In 1947, Encyclopedia Britannica produced an educational film on mass market book making.Odds are, you've never seen this documentary, which begins with an author and his book and takes the viewer through each step of the manuscript's journey from typewriter to printer to binder, a Metropolis of production line machinery, repetitive motion, and human cogs in a process that belies the human thought and act that brought the original text into the world.
Who the Heck is Herwart von Hohenburg?
The Mensa Isiaca. Engraved plate number onefrom Thesaurus Hieroglyphicorum.No copies have come to auction within the last thirty-five years. OCLC/KVK note only seven copies in institutional collections worldwide, only one of which is complete, in the Bibliothéque National - France. But another complete copy recently appeared out of nowhere and into the marketlace, unheralded, without fanfare.The book is Thesaurus Hieroglyphicorum, published in 1610 by Johann (aka Hans) Georg Herwart von Hohenburg (1554-1622). It is one of the earliest works on Egyptology.It is a book that profoundly influenced Athanasius Kircher, one of the most fascinating individuals of the seventeenth - or...
43d California Book Fair Coda: Happy Trails
A mysterious stranger appears at the 43d California International Antiquarian Book Fair and blesses exhibitors left and right by spending over one million dollars on Bibles. Astonishing, a marvel indeed, but not a supernatural event. Or was it?Now word trickles in since yesterday’s report that some dealers are experiencing a post-Fair bounce, with books taken on approval, approved, and books left to think about later at home thought about and bought.Read last sentence, last clause again. Repeat. Some people who did not buy at the book fair went home, thought, then bought.This is an anomaly. It rarely occurs in other...
43d California Book Fair and the State of the Trade
Last weekend’s 43d California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Los Angeles, the first major book fair of the year, provided an excellent overview of where the rare book trade now stands and where it may be headed.As reported here at the Fair’s beginning, the market has stabilized; the panic of ‘09 is over. Dealers have lowered posted prices and there is movement, albeit limited. Cash remains tight for collectors as well as dealers but seems to be loosening; collectors are returning to the market but only for fresh material, in certain areas, at certain price points.Trade sales, sluggish at the...
Writers Helping Writers. Or Not. Cheever, Bradbury, Salinger and Vonnegut
In 2004, Nicola Nikolov, an émigré to the U.S. in 1976 from communist Bulgaria, walked into William Dailey Rare Books in Los Angeles with a small archive of letters.Briefly recounting a dark biography past and reduced, if freer, circumstances present, he told of his life as a published Bulgarian author and his difficulty establishing a writing career for himself in the United States. It was extremely important to him that his writing be accepted.In August of 1978, he wrote, heart in hand, two-page long, well-written, typed letters to a small number of American novelists, with full, dire biographical details, limning...