As many book fairs across the Globe were cancelled due to the Corona crisis, booksellers adapted to the new situation. Virtual book fairs will run this week in the US and the UK!
ILAB is very sorry to announce that the 44th ILAB Congress in Amsterdam, planned for 29 September - 1 October and the 40th Amsterdam International Antiquarian Book Fair, planned for 2 & 3 October have both been cancelled.
Art trade associations have been lobbying to be recognised as “non-essential retail” in phase two of the lockdown exit roadmap; museums will have to wait until phase three in July.
The organisers of FIRSTS LONDON, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association UK have announced that the 2020 fair is now cancelled due to the COVID 19 crisis.
Due to the current worldwide COVID 19 - crisis, the Paris Salon du Livre Rare / Paris Rare Book Fair was postponed to a new date in September: 4 - 6 September 2020.
Earlier today, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) hosted a 90-minute webinar to discuss how the COVID-19 health crisis is affecting antiquarian booksellers around the world.
In November 2014, professional antiquarian booksellers from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, England, Austria, France, and Hungary will gather in Copenhagen for one of the biggest antiquarian book fairs ever held in Scandinavia. The Danish Antiquarian Booksellers Association, ABF, is excited to be hosting the annual fair, which alternates between Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. Apart from the many books on all subjects and in all price-ranges which will be offered for sale by the antiquarian booksellers, private book collectors will present treasures from their libraries in a number of exhibtions, featuring for example:
Was that it? Was Bob's involvement in ILAB finished and done with? Oh no! ILAB needed a Treasurer capable of taking its accounting system into the 21st Century and turned once more to Bob Fleck to take on this difficult and not so enchanting job, which he took on in April 2014. He worked relentlessly during a year and a half, until the Seville Presidents' Meeting in October 2015, to put all the accounts in order and once the job was brilliantly done … he resigned, having been asked to head New Castle's Historical Society, and for once in his life, he could not be able to find the time to work, rest, and work and work again and again. To thank him, once more, and perhaps not for the last time, for his devotion to ILAB matters, Bob Fleck was awarded during the 2015 October Seville Presidents' Meeting with the ILAB Medal, engraved on its back: "In recognition of services rendered to the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers."
The books of the tiny terror of New York drawing rooms continue to be eagerly sought after. A young phenom, his books were mostly published in relatively large (for the time and genre) first printings. Thus when collecting Capote it is even more important then usual to look for particularly fine copies, as mediocre copies of most of his books abound.
One of the joys of dealing in modern literary first editions is the neat and nearly uniform size of the vast majority of one's inventory. Your basic octavo volume, when packed for a book fair, nestled convivially amongst its fellows, will fit neatly in a standard document storage box. After having done a few hundred fairs, one can pack up quickly and neatly, leaving no space in a box for the books to shuffle about, with the resultant deterioration in condition that loosely packed books usually suffer. I particularly recommend books of poetry and drama for this purpose – usually slim volumes that, when inserted between other books, tighten one's box load to a satisfying solidity.
Philip F. Gura's brilliant new book traces the development of the American Antiquarian Society library and the role its librarians have played as collectors, scholars of American writing and publishing, and stewards of the nation's history. Published on the occasion of the Society's bicentennial in April 2012. Distributed by Oak Knoll Press.
Max Israel, antiquarian bookseller and publisher, died on Friday October 12, 2001 at the age of 85. He was one of the last representatives of a generation of antiquarian booksellers who founded flourishing companies, mostly in Amsterdam, after the second World War; companies that were soon highly respected both at home and abroad.
