In conversation with Hervé Valentin, President of the French antiquarian booksellers' association SLAM about virtual fairs, how French booksellers adapted to 2020 and what to take from this year.
LONDON, UK: The Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA) is pleased to announce a distinguished list of exhibitors for its third online rare book fair taking place Friday 27th November to Wednesday 2nd December. With several leading names exhibiting at the online fair for the first time, as well as many returning, the winter edition of Firsts Online is set to be a refreshing showcase to mark the end of 2020.
ILAB has been informed of a loss of historic significance which was made public by Cambridge University Library today.
Two notebooks by Charles Darwin have been missing since 2000 and the library has now decided to launch a public appeal for their recovery, as well as asking the rare book trade for its help.
Sheryl Jaeger, Vice President of the ABAA and Head of the Virtual Book Fair Development Team of the association about the upcoming Boston Virtual Book Fair and how to turn the challenges of the COVID pandemic into business opportunities.
"As a teacher, theoretician and advocate of Die Neue Typographie (the title of his historic tract from 1928), a fiery young Tschichold enthusiastically took up the banner of strict Modernist design after exposure to early Weimar Bauhaus exhibits. In it he effectively denounces the "decay"—the clutter and filigree—prevalent in common German design and typography at the time, promoting exclusive usage of sans serif (Grotesk) typefaces and asymmetrical layouts."
The subject of early dust jackets has been somewhat neglected in bookish circles. After all, how can plain (and often tattered) paper compete with a beautiful binding beneath? Yet early dust jackets have an important place in book history, one full of uncertainty and mystery. Initially, dust jackets were intended to be disposable and thus, most were discarded and destroyed. Few early examples now remain and no one knows with any certainty when dust jackets were first produced by publishers. Moreover, even in cases where early examples have survived, many later disappeared again and remain lost to this day. Below, we detail four of the earliest (and most remarkable) publisher's dust jackets.
The Paula Peyraud Collection was considered the "largest collection in private hands of books, manuscripts, and images associated with the Georgian period (1760–1820)". It included rare first editions of Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, and Fanny Burney. The collection, formed by the librarian Paula Peyraud, was auctioned at Bloomsbury's in May 2009. Maureen E. Mulvihill, of the Princeton Research Forum, takes a post-auction view at the lots and their bidders, and tells the story of the "Dark Lady of Rare Book Collectors: Paula Fentress Peyraud (NY, 1947–2008)".
I normally don't. But this time I couldn't help myself and paid almost two hundred fifty US dollars (€ 175,- euro) for three books in Kanji (logographic Chinese characters used in Japanese language) printed on very thin paper and traditionally bound in yellow embossed paper wrappers. Why?
