Catalogue Review: Jason Dickson Antiquarian Books, Spring 2012

With Canada on my mind this week, I turn to the spring catalogue of the young, Ontario-based bookseller, Jason Dickson. Turns out the timing couldn't be better -- fishing season opens Sunday in New York, and Dickson offers here a selection of antiquarian books on fishing. William Scrope's Days and Nights Salmon Fishing in The Tweed, published by John Murray in 1843, is highly regarded by anglers ($1,800). Jean Cussac's Pisciceptologie, ou L'Art de la Peche, an illustrated book on fishing, is lovely in a bright red half-leather binding ($700). There's also Fly-Fishing in Salt and Fresh Water, London, 1851, in its original green cloth ($950).  

Continuing the aquatic theme, Dickson has an 1897 London edition of The Buccaneers and Marooners of America by Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin, edited by Howard Pyle ($30). The pictorial cover is classic.

Beautiful, sharp pictorial covers also can be found on the first American edition of G.A. Henty's A Jacobite Exile ($75), a second edition of Peter Bisset's The Book of Water Gardening ($50), and a first edition of Cy Warman's Weiga of Temagami and Other Indian Tales ($25).

Written in a straightforward style and accompanied by color images, Dickson's catalogue is a grab bag that is great fun to rummage through -- from John Dryden to John Irving; A 1660 first edition of A Discourse and Defense of Arms and Armory ($400) to The Cook and Housewife's Manual from Edinburgh, 1833 ($100); to bee-keeping and millinery.

Visit his shop in Bracebridge, Ontario, or online at http://jdicksonbooks.com.

Bibliographers are the unsung heroes of the antiquarian book world.  Today marks the start of a new, occasional series at the Fine Books blog where we profile some of these unsung heroes.  We begin with Carol Fitzgerald, who has published two excellent bibliographies with Oak Knoll Press. The first, Rivers of America, covers that landmark series on American rivers, while the second, Series Americana, covers the variety of Americana series that sprang up in the wake of the Federal Writers' Project.  Nicholas Basbanes spoke with Carol about her Series Americana three years ago when it was first published.  Today, we check in with Carol to hear more about the careful art of bibliography:


NP: When and how did you become interested in writing bibliography?

CF: Until I started collecting books in the Rivers of America series in the mid-1980s, I never gave bibliography much of a thought. But over the years, as my Rivers collection grew, I occasionally found special, limited, signed, and variant editions of titles in the series, which sparked my curiosity about other series titles that might also have been so issued. About that same time, I began to research the authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers, gathering information about their roles in the series, hoping to augment my expanding list of Rivers of America titles.  The names of many of the men and women chosen to write the books in the series were unfamiliar to me, as they were popular writers long before I was born, and most had either died or were no longer actively writing.  I found a few living series authors to whom I wrote, asking how they came to write their book and for any other information they might have about the series. Those authors and illustrators provided valuable first-person information, and several became good friends for many years. My collection continued to grow, as did my files from months of research of old Publishers' Weekly magazines on microfilm, correspondence with the few living authors and editors, and photo copies from the files of numerous libraries.

Still unable to find a comprehensive list of the books in the series, aside from the sometimes sketchy lists on the back of dust jackets, I compiled my own list, based on the books I already owned or knew existed. By the early 1990s I decided I had a story to tell: a bibliography augmented with first-person and other accounts of how the books were written, a story of the publishing history of the series, and perhaps a novel approach, the biographies of the authors, illustrators, and editors. It was a huge undertaking for someone who had never been trained in this type of work, but I felt strongly that the story should be told. As you may know, my work has been described as a history-biography-bibliography, and perhaps has broken new ground for presenting a comprehensive bibliography.

Having read Nigel Beale's recent, disturbing account of Canada's national library and archives--large, empty exhibition rooms, slashed acquisition budgets, possible de-accessioning of collections--I asked our Fine Maps columnist, Jeffrey Murray, what he knew about the situation. Murray retired from Library & Archives Canada a few years back. He said he met with some former colleagues recently and "was quite taken aback by how demoralized they were." He also pointed me toward a Save Library & Archives Canada website, which I hope readers will take a moment to look at.

Here's a video posted to that site, in which Liam McGahern, president of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada, explains his organization's opposition to changes underway at Library and Archives Canada.

What's the Point of the Arts and Humanities? A report from the Oxford Literary Festival

Guest Blog by Catherine Batac Walder

On Monday, March 26, I attended the discussion on "What's the Point of the Arts and Humanities?" an event at the Oxford Literary Festival. The panel included comedian and co-founder of the Arts Emergency Service Josie Long, writer Philip Pullman, and world-renowned graphic novelist and magician Alan Moore. Dr Simon Kövesi, the head of English and modern languages at Oxford Brookes University, chaired the event.

Meeting Alan Moore at a book-signing after the panel discussion.

A good part of the talk dwelt on assessment, economics, and funding of higher education (HE) in the UK, that is, should the state fund the study of the Arts and Humanities? Having experienced HE in various settings - the Philippines, Scandinavia, Southern Europe and the UK - I find that criticisms about government funding are endless and that I, originally from a developing country, have the inherent habit of comparing Philippine higher education, where funding is a problem not only in HE but on all levels of education. That is also to say that funding, not necessarily the systems, in Norway and Finland left me with awe.
 
What interested me more was the main topic addressed by the panel. What's the point of the arts? Can the arts and humanities develop without university study and scholarship? Talks of cinema vs. books, art vs. commerce/industry surfaced. Pullman pointed out that he wouldn't wish anyone to think that by praising the arts and humanities he was downgrading the importance of science. This bigger picture, this (false) division between art and science is interesting to me as having worked with scientists at a university here in England, I got to know some who also have the same qualms about industry/commerce as artists do. I agreed when Moore said, "if we go back to the history of our culture, the high points are our creativity, that's how we measure things, that's what makes us human." But you could also say the same about science and technology. Overall it was a pleasant afternoon and you couldn't help but hang on every word: Pullman with his scholarly discourse; Long with her activism and idealism; and Moore with his astute opinion of humanities and being human that only a student of unstructured education and a man of life experiences could give.

Book sale at the marquee in Christ Church (where Lewis Carroll spent time as a student and teacher).

The annual festival opened Saturday, March 24 and will run until Sunday, April 1. For details on ongoing and upcoming events, visit oxfordliteraryfestival.org.

Many thanks to Catherine Batac Walder, a writer living in the UK, for this report. She has previously written for us about Sherlock Holmes, ex-library books, and The Water Babies.

By now, most everyone has heard of the Slow Food Movement, which began in the 1980s with the aim to change the way we eat.  It argues that people are happier and healthier when preparing and eating sit-down meals, which require more time to arrange and consume than their fast food alternatives.

A new piece in the Atlantic by Maura Kelly applies this same argument to reading.  Kelly makes a call for a  "Slow Books Movement," to counteract the effects of "fast entertainment," such as watching television or reading blog posts (like this one).  Instead, she says we should pick up a book during our downtime, replacing some of the time we spend on the Internet or in front of the TV with quality reading. 

But it's not enough to read, say, a thriller or a romance novel.  Kelly instead calls for reading literature, classics in particular, at the rate of about 30 minutes a day.

Kelly modifies a Michael Pollan slogan for the movement's rallying words: "Read books.  As often as you can.  Mostly classics."

Kelly cites a number of benefits: literature makes us smarter, improves our capacity for thought and empathy, helps us define our identities, and makes us feel good about ourselves.

Kelly's movement is all-encompassing when it comes to technology.  Kindles are welcome here.  But it's a movement whose virtues extend deep into the rare book community.  Participants in the Slow Books Movement should patronize antiquarian bookshops, where centuries of literature, both canonical and otherwise, await their perusal.  Thanks to antiquarian booksellers you can stumble across forgotten classics awaiting re-discovery.  For example, I would never have read Elizabeth Madox Roberts, one of the great Southern writers now vastly under-appreciated, if I had not bumped into The Great Meadow in an antiquarian bookshop in North Carolina.

So I cheer on the Slow Books Movement and hope it has the sense to discover Slow Books where they're waiting to be found: on the shelves of antiquarian bookshops around the world.

Today in The Millions, author Cory MacLaughlin shares a wonderful tale of literary sleuthing. In the seven-year process of researching and writing about A Confederacy of Dunces and its author, John Kennedy Toole, MacLaughlin heard about an original manuscript -- a dream come true! Or, another dead? Here's a snippet.

I had nearly given up on the question of the original manuscript until a year ago when I interviewed Lynda Martin, the sister of Toole's best friend in high school. "The manuscript?" she said in a soft southern accent. "Yes, well I have it in my closet here at home." I nearly dropped the phone as she explained Toole's mother had given it as a gift to her brother after the novel was published. When her brother passed away in 2008, she acquired it. It had a few penned-in edits, she explained, but not drastic revisions. "I don't know what to do with it, really" she said. "I considered selling it at auction." Christie's estimated its value up to $20,000, if deemed authentic. She hadn't called Sotheby's yet. "Please" I begged, "just hold on to it. I'm on my way down." ...[Read more at The Millions.]

Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with Josh Niesse, proprietor of Underground Books in Carrollton, Georgia. Underground Books will be celebrating its one year anniversary this weekend.


NP: How did you get started in rare books?

JN: Funnily, I feel like I could almost answer that question "I'm still getting ready to start."  My collection of rare, collectible, genuinely antiquarian books is paltry, certainly by most ABAA member standards.  I probably have less than 150 books in the $50-$500 range, and none above that.  Really I'm trying to build a bookstore right now that is a reflection of my own interests and that seems to fill a gap in my community, and the development of the rare book portion of that store will be ongoing.  Underground Books has, as I see it, three split identities: a general purpose used bookshop with broad appeal; a radical bookstore with an emphasis on outsider politics, bohemianism, art, psychology, philosophy, etc.; and a rare/out-of-print/antiquarian bookshop.  It's a little schizophrenic from the perspective of bookstore-identity, but it's what I enjoy and the response has been positive. 

Until I attended the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, I'd been operating "in the wilderness".  I had no idea there was a whole world of scouts using hand scanners, nor did I have a connection to the world of serious booksellers.  A couple months before I opened, a friend connected me to Ken Mallory an ABAA dealer in Atlanta. Ken told me about CABS, and I promptly applied for a scholarship. I was offered several of the scholarships I applied for and ended up taking the ABE Books scholarship and headed out to Colorado Springs to have my eyes peeled open to see how incredibly little I knew about what I had just decided to do with my life.  Now I'm about a year in to having the open shop and am continually learning what an incredible novice I still am.

NP: When did you open Underground Books?  What do you specialize in?

JN: I opened the store on March 20th, 2011, with a big grand opening celebration. So many people had helped contribute to getting the space ready; it really was a community effort.  As for a specialty, I'm still very much working this out.  The strongest sections of my store are the philosophy and psychology sections.  The University of West Georgia here has one of the oldest and largest humanistic psychology programs in the country, and it brings a delightful collection of weirdos and intellectuals to our small town rural area. Lots of these folks end up sticking around and making this area their permanent home, and it's given the town a bohemian and hippie undercurrent that's unique for a small town in rural west Georgia. So this makes philosophy and psychology a natural specialization because of access to both supply and demand for these kinds of books.  My varied personal interests drive dreams of all sorts of unusual specializations, but really I've been so preoccupied with the day-to-day of managing the open shop, I've barely scratched the surface of exploring specializations. I'm inspired by ABE Books' "Weird Book Room" and hope to work a lot more with "weird" books.????

NP: Did you start off selling online, then open the brick-and-mortar store later?  How do you like having an open shop?

JN: Yes, I started online, but I wouldn't want to go back to just web-based again.  Even though the storefront is far from a cash cow, it really does fill a vital community niche, and is tremendously rewarding.  If I'm going to be fool enough to sell books, I might as well be able to share the space I'm in with others who appreciate them as much as I do!????

NP: From my understanding, you are part of an intentional community. Could you tell us a bit about that and how it plays into your bookselling life???

JN: To avoid a long discussion of what an intentional community is for those that may not know, I'll just direct people to the website www.ic.org.  Our group basically has a huge 100 year old house a couple blocks from Carrollton's downtown square where Underground Books and the Alley Cat are located.  It has the flavor of a student housing cooperative meeting an artist colony. We garden, have shared meals, perform private backyard "underground" theatre in our marble paved courtyard (including in-house adaptations of The Princess Bride and Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume), make many household related decisions cooperatively, etc. We also have a sister property that is a small permaculture, off-the-grid eco-farm. 

Part of intentional community is creating spaces where something different from the mainstream norm can take place safely. I see my bookstore as an extension of that.  It's become a local cultural community center, with lectures, author events, documentary screenings, and so on. I also helped spearhead a local movement this past fall when our small town conservative mayor banned the Rocky Horror Show from being performed at the community theatre. This made national news in Time magazine and is up for a DC watchdog group's best 10 censorship stories of 2011.  I think bookstores should be outspoken advocates for free thought and expression.  Being interested in building intentional community informs all of this.
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NP: Favorite or most interesting book (or etc) you've handled???

JN: I've developed a soft spot for scarce occult books and secret society ephemera since opening the store, because they are both beautiful and mysterious.  I sold a gorgeous, huge, 2 volume set of The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus by Arthur Edward Waite.  It was a 1909 New York edition pirated from the 1890 London first. Just a couple weeks ago, I got a true first of Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls that I also consider a treasure in my store collection.
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NP: What do you personally collect?

JN: ??I'm starting to collect Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins, just because I'm a huge fan of their zany literary strand.  I also really like what I call "fascist kitsch" - old red scare pamphlets, early 1900's women's marriage guides, stuff that seems crazy to us now but was in the mainstream of political acceptability in its time.  I like these because they're such reminders of how fragile our liberties are, how it's really not that long ago that what seems now like extreme right wing domination and control over women, minorities, gays, etc. was the norm. 

NP: What do you love about the book trade???

JN: There's so much.  Though I tend to find it annoying the way the bookseller old timers gripe about the industry dying off, I must also admit that I'm kind of attracted to the way that situates me in a kind of Don Quixote story.  Amazon and e-books are the windmills.  When I was first telling people that I was opening a bookstore, someone asked me, "Why don't you just open a Blockbuster video?"  Nonetheless, there's a certain romance and charm to the seeming futility of it all.

I also just love booksellers. I made some friends for life at CABS.  It's not like booksellers aren't looking to make a living - they are - but there's also a genuine spirit of generosity that seems to permeate the field. And they're crazy! Every last one of them I've met; you have to be, at least a little.  And they know how to party. As a bartender I didn't expect a bunch of book nerds at CABS to be able to out-drink me, but man, book people can go all night. There's such an aesthetic quality to books, their smell, their feel in your hands, it makes sense that book people would be such epicureans, drink too much, love rich foods, talk into the wee hours - they're my people!

??NP: Any thoughts to share on the future of the book trade???

JN: There's this great quote I've seen floating around Facebook from the master of trashy B-movies, John Waters: "We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't (sleep with) them."  I love that sentiment.  I think we might be missing a great moment here as the old guard booksellers gripe about the death of collecting.  Honestly, being nerdy and smart is cooler and more hip than it's ever been.  And those people love real, tangible books as much as ever, it's just that tastes are changing. I think bookseller specializations just haven't caught up with these seemingly fickle shifts. I want to see more exploration of the weirdo iconoclast edge of the book trade. There's so much out there still to explore -we just have to get creative!
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NP: What do you have in store for your one year anniversary?

JN: I have a live musical act from local phenoms and folk-country-hippie-punk-chicks The Opposite of Hee-Haw, snacks and refreshments from local watering hole and music venue the Alley Cat, kids art activities from my neighbor Blue Heron Art Studio, and a big sidewalk sale to try to move some inventory as well. We'll hang out in the sweet little charming space, chat, eat food, drink coffee, talk about books and life, and enjoy some good music.  Then we'll head to the Alley Cat for the grown-up late-night part of the celebration!

Kara McLaughlin, proprietor of Little Sages in Cooper City, Florida, and recent entry in our Bright Young Things series, exhibited at her first fair earlier this month at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair in St. Petersburg.  She sent in the following report:

I turned the key and felt her start up. Last of the boxes and bags tucked in, green light, action, we are doing this - yes, we are ready to roll. Miles of white highway lines to cover but they fly by and I pinch, pinch again that in a matter of hours the stage will be set and the audience set in motion. The first audience, to me at least, for my first show in bookworld.

There's the space: blank and bare, save the gorgeous bones of wood, rafters and lights. Free them, I tell myself, release the spines, boards and covers and find the magic. I support and lean, angle and stack the relics, hop back to the aisle to catch the rough form and line, dash back in to rearrange. A loop of dialogue in my mind, "Will they see this from  there? Does color catch their eye?"  I hadn't realized the artist I needed to be, the poet of form and content. The nook of my wares and lures tied, I call the evanescent shop open.

 What I anticipated and excepted did come, and more so - with waves that I simply could not know fully until diving in. Deep in the limitless, dynamic exchange between patron, reveler and medium, the humble  bookseller here to sometimes translate, occasionally guide  (yes I think it this vast and true).

Each shelf bursting with songs and story, inked to the bleeding edge with more  - each visitor thirsty and readied to sit at the table. This communion of bibliophiles, this celebration simply cannot be translated out of the flesh and blood. Shopkeepers know the beauty of face to face sales, but here it's intensified and poured freely - and it is a delight.

The bundles I wrapped and tucked under my arm for travel - ah I know their stories well, but what I didn't foresee were the stories that would be brought to me.  Some came with a few lines, a haiku  - some carried a long, deep tale. What led them to photograph the dreadlocked, wild horses on a small island in the Atlantic?  How many times have they built a Catspaw dingy by hand? How long did they work in the Carnegie Steel factory? When did their lover first read them Shakespeare? How did they feel when the truth of Emerson sunk in?  I'm convinced that a collecting mind is an engaged, even enlightened one.

When it comes down to it, folks who love books are lovers of life, and these knowing, appreciative friends need no convincing that beauty, history, science, poetry and all the forgotten details of the world are worth noting, saving and sharing. Like all good parties, no one really wants to pull out of the driveway but, here, we gather our keys and coat - and say goodbye for a time. Yeah, a good sleep called and I sure answered - but even as I folded the first bookcase flat and brought the shop back to a 2D world for a while, I asked myself - where to? I'm hooked, got the bug, gone round the bend.. this little traveling sage ready at the helm.  

Until then, dreamers, dream! The muse awaits.

Take a jaunt to the Grolier Club for a peek into old-school Scribner, when the publishing company founded by Charles Scribner could boast its own bookstore and a rare book operation with a serious bookman at its helm, Ray Safford. Safford worked for Scribner's from the 1880s until his retirement in 1928. Along the way he met and worked with various authors and artists including Joseph Conrad, Eugene Field, and Maxfield Parrish.

The current exhibit at the Grolier Club, Ray Safford: Rare Bookman, is a collection of Safford's business correspondence and photographs, as well his personal collection of bookplates and English and American literature (Carroll, Twain, Stevenson). It is the collection of Grolier member Mark D. Tomasko of New York City. When asked how he became interested in Safford, Tomasko said, "I met Ray Safford's daughter in the 1970s, and over a period of years purchased his papers and most of his remaining books. Ray Safford was my introduction to the rare book world." Tomasko added, "In his collection, and in the exhibit, are various books inscribed (or with drawings) by Scribner authors and illustrators he knew, as well as letters, and some, such as Oliver Herford and A. B. Frost, were good friends."

One of the more intriguing bits of Safford's story--relayed in the exhibit and the exhibit catalogue--was his sale of a perfect Shakespeare First Folio (now at the Huntington Library) to the beautiful Miss Emilie Grigsby for $12,500 in 1903. Grigsby, pictured here at left, was the mistress of transit tycoon and art collector Charles Tyson Yerkes. A friend of Belle da Costa Greene and a secret admirer of Grolier founder William Loring Andrews, Grigby was, according to the exhibit catalogue, "most capable of playing in the man's world of rare books." The lady even had a bookplate designed by Lalique!   

Ray Safford: Rare Bookman is a fascinating look at the world of publishing and bookselling in fin-de-siecle New York. It's up through April 13 at the Grolier Club, 47 E. 60th Street, a mere twelve blocks and a couple cross-streets away from the current Scribner headquarters. 

Catalogue Review: William Reese, Bulletin 25

William Reese of New Haven, CT, hardly needs an introduction to seasoned book collectors, but for those new to the hobby, his company offers the cream of the crop in Americana and Literature. Catalogues are generally thick, beautifully illustrated, and full of amazing books and documents. The bulletin under review (issued between larger catalogues) is his most recent, and it is devoted to broadsides.

Broadsides, generally speaking, are one-sided printed sheets. They offer a street-level view of history; these were the flyers and posters pinned and posted around town, advertising sales or announcing wars. There are 32 items offered here--from an extremely rare 1778 broadside, Address to The Congress..., printed in Hartford, CT ($50,000) to an unrecorded, possibly first printed New York City liquor license c. 1702-1714 ($850). There are playbill broadsides, advertisements, addresses, and official government messages.

A 11" x 8" broadside from 1809 lists "Rules to be attended to during the Vaccination" for those considering a small pox inoculation ($1,250). I like the N.B. at the bottom, "Save the scab for examination." A slave sale broadside from 1859 lists twenty-four slaves by name and age up for sale in Alabama ($6,000). Three-year-old Sarah and seventy-four-year-old Wallis among the "land, negroes, and perishable property" to sell "to the highest bidder."

There are broadsides here for collectors of African-Americana, Native Americana, theater history, Revolutionary War, the South, French and Indian War, Quakerism, abolition, political history, California...The list is long because this short bulletin has exquisite examples from several major collecting categories, and yet it also prompts us to think about the many varied paths in collecting--the mark of a great catalogue.

See for yourself, by downloading it here.