ABC’s of Book Collecting: Association Copy October 16, 2009

ASSOCIATION COPY This term, often scoffed at by laymen, is applied to a copy which once belonged to, or was annotated by, the author; which once belonged to someone connected with the author or someone of interest in his own right; or again, and perhaps most interestingly, belonged to someone peculiarly associated with its contents. Its extension to mean any book owned by a famous person can only be excused by establishing some point of…

ABC’s of Book Collecting: As Issued & As Usual October 1, 2009

AS ISSUED A term used to emphasise the original condition, as issued, of the book described, especially when some individual feature contradicts normal expectation; e.g. ‘edges trimmed, as issued’,‘stitched, without wrappers, as issued’, ‘half roan, as issued’. See advance copy. AS USUAL A favourite qualification, among booksellers’ cataloguers, to the admission of some defect or imperfection which is, or can be maintained to be, so prevalent as to be almost normal among copies of the…

ABC’s of Book Collecting: Armorial September 6, 2009

ARMORIAL As an adjective, used of (1) a binding blocked with the coat of arms, usually in gilt, of its original or a subsequent owner, and (2) of bookplates based on, or incorporating, the owner’s arms. As a noun, used colloquially for an armorially decorated book. Previous ABC’s of Book Collecting posts Carter, John & Nicolas BarkerABC’s of Book Collecting. 8th EditionNew Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004 Buy a copy Thanks to Oak…

ABC’s of Book Collecting : Antique August 24, 2009

ANTIQUE (1) This has one specialized and superficially misleading use: for bindings (mostly calf or half calf) which are in fact modern but have been executed in the style of some earlier period. Alternativedescriptions for this tactful approximation to the book’s original dress would be ‘old-style calf ’, or ‘half calf, period style ’. Calf antique is also sometimes used to denote divinity (oroxford) calf. Genuinely antique binding, if not precisely datable, will be described…

ABC’s of Book Collecting : Antiquarian Bookseller July 23, 2009

ANTIQUARIAN BOOKSELLER The lines of demarcation between ‘rare books’, ‘old books’ and ‘second-hand books’ have never been, and can never be, clearly defined. The same applies to most of those who deal in them; and the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association makes no distinction between a man who specialises in incunabula, another who deals only in modern firsts, a third who restricts himself to botany, and finally a general second-hand dealer, provided that his business is primarily…