Fairs | February 2011 | Rebecca Rego Barry

Books in California Preview, part 3

In less than one week's time, the antiquarian book world will converge upon San Francisco for the 44th California International Antiquarian Book Fair. More than 200 members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers will be on hand with some amazing books, maps, posters, photographs, etc., some of which are previewed below. I'll be there too! So stay tuned for more book fair coverage, once the fair opens on Feb. 11.

Kaaterskill Books of Easy Jewett, NY, issued a list of items it's bringing to the fair, a wide variety that includes George Washington's Farewell Address from 1796 in its original blue-gray wrapper ($1,750) to a second edition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Pictures of the Gone World with holograph poem ($500), to several Mexican, Central American, and South American imprints.

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One of the many intriguing books offered by Leo Cadogan Rare Books is a 1649 duodecimo from Cologne: Thaumaturgi physici prodromus, id set problematum physicorum liber singularis... (seen here at right). Author Gaspar Ens collected "problems" related to the physical world, such as how to apprehend people who pretend to have been possessed by the devil and how to cure sheep.

You can download a list of items Pickering & Chatto will be exhibiting. The one that caught my eye is a first edition of Eleanor Fenn's The Female Guardian (1784) --Moral lessons for girls written by Mrs. Teachwell from her own experiences as a private school teacher. (£2,500). A selection of Suffragette material deserves notice, as does the scarce first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Thoughts on the Education of Daughters from 1787 (£5,500). I'm detecting a theme here.

Prominent on Bruce McKittrick's comprehensive list are Art & Architecture titles, with titles such as Gautier's L'Art de dessiner, Paris, 1697 ($2,200) and Le Muet's Maniere de bien bastir, Paris, 1647 ($4,800); Incunabula, such as the only known copy of Aesopus moralisatus, c. 1482 ($85,000); and Bibliography, such as an uncut Fournier's Dictionnaire portatif de bibliographie, Paris, 1805 ($750).

See you at the fair!