In February of 1964, in my freshman American Literature Survey Class, I first encountered Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Our teacher was Daniel Hoffman, a worthy poet, critic, and educator who'd go on to publish two dozen books, one of which, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe was nominated for the National Book Award. All in all, a serious customer. At that time, furthermore, he was 41 years of age, at the height of his powers as a teacher. Sparks flew as he paced in front of his desk, expounding on Jonathan Edwards, Fenimore Cooper, Poe, the Transcendentalists – inspiring us, challenging us, prying us loose from our childish preconceptions, frightening us, taking us places no teacher had ever taken us. And then we got to Moby Dick. He started right off by reading us a chapter. As I recall it was “The Honor and The Glory of Whaling” – one of those intermediary chapters that expands the scope of the story through space and time to the realm of gods and myths. It was the first time and, until just recently, the last time I'd ever heard the book read aloud. And of course, it had a profound effect. With those words still ringing in our ears, he went on to demonstrate how each of the themes resonated back through the book, strands in a mighty cable such as the one Father Mapple spins in his sermon. We youngsters, of course, were utterly gobsmacked by this performance, for it was as much a performance as it was a lecture. At the end of that first hour, Professor Hoffman told us pro... [more A Boy & His Book: Moby Dick]

“Lynd Ward was way ahead of his time, a visionary, in understanding the importance of the book as an object, as a container of a kind of content. His books were made with great attention to that container and he worked within it as precisely as a concrete poet works with language.” — Art Spiegelman The so-called graphic novel -- which may be no more than a successful rebranding of comics -- has become a very popular genre, with its own bestseller list in the New York Times, and growing shelfspace in new book stores. In light of this new-found prominence and respectability, it's interesting to look back at the precursors to the graphic novel, the stages the idea of the illustrated novel-length story went through before settling into the form we current know. One of these stages was the wordless novel, in particular the work of American Lynd Ward, who was both an influential illustrator of children's books (he won a Caldecott Award) and a pioneer of the wordless novel. Lynd Kendall Ward grew up in Chicago and studied Fine Arts at college in New York in the early 1920s. A year studying wood engraving in Germany in 1926-'27 led to his discovery of Frans Masereel's wordless novel The Sun (1919). Told in a series of woodcuts without any words, the concept spoke to the young American artist. He returned to the U.S. in late 1927, where he began his career as an illustrator by working on drawings for Dorothy Rowe's The Begging Deer: Stories of Japanese Children. In 1929, Ward ca... [more Lynd Ward and the Wordless Novel]

Bookplates are fascinating corner of the literary world. If your only exposure to bookplates are the rather anodyne mass-produced examples some modern bookstores sell, you may not appreciate the individuality, wit, and artistic skill that went into bookplates in years gone by. A new exhibition attempts to showcase the best examples for bookplates from centuries past. The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia presents The Art of Ownership: Bookplates and Book Collectors from 1480 to the Present, from September 21, 2016 through January 17, 2017. Edwin Davis French (1851–1906), bookplate of William Keeney Bixby. Engraved print and black printing ink on paper. New York, 1906. In Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), The scarlet letter: a romance ... Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850. The primary function of a bookplate is simply to indicate the owner of a book, yet book collectors across the centuries have commissioned ornate and evocative designs that do much more than designate property. From coats of arms and etched portraits to scenes of libraries and fantastical creatures, these miniature artworks may reveal a great deal about the ancestry, occupation, artistic taste, or philosophy of the men and women who used and circulated them. The Art of Ownership features beautiful and curious specimens from five centuries of books in the Rosenbach's collection, along with examples from the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the University of Delawar... [more The Art of Ownership: Bookplates]

Happy Roald Dahl Day! The renowned British children's book author, screenwriter, and WWII fighter pilot, was born one hundred years ago, today (September 13, 1916). Dahl (or more accurately his books) has been in the headlines often in 2016, first as Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Dahl's classic The BFG hit the theaters and again after the death of the actor Gene Wilder, whose most-celebrated role was as the eccentric Willy Wonka in the 1971 film adaptation of Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (renamed Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory). Many book collectors doubtless brought their children (or grandchildren) to see The BFG and/or played Wilder's classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (or at least watched him sing “Pure Imagination” on YouTube -- scroll down to play the video for a little music while you peruse the rare Dahl books on this page) after Wilder's passing, and have been reading Dahl stories at bedtime. However, if you have a Roald Dahl first edition or two — especially of his earlier books — you might want to make sure they're safely out of reach on a high shelf until the next generation has learned to handle rare books properly. Roald Dahl joined the Royal Air Force at the beginning of WWII. After surviving a crash that fractured his skull and temporarily blinded him, Dahl became a fighter ace, before lingering headaches from his injuries forced him from the cockpit. Sent to the British Embassy on a diplomatic posting in 1942, Dahl was... [more Collecting Roald Dahl]

"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.” -- Colette I readily admit that I am a fan of the badass literary woman. Give me Anais Nin, Marguerite Duras or Virginia Woolf any day – women who tell it like it is, who aren't afraid to examine deep parts of the psyche, of feelings on sex, attraction, anger… any and all of the above. It is no surprise, then, that when I first read works by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette (best known by simply “Colette”), I immediately was attracted to her matter of fact statements on such taboo (at the time) subjects, and the lyrical quality of her prose. Today being the 62nd anniversary of her death, I thought it high time a blog was written about this amazing female literary giant. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born in January 1873 to a tax-collector/war hero (bet you didn't think such a combo was possible…) and his young wife in the French region of Burgundy. Though at Colette's birth the family was significantly well off, by the time she was able to attend school the family's wealth had diminished substantially and she was only able to attend public school until she was 17. Though public school was not the ideal, it was still a reasonably substantial education for a girl in her social standing at the time. Shortly after leaving school, she married a well-known author of the day Henry Gauthier Villars (known as “Willy”) when she was 20 and he was 14 years her senior. Willy convinced her (as she later recollected) to beg... [more Colette]

Today is the third anniversary of the sudden death of Nobel-Laureate Seamus Heaney. A ground-breaking poet, his career sought to find parallels and common ground across many different traditions. Born of a Catholic family in majority-Protestant Northern Ireland, he rejected the violence of the 1970s, yet strongly claimed his Irish heritage and identify, politely refusing to be included in anthologies of British poets and declining the post of Britain's Poet-Laureate. His earliest poems, are described as naturalistic and explore his rural upbringing, celebrating the small comforts and familiarities of farming communities and considering his family heritage of agriculture on one side and industrialization on the other. As a fellow Irishman, his poetry was the first in which I found personal resonances, similarities to my own family stories, scenes that I could recognize from my own life, despite differences in age and geography. Over the years, I've become a huge fan and frequent reader of Heaney. Eleven Poems — His First Pamphlet (November 1965) Belfast: Festival Publications, 1965. First edition, first issue, with a nine-pointed purple sun illustration to the front cover, printed on laid watermarked paper. Original publisher's wrappers. An excellent copy, with a short closed tear to the spine head, light creasing to the front wrapper, some minor soiling to the wrappers, light pencil marking to the first poem, otherwise bright and clean pages. Overall, a near fine copy of an... [more Remembering Seamus Heaney]

I'm thrilled to announce the winners of this year's National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest: 1st Place: Luke Kelly. Harvard Unversity. “A Collection of Eugene Walter, King of the Monkeys” 2nd Place: Megan Jones. University of Kansas. "The Life and Times of Sacco and Vanzetti" 3rd Place: Micaela Beigel. Goucher College. “Once We Were Dreamers: A Collection of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust” Essay award: Samantha Flitter. Princeton University. “The Sand and the Sea: An Age of Sail Library in Rural New Mexico” The judges were impressed with the stories and thought that went into assembling these collections and wish to thank all who participated. The Awards Ceremony will take place at the Library of Congress on October 14th at 5:30pm. Our featured speaker is Toni Tipton-Martin. The event is free and open to public. Thanks to all who entered. [more 2016 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest Winners Announced]

Editor's note: Geoffrey Hill (1932-2016) was considered by many to be the finest poet writing in English of his time. His first poetry appeared in the early 1950s and his last book was published in 2012. His work is dense, lyrical, layered, scholarly, arcane, and sometimes not easily accessible, which makes the rewards of his poetry all the greater for those who take up its challenges. We asked Graham Shearing, an Englishman who has collected and read Hill for many years, to discuss his poetry, and Jett Whitehead, a specialist in modern poetry, to discuss editions of Hill's works. GRAHAM SHEARING: Around 1980 I was in a bookshop in Bath, England, when I first found Geoffrey Hill's Tenebrae, then two years since its publication. I was struck by the design of the wrapper and the magical word Tenebrae, with its liturgical associations. I bought one other book, of somewhat lubricious poetry, that day, by a now-forgotten poet (as is so often the case). But I devoured the Hill on the bus back to Downside Abbey, some miles away... the rattle of the bus drowned out in my mind by the force of his “Lacrimae, or, Seven tears figured in seven passionate Pavans” and its deliberate evocation of John Dowland's music. Tenebrae : Andre Deutsch, 1978. paper covered boards, dust jacket. 8vo. paper covered boards, dust jacket. 48 pages. First edition. Duff Cooper Memorial Prize winner 1979 wrap-around. Poetry Society leaflet loosely inserted. Fine. (Offered by Oak Knoll Books) I returned to ... [more Reading & Collecting Geoffrey Hill]

I first met the poet Frank O'Hara in the early 1990s. I was in the process of abandoning the writing program I was enrolled in at a local university for the much less muddied waters of the religious studies department; and, for his part, Frank had been dead for a little over twenty-five years. Frank O'Hara died at 8:50 p.m. on July 25, 1966 at Bayview General Hospital on Long Island. Mark Ford, editor of O'Hara's Selected Poems (2008) , succinctly describes the events of the previous evening, a night O'Hara spent with his friends Morris Golde, J. J. Mitchell, and Virgil Thomson clubbing on Fire Island. “The beach taxi in which he and his friend J. J. Mitchell were traveling broke down. As they waited for a replacement to arrive, a Jeep approaching from the opposite direction swerved to avoid the stranded taxi and travelers, and it struck O'Hara.” Frank and I met in a seedy bookshop on campus, a second floor walk-up promisingly dubbed Ice 9. In the airless front room of the shop were displays of toe-curlingly pornographic photo collections, dusty issues of Re/Search featuring Throbbing Gristle and Brion Gysin, and excitingly garish works by Kathy Acker, Jack Black (hobo author of You Can't Win fame), and J. G. Ballard. Perusing the makeshift shelves in the smaller rear room I came across a small display of poetry titles including a healthy dollop from the City Lights Pocket Poets Series. Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, I ran my finger across the familiar spines. But ho! W... [more Frank O’Hara in 1966]

Maxwell Perkins was the most famous editor of the golden age of American letters, working with Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. Rather than attempt to compress his mammoth career into two hours, the new film Genius, starring Colin Firth and Jude Law, focuses on Perkins relationship with Thomas Wolfe, perhaps his most gifted author, but also his greatest challenge. ABAA members offer many interesting items connected to Maxwell Perkins and his stable of famous authors, from glamorous first editions and rare books, to unexpected ephemera like mundane letters between the editor and various literary executors. Carolina Folk Plays: Second Series. Edited with an Introduction on Making a Folk Theatre by Frederick H. Koch New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1924. First edition. Thomas Wolfe's first appearance in a book, following the separate publication of his "Crisis in Industry.". 8 photographic illustrations including one which shows Wolfe portraying Buck Gavin, two woodcuts by J.J. Lankes and another by Mary De B. Graves. xxxiv, 173, pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Original buckram, lettered in green. Fine in pictorial cream dust jacket, with small loss on top of front panel, with price change on front cover from $1.75 to $2.00. In blue cloth box and chemise. Contains Thomas Clayton Wolfe's first play. Written for his dramatic writing course, the "Carolina Playmakers" taught by Frederick H. Koch. When it was produced in March 15 and 1... [more Max Perkins: Genius Editor]