Running from Sept. 2-5 at the Baltimore Convention Center, the Baltimore Summer Antiques Show is widely recognized as the largest indoor antiques show in the U.S. It includes a 70-dealer antiquarian book fair within the show. A few of those dealers booked for Baltimore shared some highlights with us.

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The rare book department at Arader Galleries is bringing some treasures from its travel and natural history libraries at 72nd Street in New York (seen above). According to Arader's Kate Hunter, "Some of the highlights of [Arader's] collections that we will be bringing to Baltimore include Audubon's iconic The Birds of America, from Drawings made in the United States and America, published in seven volumes in Philadelphia between 1839 and 1844, this is the first octavo edition with 500 hand-colored lithographed plates after originals by Audubon, and including 65 images not found in the earlier celebrated Elephant folio edition of 1827-1838. In recording the birds of America and imbuing each image with natural grace and scientific accuracy Audubon established himself as the premier bird artist of his age and since." She said they've also packed a fine copy of Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, from the famous library of Beriah Botfield, and including 500 superbly hand-colored copper engravings. She called it "one of the most comprehensive and most beautiful records of English and exotic flora." Arader will also offer the first major work of Sir Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees... Kate Hunter invites readers to stop by stand 808 to see these (and other) rare treasures from Arader.

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Griffon's Medieval Manuscripts of St. Petersburg, Florida, will have a medieval leaf and a Piranesi print among its offerings. The leaf, seen here at left, is from an illuminated Antiphoner manuscript, Bologna, circa 1300, with a $30,000 price tag. There are seven lines of text, in a gothic liturgical hand and of music on a four line red stave. The Giovanni Battista Piranesi print titled "Veduta dell' Atrio del Portico di Ottavia" dates to 1760 and is in very good to excellent condition. Griffon's also
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has a rare map of early America by Henri Abraham Chatelain, as well a pristine miniature leaf from a finely illuminated Dewan, early 19th century, seen here at right. At $475, it speaks to the company's mission of introducing people to affordable art. As Dr. Anthony Griffon has written of his company, "Our goal is to attract the average person to experience a different and exciting arena of art collecting."

Ian J. Kahn of Lux Mentis Booksellers in Maine shared some stunning images of the material he's bringing to
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Baltimore this year. At left, Portraits of the Children of Nobility (1838) is uncommon in its full burgundy leather binding and has what Kahn called "a wonderful collection of images, each with supporting prose and poetry" for $425. A fine press book guaranteed to turn heads at Kahn's booth is Mokomaki: Thirteen Etchings of Shrunken & Tattooed Maori Heads, illustrated by Leonard Baskin and published in a numbered limited edition by the Eremite Press, 1985. Wrote Kahn about this interesting item seen below, which he is selling for $12,500: "This is one of four copies created within the 'Deluxe' first 10 copies. The 'Super Deluxe' copies were created in response to Baskin's friend (and vellum dealer) asking him if he would consider printing some of the images onto vellum. The result is inexplicably wonderful." Also at Kahn's booth will be an 1806 pamphlet titled Horrid massacre!!! that is said to be the first example of engraving for a printed book in the state of Maine, very scarce at $2,500.

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For those who are also interested in art and antiques, more than 550 international dealers will be exhibiting in Baltimore, in areas such as fine art, furniture, jewelry, porcelain, textiles, and folk art. Check out the website for hours, prices, and a list of vendors.


Ralph Sipper, of Ralph Sipper Books in Santa Barbara, CA, has just launched his first (yes, you read that right) website. Welcome! Being an "old school" antiquarian bookseller for 40 years, Sipper finally agreed to bring his shop online. He said of the decision: "Old-fashioned as I am, and motivated by the enthusiasm of my daughter and son-in-law, I am moving onto the Information Super Highway in as positive way as I can muster."

His daughter, Cory, and her husband built the very attractive site. She said her father is "quite happy to have his website. Possibly, even excited. As long as it doesn't take time from handwriting and snail-mailing his business letters." Take a browse through the inventory, check out their Book of the Month, and read a fascinating interview Matthew Bruccoli did with Sipper for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, which is posted in PDF.

Ralph Sipper Books is an ABAA member that specializes in literary first editions and manuscripts.

Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life.... Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality....

A considerable scholar in his own right, Robert Darnton, source of the above quotation, probably would appreciate his own words being commonplaced.  There was a time, after all, when capturing and commenting upon particularly apt quotations was the very essence of a well-rounded education.

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Known as early as the 14th century, commonplace books came into their own in the 1600s, and they continued as a popular pedagogical device well into the 20th century. Over the centuries, the focus of such books shifted from capturing and organizing "exemplary" thoughts and ideas to something more akin to a hodgepodge: a jumble of quotations, recipes, medical remedies, and whatever else struck one's fancy as worthy of capture and commentary. 

Although a number of commonplace books have found their way into print (a typical example is depicted above), many more survive only as manuscripts in institutional collections.  We are fortunate that some of these institutional collections have been digitized, so we all can appreciate them.  Harvard's Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History contains some particularly instructive examples of the commonplace book.  (For a good recent overview of the practice, see David Allan's Commonplace Books and Reading in Georgian England.)

Several scholars have suggested that blogs are direct digital descendants of the printed commonplace book.  One could make the same argument for FaceBook, Twitter and like services.  In fact, it's not much of a stretch to imagine the LOC's archive of every tweet ever made as the world's largest commonplace book....
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One of the most extraordinary bibliophiles I have ever met, Irwin T. "Toby" Holtzman, passed away in Detroit this past week at 82, leaving behind his lovely wife Shirley, three children, three grandchildren, and a legacy of tenacious commitment to books and libraries that is unequaled in my experience. Truth be told, I never met anyone quite like Toby, and expect I will not again anytime soon. As a collector, his interests were generally centered on twentieth century and contemporary fiction. At the height of his activity, he collected the works of some 350 authors, and he did it with a remarkable degree of thoroughness. I first learned about Toby in the late 1980s when I was in the early stages of researching A Gentle Madness, and looking for suitable people to profile. When I told Peter Howard, the owner of Serendipity Books in Berkeley, Calif., the premise of my book--the title pretty much says it all--he suggested I spend some time in Detroit with Toby. "He has a native feeling for books that you really have to experience first hand to appreciate," Howard said. What Peter was saying in a delicate way is that Toby, for want of a more precise description, had a certain intensity about him when it came to books. "Toby can definitely wear you down," he offered, and pretty much left it at that. When I asked Toby about this apparent single-mindedness of his, he offered no apologies, acknowledging that yes, he was an "in your face kind of guy" when it came to books, but that the cause was literature and reading, after all, and what could be more important than that. Indeed, when we first got together in August of 1991, he was already finding suitable homes for his books. Today, his various collections can be found in no fewer than fifteen major libraries around the world, his William Faulkner collection at the University of Michigan, his Russian writers collection at the Hoover Institution in California, his John Osborne collection at the British Library, his American Indian collection at the University of Illinois, his gift to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem of five thousand Israeli books, manuscripts, and inscribed copies, most notable among them. As a collector of modern firsts, Toby always favored the living and the hopeful, and he took special pride in "discovering" new talent. To get a leg up on the competition, he regularly read the forecasts in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, and he took great pride in being able to say that fully 40 percent of the collectible books he had acquired were bought at their jacket prices. And as much as he loved his books, he had no separation anxiety whatsoever about parting with them--so long as they went to the right places. "You reach a point in your life where you begin to collect by subtraction, not addition," he said. Following the publication of AGM fifteen years ago this month, Toby and I kept in touch. We ran into each other often, at the New York Book Fair, the California Book Fair, in the basement of the Strand Book Store, wherever book people gather. A few months ago, I gave a talk at the Clements Library in Ann Arbor, and we had dinner together with a group from the University of Michigan. It was great fun, and Toby gave me a photo of himself--the one pictured above--seated in a nifty "book chair" he had bought during a recent trip he had made to Italy with Shirley. Yes, that is my book he is holding. Pretty cool, I thought, and so typically Toby. Totally in character, too, is the request Toby's family made this week of friends and colleagues following private funeral services in Michigan: "Please honor the memory of Toby Holtzman and the values of his life by supporting a library, buying books at your local bookstores and reading to your children and grandchildren." What an epitaph. And what a bookman.
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WASHINGTON -- I've got to hand it to new author Patrick McEnroe, a former Grand Slam doubles champion, Davis Cup coach, and engaging commentator on ESPN. He is a celebrity who understands that without ticket, book and gear-buying fans, he would have no career: The good life he enjoys is a direct result of what people buy and watch they watch on TV.

I like to see people who get that connection, who understand that that it would be audacious of them to treat those very same folks as a nuisance. 

In town this week for the Legg Mason Tennis Classic that concludes Sunday, he sat down for a signing session to promote his book, "Hardcourt Confidential -- Tales from Twenty Years in the Pro Tennis Trenches. He made it clear he'd be willing to stay as long as the now famous John Isner match at Wimbledon if that's what it took to accommodate the crowd. 

I watched him shake hands and genuinely engage the people who came up to him. He actually asked them questions while also answering theirs. 

I didn't tell him I still do a little journalism when I approached with my copy. I bought passes for the whole tournament so I could take it in as a fan rather than a reporter. I didn't want any special treatment or false kindness even in a brief encounter.

McEnroe looked me in the eyes and asked me how I would like him to inscribe the book. I respectfully asked to keep it short and simple because of the line behind me. "Great forehand," I said, smiling at the thought of showing the words to all my tennis friends. He asked me a few questions about my game while he wrote, handed the book back to me, and posed for a few photos my girlfriend shot.

I thanked him for the signature and what he does for the game. I've long respected McEnroe for his work to promote the sport I've spent a lifetime loving.

Then I looked down at what he wrote, which was longer than what I had asked him to consider.

"To Chris: Great forehand -- work on that backhand."

I laughed, shook his hand and stepped aside. The book looks promising and I'll crack it open like a new can of tennis balls the moment the tournament ends. 

[Photo courtesy of Won-ok Kim.]


Last month, the University of North Carolina press released A History of the Book in America, volume 2, which was actually the last in a series of 5 (published out of order). Volume 2, edited by Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley, covers the 1790-1840 era, and contains essays by James N. Green, E. Jennifer Monaghan, and Scott E. Caspar, among others. The topics include the rise of book publishing in the new republic, journeyman printers, membership libraries, school books, women and early print culture, periodicals and newspapers, novels, travel books, literacy, and literary colonization. What an amazing resource to have on hand, particularly if you're lucky enough to have all five volumes on your shelf.

In association with the American Antiquarian Society's program in the history of the book, this scholarly series was a project more than a decade in the making. Back in April, the AAS celebrated the completion of the series with a ceremony at the Library of Congress, which is now available online.

 
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Oh, those lovely Penguins! Penguin Books turns 75 this year. To celebrate, Penguin US has commissioned tattoo artists to create cover art for six classic titles (seen here is Berk Krak's cover for Martin Amis' Money), while Penguin UK has issued a new Penguin Decades series.

Take a look at this wonderful article in last week's Guardian newspaper -- complete with photo of past FB&C contributor and Penguin collector Steve Hare. Hare owns 15,000 Penguins. Alison Flood writes, "Penguin titles are not only among the most recognisable in literature but also a magnet for collectors." In fact, the Penguin Collectors Society encourages a younger generation to take up Penguins. Hare told the Guardian, "[We're] not simply about collecting, but for anyone interested in graphic design, publishing history, illustration, and the joys and pleasures of the physical book."

P.S. an excerpt of Penguin by Illustrators, edited by Hare, is available here.
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At left and below: a selection of the Minsky Archive, including maquettes, molds for castings, correspondence, and holographic manuscripts. Top right: large cabinets displaying Minsky's Bill of Rights.

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Richard Minsky's new exhibit, Material Meets Metaphor: A Half Century of Book Art opened yesterday at Yale University's Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library in New Haven, Connecticut. Curated by Jae Jennifer Rossman, assistant director for special collections, the exhibit "showcases his editioned (non-commissioned, made in multiple copies) bookworks alongside selections from the Richard Minsky Archive, which documents the history of his career and his working process."

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If you've ever wanted to sit in an electric chair without the painful end result, this is your chance. Minsky's provocative work, Freedom of Choice, seen here, is on display, and visitors are invited to strap on the head restraint, apply the electrodes, and listen to Minsky's reading of three poems through the chair's MP3 player.

Running now through November 29, the exhibit is free and open to the public. For more information, read the original press release, and our recent Q&A with Minsky. More photos and description of the exhibit's installation are available on Minsky's site. All photos courtesy of Richard Minsky, who joins Fine Books as our new Book Art columnist in the fall issue.   

Jonathan Shipley

Jonathan Shipley is a freelance writer living in Seattle. He’s written for the Los Angeles Times, Gather Journal, Uppercase, and many other publications.

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The Christian Science Monitor recently took note of a comic book auction coming soon. Up on the blocks, being sold at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas? One of the rarest and most desirable comics around - Batman No. 1 (Spring, 1940). Batman first appeared in Detective Comics No. 27 (May, 1939), but this was his first stand-alone comic book that also introduced his soon-to-be arch nemesis, the Joker.

Owned by Mike Wheat, a comic book collector hailing from Alaska, it is one of only about 300 Batman No. 1 comics known to still exist. It is supposed to fetch around $40,000. Not a bad return for Wheat, who bought the comic with a couple others in 1974 for $300.

Also under the hammer at Heritage this week is the "Aloha copy" of Detective Comics No. 27. Bought in Honolulu in the 1970s, it is estimated to bring in $400,000.

UPDATE: The "Aloha Copy," sold for $657,250 and the Batman No. 1 sold for $55,269, according to the Honolulu Star Advertiser.
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The BBC reports today that Raymond Scott, who stole a first folio from Durham University in 1998, has been sentenced to eight years in prison. Said Judge Richard Lowden to Scott: "It would be regarded by many as priceless but to you it was definitely at a very big price and you went to very great lengths for that price. Your motivation was for financial gain. You wanted to fund an extremely ludicrous playboy lifestyle in order to impress a woman you met in Cuba." Two years were tacked onto the six-year sentence for taking the stolen property out of Britain.

In this strange case, it's not so much the theft that galls, book theft has been going on for centuries and is not likely to subside. It's the fact that Scott mutilated the volume. The BBC reported the damage last month. Scott had removed the goat binding and cut the cords on the spine in an effort to disguise the book's provenance. Some pages are also missing, including the frontispiece engraving of the Bard.