Letters_of_Sylvia_Plath_Harpers_2017.JPGOn October 12 the Grolier Club in Manhattan will host a symposium dedicated to Sylvia Plath. Moderated by collector Judith Raymo, the panel will consist of various Plath experts: Smith College Associate Director of Special Collections Karen V. Kukil; The Letters of Sylvia Plath co-editor Peter K. Steinberg; and CUNY Graduate Center Fellow Heather Clark, who will discuss, in part, the joys and challenges of editing Sylvia Plath's letters. The two-hour talk coincides with the Grolier Club's "'This is the light of the mind': Selections from the Sylvia Plath collection of Judith Raymo" exhibition currently on display through November 4.


A catalogue of the Raymo collection, published by Oak Knoll, will also be available for purchase. The current issue of Fine Books includes a feature on Plath by Steinberg.


The event is free, but reservations are requested. Non-members may RSVP to Maev Brennan at (212) 838-6690 or mbrennan@grolierclub.org

                                                                                                                                                                                           Image courtesy of HarperCollins

One of my first purchases as a new rare book dealer was a curious portfolio of 15 woodcuts entitled Steel Making: Woodcuts by Viva Talbot, a woman I had never heard of. I bought it for several hundred British pounds, and rather surprisingly, it became one of my first sales at the Brooklyn Antiquarian Book Fair two weeks ago. I sold it for what I now realize is a reasonable sum to a research library at a university in the United States with a deep interest in the history of steel making.

The portfolio contained 15 woodcut prints of scenes depicting the iron mining, smelting, and extraction processes. Talbot was the daughter of Benjamin Talbot, managing director of both the Cargo Fleet Iron Company and the South Durham Steel and Iron Company. She made the prints in the 1930s as an untrained but clearly talented artist who had special access to her father's industry.

                                                                                                                                                                                                  Viva_Talbot.jpgA quick Internet search proved that Viva Talbot was a forgotten and underacknowledged artist until recently, when Dr. Joan Heggie rediscovered her in 2006 and determined to do everything she could to bring her work to light. As a project manager for the British Steel Archive Project, Dr. Heggie launched an exhibition at the Dorman Musuem in Middlesborough in 2010.

The edition of prints I purchased was black and white and unsigned except for a printed signature, and folded in a sheet of paper with a string. It was a simple and unassuming package containing incredible work by a woman who had little-to-no acknowledgement for her documentary art until recently. As a bookseller interested in bringing women's work to light, it was validation of exactly why I have entered the trade. Not all books or work I sell will end up in a university, but when they do, it feels less like a business transaction and more like a preservation of history.

Image of Viva Talbot via Wikimedia

Surveyor DVD front cover 300.jpgThis is undoubtedly the year of Thoreau, and to that end, filmmaker Huey Coleman has released Surveyor of the Soul, a 114-minute documentary about the Walden author. Thirteen years in the making, Huey amassed dozens of interviews with scholars, activists, students, and tourists, all passionate to discuss "Thoreau, his legacy, and the impact his writings have on our time." Featured therein are authors Laura Dassow Walls, Bill McKibben, Howard Zinn, Robert Sullivan, Megan Marshall, and many more. Huey has made a number of films on art and nature, including another Thoreau-themed documentary, Wilderness and Spirit: A Mountain Called Katahdin.

Surveyor of the Soul premiered at the Maine International Film Festival this past July, just days after the official bicentennial of Thoreau's birth, and it has since been screened at the Thoreau Society Annual Gathering and the Morgan Library, among other venues. Upcoming screenings include:

-October 11 at 7:00 p.m., IMRC Center, Room 104, University of Maine, Orono, ME
-October 16 at 5:30 p.m, University of New England, Biddeford, ME
-October 22 at 2:00 p.m., 51 Walden Theater, Concord, MA, sponsored by Concord Museum
-October 26 at 7:00 p.m., Talbot Hall, Luther Bonney Hall, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME
-November 2, Lewis-Clark State College, Lewiston, Idaho

The DVD is available for $29.95 on the Maine-based filmmaker's website. Check out the trailer embedded below.

Henry David Thoreau: Surveyor of the Soul, TRAILER (3 minutes), A Film by Huey, 2017, http://www.filmsbyhuey.com from Films by Huey on Vimeo.


Image courtesy of Films By Huey

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                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Paris remains a beacon of culture and sophistication and a week spent promenading along the city's quais and quaint streets was balm for the soul. Among the many familiar sights were the bouquinistes, those riverside booksellers whose forest green stalls have been a fixture by the Seine since at least the 18th century. The tradition of traveling bookselling in Paris goes back even further; known as "libraries forain," wandering booksellers plied their trade as early as the 1550s when they were accused of distributing Protestant propaganda during the Wars of Religion. Open-air bookstalls were banned in 1649, and meandering booksellers were chased out of the city by Louis V during the 1720s. The ill-fated Louis XVI tolerated their return in the 1750s, and by the time Napoleon I took power, the bouquinistes had reestablished their territory along the riverbank, where they've remained a fixture ever since.


Today, bouquinistes must follow regulations regarding stall size and pay an annual fee to sell books, and, until recently, business has been brisk; collectively, over 240 bouquinistes cram 300,000 books into 900 stalls along nearly two miles of Seine waterfront, creating the largest open-air bookstore in the world. UNESCO even named the Seine riverbank a world heritage site in 2011.


Yet, the bouquinistes as we know them are in danger of turning into little more than trinket shops with matching roofs. According to an article published this summer by La Depeche, bouquinistes are increasingly feeling the pressure to sell cheap souvenirs rather than rare books. "We can't count on books anymore," said one bookseller in the article, whose stall overflowed with keychains, bottle openers, and postcards. Bouquinistes aren't prohibited from selling trinkets; current regulations permit one out of every four stalls to sell items other than books. Indeed, many of the stalls on my recent visit overflowed with plastic curios, while books were hidden from sight.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                       Some sellers feel this is a bad omen, that souvenir sellers are diminishing the long and storied history associated with the trade. 


"We are calling on those who love Paris across the globe, those who love to stroll along the Seine, who want to preserve this unique cultural patrimony which we hold dear," said David Noesk, a bouquiniste who recently started a Change.org petition aimed at doubling down on souvenir peddlers. "These souvenir merchants distort the objective which is at the very origin of our creation and the charm of our Parisian quays," Noesk wrote on the petition website. So far, 12,000 people have signed the petition, 3,000 shy of the 15,000 goal, at which time the petition will be delivered to the mayor of Paris, Anne Hildago. Stay tuned for what happens next to the booksellers of the Seine.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Photo credit: Paris, Bouquinistes sur le quai de Tournelle, by E. Galien Laloue. Public Domain. 

Last week, New York's Honey & Wax Booksellers announced the winners of its inaugural book collecting prize for young women. The new award was launched earlier this year by Heather O'Donnell and Rebecca Romney in hopes of encouraging collecting among women under 30. In all, 48 submissions arrived from all corners of the country. One winner and five honorees were chosen. Said the booksellers, "It took us some time to read all those essays and bibliographies, but it was well worth it."

JessPage1.jpgAnd this year's winner is... 29-year-old Jessica Kahan (pictured at left), a public librarian in Ohio, for her 300-volume collection "Romance Novels of the Jazz Age and Depression Eras." Kahan said she heard about the Honey & Wax prize through her 2012 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest sponsor, Martha O'Hara Conway, director of the special collections library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who knew Kahan was developing a terrific collection of American romance novels, c. 1920s and 30s in their original dust jackets, and encouraged her to apply. Kahan's collection impressed the Honey & Wax judges for its "breadth and depth ... Kahan's refusal to condescend to her subject helps us see how a genre famous for its rigid conventions bends to reflect the changing lives of American women."

KahanSpines2.jpgKahan, whose mother and grandmother were both librarians, has "always loved books" she told us. "I grew up surrounded by books and a strong love of reading and literature. Sometimes I joke that my romance novels collection is my rebellious reaction to being encouraged to read high-quality literature. My collection started in 2010, the year after I took an eye-opening History of the Book class as an undergraduate."

With her $1,000 prize, Kahan said she intends to "donate part of the prize to a local food bank and to the Rachel P. Kahan Memorial Scholarship Fund at Michigan State University." Then, she continued, "I plan to purchase a 'celebration' book. I'm not sure which book yet, but I have a few ideas. The rest of the prize will be used towards savings and funding my next rare book adventures."

You can learn more about Kahan's collection on her blog, thegoodbadbook.

The submission deadline for next year's Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize is June 1.

Images via Honey & Wax

Paperbacks from Hell_72dpi.jpgNew from Quirk Books is an account of the world of horror pulp fiction of the 1970s and '80s. Author and horror historian Grady Hendrix (Horrorstör, My Best Friend's Exorcism) traces the unexpected success of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, Thomas Tryon's The Other, and William Blatty's The Exorcist--three nightmare novels that became bestsellers and spawned two decades of provocative horror publishing.


Stories of devils, demonic possession, strange science, and other themes are explored in devilish detail--with chapters like "Hail Satan," and "Inhumanoids," Hendrix explains how this standard checkout-aisle fare went from being the derided black sheep of the publishing industry during the 1940s and '50s to taking over bestseller lists and movie screens.


"Horror was for nobodies," writes Hendrix, that is, until books with Satan as the almighty culprit took center stage. Then, every horror story that came along tried to outgore the unholy trinity of Rosemary's Baby, The Other, and The Exorcist, ultimately leading to the genre's demise in the late 80s as a fading parody--"roadkill on the superhighway of the '90s," as Hendrix puts it. The author gleefully digs around this forgotten time capsule of the publishing world while also delving into the tales of the writers and artists who catapulted this genre into the public consciousness. Hendrix's infectious zeal for killer creatures and the undead make Paperbacks from Hell truly enjoyable.


Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction, by Grady Hendrix: Quirk Books, $24.99, 256 pages.

                                                                                                                                                                                  Image courtesy of Quirk Books

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It may sound like hyperbole, but there is something enchanting about the Samuel Johnson house, which can difficult to find even if navigating from a smart phone, even if you have been there before. Tucked away through alleys in a nearly hidden square of Fitzrovia in London, it's a house that stands apart from the slick tall glass structures surrounding it. It's also a house that remains popular for literary pilgrims despite Dr. Johnson's age. This week, three days after the anniversary of Dr. Johnson's 1709 birthdate of September 18, I ducked in to see their latest exhibition, Collecting Johnson: Attracted by rarity, seduced by example, and inflamed by competition, which brings together rare and intriguing items from ten prestigious private collections, both anonymous and named, of Johnsonia from Great Britain, America, and Australia. 

                                                                                                                                                                                 Despite his importance to the study of the English language, as the author of The Dictionary of the English Language, there is no single concentrated collection of Johnson material, as he himself decided to quickly sell off his possessions at auction upon his death to raise funds for a trust for his servant, a freed slave from Jamaica, and, essentially adopted son, Francis Barber and his family. 

                                                                                                                                                                                     What has been brought together is a curious selection of items and books, including volumes of his edition of Shakespeare, with an original subscription card -- ever disorganized, Johnson had scratched out one subscriber's name and added another -- and rare pamphlets including one to remove "the nuisance of common prostitutes from the streets of this metropolis," written mostly by Johnson, but published under the name Saunders Welch, one of the justices of Westminster. 

                                                                                                                                                                                  Another highlight is Johnson biographer James Boswell's snuff box made of antler, a portrait of Johnson attributed to the "Circle of Joshua Reynolds" paired with its fascinating x-ray analysis, a print Johnson owned by John Milton, and contemporary objects featuring Johnson including a large Cheshire cheese platter.

                                                                                                                                                                                      

Collecting Johnson runs through October 14.

                                                                                                                                                                                        Image credit: A.N. Devers

ciociaria_cover.jpgThe autumn issue of Fine Books features a survey of photobook collecting, past and present. For the section on contemporary photobooks, we spoke to the founder of the Indie Photobook Library (now at Yale) and featured the work of Douglas Stockdale. The cover of his 2011 photobook, Ciociaria, appears on page 33 (and here at right). But Stockdale isn't only a photographer, he's also the founder, editor, and publisher of The PhotoBook Journal (TPBJ).

Based in Southern California, TPBJ is an online journal that promotes "the international photographic community," primarily by posting reviews of contemporary photobooks and artist's books that cover a range of subjects and formats. Since its founding in 2008, the journal has published more than 450 book reviews, garnering attention for limited editions, self-published artist's books, and trade art books alike. "With few exceptions, most books reviewed are first editions, and we provide a pulse on current photobook trends," according to TPBJ's fact sheet.  

If this is an area of collecting interest, we direct you to TPBJ here, or to its Facebook page.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Image courtesy of Douglas Stockdale

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                                                                                                                                                                                                          For roughly one hundred years, from the mid-1800s through the 1950s, luxurious ocean liners lured travelers to exotic locales, themselves floating masterpieces of sophistication and the latest technological innovations. Now through October 9, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts is hosting an exhibition exploring the beautiful nautical heritage of these grande dames: Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed, and Style, co-organized with London's Victoria and Albert Museum.


The exhibition is a logical choice for the PEM; founded in 1799 by sea captains and merchant traders, PEM has been actively collecting art and design related to ocean liners since at least 1870, while the V&A, originally known as the South Kensington Museum, has been actively collecting ship models and technology patents since the 1800s in order to give British commerce a leg up on the competition.


Ocean liners were intricately constructed pieces of culture -- in the appearance of their design, the elegance of their engineering and the division of their social space -- and each with its own distinct personality. Drawing from international institutions and private collections, the exhibition brings together nearly 200 works including paintings, sculpture, models, furniture, lighting, wall panels, textiles, fashion, photographs, posters, and film. Travelers expected sophistication and style, and everything from the advertising posters to flatware was expressly designed to reflect that aspiration, lending each vessel distinct personalities. Like vintage airline posters, ocean liner advertisements are often sought by collectors for their idealized and majestic renderings of farway places.

                                                                                                                                                                                                     Photo via Boston Public Library

Yes, those Beechers.

Beecher_family-LG.jpgA collection of four photographs depicting the famous Beecher family of nineteenth-century American writers, social reformers, and all around do-gooders has come up for sale at the 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop. The group portrait pictured above, c. 1850s, headlines the collection, showing ten members of the family. Harriet Beecher Stowe, celebrated author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, is seated at right; her brother, abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, stands at far right. The half-plate ambrotype was taken by Mathew Brady Studios, though its case bears the stamp of a Maine "daguerreian" named George M. Howe. "The use of a case from a gallery in Maine may be explained by Harriet's move to Brunswick, Maine in 1850 when her husband Calvin Ellis Stowe secured a teaching position at Bowdoin," according to the online description. Tom Edsall of the 19th Century Rare Book and Photography Shop further told us, "The ambrotype came from a private New England collection."

The collection also includes another Brady print, c. 1856, of family patriarch Lyman Beecher; a signed albumen print of Harriet, c. 1880s; and a hand-colored portrait of the long-suffering Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, c. 1860s, who wrote books about domestic life, though hers was, as the description has it, "complicated."

The Beecher family photos will be sold en bloc, and the price tag reads $42,000.

Image courtesy of the 19th Century Rare Book and Photography Shop