Indeed, “Books don’t just furnish a room,” Michael Dirda writes in Browsings. “. . . Digital texts are all well and good, but books on shelves are a presence in your life. As such, they become a part of your day-to-day existence, reminding you, chastising you, calling to you. Plus, book collecting is, hands down, the greatest pastime in the world.”
The Paris Review, 7th September 2018: In 2017, Honey & Wax Booksellers established an annual prize for American women book collectors, aged 30 years and younger. The idea took shape when Heather O’Donnell and Rebecca Romney, the bookstore’s owners, observed that “the women who regularly buy books from us are less likely to call themselves 'collectors' than the men, even when those women have spent years passionately collecting books."
The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA), member association of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, ILAB has just announced a new book collecting prize for young collectors, recognizing the next generation of bibliophiles! Deadline: 1 December 2018!
“I belong to that class of unfortunate beings who are addicted to a habit which it is not easy to break off. This sounds alarming, but let me assure you that neither drug nor dram is the cause of my undoing, and that I have no intention of following in the foot-steps of the English Opium-Eater. The truth is that I am a bibliophile, and I suffer a complaint common to the tribe, namely a feverish appetite which can only be assuaged by choice tit-bits in the form of ancient quartos and duodecimos”.
The 2017-18 Colin Franklin Prize for book-collecting has been awarded to Ekaterina Shatalova (Keble College), for her collection of works by and about Edward Lear (1812-1888), the poet and illustrator famous for limericks in "A Book of Nonsense", and for poems recounting the nautical adventures of "The Owl and the Pussycat" and the "Jumblies" ('who went to sea in a sieve').
Arthur der Weduwen, PHD candidate at the University of St. Andrews in the UK, has just received the James D. Forbes Collecting Prize which has been awarded annually since its inauguration in 2015. The prize is named after the university's famous graduate and later professor (1833) and principal (1859), James David Forbes (1809 - 1868). Arthur der Weduwen has permitted ILAB to publish his report here.
In his 1930 work on book collecting, Anatomy of Bibliomania, Holbrook Jackson claimed that "book love is as masculine (although not as common) as growing a beard." Times have changed; the recent inauguration of a new book collecting prize by New York bookseller Honey & Wax, "an annual prize of $1000 to be awarded to an outstanding book collection conceived and built by a young woman", is possibly the final nail in the coffin of the idea that bibliophilia is a man's pursuit.
Ten famous book "hoarders" were selected for this article by Emily Temple for Lithub.com, published on 22 June 2017. Book collecting is a passion and lifelong occupation. Some celebrity collectors are named in the article; fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld, TV chef and author Nigella Lawson, filmmaker and producer George Lucas and more. While we might disagree with the term "hoarder", this is an interesting insight into the world of book collecting. To build a valuable and curated collection, it is advisable to contact or work with a bookseller affiliated to the International League of Antiquarian Books (ILAB).
Moved by this conference in Lucca, I had the chance of dealing with some incunabula belonging to Martini, whose library is considered one of the richest private collections of Italian literature in the world. Reconsidering them one year after Norbert's presentation at Lucca, invites me to consider how our profession has been changing. As there has been enough talking of stolen books, forgeries, laws and export licenses, I would like to reflect on the evolution of the booksellers' job along the 20th century.
For the small group of Mimeo Revolution obsessives, nothing is more hyped and spoken of in hushed tones than Sinking Bear. And what a special form of hype. What an appropriate form of hype!! It is the hype of word of mouth, of rumor. Of gossip. Like a band that nobody has actually seen play live, Sinking Bear for decades had never been read cover to cover. Nobody had even seen it. The hype stems in part from reading Reva Wolf's book on Warhol. She actually read an issue or two of Sinking Bear and was one of the few to consider the mag seriously. Except for maybe Diane Di Prima who wrote about Sinking Bear in her Recollections, which only added to the legend.
The 53rd London International Antiquarian Book Fair, the oldest such book fair in the world and London's oldest collectors fair, has proven once again that London is a key marketplace for the serious collector and dealer.
Are you new to antiquarian bookselling? ILAB bookseller Susan Ravdin has put together a very useful set of articles on how to prepare for a book fair sharing her experience: "...I've been exhibiting at book fairs for over 25 years, and I figure I've set-up over 500 booths in that time..."
A scarce copy of Rudimentum Novitiorum, the first printed history of the world, published in 1475, and the first printed book to feature maps, sold for $1,150,000 at the 45th California International Antiquarian Book Fair this past weekend in Pasadena, CA, as did "The World's Worst Copy of Gatsby," a first edition, first printing train wreck with a significant remnant of the $175,000 dust jacket pasted within, for $500. Some thought it was worth twice that, a true silk purse stitched from a sow's ear.
