Rare Books Digest http://www.rarebooksdigest.com An educational and informational site about rare, old and antiquarian books. Tue, 21 Mar 2017 00:31:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.16 Interview with Laurent Ferri http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2017/03/21/interview-with-laurent-ferri/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2017/03/21/interview-with-laurent-ferri/#comments Tue, 21 Mar 2017 00:27:11 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4864 We recently had the opportunity to speak with Laurent Ferri, Curator of the pre-1800 Collections Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, at Cornell University. RBD: Within the scope of your definition of a book [“a closed/bound container of ideas and symbols which reflects and supports the intentions and worldview of its “author(s)”], what are some […]

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Laurent Ferri, CornellWe recently had the opportunity to speak with Laurent Ferri, Curator of the pre-1800 Collections Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, at Cornell University.

RBD: Within the scope of your definition of a book [“a closed/bound container of ideas and symbols which reflects and supports the intentions and worldview of its “author(s)”], what are some of the “rarest” books that you had the opportunity to examine?

FERRI: The distinction that most of us are making between “rare books” and “ordinary books” did not make sense during centuries: all medieval books were “rare” and, to a certain extent, “unique”. I like to tell the (certainly apocryphal) story of Saint Francis of Assisi who found a discarded or lost piece of parchment detached from a volume of sermons, lying in the mud, near a scriptorium: the saint took the time to stop, pick it up, and clean it up slowly and lovingly; he then told his companions that every book containing the word of God (the only Author) should be respected and preserved. By contrast, because people have quick access to millions of printed books, images of books, and e-books today, they become snooty or blasé.

In addition to the market value (supply, demand, and mimetic desire), there is obviously the number of existing copies; the condition; the provenance (I am just coming back from our vault, where I saw the sublime “Piranesi albums” given to the brother of the King of England by Pope Clement XIV.: you cannot beat that!); there’s also the difficulty to access and/or read the book; finally, there is the sentimental and/or religious value of the item.

Ernst Gombrich wrote, in the introduction of his “History of Art”, that there is no “good” or “bad” reason to like or dislike a cultural artifact: in that sense, it is difficult to say what “the rarest book” is, using only objective or universal standards. A lovely book that was given to me when I was a child, Gédéon en Afrique, is arguably “the rarest thing for me” — but not for anyone else!

But seriously – I may soon have a chance to examine “Les Très-Riches Heures du Duc de Berry” and, as you can imagine, I am very excited: the most beautiful book of hours in the world is also notoriously inaccessible! Another rare book I would like very much to see in Chantilly is the copy of Caesar annotated by Montaigne, with the manuscript note indicating that he read it “from February 25 to July 21, 1578″.

I could also mention the magnificent Dutch atlases of the 16th and 17th centuries; Chinese “jade books”; or the first edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855), which I saw at the Beinecke, which is like Ali Baba’s cave.

Let’s try and say something more original: at Cornell, we have this unique bound manuscript called the Paidikion, which is probably “the rarest book on a high-risk subject” I’ve ever seen. It is made up of homoerotic stories, and contains a detailed listing of all the sexual encounters of a famous English linguist (1883-1957) who had a secret, scandalous life: he was attracted by very young men, and did more than just collecting the conventional erotic photographs of Wilhelm von Gloeden (some of which are inserted in the volume). There is a disturbing and awkward sense of voyeurism when you examine this diary, long thought to be lost, and which achieved a “mythical status” in some circles. If my memory doesn’t betray me, Gide mentions it in his correspondence. Anyway, passages of the Paidikion were eventually published in The International Journal of Greek Love [sic] in 1966. Today, it is made available in an academic library, “by appointment only”.

RBD: Excluding Cornell, which other institution has made a huge advancement in rare book special collections in recent years?

FERRI: Generally speaking, there is increasing global competition for “the best (rarest) stuff”, because institutions need to differentiate themselves from other “brands”. National libraries like the BnF or the British Library have this advantage over private universities or collectors that they can use preemption policies to block the export of “national treasures” and expand their century-old collections.

Philanthropy in the US remains spectacular: in February 2015, Princeton received a $300 million (!) gift of rare books from William Scheide, including the first six printed editions of the Bible, the four folios of Shakespeare, etc. Also, it is impressive to see new institutions building world-class collections of rare books and manuscripts “from scratch”: for example, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, which opened in 2014, can already boast the earliest surviving manuscript copy of Avicenna’s medical Canon, as well as marvelous Persian illuminated books, which even an institution like Cornell would never be able to acquire.

I must admit I am not aware of all the “advancements” made everywhere. Public shows are eye-openers. The most spectacular exhibitions of rare books are probably at the Morgan Library and Museum: I particularly enjoyed “Drawing Babar” (2008) and “Illuminating Fashion” (2011), both the physical exhibition and the web sites. Recently, “Aldo Manuzio: Il Rinascimento di Venezia” (2016) at the Accademia was a tour-de-force.

RBD: The acute insider’s view is that most of the rare books of the world had moved into the libraries of institutions during the second half of the last century. How did institutions adjust their focus since then?

FERRI: There is a certain fascination with big numbers (especially big $$), which I find annoying. Important acquisitions are not just about resources and logistics. It is about preserving and transmitting our cultural heritage in an intelligent, creative, stimulating, and inclusive manner.

RBD: Apart from the content of rare books there is no more intriguing question in the rare book world than “What is it worth?” Is this question relevant in the context of the institutional collection?

FERRI: You are right: the “price tag question” is usually irrelevant when we consider books at the collection-level. An important library collection is like a major/designated historic monument, it is “priceless”. The French politician who wanted to “sell Versailles” to fund Social Security was being silly.

RBD: What are the areas of present-day interest that institutions are lacking behind private collectors?

FERRI: What I can tell you is that we will always need very passionate, focused, obsessive collectors. They are not event-driven (it is sometimes difficult to plan anything on the long term when you work in a museum), and they are nor hampered by bureaucracy or political correctness. We share similar enemies: inflation, speculation, ignorance, and conformism.

Ghérasim Luca et Jacques Hérold, Le Sorcier NoirRBD:  What is Laurent’s trophy book?

FERRI: It was fun to acquire a copy of Le Sorcier Noir by Jean Hérold and Gherasim Luca (1962), for our “Surrealism and Magic” exhibition at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, a few years ago. This trove manifests the Surrealist belief in the “magic potential” of the found object. It seems to have begun when Luca sent Hérold a playful collage of scientific images of different minerals. The result was a limited edition of fifty boxes, comprising fanciful texts by Luca; two states of an etching by Hérold; and a unique haberdasher’s sample card on which buttons found in a flea-market were affixed like specimens of rare gems, lending the whole an aura of mystery and arcane learning.

By definition, however, “the book of my dreams” I don’t have yet. So, let’s make a wish: it would be fantastic to acquire at least one volume from the Pillone Library, with a splendid fore-edge painted by Cesare Vecellio (1530-1601), a cousin and pupil of Titian: the volume showing Erasmus at his desk, maybe? Erasmus of Rotterdam is one of my heroes. I just finished reading his Epigrammata, in a 1518 edition, as well as his biography by Stefan Zweig, in the Kindle edition.

Pillone Library fore-edge by Vacello

 

 

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The First Dystopian Novel http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2017/02/27/the-first-dystopian-novel/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2017/02/27/the-first-dystopian-novel/#comments Mon, 27 Feb 2017 01:41:17 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4832 Before Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One”, George Orwell’s “Ninteen Eighty-Four” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, there was Yevgeni Zamyatin’s “We”, the first dystopian novel ever written. The book is a satire on life in a collectivist futuristic state, “One State”, located in the middle of a wild jungle.  It is surrounded by a wall […]

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We by Eugene Zamiatin

Before Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One”, George Orwell’s “Ninteen Eighty-Four” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, there was Yevgeni Zamyatin’s “We”, the first dystopian novel ever written. The book is a satire on life in a collectivist futuristic state, “One State”, located in the middle of a wild jungle.  It is surrounded by a wall of glass and occupied by humans who live in buildings built of glass, have numeric names and wear identical uniforms.  In Zamyatin’s plot, the ruler, the “Benefactor” with the assistance of the police force, the “Guardians”, directs the citizens of “One State”  to undergo the “Great Operation”, which destroys the part of the brain controlling the imagination and passion.

Despite the fact that the book’s content is fictional, it had the potential to be interpreted as having a hostile attitude towards the Marxist-Leninist world view, and therefore distribution was banned in Russia. The first English translation and true first edition of the novel was published in New York by E. P. Dutton in 1924. It wasn’t until 1927, that Russian editions began circulating outside Russia in Eastern Europe, having been translated back from the English, suffering severe alterations in the process 1. One particular edition that appeared in the Russian émigré journal “Volia Rossii,” caused an open political campaign against Zamyatin in the Soviet Union that led to his emigration to France in 1931.  The book was not to be published in Russia until the glasnost era of 1988. Some of the 1927 Russian editions of the book are asking for $500 in on-line marketplaces.

Copies of the 1924, E.P. Dutton American edition with a dust jacket are extremely scarce, commanding five figures. E.P Dutton reprinted the Gregory Zilboorg translated edition in paperback format in 1959 (paperback D39). Another collectible English edition is the 1970, Jonathan Cape London hardcover, which trades for about £250 in a nice dust-wrapper.

 

"We" Jonathan Cape

"We" by Eugene Zamiatin

"My Roman" by E. Zamjatin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In June 1949, three years before George Orwell published his last novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, he reviewed “We” for the London Tribune readers. At that time, Orwell suggested that Zamyatin’s book was influential to the writing of  Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and recommended it to readers as “in effect a study of the Machine.” It is also quite clear that Orwell borrowed some key components and characters from Zamyatin’s earlier book himself. Perhaps “We” deserves more recognition than it has had, but collectors are currently more excited about Orwell’s masterpiece. Fenwick2 records two variant states of the first edition dust-jacket, published in London by Secker & Warburg, one printed in green, the other in red. Complete copies carry the original wrap-around band, printed in black and are traded for more than $5,000. Orwell, who died the year after the release of his novel, had only signed a very limited number of copies, which are now extremely rare and highly sought-after.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

One may argue that through a mix of creativity, plagiarism, and transmission of knowledge, works are almost never truly original. Robert Merton, in his book, On the Shoulders of Giants, digresses into the origin of Newton’s aphorism, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” With playfulness and a large dose of wit, Merton writes that Newton was already standing on the shoulders of George Herbert, who in 1651 wrote, “A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two.”  A generation before Herbert, Robert Burton, in 1621 wrote, “A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.” Before him, with a similar aphorism, stood Spanish theologian, Diego de Estella, who got it from John of Salisbury in 1159, who copied Bernard of Chartres in 1130: “We are like dwarfs standing upon the shoulders of giants, and so able to see more and see farther than the ancients.”3

The theme of one man, living in a totalitarian society, constantly being watched by the dehumanizing forces of an omnipotent, omniscient, Big Brother, Benefactor, Mustapha Mond, The Capitol, etc., have political implications of official distortions. It is a warning against totalitarianism under any disguise, whether it parallels the activities of Cheka or those of America’s surveillance apparatus or the presentation of “alternative facts” by government officials. It is the theme that does not fall out of fashion; a major hit indeed. Editions of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” still occupy top spots in Amazon’s “movers & shakers” thanks to National Security activities.  Outside the United States, in Britain and Australia, sales have risen by 20% so far this year compared to last year, according to Penguin Books. In the meantime, back in Russia, second-hand bookshops and science fiction in general are vanishing. Moscow is left with just six used bookshops compared to approximately 7,000 in Paris and detective stories are at the top of Russian bestseller lists.

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1 Olshanskaya, Natalia (2011). “Russian dystopia in exile: translating Zamiatin and Voinovich”. In Baer, Brian. Contexts, subtexts and pretexts: literary translation in Eastern Europe and Russia. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 266. ISBN 9027287333.

2 Gillian Fenwick  (June 1998). “George Orwell: A Bibliography”  London: St. Pauls Bibliographies. A.12a. ISBN 978-1884718465.

3 Merton, Robert K. (1965) “On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript.” The Free Press, New York .

 

 

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Rare Book Sale Monitor update – 4th Quarter, 2016 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2017/01/27/rare-book-sale-monitor-update-4th-quarter-2016/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2017/01/27/rare-book-sale-monitor-update-4th-quarter-2016/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2017 01:40:41 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4811   Last quarter’s coverage of the big rare book auctions, focused almost entirely on the new price record set by a first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, which has become the most expensive printed scientific book ever sold at auction after a winning bid of $3.7m (£3m), nearly two and a half times […]

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Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica  Last quarter’s coverage of the big rare book auctions, focused almost entirely on the new price record set by a first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, which has become the most expensive printed scientific book ever sold at auction after a winning bid of $3.7m (£3m), nearly two and a half times its highest estimate. In fact, the regular December 14 Christie’s event, “Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts, including Americana”, recorded close to 10 million dollars in total sales from 331 lots; a new record for this event.

Exuberant sales such as the one for the copy of Principia Mathematica say nothing about the rare book market overall, or the broader market for the most common titles that make up the majority of sales. Record-breaking auction sales are meaningless to the Rare Book Sales Monitor (RBSM), which uses repeat sales data from a variety of sources including auctions, on-line marketplaces and book fairs to generate the reports. Repeat sales information exclude unique offerings that only sell once or the offerings that never find a buyer. In order to avoid nonsampling errors, (which can arise when a title being tracked is no longer trading within a year), it is replaced with another similar title of the same genre.

Within the results recorded towards the end of 2016, there was a wide disparity in performance. Titles that were extremely popular with collectors historically showed a significant drop in sale price or remained unsold, while others kept charging upwards. The differentiating attribute in most of these cases proved to be the factor of “condition”. A simple example to consider consists of two copies of the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, that are identical in every way, except one of them has had some restoration to the dust jacket. If the book without restoration to its dust jacket sells for 20% more a few months after the copy with the restoration did, a normal indexing process could record a 20% jump in one of its composites.  Since collectors are more willing to pay the premium for the appeal of a copy that still has its original dust jacket condition intact, a statistical method called “hedonic regression” is applied to the computation, with the end result, in this case, having no price appreciation recorded. Hedonics is usually applied to titles that are sold with specified faults, such as damages or missing parts like dust jackets.

The RBSM begins by recording price changing trends in titles considered to be within very narrow homogeneous range. In other words, books having the same imprint and condition. Following that, consideration is given to special attributes, if any, such as signatures, inscriptions, associations, margin notes etc. The copy of the Hobbit, for example, that sold for a premium because it was signed by the author, made an impact on the author/genre RBSM index, because of the availability of comparables. Putting a price tag on “signature” is tricky, because it varies, as anything else, by author popularity and scarcity of work. Signature valuations are best left determined by the marketplace forces.

A less important consideration, but still a factor is the channel by which a particular title gets sold. Auctions in particular, are more vulnerable to wider sale price fluctuations or price variance. Bidding at an auction can become sensational given some participant rivalry, and may push sales beyond unprecedented levels. For this reason, the RBSM favors price changes recorded within similar channels or marketplaces. This heuristic practice is also in agreement with recent research studies at Stamford University, which imply that books in high demand which appear at auction more frequently, consist of works that sellers are willing to part with because they have increased in value. Such bias is minimized by comparing sales from the same channel.

The RBSM indexes are rough approximations, but they are still very useful. They are very good at providing a high level picture of the more general price trends for several genre and authors actively trading in the rare book marketplaces. In this respect, even though the media declared that a first edition of Principia Mathematica, set out Newton’s laws of motion in rare book trade motion, the RBSM recorded a significantly lower increase for the genre of science since the first quarter of 2016.

 

RBSM 2016 Q4 genre

Rare Book Sale Monitor Genre Breakdown

RBSM 2016 Q4 Author

Rare Book Sale Monitor Author Breakdown

 

 

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Pleased to Meet you, Hope you Guess my Name http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2017/01/10/pleased-to-meet-you-hope-you-guess-my-name/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2017/01/10/pleased-to-meet-you-hope-you-guess-my-name/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2017 02:35:09 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4801 I was born in Mainz, Germany. I lived for the first month of my life in a printing plant before being brought to a merchant. I can remember very little about that time, for as soon as I left the plant I was securely stored away in a bookcase outside of town.  I was very […]

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Beinecke Library

I was born in Mainz, Germany. I lived for the first month of my life in a printing plant before being brought to a merchant. I can remember very little about that time, for as soon as I left the plant I was securely stored away in a bookcase outside of town.  I was very fortunate to escape the 1462 ruthless plundering of Mainz carried out by the troops of Adolph II. Many of my fellow “paperkind” were destroyed the day that the printing office, the place of my birth, was set on fire, taking all of my early childhood memories away from me.

While I was created with a chance to live forever, (whatever “forever” entails on this planet), it is quite possible that improper living conditions could bring premature end of life to a great number of we “paperkinds.”  For quite a few of us lucky ones, who manage to attain collectible status and avoid mishaps on the way, life can be long, long, long. Some of my siblings are accounted for and well-preserved, but perhaps there are still a few that have not been destroyed and are still intelligible, buried in the farthest corners of the world, and hidden amongst the innermost shadows of forgotten rooms, waiting for the day to be discovered.

As for myself, I am sitting pretty in the most elegant of rooms, under the most proper conditions created to house “paperkinds”. I am here with some other lucky, collectible, all-time “nuggets”, such as; The Bay Psalm Book which was bought by Cornelius Vanderbilt and somehow made its way to Yale. I was still far across the Atlantic, the day when locksmith Stephen Daye, set up shop in 1639, in Cambridge MA, to work on the production of The Whole Booke of Psalmes, psalter, commonly known as the Bay Psalm Book, prized as the oldest surviving object printed in what is now the United States.

Every work in this place, whether sacred or secular, was laboriously created as a unique glorification of the acquisition of knowledge. Take for example, John James Audubon’s, The Birds of America; or the Speculum humanae salvationis (pseudo-Bonavature, Meditations de passion Christi, England, early fifteen century), believed to be the first illuminated manuscript given to an American academic library; or the first edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost; or the multiple copies of rare James Joyce’s, Ulysses; or the papers of Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound and Lassie creator Eric Knight. They are all here.

Thanks to architect Gordon Bunshaft, our state of the art new digs at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, is providing the ideal 65 °F and 45% humidity for we “paperkinds,” despite seasonal fluctuations, while also protecting us from bookworms. I am also informed that the plumbing, fire-suppression and security in this place, are designed to ensure our eternal lives, or at least as long as this planet keeps spinning.

Since I am not allowed to remain uncommunicative and inaccessible, and I do have to make myself available to the young knowledgeable scholars, I am snuggly housed in a nice Bunshaft-designed display case; an additional precaution offered to super stars such as me. Oh, before I forget, a little piece of information for any newcomers planning to join the establishment, you will have to spend three days in an on-site freezer at 30 degrees below zero Celsius to exterminate any pests you may be carrying and stabilize your mold. A brilliant idea, may I add. In fact I do not understand why some of our visitors are not forced to go through a similar process.

Just in case you are still wondering who I am, I am the Gutenberg Bible, also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42.

 

Gutenberg Bible at Beinecke

 

 

 

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The Ingredients of the Rarest Christmas Book http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/12/15/the-ingredients-of-the-rarest-christmas-book/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/12/15/the-ingredients-of-the-rarest-christmas-book/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2016 01:50:47 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4792 At a local book trade show not more than three months ago, I had the opportunity to meet up with a few old friends and exchange some provocative conversations relating to my favorite topic – books.  The antiquarian book dealer in this particular conversation was delighted to bring up some quite interesting points on the […]

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Christmas rare bookAt a local book trade show not more than three months ago, I had the opportunity to meet up with a few old friends and exchange some provocative conversations relating to my favorite topic – books.  The antiquarian book dealer in this particular conversation was delighted to bring up some quite interesting points on the origins of rare books. “What would you need if I commissioned your services, to produce a rare book for me?” he jokingly asked the book producer in the group. The response came in quick, loaded with black humor: “You are not looking for a book producer; you are looking for an exterminator or a fire-starter!”

I paused to think for a second with that in mind. I wondered, if I had asked a movie producer to create a unique blockbuster movie, would his response also have been “no way, you are asking something that is quite impossible”?

Last week I was looking through some dealer catalogues on-line to see if I could help fill some stockings with rare books at reasonable prices. A tough mission indeed! It was when I came across two offerings of the scarce The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale by Philip Van Doren Stern, on sale for $15,000, that the question “what would it take to produce a rare book?” came back to mind. I realized that this was the perfect opportunity to drill deeper into the components that create the magic of the production of rare books in general by focusing on the production of this rarest book of Christmas. The following are the ingredients that made this book what it is:

  1. Limited Production. The original privately printed, twenty-one page edition of 200 7.5” x 5.5”, signed copies, bound in orange wrappers, were distributed to friends for Christmas 1943. Van Doren, who began writing the novella in 1939 did not finish writing it until 1943, and found it difficult to get the story published, so he had it printed as a Christmas Card. The story was published as a book in December 1944, with illustrations by Rafaello Busoni, published by McKay.
  2. Special Attributes. All 200 copies of the 4,100 word novella carry the author’s signature.
  3. Successful Movie Adaptation. The Greatest Gift, about a man who was brought to a realization of the joy of living after he had expressed a wish that he had never been born. In 1946, the fantasy became the basis for a Frank Capra movie you are probably familiar with. It’s a Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore, is one of today’s most popular Christmas films, easily surpassing other favorites such as A Miracle on 34th Street. Of the 80 movies he made, actor James Stewart said It’s a Wonderful Life was his favorite.
  4. Critical Mass Exposure. It’s a Wonderful Life was not an immediate hit. Although nominated for five Academy Awards, the movie was shut out at the awards ceremony. And, despite Capra’s popularity at the box office, It’s a Wonderful Life barely made back its cost. When its copyright was inexplicably not renewed in 1974, It’s a Wonderful Life slipped into the public domain and could be found on the air literally tens of times every holiday season. It was this repeated showing that transformed an otherwise obscure film from the postwar 1940’s into a Christmas classic with a whole new audience by the 1980’s.
  5. The Importance of the Message. The story that touched the 200 or so hearts in 1943, and now stands as an icon of popular culture, had to have had a meaningful, profound message or a challenge: Pretend, perhaps for a moment, that you are a ghost on the outside looking in. Would what you see make you pause, as George had, and see the blessings all around?

 

 

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Tarantula by Bob Dylan http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/11/25/tarantula-by-bob-dylan/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/11/25/tarantula-by-bob-dylan/#comments Fri, 25 Nov 2016 00:34:28 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4776 What do T. S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Pearl Buck, Elias Canetti, Gunter Grass, John Steinbeck, Harold Pinter, Ernest Hemingway and Bob Dylan have in common? They have all been honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s most prestigious and coveted award. The 2016 winner, Bob Dylan, […]

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Bob Dylan portraitWhat do T. S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Pearl Buck, Elias Canetti, Gunter Grass, John Steinbeck, Harold Pinter, Ernest Hemingway and Bob Dylan have in common? They have all been honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s most prestigious and coveted award. The 2016 winner, Bob Dylan, was described by the Swedish Academy, as having “a tremendous impact on popular music, signified by new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” The Academy, typically awards the prize based on an author’s artistic contributions on the whole, rather than on the merits of a single item of an author’s works.

Bob Dylan’s career achievements include eleven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and this, the Nobel Prize in literature. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” In May 2012, Dylan also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

Bob Dylan’s literature artistry is for the most part expressed through the lyrics of his songs. As such, the collector of his works may choose from the myriad of works and memorabilia that includes albums, guitars, photographs, music sheets, film footage, personal items, song lyrics etc.. For the rare book collector, however, the selection is limited by the small number of books written or signed by the artist. There is actually only one book that was written by Dylan, the rest are collections of his lyrics.

In 1966, Dylan was within two weeks of making the final changes to the printer’s galleys of his first book, Tarantula, when a motorcycle accident caused him to postpone the project. Before the book was officially published in 1971 by Macmillan, a mimeographed pirated edition was issued by Wimp Press from a copy of the uncorrected proof that had been circulated. The majority of the 54-page, stapled pirated issues that are available for sale were printed in 1970 since it includes cover notes claiming that profits from the publication are to further Woodstock Nation.

Tarantula Whimp Presstarantula by Weberman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A more attractive bootleg edition of Tarantula was published in 1968 by A. J. Weberman, an American writer, political activist/gadfly, and Dylanology specialist. In the introductory notes inside front cover he writes: “The copy we received to work from was xeroxed and, according to the grapevine, was taken from the printer’s galleys. We have tried to keep as close to that as possible. This edition has the same number of pages. Each line has the same words in it. The graphics were of our own choosing. Proceeds from the sale of this underground edition are going to legal defense funds around the country”. The book features a psychedelic illustration – “The Meth Freaks fight the Feds to the finish” signed S. Clay Wilson – underground cartoonist known for aggressively violent and sexually explicit panoramas of “lowlife.”

When Tarantula was finally published, in 1971, the young protest movement and Dylan’s influence to the folk music scene was eclipsed by the polarizing effects of the Vietnam War and the political upheavals of the late Sixties. The largely enigmatic poetry written by the 23-year old boy at the height of his influence, had a very different impact than if it had been released as originally scheduled in 1966.

The uncorrected proof copies of the suppressed first edition, in spiral-bound original salmon-colored wrappers, eleven inches in height, seventy-eight pages in length, are very scarce. Macmillan’s public relations describe the edition’s size as “a few copies.” Perhaps only 3-5 copies were produced! A copy that belonged to Quentin Fiore, noted graphic artist and book designer, recently sold by Ken Lopez for $8,500. Another dealer is offering a similar copy asking $10,000. No copies are known to have ever been offered at auction.

Tarantula uncorrected proof

 

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Rare Book Sale Monitor update – 3rd Quarter, 2016 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/10/22/rare-book-sale-monitor-update-3rd-quarter-2016/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/10/22/rare-book-sale-monitor-update-3rd-quarter-2016/#comments Sat, 22 Oct 2016 23:52:08 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4765 In terms of total dollars, global auction sales of rare books in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2016 were slightly down from the same period in 2015; this year’s $87 million figure, for the period, represents a 6% decrease compared to last year. But a closer look at the top three markets – the […]

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Scientific rare booksIn terms of total dollars, global auction sales of rare books in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2016 were slightly down from the same period in 2015; this year’s $87 million figure, for the period, represents a 6% decrease compared to last year.

But a closer look at the top three markets – the United States, France and the United Kingdom – reveals a notable fall in this year’s sales in the U.S. The slowdown in America’s biggest auction market is partially due to the strong dollar. American buyers are still incredibly important to rare book auction sales worldwide, regardless of the location, and continue to lead global demand. It seems that smart buyers took advantage of the stronger dollar to place their bids in other currencies, namely the British pound.

Spring’s highlight was a two-day Sotheby’s Paris auction in late April of the remarkable Bibliotheque R. & B.L. Dada-Surrealisme, on the year of the 100th year anniversary of the birth of Dada, which brought 5,775,802 Euro. Among the many impressive works up for auction, the showstopper was an album of rayographs, Les Champs délicieux, by Man Ray that soared to €243,000 (estimate: €120,000-150,000), the highest price paid for an item during the two-day sale.

The summer season brought two successes in the British market, boosted by the devaluation of the British currency following the Brexit vote. The two auctions held at Christie’s London King Street location generated over 12 million British pounds combined. The first of a two part auction held on July 13, the Giancarlo Beltrame Library sold a number of scientific rare books which were meticulously kept in perfect condition. Mr. Beltrame (1925-2011) was an exceptional personality, a world-class entrepreneur, a collector or scientific instruments and rare books.

The second, the summer auction on “Valuable Books and Manuscripts,” generated a million more British pounds than the year before. It included a Johann Sebastian Bach autographed music manuscript, titled ‘Prelude [– Fuga – Allegro] pour la Luth. ò Cembal. Par J.S. Bach’, for the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro for lute or keyboard in E flat major, BWV 998, n.d. [c.1735-1740]. There are about ten of Bach’s complete autograph manuscripts that are thought to have survived in private hands. The manuscript is one of only three for instrumental compositions. It sold for GBP 2,518,500, at the high end of its estimated value.

On-line sales of collectible category books are still behind auctions in terms of total sales by value. Unlike the results from the major auction houses, European sales online are currently trending downward. The number of top value items sold through Abebooks this year, included 17% less from European sales compared to last year. In fact, 4 out of the top 5 sales conducted during the same quarter last year were through European dealers, while that number is down to one so far this year. It seems that US buyers have not taken advantage of the strong dollar through on-line purchases.

Sales at international book fairs are demonstrating the predictable nature of the marketplace: a scarce book, in perfect condition, offered at a discount price, does get sold. The discounted pricing is clearly marked on the currency conversion rate signs posted by dealers, such as Adrian Harrington and Peter Harrington from the UK. Our discussions with the dealers during such events as these are confirming a similar trend as the one exhibited at auction: more sales to American buyers. It should be interesting to find out if the trend continues during this week’s 40th Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair.

While deep discounts at the book fairs attract impulse buyers, now, more than ever the auction market has become extremely focused. Well-preserved rare books in excellent condition with impeccable provenance will continue to sell at premium, as the Giancarlo Beltrame Library at Christy’s, (which topped the presale high estimate by 46 percent) demonstrated.

 

RBSM 2016-Q3

RBSM Genre Breakdown

 

RBSM 2016-Q3 Author

RBSM Author Breakdown

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The Rarest Milestone in the Science Fiction Genre http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/10/02/the-rarest-milestone-in-the-science-fiction-genre/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/10/02/the-rarest-milestone-in-the-science-fiction-genre/#comments Sun, 02 Oct 2016 21:48:09 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4758 Do Jules Verne’s works categorize as science fiction? The French author who has been called the “Father of Science Fiction”, along with authors such as H. G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback, Lucian of Samosata and Mary Shelley, often argued against classifying his novels as scientific. In fact, he has often been labeled a writer of genre […]

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20,000 Leagues under the Sea Do Jules Verne’s works categorize as science fiction? The French author who has been called the “Father of Science Fiction”, along with authors such as H. G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback, Lucian of Samosata and Mary Shelley, often argued against classifying his novels as scientific. In fact, he has often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children’s books, largely because most of his books’ English translations were bowdlerized. Many translators attempted to dumb down the prose, resulting in errors, abridgment, and even censorship.

The reality was that whereas many science-fiction writers set their stories in the distant future, Verne typically placed his in the present with indisputable scientific accuracy. He took the time before writing his stories to research; to take numerous notes from every book, newspaper, magazine, or scientific report that was presently published. Such discipline in his writings caused his initial popularity in France by parents who saw his stories as educational tools. He, in fact, was a founding father of a subgenre known as “hard Science Fiction,” because he emphasized technological accuracy and scientific detail.

In 1863, Verne published his first book, “Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq Semaines en ballon),” in Paris, with an illustrated edition appearing in 1865. The book was an absolute success; readers were unsure whether they were reading fact or fiction. He continued to write some of the world’s best science fiction adventures: “Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre),” published in 1864; “From the Earth to the Moon (De la Terre à la Lune),” published in 1865, which was also the basis for the first ever Science Fiction film, the 1902 “La Voyage dans la Lune.” “Around the World in Eighty Days (Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours),” published in 1873, is one of the best-selling novels of all time and is considered to be his most successful work in fiction.

While none of Verne’s famous titles have been out of print, one edition stands alone as being the rarest. “20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers),” published in 1869, was translated from the French and released in America in November of 1872. The first issue of the American edition published after the British edition, in Boston, by James R. Osgood, carries a gilt-stamped illustration of a jellyfish on the front cover and Captain Nemo on the spine. The final ‘s’ in ‘Seas’ is lacking from the titles. Such errors as well as omitting almost a quarter of the original text, was the fault of the translator, Lewis Page Mercier.

Rare book collectors of science fiction, value the politically incorrect translation of “20,000 Leagues” highly due to its extreme scarcity. Osgood’s manufacture was bound from the English Sampson and Low sheets that preceded it in the same month and was mysteriously curtailed with very few copies put in circulation. Arthur B. Edwards, author of “Collecting Jules Verne,” (Firsts, vol 6, no 7/8, 1996) estimates that there are only about 15 copies of this true first American edition known to exist today. Speculation is that most were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire, which occurred in November of 1872, the same month as publication.

The few copies that are available for sale on-line, are posted with an ask price of around $10,000. A copy sold at Christie’s in 2001 for $8,812 while a similar copy in slightly better condition, sold again by Christie’s in 2005, a century after Verne’s death, fetched $24,000. Sotheby’s will be auctioning another copy on October 20th, in London, during “The Library of an English Bibliophile, Part VI” event. Lot #180 is set at an estimated 6,000 – 8,000 GBP, a price that does not seem to reflect the effect that the Brexit vote had on the British currency.

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From the Hinman Collator to Machine Intelligence http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/09/16/from-the-hinman-collator-to-machine-intelligence/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/09/16/from-the-hinman-collator-to-machine-intelligence/#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2016 00:39:28 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4744 Past Technology: Lights and Mirrors The students at the University of Virginia Rare Book School, receive, as part of a course in Advanced Descriptive Bibliography, a demonstration of the 450 pound Hinman Collator. The purpose of the machine, which was developed during the 1940s by Charlton Hinman, was to help detect typographical variations in the […]

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Hinman collator Past Technology: Lights and Mirrors
The students at the University of Virginia Rare Book School, receive, as part of a course in Advanced Descriptive Bibliography, a demonstration of the 450 pound Hinman Collator. The purpose of the machine, which was developed during the 1940s by Charlton Hinman, was to help detect typographical variations in the printing of early editions of a particular title. It is, in a way, an invention which can be used to identify a first printing from a later printing by comparing text one page at a time. The two copies are laid on the machine’s platform side by side and are superimposed via a set of mirrors causing variations in text to appear wiggling about through the machine’s pair of binocular optics.

The most famous task that the machine was used for was to compare Shakespeare’s plays, of which no manuscript survives. During the Renaissance, it was common practice during the printing process, to proofread and correct continually, leaving changes scattered throughout various copies as a trail by which bibliographic research could determine the order by which copies had been printed. Using his then state of the art technology, Hinman was able to compare 82 volumes of 900-plus pages, scrutinizing two pages at a time. A process he once estimated would have taken him 40 years, if ever completed, without the machine.

In the years following Hinman, various attempts were made to improve the technology primarily by condensing its size. The most notable improvement was the portable model developed by Randall McLeod during the late 1990s. By then, computers were leaping ahead in the technological innovation race, with the introduction of portable scanning devices that have become common practice today.

Digitization and Datafication
It has been a year since a US federal appeals court ruled that Google’s book-scanning project was in compliance with copyright laws even when volumes were scanned without the authors’ permission. The project, which now includes Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, to convert scanned images into text, is making it easier for readers to find works, and researchers to compare and analyze. The digitization of books is combined with data indexing to provide datafication of contents and a powerful search capability against the Big Data of the written word.

The future is now: Machine intelligence
The next generation of technology is now beginning to evolve. Fast pixel-to-pixel comparison through portable devices such as a mobile phone backed by the availability of relevant statistical data, is providing the platform for killer application development. New development is already underway utilizing complex mathematical inference learning algorithms to identify and compare books through their cover imagery using a phone camera to input. Extending functionality beyond the barcode scanner, the pixels of the covers and pages are matched against the database to determine the authenticity, value and scarcity of a particular edition.

Digitally produced images such as the ones on facsimile book dust jackets are made of ink jet dots rather than the vintage offset lithographic dots. Dots relate to the droplets of ink a printer spits to produce images in detail and are measured in DPI or “Dots per Inch”. Ink jet dots are generally smaller than vintage offset lithographic dots that are produced by pressing ink directly onto paper.

All digital images are made up of tiny squares called pixels, and each pixel in an image has a specific size and a specific color value. It takes multiple drops of ink from the printer to create the color in each square pixel. Under normal circumstances, digitally produced images contain more dots per pixel than those produced through lithography. Facsimile book dust jackets consist of pixels that contain smaller dots with greater variation in color in their composition than original dust jacket pixels which are made of larger dots with more color consistency.

Engineers at Google that have worked on providing well optimized image search engine results using the information contained within images, are now developing machine intelligence applications that are using pixel patterns to infer the identity of an image. By reversing this same process, they are able to produce an image from an object’s identity. Not too long from now, bibliophiles may carry phone apps that use the phone’s camera to match book cover images to a detailed set of data, or use book attributes to generate an image of what the book could look like. Foxing and chipping still included!

machine intelligence

 

 

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The Factor of Color in Early Centenary Printing http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/09/02/the-factor-of-color-in-early-centenary-printing/ http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/2016/09/02/the-factor-of-color-in-early-centenary-printing/#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2016 01:40:53 +0000 http://www.rarebooksdigest.com/?p=4729 17th century German Jesuit scholar, Athanasius Kircher, published around 40 works, exploring a variety of topics, ranging from a universal language scheme, to pneumatic, hydraulic, catoptric and magnetic science. His books are lavishly illustrated, written in Latin, and were in wide circulation during the 17th century. Collectors historically have sought some of his most notable […]

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Athanasius Kircher17th century German Jesuit scholar, Athanasius Kircher, published around 40 works, exploring a variety of topics, ranging from a universal language scheme, to pneumatic, hydraulic, catoptric and magnetic science. His books are lavishly illustrated, written in Latin, and were in wide circulation during the 17th century. Collectors historically have sought some of his most notable volumes on topics such as comparative religion, medicine, Egyptology, geology, and music theory.

In this, the 21st century, auction houses and dealers have sold numerous copies of “Mundus Subterraneus”, both in the original edition published in 1665, and the reprints from subsequent years. In this book, Kircher explores the theory that tides are caused by water moving to and from the subterranean ocean and concludes that the center of the earth is a massive internal fire for which the volcanoes are mere safety valves.

“Ars magna Lucis et Umbras in DecemLibros Digesta”, published in 1646, covers his work on light, shadow, and optics that lead to the production of camera obscura and magic lantern. In “Musurgia universalis”, Kircher gives an exhaustive encyclopedia of the music of the times, which remained the standard resource of music into the 18th century. “China Monumentis” and “Toonneel van China”, published in 1667 and 1668, with maps and engraved illustrations, are considered to be some of the most influential books which shaped the European conception of China in its day.

The average sale price for these books varies from a few thousand US dollars to approximately $10,000 on the high end. Since the beginning of this century, prices have remained relatively stable due to a reduction in institutional buying interest. Institutions were early buyers of Kircher’s works; a trend, that lasted through the beginning of the 1970’s.

Once in a while a scarce edition is brought to the market, generating renewed interest. A recent example is the very scarce copy of “Mundus Subterraneus”, which was auctioned just last July by Christie’s during “The Giancarlo Beltrame Library of Scientific Books, Part I” event held in London. The book without any special associations or provenance, sold for close to $200,000! It is, however, an extremely rare book being one of two of Kircher’s books recorded at auction to contain contemporary colored illustrations. The other was a copy of a Dutch edition of the “Toonneel van China”.

Multi-color printing in the middle of the 17th century was not easy to do. Multi-colored engraving was invented in 1702 by German Jakob Le Blon, which was at least 35 years after the publication of “Mundus Subterraneus”. Kircher’s motivation to produce a few copies of his books in color was one of pure experimentation. It is fairly certain through the analysis of 17th Century correspondence letters from Johannes Marcus Marci to Kircher that the Voynich manuscript, was for a period of time, in his possession. Johannes Marcus Marci, a Bohemian doctor and scientist, rector of the University of Prague, sent the enigmatic Voynich Manuscript to his long time friend, Athanasius Kircher, in the hope that Kircher was going to be able to decipher it. One of the extraordinary attributes of the enigmatic manuscript is the coloring of the illustrations. Modern day research analysis found the manuscript’s parchment pages to date back to the 15th century, with color added using iron gall ink (also known as iron gall nut ink, oak gall ink, and common ink), made from iron salts and tannic acids from vegetable sources.

Voynich Manuscript

The colored “Mundus Subterraneus” containing two volumes in one, has 19 engraved plates of which are 10 double-page, 2 double-page and folding, and 7 full-page. It also has 64 finely colored, by hand, engraved illustrations which contain one full-page and 2 on separate sheets. There are an additional 7 tables and numerous woodcut illustrations, some of which are also in color. While there is no indication as to whose hands applied the coloring to the engravings in Kircher’s work, one could dare to suggest that due to the contemporary nature of the work, it is quite possible that Anthony Heeres Siourtsma , pupil engraver of Dutch designer and copper engraver, Christin de Passe II, commissioned the job.

Mundus Subterraneus Kircher

 

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