When offered Sylvia Plath's first collection of poems, The Colossus, New Directions founder James Laughlin turned it down. The year was 1960, and London publisher William Heinemann was looking for an American publishing partner. They sent a typed proposal letter and a proof of The Colossus to four American publishers, among them New Directions, where editor Bob MacGregor subtly praised the book in a note to his boss, calling it "skillful," particularly Plath's poem for Leonard Baskin, "Sculptor." But Laughlin decided to pass, scribbling on a slip of paper, "Nor for us, I'd say."

Later this month, this mini archive including three pieces of publishers' correspondence (one typed letter signed; one half typed, half manuscript note; and one brief manuscript note) accompanied by an uncorrected proof of The Colossus will go to auction at Freeman's in Philadelphia on September 30. It is conservatively estimated at $1,000-1,500.

In 2011, Peter K. Steinberg, author of Sylvia Plath and founder of Sylvia Plath Info, wrote an article for FB&C about elusive Plath proofs. "[I]t is the two titles published during Plath's life that are the more desirable for the collector, which is reflected in both their rarity and price." Those two titles are The Colossus, which had been ultimately picked up by Knopf in the U.S. in 1962, and The Bell Jar, Plath's pseudonymous novel published by Heinemann in 1963. She committed suicide soon after its publication.

According to Steinberg, Heinemann's print run for the first edition of The Colossus was quite low--500 copies. As for pre-publication proofs, we might estimate 20-25 were produced, the same number bookseller Ken Lopez suggested in 2011 were made of The Bell Jar (which had a larger print run). Steinberg said the Freeman's copy is the tenth recorded proof of The Colossus; six are held by institutions, two are privately owned, one is currently for sale for $5,500 from an online bookseller, and the one pictured above that goes to auction next week.

Uncorrected proofs have become a strong area of interest, particularly for collectors of modern first editions. As Ken Lopez explains, collectors are swayed by "the earlier the better" rule, and proofs represent the next best thing to collecting authors' manuscripts, an unreachable goal for many collectors.

Last year Bonhams sold a previously unrecorded proof of Plath's The Bell Jar, found by a student, for £5,250. 

                                                                                                                                                                           Image Courtesy of Freeman's.

The Folio Book of Ghost Stories, reproduced with permission from The Folio Society.                                                                                                                                                       David McConochie has a flair for creating otherworldly art and was recently recognized as Illustrator of the Year at the Victoria and Albert Museum's V&A Illustration Awards for his work on The Folio Book of Ghost Stories, a collection of nineteen haunting, blood-curdling tales of paranormal activity and malevolent beings by storytellers such as A.S. Byatt, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Vladimir Nabokov, among others. (Last year's winner was Virginia-based Sterling Hundley for illustrating the Folio edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.) V&A panel judges said that McConochie's work struck them "by the boldness of the composition and the way in which it set the tone for the unnerving stories within the book." McConochie, 35, recently shared his thoughts on this momentous win and his approach to illustrating a volume of supernatural stories.

McConochie in his studio. Image used with permission from Folio Society.  

McConochie joins a select group of artists with the V&A prize. "I had been aware of the awards going back to my student days, though such accolades back then seemed a remote idea," he recalled. "As an artist, you're out on a limb a lot of the time and in bit of a bubble, so it's great having this sort of recognition."                                                                                                                                                                                               

The artist's perfectly creepy illustrations for The Folio Book of Ghost Stories appear pulled from another era, and in fact were inspired by early photography. "I had been looking at daguerreotypes in my research. There was a quality of underlying eeriness in the grainy images that I wanted to incorporate into some of the illustrations," he explained. "I tend to soak up imagery and information from different sources before I start work and then start to put things together in an intuitive manner." McConochie said that the artistic process can be quite chaotic, and the final image is often the result of hard work assisted by a dash of serendipity.                                                                                                                                                                                        

In addition to illustrating ghost stories, the artist enjoys reading them as well. "This [Folio Society edition] is a great collection and there are a few favorites, some of which I chose not to illustrate, such as "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens." Another that came to mind was W.W. Jacobs wish-fulfillment story gone horribly wrong in "The Monkey's Paw." McConochie was drawn to the fact that "Jacob's tale has this growing sense of dread. It creates some very macabre and gruesome imagery in the reader's mind and yet holds back on revealing much; it's all suggestion."                                                                                                                                                                                                               McConochie continues his foray into eerie underworlds and parallel universes with a series of paintings for a forthcoming book entitled Child of the Dark, a diary of a woman living in a Sao Paulo favela in the 1950s.                                                                                                                            

This volume is presented in a slime-green clamshell case, and the frontispiece is a portrait of a faceless apparition from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Captain of the Pole-Star." The Folio Book of Ghost Stories, introduced by Kathryn Hughes and illustrated by David McConochie, is 296 pages with eight color illustrations and retails for $59.95. 

Reproduced with permission from The Folio Society. 

I'm on the road this week and happened to spend last weekend in St. Paul where a lazy Sunday drive along Summit Avenue revealed this surprising bit of news:

The F. Scott Fitzgerald family rowhouse, located at 599 Summit Avenue, is up for sale. The three-story, 3,441-sq. foot brownstone was built in 1889 and has four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Even without the enticing bit of literary history connected with the house, its price, $665,000, seems a bargain to this blogger, more familiar with West Coast real estate.

Fitzgerald's parents moved into the house in 1918, and Fitzgerald joined them after brief stints in the US Army and the New York City advertising world. Fitzgerald spent the summer of 1919 in the house finishing This Side of Paradise in a third-floor room and taking frequent walks down nearby Selby Avenue. The Fitzgerald family, who moved frequently, vacated the house again in 1919, but its place in literary history was assured by F. Scott completing his most successful novel (during his lifetime, anyway) while living there.

You can get a peek behind the scenes of the Fitzgerald house on its Zillow listing.

Perhaps it is too obvious to say, but handwriting tugs at the heartstrings of book collectors. We look for and place value on signatures, inscriptions, and marginalia. So the idea that handwriting might someday be obsolete is unsettling. Put in context, however, bibliophiles will note some fascinating parallels between this divide and the one that Gutenberg faced five hundred years ago. Anne Trubek, editor in chief of Belt magazine, publisher of Belt Publishing, and sometime contributor to Fine Books, deftly provides that background in her new book, The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting (Bloomsbury, September).

From a visit to the Morgan Library to behold (and hold) cuneiform at the book's beginning to a visit to the Ransom Center to examine digital handwriting and contemporary authors' archives near the book's end, Trubek makes manageable what could be an unwieldy topic. She even explains how a goose quill pen is made! And who knew that Platt Rogers Spencer, developer of Amerca's ornate 19th-century penmanship, took his inspiration from nature, fashioning his "a's, b's and c's from the shapes for rocks, branches, and lakes that he looked at every day"?

Trubek is well-acquainted with the question that some historians and history-minded enthusiasts ask, "How can you read cursive if you cannot write it?" To which she responds, "The truth is, most of us already cannot read 99 percent of the historical record." A compelling statement that is supported by her (too brief) interview with Heather Wolfe, curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library and an expert in indecipherable historic scripts. Her point is that the shift away from handwriting is part of a long-term process, and it dredges up cultural and social anxieties that deserve to be considered in this debate.  

That said, those who believe that teaching handwriting--a hot-button issue in American education--remains important will still find the book enjoyable to read because Trubek's approach is even-handed; she seems less interested in converting readers than in offering up a thoughtful survey of a fraught subject.   

Image via Bloomsbury Publishing.

The National Post Office of the Netherlands, "PostNL," has issued a special commemorative stamp sheet to celebrate 2016 as the "Year of the Book."

PostNL worked in collaboration with the National Library of the Netherlands to select ten books to feature on the stamp sheet including Turks Fruit by Jan Wolkers, Het Achterhuis by Anne Frank, Ethica by Spinoza and Oom Jan Leert zijn Neefjes Schaken by Max Euwe. The selected books represent a diversity of genres, time periods, and formats, including journals, children's books, textbooks, picture books, and literature.

Designer Niels Schrader created a "bookscape" to showcase the ten books across the the stamp sheet. "In this design, the books are spread out horizontally, photographed from different angles. For example, there are photographs of books which are open, or with the front or back cover showing, or only the spine of the book. This creates a landscape of books if you view them from above. We now call that a bookscape," said Schrader in a statement.

If you can bring yourself to break apart the bookscape, stamps are valid for mail shipped within the Netherlands, but for collectors in other countries, the stamps can be purchased online at collectclub.nl.  

As a location for an antiquarian book fair, nouveau Brooklyn seems pretty perfect. The local crowd is young, educated, and interested,* and the Brooklyn Expo Center is a bright and airy venue with a great vibe. Having completed its third successful event this past weekend, the Brooklyn Antiquarian Book Fair is now a staple of the book fair calendar.

My browsing time was limited, so my highlights are regrettably brief.

William Reese Co. put the borough in the spotlight with two early Brooklyn imprints: An Historical and Geographical Account of Algiers by James Wilson Stevens (1800) and The Book of Common Prayer (1801). Another interesting item on display was New York's first liquor license, a form printed c. 1702-1714 by William Bradford, the only working printer in NY at the time.

I perused Peter Masi's stand--a delight not only in content but in form, for he has all manner of fascinating ephemera neatly organized by subject. His printed catalogues are enjoyable for this reason as well.

Austin Abbey Rare Books created an outstanding visual display of decorated gilt bindings. I spied an especially beautiful copy of A Border Shepherdess by Amelia E. Barr and thought immediately about Richard Minsky and his Barr collection.   

In addition to 100+ booksellers, the book fair hosted special events throughout the weekend. Whether or not things like the Haiku Lounge, panel discussions, or book signings (disclosure: I was graciously invited to sign copies of Rare Books Uncovered there on Saturday afternoon) draw more or different visitors than might otherwise attend an antiquarian book fair, it's difficult to know for certain, but it does make the book fair experience more fun and diverse.  

*And interesting. Lots of cool tattoos were on exhibit at the fair too; I noticed Poe on one arm and the words "Ex Libris" on another.

Images: Courtesy of Brett Barry.

Readers may recall a story that appeared here earlier this year heralding the rediscovery of a long-forgotten manuscript by Beatrix Potter. Penguin editor Jo Hanks unearthed the material while conducting research for a new addition to Emma Thompson's revival of the series.  "I found a reference to a letter from Beatrix to her publisher that referred to a story 'about a well-behaved prime black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life,'" Hanks recalled in an online discussion in January. Intrigued, Hanks searched among the author's papers in the V&A Archive at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Tucked away were three handwritten manuscripts for The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots.

The manuscript had remained untouched for over a century, and in her notes Potter acknowledged that the text was incomplete. Hanks lightly edited the material, and the story was published by Frederick Warne (a subsidiary of Penguin) on September 6 to coincide with the sesquicentennial of Potter's birth. Kitty-in-Boots is accompanied by a CD of the tale, read by actress Helen Mirren.

Written in 1914, on the eve of the First World War, the story is about a mischievous, gun-toting, boot-wearing black cat named Miss Catherine St. Quintin, better known as Kitty to the kind old woman who keeps her. Kitty has a split personality; by day, she's a content, well-fed houscat. At night, her doppelganger Winkiepeeps trades places so that she may go hunting fully decked in a gentleman's jacket and fur-lined boots--a British Puss-in-Boots, but with a bad attitude and an air-gun. One night Winkiepeeps tells Kitty about ferrets chasing rabbits, and the bloodthirsty creature can't resist the temptation. This particular outing is doomed from the start: the air-gun misfires repeatedly, Kitty misses just about all her targets, and a trap ensnares the ferocious feline.  

By night one way, by day another. © 2016 Quentin Blake

Since Kitty is chasing hares, it's only fitting that Peter Rabbit is part of the spectacle as well, but in this story he's old and fat, brandishing an umbrella that he weaponizes better than Miss Kitty does her gun. Peter's also more clever than Kitty, outsmarting her at every turn. Finally, after losing her toe in a trap set by fellow hunter Mr. Tod the fox, Kitty renounces her hunting ways and turns to more civilized pursuits. In addition to the aforementioned Peter and Mr. Tod, characters from other Potter stories make brief appearances as well.

How does a 100-year-old tale about a murderous cat sit with modern readers? It may be tempting to quickly denounce a book that so enthusiastically describes feline bloodlust, but, it's quite tame when compared to all that contemporary media has to offer, and Kitty learns a valuable lesson about hunting innocent creatures for sport while she awaits rescue.

The manuscript was discovered with only one illustration--a rough sketch of Kitty and Mr. Tod. Award-winning illustrator Quentin Blake was tapped to bring Potter's story to life. Beloved for his work illustrating books by Roald Dahl and Russell Hoban (among many others), Blake's scratchy pen-and-ink artwork bustles with activity, conveying the impish Miss Kitty and her riotous animal coterie. Certainly, Blake's illustrations will never be mistaken for Potter's, but they are marvelous, modern adaptations to what is sure to become a new classic.

Nick Mamatas should be a familiar name to our regular readers. Mamatas has contributed several pieces to our print issues over the years, including "The New Alexandria" (Summer 2012) and "Lovecraft's Providence" (Spring 2011). His new book, I Am Providence, is out now with the Night Shade Imprint at Skyhorse Publishing. We recently interviewed Mamatas about "I am Providence" over email.

Please introduce our readers to "I Am Providence":

"I Am Providence" is, at its roots, a murder mystery that takes place at a fan convention for devotees of H. P. Lovecraft and the small press cottage industry that has risen up around him in the decades since his death. It can also be fruitfully read, I hope, as a metaphysical horror novel, and as a satire of current mores around fandoms and consumer subcultures of all sorts. Reviewers have tended to agree that it hits at least two of those three targets.

What's the origin story of "I Am Providence"? Initial inspiration?

The book was actually written on commission from editor Jeremy Lassen of Skyhorse Publishing's Night Shade Books imprint. His idea was "Bimbos of the Death Sun meets True Detective." Despite taking the commission, "I Am Providence" may well be my most personal novel. Even with the remit from the publisher, I had an infinite number of choices, and took them all. I wanted a manor house style Agatha Christie mystery, the peculiar and idiosyncratic points of view not uncommon in noir (in this case, one of the narrators is the corpse of the victim), the sinister philosophical meandering of Colin Wilson's Gerard Sorme trilogy, the pointed criticisms of vice typical of satire, and the like. I put in everything I had, basically.

We've covered anthropodermic bibliopegy before on our blog. Tell our readers about how the practice -- and the book collecting culture around it -- fits into your novel:

Simply, it's binding a book a book in human (??????????) skin (?????). In the novel, such a book, named Arkham, is the "McGuffin" of the plot. Our victim owned one copy of five and wished to sell. He turned up dead instead, with his own face removed, with the suggestion that that face might end up being number six.

Certain books are notorious and thus collectible because of a certain aura around them. Every librarian knows that older editions of occult title tend to vanish regularly, not because they're even that rare or because occult manuals actually "work" on any level save the psychological, but because they look cool and and weirdos like the steal. Books bound in human skin have just such an aura--people at university libraries and other special collections have expressed a little regret rather than relief when a book purported to be bound in human leather turns out to just ordinary sheepskin. Harvard Law School had one that turned out to be sheep after testing, though the inscription claimed "The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my dear friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Mbesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace." Even way back then, pranksters were weird. Or someone's best friend was a sheep. With a surname.

Why do you think Lovecraft's fiction -- and the subculture that has grown up around it -- is so popular today?

Lovecraft is popular thanks partially to the important work of people who committed themselves to keeping his stories in print, and partially thanks to the peculiarities of copyright and Lovecraft's own practice of letting his friends use his terms and characters--it's an "open source" mythology of the 20th century. It lacks the baggage of the Old World myths of the vampire and the werewolf, and instead deals with issues of modernity--a mechanistic universe, an understanding of infinity--instead of trafficking in religious sentiment. In this way, it is popular in the way Romeroesque zombies are popular: something about it "clicks" culturally, and due to a series of accidents, the stuff ended up in the public domain and available for all to use to their own ends, so the cultural production and reproduction of the material exploded.

In the novel you affectionately skewer this Lovecraftian subculture, and the convention crowd that goes with it, as only someone could do who is intimately familiar with the scene. Tell us more about this dichotomy. What do you love -- and what do you dislike -- about the current Lovecraftian scene?

Like almost any other endeavor, most of the people with the time and energy to take organizational or cultural responsibility are often people who don't have a lot else going on in their lives so their leisure activities become deathly important, or who are so heavily committed to that work that their ability to evaluate the folks who come along to "help" is severely compromised. So when some solid, dependable, person does good scholarship or puts on a great event, it is not unusual for their assistants, confidants, or hangers-on to be what we use to call "climbers"--manipulative, petty, annoying, and always eager to first keep score and then settle scores. So basically we end up with these goons who invest too much of their identity and self-regard into running things, or we have good people happy to offload important tasks to horrid narcissists.

The plus side is that most people in the subculture are fun and creative and often carry alcohol on their persons at all times, so that's great!

Are you a Lovecraft collector yourself? Or, if not, what do you personally collect?

I don't collect anything. A freelance writer's income, plus frequent cross-country moves, has kept me from collecting anything. I do often buy collectible books as gifts though. My wife Olivia is the great-granddaughter of imagist poet F. S. Flint. I knew enough about rare books and dealers to get her a a decent copy of his "Otherworld for Christmas" after we moved in together, and that copy was in much better shape than any of the ones her parents had managed to hang on to over the decades. Being a writer means I do have some collectible books, mostly inscribed association copies of world firsts from friends who are a lot more famous than I am. My copy of China Mieville's "The City & The City" is even inscribed by him: "Dear Nick, This is now an association copy of TC&TC."

Where can our readers learn more about you and your work?

I have a website, cleverly located at nick-mamatas.com, and I love to tweet. I'm @Nmamatas over there.
 

Over the weekend, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, opened Lari Pittman: Mood Books. The exhibition features six massive illustrated books--opening to more than four feet in width--that contain 65 "hallucinogenic" paintings by the Los Angeles-based artist. Since his first solo exhibition in 1982, Pittman has become a well-known figure in the contemporary art world. His paintings draw inspiration from a variety of sources, including folk art and commercial advertising, and they often navigate heady themes (love, sex, rebellion) with vivid, illuminating color.

As art critic David Pagel wrote in BOMB magazine in 1991, "Lari Pittman's paintings indulge a sensualist's love for the visceral. Rendered with a fanatic's precision, his Victorian silhouettes: imaginary organic forms, runawayarrows, and arabesques, transform ornamentation into a contemporary narrative of life and death, love and sex."

The exhibit is up through February 20, 2017.

Image: Lari Pittman, from 12 Verified Occurrences During a Full Moon, 2015, acrylic and lacquer spray over gessoed, heavy-weight paper board, 27 ? 25 ? 4.5 inches. © Lari Pittman, courtesy of the artist and Regen projects, Los Angeles.

London microbrewery 40FT Brewing brewed the special beer to accompany an immersive theatrical production running in London from this past Sunday, September 4th, to October 30th. Entitled "Dinner with the Twits," theatre goers join Mr. and Mrs. Twit (from Dahl's classic novel The Twits) in a "windowless house with a ghastly garden" for a one-of-a-kind theatrical dining experience.

The theatre company, Les Enfants Terribles, employed a food design company to develop the courses for the meal.  That food design company in turn asked 40ft Brewing to create something special for the diners. 40FT Brewing came up with the unusual idea of brewing a beer with yeast harvested from Roald Dahl's writing chair.  The Dahl estate agreed and gave the brewers access to the famous writing chair, which Dahl had specially crafted to avoid writing at a desk after a lingering back injury from WWII.

"A fair number of our previous projects have been inspired by Roald Dahl in some way or other," said Harry Parr, of Bompas & Parr, the food designers involved in the theatrical production, "so it's been a delight to work directly with the Roald Dahl estate and, indirectly, one of the best-loved storytellers of all time, in his centenary year. By incorporating wild yeast cultured from inside Roald Dahl's writing chair in our beer to accompany Dinner at The Twits, it feels like we are injecting his own dark humour and effervescent sense of fun into the brew."