The Fair's guest of honor.From Author to Oscar® exhibit.Books into Film, the Fair's theme, has inspireddealers to feature related material.Birdseye view plan of Venice from the 17th centuryin a volume valued at $1.2 million.True scarcity:A first edition copy of J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Ryeinscribed by the author.
43rd California International Book Fair Opens
On the cusp of opening.LOS ANGELES. The 43d California International Book Fair opened its doors to the public yesterday afternoon for its premiere session.First impressions:Dealer reports were varied in regard to pre-show sales, with some telling us that trade business was nowhere, others that they were encouraged, though not overwhelmed, by trade sales volume. In the past, dealers were allowed to set-up the day before opening; this allowed ample time for dealers to work the room and wheel and deal. Increasing costs this years precluded that valuable extra time and some felt that this played a role in depressing potential...
If Mme Sévigné Used Email Would Her Daughter Have Begged For Mercy?
A widowed marquise of the French nobility, she was devoted to her children. When her daughter married and moved away, she became despondent. Loneliness prompted her to begin writing letters to Françoise Marguerite, a correspondence that by her death had numbered an estimated 1,700 epistles. It is the “most intimate and sustained chronicle of a mother-daughter relationship ever recorded” (New Oxford Companion to Literature in French).“After her daughter had gone to Provence, Sevigne was indeed inconsolable. Her devotion to the absent Francoise was intense; she and her friends wondered if it was too intense. In February 1671, four days after...
Authentic G. Washington Bookplate Comes to Auction
An authentic example: Note the chain lines in the paper.Invisible at this size, the engraver's error is found abovethe B in Probat as a scratch exiting the leafat its base and to the right.(This is not the example selling at Heritage).A genuine bookplate belonging to George Washington will fall under the hammer at Heritage Auctions, February 11-12, 2010, at their new Beverly Hills, CA branch, sale 6038, lot 37023.Authentic examples don’t come to market very often, although genuine fakes are easily acquired; the Mount Vernon online store offers them for five-and-a- half georges.Heritage’s starting bid is $1,500. The bookplate is,...
Is the Rare Book World Ready For a Fully Interactive Catalog on CD? Part Two
Yesterday, I discussed the severe limitations of digital catalogs as PDF files integrating Flash animation. What might a fully interactive digital rare book catalog look like?Insert a new model digital catalog CD into your lap or desktop machine, click on the icon and open it. First thing you’ll notice is that it is full-screen with no wasted real estate surrounding it, content sized to a screen, not shoe-horned to fit onto a standard-sized 8 x 11 leaf of paper. You can read the text without need to zoom in.Click the mouse to move pages forward or backward. Click fast or...