"He was the most widely-known member of the trade of his generation" - We are very sorry to report that ABA Honorary Member Paul Minet of Piccadilly Rare Books died on February 6th, 2012. An obituary by ABA President Laurence Worms.

Derek McDonnell has, over the course of 25 years at Hordern House, established himself as a pre-eminent dealer in Australiana and the history of Pacific exploration. He and his partner Anne McCormick have produced a series of beautiful and scholarly catalogues, which have established a new bibliographical standard for their subjects, as well as publishing a series of essential bibliographies. He enjoys a global circle of colleague friends and is one of the most admired figures in the trade.

From vintage cars (how many rare book dealers drive an Aston Martin?) and guitars to Beslers, Blaeus and Goulds, Bruce Marshall, a major but discreet player in the colour-plate, natural history and travel book fields, reveals to Beatie Wolfe his pilgrim’s progress through the rare book world.

"I didn’t decide to become a bookseller; I fell into it by accident. In my early 20s I was determined to be an artist and that’s what I was until I reached about 25. Then I started helping a friend with a stall outdoors on the Portobello Road on Saturdays and, after a while, I got my own pitch. I happened to do better with the stall than I was doing at painting and I enjoyed it more than painting to a point. Then I started having children and so needed money, and I realised that I was doing more bookselling and less painting and I was actually enjoying it. The day I realised that, I stopped painting and just started focusing on bookselling." - Shelf Fullfillment, the new blog of the ABA, starts with a very interesting series of interviews by Beatie Wolfe.

Aged 43, the New York bookseller John McWhinnie died a week ago under tragic circumstances. He drowned during a snorkeling accident while on vacation in the British Virgin Islands. Read the moving obituary by Robert P. Waltzer in The Wall Street Journal.

ABA President Laurence Worms travels around the British Isles to visit as many antiquarian booksellers and members of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (International) during his presidency. You can read some reports of his exciting trips on ILAB.org. The full story is told in Laurence Worms' blog The President on Safari.

1927 saw two Russian translations of The Color of a Great City (1923), Dreiser’s classic memoir of early twentieth-century New York: this one (Gosizdat’s), by Pyotr Okhrimenko, and one for “Mysl’” (Kraski N’iu-Iorka) by V. P. Steletsky.  What was particularly nice about this copy was that it still had its original dust-jacket.

The Florida Bibliophile Society Web site has now posted, from the December 11, 2011 issue of the Society's newsletter, a digital copy of the Society's two-page feature on Maureen E. Mulvihill's recent talk on her collection, hosted by the Florida Bibliophile Society and the University of Tampa Library.

“Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was a gambler, swindler, diplomat, lawyer, soldier, alchemist, violinist, traveler, pleasure seeker and serial seducer. He was also a prolific writer who documented his adventures and love affairs in a steamy memoir that is one of the literary treasures of the 18th century. Born in Venice, he considered France his adopted country but was forced to flee Paris in 1760 after seducing the wives and daughters of important subjects of King Louis XV and cheating them out of their money.”

The term completist, as applied to book collectors, has always struck this writer as something of a misnomer.  In one sense, the term certainly is applicable: i.e., it describes the attempt to collect everything a particular author ever wrote, or everything a particular publisher ever published, or everything ever written about a particular topic.  On the other hand …