A Bookbinder's Ticket and Bookseller Labels

One area I collect in is books about books.  A part of that collection includes book trade labels.  What is a book trade label?  If you've handled old books, you've likely noticed teeny-tiny labels typically on the front or rear endpaper.  They will often be less than an inch long and a half inch tall. 

I'm not really sure why, but it seems more natural to refer to these tiny bits of paper as tickets when associated with a bookbinder, and a label when it is from a bookseller. Perhaps because craftsmen use jobbing tickets and retailers label their merchandise. In the interest of casting my net wide, I refer to them all as book trade labels.  That was the nomenclature used when I found Seven Roads Book Trade Labels and realized I was not the only one interested in these gems.  Unfortunately, Seven Roads went dormant in June 2007.  However lost Seven Roads is, we gained the Bibliophemera blog, which often features labels.
book trade labels, bookbinder, bookbinding, collecting
One Touch of Venus (Library): Odyssey of an Imprint, Part I
In a recent post, I mentioned one of Canadian poet John Glasscoe's novels, Fetish Girl by Sylvia Bayer, originally published in 1972 by Venus Library, and noted that Venus Library "evolved from Olympia Press- New York."

This is sort of true but far from the whole story. The history of Venus Library is much more tortured and I'll have to get on the rack and stretch out a bit to tell it.
Eroticaerotic Literature Publishing John Glassco Girodias Kable News Venus Library Grove Press Barney Rosset vintage aperbacks
Our Man in the Attic
Those of us based downstairs in the United States often neglect our upstairs neighbors in Canada who take a lot of ribbing from us for being from, well, Canada. The land of maple leaves has, however, produced some great literature, in addition to being a fertile breeding ground for comedians (think SCTV and the initial cast for Saturday Night Live).

We do not, alas, hear enough about the Canadian literary scene. Brian Busby is doing something about it.

"A writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public and bibliophile, I'm the author of Character Parts: Who's Really Who in Canadian Literature (2003), and editor of In Flanders Fields and Other Poems of the First World War (2005) and Great Canadian Speeches (2008). There are several other odds and ends, some of which I dare not speak."
Canadian Literature
Required Viewing

Recently, CBS Sunday Morning gave us 6 minutes of Bibliomania at it's finest with this report from Paris.

It begins with a trip to the apartment of a self-professed bibliomaniac. This guy is first ballot.

Then we get some time with the dynamic duo of John Baxter and Martin Stone.

Baxter gives us a little evolutionary history of one type of collector; the modern firsts collector - how one goes from simply a reader - to hardcover first edition- to a signed copy - to advanced proofs. As Baxter says in his 2003 book chronicling his biblio-escapades, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, "One rationale of book collecting is that it brings you closer to the writer's you admire." Baxter then breaks out his copy of the The Great Gatsby in a dust jacket; one of the true hi-spots of modern literature.

Then we move on to Martin Stone, the legendary rocker turned legendary book scout. We watch as he scouts a two volume set which by the end of the segment he has resold for a $300 profit! Why does Stone live in Paris? "The best books in the world are in France" says Stone who goes on to sum up his relationship with books by saying "I need to have many more books than I am going to read."

Baxter and Stone are not strangers to one another. Baxter's book A Pound of Paper is dedicated to Stone and he's mentioned throughout as a sort of guiding light for Baxter's obsession. After the American edition of Pound of Paper was released Baxter and Stone came to America. Though touted as a promotional tour for the book part of the plan was for Baxter to follow Stone around as he scouted the West coast and then write a book about it. One of their first stops was Seattle and Wessel & Lieberman. It was quite a treat for us and an honor to be part of their biblio-escapades. I am not sure what happened to that project but it's good to know that Martin Stone's scouting tour of America was chronicled.

Nigel Burwood's post on Stone over at Bookride
Piece in the San Francisco Chronicle that appeared during Baxter and Stone's visit to the Bay area.

bibliomania, book collecting, scouting