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!

Catalogue Review: ReadInk Books, No. 3

You can be sure that ReadInk of Los Angeles will be exhibiting at next week's California International Antiquarian Book Fair in nearby Pasadena. Whether or not you can make it there, you can peruse their latest catalogue -- an exceedingly clever booklet arranged in an ABC format, e.g. A is for Appel, a "hardboiled writer"; B is for Booze; C is for Cowboys.

I, for one, like the W section, with one book falling under each journalistic query, Who, What, When, Where, and Why. What Actors Eat -- When They Eat, a compilation of recipes from the radio and screen actors of the 1930s looks like a hoot ($125). In the Zs, a second printing of Stefan Zweig's The Tide of Fortune caught my eye ($200). Zweig is, as the catalogue states, "in perhaps permanent eclipse" as a writer, but he was also a major music collector.

One of the great treasures buried in this visually interesting catalogue is a VG+ first edition of Nancy Mitford's Wigs on the Green, which so distressed her family that she barred reprints until after death ($4,000). So states our friendly bookseller here in the catalogue: "I actually don't expect to ever see another copy after I sell this one to you, but such is the lot of the dedicated bookseller." This book, by the by, is under S for Sisters; another Mitford gem, a near fine first of Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death, is filed under F for Funeral ($50).

This is a fun catalogue, full of neat mid-twentieth-century books usually in dust jackets, that veers (or leers) toward the underbelly of literature -- where D is for Deranged with 1947's If a Man Be Mad ($250) and Q is for Queer with 1964's My Son, The Daughter ($50).

Browse it all here, or see them in Pasadena next week!

Booksellers are packing up and shipping out this week, as many head to California for the San Francisco Antiquarian Book, Print and Paper Fair this weekend and the California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Pasadena the following weekend. Last week I reviewed the 'collective' catalogue of seven booksellers bound for both fairs. Today I'm taking a look at some other books on their way to the Golden State...

Books Tell You Why, a purveyor of fine first editions and signed books based in South Carolina, is headed to the fair in Pasadena with this stunning copy of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, his first James Bond novel. It is a first edition/first impression in fine condition in first state dust-wrapper. The price is $55,000. Books Tell You Why is also bringing the German translation of the Physica Sacra, in five volumes. The book, concurrently published in Latin, is Johann Jakob Scheuchzer's famous scientific commentary on the Bible with 762 plates on cosmography, paleontology, zoology, botany, and anatomy. The price is $12,500.

Moving to booth 221 at the Pasadena fair, you will find fine illustrated and children's books from Aleph-Bet Books of New York. In addition to a rare inscribed copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time ($18,500), they will be bringing the fabulous Edmund Dulac manuscript seen here above. "This is an amazing finished manuscript tale about King Henry, his knights on horseback, medieval lords and a nervous Earl Hugh Bigod and his castle of Bungaye. It appeared as a full page color illustration in the Christmas 1906 issue of the Graphic." Bound in crimson morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe. The price is $40,000.

UK-based Simon Beattie is exhibiting at Pasadena for the first time. Among his selection of fine continental books, an intriguing book: Der Orang-Outang in Europa, 1780, the first 'California' imprint, though published in Berlin. A satire of life in Poland, it's anyone's guess why the printer choose 'Californien' as its fictitious place of publication. The price is $3,250. William Godwin, Sergei Diaghilev, and a playbill for Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen will also be at Beattie's booth.

Sophie Schneideman Rare Books & Prints of London will be exhibiting at both California fairs. She is bringing a selection of private press books, including some California imprints from the collection of Clarence B. Hanson, Jr. of Birmingham, Alabama. She'll also have several fine books on food and wine, and an original wood engraving from Lucien Pissarro, Girl Seated on a Grassy Hillside, No. 4 of 20, numbered and signed. The price is $949.