San Antonio, TX. This burg will never be accused of being a book town. Visiting the city - which possesses one of the loveliest downtown areas in the country - only one rare book shop was found: The History Shop, located across the street from the Alamo. It was not impressive; concentrating on weapons, maps and some books, its diorama of the Alamo is about the best that can be said for it. The Antiquarian Book Mart is located outside the downtown area; I did not have an opportunity to check it out. As far as new book shops, the...
Rare Maurice Sendak "Where The Wild Things Are" Original Art Surfaces
A standard, letter-size envelope featuring Where The Wild Things Are original art by its sender, Maurice Sendak, has recently surfaced.The envelope (3 1/2 x 6 1/2 in; 90 x 165 mm), postmarked New York Jan 27, 1966, is autograph addressed by Sendak to fellow Caldecott Medal award winner, Nonny Hogrogian, with Sendak's autograph name and return address to the flap. Considering its journey through the United States Postal Service and forty-three year life, it is in miraculous condition.Original artwork by Sendak associated with and near contemporary to the publishing of his classic Where the Wild Things Are is exceedingly rare.The...
Baby, You Can Drive My Car – But Carefully, Please!
In 1939, with the world on the brink and Great Britain on the brinkest, spirits were lifted, if only for stolen moments, by a book that gently satirized automobile drivers.How To Be a Motorist was illustrated by W. Heath Robinson, an extremely talented book illustrator primarily remembered today for his Rube Goldberg-esque designs for bizarre machinery and wacky inventions.“This handy, decorative, valuable, and uncostly volume... is dedicated in admiring sympathy to that badgered but unconquerable little creature, the British motorist, or Fate's football. In England nowadays it is practically impossible to be both law abiding and a car owner; try...
Love In Bloomsbury: Our Monthly Look at the London Review of Books Personal Ads
Though another page has torn off the calendar and the autumn leaves are falling, love is still in bloom, and, as usual, the personal ads at the London Review of Books are fecund with possibilities for casual or meaningful fecunding and the pursuit of happiness or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Contact info has been deleted to protect the delightfully guilty:My attempts to find a suitable lover in this column would have been far more successful but for the bureaucratic pettifoggery of the LRB advertising department, the dilatory shenanigans of the British postal service, and the rambunctiousness of my gall bladder....
On the Length of Subtitles in Many Old, Rare and Antiquarian Books,
Or, the Custom of Publishers of olde to Load the title page with a Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Contents so complete that when finished perusing one’s need to Read the Actual Book is obviated and further Exploration Unnecessary; title pages as Cliffs Notes, Advertisements, Promotional material, Infomercials, and other forms of Ballyhoo meant to capture the Prospective Reader’s imagination and Cash at a time when there were no attractive Dust Jackets or other means of Merchandising books, and reading a title page with War and Peace longitude was like going to Wallach’s Music City, choosing a new record,...