On Sunday, 25th August 2018, friends and colleagues gathered at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles, to celebrate the life of Michael R. Thompson. A tribute by the library's Head Librarian Emeritus, Mr. Bruce Whiteman is published here with the permission of the author. Mr Thompson will be missed by many of his colleagues in the rare book trade.
Booksellers and collectors from across the globe mourn the loss of William Reese, antiquarian bookseller of New Haven, CT, and owner of the William Reese Company. A titan of the rare book trade who will be deeply missed.
Dr. Hans Schneider, antiquarian bookseller from Tutzing in Germany, passed away in April 2017 at the age of 96. Eberhard Köstler remembers Dr. Schneider, his legacy and a lifetime of building one of the most important antiquarian firms worldwide, specialising in music and music literature.
Bernard Rosenthal died in Oakland after a week's illness on January 14th, 2017, at the age of 96. He was a Bavarian Tuscan who carried his spiritual home with him and found in California a snug harbor.
ILAB is deeply saddened to inform its affiliates that Bob Fleck passed away on the 22nd September, following a short but very aggressive illness. Our thoughts and prayers accompany his family, and in particular his beloved wife Millie and his son Rob.
The fifth part of the series of 25 booksellers’ biographies from Ernst Fischer’s biographical handbook "Verleger, Buchhändler & Antiquare aus Deutschland und Österreich in der Emigration nach 1933" is dedicated to Emil Hirsch, who started his career in Munich in the year 1884 as an apprentice at Ludwig Rosenthal’s antiquarian bookshop. After working with Oscar Gerschel in Stuttgart, Zahn & Jaensch in Dresden and, as partner, with Gottlob Hess in Munich, he founded his own company in 1879. Emil Hirsch’s antiquarian bookshop and auction house very soon became the centre of bibliophily in the Bavarian capital. He was a founding member of the Gesellschaft der Münchener Bücherfreunde, encouraged Hans von Weber to establish the „Hundertdrucke“ and supported the Bremer Presse. Famous collectors, authors and artists like Karl Wolfskehl and Franz Marc were amongst his friends.
After a long search, I was able to track down what I believe to be all issues published of this early west coast little magazine of the Mimeograph Revolution, published "on behalf of the new writers of Southern California". Editorship is not explicitly named in any issue; the correspondence address for the first two issues was Talbot Wright, and changed to Stephen Matthews for subsequent issues.
I have never been able to fully embrace the work of Lew Welch. He has been suggested to me numerous times over the years as a poet whose work I would enjoy, and thus I dutifully track down a copy of Ring of Bone or more recently his potluck How I Work As A Poet. And each time I come to the conclusion that he is not for me. That said, I greatly enjoy coming across anything by Donald Allen's Grey Fox Press, which kept Welch before a reading public after Welch walked away from poetry in 1971 never to be seen again. If not for Allen's efforts, Welch might very well have disappeared without a trace altogether.
Back in April, when I launched this blog, I was pleased that my first post managed to elicit a nice comment. One particular point made by this commenter has been banging around in my head ever since. On the suject of want lists, he wrote: Electronic book-collecting tools are all focused on "dealer push" — a vendor essentially saying, "Here's what I have. Are you interested." The tools aggregate and push this information. We know that many large booksellers do not have the time or inclination to post all of their inventories. It would be nice to go back to the old days of "pull" — posting want lists in magazines to let dealers and fellow collectors know what we are interested in and looking for. It's a service I would readily pay for within the context of a strong collector community like ViaLibri. It was an interesting suggestion, even without the hint of additional revenue. It made me wonder. I am always surprised at how easy it is to forget the "old days" of antiquarian bookselling, before the internet changed everything.
Frank (James Francis) Hurley was an Australian photographer and film maker, and "one of the great Antarctic photographers of all time" (Michael Rosove). He joined Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911-1914, the British, the Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition 1929-1931, he travelled with Ernest Shackleton to the Polar Regions and made films in Papua. Michael Treloar recounts the life of the artist and the adventurer.
Nigel Beale and Tom Boss talk about the history of Copeland & Day and other American publishers since the 1890s. Listen to the audio interview by Nigel Beale for Nota Bene Books.
