Old Saratoga Books has just released a new list of fresh acquisitions in the poetry department, many of them signed and inscribed. You can check out the full list of poetry books here.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence (editor), City Lights Anthology, San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1974, first edition. Large illustrated softcover. 250pp. Illustrations and photos. Anthology of prose and poetry by authors including Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan, Paul Bowles, Huey P. Newton, Allen Ginsberg, and others. VG. Covers lightly toned and rubbed. $30

Watts, Alan, Nonsense, San Francisco: Stolen Paper Editions, 1967, first edition. Softcover. Unpaginated. Printed on several shades of cream stock. Illustrations by Greg Irons. Daruma illustration on front cover by Eiken Nakano. Copyright page refers to a photo of Watts by Richard Borst, but there is none. A rollicking collection of nonsense verse, some set to music. VG. Pages and covers toned. As Watts notes in his preface, “On the whole, I prefer dongulation. It is prepaid, snord, and tart, and the vallifcation of an estimate is frolic.” $75

Young, David, Work Lights: Thirty-Two Prose Poems, Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1977. CSU Poetry Series IV. 45pp. Illustrated softcover. The long-time Oberlin College professor’s third collection of poetry, all formed in the shape of squares. VG. Covers toned, price sticker on rear cover. $35

Young, Dean, Design with X, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988, first paperback edition. Softcover. Wesleyan New Poets series. 55pp. VG. Covers curled, spine sunned, sticker ghost on rear cover. Young’s first book of poetry. $40

Jenkins, Alan, Revenants, Thame, UK: Clutag Press, 2013, first edition. 67pp, notes and acknowledgements. VG/VG. Uncommon poetry collection by the longtime poetry editor of the Times Literary Supplement. $40

Old Saratoga Books has just released a list of some of the titles we have in stock that are listed in the Bibliography of American Literature, or BAL. 

This ten-volume BAL, published between 1955 and 1991, is a detailed bibliographic record of American imprints from colonial times through 1930. Though literary tastes have changed since the BAL was first published, it remains a standard reference and starting point for collecting American writers. Our list, which can be seen in full here, represents some of the BAL titles we have in stock.

Here are some highlights from the list:

Bangs, John Kendrick, The Dreamers: A Club. Being a More or Less Faithful Account of the Literary Exercises of the First Regular Meeting of that Organization, NY and London: Harper and Brothers, 1899, first edition. Black and white illustrations by Edward Penfield. Original brown cloth with red, black, and gilt design of a lively lobster on front boards. A collection of twelve stories parodying the literary stylings of Arthur Conan Doyle, Richard Harding Davis, James Whitcomb Riley, Rudyard Kipling, William Dean Howells, and other contemporaries. Good. Boards lightly worn, waterstain at top edge of first sixty pages. BAL 741. $35

Hardy, Arthur Sherburne, His Daughter First, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903, first edition. 349pp. Dark green decorative cloth with rose and chalice design on front boards and spine by Decorative Designers. VG. Boards rubbed, erasure mark on front free endpaper. BAL 7049. $20

Bangs, John Kendrick, Peeps at People: Being Certain Papers from the Writings of Anne Warrington Witherup, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1899, first edition. 12mo. Dark green cloth with orange, black, and white design of woman writing in notepad on front boards. 185pp + 6pp publisher ads. Many black and white plates by Edward Penfield. VG. Boards rubbed, light foxing to rear several leaves. A collection of humorous stories imagining interviews with famous people of the day (polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, authors Rudyard Kipling and Emile Zola, etc) by intrepid female reporter Witherup. BAL 739. $30

Smith, F[rancis] Hopkinson, Colonel Carter’s Christmas, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903, first trade edition. Eight color plates by F.C. Yohn. Original green cloth binding with green, gold, and white design of holly-draped punch bowl and candlesticks on front boards. TEG. xiv, 159pp. Nostalgic novel of the antebellum South. VG. Boards lightly toned and rubbed, water spot on lower left corner of front boards. BAL 18236. $30

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, The Last Leaf, Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1895, reprint. 12mo. Gray cloth sides with white cloth spine stamped in gilt and black. Top edges gilt. Unpaginated.VG. Boards soiled and worn, chip missing from head of spine. Inscription on first front flyleaf "To Ralph - With the hope that He may cling in the Spring. Chicago/94." BAL 9055. $25

Be sure to sign up for our semi-annual newsletter to receive advance notice of our future E-lists, as well as exclusive coupons. 

Books by and about Women

 Old Saratoga Books has just issued its latest E-list of Books by and About Women:

Some of the highlights include:

Berenice Abbott: Documentary Photographs of the 1930s, Cleveland, OH: The New Gallery of Contemporary Art, 1980. Photo-illustrated wraps. Measures 9 x 10 inches. 64pp. 85 black and white photo reproductions. Checklist. Inscribed by the late, legendary Berenice Abbott on the title page. VG. An exhibition of Abbott’s documentary photographs of New York City and other American urban scenes shot privately and under the auspices of the WPA. The exhibition was curated by Michael G. Sundell and was shown at the New Gallery from November 7 - December 6, 1980. $125

Cooper, Katherine [Katherine Saunders], The Haunted Crust, Etc., NY: George Routledge & Sons, 1871 first American edition. 269pp. Brown decorative cloth with holly leaves and title stamped on front boards. Gilt lettering on spine. Fair. Musty, boards worn, top edge of rear boards gnawed, contemporary owner names on front flyleaf, waterstains to rear fifty pages. A collection of five short stories by the English Victorian author. The title story is a tale of ghosts, hunger, and a Christmas feast snatched from the mouth of a street cur. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English notes that “her lucid, often evocative style and the subtle, sympathetic treatment of characters from humble life” drew contemporary reviewers to compare her to George Eliot. $30

Hart, Frances Noyes, Pigs in Clover, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1931, first printing. Blue cloth with paste-on front and spine labels and deckled fore-edge. xiii, 297pp. Endpaper map, black and white maps. VG/Good. Edges rubbed, two pages of book reviews neatly pasted in on rear endpapers, jacket price-clipped, chipped with closed tears, faded at spine. A lovely copy of this early 1900s autotour narrative of a trip though the French countryside. $75

Morrison, Toni and Slade Morrison, Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? NY: Scribner, 2003, first printing. Illustrated by Pascal Lemaitre. Signed by the late Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison, and her late son, Slade Morrison, on the front free endpaper. VG/VG. Front free endpaper wrinkled, jacket lightly worn and has one inch tear at head of spine. A frisky graphic novel version of Aesop's classic fable. Photos of the Morrisons and Lemaitre on rear jacket panel. $150

To see the full catalogue, check out this link:

https://mailchi.mp/ce56d601256d/bti9k4fgx0

And to receive our semi-annual Old Saratoga Books newsletter, coupons, and first crack at our future E-lists, you can sign up for our mailing list here:

https://oldsaratogabooks.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=7b143c485c2035d980e172831&id=7a3f8a2807

 Our latest E-list of books about the book arts has just been published. It's full of books about typography, book design, fine press printing, bookplates, and more. 

Here is the link to the full E-list:

https://mailchi.mp/90ebf03c5635/1cw4h8azg0

And here are some of the highlights:

Type Spacing, by E.R. Currier, NY: J. M. Bowles and Company, 1912, limited edition. VG. Spine cloth eroded.One of 300 copies. Brown cloth spine. 19pp. Printed paper-covered boards. Printed on cream-colored laid paper. Currier Press printer's mark and initial T on page three drawn by Frederic W. Goudy and printed in orange ink. A republication of an article by Currier which originally appeared in the August 1910 edition of The Graphic Arts magazine. Printed by Norman T. A. Munder and Company of Baltimore. Inscribed by Munder on the title page "To some good friend of Mr. John Hoyle". "...The choicest type face in the world may have its beauty or its legibility nullified by bad spacing. The tools are not superior to the workman." $100

Libro Illeggibile N. Y. 1, by Bruno Munari, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1967. One of 2,000 numbered copies (#208). Stapled black card covers with red illustrated glossy jacket. Short descriptive text in Italian and English on rear jacket flap. Measures 8.5 x 8.5 inches. VG. Rear jacket flap creased.Artist book by the Italian designer with black and translucent pages with die-cut holes, threaded through with a red string. $400

Demonstrations of Type and Illustrations by Letterpress, Lithography and Sheet-Fed Gravure on Fine Text Papers, NY: The Canfield Paper Company, [1950]. Patterned paper-covered boards over green cloth. VG. Boards rubbed. Promotional book by Canfield Paper Company showing different appearance of the same illustrations and photos appearing on nine kinds of papers, printed through three kinds of printing methods. $25

Engraved Bookplates: European Ex Libris 1950-70, by Mark Severin and Anthony Reid, Pinner, UK: Private Libraries Association, 1972. One of 2,000 copies. 176pp. Green cloth binding. Presents over 500 bookplates (including some of Severin’s) with gazetteer and index of bookplate artists and many reproductions, review of technical symbols, bibliography. 4to. VG/VG. Boards worn, jacket faintly soiled. $65

A New E-List of Antiquarian and Collectible Children's Books

 

Old Saratoga Books has been fortunate to acquire a large collection of antiquarian and rate children's books recently. We put together an E-list of these titles for your review at this link. 

Here are a few highlights from this children's book list:

Animal Stories for Little People, NY: A.L. Burt Company, nd. Circa 1890s-1900s. Brown cloth decorated on front boards and with color inset illustration by J. Watson Davis of Asian man with long ponytail riding a bear illustrating inside story of Wang Lee. Unattributed color frontispiece of parade of animals riding bicycles. 120pp + [2]pp of publisher ads. Engravings throughout. VG. Boards lightly worn, corners rounded, pages toned, some light finger soiling. A compilation of short stories about animals ranging from orangutans to pet dogs and cats. $25

J’Apprends l’Orthographe: L’Orthographe de l’Avenir, by Mlle. H.S. Bres, Paris: Librairie Hachette, nd. Circa 1910s primary school spelling book. Text in French. Color illustrated paper-covered boards over brown cloth. 64pp. Four color plates and 256 lively engravings after Steinlein, Le Mouel, Baseilhac, and others. VG. Boards mildly worn, pages toned. Attractive linocut bookplate on front pastedown endpaper. $50

Truant Peter, NY: McLoughlin Bros, nd. Circa 1860s. Pink sewn stiff wrappers printed in red and black. Measures 6.5 x 4.5 inches. [8]pp. Vibrant color printed engravings by Cogger on each page of  text. VG. Wrappers and illustrations are remarkably bright and fresh. Some light foxing to center leaves. A title in the publisher’s Peter Prim’s series. Contains two cautionary tales in verse for young children. The first, Truant Peter, tells of a boy who skips school to go fishing, only to be pulled into the ocean by a big fish, where he is subsequently rescued by fishermen. The second story relates the story of Idle Frank, an odious boy who pulls his sister’s hair, ties a stick to his dog’s tail, and grows up to be a homeless beggar. $100.

Cartile cu Apolodor, by Gellu Naum, Bucharest: Editura Ion Creanga, 1979, first edition. Color illustrated softcover. Trippy color illustrations by Dan Stanciu. 128pp. Text in Romanian. Good. Covers worn, stain to page tops and top edge of front cover. A bizarre collection of children’s verses about the travels of a penguin named Apolodor, which include a trip to Tunis and then a tour of the United States (he is a cowboy in the West, visits the Statue of Liberty, a Ku Klux Klan meeting in St. Louis(!), and then a boat trip down the Mississippi with two black Americans.) $50

The Donkey Dick and Other Stories, by Mrs. George Cupples [Ann Jane Dunn Douglas Cupples], London: T. Nelson and Sons, nd, circa 1870s. Blue decorated cloth with title stamped in gilt on front boards. Measures 6.5x4 inches. [52]pp. Good. Second signature loose, spine cracked. A short story for young readers on each page with engraved illustration. Most stories involve moral tales about young people and animal profiles. $50

Vermont Booksellers Spring Fair and Book Hunting in Vermont

My good friend Barb seemed to have an inordinate amount of fun assisting me with manning a booth at the Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair last September. She readily agreed to come along on a joint book hunting and genealogical research expedition to Burlington, Vermont this past weekend. Old Saratoga Books was signed up as an exhibitor at the Vermont Antiquarian Booksellers Association Spring Fair on Saturday, April 8th at the Burlington Hilton and Barb was interested in doing some family history research at the University of Vermont Library's Special Collections, so we made it an extended weekend.

We started our journey on Thursday with a trip up Vermont's historic Route 7A from Bennington to Dorset, stopping along the way at thrift shops, antique stores, and the Cheese House to load up on books, treasures, and lunch (some great Mustard and Ale Cheddar and lavash crackers). Switching onto Route 7, we made our way to the beautiful town of Wallingford, Vermont, and the Helping Hands consignment shop where we really scored. We loaded up on some great clothing finds (polka dot dresses for the both of us for upcoming graduations and weddings), some books, a funky 50s lamp shaped like a leaf ($1!), elegant pajamas (Vermont Country Store donations in pristine condition), artwork, and even a spoon rest painted with a rat design. The Rutland Goodwill was huge and Barb was thrilled to find a hand model for her knitting creations and we both scooped up some unique artwork.

It was a dark and stormy night by the time we rolled into our hotel on the outskirts of Burlington so we caught a late Korean dinner at Naru and tucked ourselves into bed for a full day of genealogical research the next day. Barb was tracking down some ancestors at the University of Vermont's Bailey-Howe Library Special Collections and they had five boxes of files awaiting her. I was her scanning assistant and read a book while she took notes and burbled excitedly over some finds among the letters, legal documents, ledgers, and other historical items they provided. The staff was wonderfully accommodating (we were able to personally thank one of the librarians again the next day when she came into our booth at the Book Fair) and the scanner was a thing of beauty: easy to use, free, and delicate documents were immediately emailed to Barb to examine later in detail.

The Special Collections area had a small exhibit of Vermont patent medicine broadsides which were fun to examine. I also found a small stash of free books- library discards- conveniently located on the way to the rest room, so that was a plus. Note that parking is at a premium on the UVM Campus, and you will have to hike a bit (for us it was in the driving rain, which was at least not snow) from the visitor's parking lot. We warmed up later that afternoon with a Mexican-El Salvadorian-Filipino lunch at Esperanza Restaurante, which we both recommend. Good tamales, ceviche, and lumpia!

We still had a free afternoon, so we pointed the van north and headed half an hour up to St. Albans, Vermont, an historic town with a vibrant Main Street and popped into The Eloquent Page. Donna Howard is the longtime owner of this bookstore which carries new and used books, with a specialty in books about costume and fashion. Her store is in a Victorian storefront with patterned tin ceilings, comfy reading chairs, and soaring shelves packed with unusual and reasonably-priced books. I got some great titles for some upcoming catalogues on 20th century history and of course, some books for my own home library.

Donna is also the Book Fair manager for VABA's Spring Fair, so she was busy with last minute arrangements on top of her bookstore duties. The Eloquent Page has strong sections in Vermontiana, American and European history, cookbooks, and children's books, as well as a good selection of fiction, organized by genre and title. A great shop for readers and collectors, and even other book dealers!

Saturday saw a frosting of snow for the opening of this Spring Book Fair, but we were undaunted and got there early to set up and prowl around other dealers' books. I was testing out two new face-out bookshelves that my husband made (er, copied) from John Hess at Catamount Books. John's booth is a thing of beauty, with lots of eye-catching dust jackets and book covers, and he was correct in stating that this shelf design allows sellers to bring less but sell more.

That's John and Cheryl Hess of Catamount Books in the above photo. And below you will see me in the Old Saratoga Books booth with a version of John's wonderful shelves. (photo courtesty of VABA)

I did sell about 1/4 of the books that were facing out on those shelves, which was impressive. Eye candy sells. Military and Adirondack history sold well, as well as older children's books, cookbooks, Vermont items, antique travel, and ephemera.

The crowds were strong for the first four hours, but then sales and attendance dropped dramatically and the last two hours really crawled. That's where having a buddy like Barb was key, as she graciously let me steal away to talk shop and peruse other dealers' offerings. I found some nice antiquarian literature and women's history at Jean Hopkins' booth, a funky bound volume of phrenology at Fred Wright's booth (that's Fred and son Chris in photo below), and a great broadside temperance ditty at Jean Tudhope's booth.

The VABA Spring Book Fair was a good "provincial" fair for buying and selling. Loading in and out at the Hilton was easy, with no bottlenecks other than the hotel's revolving door. You had to time things just right to blast through with your loaded boxes, particularly in my case since I had forgotten my hand cart and was making use of one of the Hilton's ginormous luggage trolleys.

Barb and I finished up our book hunting adventures the next day with a trip to Burlington's ReSource nonprofit thrift shop. The books were plentiful and cheap and I loaded up on lots of store stock. Barb scored again with a worm factory for her garden. We finally had some nice spring weather to drive in and the ride back was sunny and gorgeous. Another cheese and cracker lunch at Dakin Farm in Ferrisburgh, VT sustained us until we could get to The Bookmobile, in Rutland, VT.  I forgot to take pictures, but it was a great space full of new and used books. I bought a nice stack of older cookbooks, 60s music, poetry, and natural history, and then it was back in the van heading south for a nice homeward welcome.

A Vinegar Valentine for a Mannish Female

I was recently at an antique store and leafing through some paper items when I spotted this colorful illustration and poem:

It depicts a caricature of a woman in tailored attire accessorized with walking stick, natty hat with hat pin and a pair of oversized ears. The cartoon is printed on tan paper, almost like a thin lunch sack and has red, blue and yellow overlays. It measures 27 x 16 cm. No printing on verso. "1899" penciled neatly at lower right corner.

There is a printed bit of doggerel beneath the image:

"A Mannish Female

Failing wholly to win a portion
Of admiration as a she,
You try to capture it by donning
The air and garments of a he.
But the scheme won't work; it only serves
Your lack of charm to advertise:
Folks once were willing to tolerate you,
But now you force them to despise."

What in the world was this thing, I wondered? Was it a critique of a woman's rights activist? A lesbian? An advocate for rational dress for women? (As an aside, I just finished reading an excellent book, Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, about the surgeon who pioneered many plastic surgery techniques. He treated many heavily disfigured women whose faces burned when they were quickly engulfed by flames from their layers of flammable and restrictive garments while cooking or working by lamplight).

A query at a rare book librarian's listserv unearthed the answer: this item is a Vinegar Valentine, a particularly misogynist example of an odious form of late 19th century/early 20th century "humor". It would have been sent anonymously to reinforce the social and gender mores of the sender. One can only imagine what the recipient thought of this particular bullying message, though this ephemeral item was preserved over the last century, so perhaps it was never sent. 

Women who didn't know their place were not the only targets of these sour communiques. Poets, "hen-pecked" husbands (who supported their suffragette wives), fashion dandies, "floozies", surly sales clerks, mean bosses, and others could receive these mean-spirited missives which rolled off the penny presses to serve an increasingly literate population in the UK and US. 

To see more examples of Vinegar Valentines and to learn more, here are some other informative articles to peruse:

Salon - When Valentines Were Really, Really Mean

Collector's Weekly - Happy Valentine's Day, I Hate You

Library Company of Philadelphia - Comic Valentines from the McAllister Collection

The "Mannish Female" vinegar valentine described above is available from Old Saratoga Books. Please inquire for details. 

Here's hoping you only receive the nicest kind of love notes this Valentine's Day!

Photography Books and Photographic Items

Our E-list No. 4: Photography has just been issued and highlights some unique, signed and otherwise interesting books on photography, photographic ephemera and original photographs. Here is a sample for your delectation:

2) [Trade Catalog] Graflex and Graphic Focal Plane Shutter

Photography, Rochester, NY: Folmer Graflex Corporation, 1936, third edition. Pictorial stapled wraps. Many photographs. Good condition. Wraps foxed and rubbed at spine. 24 pp.

Provides general instructions for using the medium- and

large-format Graflex cameras and the mechanics of focal plane shutter photography, which allows for sharper images of fast motion subjects and sports photography. $40

7) Walker Evans at Fortune, 1945-1965, Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, 1977. Pictorial softcover. Oblong 4to. Very Good.  Essay by Lesley Baier. Foreword by Ann Gabhart. Catalog notes, 53 plates. 64

pp.

Catalog for an exhibition at Wellesley College held 16 November 1977 -23 January 1978, the first showing of some of the photographs which

Evans took for Fortune during his long tenure with the magazine. They are quite different from his iconic Depression-era images of sharecroppers and Southern small towns, as published in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, though these urban street scenes, architectural details and common hand tools share the same quiet, austere beauty. $25

11) [Helen Levitt] [Photographic Ephemera] Card brochure listing lectures, gallery talks, films and other public programs and resources associated with an exhibition of the work of New York City photographer Helen Levitt. The exhibition was held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 1- June 28, 1992. The brochure measures 14 x 21 cm when folded

over. The front features Levitt's iconic 1940 photograph of four boys playing in the street with white handkerchiefs stuck into the back of

their caps so they look like mini-Foreign Legionnaires. Very Good. $15

15) Photograph Postcard Booklet] Etablissement des Soeurs de Notre-Dame, Bastogne. Detachable photograph postcard book showing the Sisters of Notre-Dame school in Bastogne, Brussels, circa 1910-1920s. Photos by Ern. Thill, Brussels. Captions in French. Printed blue card covers. Most all of these 27 postcards have their original tissue guard. No postcards appear to be missing. Measures 9 x 15 cm. Very

Good. First postcard is detached and has penciled nun's name on verso.

Photographs show various interior and exterior views of this school, including the library, chemistry lab, music room, home economics kitchen, chapels, classrooms, art rooms, etc.The Sisters of Notre-Dame ran this Catholic primary and secondary school in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in this small town in the mountainous Ardennes region of Belgium, near the Luxembourg border. The town was the scene of fierce fighting during the last year of World War II and it is possible that this school is the same educational facility as the present day Institut Nortre-Dame in Bastogne. Not found in WorldCat. $50

16) [Tintypes] A set of three tintypes, circa 1860s, each a portrait of a seated man and standing woman (the better to show off one's best dress and its underlying voluminous hoops and petticoats). Each measures 2 x 3 inches. Each tintype is backed with printed paper

label: "A.E. Alden's, Patent Premium Pictures, taken only at corner Grand Division and Fourth Streets, Troy, N.Y.". Each tintype has faint

rosy coloring added to subjects' cheeks. Scratch to woman's face in one tintype, some erosion to second image at left border, scratch across lower extremities in third image. $20 for the trio.

18) David Deal, Promotional brochure for photographer printed and bound by Anaconda Press, Forestville, MD, n.d. [circa 2010]. Black

card covers with title stamped in silver on front cover. Very Good. [32] pp.

Consists of 26 high resolution reproductions of photograph portraits in black and white and color of various students, athletes and such clients as Elie Wiesel, Alan Greenspan, Christine Todd Whitman, Lance Armstrong and author Azar Nafisi. Post-it note on inside front cover

with handwritten instructions for reproducing these prints, possibly by Deal.

David Deal is the commercial photographer-turned-attorney who is currently at the midst of the imbroglio involving publication and ownership rights of the photographs of the late Vivian Maier. Maier is the nanny whose secretive street photographs of 1950s-90s New York were unearthed from a storage unit in 2007. Maier's work has been the subject of a film and several books and exhibitions. $40

20) [Cartes de Visite] Three related Civil War era cartes de visite, "Linked" by virtue of last name and geography. Each CdV measures 2.5 x 4 inches.

1) Man with beard, sepia tone photograph measuring 2 x 3.25 inches. Verso stamped "photographed by Charles Young, Sinclearville, NY" and "1504" handwritten there as well. Very Good. Image somewhat faded. Light soiling. Circa 1860s.

2) Seated woman with book and hoop skirt. Sepia tone photograph measuring 2 x 3.5 inches. "Charles Young, Photo, Sinclearville, NY"

stamped on front and handwritten note "Miss Lorinda Link, to here [sic] cousin" and tax stamp ghost on verso. Tax stamp dates this photo to 1864-66.  Very Good. Image sharp, but some light foxing and waterstain to lower margin of front mount. Light soiling to verso.

3) Standing woman in fancy gown, snood and cameo against tasseled drapery background. Velvety black tone photograph measuring 2 x 3.5 inches. Front mount edged with two red ruled borders and stamped at lower right "Photd. by Schoonmaker, 282 River St., Troy, N.Y." Penciled inscription on verso "Jane Link, pa sister". Very Good. Image sharp and dark, top left corner bent, rear cover soiled. Circa 1860s-70s based on her fashions.

Sinclearville is a small village in Chatauqua County, in far western New York State. It was known as Sinclearville from 1809 when it was founded by Revolutionary War Major Samuel Sinclear until 1887, when it was officially incorporated and "clarified" the spelling of its name to Sinclairville.

This trio of cartes de visites: $30

21) Busch, Glenn; Connew, Bruce; Bashford, Uiga; Muhrkuhl, Maria;Johnsen, Hanne; Kozanic, Dean; Veling, Tim, My Place, Christchurch, NZ: Canterbury University Press, 2005. Softcover. Very Good. Measures 23 x 20 cm. Foreword by Bruce Ansley. 145 pp.

A photoessay that is part of Canterbury University School of Fine Arts' The Place in Time Project, in which New Zealanders are interviewed and photographed in situ in their homes, shops and other favorite haunts. Many black and white photos. WorldCat records only three copies, all residing in New Zealand. No other copies listed for sale in the trade. $50

23) Hammer, Mina Fisher, History of the Kodak and its Continuations: The First Folding and Panoramic Cameras, Magic Lantern, Kodak, Movie, Closeup of the Inventor and the Kodak State, NY: The House of Little Books, 1940, first edition. Brown cloth with titles stamped in gilt on front boards and spine. Very Good. No jacket, boards rubbed, top corners heavily worn. Many photos and illustrations. xvi, 95 pp.

A look at the history of photography from the Magic Lantern era,

including daguerreotypes, collotypes, gelatin dry plates,

phantoscopes, celluloid film, kinetographs and various other

Eastman-Kodak inventions through to the printing date. $80

25) Vishniac, Roman, A Vanished World, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984, second printing. Foreword by Elie Wiesel. Signed "Roman Edith

Vishniac" on front flyleaf. Edith was Vishniac's wife. Very Good in Very Good jacket. Jacket lightly wrinkled and rubbed. 179 photo reproductions. 179 pp.

This book represents but a fraction of the photographs of Jewish village life which Vishniac took on various trips to Ruthenia, Poland,

Czechoslovakia and other parts of Eastern Europe in the 1930s. Vishniac sewed many of the negatives in the lining of his clothes when he came to the US in 1940, and others were safeguarded by his father

while in hiding in France during World War II. Vishniac died in 1990. $150

29) DeCarava, Roy, The Sound I Saw: The Jazz Photographs of Roy Decarava : January 20 to March 20, 1983, NY: Studio Museum in Harlem, 1983. Softcover. Very Good. Covers very lightly rubbed. Preface by Willard C. Butcher, foreword by Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, introduction by A. D. Coleman and essay by C. Daniel Dawson. Footnotes. Chronology and bibliography by Sherry Turner DeCarava. Catalog of the full exhibition at rear. 84 pp.

60 black and white plates of such jazz greats as Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Milt Jackson, Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Zoot Sims,

Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and many others. Other photos of jazz clubs, patrons, and

other musicians.  $75

32) Margolis, Richard; Peters, Susan Dodge, Photography, Art of the State: An Exhibition Featuring Work by the Photographers Teaching in the State University of New York, Brockport, NY: State University of New York, 1983. White pictorial stapled wraps. Very Good. Light foxing to front cover. 36 pp.

Includes the work of Francois Deschamps, Roger Freeman, Phyllis Galembo, Tyrone Georgiou, Bonnie Gordon, Charles Heasley, RobertKeough, Les Krims, Nathan Lyons, Mel Rosenthal, Jim Sylvia, Michael Teres and John Wood. $15

The Book of the Day: Cheap Thrills at the Used Bookstore

Restaurants may have the Catch of the Day, but at Old Saratoga Books, we have The Book of the Day. It has become a daily source of amusement and pleasure at our mom and pop used bookstore, not to mention a quasi-rivalry, to see which one of us can sell The Book of the Day when it is our turn to man the front desk. 

Sometimes the Book of the Day is one of our pricier books. It certainly perks us both up to have sold something in the three or four figures. Selling a nice Rockwell Kent illustrated Moby Dick was satisfying. Book of the Day kudos were earned for wrapping up an expensive cocktail book for a mixologist collector. Convincing a customer to splurge on a crisp copy of a signed modern first edition always brings a smile, but often the Book of the Day is something else entirely.

We salute each other whenever the Book of the Day is some honking big volume that resists easy shelving or which has thunked one of us in the head or tripped us up as it juts out from the shelves.  We both do our darndest to avoid taking them in but somehow these herniators and unwieldy tomes sneak in the shop. When these biblio-behemoths attract someone’s attention and go home with them, they are definitely the Book of the Day.

Selling the complete works of an author earns double Book of the Day honors. Sets of Dickens, Thackeray and O. Henry, the most common multi-volume works we encounter in our area, bring even more prestige, but I was never so chuffed as when I sold a set of 50 books about various kinds of antiques, written in Italian no less, to a woman who thought they would make a lovely engagement present for some lucky couple. The binding was naturally quite attractive, but they took up so much bookstore real estate and upstate New York is not chockablock with people who are fluent in Italian, so I had worried that they would molder on our shelves until Dan and I ourselves became antiques.

Selling a piece of ephemera earns high fives with us for the Book of the Day. Ephemera may be in vogue with the book buying public these days, but I find it hard to display in our traditional bookstore setup. Several years ago though, one of our talented customers bequeathed us with a handmade chest made from discarded card catalog drawers that we use for house much of our ephemeral stock, but mostly I just bag and tag (place in a plastic baggie and tack to a wooden bookshelf endcap) the items that are too small, wide or floppy to stand upright in the shelves, so they make us very happy when someone approaches the desk with thumb tack in hand.

The Book of the Day is often some poor book that has languished at the shop for years. Before we even opened our shop doors we responded to a Pennysaver ad about buying the stock of a retiring bookseller named Leonard. Some of these “Leonard” books, as we have referred to them now for over twenty years, somehow still populate the darkest recesses of our drama and poetry sections, no matter how many times we comb through and cull them. When a customer brings a Leonard book to the desk (I can recognize the former seller’s distinctive price code on the front flyleaf), I just about pull a rib muscle in quiet exultation.

Then there is that special breed of books that catch our fancy for reason of their exquisite jacket art or bindings or some strange title or subject matter that we face out or place in the shop windows. I love when these special books get adopted and validate my faith in their allure.

The Book of the Day could be some amazingly common title that someone brings to the desk and which I may reflexively think has been plunked from our 3-for-$1 bargain carts, but actually bears some audacious price (i.e., anything more than 33-1/3 cents). In this case, the Book of the Day might be Jane Fonda’s Workout Book, a cookbook by the Frugal Gourmet, a Da Vinci Code hardcover, or --be still my heart-- a self-help or business title. Bam! The customer is not only buying the Book of the Day but cleansing our shop.

And then there’s the Book of the Day category which makes each of us smile the most: when we sell the perfect book to the perfect person, like someone who relates that they have been looking for a certain title for years or to complete a series. Many Books of the Day have been purchased by one of our young customers who’s now in high school, who has been collecting books since he was two feet tall. His mom usually rewards him with a bookstore shopping trip after a successful semester and he always picks out interesting historical material, from biographies to Victorian store ledgers to ephemeral items. Whatever he buys is usually pretty cool and it’s so satisfying to ring up his book finds and see how enthused he is about them.

For all you booksellers out there, do you have Books of the Day?

NYC Antiquarian Book Fair 2015

Having attended and exhibited at a number of "provincial" book fairs, it was a special treat to visit the grandaddy of them all, the ABAA's New York Antiquarian Book Fair. My reconnaissance mission was overlaid with the pleasure of seeing some bookseller friends in action and having my daughter want to accompany me after so many years of thinking what her dad and I do is hopelessly pointless and boring.

 The Book Fair is the premiere attraction of New York City's Rare Book Week and had begun on Thursday with an evening preview. I arrived on Sunday, when I thought the crowds would be thinner and I could spend more time browsing. The atmosphere did seem a bit more subdued than I had imagined and there was more than a hint of general weariness among all the booksellers, given that this marathon event had begun with Wednesday setup and travel, and weeks of preparatory duties before that. I don't even want to think about the logistics of what some of the international dealers had to go through for this event.

While we were in line for tickets I ran into Molly Russakoff, of Molly's Books and Records in Philadelphia. Molly and I met last year at the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS). She and I were both anticipating looking at some amazing book booths, having such a greater knowledge of what it takes to acquire, present and sell antiquarian material - not to mention having to schlep it all in.

I spied a few other alumni from the CABS Class of 2014 who were assisting various ABAA booksellers, including Mr. Jeffrey Rovenpor, Noah Goldrach, and Nelson Harst.

CABS Director and Minneapolis-based bookseller Rob Rulon-Miller was there with an artful display of unusual dictionaries (one of his specialties), illustrated books and assorted antiquarian material. I had never seen a copy of Rockwell Kent's first illustrated book Architec-tonics: Tales of Tom Thumbtack, Architect and Rob noted that his copy is particularly rare for having retained its original dust jacket. That's Rob on the right with the lanyard and Rockwell at center stage on the lower bookcase shelf resplendent in his smashing light blue jacket.

Two of the most welcoming and humorous booksellers I know were anchoring a booth at the east side of the Armory: Ron Cozzi of Buffalo's Old Editions Bookstore and Jeffrey Bergman. For his 21st consecutive New York Book Fair, Ron was surrounded by an impressive array of Rivers of America series books, regimental histories and beautiful bindings, but he most tempted me with two titles; an 1890s Gollywog picture book for children- which, though lovely and interesting- makes Little Black Sambo look politically correct; and a 1970s MOMA art exhibition catalogue featuring a jacket illustration by Henri Matisse in bold black brushstrokes. Jeffrey was busy stacking up modern firsts for a customer while I was ogling Ron's books, but he was very gracious to interject a nice welcome.

The books and other items at the Fair were universally magnificent and worthy of homes in the most sophisticated book collection, library or museum. How about that page out of Virginia Woolf's passport, complete with her photograph and signature? Interested in a copy of Slaughter House Five bedazzled with an inscription and self-caricature by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., complete with his ever-present smoking cigarette? I saw illuminated leaves from the 15th century, engravings of the extinct dodo, a Figbash doll handmade by Edward Gorey, a hastily scribbled lyric from the pen of Bob Dylan, a sea of miniature books, an R. Crumb pen and ink of himself and his wife seated at a bar, Ernest Hemingway's first book of poems, medieval illustrations of popes with dragon bodies, antique maps, Big Bill Broonzy's autobiography, and a range of truly rare and beautiful items, all in impeccable condition. It was heady stuff.

While most items at the New York Book Fair were well out of my price range, I did pick up a nice book for my reference collection from Boston's Bromer Booksellers, where the range of Goreyana particularly entranced a certain graphic design student raised on The Gashlycrumb Tinies. 

Brattleboro, Vermont-based booksellers Matthew and Adrienne Raptis of Raptis Rare Books were there with a large and sumptuous array of biblio-eye candy; truly one of their gorgeous catalogs come to life. Classic literature, fine sets and books about economics and finance comprise the bulk of their stock and all the high spots were there in luscious condition.

I was delighted to stop in and peruse the offerings from two other CABS faculty members, Nina Musinsky of Gotham's own Musinsky Rare Books and Brian Cassidy, Books, whose antiquarian stock could not be any more disparate. Nina's inventory are jewel-like examples of early printed books, like almanacs with exquisite embroidered covers, illuminated book of hours, books with hand-colored plates of 18th century fashions, and incunabula.

Skipping ahead several centuries we get to the kind of material that Brian Cassidy unearths and preserves for us all: zines, mimeographed handbills, poetry chapbooks and broadsides, photograph archives, scrapbook albums and literary ephemera that document the "cultural detritus" of more contemporary times. Brian and Ian Kahn of Lux Mentis shared a booth, the most vivid and eye-catching of the Fair in my opinion, and Kahn took particular pleasure in ribbing Brian after I hailed him with "Perfessor Cassidy!". That coming from a man whose booth was crowned by a picture-poem worthy of the Red Hat Society.

I was eager to check in with Greg Gibson at Ten Pound Island Book Company, who, in addition to his brilliant writing in his own books and blog, had recently welcomed me so warmly into the fellowship of IOBA, but he was elsewhere, probably sniffing out amazing maritime history rarities from his colleagues. Greg has already blogged up his thoughts about the New York Book Fair (and the two shadow book fairs) here. You can also check out Rebecca Rego Barry's review of the three NY Book Fairs at Fine Books and Collections.

In addition to visiting the New York Book Fair, I packed in some more literary doings by attending an interactive production of Hamlet, rambling through Central Park to peek at the Hans Christian Andersen and Alice in Wonderland statues and examine the books, paintings and sculpture at The Frick Collection. A memorable weekend of wonderful books and events, indeed.