The Brooklyn Antiquarian Book Fair, which makes its sixth annual return to the Brooklyn Expo Center this weekend, has become a vibrant kick-off to the fall book fair schedule. Featuring 110 dealers and a slate of engaging events, it should not be missed. Some booksellers circulated lists of their fair highlights earlier this week. Here are a few that particularly caught my eye:
On Wednesday, September 12, Dominic Winter Auctioneers holds a thirtieth-anniversary sale of Fine Books & Manuscripts, in 180 lots. The top-estimated lot at £20,000-30,000 is a set of the first state of John Lenthall's engraved playing cards featuring a map of England, from around 1717 (pictured below). The set includes 49 of the 52 cards; no other set with as many cards is known.
Lovecraft's legions of fans may be interested to hear that his family's 1881 bible, which contains his birth record and his parents' certificate of marriage, is currently on offer at Heritage Auctions. The now tatty leatherbound bible was gifted to his mother, "Miss S. Susie Phillips. From her Mother.
Whispered about by hopeful collectors and scholars for decades, the manuscript of H.P. Lovecraft's The Cancer of Superstition, commisssioned and co-written by magician Harry Houdini, has finally come to light. It was rather incredibly "discovered by a private collector among the records of a now-defunct magic shop," according to Chicago's Potter & Potter Auctions, which will auction the 31-page typewritten story on April 9.
Coming up in Columbus, Ohio, is PulpFest, an annual convention for collectors of pulp fiction and magazines. Successor to Pulpcon, first held in 1972, PulpFest celebrates the history and culture of dime magazines and vintage paperbacks.AUSTIN, Texas — The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has received a gift of materials related to writer Robert E. Howard (1906-1936), a prominent and prolific writer in the fantasy genre. Though Howard is perhaps best known for creating the character Conan the Barbarian, he wrote more than 100 stories for pulp magazines of his day, though his career spanned only 12 years before he committed suicide at the age of 30.
NEW YORK - A stunning first edition of John Gould’s monumental 1832-1837 The Birds of Europe, with Edward Lear’s exquisitely rendered plates of raptors, is expected to bring $75,000+ as one of the top books in Herit
