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Book place: Printers Row Fine & Rare Books

Special to the Tribune

The place: “There's something about being able to be transported out of the ordinary into the real,” says Printers Row Fine & Rare Books bookseller John LaPine of his love of literature. When you enter the Victorian-styled store, it feels like you're transported into an art history showcase of fine literature. Or the library of a mad genius eccentric.

On the wall is a framed letter from John Steinbeck to his publisher. There are busts and globes, a gramophone, a massive splayed dictionary, a Great Pyrenees dog named Sully, and a sign that reads: “A friend is a rare book of which one copy is made.”

Printers Row Fine & Rare Books specializes in this kind of friend, principally 16th to 20th century literature in the first edition, of which it has about 20,000 titles that LaPine says “are interesting, unusual, rare and will sell.”

There are signed first editions from the Franklin Library, such as Raymond Carver's “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories,” first editions including “The Great Gatsby,” and, online, a first edition first printing of Ernest Hemingway's “Three Stories and Ten Poems” inscribed to the doctor who delivered “Papa's” two sons. It costs $225,000.

Visit: Printers Row Fine & Rare Books, 715 S. Dearborn St., 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, closed Monday, or go to printersrowbooks.com.

Robert Duffer is a freelance writer in Chicago. Find him at robertduffer.com.

Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune
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