Monday, February 13, 2012

Working My Way to the Book Fair


The storm has passed and life returns to normal. Yesterday the streets were clear, but the wind was biting, so we holed up for the second day in a row. However, from this experience we have learned something very important about ourselves. Unless we become so feeble that we can’t lift a book with both hands we can NEVER retire. Settling into a life of leisure may be the American Retirement Dream, but it’s definitely not ours. We told ourselves we could do anything we wanted this weekend which sounded extremely good except that after we read a lot, watched a Netflix documentary called Craft In America (a PBS show we’d missed) and talked excitedly about it for half an hour we were flat out of fun things to occupy ourselves. So Eric cleaned the house and I worked listing books and figuring out what we will take to the upcoming book fair. Only then – only when the vacuum cleaner roared and my feet flew up and down the stairs a million times did the house begin to breathe again. Clearly, we do not do idleness well.

I don’t know whether this is a good thing or bad thing, but I lean sharply toward good for the simple reason that there is no line of demarcation between work and play for me. I love selling books, I love writing when I’m in “the zone”, and I love playing with my art papers. So it’s not surprising that in the end, this weekend was salvaged by the call of the books. At least for me anyway. As for Eric, he doesn’t love cleaning, but he doesn’t hate it either, so for him there was a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment which is much better  than frittering away time doing nothing. See what I mean? We lack the relaxing gene. My antiques dealer friend Darwin says he lacks it too and thinks we should probably buy a couple if they turn up on ebay!

Yesterday’s work also blessed me with a sense of peace and well-being regarding the upcoming antiquarian show. While I am certainly not bursting with books over here, I am not as bad off as I thought I was either. Over the past year I tucked away this book and that book and now all of a sudden there’s a small cache of real goodies including a signed copy of the Mark Twain biography written by his daughter, Clara; an 1895 Compleat  Angler; an early Ray Vietzen archaeology (The Ancient Ohioans); an 1849 copy of John Quincy Adams’ Letters to his Son (religious); and an 1812 copy of Washington’s Final Address. I also have a ton of first edition novels by the French mystery writer Georges Simenon, an impressive array of Easton Press titles from the 70’s that have never been read, a nice collection of pop-up books and specialty vintage kid books, that rare little baseball book I showed you not long ago, those 16th and 17th century vellum documents from England, a rare map (we'll talk about it later), and boxes and boxes of ephemera.
I also found something I got this past summer that confounded me then and confounds me now. It’s a book titled The Marrow of Astrology which was published in 1688. Truly, this is one of those books you could  easily pass by without even a glance due to the fact that it was rebound cheaply and plainly in 1906. We know this because the daughter of the former owner wrote it at the top of the foreword of the text. Both the title page and copyright page are missing, but the book is actually two books in one and the second part clearly shows the title. Of course the pages are very delicate, but can be carefully read, though you do  have to decipher ye olde English. What I love most about it is a section where the author numbered his many points on a topic and got all the way to thirteenthly!  

Handwritten notes and marginalia to the original text can be a sticky wicket, but I suspect in this case it may depend greatly on the sensibilities of the buyer, as they date from 1906. The tricky part of this book is pricing it. One lone copy exists on ABE owned by a British dealer who is asking $1300. His has been rebound also, but in calf, and is not missing the two pages as mine is. But then again, that makes mine the bargain copy -- which in a way is good, but in another way is the problem. The cheap binding and missing pages are egregious faults which devalue it by a good bit. But what is “a good bit”? There’s where it gets tricky.





I need to do some research on it, as well as on the 1812 Washington’s Final Address. As for the John Quincy Adams book of letters to his son – it looks like that one will be skipping the fair this year after all. I listed it on ABE yesterday because I couldn’t believe anyone at the fair would pay a three-figure price tag for a little book that measures 3"x4-1/2" and is not a first edition. JQ Adams died in 1848, the year the book was published and my copy dates from 1849. But it looks like I might have been wrong because it sold on ABE as I was writing this.


2 comments:

Barbara said...

Just found you via the ChrisLands LinkedIn page, I've read a few of your posts and love them! I started a blog last year http://marchhousebookscom.blogspot.com/ it's about vintage children's books so may not be your 'thing' but I would love it if you called in. I can't leave without following your blog so will do that next.

tess said...

Hi Barbara! Delighted you stopped by and delighted to hear you have a blog. I LOVE vintage children's books, so will definitely be coming to call. This new Christland's discussion is great --helps us meet each other. I'm off for a visit right now, in fact.