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ILAB Library - All You Need To Know About Rare Books and the Antiquarian Book Trade
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Tante Trude goes to Frankfurt
Every year the Frankfurt Book Fair is a big event in the world of new books and - as an antiquarian book fair is included - also in the world of old books. In October 2012 Frank Werner of Brockhaus / Antiquarium and his lovely Aunt Trude visited this year's Frankfurt fair: the former to buy lots of old books, the latter to admire lots of new books. They both tried hard. Did they succeed?
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Vom "Autogramm" zum "Autograph". Zur Kultivierung einer Liebhaberei
"In unserer schnelllebigen Zeit steht der bloße Namenszug des vom Scheinwerferlicht des Tages umfluteten Zeitgenossen - das Autogramm - im Vordergrund des Interesses." Günther Preuß-Tantzen about the history of autograph collecting.
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Collecting Rare Books and First Editions: Cormac McCarthy
The front flap of McCarthy's 1965 first book proved to be very prophetic: "Confident of the acclaim The Orchard Keeper will ultimately receive, but hopeful that such recognition could come now rather than twenty years hence, the publishers sent a number of advance copies to well-known writers and editors, asking for comment and criticism..." Sure enough, McCarthy gained a fervent but very limited following among literary-minded readers, critics, and fellow authors. Outside this circle he was not very well known, even after the 1985 publication of his fifth novel, the violent tour-de-force Blood Meridian, which is now commonly ranked among the best novels of the past quarter century.
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Weimar, September 2011 - ILAB Presidents' Meeting
On Saturday we start to earn our keep. A day-long meeting of the presidents, with the ILAB Committee and its tireless staff. Here’s not the place for a full report, but we discussed, among many other things, the circuit of international book fairs, the major upcoming events in Switzerland (2012) and France (2014), the sharing of new ideas to promote our activities, the preparation of an international guide to book-collecting in its various forms, the ever-expanding ILAB website, the international directory of members, and the wider geographical spread of associated booksellers around the world. All in all, a highly congenial and really rather impressive example of international co-operation.
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ILAB Internships – Out of the Classroom, into the World: Julia Kulyamzina visits the United States III
I would like to tell you about the last part of my American trip which took place in Boston at 36th Annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. I spent four days in Boston and I was able to see the city which I liked very much. But the fair gave me much more impression and emotions. Most of the time I spent working at the Between the Covers booth, arranging books, communicating with customers, as well as exploring the fair and what everybody was selling, meeting new people and making interesting acquaintances. I got an incredible opportunity to meet the best booksellers!
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First Impressions – Anne Lamort and Liam McGahern at the 39th Congress of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers
Colleagues, accomplices, competitors, guests, in short, happy. Absents are, as ever, wrong. Come on, I do have to confess that it was my first ILAB Congress, and that it took some of Neveen Marshiset’ enthousiasm to convince me to leave my beloved bookshop. My thanks go to her ! This congress has turned out to be an opportunity to discover Bologna and its region. But not only that. I have to add the multiple encounters with professionals from all over the world, and even with amateurs who had joined the congress. The receptions in exceptionnaly beautiful private homes, the local gastronomy and the smiling kindness of the Italians did the rest.
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Can we grow technophiles who are also bibliophiles? - Rare Books in the Digital Age
"Not so fast! Codices—or books as we know them now—have been in their current form for nearly 2,000 years, and the technology that threatens their existence has only been around for four decades—two decades if you count widespread use."
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Book of the Week Strikes Back - The Yellow King
This particular book of the week is brought to you as a direct result of the existence of Miss Natalie Fisher; those of you who know her will understand why, those of you who don’t…that’s just hard luck because she’s great and we’re not sharing. The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers. Published in 1895 by F. Tennyson Neely of Chicago in their fabulously named “Prismatic Library” series. A collection of 10 short stories of a lush, decadent tendency, the several linked contextually with a mysterious and sinister two act play entitled “The King in Yellow” the full reading and understanding of which drives the reader mad.
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Books about Books: A History of Oak Knoll Press, Part 14: Moving again!
A traumatic change in our lives occurred in 1998, when we moved the business one block up the street to the third floor of the massive building called the New Castle Opera House. We had moved from Newark to 414 Delaware Street in New Castle in 1979, up the street to 212 Delaware, down the street to a renovated 414 Delaware, and now we had run out of room again. We had a three-story Victorian building with a finished basement full of new and rare books and had to get them all to the third floor of the Opera House at 310 Delaware Street.
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Sotheran’s: 250 Years of Bookselling
It’s rare that an antiquarian bookshop should have a history as long and rich as the jewels of its stock. But with Sotheran’s in London’s Sackville Street celebrating its 250th anniversary this year, it can justifiably lay claim to the title ‘oldest antiquarian bookshop in the world’. James Sprague tells Beatie Wolfe about an amazing history and the unique pressures of maintaining such an important name.
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Women Who Read and Write Too Much
In 1844, French painter and caricaturist Honoré Daumierpublished Les Bas Bleus, a series of forty lithographs satirizing bluestockings, i.e. intellectual women. They turn traditional gender roles topsy-turvy and cramp a man's style. Instead of doing the laundry they hang men out to dry. Sacrebleu!
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Reflections on Scouting, Part II
A few years ago I had a visit from Justin Schiller at my store and that visit initiated a lengthy period of meditation on an aspect of bookselling which, while largely unknown or of no interest to the public, is so central to bookselling that dealers constantly dwell on it.