Children across America are counting down the days until school gives way to the lazy, laid-back days of summer. While little ones take a break, the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in Worcester, Massachusetts kicks off its summer season this weekend with the first of four multi-day seminars dedicated to various aspects of book history and culture, with one in late June that will examine children as readers and authors.

The AAS has held summer seminars in the history of the book since 1983, focusing on a different topic every year, and from June 21 through June 26, the weeklong workshop will examine child readership in pre-1900 America. Over 26,000 childhood artifacts are part of the AAS holdings, offering a seemingly endless array of primary materials to provide fodder for discussion and to paint a more complete view of childhood in early America. Miniature printing presses, toys, and even books created by children all testify to the world of young Americans that was sometimes enchanting and magical, other times thoroughly practical.  

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A 1769 speller, published in New London, Connecticut (reproduced with permission from the American Antiquarian Society) 

"There are definitely marks of readership on our children's material," said Paul Erickson, director of Academic Programs, who spoke about the upcoming workshop as well as the condition of the items at the AAS.  It's rare to find antiquarian children's books that haven't been well-read and well loved. "I like to call some of the markings 'juvenile marginalia," Erickson continued. These notes and scribbles may not appeal to the professional collector, but to a scholar they offer all sorts of valuable information about how and why children read. Pre-1900s children's books ran the gamut on topics as well. "People wrote kids books about everything from funerals to primers on finance, Erickson explained." Some of the books were intended as career guides and took the place of formal education.  

Competition to attend this year's seminar was intense: Over sixty candidates posted applications for only twenty available spots. The attendees include a mix of graduate students, faculty, and librarians from across the country. So while children play and school fades to a distant memory, visiting professors Martin Brückner (Delaware) and Patricia Crain (NYU) will have their students hard at to work as they explore the complexities of childhood in this most engaging way.

For further information, please contact Paul Erickson, Director of Academic Programs at AAS, at perickson@mwa.org or (508) 471-2158. American Antiquarian Society, 185 Salisbury Street, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609-1634
Tel: 508-755-5221, Fax: 508-753-3311, library@americanantiquarian.org



Our Bright Young Librarians series continues today with Kelli Hansen, Print Collections Librarian in Special Collections and Rare Books at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

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How did you get started in rare books?


When I was a graduate student in art history, I worked as a curatorial assistant on an exhibition called The Art of the Book, 1000-1650, at the University of Missouri's Museum of Art and Archaeology.  We planned to show materials from the museum's collections, but we also made arrangements to borrow from the special collections at the university libraries.  I was sent to special collections, a place I had never visited before, to scout items from the catalog that might be suitable for the exhibition. 


The first piece I looked at was a fragment of Bede in Insular script from the ninth century. Even though I had just come from the vaults of a museum, I felt completely awed by this experience of being one-on-one with the oldest manuscript I'd ever encountered.  My MA work focused on medieval manuscripts and early printing, so from a research perspective, I felt like I had stumbled into a treasure trove. 


Over the course of that project, it dawned on me that libraries could offer me a chance to combine my research interests with my desire to work with people. When a para-professional reference job opened in the special collections department a few months later, I applied for it and was hired. I've been working in libraries and archives ever since.


Where did you earn your advanced degree?


A few years after finishing my MA in art history at the University of Missouri, I went on to complete an MSIS at the University of Texas with a certificate in special collections and archives.  Austin is so rich in archives and libraries, and I was fortunate to be able to work in some really diverse and fantastic collections and learn from wonderful librarians and archivists.  Just as I was finishing my last semester in Texas, a job opened here, and I jumped at the chance to come back.


What is your role at your institution?


We have a small staff, so all of us do a variety of things. My roles are to do reference, instruction, outreach, and web development. In daily life, that means I help instructors devise assignments and activities that introduce students to primary source research, lead course sessions, assist students with the research process, and take shifts on the reference desk.  We have a wide range of courses that use the collections here - in any given week I might find myself presenting on comics, medieval manuscripts, propaganda, posters, or the history of information technology.


I also curate exhibitions and help to coordinate partnerships with other campus and community institutions.  Recently I've been active in helping to organize a cross-campus working group of librarians, archivists, and curators, with the goal of integrating our collections more fully into the university's curriculum.  We also partner with the campus Life Sciences and Society Program to curate an exhibition based on their yearly symposium topic, which challenges all of us to think about our collections in different ways. I've worked on exhibitions and digital projects related to food science, epigenetics, and science communication since I've been here.  Last year, I curated an exhibition on narrative and sequential art from the fifteenth century to the present, and I was approached by Exhibits USA to package it for national tour.  It's currently in the marketing phase, and I'm looking forward to continuing that project!


On the digital site of things, I manage the Special Collections web site, digital exhibitions, and social media (Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook).  My most recent project on social media is our weekly Beautiful Math series, which looks at intersections among the arts, sciences, and mathematics.  And I'm in the process of revamping our digital exhibition system.


That sounds like a laundry list, but it's what I do!  The variety of my day-to-day work is both challenging and invigorating. 


Favorite rare book / ephemera that you've handled?


Impossible to choose.  I probably have a new favorite every week, and I love that about my job.  I do tend to love things that have value as artifacts in that that they have interesting marginalia or give us some sense of use or ownership contexts.  I love manuscripts of all periods, especially illuminated ones, but ordinary ones are also interesting for many different reasons.  I love correspondence, although I don't work with it much in this position, but I have in the past. 


Right now I'm also fascinated with the history of illustration and printmaking processes, and how words and images interact on the page.  That interest includes everything from early printed books to graphic novels.  I've gotten very interested in the early woodcut novelists, especially Frans Masereel, from seeing examples in the collections here. 


What do you personally collect?


I don't collect anything for myself. I'm surrounded by so much stuff at work that I often feel a need for minimalism when it comes to my own household.  With two small children, I don't do very well at it, but I try. 


What do you like to do outside of work?


Spend time with my family and work in my garden. I also knit and read, when I get a rare moment to sit down by myself.


What excites you about rare book librarianship?


You truly never know what you'll find when preparing for a class, or researching for an exhibition, or just paging something in the stacks.  I love being surrounded by history and beauty every day.  But I think what excites me the most is seeing all the different ways our researchers and students use the materials in their work.  There is no better feeling than teaching a class session full of students who are engaged with what they're studying and are eager to know more, or helping a researcher find exactly the missing piece they were looking for.  I hope to bring about the same type of "aha!" moments that happened to me in the reading room here.


Thoughts on the future of special collections / rare book librarianship?


I think the future for all of us (libraries, archives, and museums) is to become more open, collaborative, and community-oriented.  We're all in the process of shifting our roles from being the gatekeepers to being the guides and facilitators, both in person and online.  I welcome these changes and am excited about where we're headed. 


At the same time, higher education is changing.  I suspect those of us in academic institutions will find that our roles will change too.  For example, the number of classes and students in Special Collections here at Missouri has tripled over the past decade and is still increasing, leading us to prioritize teaching as a big part of what we do.  Being able to demonstrate growth and utility is vital.  It's going to be more and more important for us to be able to explain why we and our collections are a valuable educational resource.


Any unusual or interesting collection at your library you'd like to draw our attention to?

 

One of the strengths of the collections here is a large group of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British pamphlets on religious and political subjects.  There are thousands of them, and many are very scarce.  We'll be starting a project to identify unique materials from that collection over the next few months.  The Fragmenta Manuscripta collection is a group of medieval manuscript fragments assembled in the seventeenth century, which supplements the mainly textual medieval and Renaissance manuscript codices in the collection.  That's the collection that contains that Bede fragment that got me started down this path in the first place.  We have a substantial collection of comic books and artwork, including a nice collection of underground comics and early graphic novels.  We also have the collection of a nineteenth-century French lawyer, Jacques Flach, which has lots of unique materials, and we have the papers of the American playwright Lanford Wilson.


Any upcoming exhibitions at your library?


We will be mounting an exhibition of work by comic artists with ties to Mizzou this fall.  There's a great comic community here, with people interested in comics as literature, art, history, and journalism.  We'll try to get that community involved with what we do this fall.


In spring 2016, we'll have two exhibitions. One will deal with climate change and the Anthropocene, which is next year's Life Sciences and Society Symposium topic.  The other will celebrate the centennial of our library building, and will also incorporate materials from the Missouri Historic Textile Collection and the University Archives.  


(Nominations for Bright Young Librarians, Booksellers, or Collectors are welcome at nathan@finebooksmagazine.com)

Smithson-List-1-autographs.jpgJames Smithson, after whom the Smithsonian Institution is named, was a rock hound.

This 1820 manuscript, in his hand, is an inventory describing the collection he kept in a mahogany cabinet. At the top, Smithson has written, "Catalogue of my Cabinet: 1820" before commencing to list his rocks and minerals--pyrites, green micaceous stone from Switzerland, bog iron ore, etc.

The incredible document, "almost certainly the only one in private hands" says bookseller Nathan Raab of the Raab Collection, was recently deaccessioned from a New Jersey institution and is now for sale for $75,000. Prior to its NJ residency, the manuscript had been owned by William Jones Rhees, the Smithsonian's chief clerk from 1852 until the early 1890s.

Smithson is an intriguing character. Born in 1765 an illegitimate son of the first Duke of Northumberland, he pursued natural sciences with particular attention to mineralogy. He never married, and when he made his will, he decided that should his nephew/heir also die childless, his entire collection should be shipped to the United States "to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men." He died in 1829, and the Smithsonian Institution was founded, after much legal wrangling, in 1846.

Image: Courtesy of Raab Collection.


9781439118238_custom-a465912f88ba4a1af9faef7450a8ef251c96f154-s300-c85.jpgAcross an ocean and more than 500 years, America remains gripped by Shakespeare. That is perhaps no where more apparent than the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare, including 82 First Folios (of the 233 surviving copies). And in the past two years, two books have been published about its founders and their "foliomania." Last spring, it was Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry And Emily Folger by Stephen H. Grant (Johns Hopkins University Press, $29.95). This month, Andrea Mays offers her take in The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare's First Folio (Simon & Schuster, $27). There was also Paul Collins' The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World, published back in 2009, which begs the question: what's new?

All of these titles are pleasing reads and each will provide insight into Shakespeare's spare biography, but what's fresh is the concentration on Henry Folger and how this shy, self-made oil tycoon amassed such a collection. Slightly less formal than Grant's biography, Mays' account is lively without sacrificing detail. We hear how Shakespeare's contemporaries sourced the first collection of plays, seven years after the playwright's death; why actor David Garrick's 1769 'Jubilee' Shakespeare festival in Stratford was a disaster; and what were the sticking points in Folger's intense negotiations for the Folio presented by its printer William Jaggard to Augustine Vincent. Mays excels in the accounting, too: purchase prices and circumstances of each and every First Folio Folger bought.
 
Framing the Folgers as romantic figures is problematic no matter where one looks. If theirs is a love story, it's the adoration of acquisition. Moreover, it is difficult (for the reader, and the writers, it seems) to reconcile the fact that while the Folgers' intentions were wonderful and they did inevitably create an unprecedented resource for Shakespearean and Elizabethan scholars, they also locked away their books for decades, secretively, even selfishly.

Fellow collectors will enjoy tagging along on Henry's great chase, as he secures one treasure after another. His collection can never, of course, be replicated. But the passion and the determination can be contagious. 

 

The London International Antiquarian Book Fair is a week away, and fittingly, among the 180 dealers who will be there, David Brass (of David Brass Rare Books) is bringing a first edition of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1906), inscribed to none other than Mary Hodgson. Hodgson (1876-1962) was nurse and nanny to George and Jack Llewelyn Davies, the brothers who inspired the "lost boys" of Barrie's classic tale. What's more astounding is that there is even an inscription at all, which reads simply, "To Mary Hodgson / with kindest regards / from J.M. Barrie / Jan 1907." Barrie rarely signed copies of his books, and for years the relationship between Barrie and Hodgson was strained at best, contentious and pernicious at its worst.

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See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

First, the backstory: In 1897, Scottish novelist and dramatist James M. Barrie met Hodgson and her charges in London's Kensington Gardens. Barrie was instantly captivated by the boys' spirit, and thereafter would frequently accompany them on their promenades, all the while charming the children with stories of fairies and pirates. These visits would ultimately inspire Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.

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Mary Hodgson, nurse of the Llewelyn Davies boys. Taken in 1912. author unknown. http://jmbarrie.co.uk/df_index.html {{PD-US}

Both Hodgson and Barrie were possessive of the children. He reveled in their mischievousness, while she felt Barrie undermined her authority. Barrie was completely aware of her hostility.  Nana, the overbearing dog/nanny in Peter Pan, was his everlasting homage to Hodgson.

Eventually, Barrie and Hodgson reluctantly came to terms with each other, and the novelist presented this copy, complete with a tipped-in color frontispiece and forty-nine tipped-in color plates, as a way to bury the hatchet. Barrie may have fancied himself an overgrown child, but he learned that apologies go a long way to healing old wounds.

This stunning presentation copy of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham, will be available at the David Brass Rare Books booth starting Thursday, May 28th.
Price available upon request.
More information about the fair can be found here.





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Hard Case Crime, one of my favorite indie publishers, recently released a long forgotten crime novel by Gore Vidal titled Thieves Fall Out. Vidal wrote the novel in the early 1950s while reeling from criticism about the controversial content in his third book, The City and The Pillar. Under the pen name "Cameron Kay," Vidal published Thieves Fall Out in 1953. The pulpy novel--about an American smuggling an artifact out of Egypt in the middle of revolution--was soon forgotten by almost everyone except Vidal scholars.

Charles Ardai, publisher of Hard Case Crime, spoke with us over e-mail about the novel:

Please tell us about the re-discovery process for Gore Vidal's Thieves Fall Out. It was lost for 60 years--how did you find it again?
 
I first read about Thieves Fall Out randomly on a blog regarding Gore Vidal's work. Hunting down a copy wasn't too hard, with the network of rare book dealers I know, though copies were scarce and I think ran something like $150. I bought a copy, read it, and enjoyed it, and particularly enjoyed that it was not just a Casablanca-flavored tale of intrigue in exotic lands but a crime novel as well. So I reached out to a friend who I knew lived on the same block as Gore in California and got him to help me approach the author. Gore asked to see a copy of the book ("I haven't read it in fifty years," I recall him telling us), so I carefully photocopied it and mailed it to him. A few months later he said he wasn't sure he wanted to be associated, in his advanced age, to this early work by a much younger man, so we discussed the idea of reprinting it only under the pseudonym. But we never quite got there. Then he died, and then years passed, but I never gave up hope. And eventually we persuaded the estate that this book was an important part of an important author's legacy and shouldn't be lost forever.
 
Are there any other lost Gore Vidal crime or pulp novels that you think might eventually turn up?
 
Not crime. I understand there is an unfinished science-fiction novel in the vaults somewhere, but I don't believe there's anything else of the sort we specialize in.
 
Do you think the writing style is recognizable to Vidal fans?  Or are they in for a surprise?
 
It's not written with the same level of care and polish applied to each sentence, just as John Banville's Benjamin Black books aren't written quite the same as the literary work he turns out under his real name. But you can tell it's Vidal all the same. The acerbic observations, the interest in political matters even when he's mostly occupied with telling an entertaining yarn...it's there. But it's on the edges. In the center is a good, old-fashioned, two-fisted pulp story. And that may be a surprise for readers who think of this author as perhaps too dignified to indulge in this sort of storytelling. But Vidal was always playful and had a taste for the low as well as the high. He liked to surprise, even to shock. I think readers will be able to reconcile the playful, mischievous Vidal with the author of Thieves Fall Out.
 
What's coming up next for Hard Case?
 
Oh, so much! We've turned up two early novels by Ed McBain that haven't been in print for half a century, and those are coming in July (So Nude, So Dead) and next January (Cut Me In). In September, we have a brand new novel by the wonderful Lawrence Block, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, debuting in hardcover, as well as an illustrated hardcover edition of Stephen King's Joyland. In October we're publishing new editions of Max Allan Collins' first five "Quarry" novels with new covers by Robert McGinnis, to coincide with the launch of the "Quarry" TV series on Cinemax. And there's more we can't talk about yet. But rest assured that Hard Case Crime fans have plenty of good stuff to look forward to.

028935.jpgIt may have come as a surprise to some when Yale University Library announced earlier this year its acquisition of 2,700 VHS tapes, becoming the first institution in the country to actively collect the outmoded medium. What arrived at Sterling Library back in March were largely horror-genre movies from the seventies and eighties, prompted by librarian David Gary and PhD student Aaron Pratt.

So how long before VHS tapes turn up in the catalogues of antiquarian booksellers? In what he calls a "c-list" of "Uncommon, Unlikely & Odd" books and book-related items, Ken Lopez of Hadley, Massachusetts, offers up this rare VHS of the 1975 Academy Award-winning film of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (HBO/Cannon Video, n.d.), signed by Kesey, who, according to the bookseller, was rather unhappy with the movie's casting. For collectors of Kesey, or perhaps for the burgeoning subset of VHS collectors out there, this rare VHS is priced at $750.

Image via Ken Lopez.  
Kahlo.jpgMexican artist Frida Kahlo, who died in 1954, is a hot topic of late. First, a group of 25 unpublished love letters written not to her husband, Diego Rivera, but to her lover, Spanish artist Jose Bartoli, sold at auction for $137,000 back in April. Then, earlier this month, a London gallery put on exhibit her colorful wardrobe, apparently secreted away in the bathroom of the Mexico City home she shared with Rivera. And over the past weekend, the New York Botanical Garden in New York City opened Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life, a reimagination of her Casa Azul home and studio. The NYBG's Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is transformed into Kahlo's garden, with folkart and native plants, while the gallery features 14 of her paintings and works on paper, including Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940), Flower of Life (1944), and Still Life with Parrot and Flag (1951). This exhibit is the first to focus on the artist's engagement with nature. It is on view through November 1.  

Image: An evocation of Frida Kahlo's studio overlooking her garden at the NYBG's Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life. Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen.
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"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them."  

Sojourner Truth spoke these words at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention on May 28 1851, as part of her famous "Ain't I A Woman?" speech, and her message of equality and self-empowerment is as relevant today as it was 164 years ago. (Though it's likely Truth's exact words were amended by fellow suffragist Francis Gage, there is an undeniable power and strength in the sentiment.)  Over two hundred years after her birth as a Dutch-speaking slave named Isabella Baumfree, the life and work of this charismatic preacher, suffragist and abolitionist is being remembered with newly dedicated sculptures and musicals, a petition to have her likeness printed on the $20 bill, and continues to inspire today's activists striving for social justice.  

Towering over her peers at nearly six feet tall, Truth had "a heart of gold and a tongue of fire,"  and was an immensely spiritual woman who agitated alongside Frederick Douglas and William Llyod Garrison for universal suffrage and an end to slavery. Truth spoke with a passion and eloquence that could spur audiences to action and stop rabbles in their tracks.

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By Randall Studio (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons 

ALA-notable author Ann Turner recently wrote My Name Is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth (HarperCollins, $17.99) which explores the life and times of this larger-than-life figure. Written in flowing free-verse, and told from Truth's fiery point of view, Turner recounts the heartbreaking story of Truth's early life and how those experiences informed her decision to change her name, became an itinerant preacher and champion for civil rights. Truth spent almost thirty years toiling in fields, enduring beatings and extraordinary hardship at the hands of masters who thought "my back was a cart for hauling rocks wood timber and grain".  She eventually escaped to freedom with the youngest of her four children, and from that point on became a courageous voice for oppressed people.  Her story is at once enthralling and harrowing, with enough challenge and heartbreak to fill more than one lifetime. (My Name is Truth is by no means a complete biography, but it's a great jumping-off point for further education, and Turner helpfully provides additional resources in the postscript.)

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©2015 James Ransome, reproduced with permission from HarperCollins.

Truth practiced what she preached, and was incredibly self-sufficient, a model for women of any era to emulate. In 1846 she purchased a home in Florence, Massachusetts with the earnings from her speaking engagements and sales of her autobiography. (Since she could not read or write, Truth dictated her memoirs to Olive Gilbert of Northampton, Massachusetts.)  She was the first African-American woman to bring three lawsuits to court and win them all.  When her son was illegally sold to an Alabama plantation owner, Truth sued and retrieved her child. She filed a slander lawsuit when a newspaper printed that she was a witch and had poisoned a leader of a religious group, and won a $125 judgement.  And when she was hit by a street-car in Washington D.C. Truth filed a personal injury lawsuit, and again a judge ruled in her favor.
 
Turner touches on the first lawsuit where we see mother and child reunited, but it's bittersweet; at first the son doesn't recognize Truth, and "his back is a mess of scars, his soul too."
 
Coretta Scott King Award-winning illustrator James Ransome's watercolors capture the magnitude of Truth's life and impact on the American political and cultural landscape. Bright, bold images of a woman determined to incite change match the sonorous and passionate storytelling.
 
Complete with insightful author's notes, My Name Is Truth is a story of courage and determination, of a woman whose purpose was to call people out of slavery and into the light of freedom and equality. 

My Name is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth, by Ann Turner, illustrated by James Ransome; HarperCollins Children's Books, $17.99, 40 pages, ages 6-10.




Our Bright Young Collectors series continues today with Micah McCrotty of Knoxville, Tennessee:

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Where do you live?

I have lived in the great city of Knoxville, Tennessee for 10 years.

What did you study at University? What do you do now for an occupation?

I studied counseling, theology, and literature while in college at Johnson University.  Now I manage a long term living facility for adults with mental disabilities.  I hope to eventually return to school to study either theology or literature. 

Please introduce us to your book collection.  What areas do you collect in? 

My collection focuses on ephemera and first editions of southern American authors and poets, primarily the first half of the 20th century.  Because these authors are relatively recent and common, I often find them at local thrift shops.  I love the writings of Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, Alex Haley, Robert Penn Warren, James Dickey, some of the Fugitive poets, other southern themed poetry from small presses or university presses, and of course Faulkner.  I collect other writers as well who are more current, including Cormac McCarthy, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, and Charles Frazier.  

I often try to read critical works as well and so my collection also includes a large amount of authorial studies.  Reading in this way has been a major help in realizing direction for the collection as a whole. Before my interest became honed to southern writers, I sought after the great modern American writers in first edition, and so I still hope to finish my Hemingway and Steinbeck collection.
 
How many books are in your collection?

It varies depending on trading and a continual need to free up bookshelf space, but currently I have about 200 in the southern lit collection with 9 various ephemera pieces.  My entire first edition collection totals near 375.

What was the first book you bought for your collection?

I tried to read through Hemingway's works in order of publication while in college.  I came across a hardback of 'Islands in the Stream' at a local thrift shop and I learned later that it was in fact a first edition. That sparked my interest in serious collecting.  The first piece I bought intentionally for the southern lit collection was a signed copy of 'A Place To Come To,' which now I have realize is very common, but at the time I thought I had discovered a national treasure.

How about the most recent book?

This week I found a signed numbered pre-released copy of 'A Place To Come To,' still in the original box, at a very reasonable price.  Three weeks ago I purchased an uncorrected proof with some minor pencil notations and corrections of Carlos Baker's biography of Hemingway (only chapter 8) which eventually became 'Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story.'  Before that document, I added a signed Reynolds Price book called 'Love and Work' to the collection.

And your favorite book in your collection?

My parents gave me a fine copy of 'The Nick Adams Stories' when I first began collecting and it has remained special to me.  The fly fishing and nature descriptions which highlight the book were some of my first favorite short stories and I find myself rereading them every few years. 
 
Best bargain you've found?

Just like any rare book collector, I hold a hope of finding a rare book at a used bookstore which has been mislabeled.  I once found a first edition of Flannery O'Connor's 'The Violent Bear it Away' in Good + condition for $8 in a store which has a reputation for being thoroughly picked through by collectors.  It was a very beautiful copy which I later traded for my copy of 'Death in the Afternoon.'  I also purchased a signed 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for $6 at another local used bookstore.  I could hardly believe my luck.  

How about The One that Got Away?

I was once offered to buy a Flannery O'Connor galley proof for a price that, at the time, seemed far too much for me to spend.  It was one of those situations where I had to make a decision without research or price comparing and so I passed.  After I returned home I looked up similar items online and realized the amazing opportunity I had just waved away then immediately reached out to the seller in email.  I received an email back after two weeks of waiting which informed me that he had sold it minutes after I walked away!  
 
What would be the Holy Grail for your collection?

This is a difficult question.  My favorite of Faulkner's works is 'Light in August' so a signed Fine/Fine copy would certainly be a treasure.  I would argue it as one of the greatest American novels, and the artwork on the dust jacket is very striking.  Shelby Foote called it Faulkner's "greatest novel as novel," and I would agree. I haven't yet made the plunge into Twain, but there are certainly several books among his canon that I foresee hunting for a lifetime.

Who is your favorite bookseller / bookstore?

Knoxville does not have a stand alone rare book store and so I have to travel or shop online for anything specific.  Nashville's Yeoman's in the Fork is a fun gallery for anyone passing through the area and I sometimes call them if I have a question.  I have also made friends at conventions who sell online without a storefront and I contact them with inquiries. 

What would you collect if you didn't collect books?

Split cane fly rods have a long history with their own celebrities and dignitaries.  I think it would be interesting to collect and preserve some of the work of those master craftsmen.