchases.

How about a fine "exceptionally fresh copy" of the Declaration of Independence, printed in 1833 by Peter Force from W. J. Stone's 1823 plate. Consigned by the The Historical Society of Montgomery County, PA. Its estimate is $15,000-$20,000.

The Brooklyn Historical Society has consigned several lots of autographs. One is a collection of ten American autographs, late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, including Elbridge Gerry and LaFayette. The catalogue notes that this lot will be "sold to benefit the collections fund." They hope to make $2,000-3,000 on it.

The BHS is also selling a Chang and Eng autograph signed letter, for the low estimate of $600-800, a Henry Clay als for $2,000-3,000, and a printed document with John Hancock's John Hancock for $4,500-6,000.

Any readers want to weigh in on this practice? 

Have you read this month's feature story on H.P. Lovecraft and his beloved city of Providence, Rhode Island? Up until I read it a few months ago, when a freelancer pitched it to me, I didn't know much of anything about Lovecraft. Then I visited the book fairs in New York and saw his name pop up in half a dozen places. Funny how that happens.

For those of you interested in antiquarian Lovecraft material, two great booksellers to start with are those whose material was featured in our article. L.W. Currey, Inc. of Elizabethtown, NY, provided the image of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and he has so much more available in his shop. Bloody Rare Books of Exeter, NH, allowed us to use an image of their copy of "The Shunned House." They too have much more Lovecraft on hand.

Guest Blog by Catherine Batac Walder, a FB&C reader, "cured bookaholic," and blogger who has a question for booksellers and book collectors about ex-library copies

A self-published book-is it worth anything? Maybe something like a copy of Jill Paton Walsh's Knowledge of Angels, one of the first 1000 printed, signed by the author (pictured here with her book). The book was self-published but then later it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. However, if the book is an ex-library copy with a few stamps on it, how much is it really worth?

In 1994 when Knowledge of Angels was published, Ms. Walsh was already a prominent and award-winning children's book author. Rejection after rejection of Angels led Ms. Walsh and her husband to take the self-publishing route. This 'disturbing and beautiful novel of ideas' (Ursula K. Le Guin) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that same year.

I handed a copy of Angels to my husband who inspected it and remarked about the latest book I had bought, "so, someone could nick a book from the library and sell it online?" It was a joke but to be honest, one I never really thought about before. I thought that buying an ex-library copy online would be the same as getting one at the sale that is stamped "discarded." Within two seconds I was Googling ex-library copies on the brink of paranoia. I found very helpful forums with some people assuring others who are reluctant to buy ex-library copies. One seller suggested that if a buyer is really concerned about having bought a book that may not have been discarded, the best thing to do is to contact the library directly and check just to put his mind at ease.

There are indeed used book shops that make money by including in their stock books that had been discarded by libraries. It gets more complicated in the digital age when book browsing is made easy online but the most you can find out about the sellers' reputation are through feedback left by other buyers. Whether online or in person, there is that huge element of trust when buyers deal with some used booksellers. Book lovers who buy books simply to read them do not care whether they're rare books and do not think of the history of the sellers' acquisitions. Others who are keen on first editions but are not necessarily collectors find their copies in used book shops and sales, without knowing how much they're really worth. As a buyer, sometimes I find that the discarded items are those rare hardbound books so I don't really mind paying for those. But is it even legal for bookshops to sell ex-library copies?

The library stamps in this particular copy of Knowledge of Angels were certainly not attractive. Further research on the background of this edition wasn't inspiring, either. One buyer who had bought the same book complained to the seller that the book was in awful condition, with the pages unevenly cut. Now as I held in my hands a copy with its pages having the same "unevenly cut feature," I still knew there was something special about the way the edges had been cut. Never an expert on books, I just assumed that uncommon features in them are what errors are in rare stamps.

Early in April 2011, I went to the Oxford Literary Festival, as I've done these last few years, to attend a P.D. James and Jill Paton Walsh talk. Afterwards I queued up to have two books signed by each author. "Catherine, this copy you've got here..." Jill Paton Walsh began after she had signed my copy of Knowledge of Angels. Around this time I was about to have a heart attack, thoughts of my husband's remarks running through my head, worried about being embarrassed. But I kept saying to myself, nothing to worry, it has two or three library stamps, yes, but just say it's an ex-library copy I had bought online. But before I could say anything she said that it is a very rare book, one of the first 1000 printed. She showed me the distinguishing features such as the way the pages had been roughly cut and the "Green Bay" on the spine. She said, "take care of this book. It is very rare. Another copy (obviously a signed one as well) was sold at £6500."

And so these are questions I would like to throw at experts: how much do library stamps decrease the value of a book? If one's copy of a book is valued and say, someone would like to purchase it, and if it's an ex-library copy, will it be enough to say about the book's provenance, "I bought this book at a charity shop not knowing that it costs so much"?

Photo and text courtesy of Catherine Batac Walder. Thanks for sharing this question with us, I hope some of our readers chime in with an answer. 

For those of you who have read through the FB&C spring issue, you'll have noticed a wonderful article by Suzanne Karr Schmidt, the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. She wrote about her experience curating the current exhibit, Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life. A 112-page exhibition catalogue with 98 illustrations (shown here at left) is now available.

For non-subscribers (shame on you!), here's a snippet from our spring article:

This exhibition--containing over one hundred printed objects and objects with printed components--focuses on how early print owners physically manipulated these ephemeral artworks. As such, it is an unusual theme for a museum show. Books are notoriously difficult to exhibit in this type of setting, and yet they are intrinsically important to the topic at hand. Altered and Adorned therefore includes eleven bound volumes and albums, while at least six of the single-sheet prints were once book illustrations, four others were intended (and in two cases, used) as bookplates, and two remain attached as frontispieces for the books that originally housed them.

As any aficionado of old books might infer, many types of evidence of hands-on treatment endure, for owners routinely annotated prints. They also cut and pasted them everywhere--onto books, boxes, furniture, and walls, and sometimes they went even further and transformed them into three-dimensional objects. ...

Sad news today for typewriter devotees -- according to the Atlantic, the last typewriter factory in the world has shut its doors. From the piece:

With only about 200 machines left -- and most of those in Arabic languages -- Godrej and Boyce shut down its plant in Mumbai, India, today. "Although typewriters became obsolete years ago in the west, they were still common in India -- until recently," according to the Daily Mail, which ran a special story this morning about the typewriters demise. "Demand for the machines has sunk in the last ten years as consumers switch to computers." Secretaries, rejoice.

Nick Basbanes' lament about New York City's Writers Room banning typewriters last year has proved more prescient than we would have liked. 

A few prints by Hungarian photographer Brassai went under the hammer last week at Doyle NY (see our photo essay). Two others will be for sale this upcoming weekend at Stair Galleries in Hudson, NY. Their two-day modern and contemporary art auction features an entire day of photography, and a second day devoted to paintings, prints, and other works of art. Here is a brief sampling:

Back in 2008, I wrote a short article for FB&C on the stellar season of award-winning films that were based on books (it was the year of Atonement, No Country for Old Men, Into the Wild, and others). I asked antiquarian booksellers whether a good film adaptation had any effect on book sales. The consensus seemed to be that only if the film was great would book sales surge. Harvey Jason of Mystery Pier Books in West Hollywood told me at the time that all the movie hype "does help because it brings the title to prominence." But, he added, "it has to be a literary high spot to begin with."

As many of you know, Ayn Rand's conservative classic, Atlas Shrugged, was released into theaters last Friday (Tax Day!). So I was intrigued to see this write-up in Forbes about how the film has already spurred Atlas to the Amazon bestseller list (it is #21 today). In the article, Mark E. Babej writes, "all signs point to the fact that the mere existence of the movie is causing interest in the book to spike to new heights."

Curious about the film? Here's the trailer:

Taking a stab at the empty cultural space for serious book reviews these days, The Los Angeles Review of Books (a digital magazine) debuted--or at least posted a preview of itself--yesterday with a thoughtful and worthwhile (if somewhat ironic) essay on "The Death of the Book" by Ben Ehrenreich. It begins:

Pity the book.  It's dead again.  Last I checked, Googling "death of the book" produced 11.8 million matches.  The day before it was 11.6 milion.  It's getting unseemly.  Books were once such handsome things.  Suddenly they seem clunky,  heavy, almost fleshy in their gross materiality.  Their pages grow brittle.  Their ink fades.  Their spines collapse.  They are so pitiful, they might as well be human. [....More]

Photolucida is a non-profit arts organization that holds what it calls a Portfolio Reviews Festival every other April. The 2011 event begins today, April 14, and runs through Sunday. At this event, gallery owners, curators, critics, collectors, and publishers gather in Portland, Oregon, to review fine-art photography from professional, mid-career artists.

This year, Lauren Henkin, who has produced two photobooks in the last two years, will be giving a talk on Saturday during lunch. The title of her talk is, "Turning Toward Books: Shifting Focus."


In our current (spring) issue, writer Nicole Pasulka took at a look at the strengthening market for artists' photobooks. The recent publication of Publish Your Photography Book by Darius D. Himes & Mary Virginia Swanson is likely to add more muscle. So says the first line of copy on the interior flaps of that book: "We live in the golden age of photography books."  

The American Library Association has declared today to be National Bookmobile Day. How many readers and collectors out there got their start with a bookmobile passing through town? Novelist and book artist Audrey Niffenegger is the honorary chair. She wrote a graphic novel last year called The Night Bookmobile, featuring a mysterious bookmobile that "contains every book she has ever read, from her childhood diary to college textbooks to Gravity's Rainbow, complete with bookmarks."

Another bookmobile to follow today--the gypsy wagon bookmobile belonging to Wandering Book Artists Peter and Donna Thomas.

On Thursday, April 7, Swann Galleries will hold its spring auction of fine books & manuscripts at 104 East 25th Street at 10:30 a.m. A great variety of material in a manageable 136 lots.

A Zaehnsdorf binding of Edmund Spenser's long-form poem, The Faerie Queen, bound here in three volumes, is one lot I'd love to see in person. "Lavishly gilt chestnut brown crushed morocco," boasts the catalogue (est. $4,000-6,000).

And like the Thoreau set for sale at Heritage on Thursday, the 23-volume set of John Burroughs that Swann is offering is another quiet beauty that I'd love to own. A Riverside Press set from 1904-1922, it is one of the 750 sets signed by Burroughs. Neatly bound in red morocco, decorated in gilt, its estimate is $5,000-7,000. Looking further down the lot list, I also spy a ten-volume set of John Muir, with an original leaf in Muir's hand, estimated at $4,000-6,000.

The art of sculptor-designer-printmaker Eric Gill seems to be enjoying extra-special attention these days. (In the past week, I've seen notice of two new limited editions of his work, one from Kat Ran Press and one from Old Stile Press). And what could likely be the star of Swann's sale is an association copy of the 1931 Golden Cockerel Press edition of The Four Gospels...illustrated by Gill. One of only twelve copies printed on Roman vellum and bound in gilt-decorated white pigskin, it also features an inscription by Gill to his friend Leonard Woolf. Its estimate is $60,000-75,000.

Also on the block at this sale: a first edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species... (est. $50,000-70,000), an interesting set of volumes with fore-edge paintings showing London views (est. $4,000-6,000), a first edition of Joyce's Ulysses (est. $25,000-35,000), a section of Rackham-illustrated books, and a nice selection of manuscript leaves (est. $500 and up).

For more highlights, read Swann's press release for the sale here.

For those who stick around, Swann is holding a second auction on Monday, April 11, featuring early printed books, including a section of Armenian books.  

Has it really been ten years since Nicholson Baker shook up the cozy world inhabited by librarians and conservators with publication of Double Fold, his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning examination of the way materials on paper--most notably newspapers--were being displaced by surrogate copies in other, more easily stored media? Not only has it been a decade since Baker made the word "microfilm" a synonym for "leprosy"--and not undeserved, I should add--it has been an eventful decade in the book world to boot, as our own Rebecca Rego Barry reminds us in a splendid overview of Double Fold and its continuing impact. It is featured in the current issue of The Millions, the superb--dare we say indispensable?--online magazine offering comprehensive coverage of books and the arts. Here's a link. Nice going, Rebecca, very well done.

To kick off a week of previews relating to this week in New York City -- two major auctions and three fairs -- I sat down this weekend to conquer the Heritage Auction Galleries' catalogue for its April 7th live auction at the Fletcher Sinclair Mansion (2 E. 79th St., where lots are on view Wednesday & Thursday). It is not quite the Sears catalog in heft, but close. There I sat, diligently, with my set of lavender sticky notes to mark pages of interest. I quickly realized this method was futile when I had used twenty notes in the first forty pages.

Which is to say it would be impossible to summarize, so I will merely offer a few highlights as I see them. The star of the show may be the "Astor-Aubery de Frawenberg" Book of Hours, produced in France c. 1500-1520. One of the illustrations is seen here on the catalogue's cover. Once owned by William Waldorf Astor, it is a stunning manuscript on parchment in an equally stunned binding of seventeenth-century red velvet under European silver-gilt pierced covers. The starting bid will be $305,000.

Novelist Sarah Burney's copy of the first edition of Austen's Pride and Prejudice (est. $90,000) looks quite beautiful, and it strikes me that the Austen collector we profile in our spring issue's "How I Got Started" column would be awestruck.

A first edition of the first volume of Lewis & Clark's History of the Expedition...with an association to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the preface, uncut and in the original boards seems likely to beat its estimate of $25,000, even if there are some minor condition issues. The same is true for a book of American state constitutions published in 1781. Uncut, in the original boards, and inscribed by Bushrod C. Washington, the nephew and heir of George Washington, it is estimated at $20,000. Perhaps this is a good place to mention F. Scott Fitzgerald's personal and heavily annotated textbook edition of George Washington's The Farewell Address...also at this auction. Published in 1911, it's a textbook example of how much ownership and association can mean to a book's value (pun intended!). Bidding starts at $20,000.

It will come as no surprise to my everyday readers to hear that the twenty-volume set of The Writings of Henry David Thoreau with eighteen pages of manuscript bound in at the front of volume one (est. $15,000) certainly caught my eye. As did a rare limited edition in vellum of Danish folktales illustrated by Kay Nielsen, which will open at $2,500.

There are more than a few Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Edward Curtis items for sale. The Victor Gulotta collection of Charles Dickens comprises a large part of the sale, as well. A small collection of inscribed and/or signed Stephen King first editions and special editions are here, many opening at $400. Or perhaps a sterling silver seagull pin engraved "To Bert from Ayn" [Rand] piques your interest? (Its estimate is $3,500). There literally is something for everyone at this sale.

The floor auction will commence in two sessions; one at 1:00 p.m., the other at 5:00 p.m on Thursday. A third session on Saturday is an Internet, Fax & Mail only session. (There are also two manuscript and autograph auctions happening at Heritage this weekend, for which there are two separate catalogues!) Good luck, bidders.

In our winter issue, contributor Al Cunniff wrote an article about the controversy surrounding the authorship of the "Shakespearean" play, Double Falsehood. It's fascinating how Shakespeare continues to shape our literary world almost four hundred years after his death. Earlier this week I was pleasantly surprised to see an ad for New York's Classic Stage Company's production of Double Falsehood. I had no idea it was on stage here in the U.S. (opened on March 12 and closes this Sunday, April 3). Following this Saturday's matinee, Brean Hammond, editor of the Arden Shakespeare, will participate in a moderated discussion about the play's history.

I scanned this paper company ad from the inside front cover of Book Business magazine. I think you can see why! (In case you can't read the fine print, it says "PAPER because/It'll be remembered longer on paper" and at the bottom "The first book ever published was the Gutenberg Bible. Printed in the 1450s, 21 complete copies still exist today, 500 years later. To learn more, please visit Paperbecause.com.")

An important collection of papers and portraits goes on the block at Bonhams London tomorrow. Part II of the Roy Davids Collection consists of five hundred-plus lots of manuscript material in the fields of literature, history, travel and exploration, art, science, and more. From a photograph of English novelist Julian Barnes (estimated at £400-600) to the exceedingly rare autograph signed letter from John Keats to Fanny Brawne (seen here, estimated at £80,000-120,000) to a series of twenty-one autograph letters of William Morris (£8,000-10,000). Kings, queens; Pepys, Austen; Bacon, Ralegh -- it's an astounding collection.

Over at the ILAB website, an essay by Roy Davids on "Manuscripts and the Worthiness of Collecting" is well worth a read on this exciting occasion. Writes Davids, "Collectors pass on something for their successors to absorb, and to be absorbed by, and to build upon. And with their own reflections, research and books and catalogues, they can make important contributions to knowledge and civilised life."

Today is the centennial of the birth of playwright Tennessee Williams. There's still time to visit the exhibit at The Bookshop in Old New Castle in Delaware (where the selection of materials above will be). There's a major celebration happening in New Orleans. Or, if you happen to be in Florida, there's an exhibit in the Keys. Or one at the Ransom Center in Austin, Texas (which we wrote about extensively in our winter issue). So far as I can tell, there isn't one in Tennessee, though!  

Many of you will recall our attention to the recently produced documentary Typeface. We also featured prints from the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in last year's gift guide.

Now for the update. The filmmakers announced that Typeface will be broadcast on PBS stations across the country beginning April 4. (Check your local listings.) They have been holding successful screenings here and abroad for more than a year (Spain, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, & Tulsa next month).

They've also posted a short interview with the museum's Moran brothers, who talk about the effect the film has had on the museum and the letterpress renaissance. 

At the upcoming Heritage auction in New York City on April 7-9, rare Charles Dickens manuscript material, serialized parts, first editions, theatrical broadsides, and period photographs will find new owners (of course, if you want to get a head start or won't be in NYC, you can place bids online). Ten years in the making, this is an amazing collection, and I've taken the opportunity to talk with the collector, Victor Gulotta, about how he built the collection and why it's time to divest.



RRB: Victor, I know from your work with Nicholas Basbanes that you have a literary profession. Tell us about yourself and how you came to be a collector.

VG: My background is in book publishing. After studying literature in college, I landed a position with a small, scholarly publisher, where I edited manuscripts and promoted books. As a promotion specialist, I went on, over the course of sixteen years, to head publicity departments at several trade and scholarly publishing houses. Later, I started my own company, Gulotta Communications, Inc., a full-service PR firm for authors and publishers. As a literary publicist, I continue to represent fiction and nonfiction authors.
 
While the authors I represent are very much alive, the ones I collect are decidedly dead. Looking back at the genesis of my collecting, I'd have to say that it was in grade school when I began a systematic effort to acquire books. I loved our local library in Brooklyn, but found returning books a bit frustrating: I wanted to keep the books I'd read, so I could refer back to them at my convenience. The solution was in the copies of Scholastic and Tab books I would order through my school. Each month, our teachers, most of whom were nuns, would announce to their respective classes that a shipment had arrived. Then they would bring in the boxes of books and dispense them to the beaming students who had placed orders. I always felt sorry for the kids who emerged empty-handed.
 
I chose books from different genres, including American and English lit (which included Dickens novels), history, biographies, science, and science fiction. Now I had books I could read, reread, and cherish. I began to assemble a nice collection of paperbacks, eventually supplementing or replacing them with hardcover editions. Much later on, I discovered the joy of first editions. Thus began my collecting.
 
RRB: Your focus has been Dickens, and that's the collection up for auction in April by Heritage. Why Dickens, and how long did it take you to put this collection together?

VG: Dickens has long been my favorite English novelist. I suppose it's his treatment of social injustice that I find most compelling. Then there are all the other reasons to love Dickens--too numerous to go into here. Suffice it to say that I never grow tired of his fiction, nor of accounts of his life.

I began collecting Dickens in earnest in 2001, shortly after selling my Longfellow collection, a fourteen-year project, to Harvard. The connection between Longfellow and Dickens, who were trans-Atlantic friends, was in the back of my mind when I shifted gears. I've saved a letter in which Longfellow reflects on his 1842 visit with Dickens in England.

It took me ten years to build my Dickens collection. It reflects my deep appreciation for the life, not just the works, of this great novelist.

RRB: What are your buying methods -- visiting shops, perusing catalogues, attending fairs, searching online? Has one dealer been especially helpful?

VG: When I collected Longfellow, there were several dealers--people like Jim Randall at Ahab Rare Books in Cambridge and David O'Neal in Boston--who always kept me in mind for special material. In the early stages of collecting Dickens, I relied in part on Heritage Book Shop in Los Angeles (not to be confused with Heritage Auctions in Dallas). They were legendary Dickens specialists, and I acquired a number of parts issues from them. As I advanced in my collecting, I drew from a multitude of sources.

I continue to buy from diverse sources, in particular because my interests are more varied these days (in addition to nineteenth-century literary material, I collect early printed volumes and medieval manuscripts). When I can, I visit shops, but I buy primarily from auctions and online listings, fairs when they're in town, catalogues, and occasionally from individuals.

RRB: For many book collectors, the best part of collecting is the chase. Which of these items was the most fun to "find"?

VG: Undoubtedly, the most satisfying find was the Autographed Quotation Signed (AQS) of Little Nell's death scene in The Old Curiosity Shop. Dickens penned this piece while in Boston during his first American tour, in 1842. Dickens AQsS rarely come on the market; I acquired this piece some years ago at a small local auction. It had not seen the light of day for decades before.

RRB: Why have you decided to sell the collection?

VG: Collections are fun-filled, intellectually stimulating projects. I collect a lot of historical--mostly literary--material. Collecting fuels my interest in, and knowledge of, a particular subject, whether it's an author, a genre, or a period. When I reach the stage of accomplishing what I've set out to achieve--and that usually means a collection has been formed to my satisfaction--I move on. In the case of Longfellow, that meant finding an appropriate institution to house the collection.  With Dickens, I've chosen to go the auction route, in part because he was more of a public figure--it seems appropriate that his letters, portraits, first editions, and other material should be made available to his many fans, especially on the eve of the bicentenary celebration of his birth (2012).

RRB: Do you have a favorite piece, one that's most difficult to part with? (I just love the red wax seal with Dickens' crest -- it seems so personal.)

VG: Besides the aforementioned Little Nell manuscript item, I'd have to say that I will most miss the photographs. Comprising several lots, there are two dozen cartes de visite, a couple of cabinet cards, and a large albumen photo, each a contemporary image of Dickens. Like the autograph material--and the wax seal you mention--these images provide a personal connection to Dickens. Yes, you can read a Penguin paperback copy--or better yet, a first edition--of David Copperfield, his most autobiographical novel; or treat yourself to the meticulously detailed 1952 biography of Dickens by Edgar Johnson, and you'll make a deeply personal connection with the great novelist, but spend some time with these photos, taken from life, and you'll add a new dimension to your appreciation for Dickens.

To read more about the Gulotta Collection, read this article written by HA's rare books manager Joe Fay in the company's January newsletter. Our thanks to Mr. Gulotta for spending some time with us.

Say you love Henry David Thoreau as much as I do and that you would like to join me in lending his legacy a hand? Outstanding. Here's how.

The Alexander House Booklovers' B&B in a historic district on the eastern shore of Maryland is up for sale. Owner Elizabeth Alexander, who has successfully run the literary-themed inn for eight years, gaining national attention from BudgetTravel, The Today Show, Fodor's, and The Washington Post, must leave the business for health reasons, she told me by email earlier this week. The Victorian house has four bedrooms and four bathrooms (plus a shop within that sells antiquarian books).

For an asking price of $445,000, almost everything is included (antique furnishings, linens, cookware, dishes, etc.), even a week of innkeeper training. A photo tour, a property map, and more details are available on a website specifically set up for real estate purposes.  

Over the next week or two, three auctions that might be off your radar should merit your attention. One is a complete surprise, from the University of Michigan. They announced today a closed-bid auction of more than three hundred lots of duplicate or donated material. "The material offered for sale is representative of the collecting strengths of the Special Collections Library and includes books, serials, and pamphlets in the following broad subject areas: American Literature, English Literature, Children's Literature, History, Mathematics, Social Movements, and Transportation History." Proceeds will benefit the UM Special Collections Library. Can I just say how delighted I am by this auction? It is so heartening to see material like this--some ex-lib, some not--being offered to book lovers, collectors, and other institutions who will treasure it. In the past (and even in the present), libraries might have pitched this stuff. Other topics include Fine Press & Bibliography; Early Books; Anarchism; Classics; Picture Books; etc. You will need time to peruse the list before the deadline of March 25, so get started.


Stair Auctioneers & Appraisers of Hudson, New York, has an interesting two-day auction this weekend, beginning with paintings, works on paper, and architectural drawings on March 19, and followed by furniture, Americana, silver, and carpets on March 20. So what's so interesting to me? Slipped in on March 20 is the "partial library of the late Louis S. Auchincloss." Auchincloss was a fine historian and novelist, who portrayed the upper classes with wit, biting at the heels of Henry James and Edith Wharton. He passed away in January of 2010. The short list contains some historic documents, leather bindings, books inscribed to him, and random literature, all worth a look. A video preview is here.

Lastly, from March 17-April 7, Christie's International is holding a "Bid to Save the Earth" Green Auction. The categories are broad--entertainment, music, travel, sports, etc., but the art & collectibles category proves fun to browse. Limited edition prints and posters, private tours at galleries and museums, and "experiences," such as a session with a professional photographer, are all up for bidding. To read more, go here.

Prompted by yesterday's blog from the American Antiquarian Society, I watched the Patriot Printer video on Vimeo (where a few other videos also look enticing, such as Vincent Golden's one on antebellum American newspapers). PP is a dramatic reenactment of how early printer and AAS founder, Isaiah Thomas, printed a 1775 edition of the Massachusetts Spy. Check it out, ye lovers of American history and printing!

The Patriot Printer from American Antiquarian Society on Vimeo.

On Feb. 26, Dirk Soulis Auctions of Kansas City, Missouri, auctioned a superb collection of books and manuscripts from the estate of Pittsburg (KS) State University curator and archivist Eugene DeGruson. In that location--instead of the usual suspects--some scouts and booksellers "in the know" were hoping that this auction was just under the radar of the bigger book dealers. Even more intriguing to them was the fact that DeGruson's collection had been assembled with the help of Mary Benjamin, a prominent document dealer who died in 1998.

The 355 literary lots included signed letters from the likes of Charles A. Dana, Henry Thoreau, Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, Longfellow, Lawrence, Tennyson, Byron, Mary Shelley, Samuel Pepys, and many others. Some carte-de-visites, a small photo archive of Edna St. Vincent Millay, an archive of Amy Lowell papers, an archive of Katherine Anne Porter, same of Glenway Wescott, a handful of presidential letters, Hollywood autographs, and a selection of Mark Twain books. Aside from the Twain, it was not a deep collection, but broad and surprising.

Even more surprising were the estimates -- which were very low. $1000-$1,500 for a first edition of Johnson's Dictionary? It went for $7,500, plus the ten percent premium. An Oscar Wilde manuscript poem estimated at $500-$1,000 went for $16,500. But the real kicker was the Walt Whitman manuscript poem from 1885, estimated at $400-$600. It sold for $55,500.

Dirk Soulis, the auctioneer, who does not specialize in books or manuscripts, told me that the low estimates are a "common strategy" for them. "It sometimes seems that the competition is heightened even further when those who were hoping this was their quiet find begin to sense intruders," he wrote to me by email. He then added, "Of course, we never saw that coming with the Whitman manuscript. A few others did surprise us as well." Depending on what estates come his way, Soulis usually has a good book auction about once a year.

While some of these big bids did come in by phone and online through Live Auctioneers, the floor was active as well, leading some to speculate that a couple of high-end dealers flew into Kansas City that week.

International League of Antiquarian Booksellers president Arnoud Gerits has the answer, in an interview published this week on the ILAB website. Some of his advice:

The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers does not encourage collecting books for investment purposes. We can tell what the price of a book was in the past, how that price has developed, we can tell what it will cost now to own a copy, but we cannot predict what its future price will be. Our advice is always: buy what you like, what pleases you, what interests you, what fits within your areas of collecting or interest, buy the best copy available (and affordable to you) at the moment you want to buy the book. [Read more] 

Back in October, CNBC.com also ran a news article that took up this question of whether or not to invest in rare books. It seems people are looking for alternative investment strategies these days!

Single book lovers, take note. The New York Times is reporting on a new trend: speed-dating events hosted by public libraries. In San Francisco, the main library recently hosted one such event. Attendees were requested to bring a favorite book, a handy topic of conversation should the chemistry be lacking during any of the four-minute chats. No word yet on whether this trend will move to archives and special collections.

...And not just at PBA. Heritage Auctions is launching its weekly Internet auction tomorrow, March 3. This gives you the chance to bid on approximately 300 books, prints, and maps every week, with one auction opening each Thursday, just as the previous closes. The debut auction includes a range of material from A Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits (London, 1793) in contemporary cloth to a large selection of (very) modern first editions, like this signed first of The Corrections, lacking the Oprah sticker. There are also a smattering of photobooks, prints, and engravings. Mark your calendars for a weekly peruse!

Today George Washington University announced a gift of $5 million and a collection related to the history of Washington, D.C. Small's collection includes seven hundred rare documents, maps, drawings, and ephemera; a 1790 George Washington letter that outlines the ten square-mile area that would become the capital is one of the many high points. The 85-year-old Small told the Washington Post that he has been building this collection for more than fifty years.

As the university's press release points out, Small is no stranger to collecting or philanthropy:

Mr. Small's donation to George Washington University builds on a long and distinguished personal history of preserving and sharing America's heritage. In 2005, he donated the earliest known image of the White House--a watercolor done in 1801 by J. Benford--to the White House, where it now hangs. The University of Virginia was the recipient in 2004 of Mr. Small's remarkable collection on the Declaration of Independence, where it is housed in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. 

More at the Washington Post.

The Awl, a NYC-based online magazine, posted a great piece this week on "How to Spot a First Edition." The opening anecdote, though, is sure to draw readers outside the usual bibliophilic circles (31 reader comments and counting):

One of the most touching things about Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids is the way the author slips into book-scouting lingo when she describes the knack she had for that enjoyable (and revenue-enhancing) pastime in the late '60s and early '70s:

Not long after, I found a twenty-six-volume set of the complete Henry James for next to nothing. It was in perfect condition. I knew a customer at Scribner's who would want it. The tissue guards were intact, the gravures fresh-looking, and there was no foxing on the pages. I cleared over one hundred dollars. Slipping five twenty-dollar bills in a sock, I tied a ribbon around it and gave it to Robert.

Smith describes a number of such finds. The mere idea that you could run into a signed Faulkner just wandering around a used bookstore in New Jersey!

It's worthwhile to know a little bit about rare books--because it's fun and also because you shouldn't be letting valuable things slip off into perdition, if you can help it. There are many characteristics that tend to make a book more valuable, but nearly all the valuable ones are first editions. So what is a first edition, exactly? [Read More -- Seriously, Read More!]

Last week, McSweeney's (the quirky and inspiring publisher featured in our winter issue) announced that it is launching a kids' newspaper comics page, to be distributed through Tribune Media Services. According to McSweeney's, "The Goods is a gallimaufry of games, puzzles, comics, and other diversions, appearing in newspapers across the U.S. and Canada." (A sample page is pictured here -- George Washington powder-wig maze?!) One more bid to save the world of print, thank you McSweeney's!

In just a few days, The Leaves of Fate, the third volume in an historical trilogy written by Massachusetts bookseller George Robert Minkoff will be published. He follows up The Weight of Smoke and The Dragons of the Storm with this final volume on Capt. John Smith and Sir Francis Drake.

Several years ago when the first book was published, I had the pleasure of interviewing Minkoff about his literary pursuits. He told me about researching a novel. Here's a snippet from that article, in the May/June 2007 issue:

Although Minkoff acknowledged he is "not a historian," he took his research very seriously. He utilized his bibliographic experience to study the history of tobacco - a significant part of the story - by examining sixteenth-century books and pamphlets that provided divergent views on long-held beliefs and myths. He also delved into the history of alchemy, geography, disease and piracy to recreate Smith's world and that of Smith's Elizabethan-age hero and father figure, Sir Francis Drake.

The details in the original sources, he said, lend flavor to the narrative, especially to its language, which was very important to him. "Language is a character. I didn't want it to sound like it was written last Wednesday," he quipped.

No less a writer than Paul Auster has praised Minkoff, saying, "George Minkoff is one of the bravest men alive. He has gambled that a three-part epic novel about 17th century Colonial America -- written in a language that mimics the speech of the time -- can hold the interest of 21st century readers and bring satisfactions and delights as a work of contemporary fiction. Remarkably enough, he has won his bet."

All three volumes are available in trade editions and in signed limited editions. Read a sample chapter at McPherson & Co.'s website.

Relive Tennessee Williams' theatrical life in The Historic New Orleans Collection exhibit Drawn to Life. The exhibit showcases dozens of drawings by the iconic Al Hirschfeld chronicling six decades of Williams' productions on and off Broadway. In a fascinating archive of the playwright's career, Hirschfeld brings to life the creative genius of Williams. The exhibit also shares how Williams often drew from his own life to create some of the most dynamic characters in American theater history.