"A dime novel, hidden in the corn crib..."

For those of you who love American musicals, see if you can identify the quote I used to title this posting.

It only takes a minute or two of strolling through the shelves for my eye to see something new and interesting. Today it was a plain brown buckram spine with the title "Dime Novels." Inside this crude box were about twenty representative examples of 19th and 20th century dime novels. This was pulp fiction WAY before Mr. Tarantino. Shown here are a couple of examples, including one from the famous house of Beadle & Adams (a fabulous digitization project of these things is off the Northern Illinois University's Special Collection site--see http://www.ulib.niu.edu/badndp/).

Other titles in this volume are fun to read: "Snake-eye, a tale of the Revolution," "Deadwood Dick's Mission," "Fred Fearnot at Avon again," "Give him a chance!," "Frank Merriwell's spook hunters," "Cool Colorado, the half-breed detective," and "El Rubio Bravo, king of the swordsmen."

Wade in from the shallow end

Collecting books is a great game, as I've said before, and you don't have to have a lot of money to do it well. The best thing to start with is a passion for a specific theme or subject. Auctions can be a great place to begin collecting, though I would caution the amateur about trusting some of the more rinky-dink outfits which are rather low on professionalism. Some auctioneers intentionally drive up the bidding with "ringers," in order to increase the house's percentage.

One local place I recommend highly is New England Book Auctions, at www.nebookauctions.com, out of Sunderland, MA. A solid bookman (Leif Laudamus) has run it since 2001, and it's a place for collectors and dealers to get some real deals. It's also a good place to get your feet wet at a low-key but still serious book auction. Every month or so in the Hotel Northampton they conduct a sale. These are often themed sales, and are preceded by a printed catalog (anyone can subscribe for a nominal fee). Tomorrow there is a sale on Sporting books, graphics, autographs, and ephemera (mostly baseball and fishing books, with misc. other sports included).

A few years ago I bought a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica (the famous eleventh edition) for a mere $5.00 (no one wanted to lug it away)! I can't promise those kind of deals every day (generally these sets go from $300 to $1,000), but it's a great experience in a nice little college town in western Mass.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it...

If a book is on a shelf, and no one sees it, is it really there?

A few days ago I found part of an interesting set in closed stacks (NOT special collections), which was incomplete. I promised myself I'd follow up on it later (I make this promise almost hourly, to the point where I'll be here for the next 30 years following up on fascinating little mysteries). I went back up and took a closer look, opening up the volumes, and as I looked I had that feeling you get when you Know You Have Something Here.

What we have is not one, but TWO sets of a very rare work by Romeyn Beck Hough (1857-1924), a graduate of Cornell (1881) who was a prodigy as a naturalist, working for both the Smithsonian Institute and Cornell in curatorial capacities before he was twenty. In the course of his work on this set, entitled The American Woods, Hough devised a machine that could make cuts of wood in thicknesses from 1/10 to 1/1200 of an inch, which he used to manufacture and sell business cards and other novelties made out of wood.

From 1888 to 1924 he produced thirteen volumes designed to contain specimens (in transverse, radial, and tangential sections) of all the native and naturalized species of woods in the united States and Canada. The Special Collections of North Carolina State University has provided an online version of the plates, which are extremely fragile and amazing to behold:

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/specialcollections/forestry/hough/index.html

Each volume is geographically arranged: I-IV covers New York and adjacent states, V is Florida, VI-X covers the pacific states, XI and XII cover the Atlantic states, and XIII and XIV revisit Florida.

Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous.

Glad I'm not a weatherman...

So my prediction was way off--or someone got a great deal. The Stowe went for $2,800 (the hammer price, which does not include the buyer's premium). If a dealer bought it, it is likely to appear in the trade for $6,000 or more, depending on his/her reading of the market. If an institution bought it, we hope they will publicize the purchase. If a collector, it will disappear for a time, hopefully to re-emerge.

Buying at auction can be expensive, and often you'll pay 20% or more than what the item was "knocked down" for in house fees, or other fees including those incurred through customs. Buying abroad comes with its own set of headaches, which is why most librarians use (or should use) an agent "on the ground," so to speak--but of course they require a fee as well (usually a percentage of the hammer price). Some items are so valuable to a country that they will not be permitted to cross the border (an this is not necessarily monetary value). I tried to buy a nice maritime history item from France and the sale was stopped by their ministry of naval affairs (or some such department)--it was only a $2,000 item. Other items (over 50,000 euros, for example), require certain licenses, and the process of extracting them from bureaucratic red tape can be prolonged. But then, if you are not really serious about the game, you should not attempt to play.

A quick note about our rather stunning collection of editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin. We have many editions in English, printed in various English- and non-English speaking countries. We also have editions in Bulgarian, Danish (shown here), Dutch (also shown), French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish. All here at the public library. See? I knew you'd be amazed.

All copies are not equal

Here is a book which is NOT in our collection. Actually, we do have a copy, but not THIS copy. This is the first illustrated edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in Boston in 1852.

This copy is Lot 54 in the upcoming sale (Feb. 21) at Swann Galleries in New York (the theme of which is Printed and Manuscript African Americana). The estimate is $3,000 to $5,000, but it sounds low to me (they are often low to encourage bidding, but the high estimate seems low--I'll go out on a limb and say $8-10K). This copy was presented and inscribed to Ann Terry Green Phillips, wife of abolitionist Wendell Phillips, from the great abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, as a Christmas gift in 1852.


The PPL has a stunning collection of editions (and translations) of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and over the next few days I'll show you what I mean. Prepare to be amazed.

I've shown this for two reasons--it's just plain fun to follow the trade if you love this stuff; but also to illustrate that if you have one copy of a book, it doesn't mean you should never get another one. This, my friends, is historical evidence, staring you right in the face.

I have a dream...

Ambition is a terrible curse, and I've got loads of it. These collections are pure gold, and if the Institutional Gods had smiled upon this library for the last fifty years, we would have half a dozen world-class collections here. As it is, we still have fabulous collections, but the money to care and feed them is simply not here. I suspect that many of my colleagues out there in other special collections departments across the country understand what I mean.

Given the challenges the Library faces, it is enough that they pay my salary. I do as much as I can with the hours in the day allotted, and the materials I can beg for or scrounge. I don't want to make too much noise, because we are, after all, a public library, and special collections is only one facet of our mission (I hope to make it an important facet).

That said, here is my dream. An angel will appear (better yet, a chorus of angels), bearing gifts. I cannot speak to the needs of the larger institution--I don't pretend to know all the issues facing it. But if I had my way, I would have a staff of at least two (2) FTEs (one rare book cataloger and one reading room supervisor, either one with some training in book and paper conservation methods), which would cost about $100,000/year (factoring in benefits). I'd like a healthy acquisitions budget (let's say another $100,000 per year to start), and a conservation budget, which should run about 10% of the acquisitions budget. As long as I'm dreaming, I'd like a separate fund to found a Center for the History of the Book and Printing (which would sponsor lectures, a handful of fellowships, and printing classes which would utilize both of our hand presses). The center would probably cost another $20,000 per year. All told, annual operating would be $230,000. Let's throw in another $20,000 for digital initiatives and whatever details I haven't accounted for, and we have an even $250,000, which would require an endowment figure of roughly $5 million.

That's my dream. It's a good dream, and a good goal. (sigh). I'd best get started....

Roving librarian

I spoke at the Governor Sprague mansion (http://www.cranstonhistoricalsociety.org/) today about the Harris collection. Here are the essentials of my talk about the collection:


In his maturity, Caleb Fiske Harris collected in three areas: the literature of England, American poetry and plays, and the literature of slavery and the Rebellion (that is, the Civil War). His English literature collection was dispersed at auction in 2,500 lots after his death. His second collection, on American poetry and plays, is considered his greatest collecting achievement. Those books went to Brown University, and has grown to the extent that it is now considered the greatest collection of American poetry and plays in the world, numbering over 250,000 volumes, and dating from 1609 to the present.

It is his third collection, however, about which I am speaking today. It began with an interest in the history of slavery, which was obviously the great topic of his age. No shy and retiring bibliophile, Harris was aggressive in his collecting, and demanded that his agents obey his instructions to the letter. Those instructions were specific, detailed, and assured. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what he wanted to pay for it. Harris was a collector of the kind that modern antiquarian book dealers sorely miss—when he collected a subject, he wanted everything.

In the course of collecting the history of slavery, he bought works on African races, slavery in the American colonies, anti-slavery societies, negro riots, pro-slavery and anti-slavery rhetoric, propaganda, and debate, works related to slavery and abolition in the British Empire, biographies and narratives of slaves, sermons for and against slavery, and fiction and poetry related to or based on American slavery. A natural extension of this collection was his interest in the Civil War, or as he termed it, the literature of the Rebellion. Harris collected the political and economic literature related to both subjects, purchasing hundreds of speeches, works on the constitution, states’ rights, John Brown and Dredd Scott, secession, the Emancipation Proclamation, Supreme Court decisions, privateering and blockade. He also collected official publications of both the Union and the Confederacy, as well as general histories of the war, battle and campaign narratives, regimental histories, official rolls, works on prison life, naval armament, military tactics, and poetry, fiction, and drama based upon it (in fact, I ran across a fun little book entitled ). Harris used agents in the south to collect confederate works, and abroad to gather foreign books an pamphlets on his subjects.

I don't know but I've been told....

So here's a delightful and odd little book from the Fiske-Harris collection, entitled Rhymed Tactics. It is apparently an aid to memorizing field drills by setting them to verse. Published in New York in 1862, the author is pictured on the title page. The topic is pretty unsuited to verse, but I wonder if it was ever used in any serious way (the lines scan very badly, but it's amusing). I've found a couple of copies available in the trade, for those collectors out there.

The power of an icon

Yesterday was fun. I went to the Foxe Point branch and did a little presentation to fourth and fifth graders from the Vartan Gregorian elementary school who are studying American history. They were far more engaged and excited than your average college student. One of the things that made them gasp in surprised reverence was this copy of Jeremy Belknap's History of New Hampshire (1792), which some say is the first "modern" history (i.e., written to a modern standard of methodology) written by an American.

What made them excited was that this was George Washington's copy, with his signature in all three volumes. I let them touch the page that Washington touched, and several said (only half joking) that they'd never wash their hands again!

Advises against coming to America

Here's a very nice early Americana tract by Rhode Islander James MacSparran (1693-1757), one of only nine (9) copies reported in North America. MacSparran was an Irish-born missionary for the Church of England (sent to Rhode Island on behalf of the SPGFP, or Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts). You can find a nice biographical sketch of him in the recent American National Biography (i.e., ANB, vol. 14), and an interesting spread in the Providence Journal on his slave holding here:
http://www.projo.com/extra/2006/slavery/day2/side1.htm

In America Dissected, according to the ANB, "MacSparran sought to further in the colonies the cause of England's established church. He extolled the advantages of a class-conscious society supported by relgious uniformity and denounced pluralism and liberty of conscience."

Found another treasure!

Although I know rare book folks hate to refer to this stuff as "treasures," but hey--purists make life dull. I came across this little beauty as I was setting up an exhibition.

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (1818-1895), born a slave, became a leading abolitionist orator and writer, whose Narrative is arguably the best-known slave autobiography in history. Antislavery leaders like Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison (both of whom wrote prefatory material to this volume) urged Douglass to write his life story to forward the cause of abolition. Douglass began writing in 1844, and editions were published in Boston (1845, shown here in its first edition), Dublin (1846) and Wortley (England, 1846). It was quite popular, selling 11,000 copies in the United States (in nine English editions).

From the Fiske-Harris Collection

Brantz Mayer (1809-1879). Captain Canot; or, Twenty years of an African slaver. (New York: 1854).

Mayer was a Baltimore-born son of German immigrants who studied law and was widely traveled in his youth (China and India, Europe, and Mexico). A founding member of the Maryland Historical Society in 1844, Mayer later served as its president (1867-71) and sparked the creation of the invaluable Archives of Maryland series. Mayer edited the life story of Theophilus Conneau (Captain Canot), a slave trader of French and Italian stock who lived on the east coast of Africa in the 1830s and ‘40s. Conneau found himself in Baltimore in 1853 where he met James Hall (a supporter of the Maryland settlement for freed blacks at Cape Palmas, in modern-day Liberia), who thought that Conneau’s story would aid the anti-slavery effort. Hall introduced the reformed slaver to Mayer. Captain Canot was very popular, selling 17,000 copies with re-printings in London and Paris.

Auction follow up

For those interested in such things, the Christie's auction on maritime art mentioned in a previous post realized $2.3 million, with the oil paintings bringing in the highest prices (three paintings realized well over $200,000 each). No results have been posted for the sales at Bloomsbury Auctions or the New England Book Auctions, but the Swann Galleries sale of vintage posters realized over $350,000.

The top selling posters in the sale were a 1932 winter Olympics (Lake Placid) poster ($8,000), an 1894 French poster advertising cigarettes ($8,000), an 1895 French poster advertising the music hall performer "Pal" (Jean de Paleologue) ($8,500), and an 1896 French art nouveau style poster in decorative panels depicting four women ($14,000).

I should mention that in most cases it is either private collectors or dealers who are buying this material. Institutions generally only constitute 20% or less of any antiquities trade (that is certainly true of the rare book market).